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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,131 1,841 2,152
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.88% 5.59% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.51% 41.34% 39.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,322 1,109 1,315
10th Percentile £350 £348 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.20% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 73 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.59 £54.25 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +9.15%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.13 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.35%

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 5,394 4,453 5,451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.83% 13.51% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,393 2,846 3,476
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £674 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 281 270
10th Percentile £14.21 £15.50 £15.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -49.70% +5.26%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.90 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -54.27% +19.88%

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 1,794 £525 - 2,859
UK excluding London -21 1,221 £506 +1.20% 1,422
London -34 696 £525 -8.70% 1,518
Work from Home -29 561 £500 -4.76% 1,017
South East -14 346 £525 +10.53% 407
North of England -20 291 £500 +5.26% 191
South West +2 186 £575 +4.55% 252
North West -15 145 £494 +22.89% 114
Scotland -17 136 £450 -10.00% 80
Midlands -45 125 £473 -5.50% 142
Yorkshire -28 120 £518 +3.50% 40
East of England -7 119 £491 - 275
West Midlands -43 106 £473 -5.50% 97
North East -23 34 £475 -17.39% 37
Wales +9 27 £465 +3.33% 24
East Midlands -9 16 £481 +14.52% 45
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 65

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 67 (3.14%) Confluence
2 45 (2.11%) Apache
3 32 (1.50%) nginx
4 26 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.17%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
6 24 (1.13%) SharePoint
7 23 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
8 21 (0.99%) Apache Spark
9 18 (0.84%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 17 (0.80%) SAS
11 15 (0.70%) JBoss
12 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
13 12 (0.56%) WebSphere
14 10 (0.47%) IIS
15 6 (0.28%) CMS
15 6 (0.28%) MTS
15 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.23%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.23%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
5 2 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.094%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.047%) Simulink
6 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 620 (29.09%) AWS
2 527 (24.73%) Azure
3 193 (9.06%) GCP
4 162 (7.60%) GitHub
5 112 (5.26%) OpenShift
6 109 (5.11%) Entra ID
7 101 (4.74%) GitHub Actions
8 93 (4.36%) Amazon S3
9 92 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
10 84 (3.94%) Amazon EC2
11 73 (3.43%) Serverless
12 66 (3.10%) AWS CloudFormation
12 66 (3.10%) Microsoft 365
13 65 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
15 59 (2.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 54 (2.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.35%) IaaS
18 45 (2.11%) Datadog
19 44 (2.06%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 230 (10.79%) DNS
2 222 (10.42%) Firewall
3 163 (7.65%) TCP/IP
4 130 (6.10%) DHCP
5 88 (4.13%) VPN
6 87 (4.08%) Network Security
7 80 (3.75%) SAN
8 55 (2.58%) SSL
9 51 (2.39%) WAN
10 46 (2.16%) HTTP
10 46 (2.16%) SSH
11 41 (1.92%) VLAN
12 36 (1.69%) LAN
12 36 (1.69%) VSAN
13 28 (1.31%) Kerberos
14 27 (1.27%) BGP
15 25 (1.17%) HTTPS
16 24 (1.13%) SNMP
16 24 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
16 24 (1.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.68%) PostgreSQL
2 112 (5.26%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.83%) Oracle Database
4 71 (3.33%) Relational Database
5 63 (2.96%) MySQL
6 56 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
7 53 (2.49%) MongoDB
8 45 (2.11%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.64%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.60%) Elasticsearch
11 28 (1.31%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.27%) Big Data
13 23 (1.08%) DynamoDB
14 21 (0.99%) Power BI
15 20 (0.94%) Data Lake
16 19 (0.89%) Oracle Database 11g
16 19 (0.89%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.84%) Hadoop
17 18 (0.84%) Redis
Development Applications
1 278 (13.05%) Git
2 248 (11.64%) Jenkins
3 218 (10.23%) GitLab
4 161 (7.56%) JIRA
5 37 (1.74%) Maven
5 37 (1.74%) SonarQube
6 33 (1.55%) Bitbucket
7 26 (1.22%) Artifactory
7 26 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
8 24 (1.13%) Selenium
9 23 (1.08%) Mockito
10 19 (0.89%) JUnit
11 18 (0.84%) Eclipse
12 17 (0.80%) Gradle
13 15 (0.70%) Cucumber
14 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 12 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
17 10 (0.47%) Rational Rhapsody
18 9 (0.42%) LoadRunner
General
1 452 (21.21%) Social Skills
2 324 (15.20%) Finance
3 253 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.07%) Public Sector
5 168 (7.88%) Banking
6 91 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.44%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.88%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.60%) Military
10 33 (1.55%) Front Office
11 30 (1.41%) Legal
12 29 (1.36%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (0.99%) Law
15 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.80%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.47%) Aviation
18 9 (0.42%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 326 (15.30%) Senior
2 252 (11.83%) Linux Engineer
3 215 (10.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 194 (9.10%) Developer
5 187 (8.78%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (4.97%) Architect
7 104 (4.88%) Platform Engineer
8 102 (4.79%) Software Engineer
9 83 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.80%) Support Engineer
11 77 (3.61%) Analyst
12 76 (3.57%) Lead
13 74 (3.47%) Consultant
14 70 (3.28%) Java Developer
14 70 (3.28%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 68 (3.19%) AWS Engineer
16 67 (3.14%) Administrator
17 59 (2.77%) Systems Engineer
18 58 (2.72%) Network Engineer
19 53 (2.49%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 507 (23.79%) Terraform
2 140 (6.57%) Kafka
3 127 (5.96%) REST
4 80 (3.75%) Middleware
5 75 (3.52%) Elastic Stack
6 68 (3.19%) .NET
7 56 (2.63%) Spring
8 54 (2.53%) RESTful
9 51 (2.39%) Spring Boot
10 46 (2.16%) Web Services
11 45 (2.11%) LDAP
12 38 (1.78%) JSON
13 35 (1.64%) XML
14 33 (1.55%) SOAP
15 32 (1.50%) HTML
16 30 (1.41%) YAML
17 29 (1.36%) Django
17 29 (1.36%) Node.js
18 28 (1.31%) Flask
18 28 (1.31%) React
Miscellaneous
1 154 (7.23%) Onboarding
2 140 (6.57%) Cloud Native
3 134 (6.29%) Data Centre
4 111 (5.21%) PKI
5 109 (5.11%) Linux Command Line
6 95 (4.46%) Replication
7 86 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.38%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.19%) Management Information System
10 67 (3.14%) Public Cloud
11 48 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
11 48 (2.25%) Security Posture
12 41 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
12 41 (1.92%) Private Cloud
13 40 (1.88%) Embedded Systems
13 40 (1.88%) Operational Technology
14 39 (1.83%) Clustering
15 38 (1.78%) Product Ownership
16 36 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
16 36 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 803 (37.68%) Windows
2 442 (20.74%) Unix
3 377 (17.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 253 (11.87%) Windows Server
5 113 (5.30%) Ubuntu
6 62 (2.91%) CentOS
7 59 (2.77%) AIX
8 56 (2.63%) Solaris
9 38 (1.78%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.45%) VMS
11 30 (1.41%) SUSE
11 30 (1.41%) Windows 10
12 21 (0.99%) Rocky
13 19 (0.89%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.70%) Debian
15 15 (0.70%) Oracle Linux
15 15 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
16 13 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.56%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 650 (30.50%) CI/CD
2 563 (26.42%) DevOps
3 451 (21.16%) Infrastructure as Code
4 391 (18.35%) Agile
5 340 (15.95%) Problem-Solving
6 327 (15.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 301 (14.12%) Containerisation
8 258 (12.11%) Continuous Improvement
9 246 (11.54%) Observability
10 237 (11.12%) Platform Engineering
11 236 (11.07%) Migration
12 214 (10.04%) Software Engineering
13 212 (9.95%) Root Cause Analysis
14 203 (9.53%) High Availability
15 177 (8.31%) Configuration Management
16 175 (8.21%) ITIL
16 175 (8.21%) Test Automation
17 171 (8.02%) Performance Tuning
18 163 (7.65%) Stakeholder Management
19 161 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 766 (35.95%) Python
2 433 (20.32%) Bash
3 408 (19.15%) PowerShell
4 376 (17.64%) SQL
5 251 (11.78%) Java
6 154 (7.23%) Shell Script
7 122 (5.73%) C++
8 80 (3.75%) Perl
9 78 (3.66%) C#
10 77 (3.61%) JavaScript
11 74 (3.47%) C
12 64 (3.00%) PL/SQL
13 58 (2.72%) Go
14 41 (1.92%) Bicep
15 29 (1.36%) Groovy
16 22 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.84%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.75%) Ada
18 16 (0.75%) Rust
19 15 (0.70%) Korn
Qualifications
1 822 (38.57%) Security Cleared
2 583 (27.36%) SC Cleared
3 257 (12.06%) DV Cleared
4 184 (8.63%) Degree
5 73 (3.43%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (2.82%) CISSP
7 59 (2.77%) Azure Certification
7 59 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 58 (2.72%) Cisco Certification
9 27 (1.27%) CISM
10 26 (1.22%) RHCE
11 24 (1.13%) CCNP
12 21 (0.99%) CCNA
12 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 18 (0.84%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.70%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (0.66%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (3.71%) NIST
2 74 (3.47%) QA
3 73 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.50%) SLA
5 24 (1.13%) Data Quality
6 21 (0.99%) GDPR
7 19 (0.89%) Disclosure Scotland
8 18 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.75%) GRC
9 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.75%) NCSC
10 12 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.47%) ISO 31000
12 9 (0.42%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.23%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.23%) MISRA
15 5 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 369 (17.32%) Docker
2 286 (13.42%) Active Directory
3 248 (11.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.27%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.04%) vSphere
6 75 (3.52%) VMware ESXi
7 73 (3.43%) Virtual Machines
8 59 (2.77%) VMware NSX
9 43 (2.02%) Firmware
10 39 (1.83%) Oracle RAC
11 34 (1.60%) NFS
12 26 (1.22%) KVM
13 22 (1.03%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.80%) Ceph
15 14 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.66%) Postfix
16 13 (0.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.52%) GPFS
18 10 (0.47%) Squid
19 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 474 (22.24%) Ansible
2 469 (22.01%) Kubernetes
3 192 (9.01%) Grafana
4 173 (8.12%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.18%) Puppet
6 60 (2.82%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.44%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.25%) SCCM
9 40 (1.88%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.83%) vCenter Server
11 31 (1.45%) Kibana
11 31 (1.45%) Nagios
12 30 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
12 30 (1.41%) VxRail
13 28 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.22%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.22%) Packer
14 26 (1.22%) Podman
15 22 (1.03%) Istio
16 21 (0.99%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 355 (16.66%) VMware
2 346 (16.24%) Microsoft
3 298 (13.98%) Oracle
4 232 (10.89%) Red Hat
5 175 (8.21%) Splunk
6 126 (5.91%) Cisco
7 113 (5.30%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.41%) IBM
9 89 (4.18%) Google
10 80 (3.75%) CyberArk
11 49 (2.30%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.16%) NetApp
13 45 (2.11%) BeyondTrust
14 41 (1.92%) Dell
14 41 (1.92%) F5
14 41 (1.92%) Palo Alto
15 36 (1.69%) SAP
16 34 (1.60%) Dynatrace
17 32 (1.50%) HP
18 31 (1.45%) Tenable