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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 30 26
Rank change year-on-year -11 -4 -1
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,940 1,781 2,645
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.20% 5.60% 6.11%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.95% 39.83% 41.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,221 1,057 1,785
10th Percentile £313 £355 £350
25th Percentile £402 £454 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £656 £650
90th Percentile £714 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.10% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 62 119
10th Percentile £13.00 £45.00 £23.72
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.94 £48.32
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £74.63 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +7.26% -4.62%

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 4,737 4,471 6,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.70% 14.05% 14.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,147 2,784 4,325
10th Percentile £174 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £290
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 169 327
10th Percentile £14.90 £16.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.59 £21.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.11 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.25% +16.67% +20.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £64.38
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.20 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £32.50 £26.13
% change year-on-year -26.15% +24.40% +16.11%

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 17 January 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 17 January 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 17 January 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 -10 1,664 £513 -6.99% 904
UK excluding London -1 1,110 £483 -8.10% 833
London -13 644 £550 -8.33% 193
Work from Home -11 512 £500 -5.66% 410
South East +6 303 £475 -9.09% 307
North of England 0 271 £489 -11.18% 135
Midlands +1 203 £525 -4.55% 93
West Midlands +1 185 £525 -4.72% 38
Yorkshire +8 168 £500 -17.36% 43
South West -19 125 £550 -8.33% 117
Scotland +1 118 £450 -8.16% 62
North West -16 97 £453 -17.64% 66
East of England -9 92 £475 +11.76% 102
East Midlands -25 18 £420 -4.55% 54
Northern Ireland +9 16 £400 +23.08% 14
North East -13 12 £550 +8.64% 27
Wales -7 5 £600 +11.63% 23

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 79 (4.07%) Confluence
2 67 (3.45%) Apache
3 44 (2.27%) nginx
4 37 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
5 29 (1.49%) Apache Spark
6 23 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
6 23 (1.19%) OpenStack
6 23 (1.19%) WebLogic
7 21 (1.08%) WebSphere
8 16 (0.82%) JBoss
8 16 (0.82%) SharePoint
9 14 (0.72%) Mattermost
9 14 (0.72%) Skype for Business
10 13 (0.67%) SAS
10 13 (0.67%) Tomcat
11 12 (0.62%) TPMS
12 11 (0.57%) IIS
12 11 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
13 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
14 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 60 (3.09%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.46%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.052%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.052%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Finacle
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
6 1 (0.052%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 580 (29.90%) AWS
2 381 (19.64%) Azure
3 186 (9.59%) GitHub
4 144 (7.42%) GCP
5 129 (6.65%) OpenShift
6 115 (5.93%) AWS CloudFormation
7 107 (5.52%) Serverless
8 101 (5.21%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.69%) GitHub Actions
10 81 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 73 (3.76%) Amazon ECS
12 67 (3.45%) Amazon EKS
13 61 (3.14%) AWS Lambda
13 61 (3.14%) Azure DevOps
14 60 (3.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 59 (3.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 51 (2.63%) SaaS
17 50 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
18 49 (2.53%) IaaS
19 38 (1.96%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 211 (10.88%) Firewall
2 156 (8.04%) DNS
3 139 (7.16%) TCP/IP
4 66 (3.40%) Network Security
5 58 (2.99%) SSH
6 52 (2.68%) SSL
7 50 (2.58%) HTTP
8 48 (2.47%) DHCP
9 47 (2.42%) VPN
10 31 (1.60%) VLAN
11 30 (1.55%) SMTP
12 29 (1.49%) SAN
12 29 (1.49%) Wireless
13 27 (1.39%) Kerberos
14 26 (1.34%) VSAN
15 25 (1.29%) WAN
16 24 (1.24%) Skype
17 20 (1.03%) Ethernet
17 20 (1.03%) LAN
18 19 (0.98%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (7.01%) PostgreSQL
2 102 (5.26%) Relational Database
3 98 (5.05%) SQL Server
4 84 (4.33%) Oracle Database
5 79 (4.07%) Amazon RDS
6 76 (3.92%) NoSQL
7 75 (3.87%) MongoDB
8 73 (3.76%) MySQL
9 48 (2.47%) Elasticsearch
10 28 (1.44%) DB2
10 28 (1.44%) Hadoop
11 26 (1.34%) Big Data
12 22 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.82%) Apache Hive
14 14 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
14 14 (0.72%) HBase
14 14 (0.72%) Redis
15 13 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
15 13 (0.67%) Data Lake
15 13 (0.67%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 274 (14.12%) Jenkins
2 235 (12.11%) Git
3 187 (9.64%) GitLab
4 130 (6.70%) JIRA
5 58 (2.99%) JUnit
6 52 (2.68%) Sonatype Nexus
7 44 (2.27%) Bitbucket
8 39 (2.01%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.29%) Maven
10 24 (1.24%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.13%) Liquibase
12 21 (1.08%) Mockito
13 20 (1.03%) Visual Studio
14 19 (0.98%) Browser DevTools
15 18 (0.93%) Android Studio
15 18 (0.93%) Artifactory
15 18 (0.93%) Burp Suite
15 18 (0.93%) Xcode
16 16 (0.82%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.82%) JMeter
General
1 574 (29.59%) Social Skills
2 352 (18.14%) Finance
3 208 (10.72%) Analytical Skills
4 180 (9.28%) Public Sector
5 155 (7.99%) Banking
6 72 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
7 53 (2.73%) Financial Institution
8 52 (2.68%) Investment Banking
9 45 (2.32%) Military
10 44 (2.27%) Front Office
10 44 (2.27%) Presentation Skills
11 23 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 19 (0.98%) Aerospace
13 18 (0.93%) Legal
14 16 (0.82%) Manufacturing
14 16 (0.82%) Telecoms
15 12 (0.62%) Back Office
15 12 (0.62%) Law
16 10 (0.52%) Retail
17 8 (0.41%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 294 (15.15%) Developer
2 236 (12.16%) Senior
3 173 (8.92%) DevOps Engineer
4 136 (7.01%) Software Engineer
5 120 (6.19%) Analyst
6 111 (5.72%) Java Developer
7 105 (5.41%) Architect
8 101 (5.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 93 (4.79%) Support Engineer
10 92 (4.74%) Linux Engineer
11 88 (4.54%) Platform Engineer
12 78 (4.02%) Administrator
13 74 (3.81%) AWS Engineer
14 68 (3.51%) Lead
15 66 (3.40%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 65 (3.35%) Security Engineer
17 64 (3.30%) Site Engineer
18 60 (3.09%) AWS DevOps
19 54 (2.78%) C++ Software Engineer
20 53 (2.73%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 159 (8.20%) Kafka
2 131 (6.75%) REST
3 121 (6.24%) Elastic Stack
4 79 (4.07%) Middleware
5 67 (3.45%) RESTful
6 66 (3.40%) Node.js
6 66 (3.40%) Spring
7 60 (3.09%) LDAP
8 54 (2.78%) React
9 51 (2.63%) JSON
10 47 (2.42%) XML
11 42 (2.16%) AngularJS
12 37 (1.91%) SOAP
13 35 (1.80%) YAML
14 32 (1.65%) OAuth
15 31 (1.60%) CSS
16 29 (1.49%) FastAPI
16 29 (1.49%) Web Services
17 26 (1.34%) GraphQL
17 26 (1.34%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (5.26%) Cloud Native
2 93 (4.79%) Linux Command Line
3 83 (4.28%) Data Centre
4 74 (3.81%) Replication
5 71 (3.66%) Management Information System
6 58 (2.99%) Public Cloud
7 56 (2.89%) Equities
8 55 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
9 51 (2.63%) PKI
10 46 (2.37%) Onboarding
11 43 (2.22%) Data Structures
12 41 (2.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 38 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
14 33 (1.70%) Product Ownership
15 32 (1.65%) Security Operations Centre
16 30 (1.55%) Algorithms
17 29 (1.49%) Fixed Income
18 28 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
19 27 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
19 27 (1.39%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 715 (36.86%) Windows
2 400 (20.62%) Unix
3 251 (12.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 139 (7.16%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.38%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.63%) CentOS
7 43 (2.22%) Android
8 34 (1.75%) Mac OS
8 34 (1.75%) VMS
9 30 (1.55%) Solaris
10 27 (1.39%) Mac OS X
11 23 (1.19%) Windows 10
12 19 (0.98%) AIX
12 19 (0.98%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.88%) Amazon Linux
14 15 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.72%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.72%) Kali Linux
16 12 (0.62%) Debian
17 11 (0.57%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 582 (30.00%) CI/CD
2 491 (25.31%) DevOps
3 452 (23.30%) Agile
4 378 (19.48%) Problem-Solving
5 309 (15.93%) Infrastructure as Code
6 307 (15.82%) Containerisation
7 250 (12.89%) Software Engineering
8 200 (10.31%) Observability
9 183 (9.43%) Cybersecurity
10 166 (8.56%) Computer Science
11 159 (8.20%) Test Automation
12 153 (7.89%) Continuous Improvement
12 153 (7.89%) Incident Response
13 146 (7.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 142 (7.32%) Microservices
15 134 (6.91%) Platform Engineering
16 132 (6.80%) High Availability
17 131 (6.75%) Configuration Management
17 131 (6.75%) Performance Tuning
18 124 (6.39%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 787 (40.57%) Python
2 376 (19.38%) SQL
3 371 (19.12%) Java
4 332 (17.11%) Bash
5 287 (14.79%) PowerShell
6 220 (11.34%) Shell Script
7 189 (9.74%) C++
8 139 (7.16%) JavaScript
9 133 (6.86%) Perl
10 91 (4.69%) C#
11 76 (3.92%) Go
12 57 (2.94%) C
13 41 (2.11%) Ruby
14 30 (1.55%) Groovy
15 29 (1.49%) Rust
16 28 (1.44%) TypeScript
17 26 (1.34%) PL/SQL
18 22 (1.13%) PHP
19 18 (0.93%) Kusto Query Language
20 15 (0.77%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 635 (32.73%) Security Cleared
2 461 (23.76%) SC Cleared
3 215 (11.08%) Degree
4 147 (7.58%) DV Cleared
5 115 (5.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 78 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.09%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.86%) Master's Degree
9 31 (1.60%) Azure Certification
9 31 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
10 30 (1.55%) CISSP
11 26 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
12 25 (1.29%) CompTIA Security+
12 25 (1.29%) RHCE
13 20 (1.03%) OSCP
14 19 (0.98%) CCNP
15 18 (0.93%) CCNA
16 17 (0.88%) GPEN
17 16 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.82%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (2.94%) NIST
2 41 (2.11%) GDPR
2 41 (2.11%) QA
3 40 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 31 (1.60%) SLA
5 20 (1.03%) Data Quality
6 18 (0.93%) PCI DSS
7 16 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (0.82%) NCSC
8 12 (0.62%) GLBA
9 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 9 (0.46%) SOC 2
12 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.15%) SEPA
16 2 (0.10%) Basel III
System Software
1 403 (20.77%) Docker
2 204 (10.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 169 (8.71%) Active Directory
4 71 (3.66%) vSphere
5 53 (2.73%) Virtual Machines
6 45 (2.32%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (2.11%) Hyper-V
8 27 (1.39%) GPFS
8 27 (1.39%) NFS
9 24 (1.24%) Oracle RAC
10 21 (1.08%) KVM
11 20 (1.03%) Postfix
12 17 (0.88%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 17 (0.88%) VMware NSX
13 16 (0.82%) Firmware
14 15 (0.77%) Dovecot
15 14 (0.72%) DFS Replication
15 14 (0.72%) HDFS
16 12 (0.62%) Lustre
16 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 462 (23.81%) Kubernetes
2 393 (20.26%) Terraform
3 391 (20.15%) Ansible
4 208 (10.72%) Grafana
5 183 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 77 (3.97%) Puppet
7 67 (3.45%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.16%) Red Hat Satellite
9 37 (1.91%) vCenter Server
10 36 (1.86%) Packer
11 35 (1.80%) Podman
11 35 (1.80%) vRealize
12 34 (1.75%) Argo
13 33 (1.70%) Kibana
14 30 (1.55%) SCCM
15 29 (1.49%) SCOM
16 26 (1.34%) Data Guard
16 26 (1.34%) Nessus
17 25 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
18 20 (1.03%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 295 (15.21%) Microsoft
2 290 (14.95%) Oracle
3 288 (14.85%) VMware
4 252 (12.99%) Splunk
5 221 (11.39%) Red Hat
6 119 (6.13%) Cisco
7 83 (4.28%) ServiceNow
8 73 (3.76%) IBM
9 53 (2.73%) Google
10 51 (2.63%) AppDynamics
11 47 (2.42%) Dell
12 45 (2.32%) CyberArk
13 32 (1.65%) CrowdStrike
14 31 (1.60%) Palo Alto
15 27 (1.39%) SolarWinds
16 26 (1.34%) Sybase
17 25 (1.29%) NetApp
18 23 (1.19%) Citrix
18 23 (1.19%) Solace
19 22 (1.13%) Dynatrace