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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 34 31
Rank change year-on-year -23 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,002 1,811 2,236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.79% 5.53% 5.57%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.36% 41.38% 39.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,247 1,145 1,445
10th Percentile £353 £362 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -5.20%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 55 132
10th Percentile £33.99 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.63 £59.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,087 4,377 5,604
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.62% 13.37% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,230 2,821 3,706
10th Percentile £193 £200 £193
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £450 £465
% change year-on-year +0.11% -3.23% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 251 375
10th Percentile £15.58 £15.50 £12.60
25th Percentile £17.84 £18.12 £16.83
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £64.06 £54.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.48 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £21.90 £34.50
% change year-on-year +21.00% -36.52% +2.99%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 July 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 -24 1,697 £525 -2.23% 831
UK excluding London -18 1,216 £500 - 602
London -49 575 £550 -4.35% 320
Work from Home -29 543 £500 -4.31% 334
South East -2 347 £518 +0.98% 199
North of England -11 326 £500 - 123
South West -2 178 £540 -6.09% 92
North West -8 170 £485 +21.25% 68
Midlands -13 144 £470 -1.05% 66
Yorkshire -22 139 £500 -4.76% 30
West Midlands -21 122 £470 -5.53% 38
Scotland -26 104 £450 -10.00% 38
East of England -18 94 £479 -2.30% 76
Wales +7 29 £465 +64.60% 9
North East -24 23 £490 +2.62% 26
East Midlands -7 19 £513 +13.89% 28
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 16

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 (4.15%) Confluence
2 52 (2.60%) Apache
3 33 (1.65%) nginx
4 28 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (1.05%) WebLogic
6 20 (1.00%) Tomcat
7 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.90%) SAS
9 17 (0.85%) OpenStack
10 12 (0.60%) JBoss
11 11 (0.55%) CICS
12 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
13 9 (0.45%) IIS
13 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
13 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
15 5 (0.25%) CMS
16 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.100%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.050%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.050%) InDesign
6 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.100%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 596 (29.77%) AWS
2 459 (22.93%) Azure
3 155 (7.74%) GitHub
4 150 (7.49%) GCP
5 102 (5.09%) OpenShift
6 90 (4.50%) GitHub Actions
7 88 (4.40%) Amazon EC2
7 88 (4.40%) Amazon S3
7 88 (4.40%) Entra ID
8 73 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
9 62 (3.10%) Amazon EKS
10 59 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 59 (2.95%) Serverless
11 54 (2.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 53 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
13 52 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
14 51 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
15 44 (2.20%) IaaS
16 41 (2.05%) SaaS
17 39 (1.95%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 208 (10.39%) Firewall
2 183 (9.14%) DNS
3 114 (5.69%) TCP/IP
4 85 (4.25%) DHCP
5 83 (4.15%) VPN
6 77 (3.85%) Network Security
7 72 (3.60%) SAN
8 47 (2.35%) WAN
9 44 (2.20%) SSL
10 40 (2.00%) VSAN
11 37 (1.85%) LAN
11 37 (1.85%) SSH
12 33 (1.65%) HTTP
13 32 (1.60%) SNMP
13 32 (1.60%) VLAN
14 22 (1.10%) Ethernet
14 22 (1.10%) NAS
15 21 (1.05%) IPsec
16 18 (0.90%) BGP
16 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.34%) SQL Server
2 119 (5.94%) PostgreSQL
3 94 (4.70%) Oracle Database
4 70 (3.50%) MySQL
5 69 (3.45%) Relational Database
6 68 (3.40%) MongoDB
7 56 (2.80%) Amazon RDS
8 40 (2.00%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 31 (1.55%) RDBMS
11 30 (1.50%) NoSQL
12 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
13 25 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
14 21 (1.05%) SAP HANA
15 20 (1.00%) Big Data
16 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.90%) DataStage
17 18 (0.90%) Sybase ASE
18 17 (0.85%) Data Lake
19 15 (0.75%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 215 (10.74%) Jenkins
2 197 (9.84%) Git
3 182 (9.09%) GitLab
4 141 (7.04%) JIRA
5 38 (1.90%) Maven
6 33 (1.65%) Mockito
7 32 (1.60%) SonarQube
8 26 (1.30%) Bitbucket
9 25 (1.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.05%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.95%) JUnit
12 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
14 13 (0.65%) jMock
15 12 (0.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
17 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
18 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
General
1 407 (20.33%) Social Skills
2 287 (14.34%) Finance
3 206 (10.29%) Public Sector
4 192 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
5 142 (7.09%) Banking
6 73 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (2.05%) Military
8 31 (1.55%) Front Office
9 27 (1.35%) Investment Banking
10 25 (1.25%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.20%) Legal
12 23 (1.15%) Retail
13 20 (1.00%) Law
14 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 16 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 288 (14.39%) Senior
2 201 (10.04%) Linux Engineer
3 199 (9.94%) Developer
4 176 (8.79%) DevOps Engineer
5 171 (8.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 118 (5.89%) Software Engineer
7 101 (5.04%) Architect
8 86 (4.30%) Analyst
9 84 (4.20%) Platform Engineer
10 81 (4.05%) Java Developer
11 77 (3.85%) Lead
12 70 (3.50%) Cloud Engineer
13 67 (3.35%) Consultant
14 64 (3.20%) AWS Engineer
15 61 (3.05%) Support Engineer
16 56 (2.80%) Senior Developer
16 56 (2.80%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 55 (2.75%) Administrator
18 53 (2.65%) Security Engineer
19 51 (2.55%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (5.29%) Kafka
2 99 (4.95%) REST
3 71 (3.55%) Middleware
4 68 (3.40%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.85%) Spring
6 49 (2.45%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.40%) Web Services
8 47 (2.35%) .NET
9 46 (2.30%) RESTful
10 43 (2.15%) LDAP
11 42 (2.10%) Node.js
12 34 (1.70%) ActiveMQ
13 30 (1.50%) JSON
14 27 (1.35%) SOAP
14 27 (1.35%) YAML
15 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
16 25 (1.25%) React
17 23 (1.15%) XML
18 21 (1.05%) Keycloak
19 20 (1.00%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 139 (6.94%) Data Centre
2 135 (6.74%) Cloud Native
3 121 (6.04%) Onboarding
4 104 (5.19%) Linux Command Line
5 92 (4.60%) PKI
6 91 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
7 77 (3.85%) Replication
8 63 (3.15%) Hybrid Cloud
8 63 (3.15%) Public Cloud
9 60 (3.00%) Management Information System
10 57 (2.85%) Security Posture
11 50 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (1.80%) Product Ownership
13 32 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.55%) Clustering
15 29 (1.45%) Embedded Systems
15 29 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
16 28 (1.40%) Enterprise Storage
17 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
18 24 (1.20%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 760 (37.96%) Windows
2 421 (21.03%) Unix
3 335 (16.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 211 (10.54%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 74 (3.70%) AIX
7 62 (3.10%) Solaris
8 41 (2.05%) CentOS
9 30 (1.50%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.40%) VMS
11 23 (1.15%) SUSE
11 23 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.90%) Windows 10
13 17 (0.85%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.80%) Android
14 16 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
15 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
15 15 (0.75%) Rocky
16 14 (0.70%) Debian
16 14 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 566 (28.27%) CI/CD
2 487 (24.33%) DevOps
3 361 (18.03%) Infrastructure as Code
4 357 (17.83%) Agile
5 291 (14.54%) Problem-Solving
6 274 (13.69%) Containerisation
7 251 (12.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 232 (11.59%) Migration
9 211 (10.54%) Continuous Improvement
10 203 (10.14%) Software Engineering
11 193 (9.64%) High Availability
12 190 (9.49%) Observability
13 177 (8.84%) Performance Tuning
14 176 (8.79%) Platform Engineering
15 171 (8.54%) Root Cause Analysis
16 164 (8.19%) ITIL
17 155 (7.74%) SIEM
18 140 (6.99%) AI
19 139 (6.94%) Test Automation
20 135 (6.74%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 691 (34.52%) Python
2 353 (17.63%) Bash
3 352 (17.58%) PowerShell
4 339 (16.93%) SQL
5 250 (12.49%) Java
6 152 (7.59%) Shell Script
7 115 (5.74%) C++
8 88 (4.40%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.35%) C#
10 64 (3.20%) C
11 61 (3.05%) PL/SQL
12 54 (2.70%) Perl
13 52 (2.60%) Go
14 36 (1.80%) Bicep
15 23 (1.15%) Ada
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (1.05%) TypeScript
17 20 (1.00%) Rust
18 16 (0.80%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 781 (39.01%) Security Cleared
2 579 (28.92%) SC Cleared
3 225 (11.24%) DV Cleared
4 176 (8.79%) Degree
5 77 (3.85%) AWS Certification
6 67 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
7 60 (3.00%) CISSP
8 48 (2.40%) Azure Certification
9 44 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
10 29 (1.45%) CompTIA Security+
11 28 (1.40%) CCNP
12 27 (1.35%) RHCE
13 25 (1.25%) CCNA
14 23 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.95%) CISM
16 18 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 13 (0.65%) GIAC
17 13 (0.65%) RHCSA
17 13 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (4.20%) NIST
2 79 (3.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.85%) QA
4 31 (1.55%) SLA
5 25 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.05%) GDPR
7 21 (1.05%) NCSC
8 20 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.70%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.60%) GRC
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
17 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 330 (16.48%) Docker
2 253 (12.64%) Active Directory
3 235 (11.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (4.65%) Virtual Machines
5 76 (3.80%) Hyper-V
5 76 (3.80%) vSphere
6 65 (3.25%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (2.80%) VMware NSX
8 45 (2.25%) NFS
9 40 (2.00%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (1.75%) Firmware
11 34 (1.70%) KVM
12 20 (1.00%) Postfix
13 13 (0.65%) Ceph
13 13 (0.65%) GPFS
14 10 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 448 (22.38%) Terraform
2 437 (21.83%) Ansible
3 418 (20.88%) Kubernetes
4 164 (8.19%) Grafana
5 141 (7.04%) Prometheus
6 75 (3.75%) Puppet
7 56 (2.80%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.60%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.30%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.90%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.55%) Nagios
12 28 (1.40%) Packer
13 27 (1.35%) SCCM
14 26 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
15 24 (1.20%) Podman
16 22 (1.10%) Argo
16 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
17 20 (1.00%) Kibana
17 20 (1.00%) Netcool
Vendors
1 324 (16.18%) VMware
2 303 (15.13%) Microsoft
3 295 (14.74%) Oracle
4 226 (11.29%) Red Hat
5 152 (7.59%) Splunk
6 130 (6.49%) Cisco
7 106 (5.29%) IBM
8 103 (5.14%) ServiceNow
9 77 (3.85%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.55%) Google
11 47 (2.35%) BeyondTrust
11 47 (2.35%) Palo Alto
11 47 (2.35%) SolarWinds
12 42 (2.10%) SAP
13 39 (1.95%) F5
13 39 (1.95%) NetApp
14 38 (1.90%) HP
15 33 (1.65%) Citrix
16 31 (1.55%) Sybase
17 29 (1.45%) Dynatrace