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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 32 27
Rank change year-on-year -9 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,962 1,774 2,586
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.17% 5.60% 5.94%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.99% 39.75% 41.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,234 1,053 1,742
10th Percentile £316 £356 £325
25th Percentile £401 £456 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £618 £663 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.10% - -3.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 63 118
10th Percentile £13.25 £45.00 £24.80
25th Percentile £41.25 £60.38 £48.35
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.50 £74.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.75 £62.00
% change year-on-year -3.98% +6.05% -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 4,787 4,463 6,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.62% 14.08% 14.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,175 2,784 4,248
10th Percentile £173 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £313 £281
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.77%
75th Percentile £564 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 165 350
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.00 £37.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +25.00% +20.00%
75th Percentile £60.13 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.60 £72.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £35.75 £25.25
% change year-on-year -34.27% +41.58% +6.14%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -9 1,677 £510 -9.33% 1,306
UK excluding London -2 1,118 £483 -8.10% 1,273
London -13 652 £550 -8.33% 205
Work from Home -13 515 £500 -6.98% 513
South East +1 303 £475 -9.09% 417
North of England +4 271 £491 -10.73% 215
Midlands 0 201 £520 -5.54% 154
West Midlands -2 183 £525 -4.72% 59
Yorkshire +5 170 £500 -14.16% 86
South West -15 133 £550 -8.33% 190
Scotland -2 120 £450 -8.16% 88
North West -19 95 £453 -17.64% 91
East of England -11 90 £475 +11.76% 174
Northern Ireland +8 18 £400 +23.08% 22
East Midlands -24 18 £420 -4.55% 92
North East -15 12 £550 +8.64% 39
Wales -11 5 £600 +11.63% 46

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 (4.23%) Confluence
2 66 (3.36%) Apache
3 48 (2.45%) nginx
4 37 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.43%) Apache Spark
6 24 (1.22%) WebLogic
7 23 (1.17%) OpenStack
8 22 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
9 21 (1.07%) WebSphere
10 16 (0.82%) JBoss
10 16 (0.82%) SharePoint
11 14 (0.71%) Mattermost
11 14 (0.71%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.66%) SAS
12 13 (0.66%) Tomcat
12 13 (0.66%) TPMS
13 11 (0.56%) IIS
13 11 (0.56%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.51%) iPlanet
15 5 (0.25%) CMS
Applications
1 59 (3.01%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.46%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.051%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.051%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.20%) 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
6 1 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.051%) Finacle
6 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.051%) RMDS
6 1 (0.051%) Shopify
6 1 (0.051%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 594 (30.28%) AWS
2 384 (19.57%) Azure
3 188 (9.58%) GitHub
4 144 (7.34%) GCP
5 134 (6.83%) OpenShift
6 117 (5.96%) AWS CloudFormation
7 110 (5.61%) Serverless
8 102 (5.20%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.64%) GitHub Actions
10 83 (4.23%) Amazon S3
11 72 (3.67%) Amazon ECS
12 68 (3.47%) Amazon EKS
13 63 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
15 59 (3.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 59 (3.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 50 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
17 49 (2.50%) IaaS
18 44 (2.24%) SaaS
19 38 (1.94%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 213 (10.86%) Firewall
2 149 (7.59%) DNS
3 138 (7.03%) TCP/IP
4 70 (3.57%) Network Security
5 58 (2.96%) SSH
6 52 (2.65%) HTTP
7 50 (2.55%) SSL
8 47 (2.40%) DHCP
8 47 (2.40%) VPN
9 33 (1.68%) SAN
10 31 (1.58%) VLAN
11 28 (1.43%) Kerberos
12 27 (1.38%) Wireless
13 26 (1.33%) VSAN
13 26 (1.33%) WAN
14 25 (1.27%) SMTP
15 24 (1.22%) Skype
16 21 (1.07%) LAN
17 19 (0.97%) Ethernet
17 19 (0.97%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (6.93%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.05%) Relational Database
2 99 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 82 (4.18%) Oracle Database
4 81 (4.13%) Amazon RDS
5 77 (3.92%) NoSQL
6 75 (3.82%) MongoDB
7 72 (3.67%) MySQL
8 50 (2.55%) Elasticsearch
9 27 (1.38%) Hadoop
10 26 (1.33%) DB2
11 25 (1.27%) Big Data
12 21 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.82%) Apache Hive
14 14 (0.71%) Apache Cassandra
14 14 (0.71%) HBase
14 14 (0.71%) KDB
14 14 (0.71%) Kdb+
14 14 (0.71%) Redis
15 13 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 271 (13.81%) Jenkins
2 239 (12.18%) Git
3 188 (9.58%) GitLab
4 134 (6.83%) JIRA
5 56 (2.85%) JUnit
6 52 (2.65%) Sonatype Nexus
7 46 (2.34%) Bitbucket
8 36 (1.83%) Eclipse
9 26 (1.33%) Maven
10 25 (1.27%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.12%) Liquibase
12 21 (1.07%) Mockito
13 19 (0.97%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.92%) Artifactory
14 18 (0.92%) Browser DevTools
14 18 (0.92%) Burp Suite
15 17 (0.87%) Android Studio
15 17 (0.87%) Xcode
16 16 (0.82%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.82%) JMeter
General
1 557 (28.39%) Social Skills
2 350 (17.84%) Finance
3 209 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
4 186 (9.48%) Public Sector
5 154 (7.85%) Banking
6 74 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.65%) Financial Institution
8 50 (2.55%) Investment Banking
9 44 (2.24%) Military
10 43 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
11 41 (2.09%) Front Office
12 23 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 20 (1.02%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.97%) Legal
15 18 (0.92%) Telecoms
16 16 (0.82%) Manufacturing
17 13 (0.66%) Law
18 12 (0.61%) Back Office
19 10 (0.51%) Retail
20 9 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 295 (15.04%) Developer
2 235 (11.98%) Senior
3 178 (9.07%) DevOps Engineer
4 140 (7.14%) Software Engineer
5 121 (6.17%) Analyst
6 108 (5.50%) Java Developer
7 104 (5.30%) Architect
8 103 (5.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 95 (4.84%) Linux Engineer
10 94 (4.79%) Platform Engineer
10 94 (4.79%) Support Engineer
11 76 (3.87%) Administrator
11 76 (3.87%) AWS Engineer
12 72 (3.67%) Lead
13 69 (3.52%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 67 (3.41%) Site Engineer
15 64 (3.26%) Security Engineer
16 62 (3.16%) AWS DevOps
17 55 (2.80%) Senior Software Engineer
18 54 (2.75%) C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (7.90%) Kafka
2 131 (6.68%) REST
3 125 (6.37%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.13%) Middleware
5 67 (3.41%) Node.js
5 67 (3.41%) Spring
6 65 (3.31%) RESTful
7 59 (3.01%) LDAP
8 52 (2.65%) React
9 49 (2.50%) JSON
10 46 (2.34%) XML
11 40 (2.04%) AngularJS
12 36 (1.83%) SOAP
12 36 (1.83%) YAML
13 32 (1.63%) OAuth
14 29 (1.48%) CSS
14 29 (1.48%) Spring Boot
15 28 (1.43%) FastAPI
15 28 (1.43%) SAML
16 27 (1.38%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 103 (5.25%) Cloud Native
2 93 (4.74%) Linux Command Line
3 91 (4.64%) Data Centre
4 72 (3.67%) Replication
5 71 (3.62%) Management Information System
6 58 (2.96%) Public Cloud
7 57 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
8 53 (2.70%) Equities
9 51 (2.60%) PKI
10 46 (2.34%) Onboarding
11 40 (2.04%) Data Structures
12 39 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
12 39 (1.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 34 (1.73%) Security Operations Centre
14 33 (1.68%) Product Ownership
15 29 (1.48%) Algorithms
15 29 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
16 28 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
17 27 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
17 27 (1.38%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 729 (37.16%) Windows
2 398 (20.29%) Unix
3 253 (12.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 143 (7.29%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.28%) Ubuntu
6 52 (2.65%) CentOS
7 43 (2.19%) Android
8 35 (1.78%) Mac OS
9 33 (1.68%) VMS
10 32 (1.63%) Solaris
11 26 (1.33%) Mac OS X
12 23 (1.17%) Windows 10
13 21 (1.07%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.97%) AIX
15 17 (0.87%) Amazon Linux
15 17 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.82%) Embedded Linux
17 14 (0.71%) Kali Linux
18 12 (0.61%) Apple iOS
18 12 (0.61%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 592 (30.17%) CI/CD
2 499 (25.43%) DevOps
3 455 (23.19%) Agile
4 376 (19.16%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (16.06%) Infrastructure as Code
6 307 (15.65%) Containerisation
7 253 (12.90%) Software Engineering
8 204 (10.40%) Observability
9 184 (9.38%) Cybersecurity
10 165 (8.41%) Computer Science
11 164 (8.36%) Test Automation
12 157 (8.00%) Continuous Improvement
13 153 (7.80%) Incident Response
14 152 (7.75%) Microservices
15 149 (7.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 142 (7.24%) Platform Engineering
17 132 (6.73%) High Availability
18 130 (6.63%) Configuration Management
19 129 (6.57%) SIEM
20 125 (6.37%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 789 (40.21%) Python
2 383 (19.52%) SQL
3 373 (19.01%) Java
4 339 (17.28%) Bash
5 290 (14.78%) PowerShell
6 222 (11.31%) Shell Script
7 190 (9.68%) C++
8 136 (6.93%) JavaScript
9 133 (6.78%) Perl
10 88 (4.49%) C#
11 76 (3.87%) Go
12 61 (3.11%) C
13 42 (2.14%) Ruby
14 30 (1.53%) Groovy
14 30 (1.53%) TypeScript
15 28 (1.43%) Rust
16 27 (1.38%) PL/SQL
17 22 (1.12%) PHP
18 19 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
19 16 (0.82%) Ada
Qualifications
1 649 (33.08%) Security Cleared
2 468 (23.85%) SC Cleared
3 216 (11.01%) Degree
4 155 (7.90%) DV Cleared
5 114 (5.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 81 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 62 (3.16%) AWS Certification
8 35 (1.78%) Master's Degree
9 32 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
10 31 (1.58%) Azure Certification
11 29 (1.48%) CISSP
12 26 (1.33%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
12 26 (1.33%) RHCE
13 20 (1.02%) OSCP
14 19 (0.97%) CCNA
14 19 (0.97%) CCNP
15 17 (0.87%) GPEN
16 16 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.82%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (2.96%) NIST
2 43 (2.19%) QA
3 42 (2.14%) GDPR
4 40 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 32 (1.63%) SLA
6 20 (1.02%) Data Quality
7 19 (0.97%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.82%) NCSC
9 13 (0.66%) GLBA
10 11 (0.56%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.46%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
14 5 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
15 4 (0.20%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.15%) SEPA
17 2 (0.10%) GAAP
System Software
1 413 (21.05%) Docker
2 207 (10.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 173 (8.82%) Active Directory
4 71 (3.62%) vSphere
5 53 (2.70%) Virtual Machines
6 48 (2.45%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (2.09%) Hyper-V
8 27 (1.38%) GPFS
8 27 (1.38%) NFS
9 25 (1.27%) Oracle RAC
10 24 (1.22%) VMware NSX
11 21 (1.07%) KVM
12 17 (0.87%) Firmware
12 17 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.71%) DFS Replication
13 14 (0.71%) HDFS
13 14 (0.71%) Postfix
14 12 (0.61%) Lustre
14 12 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.56%) Squid
Systems Management
1 473 (24.11%) Kubernetes
2 398 (20.29%) Terraform
3 394 (20.08%) Ansible
4 216 (11.01%) Grafana
5 186 (9.48%) Prometheus
6 79 (4.03%) Puppet
7 68 (3.47%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.14%) Red Hat Satellite
9 38 (1.94%) Packer
9 38 (1.94%) vRealize
10 37 (1.89%) vCenter Server
11 35 (1.78%) Argo
12 34 (1.73%) Kibana
13 33 (1.68%) Podman
14 30 (1.53%) SCCM
15 29 (1.48%) SCOM
16 26 (1.33%) Data Guard
17 25 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
18 24 (1.22%) Nessus
19 20 (1.02%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 300 (15.29%) Microsoft
2 293 (14.93%) Oracle
3 291 (14.83%) VMware
4 253 (12.90%) Splunk
5 217 (11.06%) Red Hat
6 124 (6.32%) Cisco
7 80 (4.08%) ServiceNow
8 77 (3.92%) IBM
9 51 (2.60%) AppDynamics
9 51 (2.60%) Google
10 47 (2.40%) Dell
11 42 (2.14%) CyberArk
12 31 (1.58%) Palo Alto
13 30 (1.53%) CrowdStrike
14 28 (1.43%) NetApp
15 27 (1.38%) SolarWinds
16 24 (1.22%) Commvault
16 24 (1.22%) Sybase
17 23 (1.17%) Citrix
17 23 (1.17%) Solace