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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,111 1,847 2,095
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.57% 5.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.35% 41.01% 39.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,320 1,102 1,245
10th Percentile £353 £335 £350
25th Percentile £430 £419 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £517 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.58% -3.36% -2.73%
75th Percentile £621 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +3.66% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 76 112
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £49.00
25th Percentile £54.84 £53.41 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +9.15%
75th Percentile £69.63 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +6.40%

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 5,365 4,504 5,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.59% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,386 2,866 3,332
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £283 £325
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 £661 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 299 254
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.08
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.30 £69.45
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.20
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.25% +39.36%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 -21 1,779 £525 +0.24% 4,051
UK excluding London -23 1,185 £510 +3.66% 3,058
London -28 719 £535 -6.96% 1,623
Work from Home -24 564 £500 -3.01% 2,548
South East -16 330 £525 +10.53% 669
North of England -19 279 £500 +5.04% 475
South West 0 177 £575 +4.55% 423
North West -23 138 £492 +23.00% 235
Scotland -15 134 £450 -10.00% 455
Midlands -42 131 £476 -4.80% 335
Yorkshire -30 115 £521 +4.25% 142
East of England -9 114 £483 -3.50% 421
West Midlands -36 112 £475 -5.00% 186
North East -18 34 £480 -10.70% 100
Wales +10 27 £465 +3.33% 205
East Midlands -9 17 £481 +14.52% 149
Northern Ireland -4 3 - - 105

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 65 (3.08%) Confluence
2 46 (2.18%) Apache
3 34 (1.61%) nginx
4 28 (1.33%) WebLogic
5 27 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
6 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
7 23 (1.09%) Apache Spark
8 22 (1.04%) SharePoint
9 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 19 (0.90%) Tomcat
11 17 (0.81%) SAS
12 16 (0.76%) IIS
13 15 (0.71%) JBoss
14 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.33%) CMS
16 6 (0.28%) MTS
16 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
17 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
17 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 5 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle E-Business Tax
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Internet Expenses
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.047%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 627 (29.70%) AWS
2 533 (25.25%) Azure
3 209 (9.90%) GCP
4 165 (7.82%) GitHub
5 111 (5.26%) Entra ID
5 111 (5.26%) OpenShift
6 101 (4.78%) GitHub Actions
7 96 (4.55%) Amazon S3
7 96 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (3.84%) Amazon EC2
9 73 (3.46%) Serverless
10 70 (3.32%) AWS CloudFormation
11 64 (3.03%) Amazon EKS
11 64 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
11 64 (3.03%) Microsoft 365
12 61 (2.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 56 (2.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 50 (2.37%) IaaS
15 46 (2.18%) Datadog
16 42 (1.99%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 225 (10.66%) DNS
2 216 (10.23%) Firewall
3 166 (7.86%) TCP/IP
4 131 (6.21%) DHCP
5 88 (4.17%) Network Security
6 85 (4.03%) VPN
7 77 (3.65%) SAN
8 54 (2.56%) SSL
9 46 (2.18%) HTTP
9 46 (2.18%) WAN
10 45 (2.13%) SSH
11 38 (1.80%) VLAN
12 31 (1.47%) LAN
13 30 (1.42%) BGP
14 28 (1.33%) Kerberos
14 28 (1.33%) VSAN
15 25 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
16 23 (1.09%) Wireless
17 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
18 21 (0.99%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (5.92%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (5.54%) SQL Server
3 102 (4.83%) Oracle Database
4 78 (3.69%) Relational Database
5 69 (3.27%) MySQL
6 57 (2.70%) Amazon RDS
7 55 (2.61%) MongoDB
8 49 (2.32%) NoSQL
9 37 (1.75%) Data Warehouse
10 33 (1.56%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.37%) RDBMS
12 28 (1.33%) Amazon Aurora
12 28 (1.33%) Big Data
13 23 (1.09%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.99%) Power BI
14 21 (0.99%) Redis
15 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
16 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
16 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 12c
17 16 (0.76%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 290 (13.74%) Git
2 255 (12.08%) Jenkins
3 234 (11.08%) GitLab
4 161 (7.63%) JIRA
5 42 (1.99%) Maven
6 35 (1.66%) SonarQube
7 34 (1.61%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 26 (1.23%) Artifactory
10 23 (1.09%) Selenium
11 21 (0.99%) Mockito
12 19 (0.90%) Gradle
13 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 18 (0.85%) JUnit
14 15 (0.71%) Cucumber
15 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
16 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
17 10 (0.47%) JMeter
17 10 (0.47%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 463 (21.93%) Social Skills
2 345 (16.34%) Finance
3 246 (11.65%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (8.34%) Banking
5 168 (7.96%) Public Sector
6 86 (4.07%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.56%) Telecoms
8 47 (2.23%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.61%) Front Office
10 33 (1.56%) Military
11 28 (1.33%) Legal
12 25 (1.18%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 22 (1.04%) Law
14 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.81%) Retail
15 15 (0.71%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.47%) Aviation
16 10 (0.47%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 321 (15.21%) Senior
2 235 (11.13%) Linux Engineer
3 214 (10.14%) Developer
4 211 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 188 (8.91%) DevOps Engineer
6 105 (4.97%) Platform Engineer
7 101 (4.78%) Architect
8 95 (4.50%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.84%) Java Developer
10 81 (3.84%) Support Engineer
11 78 (3.69%) Analyst
12 72 (3.41%) Consultant
13 70 (3.32%) Lead
14 69 (3.27%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 65 (3.08%) AWS Engineer
16 61 (2.89%) Administrator
17 58 (2.75%) Network Engineer
18 54 (2.56%) Senior Developer
19 53 (2.51%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 522 (24.73%) Terraform
2 149 (7.06%) Kafka
3 133 (6.30%) REST
4 85 (4.03%) Middleware
5 76 (3.60%) Elastic Stack
6 66 (3.13%) .NET
7 62 (2.94%) Spring
8 59 (2.79%) RESTful
9 54 (2.56%) Spring Boot
10 53 (2.51%) Web Services
11 51 (2.42%) LDAP
12 45 (2.13%) JSON
13 41 (1.94%) XML
14 40 (1.89%) React
15 38 (1.80%) HTML
16 34 (1.61%) SOAP
17 33 (1.56%) Flask
18 32 (1.52%) Keycloak
19 31 (1.47%) YAML
20 30 (1.42%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 161 (7.63%) Onboarding
2 150 (7.11%) Cloud Native
3 135 (6.40%) Data Centre
4 114 (5.40%) PKI
5 109 (5.16%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.45%) Replication
7 91 (4.31%) Distributed Systems
8 69 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.17%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.08%) Public Cloud
11 55 (2.61%) Enterprise Software
12 49 (2.32%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.94%) Private Cloud
13 41 (1.94%) Product Ownership
14 40 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
15 39 (1.85%) Operational Technology
16 38 (1.80%) Embedded Systems
17 37 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
17 37 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
18 33 (1.56%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 794 (37.61%) Windows
2 441 (20.89%) Unix
3 366 (17.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 249 (11.80%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.26%) Ubuntu
6 63 (2.98%) CentOS
7 56 (2.65%) Solaris
8 55 (2.61%) AIX
9 32 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
11 27 (1.28%) SUSE
11 27 (1.28%) VMS
12 23 (1.09%) Rocky
13 18 (0.85%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
15 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (0.57%) Debian
17 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (31.79%) CI/CD
2 576 (27.29%) DevOps
3 470 (22.26%) Infrastructure as Code
4 401 (19.00%) Agile
5 340 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
6 326 (15.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 313 (14.83%) Containerisation
8 273 (12.93%) Continuous Improvement
9 254 (12.03%) Observability
10 239 (11.32%) Platform Engineering
11 234 (11.08%) Migration
12 220 (10.42%) Software Engineering
13 219 (10.37%) Root Cause Analysis
14 193 (9.14%) High Availability
15 186 (8.81%) Configuration Management
16 181 (8.57%) Test Automation
17 178 (8.43%) ITIL
18 170 (8.05%) Cybersecurity
18 170 (8.05%) Performance Tuning
18 170 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 783 (37.09%) Python
2 463 (21.93%) Bash
3 414 (19.61%) PowerShell
4 387 (18.33%) SQL
5 267 (12.65%) Java
6 159 (7.53%) Shell Script
7 119 (5.64%) C++
8 85 (4.03%) JavaScript
8 85 (4.03%) Perl
9 75 (3.55%) C#
10 69 (3.27%) C
11 60 (2.84%) Go
11 60 (2.84%) PL/SQL
12 42 (1.99%) Bicep
13 31 (1.47%) Groovy
14 24 (1.14%) TypeScript
15 18 (0.85%) Search Processing Language
16 16 (0.76%) Ada
16 16 (0.76%) Korn
16 16 (0.76%) Rust
Qualifications
1 795 (37.66%) Security Cleared
2 557 (26.39%) SC Cleared
3 250 (11.84%) DV Cleared
4 184 (8.72%) Degree
5 73 (3.46%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.89%) CISSP
6 61 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
7 58 (2.75%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.65%) Azure Certification
8 56 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
9 28 (1.33%) CISM
10 25 (1.18%) CCNP
10 25 (1.18%) RHCE
11 21 (0.99%) CCNA
12 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
14 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 16 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (3.69%) NIST
2 76 (3.60%) QA
3 71 (3.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 29 (1.37%) SLA
5 25 (1.18%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.04%) GDPR
7 18 (0.85%) GRC
8 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.71%) NCSC
11 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 6 (0.28%) MISRA
17 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
17 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
17 5 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 382 (18.10%) Docker
2 292 (13.83%) Active Directory
3 241 (11.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 83 (3.93%) Hyper-V
5 80 (3.79%) vSphere
6 67 (3.17%) VMware ESXi
7 65 (3.08%) Virtual Machines
8 50 (2.37%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.80%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (1.61%) Firmware
10 34 (1.61%) NFS
11 25 (1.18%) KVM
12 24 (1.14%) Virtual Servers
13 13 (0.62%) Ceph
14 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
14 12 (0.57%) GPFS
14 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.47%) Postfix
16 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 8 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 498 (23.59%) Kubernetes
2 475 (22.50%) Ansible
3 204 (9.66%) Grafana
4 183 (8.67%) Prometheus
5 92 (4.36%) Puppet
6 62 (2.94%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.46%) SCCM
8 48 (2.27%) Oracle RMAN
9 38 (1.80%) Data Guard
10 36 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
11 33 (1.56%) Kibana
12 31 (1.47%) vCenter Server
13 27 (1.28%) Nagios
13 27 (1.28%) VxRail
14 26 (1.23%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.23%) Red Hat Satellite
15 24 (1.14%) Packer
15 24 (1.14%) Podman
16 21 (0.99%) Istio
17 20 (0.95%) Argo
Vendors
1 353 (16.72%) Microsoft
2 341 (16.15%) VMware
3 295 (13.97%) Oracle
4 221 (10.47%) Red Hat
5 174 (8.24%) Splunk
6 124 (5.87%) Cisco
7 115 (5.45%) ServiceNow
8 99 (4.69%) Google
9 91 (4.31%) IBM
10 83 (3.93%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.37%) NetApp
12 43 (2.04%) SolarWinds
13 42 (1.99%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.89%) F5
15 39 (1.85%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.75%) Dynatrace
17 36 (1.71%) Dell
17 36 (1.71%) SAP
18 31 (1.47%) Tenable
19 28 (1.33%) Veeam