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 12 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -22 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,015 1,849 2,289
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 5.66% 5.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.41% 41.69% 38.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,256 1,180 1,473
10th Percentile £350 £367 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £691 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 53 143
10th Percentile £35.18 £43.21 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £58.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.40 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,113 4,435 5,889
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.66% 13.58% 13.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,271 2,868 3,852
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £314 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 238 437
10th Percentile £15.78 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.01 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.86
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.46% -41.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £21.28 £31.13
% change year-on-year +24.25% -31.63% +4.97%

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 12 July 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 12 July 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 12 July 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 -25 1,698 £515 -4.19% 894
UK excluding London -17 1,203 £500 - 745
London -52 590 £545 -5.63% 252
Work from Home -32 536 £500 -1.23% 374
South East -6 335 £513 -2.38% 222
North of England -15 313 £481 -3.90% 151
South West -4 183 £538 -6.52% 159
Midlands -8 152 £476 +0.21% 62
North West -17 151 £478 +18.78% 98
Yorkshire -21 145 £500 -4.76% 32
West Midlands -14 130 £475 -2.06% 35
Scotland -26 103 £463 -5.61% 38
East of England -22 92 £475 -3.06% 89
Wales +3 28 £465 +64.60% 12
North East -19 22 £406 -14.92% 22
East Midlands -12 19 £528 +16.06% 27
Northern Ireland 0 5 - - 24

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 83 (4.12%) Confluence
2 54 (2.68%) Apache
3 33 (1.64%) nginx
4 29 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.09%) Tomcat
7 21 (1.04%) WebLogic
8 19 (0.94%) Apache Spark
9 13 (0.65%) OpenStack
10 11 (0.55%) CICS
10 11 (0.55%) SAS
11 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.40%) IIS
12 8 (0.40%) JBoss
13 6 (0.30%) SharePoint
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 22 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.050%) Houdini
5 1 (0.050%) InDesign
5 1 (0.050%) NUKE
5 1 (0.050%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.099%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) Shopify
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 602 (29.88%) AWS
2 427 (21.19%) Azure
3 157 (7.79%) GitHub
4 138 (6.85%) GCP
5 115 (5.71%) OpenShift
6 92 (4.57%) Amazon S3
7 91 (4.52%) GitHub Actions
8 88 (4.37%) Amazon EC2
9 76 (3.77%) Entra ID
10 68 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
11 62 (3.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 60 (2.98%) Amazon EKS
13 57 (2.83%) Serverless
14 51 (2.53%) AWS CloudFormation
15 49 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
16 48 (2.38%) AWS Lambda
16 48 (2.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 46 (2.28%) IaaS
18 43 (2.13%) SaaS
19 41 (2.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 188 (9.33%) Firewall
2 162 (8.04%) DNS
3 90 (4.47%) TCP/IP
4 75 (3.72%) SAN
4 75 (3.72%) VPN
5 74 (3.67%) Network Security
6 64 (3.18%) DHCP
7 48 (2.38%) WAN
8 37 (1.84%) SSL
9 36 (1.79%) LAN
10 35 (1.74%) VSAN
11 33 (1.64%) SNMP
12 31 (1.54%) HTTP
13 30 (1.49%) SSH
14 28 (1.39%) NAS
15 26 (1.29%) VLAN
16 24 (1.19%) Ethernet
17 21 (1.04%) IPsec
18 19 (0.94%) BGP
19 18 (0.89%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (6.00%) SQL Server
2 119 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
3 85 (4.22%) Oracle Database
4 77 (3.82%) MySQL
5 74 (3.67%) Relational Database
6 67 (3.33%) MongoDB
7 57 (2.83%) Amazon RDS
8 44 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.94%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.44%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.44%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.44%) RDBMS
11 22 (1.09%) Big Data
12 20 (0.99%) SAP HANA
13 19 (0.94%) KDB
14 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
15 16 (0.79%) DataStage
15 16 (0.79%) Oracle Database 12c
16 15 (0.74%) Data Warehouse
16 15 (0.74%) Db2
Development Applications
1 217 (10.77%) Jenkins
2 196 (9.73%) GitLab
3 176 (8.73%) Git
4 151 (7.49%) JIRA
5 34 (1.69%) Maven
6 31 (1.54%) Mockito
6 31 (1.54%) SonarQube
7 23 (1.14%) Bitbucket
8 21 (1.04%) Eclipse
8 21 (1.04%) Sonatype Nexus
9 18 (0.89%) Artifactory
10 17 (0.84%) JUnit
11 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.69%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.69%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.65%) jMock
14 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
15 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
16 8 (0.40%) TeamCity
General
1 405 (20.10%) Social Skills
2 284 (14.09%) Finance
3 209 (10.37%) Public Sector
4 174 (8.64%) Analytical Skills
5 138 (6.85%) Banking
6 77 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.84%) Military
8 29 (1.44%) Front Office
8 29 (1.44%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.34%) Telecoms
10 26 (1.29%) Retail
11 24 (1.19%) Legal
12 22 (1.09%) Law
13 20 (0.99%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.94%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.89%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 262 (13.00%) Senior
2 213 (10.57%) Developer
3 195 (9.68%) DevOps Engineer
3 195 (9.68%) Linux Engineer
4 159 (7.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 125 (6.20%) Software Engineer
6 101 (5.01%) Architect
7 97 (4.81%) Analyst
8 87 (4.32%) Lead
9 79 (3.92%) Java Developer
10 73 (3.62%) Platform Engineer
11 68 (3.37%) Consultant
12 67 (3.33%) AWS Engineer
13 62 (3.08%) Support Engineer
14 60 (2.98%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 59 (2.93%) Cloud Engineer
16 56 (2.78%) Administrator
17 52 (2.58%) Security Engineer
17 52 (2.58%) Site Engineer
18 51 (2.53%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (4.86%) Kafka
2 94 (4.67%) REST
3 76 (3.77%) Middleware
4 74 (3.67%) Elastic Stack
5 56 (2.78%) Spring
6 50 (2.48%) Spring Boot
7 49 (2.43%) LDAP
8 47 (2.33%) Web Services
9 45 (2.23%) RESTful
10 44 (2.18%) Node.js
11 41 (2.03%) .NET
12 31 (1.54%) ActiveMQ
13 28 (1.39%) YAML
14 27 (1.34%) JSON
14 27 (1.34%) React
14 27 (1.34%) SOAP
15 26 (1.29%) AngularJS
16 24 (1.19%) XML
17 22 (1.09%) Django
18 20 (0.99%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 140 (6.95%) Data Centre
2 129 (6.40%) Cloud Native
3 103 (5.11%) Onboarding
4 93 (4.62%) Linux Command Line
5 82 (4.07%) PKI
6 79 (3.92%) Distributed Systems
7 70 (3.47%) Replication
8 61 (3.03%) Management Information System
9 58 (2.88%) Public Cloud
10 55 (2.73%) Security Posture
11 54 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
12 50 (2.48%) Hybrid Cloud
13 38 (1.89%) Product Ownership
14 30 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
15 28 (1.39%) Embedded Systems
15 28 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
16 27 (1.34%) Enterprise Storage
16 27 (1.34%) Operational Technology
17 26 (1.29%) Clustering
18 25 (1.24%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 757 (37.57%) Windows
2 415 (20.60%) Unix
3 327 (16.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 195 (9.68%) Windows Server
5 104 (5.16%) Ubuntu
6 70 (3.47%) AIX
7 58 (2.88%) Solaris
8 42 (2.08%) CentOS
9 30 (1.49%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.44%) VMS
11 24 (1.19%) SUSE
11 24 (1.19%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.94%) Android
13 16 (0.79%) Mac OS
14 15 (0.74%) Debian
14 15 (0.74%) Mac OS X
14 15 (0.74%) Oracle Linux
14 15 (0.74%) Windows 10
14 15 (0.74%) Windows Server 2016
15 14 (0.69%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 574 (28.49%) CI/CD
2 487 (24.17%) DevOps
3 366 (18.16%) Agile
4 339 (16.82%) Infrastructure as Code
5 304 (15.09%) Problem-Solving
6 278 (13.80%) Containerisation
7 226 (11.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 218 (10.82%) Migration
9 210 (10.42%) Software Engineering
10 188 (9.33%) Observability
11 187 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
12 182 (9.03%) High Availability
13 164 (8.14%) Performance Tuning
14 161 (7.99%) Root Cause Analysis
15 156 (7.74%) ITIL
16 155 (7.69%) Platform Engineering
17 150 (7.44%) SIEM
18 136 (6.75%) Microservices
18 136 (6.75%) Test Automation
19 135 (6.70%) AI
Programming Languages
1 684 (33.95%) Python
2 337 (16.72%) SQL
3 327 (16.23%) Bash
4 315 (15.63%) PowerShell
5 252 (12.51%) Java
6 148 (7.34%) Shell Script
7 123 (6.10%) C++
8 90 (4.47%) JavaScript
9 68 (3.37%) C
10 61 (3.03%) C#
11 58 (2.88%) PL/SQL
12 55 (2.73%) Perl
13 51 (2.53%) Go
14 25 (1.24%) Ada
15 24 (1.19%) TypeScript
16 22 (1.09%) Rust
17 21 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
18 18 (0.89%) Bicep
19 16 (0.79%) PHP
20 15 (0.74%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 787 (39.06%) Security Cleared
2 588 (29.18%) SC Cleared
3 223 (11.07%) DV Cleared
4 178 (8.83%) Degree
5 71 (3.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 70 (3.47%) AWS Certification
7 56 (2.78%) Cisco Certification
7 56 (2.78%) CISSP
8 53 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
9 43 (2.13%) Azure Certification
10 33 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
11 29 (1.44%) RHCE
12 26 (1.29%) CCNA
13 24 (1.19%) CCNP
14 20 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.89%) CISM
16 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.79%) GIAC
18 14 (0.69%) Oracle Certification
18 14 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (4.27%) NIST
2 82 (4.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (2.88%) QA
4 41 (2.03%) SLA
5 25 (1.24%) NCSC
6 21 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
6 21 (1.04%) GDPR
7 20 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.69%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.55%) GRC
12 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
13 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.35%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 342 (16.97%) Docker
2 238 (11.81%) Active Directory
3 232 (11.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.67%) Virtual Machines
5 72 (3.57%) Hyper-V
5 72 (3.57%) VMware ESXi
6 71 (3.52%) vSphere
7 55 (2.73%) VMware NSX
8 49 (2.43%) NFS
9 36 (1.79%) Firmware
9 36 (1.79%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (1.59%) KVM
11 21 (1.04%) Postfix
12 17 (0.84%) GPFS
13 12 (0.60%) Ceph
14 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
16 7 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 426 (21.14%) Ansible
2 417 (20.69%) Terraform
3 416 (20.65%) Kubernetes
4 175 (8.68%) Grafana
5 153 (7.59%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.57%) Puppet
7 56 (2.78%) Progress Chef
8 48 (2.38%) Oracle RMAN
9 47 (2.33%) vCenter Server
10 33 (1.64%) Data Guard
11 30 (1.49%) Packer
12 28 (1.39%) Nagios
13 27 (1.34%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.29%) ZABBIX
15 23 (1.14%) Argo
16 22 (1.09%) Tivoli
16 22 (1.09%) vRealize
17 21 (1.04%) Kibana
18 20 (0.99%) Podman
19 19 (0.94%) SCCM
Vendors
1 314 (15.58%) VMware
2 291 (14.44%) Oracle
3 280 (13.90%) Microsoft
4 224 (11.12%) Red Hat
5 164 (8.14%) Splunk
6 126 (6.25%) Cisco
7 110 (5.46%) IBM
8 94 (4.67%) ServiceNow
9 72 (3.57%) CyberArk
10 66 (3.28%) Google
11 48 (2.38%) Palo Alto
12 45 (2.23%) SolarWinds
13 44 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.99%) SAP
15 38 (1.89%) F5
16 35 (1.74%) HP
16 35 (1.74%) NetApp
17 34 (1.69%) Citrix
18 32 (1.59%) Sybase
19 29 (1.44%) Dynatrace