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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,894 1,720 2,230
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.79% 5.84% 5.11%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.67% 41.77% 37.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,162 1,112 1,461
10th Percentile £345 £374 £340
25th Percentile £413 £431 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.10% -1.39% -6.09%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -1.80% -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 36 123
10th Percentile £35.44 £45.16 £46.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £54.38 £55.63
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - -
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 4,774 4,118 5,880
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.55% 13.99% 13.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,042 2,693 3,913
10th Percentile £188 £200 £188
25th Percentile £316 £313 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 196 408
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.17 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.33 £15.64
Median hourly rate £29.48 £21.59 £22.79
Median % change year-on-year +36.54% -5.27% -48.33%
75th Percentile £63.75 £41.48 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.05 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.94 £18.87 £24.18
% change year-on-year +48.07% -21.96% -39.69%

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 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 12 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 12 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 -27 1,587 £510 -7.27% 571
UK excluding London -16 1,130 £491 -1.80% 498
London -47 554 £530 -7.83% 129
Work from Home -37 482 £500 -4.76% 234
South East -7 301 £513 -2.38% 181
North of England -13 294 £475 -8.61% 90
South West -3 164 £538 -10.42% 92
Yorkshire -20 150 £500 -6.98% 16
Midlands -19 145 £474 -5.25% 50
North West -14 130 £467 +12.82% 56
West Midlands -17 125 £469 -6.20% 24
Scotland -23 99 £500 +5.26% 18
East of England -10 95 £475 +0.53% 66
Wales 0 26 £465 -20.65% 10
East Midlands -23 17 £530 +17.78% 26
North East -28 15 £446 -6.54% 18
Northern Ireland +3 12 £425 +30.77% 5

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 (4.38%) Confluence
2 48 (2.53%) Apache
3 31 (1.64%) nginx
4 26 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.16%) Tomcat
6 19 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.95%) WebLogic
8 16 (0.84%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.63%) SAS
9 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 10 (0.53%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.48%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.37%) IIS
14 7 (0.37%) JBoss
14 7 (0.37%) SharePoint
15 6 (0.32%) TPMS
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) 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
1 538 (28.41%) AWS
2 388 (20.49%) Azure
3 162 (8.55%) GitHub
4 124 (6.55%) GCP
5 105 (5.54%) OpenShift
6 93 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
7 81 (4.28%) Amazon S3
8 79 (4.17%) Amazon EC2
9 67 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
10 66 (3.48%) Amazon EKS
11 61 (3.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 58 (3.06%) Serverless
13 55 (2.90%) Entra ID
14 48 (2.53%) AWS CloudFormation
14 48 (2.53%) AWS Lambda
15 47 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
16 44 (2.32%) IaaS
16 44 (2.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 40 (2.11%) PaaS
18 37 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 185 (9.77%) Firewall
2 148 (7.81%) DNS
3 94 (4.96%) TCP/IP
4 80 (4.22%) VPN
5 67 (3.54%) Network Security
6 66 (3.48%) SAN
7 52 (2.75%) DHCP
8 49 (2.59%) WAN
9 40 (2.11%) LAN
10 39 (2.06%) SSL
11 36 (1.90%) SNMP
12 33 (1.74%) SSH
13 31 (1.64%) VSAN
14 29 (1.53%) HTTP
15 26 (1.37%) NAS
16 23 (1.21%) Ethernet
17 21 (1.11%) VLAN
18 19 (1.00%) BGP
18 19 (1.00%) IPsec
19 17 (0.90%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (6.07%) SQL Server
2 112 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
3 74 (3.91%) Oracle Database
4 72 (3.80%) MySQL
5 65 (3.43%) Relational Database
6 63 (3.33%) MongoDB
7 48 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 26 (1.37%) DynamoDB
10 26 (1.37%) NoSQL
11 20 (1.06%) SAP HANA
12 19 (1.00%) Big Data
13 18 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
14 17 (0.90%) Db2
14 17 (0.90%) KDB
14 17 (0.90%) RDBMS
15 14 (0.74%) Kdb+
15 14 (0.74%) Power BI
15 14 (0.74%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 210 (11.09%) Jenkins
2 180 (9.50%) GitLab
3 166 (8.76%) Git
4 149 (7.87%) JIRA
5 31 (1.64%) Maven
6 30 (1.58%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.37%) Mockito
8 22 (1.16%) Eclipse
9 20 (1.06%) JUnit
10 19 (1.00%) Bitbucket
11 18 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.84%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.69%) jMock
15 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
15 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
16 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 8 (0.42%) Liquibase
General
1 383 (20.22%) Social Skills
2 273 (14.41%) Finance
3 197 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 160 (8.45%) Analytical Skills
5 128 (6.76%) Banking
6 81 (4.28%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.27%) Military
8 26 (1.37%) Front Office
9 24 (1.27%) Retail
10 23 (1.21%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.21%) Law
10 23 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.16%) Aerospace
11 22 (1.16%) Financial Institution
12 20 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 17 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 17 (0.90%) Legal
15 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 250 (13.20%) Senior
2 195 (10.30%) Developer
3 186 (9.82%) Linux Engineer
4 178 (9.40%) DevOps Engineer
5 131 (6.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 131 (6.92%) Software Engineer
6 105 (5.54%) Analyst
7 97 (5.12%) Architect
8 95 (5.02%) Lead
9 74 (3.91%) Java Developer
10 70 (3.70%) AWS Engineer
11 69 (3.64%) Administrator
12 64 (3.38%) Consultant
13 57 (3.01%) Platform Engineer
14 54 (2.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 53 (2.80%) Support Engineer
16 52 (2.75%) Security Engineer
17 50 (2.64%) AWS DevOps
18 48 (2.53%) Senior Developer
19 47 (2.48%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (4.65%) Kafka
2 84 (4.44%) REST
3 77 (4.07%) Middleware
4 67 (3.54%) Elastic Stack
5 50 (2.64%) LDAP
6 49 (2.59%) Spring
6 49 (2.59%) Spring Boot
7 46 (2.43%) Web Services
8 44 (2.32%) Node.js
8 44 (2.32%) RESTful
9 41 (2.16%) .NET
10 31 (1.64%) YAML
11 27 (1.43%) JSON
11 27 (1.43%) SOAP
12 26 (1.37%) AngularJS
13 25 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
13 25 (1.32%) XML
14 22 (1.16%) React
15 20 (1.06%) Flash
16 19 (1.00%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 152 (8.03%) Data Centre
2 108 (5.70%) Cloud Native
3 83 (4.38%) Onboarding
4 78 (4.12%) Linux Command Line
5 72 (3.80%) Management Information System
6 68 (3.59%) PKI
7 66 (3.48%) Distributed Systems
8 59 (3.12%) Replication
9 50 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
9 50 (2.64%) Public Cloud
10 48 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
10 48 (2.53%) Security Posture
11 36 (1.90%) Product Ownership
12 31 (1.64%) Enterprise Storage
13 30 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
13 30 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
14 29 (1.53%) Embedded Systems
15 27 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
16 25 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
16 25 (1.32%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 725 (38.28%) Windows
2 382 (20.17%) Unix
3 297 (15.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 188 (9.93%) Windows Server
5 103 (5.44%) Ubuntu
6 58 (3.06%) AIX
7 50 (2.64%) Solaris
8 43 (2.27%) CentOS
9 33 (1.74%) Embedded Linux
10 27 (1.43%) VMS
11 25 (1.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (1.11%) Android
12 21 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (1.00%) Debian
14 18 (0.95%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.95%) SUSE
15 13 (0.69%) Windows 10
16 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
16 12 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 524 (27.67%) CI/CD
2 453 (23.92%) DevOps
3 357 (18.85%) Agile
4 288 (15.21%) Infrastructure as Code
5 285 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
6 242 (12.78%) Containerisation
7 204 (10.77%) Software Engineering
8 194 (10.24%) Migration
9 190 (10.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 179 (9.45%) Observability
11 158 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
12 155 (8.18%) High Availability
13 152 (8.03%) Performance Tuning
14 151 (7.97%) SIEM
15 147 (7.76%) Root Cause Analysis
16 138 (7.29%) ITIL
17 131 (6.92%) Cybersecurity
17 131 (6.92%) Test Automation
18 129 (6.81%) Incident Response
19 125 (6.60%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 619 (32.68%) Python
2 319 (16.84%) SQL
3 279 (14.73%) PowerShell
4 278 (14.68%) Bash
5 246 (12.99%) Java
6 152 (8.03%) Shell Script
7 121 (6.39%) C++
8 93 (4.91%) JavaScript
9 62 (3.27%) Perl
10 59 (3.12%) C#
11 58 (3.06%) C
12 51 (2.69%) PL/SQL
13 48 (2.53%) Go
14 23 (1.21%) Rust
15 22 (1.16%) TypeScript
16 21 (1.11%) Ada
17 20 (1.06%) MATLAB
18 19 (1.00%) Ruby
18 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
19 15 (0.79%) PHP
Qualifications
1 730 (38.54%) Security Cleared
2 543 (28.67%) SC Cleared
3 205 (10.82%) DV Cleared
4 189 (9.98%) Degree
5 69 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
6 68 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
7 64 (3.38%) AWS Certification
8 60 (3.17%) CISSP
9 54 (2.85%) Cisco Certification
10 47 (2.48%) CompTIA Security+
11 39 (2.06%) Azure Certification
12 35 (1.85%) RHCE
13 25 (1.32%) CCNP
14 23 (1.21%) CCNA
15 21 (1.11%) CISM
15 21 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
16 19 (1.00%) CompTIA CySA+
17 15 (0.79%) GIAC
17 15 (0.79%) Oracle Certification
18 14 (0.74%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (4.75%) NIST
2 80 (4.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.96%) QA
4 49 (2.59%) SLA
5 27 (1.43%) Cyber Essentials
6 26 (1.37%) GDPR
7 22 (1.16%) NCSC
8 19 (1.00%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
10 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
12 10 (0.53%) GRC
13 9 (0.48%) SOC 2
14 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.32%) GLBA
15 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.26%) DICOM
16 5 (0.26%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 316 (16.68%) Docker
2 223 (11.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 201 (10.61%) Active Directory
4 77 (4.07%) Virtual Machines
5 66 (3.48%) Hyper-V
5 66 (3.48%) vSphere
6 63 (3.33%) VMware ESXi
7 52 (2.75%) NFS
8 48 (2.53%) VMware NSX
9 37 (1.95%) Firmware
10 30 (1.58%) KVM
11 26 (1.37%) Oracle RAC
12 21 (1.11%) GPFS
12 21 (1.11%) Postfix
13 11 (0.58%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.53%) Ceph
14 10 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.42%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.42%) Squid
16 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 396 (20.91%) Ansible
2 369 (19.48%) Kubernetes
3 354 (18.69%) Terraform
4 171 (9.03%) Grafana
5 142 (7.50%) Prometheus
6 75 (3.96%) Puppet
7 49 (2.59%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.16%) vCenter Server
9 37 (1.95%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.58%) Podman
11 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
12 27 (1.43%) Packer
13 26 (1.37%) Nagios
14 24 (1.27%) vRealize
14 24 (1.27%) ZABBIX
15 23 (1.21%) Data Guard
15 23 (1.21%) Kibana
16 22 (1.16%) Argo
16 22 (1.16%) Tivoli
17 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 300 (15.84%) VMware
2 277 (14.63%) Oracle
3 252 (13.31%) Microsoft
4 223 (11.77%) Red Hat
5 176 (9.29%) Splunk
6 119 (6.28%) Cisco
7 104 (5.49%) IBM
8 89 (4.70%) ServiceNow
9 55 (2.90%) CyberArk
10 54 (2.85%) Palo Alto
11 53 (2.80%) Google
12 38 (2.01%) F5
13 37 (1.95%) SAP
13 37 (1.95%) SolarWinds
14 34 (1.80%) Citrix
14 34 (1.80%) NVIDIA
15 33 (1.74%) BeyondTrust
15 33 (1.74%) Dell
15 33 (1.74%) HP
16 27 (1.43%) Sybase