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 5 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -22 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,075 1,835 2,145
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.64% 5.65%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.36% 41.80% 40.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,292 1,122 1,342
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.02%
75th Percentile £615 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £724 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £528
% change year-on-year - -5.30% +0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 63 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.68 £53.90 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.25 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,272 4,390 5,357
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.50% 14.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,335 2,799 3,494
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £683
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 372 265 290
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.53 £14.23
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -42.51% -0.51%
75th Percentile £65.42 £58.69 £67.50
90th Percentile £74.29 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +4.69% -49.70% +24.49%

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 5 September 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 5 September 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 5 September 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 -26 1,731 £525 - 1,947
UK excluding London -20 1,181 £500 - 986
London -40 675 £537 -6.61% 1,110
Work from Home -28 551 £500 -3.85% 665
South East -13 332 £523 +4.50% 283
North of England -27 286 £500 +5.15% 159
South West +2 190 £575 - 166
North West -23 145 £500 +25.00% 89
Scotland -20 136 £450 -10.00% 61
Yorkshire -25 121 £508 +1.40% 36
Midlands -54 120 £470 -6.00% 91
West Midlands -49 99 £470 -6.00% 52
East of England -17 98 £475 -4.04% 199
Wales -1 27 £465 +3.33% 6
North East -18 27 £470 -18.26% 34
East Midlands -11 18 £500 +19.05% 38
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 42

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 65 (3.13%) Confluence
2 49 (2.36%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
3 30 (1.45%) nginx
4 23 (1.11%) Apache Spark
4 23 (1.11%) OpenStack
5 22 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.96%) SharePoint
7 18 (0.87%) SAS
7 18 (0.87%) WebLogic
8 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.67%) JBoss
10 13 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 13 (0.63%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.48%) IIS
12 6 (0.29%) CMS
12 6 (0.29%) MTS
13 5 (0.24%) NetWeaver
13 5 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
13 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
4 3 (0.14%) Simulink
5 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
1 7 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 599 (28.87%) AWS
2 517 (24.92%) Azure
3 179 (8.63%) GCP
4 162 (7.81%) GitHub
5 105 (5.06%) Entra ID
6 104 (5.01%) OpenShift
7 100 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.43%) Azure DevOps
9 90 (4.34%) Amazon S3
10 80 (3.86%) Amazon EC2
11 68 (3.28%) Serverless
12 63 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
13 60 (2.89%) AWS Lambda
14 59 (2.84%) Amazon EKS
15 58 (2.80%) AWS CloudFormation
16 56 (2.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 51 (2.46%) IaaS
17 51 (2.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 41 (1.98%) Datadog
18 41 (1.98%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 227 (10.94%) DNS
2 221 (10.65%) Firewall
3 143 (6.89%) TCP/IP
4 127 (6.12%) DHCP
5 86 (4.14%) VPN
6 80 (3.86%) SAN
7 78 (3.76%) Network Security
8 50 (2.41%) SSL
8 50 (2.41%) WAN
9 44 (2.12%) SSH
10 42 (2.02%) VSAN
11 40 (1.93%) HTTP
11 40 (1.93%) VLAN
12 35 (1.69%) LAN
13 27 (1.30%) SNMP
14 26 (1.25%) Kerberos
15 25 (1.20%) NAS
16 23 (1.11%) HTTPS
17 21 (1.01%) BGP
18 19 (0.92%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 99 (4.77%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.18%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.13%) MySQL
6 52 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
6 52 (2.51%) MongoDB
7 43 (2.07%) NoSQL
8 37 (1.78%) Amazon Aurora
9 34 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
10 33 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
11 29 (1.40%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.30%) Big Data
13 21 (1.01%) Data Lake
14 20 (0.96%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.92%) Power BI
16 17 (0.82%) Hadoop
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.82%) Redis
17 16 (0.77%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 253 (12.19%) Git
2 236 (11.37%) Jenkins
3 200 (9.64%) GitLab
4 155 (7.47%) JIRA
5 32 (1.54%) Maven
6 31 (1.49%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.49%) SonarQube
7 27 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 20 (0.96%) Mockito
9 19 (0.92%) Selenium
10 18 (0.87%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.77%) JUnit
12 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
13 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 11 (0.53%) TeamCity
14 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.43%) JMeter
15 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
16 8 (0.39%) eggPlant
General
1 438 (21.11%) Social Skills
2 310 (14.94%) Finance
3 247 (11.90%) Analytical Skills
4 168 (8.10%) Public Sector
5 163 (7.86%) Banking
6 86 (4.14%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.22%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.83%) Front Office
9 37 (1.78%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.30%) Legal
11 26 (1.25%) Aerospace
11 26 (1.25%) Military
12 21 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 19 (0.92%) Retail
14 18 (0.87%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.82%) Law
16 12 (0.58%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.48%) Aviation
17 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 311 (14.99%) Senior
2 240 (11.57%) Linux Engineer
3 200 (9.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 189 (9.11%) Developer
5 178 (8.58%) DevOps Engineer
6 109 (5.25%) Architect
7 99 (4.77%) Software Engineer
8 96 (4.63%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (4.00%) Consultant
10 80 (3.86%) Support Engineer
11 78 (3.76%) Lead
12 76 (3.66%) Cloud Engineer
13 74 (3.57%) Analyst
14 69 (3.33%) Administrator
15 68 (3.28%) Java Developer
16 63 (3.04%) AWS Engineer
16 63 (3.04%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 59 (2.84%) Systems Engineer
18 54 (2.60%) Senior Developer
19 52 (2.51%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 488 (23.52%) Terraform
2 127 (6.12%) Kafka
3 114 (5.49%) REST
4 72 (3.47%) Elastic Stack
5 71 (3.42%) Middleware
6 66 (3.18%) .NET
7 53 (2.55%) RESTful
8 49 (2.36%) Spring
9 44 (2.12%) Spring Boot
10 38 (1.83%) LDAP
11 37 (1.78%) Web Services
12 36 (1.73%) JSON
13 34 (1.64%) XML
14 30 (1.45%) HTML
14 30 (1.45%) SOAP
14 30 (1.45%) YAML
15 26 (1.25%) ARM Templates
15 26 (1.25%) Django
16 25 (1.20%) RabbitMQ
16 25 (1.20%) React
Miscellaneous
1 145 (6.99%) Onboarding
2 138 (6.65%) Cloud Native
3 133 (6.41%) Data Centre
4 106 (5.11%) PKI
5 103 (4.96%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.48%) Replication
7 83 (4.00%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.23%) Public Cloud
10 61 (2.94%) Management Information System
11 44 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
11 44 (2.12%) Security Posture
12 40 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
13 39 (1.88%) Embedded Systems
13 39 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
14 38 (1.83%) Private Cloud
15 37 (1.78%) Enterprise Storage
16 36 (1.73%) Clustering
16 36 (1.73%) Operational Technology
17 34 (1.64%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 777 (37.45%) Windows
2 432 (20.82%) Unix
3 358 (17.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 250 (12.05%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.35%) Ubuntu
6 60 (2.89%) AIX
7 54 (2.60%) CentOS
8 52 (2.51%) Solaris
9 39 (1.88%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.35%) VMS
11 27 (1.30%) SUSE
11 27 (1.30%) Windows 10
12 22 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (1.01%) Rocky
14 19 (0.92%) Windows Server 2016
15 18 (0.87%) Oracle Linux
16 17 (0.82%) Mac OS
17 16 (0.77%) Debian
18 12 (0.58%) Android
18 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 605 (29.16%) CI/CD
2 532 (25.64%) DevOps
3 426 (20.53%) Infrastructure as Code
4 370 (17.83%) Agile
5 319 (15.37%) Problem-Solving
6 296 (14.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 274 (13.20%) Containerisation
8 248 (11.95%) Continuous Improvement
9 231 (11.13%) Migration
10 229 (11.04%) Observability
11 218 (10.51%) Platform Engineering
12 203 (9.78%) High Availability
13 200 (9.64%) Root Cause Analysis
14 199 (9.59%) Software Engineering
15 176 (8.48%) Performance Tuning
16 175 (8.43%) ITIL
17 162 (7.81%) Configuration Management
18 160 (7.71%) Test Automation
19 152 (7.33%) AI
20 151 (7.28%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 748 (36.05%) Python
2 414 (19.95%) Bash
3 400 (19.28%) PowerShell
4 374 (18.02%) SQL
5 240 (11.57%) Java
6 153 (7.37%) Shell Script
7 121 (5.83%) C++
8 75 (3.61%) Perl
9 74 (3.57%) C
10 71 (3.42%) JavaScript
11 68 (3.28%) C#
12 62 (2.99%) PL/SQL
13 51 (2.46%) Go
14 43 (2.07%) Bicep
15 25 (1.20%) Groovy
16 23 (1.11%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.87%) Ada
18 16 (0.77%) Rust
18 16 (0.77%) TypeScript
19 14 (0.67%) Korn
Qualifications
1 797 (38.41%) Security Cleared
2 579 (27.90%) SC Cleared
3 247 (11.90%) DV Cleared
4 180 (8.67%) Degree
5 70 (3.37%) AWS Certification
6 58 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 56 (2.70%) Azure Certification
8 56 (2.70%) CISSP
9 55 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (1.11%) CCNP
11 22 (1.06%) CISM
11 22 (1.06%) RHCE
12 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.87%) CCNA
13 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (0.82%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.52%) NIST
2 71 (3.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 65 (3.13%) QA
4 32 (1.54%) SLA
5 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.01%) NCSC
7 19 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
7 19 (0.92%) GDPR
8 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
9 11 (0.53%) GRC
9 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
10 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.39%) ISO 15022
11 8 (0.39%) ISO 31000
11 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.24%) MISRA
14 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 348 (16.77%) Docker
2 277 (13.35%) Active Directory
3 251 (12.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.39%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.14%) vSphere
6 78 (3.76%) Virtual Machines
7 73 (3.52%) VMware ESXi
8 62 (2.99%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.93%) Firmware
10 39 (1.88%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.69%) NFS
12 27 (1.30%) KVM
13 17 (0.82%) Ceph
13 17 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.67%) Postfix
15 11 (0.53%) GPFS
15 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.48%) Squid
17 7 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 462 (22.27%) Ansible
2 448 (21.59%) Kubernetes
3 183 (8.82%) Grafana
4 163 (7.86%) Prometheus
5 86 (4.14%) Puppet
6 61 (2.94%) Progress Chef
7 49 (2.36%) Oracle RMAN
8 45 (2.17%) SCCM
9 40 (1.93%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.88%) Data Guard
11 30 (1.45%) Nagios
12 29 (1.40%) Kibana
13 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
14 27 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
15 26 (1.25%) Podman
16 25 (1.20%) Packer
17 24 (1.16%) NetBackup
18 23 (1.11%) VxRail
18 23 (1.11%) ZABBIX
19 20 (0.96%) Istio
Vendors
1 353 (17.01%) VMware
2 330 (15.90%) Microsoft
3 309 (14.89%) Oracle
4 224 (10.80%) Red Hat
5 165 (7.95%) Splunk
6 123 (5.93%) Cisco
7 112 (5.40%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.53%) IBM
9 81 (3.90%) Google
10 78 (3.76%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.31%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.22%) NetApp
13 45 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
14 41 (1.98%) SAP
15 40 (1.93%) Palo Alto
16 38 (1.83%) F5
17 36 (1.73%) Dell
18 32 (1.54%) Citrix
18 32 (1.54%) Dynatrace
19 31 (1.49%) HP