Linux Contract Job Trends

Linux
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Linux skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 36 30 27
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 +2
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,852 2,151 3,346
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.62% 5.58% 6.80%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.55% 39.42% 43.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,116 1,317 2,216
10th Percentile £350 £350 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £675
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 113 152
10th Percentile £41.25 £51.25 £21.38
25th Percentile £53.90 £65.00 £48.32
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £62.17
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% +8.57% -1.32%
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £73.75
90th Percentile £68.00 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £64.69
% change year-on-year -3.70% +4.35% -0.48%

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 4,457 5,457 7,637
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.53% 14.17% 15.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,848 3,486 5,192
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £300 £326 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £576 £625
90th Percentile £673 £675 £709
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -3.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 274 366
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.53 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.07 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £49.75 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.45% +4.74% +98.66%
75th Percentile £58.75 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £52.75 £45.88
% change year-on-year -52.32% +14.97% +108.55%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Linux as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Linux 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 -5 1,519 £525 -4.55% 930
UK excluding London +1 1,013 £500 -4.76% 796
London -6 675 £575 +4.36% 269
Work from Home -3 555 £525 - 492
North of England +18 232 £475 -13.64% 163
South East +2 230 £475 -8.65% 227
Scotland +11 216 £500 +5.26% 43
Midlands -14 136 £500 -9.09% 114
Yorkshire +22 126 £500 -16.32% 48
West Midlands -5 125 £500 -12.28% 62
North West +4 102 £402 -19.60% 95
East of England -9 96 £491 -10.68% 96
South West -20 96 £550 +1.15% 137
East Midlands -27 11 £420 -15.66% 48
Northern Ireland - 11 £350 - 18
North East -10 6 £575 +4.55% 21
Wales -13 6 £450 -14.29% 13

Linux
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 86 (4.64%) Apache
2 70 (3.78%) Confluence
3 45 (2.43%) JBoss
3 45 (2.43%) nginx
4 34 (1.84%) OpenStack
5 29 (1.57%) Apache Spark
6 27 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 26 (1.40%) WebSphere
8 25 (1.35%) Tomcat
9 24 (1.30%) WebLogic
10 23 (1.24%) Mattermost
10 23 (1.24%) Skype for Business
11 17 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
11 17 (0.92%) WebSphere Application Server
12 15 (0.81%) IIS
13 13 (0.70%) SAS
14 11 (0.59%) CMS
14 11 (0.59%) Documentum
15 10 (0.54%) FileNet
15 10 (0.54%) iPlanet
Applications
1 27 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.65%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 10 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (0.38%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
7 2 (0.11%) Windchill
8 1 (0.054%) OmniGraffle
8 1 (0.054%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 8 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
1 8 (0.43%) SAP IBP
2 4 (0.22%) Temenos T24
3 3 (0.16%) Kondor
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.16%) Teamcenter
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.054%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.054%) Finacle
5 1 (0.054%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.054%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.054%) Sage X3
5 1 (0.054%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.054%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.054%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 520 (28.08%) AWS
2 327 (17.66%) Azure
3 142 (7.67%) GitHub
4 136 (7.34%) GCP
5 100 (5.40%) OpenShift
6 99 (5.35%) Amazon EC2
7 90 (4.86%) Amazon S3
8 70 (3.78%) AWS CloudFormation
9 68 (3.67%) IaaS
9 68 (3.67%) Serverless
10 66 (3.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 61 (3.29%) GitHub Actions
12 60 (3.24%) SaaS
13 58 (3.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 55 (2.97%) Azure DevOps
15 51 (2.75%) PaaS
16 48 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
17 47 (2.54%) Entra ID
18 40 (2.16%) AWS KMS
19 37 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 192 (10.37%) Firewall
2 163 (8.80%) DNS
3 125 (6.75%) TCP/IP
4 74 (4.00%) HTTP
5 73 (3.94%) SAN
6 58 (3.13%) VPN
7 57 (3.08%) Network Security
8 56 (3.02%) DHCP
8 56 (3.02%) SSL
9 45 (2.43%) SMTP
9 45 (2.43%) SSH
10 40 (2.16%) LAN
11 37 (2.00%) WAN
12 36 (1.94%) Ethernet
13 30 (1.62%) Internet
14 28 (1.51%) Skype
15 25 (1.35%) FTP
16 24 (1.30%) VLAN
17 23 (1.24%) NAS
18 22 (1.19%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (7.24%) Relational Database
2 103 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 96 (5.18%) PostgreSQL
4 95 (5.13%) MongoDB
5 80 (4.32%) Oracle Database
6 72 (3.89%) Amazon RDS
7 63 (3.40%) DB2
8 55 (2.97%) Elasticsearch
8 55 (2.97%) MySQL
9 52 (2.81%) NoSQL
10 36 (1.94%) Big Data
11 30 (1.62%) Amazon Aurora
12 26 (1.40%) Hadoop
13 23 (1.24%) Data Warehouse
14 22 (1.19%) RDBMS
15 18 (0.97%) KDB
16 16 (0.86%) Apache Cassandra
16 16 (0.86%) SAP HANA
17 15 (0.81%) Power BI
18 14 (0.76%) Redis
Development Applications
1 292 (15.77%) Jenkins
2 278 (15.01%) Git
3 150 (8.10%) GitLab
4 145 (7.83%) JIRA
5 81 (4.37%) JUnit
6 56 (3.02%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.27%) Eclipse
8 41 (2.21%) Maven
8 41 (2.21%) Visual Studio
9 39 (2.11%) Bitbucket
10 29 (1.57%) SonarQube
11 27 (1.46%) Vagrant
12 26 (1.40%) Artifactory
12 26 (1.40%) Bitbucket Server
13 25 (1.35%) Mockito
14 24 (1.30%) Gradle
15 21 (1.13%) Liquibase
16 17 (0.92%) Visual Studio Code
17 16 (0.86%) CA Release Automation
17 16 (0.86%) PyCharm
General
1 589 (31.80%) Social Skills
2 408 (22.03%) Finance
3 226 (12.20%) Analytical Skills
4 202 (10.91%) Banking
5 174 (9.40%) Public Sector
6 96 (5.18%) Investment Banking
7 62 (3.35%) Front Office
8 51 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
9 50 (2.70%) Financial Institution
10 45 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
11 43 (2.32%) Telecoms
12 37 (2.00%) Military
13 26 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 24 (1.30%) Law
15 23 (1.24%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.92%) Aerospace
17 16 (0.86%) Electronics
18 15 (0.81%) Marketing
19 13 (0.70%) Legal
20 10 (0.54%) International Banking
Job Titles
1 353 (19.06%) Developer
2 205 (11.07%) Senior
3 167 (9.02%) DevOps Engineer
4 149 (8.05%) Java Developer
5 115 (6.21%) Linux Engineer
6 110 (5.94%) Architect
6 110 (5.94%) Software Engineer
7 97 (5.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 96 (5.18%) Analyst
9 93 (5.02%) Support Engineer
10 92 (4.97%) Platform Engineer
11 74 (4.00%) Administrator
12 68 (3.67%) Senior Developer
13 65 (3.51%) AWS Engineer
14 64 (3.46%) Python Developer
15 62 (3.35%) Python Engineer
16 61 (3.29%) Security Engineer
17 58 (3.13%) Consultant
17 58 (3.13%) Lead
18 56 (3.02%) C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (7.61%) Kafka
2 114 (6.16%) REST
3 103 (5.56%) Spring
4 98 (5.29%) Middleware
5 94 (5.08%) Elastic Stack
6 75 (4.05%) AngularJS
7 61 (3.29%) RESTful
8 59 (3.19%) React
9 54 (2.92%) JMS
10 53 (2.86%) Node.js
10 53 (2.86%) SOAP
11 47 (2.54%) LDAP
12 46 (2.48%) Web Services
13 39 (2.11%) CSS
13 39 (2.11%) Spring Boot
14 38 (2.05%) JSON
15 37 (2.00%) FIX Protocol
16 34 (1.84%) FastAPI
17 33 (1.78%) OAuth
17 33 (1.78%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 94 (5.08%) Cloud Native
2 88 (4.75%) Linux Command Line
3 86 (4.64%) Data Centre
4 84 (4.54%) Management Information System
5 80 (4.32%) Data Structures
6 75 (4.05%) Replication
7 74 (4.00%) Distributed Systems
8 63 (3.40%) Equities
9 59 (3.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 45 (2.43%) PKI
10 45 (2.43%) Public Cloud
11 40 (2.16%) Onboarding
12 37 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
13 35 (1.89%) Virtual Team
14 33 (1.78%) Security Posture
15 31 (1.67%) Hedge funds
16 30 (1.62%) Algorithms
16 30 (1.62%) Clustering
17 27 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
17 27 (1.46%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 657 (35.48%) Windows
2 422 (22.79%) Unix
3 246 (13.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 142 (7.67%) Windows Server
5 76 (4.10%) Ubuntu
6 63 (3.40%) CentOS
7 42 (2.27%) Solaris
8 41 (2.21%) VMS
9 39 (2.11%) Mac OS
10 30 (1.62%) Amazon Linux
11 28 (1.51%) Android
12 26 (1.40%) Windows 10
13 24 (1.30%) AIX
14 23 (1.24%) Mac OS X
14 23 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
15 19 (1.03%) Windows Server 2016
16 11 (0.59%) Apple iOS
16 11 (0.59%) Debian
17 10 (0.54%) SUSE
18 9 (0.49%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 469 (25.32%) CI/CD
2 464 (25.05%) DevOps
3 455 (24.57%) Agile
4 383 (20.68%) Problem-Solving
5 265 (14.31%) Containerisation
5 265 (14.31%) Software Engineering
6 244 (13.17%) Infrastructure as Code
7 149 (8.05%) Performance Tuning
8 147 (7.94%) Test Automation
9 142 (7.67%) High Availability
10 141 (7.61%) Computer Science
11 140 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
12 139 (7.51%) Migration
13 136 (7.34%) ITIL
14 135 (7.29%) Configuration Management
15 131 (7.07%) Microservices
16 129 (6.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 119 (6.43%) SDLC
18 117 (6.32%) Continuous Integration
19 114 (6.16%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 772 (41.68%) Python
2 416 (22.46%) Java
3 401 (21.65%) SQL
4 261 (14.09%) Bash
5 251 (13.55%) PowerShell
6 224 (12.10%) Shell Script
7 211 (11.39%) C++
8 139 (7.51%) JavaScript
9 128 (6.91%) Perl
10 103 (5.56%) C#
11 72 (3.89%) C
12 68 (3.67%) Go
13 47 (2.54%) Groovy
14 39 (2.11%) PL/SQL
15 37 (2.00%) Rust
16 35 (1.89%) TypeScript
17 27 (1.46%) PHP
18 21 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
19 20 (1.08%) Tcl
20 15 (0.81%) Ada
Qualifications
1 428 (23.11%) Security Cleared
2 318 (17.17%) SC Cleared
3 183 (9.88%) Degree
4 109 (5.89%) DV Cleared
5 85 (4.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 57 (3.08%) AWS Certification
7 45 (2.43%) CISSP
8 44 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
9 33 (1.78%) Azure Certification
9 33 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
10 29 (1.57%) Microsoft Certification
11 27 (1.46%) CCNP
12 26 (1.40%) Master's Degree
13 23 (1.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 22 (1.19%) ITIL Certification
15 18 (0.97%) GCIH
16 15 (0.81%) RHCE
17 13 (0.70%) GCIA
18 12 (0.65%) CCNA
19 11 (0.59%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (1.89%) QA
2 27 (1.46%) NIST
3 22 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (1.13%) Data Quality
5 20 (1.08%) GDPR
6 16 (0.86%) NCSC
6 16 (0.86%) SLA
7 14 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
7 14 (0.76%) PCI DSS
8 11 (0.59%) HIPAA
9 8 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.38%) SOC 2
11 6 (0.32%) Accessibility
12 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 4 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.16%) Basel III
13 3 (0.16%) HL7
13 3 (0.16%) MiFID
13 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 335 (18.09%) Docker
2 216 (11.66%) Active Directory
3 162 (8.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (2.48%) Hyper-V
5 39 (2.11%) VMware ESXi
6 38 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
7 34 (1.84%) vSphere
8 31 (1.67%) Oracle RAC
9 24 (1.30%) Postfix
10 22 (1.19%) DFS Replication
11 18 (0.97%) Dovecot
12 14 (0.76%) GPFS
12 14 (0.76%) KVM
12 14 (0.76%) NFS
12 14 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 14 (0.76%) VMware NSX
13 13 (0.70%) Squid
14 12 (0.65%) BitLocker
15 11 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
16 10 (0.54%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 400 (21.60%) Kubernetes
2 356 (19.22%) Ansible
3 350 (18.90%) Terraform
4 157 (8.48%) Grafana
5 140 (7.56%) Prometheus
6 82 (4.43%) Puppet
7 66 (3.56%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.21%) vCenter Server
9 33 (1.78%) Kibana
10 32 (1.73%) Packer
11 31 (1.67%) SCOM
12 29 (1.57%) Argo
13 28 (1.51%) Data Guard
13 28 (1.51%) Nessus
14 24 (1.30%) NetBackup
15 22 (1.19%) Oracle RMAN
15 22 (1.19%) Podman
16 21 (1.13%) Nagios
17 20 (1.08%) ITRS Geneos
17 20 (1.08%) logstash
Vendors
1 275 (14.85%) Microsoft
2 265 (14.31%) Oracle
3 242 (13.07%) VMware
4 207 (11.18%) Red Hat
5 186 (10.04%) Splunk
6 112 (6.05%) Cisco
7 79 (4.27%) IBM
8 73 (3.94%) ServiceNow
9 63 (3.40%) Google
10 56 (3.02%) Sybase
11 51 (2.75%) AppDynamics
12 48 (2.59%) SAP
13 42 (2.27%) CyberArk
14 36 (1.94%) Dynatrace
15 35 (1.89%) Citrix
16 34 (1.84%) HP
17 28 (1.51%) CrowdStrike
17 28 (1.51%) NetApp
17 28 (1.51%) Solace
18 27 (1.46%) F5