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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 31 27
Rank change year-on-year -9 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,920 1,758 2,618
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.19% 5.58% 6.06%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.03% 39.79% 41.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,209 1,039 1,761
10th Percentile £313 £356 £350
25th Percentile £402 £456 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £618 £663 £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 62 118
10th Percentile £13.00 £45.00 £23.41
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.94 £48.32
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.25
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.88% -7.31%
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 £61.92
% change year-on-year -5.06% +7.40% -4.74%

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 4,680 4,418 6,305
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.66% 14.03% 14.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,108 2,742 4,278
10th Percentile £174 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £286
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 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 329 168 334
10th Percentile £14.80 £16.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.03 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.14% +20.00% +20.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.30 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £32.50 £25.25
% change year-on-year -23.08% +28.71% +12.22%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 1,649 £513 -6.99% 1,220
UK excluding London -1 1,103 £483 -8.10% 1,159
London -12 633 £550 -8.33% 226
Work from Home -11 503 £500 -6.98% 531
South East +4 302 £475 -9.52% 400
North of England +4 269 £485 -11.91% 188
Midlands +3 203 £525 -4.55% 136
West Midlands +2 185 £525 -4.72% 47
Yorkshire +11 168 £500 -18.70% 69
South West -19 125 £550 -8.33% 168
Scotland 0 115 £452 -7.76% 71
North West -16 95 £452 -17.91% 85
East of England -5 91 £475 +11.76% 161
East Midlands -21 18 £420 -4.55% 87
Northern Ireland +7 16 £400 +23.08% 24
North East -16 12 £550 +8.64% 35
Wales -13 5 £600 +11.63% 40

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 78 (4.06%) Confluence
2 66 (3.44%) Apache
3 44 (2.29%) nginx
4 37 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.46%) Apache Spark
6 23 (1.20%) OpenStack
6 23 (1.20%) WebLogic
7 22 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
8 21 (1.09%) WebSphere
9 16 (0.83%) JBoss
9 16 (0.83%) SharePoint
10 14 (0.73%) Mattermost
10 14 (0.73%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.68%) SAS
12 12 (0.63%) Tomcat
12 12 (0.63%) TPMS
13 11 (0.57%) IIS
13 11 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
15 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 60 (3.13%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.68%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.47%) 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 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
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 Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 577 (30.05%) AWS
2 379 (19.74%) Azure
3 185 (9.64%) GitHub
4 144 (7.50%) GCP
5 129 (6.72%) OpenShift
6 114 (5.94%) AWS CloudFormation
7 107 (5.57%) Serverless
8 100 (5.21%) Amazon EC2
9 90 (4.69%) GitHub Actions
10 80 (4.17%) Amazon S3
11 72 (3.75%) Amazon ECS
12 67 (3.49%) Amazon EKS
13 61 (3.18%) AWS Lambda
13 61 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
14 59 (3.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 59 (3.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 51 (2.66%) SaaS
16 50 (2.60%) Microsoft 365
17 49 (2.55%) IaaS
18 37 (1.93%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 211 (10.99%) Firewall
2 156 (8.13%) DNS
3 138 (7.19%) TCP/IP
4 65 (3.39%) Network Security
5 58 (3.02%) SSH
6 51 (2.66%) SSL
7 49 (2.55%) HTTP
8 48 (2.50%) DHCP
9 47 (2.45%) VPN
10 31 (1.61%) VLAN
11 30 (1.56%) SMTP
12 29 (1.51%) SAN
12 29 (1.51%) Wireless
13 27 (1.41%) Kerberos
14 26 (1.35%) VSAN
15 25 (1.30%) WAN
16 24 (1.25%) Skype
17 20 (1.04%) Ethernet
17 20 (1.04%) LAN
18 19 (0.99%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (7.03%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.10%) Relational Database
3 97 (5.05%) SQL Server
4 84 (4.38%) Oracle Database
5 79 (4.11%) Amazon RDS
6 76 (3.96%) NoSQL
7 73 (3.80%) MongoDB
8 72 (3.75%) MySQL
9 48 (2.50%) Elasticsearch
10 27 (1.41%) Hadoop
11 26 (1.35%) DB2
12 25 (1.30%) Big Data
13 21 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
14 16 (0.83%) Apache Hive
15 14 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
15 14 (0.73%) HBase
15 14 (0.73%) Redis
16 13 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
16 13 (0.68%) Data Lake
17 12 (0.63%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 270 (14.06%) Jenkins
2 231 (12.03%) Git
3 186 (9.69%) GitLab
4 127 (6.61%) JIRA
5 56 (2.92%) JUnit
6 52 (2.71%) Sonatype Nexus
7 44 (2.29%) Bitbucket
8 39 (2.03%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.30%) Maven
10 24 (1.25%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.15%) Liquibase
12 21 (1.09%) Mockito
13 20 (1.04%) Visual Studio
14 19 (0.99%) Browser DevTools
15 18 (0.94%) Android Studio
15 18 (0.94%) Artifactory
15 18 (0.94%) Burp Suite
15 18 (0.94%) Xcode
16 16 (0.83%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.83%) JMeter
General
1 563 (29.32%) Social Skills
2 342 (17.81%) Finance
3 206 (10.73%) Analytical Skills
4 180 (9.38%) Public Sector
5 151 (7.86%) Banking
6 72 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.71%) Financial Institution
8 48 (2.50%) Investment Banking
9 45 (2.34%) Military
10 44 (2.29%) Presentation Skills
11 41 (2.14%) Front Office
12 23 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
13 19 (0.99%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.94%) Legal
15 16 (0.83%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.83%) Telecoms
16 12 (0.63%) Back Office
16 12 (0.63%) Law
17 10 (0.52%) Retail
18 8 (0.42%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 290 (15.10%) Developer
2 233 (12.14%) Senior
3 172 (8.96%) DevOps Engineer
4 133 (6.93%) Software Engineer
5 119 (6.20%) Analyst
6 108 (5.63%) Java Developer
7 105 (5.47%) Architect
8 100 (5.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 92 (4.79%) Support Engineer
10 91 (4.74%) Linux Engineer
11 88 (4.58%) Platform Engineer
12 76 (3.96%) Administrator
13 73 (3.80%) AWS Engineer
14 68 (3.54%) Lead
15 66 (3.44%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 64 (3.33%) Site Engineer
17 63 (3.28%) Security Engineer
18 59 (3.07%) AWS DevOps
19 53 (2.76%) C++ Software Engineer
19 53 (2.76%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (8.07%) Kafka
2 130 (6.77%) REST
3 121 (6.30%) Elastic Stack
4 77 (4.01%) Middleware
5 67 (3.49%) Node.js
6 66 (3.44%) RESTful
7 63 (3.28%) Spring
8 60 (3.13%) LDAP
9 53 (2.76%) React
10 51 (2.66%) JSON
11 47 (2.45%) XML
12 41 (2.14%) AngularJS
13 37 (1.93%) SOAP
14 35 (1.82%) YAML
15 32 (1.67%) OAuth
16 31 (1.61%) CSS
17 29 (1.51%) Web Services
18 28 (1.46%) FastAPI
19 26 (1.35%) GraphQL
19 26 (1.35%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (5.31%) Cloud Native
2 92 (4.79%) Linux Command Line
3 83 (4.32%) Data Centre
4 73 (3.80%) Replication
5 70 (3.65%) Management Information System
6 58 (3.02%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
8 52 (2.71%) Equities
9 51 (2.66%) PKI
10 46 (2.40%) Onboarding
11 40 (2.08%) Data Structures
12 38 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
12 38 (1.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 33 (1.72%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.67%) Security Operations Centre
15 29 (1.51%) Algorithms
16 27 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
16 27 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
16 27 (1.41%) Fixed Income
17 26 (1.35%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 711 (37.03%) Windows
2 394 (20.52%) Unix
3 251 (13.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 137 (7.14%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.43%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.66%) CentOS
7 43 (2.24%) Android
8 34 (1.77%) Mac OS
8 34 (1.77%) VMS
9 30 (1.56%) Solaris
10 27 (1.41%) Mac OS X
11 23 (1.20%) Windows 10
12 19 (0.99%) AIX
12 19 (0.99%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.89%) Amazon Linux
14 15 (0.78%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.73%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.73%) Kali Linux
16 12 (0.63%) Debian
17 11 (0.57%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 578 (30.10%) CI/CD
2 487 (25.36%) DevOps
3 444 (23.13%) Agile
4 372 (19.38%) Problem-Solving
5 306 (15.94%) Infrastructure as Code
6 302 (15.73%) Containerisation
7 245 (12.76%) Software Engineering
8 200 (10.42%) Observability
9 182 (9.48%) Cybersecurity
10 163 (8.49%) Computer Science
11 158 (8.23%) Test Automation
12 152 (7.92%) Continuous Improvement
12 152 (7.92%) Incident Response
13 144 (7.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 142 (7.40%) Microservices
15 134 (6.98%) Platform Engineering
16 131 (6.82%) High Availability
17 127 (6.61%) Configuration Management
18 125 (6.51%) Performance Tuning
19 124 (6.46%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 773 (40.26%) Python
2 370 (19.27%) SQL
3 363 (18.91%) Java
4 328 (17.08%) Bash
5 283 (14.74%) PowerShell
6 219 (11.41%) Shell Script
7 185 (9.64%) C++
8 138 (7.19%) JavaScript
9 129 (6.72%) Perl
10 90 (4.69%) C#
11 76 (3.96%) Go
12 57 (2.97%) C
13 41 (2.14%) Ruby
14 30 (1.56%) Groovy
15 29 (1.51%) TypeScript
16 28 (1.46%) Rust
17 26 (1.35%) PL/SQL
18 22 (1.15%) PHP
19 18 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
20 15 (0.78%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 632 (32.92%) Security Cleared
2 458 (23.85%) SC Cleared
3 212 (11.04%) Degree
4 147 (7.66%) DV Cleared
5 113 (5.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 79 (4.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.13%) AWS Certification
8 35 (1.82%) Master's Degree
9 31 (1.61%) Azure Certification
9 31 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
10 30 (1.56%) CISSP
11 26 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
12 25 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
12 25 (1.30%) RHCE
13 20 (1.04%) OSCP
14 19 (0.99%) CCNP
15 18 (0.94%) CCNA
16 17 (0.89%) GPEN
17 16 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.83%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (2.97%) NIST
2 41 (2.14%) GDPR
2 41 (2.14%) QA
3 40 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 30 (1.56%) SLA
5 20 (1.04%) Data Quality
6 18 (0.94%) PCI DSS
7 16 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (0.83%) NCSC
8 12 (0.63%) GLBA
9 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 9 (0.47%) 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 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.16%) SEPA
16 2 (0.10%) IFRS
System Software
1 399 (20.78%) Docker
2 204 (10.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 169 (8.80%) Active Directory
4 71 (3.70%) vSphere
5 53 (2.76%) Virtual Machines
6 45 (2.34%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (2.14%) Hyper-V
8 27 (1.41%) GPFS
8 27 (1.41%) NFS
9 24 (1.25%) Oracle RAC
10 21 (1.09%) KVM
11 20 (1.04%) Postfix
12 17 (0.89%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 17 (0.89%) VMware NSX
13 16 (0.83%) Firmware
14 15 (0.78%) Dovecot
15 14 (0.73%) DFS Replication
15 14 (0.73%) HDFS
16 12 (0.63%) Lustre
16 12 (0.63%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 459 (23.91%) Kubernetes
2 390 (20.31%) Terraform
3 385 (20.05%) Ansible
4 207 (10.78%) Grafana
5 183 (9.53%) Prometheus
6 77 (4.01%) Puppet
7 66 (3.44%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.19%) Red Hat Satellite
9 37 (1.93%) vCenter Server
10 36 (1.88%) Packer
11 35 (1.82%) vRealize
12 34 (1.77%) Argo
13 33 (1.72%) Kibana
13 33 (1.72%) Podman
14 30 (1.56%) SCCM
15 29 (1.51%) SCOM
16 26 (1.35%) Data Guard
16 26 (1.35%) Nessus
17 25 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
18 20 (1.04%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 295 (15.36%) Microsoft
2 288 (15.00%) Oracle
2 288 (15.00%) VMware
3 250 (13.02%) Splunk
4 221 (11.51%) Red Hat
5 119 (6.20%) Cisco
6 82 (4.27%) ServiceNow
7 73 (3.80%) IBM
8 52 (2.71%) Google
9 51 (2.66%) AppDynamics
10 47 (2.45%) Dell
11 44 (2.29%) CyberArk
12 31 (1.61%) Palo Alto
13 30 (1.56%) CrowdStrike
14 27 (1.41%) SolarWinds
15 25 (1.30%) NetApp
16 24 (1.25%) Sybase
17 23 (1.20%) Citrix
17 23 (1.20%) Solace
18 21 (1.09%) Dynatrace