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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 31 31
Rank change year-on-year -16 0 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,889 1,789 2,419
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.55% 5.88% 5.42%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.54% 41.15% 39.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,201 1,104 1,592
10th Percentile £325 £363 £325
25th Percentile £401 £446 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £656 £650
90th Percentile £716 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -6.67% -0.94% -3.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 55 119
10th Percentile £15.00 £42.75 £26.04
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.45 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.46 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £73.50 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £66.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year -5.54% +9.92% -6.92%

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 4,777 4,347 6,180
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.51% 14.28% 13.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,159 2,786 4,133
10th Percentile £178 £200 £180
25th Percentile £275 £317 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £572 £589 £591
90th Percentile £675 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £430 £430
% change year-on-year -3.49% - -9.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 149 394
10th Percentile £15.02 £16.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.18 £20.94 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.50 £30.78 £24.43
Median % change year-on-year -23.65% +26.01% -7.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £61.31
90th Percentile £68.68 £69.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £23.14
% change year-on-year -18.54% +21.03% -12.70%

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 1 March 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 1 March 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 1 March 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 -14 1,634 £520 -5.45% 978
UK excluding London -8 1,083 £490 -6.67% 906
London -31 601 £550 -8.33% 204
Work from Home -16 505 £500 -4.76% 470
South East -2 319 £485 -7.62% 298
North of England -3 291 £500 -9.09% 147
Midlands -10 168 £513 -2.33% 108
Yorkshire -13 159 £500 -13.04% 46
West Midlands -9 154 £525 -1.13% 66
South West -21 139 £550 -8.33% 136
North West -11 123 £492 -6.29% 71
East of England -13 84 £462 +2.67% 122
Scotland -22 78 £414 -12.02% 70
Northern Ireland +8 16 £413 +26.92% 15
East Midlands -34 14 £425 -6.49% 42
North East -16 12 £550 +12.82% 30
Wales -12 6 £404 -24.88% 29

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 91 (4.82%) Confluence
2 47 (2.49%) nginx
3 43 (2.28%) Apache
4 40 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (0.95%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.85%) WebLogic
7 14 (0.74%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.69%) Tomcat
8 13 (0.69%) WebSphere
9 12 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
9 12 (0.64%) TPMS
10 10 (0.53%) SAS
11 9 (0.48%) JBoss
12 8 (0.42%) CICS
13 6 (0.32%) IIS
13 6 (0.32%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.32%) Skype for Business
14 5 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 50 (2.65%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.053%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.053%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.053%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.053%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.053%) RMDS
5 1 (0.053%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
5 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 580 (30.70%) AWS
2 364 (19.27%) Azure
3 181 (9.58%) GitHub
4 142 (7.52%) GCP
5 141 (7.46%) OpenShift
6 107 (5.66%) AWS CloudFormation
7 104 (5.51%) Serverless
8 95 (5.03%) Amazon EC2
9 89 (4.71%) GitHub Actions
10 79 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 72 (3.81%) Amazon EKS
12 65 (3.44%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (3.34%) Amazon ECS
14 60 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
15 57 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 48 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 45 (2.38%) IaaS
18 41 (2.17%) Entra ID
19 35 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
20 34 (1.80%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 209 (11.06%) Firewall
2 141 (7.46%) DNS
3 128 (6.78%) TCP/IP
4 65 (3.44%) Network Security
5 64 (3.39%) VPN
6 44 (2.33%) SSH
7 38 (2.01%) DHCP
7 38 (2.01%) HTTP
7 38 (2.01%) SAN
7 38 (2.01%) SSL
8 29 (1.54%) WAN
9 27 (1.43%) VSAN
9 27 (1.43%) Wireless
10 26 (1.38%) Ethernet
11 25 (1.32%) VLAN
12 24 (1.27%) BGP
13 22 (1.16%) Kerberos
14 20 (1.06%) LAN
14 20 (1.06%) Wireshark
15 19 (1.01%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (7.57%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.19%) SQL Server
3 80 (4.24%) Amazon RDS
4 79 (4.18%) Relational Database
5 72 (3.81%) MongoDB
6 70 (3.71%) MySQL
7 63 (3.34%) NoSQL
8 62 (3.28%) Oracle Database
9 49 (2.59%) Elasticsearch
10 26 (1.38%) DB2
11 23 (1.22%) Big Data
12 19 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
13 17 (0.90%) KDB
13 17 (0.90%) Kdb+
14 15 (0.79%) Data Lake
14 15 (0.79%) Hadoop
15 13 (0.69%) DynamoDB
16 12 (0.64%) GIS
16 12 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 11 (0.58%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 261 (13.82%) Jenkins
2 207 (10.96%) Git
3 198 (10.48%) GitLab
4 144 (7.62%) JIRA
5 50 (2.65%) JUnit
6 47 (2.49%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.22%) Bitbucket
8 36 (1.91%) Eclipse
8 36 (1.91%) Maven
9 26 (1.38%) Cucumber
10 23 (1.22%) Mockito
11 19 (1.01%) Visual Studio
12 18 (0.95%) Burp Suite
12 18 (0.95%) Liquibase
12 18 (0.95%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.90%) JMeter
14 16 (0.85%) Artifactory
15 15 (0.79%) Metasploit
16 13 (0.69%) Android Studio
16 13 (0.69%) Xcode
General
1 504 (26.68%) Social Skills
2 321 (16.99%) Finance
3 191 (10.11%) Public Sector
4 177 (9.37%) Analytical Skills
5 135 (7.15%) Banking
6 64 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.54%) Military
8 45 (2.38%) Financial Institution
9 38 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
10 32 (1.69%) Investment Banking
11 28 (1.48%) Front Office
12 25 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
13 20 (1.06%) Legal
14 19 (1.01%) Aerospace
14 19 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.95%) Telecoms
16 17 (0.90%) Law
17 15 (0.79%) Retail
18 13 (0.69%) Manufacturing
19 11 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 260 (13.76%) Developer
2 237 (12.55%) Senior
3 180 (9.53%) DevOps Engineer
4 146 (7.73%) Software Engineer
5 127 (6.72%) Analyst
6 113 (5.98%) Architect
7 100 (5.29%) Java Developer
8 90 (4.76%) Linux Engineer
9 85 (4.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 77 (4.08%) Lead
10 77 (4.08%) Support Engineer
11 76 (4.02%) Platform Engineer
12 75 (3.97%) Administrator
13 71 (3.76%) AWS Engineer
14 70 (3.71%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 66 (3.49%) Site Engineer
16 58 (3.07%) AWS DevOps
17 53 (2.81%) Senior Software Engineer
18 52 (2.75%) Security Engineer
19 47 (2.49%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (7.46%) Kafka
2 116 (6.14%) REST
3 111 (5.88%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.29%) Middleware
5 73 (3.86%) Node.js
6 68 (3.60%) Spring
7 54 (2.86%) LDAP
8 49 (2.59%) RESTful
9 46 (2.44%) JSON
10 45 (2.38%) React
11 44 (2.33%) XML
12 43 (2.28%) Spring Boot
12 43 (2.28%) Web Services
13 38 (2.01%) AngularJS
14 35 (1.85%) YAML
15 34 (1.80%) SOAP
16 28 (1.48%) .NET
17 25 (1.32%) CSS
18 24 (1.27%) SAML
19 22 (1.16%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 118 (6.25%) Cloud Native
2 111 (5.88%) Data Centre
3 87 (4.61%) Linux Command Line
4 71 (3.76%) Management Information System
5 70 (3.71%) Distributed Systems
6 59 (3.12%) Public Cloud
7 54 (2.86%) PKI
8 50 (2.65%) Onboarding
9 47 (2.49%) Replication
10 42 (2.22%) Equities
11 40 (2.12%) Hybrid Cloud
11 40 (2.12%) Product Ownership
12 38 (2.01%) Security Operations Centre
12 38 (2.01%) Security Posture
13 32 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
14 31 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
15 30 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 29 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
16 29 (1.54%) Data Structures
17 28 (1.48%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 697 (36.90%) Windows
2 353 (18.69%) Unix
3 263 (13.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 151 (7.99%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.61%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.70%) CentOS
7 39 (2.06%) Android
8 36 (1.91%) Solaris
9 27 (1.43%) AIX
10 26 (1.38%) Mac OS
10 26 (1.38%) VMS
11 23 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (1.01%) Embedded Linux
12 19 (1.01%) Mac OS X
13 17 (0.90%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.74%) Kali Linux
16 13 (0.69%) Debian
17 11 (0.58%) Apple iOS
17 11 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 587 (31.07%) CI/CD
2 486 (25.73%) DevOps
3 424 (22.45%) Agile
4 361 (19.11%) Problem-Solving
5 311 (16.46%) Infrastructure as Code
6 308 (16.30%) Containerisation
7 238 (12.60%) Software Engineering
8 194 (10.27%) Observability
9 168 (8.89%) Cybersecurity
10 163 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
11 161 (8.52%) Computer Science
12 157 (8.31%) Microservices
13 145 (7.68%) Incident Response
13 145 (7.68%) Test Automation
14 142 (7.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 129 (6.83%) Platform Engineering
16 127 (6.72%) High Availability
17 125 (6.62%) SIEM
17 125 (6.62%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 124 (6.56%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 696 (36.84%) Python
2 340 (18.00%) Java
3 326 (17.26%) Bash
4 319 (16.89%) SQL
5 267 (14.13%) PowerShell
6 189 (10.01%) Shell Script
7 170 (9.00%) C++
8 132 (6.99%) JavaScript
9 102 (5.40%) Perl
10 80 (4.24%) C#
11 65 (3.44%) Go
12 54 (2.86%) C
13 43 (2.28%) Ruby
14 34 (1.80%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.59%) PL/SQL
16 28 (1.48%) Rust
17 23 (1.22%) PHP
18 22 (1.16%) Ada
19 19 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
20 14 (0.74%) Korn
Qualifications
1 694 (36.74%) Security Cleared
2 496 (26.26%) SC Cleared
3 204 (10.80%) Degree
4 171 (9.05%) DV Cleared
5 106 (5.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 84 (4.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 65 (3.44%) AWS Certification
8 39 (2.06%) CompTIA Security+
9 38 (2.01%) CISSP
10 37 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
11 31 (1.64%) RHCE
12 30 (1.59%) Master's Degree
13 27 (1.43%) Azure Certification
14 24 (1.27%) CCNA
14 24 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
15 21 (1.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 21 (1.11%) CCNP
16 19 (1.01%) OSCP
17 18 (0.95%) Oracle Certification
18 17 (0.90%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.86%) NIST
2 52 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.54%) GDPR
4 41 (2.17%) QA
5 30 (1.59%) SLA
6 23 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
7 18 (0.95%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.90%) Data Quality
8 17 (0.90%) NCSC
9 12 (0.64%) GLBA
9 12 (0.64%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 8 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
11 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.32%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 3 (0.16%) GRC
15 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 403 (21.33%) Docker
2 217 (11.49%) VMware Infrastructure
3 172 (9.11%) Active Directory
4 76 (4.02%) vSphere
5 69 (3.65%) Virtual Machines
6 51 (2.70%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (1.54%) NFS
9 27 (1.43%) GPFS
9 27 (1.43%) VMware NSX
10 23 (1.22%) KVM
11 19 (1.01%) Firmware
12 15 (0.79%) Oracle RAC
13 14 (0.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 13 (0.69%) Postfix
15 12 (0.64%) Lustre
16 9 (0.48%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.37%) Ceph
17 7 (0.37%) QEMU
18 6 (0.32%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 492 (26.05%) Kubernetes
2 405 (21.44%) Terraform
3 381 (20.17%) Ansible
4 200 (10.59%) Grafana
5 170 (9.00%) Prometheus
6 68 (3.60%) Puppet
7 66 (3.49%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.28%) vCenter Server
9 37 (1.96%) Packer
10 36 (1.91%) Red Hat Satellite
11 35 (1.85%) Argo
12 34 (1.80%) vRealize
13 32 (1.69%) Podman
14 30 (1.59%) Single Sign-On
15 29 (1.54%) Kibana
16 25 (1.32%) SCCM
17 22 (1.16%) Nessus
18 20 (1.06%) SCOM
19 18 (0.95%) ITRS Geneos
20 17 (0.90%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 300 (15.88%) VMware
2 298 (15.78%) Microsoft
3 246 (13.02%) Oracle
4 229 (12.12%) Red Hat
5 224 (11.86%) Splunk
6 105 (5.56%) Cisco
7 86 (4.55%) IBM
8 70 (3.71%) ServiceNow
9 57 (3.02%) Google
10 45 (2.38%) Dell
11 37 (1.96%) Palo Alto
12 35 (1.85%) CyberArk
13 28 (1.48%) AppDynamics
14 26 (1.38%) SolarWinds
15 25 (1.32%) Atlassian
15 25 (1.32%) NetApp
16 24 (1.27%) Citrix
16 24 (1.27%) NVIDIA
17 22 (1.16%) Sybase
18 21 (1.11%) SAP