Linux Contract Job Trends

Linux
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Linux skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -19 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,885 1,676 2,215
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.83% 5.14%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.75% 42.06% 38.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,161 1,083 1,466
10th Percentile £350 £375 £340
25th Percentile £413 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £633 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £515 £545
% change year-on-year -4.85% -5.50% +3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 37 119
10th Percentile £33.90 £46.34 £44.35
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £53.75
Median hourly rate £61.42 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.52% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.04 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - -

All Operating Systems
UK

Linux falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,742 3,985 5,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.85% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,015 2,625 3,888
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £315 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £465 £470
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% -1.06% -6.00%
75th Percentile £571 £586 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 184 405
10th Percentile £14.75 £15.15 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.06 £17.33 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.73% -2.22% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £44.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £71.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £22.58
% change year-on-year +72.23% -16.43% -41.35%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Linux relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Linux job vacancy trend in the UK

Linux
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux

Linux
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux over the 6 months to 3 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Linux in the UK

Linux
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux

Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Linux over the 6 months to 3 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Linux in the UK

Linux
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux within the UK over the 6 months to 3 June 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -22 1,577 £511 -7.09% 956
UK excluding London -14 1,125 £490 -4.85% 735
London -51 544 £550 -4.76% 297
Work from Home -29 479 £500 -4.76% 495
South East -6 304 £505 -8.18% 239
North of England -14 291 £469 -10.67% 109
South West -5 160 £538 -10.42% 142
Midlands -14 149 £485 -3.00% 70
Yorkshire -17 149 £480 -10.70% 25
West Midlands -14 129 £477 -4.60% 38
North West -14 128 £466 -5.34% 64
Scotland -22 97 £500 +5.26% 41
East of England -12 90 £475 +0.53% 106
Wales +3 27 £465 -20.65% 22
East Midlands -27 17 £530 +16.61% 32
North East -27 14 £446 -18.12% 20
Northern Ireland +7 13 £425 +30.77% 18

Linux
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 82 (4.35%) Confluence
2 51 (2.71%) Apache
3 33 (1.75%) nginx
4 26 (1.38%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (1.17%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.95%) Apache Spark
7 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 13 (0.69%) SAS
9 12 (0.64%) OpenStack
9 12 (0.64%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 9 (0.48%) NetWeaver
12 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.37%) JBoss
13 7 (0.37%) SharePoint
14 6 (0.32%) IIS
14 6 (0.32%) TPMS
14 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.27%) CMS
Applications
1 21 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.053%) InDesign
5 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 533 (28.28%) AWS
2 387 (20.53%) Azure
3 163 (8.65%) GitHub
4 121 (6.42%) GCP
5 110 (5.84%) OpenShift
6 94 (4.99%) GitHub Actions
7 84 (4.46%) Amazon EC2
7 84 (4.46%) Amazon S3
8 69 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
9 68 (3.61%) Amazon EKS
10 63 (3.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 58 (3.08%) Serverless
12 52 (2.76%) AWS CloudFormation
13 51 (2.71%) Entra ID
14 49 (2.60%) AWS Lambda
15 44 (2.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 43 (2.28%) IaaS
17 41 (2.18%) Microsoft 365
17 41 (2.18%) PaaS
18 36 (1.91%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 186 (9.87%) Firewall
2 142 (7.53%) DNS
3 92 (4.88%) TCP/IP
4 78 (4.14%) VPN
5 64 (3.40%) Network Security
5 64 (3.40%) SAN
6 49 (2.60%) DHCP
6 49 (2.60%) WAN
7 41 (2.18%) LAN
8 35 (1.86%) SNMP
8 35 (1.86%) SSL
9 34 (1.80%) VSAN
10 32 (1.70%) SSH
11 29 (1.54%) HTTP
12 26 (1.38%) NAS
13 23 (1.22%) Ethernet
14 19 (1.01%) BGP
14 19 (1.01%) IPsec
14 19 (1.01%) VLAN
15 17 (0.90%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (5.89%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.84%) PostgreSQL
3 75 (3.98%) MySQL
4 72 (3.82%) Oracle Database
5 62 (3.29%) Relational Database
6 61 (3.24%) MongoDB
7 50 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.28%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.96%) Amazon Aurora
10 26 (1.38%) NoSQL
11 25 (1.33%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
12 20 (1.06%) SAP HANA
13 18 (0.95%) Big Data
14 17 (0.90%) KDB
15 16 (0.85%) DB2
16 15 (0.80%) Power BI
17 14 (0.74%) Kdb+
18 13 (0.69%) Sybase ASE
19 12 (0.64%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 206 (10.93%) Jenkins
2 175 (9.28%) GitLab
3 167 (8.86%) Git
4 139 (7.37%) JIRA
5 33 (1.75%) Maven
6 30 (1.59%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.38%) Mockito
8 23 (1.22%) Eclipse
9 21 (1.11%) JUnit
10 19 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
11 18 (0.95%) Bitbucket
12 16 (0.85%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
14 13 (0.69%) jMock
15 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
16 10 (0.53%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 382 (20.27%) Social Skills
2 267 (14.16%) Finance
3 195 (10.34%) Public Sector
4 150 (7.96%) Analytical Skills
5 122 (6.47%) Banking
6 78 (4.14%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.28%) Military
8 24 (1.27%) Front Office
9 23 (1.22%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.22%) Financial Institution
9 23 (1.22%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.17%) Retail
11 21 (1.11%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.11%) Law
12 20 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 17 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
15 16 (0.85%) Legal
16 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.64%) Police
Job Titles
1 243 (12.89%) Senior
2 189 (10.03%) Developer
3 182 (9.66%) Linux Engineer
4 177 (9.39%) DevOps Engineer
5 133 (7.06%) Software Engineer
6 122 (6.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 104 (5.52%) Architect
8 101 (5.36%) Analyst
9 96 (5.09%) Lead
10 74 (3.93%) Administrator
11 73 (3.87%) AWS Engineer
11 73 (3.87%) Java Developer
12 64 (3.40%) Consultant
13 57 (3.02%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 56 (2.97%) Platform Engineer
15 55 (2.92%) Security Engineer
16 51 (2.71%) AWS DevOps
17 49 (2.60%) Site Engineer
18 48 (2.55%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 47 (2.49%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (4.77%) Kafka
2 80 (4.24%) REST
3 74 (3.93%) Middleware
4 72 (3.82%) Elastic Stack
5 51 (2.71%) LDAP
6 50 (2.65%) Spring Boot
7 49 (2.60%) Spring
8 46 (2.44%) Node.js
9 44 (2.33%) Web Services
10 43 (2.28%) RESTful
11 38 (2.02%) .NET
12 34 (1.80%) YAML
13 27 (1.43%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.43%) JSON
14 25 (1.33%) ActiveMQ
14 25 (1.33%) XML
15 24 (1.27%) SOAP
16 21 (1.11%) Flash
16 21 (1.11%) React
17 19 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 150 (7.96%) Data Centre
2 108 (5.73%) Cloud Native
3 78 (4.14%) Onboarding
4 76 (4.03%) Linux Command Line
5 71 (3.77%) Management Information System
6 69 (3.66%) Distributed Systems
7 65 (3.45%) PKI
8 59 (3.13%) Replication
9 47 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.49%) Public Cloud
9 47 (2.49%) Security Posture
10 45 (2.39%) Hybrid Cloud
11 35 (1.86%) Product Ownership
12 32 (1.70%) Enterprise Storage
13 31 (1.64%) Embedded Systems
14 30 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
14 30 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
15 25 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
15 25 (1.33%) Operational Technology
16 24 (1.27%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 724 (38.41%) Windows
2 371 (19.68%) Unix
3 301 (15.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 183 (9.71%) Windows Server
5 97 (5.15%) Ubuntu
6 55 (2.92%) AIX
7 49 (2.60%) Solaris
8 44 (2.33%) CentOS
9 35 (1.86%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.54%) VMS
11 24 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (1.22%) Android
13 21 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (1.06%) Debian
15 19 (1.01%) Mac OS
16 14 (0.74%) SUSE
17 13 (0.69%) Windows 10
18 12 (0.64%) Mac OS X
18 12 (0.64%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 531 (28.17%) CI/CD
2 452 (23.98%) DevOps
3 354 (18.78%) Agile
4 284 (15.07%) Problem-Solving
5 283 (15.01%) Infrastructure as Code
6 238 (12.63%) Containerisation
7 203 (10.77%) Software Engineering
8 186 (9.87%) Migration
9 178 (9.44%) Observability
10 175 (9.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 157 (8.33%) High Availability
12 156 (8.28%) SIEM
13 155 (8.22%) Performance Tuning
14 151 (8.01%) Continuous Improvement
15 145 (7.69%) Root Cause Analysis
16 137 (7.27%) ITIL
17 130 (6.90%) Incident Response
18 129 (6.84%) Cybersecurity
19 128 (6.79%) Test Automation
20 126 (6.68%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 619 (32.84%) Python
2 323 (17.14%) SQL
3 278 (14.75%) Bash
3 278 (14.75%) PowerShell
4 252 (13.37%) Java
5 154 (8.17%) Shell Script
6 126 (6.68%) C++
7 100 (5.31%) JavaScript
8 63 (3.34%) Perl
9 60 (3.18%) C
10 58 (3.08%) C#
11 49 (2.60%) Go
12 46 (2.44%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.27%) Rust
14 23 (1.22%) TypeScript
15 21 (1.11%) Ada
15 21 (1.11%) MATLAB
16 20 (1.06%) Ruby
17 19 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.85%) PHP
Qualifications
1 738 (39.15%) Security Cleared
2 544 (28.86%) SC Cleared
3 209 (11.09%) DV Cleared
4 186 (9.87%) Degree
5 73 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
6 70 (3.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (3.13%) CISSP
8 56 (2.97%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
9 44 (2.33%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.07%) Azure Certification
11 34 (1.80%) RHCE
12 25 (1.33%) CCNP
13 24 (1.27%) CCNA
14 20 (1.06%) CISM
14 20 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 17 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
18 16 (0.85%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.51%) NIST
2 73 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 55 (2.92%) QA
4 50 (2.65%) SLA
5 28 (1.49%) Cyber Essentials
5 28 (1.49%) GDPR
6 22 (1.17%) NCSC
7 17 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 12 (0.64%) HIPAA
9 11 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (0.48%) Data Quality
10 9 (0.48%) GRC
11 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.42%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.32%) GLBA
12 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
13 5 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 5 (0.27%) DICOM
13 5 (0.27%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 314 (16.66%) Docker
2 221 (11.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 194 (10.29%) Active Directory
4 78 (4.14%) Virtual Machines
5 66 (3.50%) vSphere
6 65 (3.45%) Hyper-V
7 63 (3.34%) VMware ESXi
8 52 (2.76%) NFS
9 47 (2.49%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.96%) Firmware
11 29 (1.54%) KVM
12 24 (1.27%) Oracle RAC
13 22 (1.17%) GPFS
14 21 (1.11%) Postfix
15 12 (0.64%) Ceph
15 12 (0.64%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.48%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.42%) Squid
18 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 385 (20.42%) Ansible
2 371 (19.68%) Kubernetes
3 353 (18.73%) Terraform
4 174 (9.23%) Grafana
5 143 (7.59%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.66%) Puppet
7 47 (2.49%) Progress Chef
8 40 (2.12%) vCenter Server
9 38 (2.02%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.59%) Podman
11 28 (1.49%) Red Hat Satellite
12 26 (1.38%) Packer
12 26 (1.38%) vRealize
13 25 (1.33%) Kibana
14 24 (1.27%) Data Guard
14 24 (1.27%) ZABBIX
15 23 (1.22%) Nagios
16 22 (1.17%) Tivoli
17 21 (1.11%) Argo
18 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 303 (16.07%) VMware
2 269 (14.27%) Oracle
3 254 (13.47%) Microsoft
4 226 (11.99%) Red Hat
5 183 (9.71%) Splunk
6 122 (6.47%) Cisco
7 96 (5.09%) IBM
8 87 (4.62%) ServiceNow
9 54 (2.86%) Palo Alto
10 51 (2.71%) CyberArk
11 49 (2.60%) Google
12 37 (1.96%) F5
13 35 (1.86%) Dell
13 35 (1.86%) SolarWinds
14 34 (1.80%) SAP
15 33 (1.75%) Citrix
15 33 (1.75%) NVIDIA
16 31 (1.64%) HP
17 29 (1.54%) BeyondTrust
18 26 (1.38%) Atlassian