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 9 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,901 1,705 2,225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 5.82% 5.14%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.69% 42.05% 38.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,162 1,099 1,457
10th Percentile £348 £375 £340
25th Percentile £413 £435 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -0.46% -6.09%
75th Percentile £600 £627 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -1.80% -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 35 123
10th Percentile £35.70 £43.98 £46.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £55.63
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.60 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - -

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 4,790 4,055 5,829
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.85% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,048 2,654 3,891
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £316 £313 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £465 £470
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% -1.06% -6.00%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 192 407
10th Percentile £14.75 £15.13 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.33 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.73% -2.22% -48.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £41.25 £62.25
90th Percentile £71.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £24.18
% change year-on-year +72.23% -21.96% -38.08%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 June 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 1,594 £510 -7.27% 701
UK excluding London -13 1,132 £491 -1.80% 579
London -45 555 £545 -7.23% 187
Work from Home -36 480 £500 -4.31% 319
South East -6 303 £505 -4.90% 206
North of England -14 294 £475 -9.52% 93
South West -4 163 £538 -10.42% 112
Yorkshire -20 151 £500 -6.98% 22
Midlands -20 148 £476 -4.80% 58
North West -16 129 £466 +9.59% 54
West Midlands -19 127 £475 -5.00% 32
Scotland -23 96 £500 +5.26% 25
East of England -15 94 £475 +0.53% 75
Wales +5 27 £465 -20.65% 17
East Midlands -28 18 £530 +17.78% 26
North East -20 14 £446 -6.54% 17
Northern Ireland +6 13 £425 +30.77% 7

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 81 (4.26%) Confluence
2 48 (2.52%) Apache
3 33 (1.74%) nginx
4 29 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.16%) Tomcat
6 20 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.95%) WebLogic
8 17 (0.89%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.63%) OpenStack
9 12 (0.63%) SAS
9 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.47%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 7 (0.37%) IIS
12 7 (0.37%) JBoss
12 7 (0.37%) SharePoint
13 6 (0.32%) TPMS
13 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 20 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 531 (27.93%) AWS
2 384 (20.20%) Azure
3 162 (8.52%) GitHub
4 124 (6.52%) GCP
5 111 (5.84%) OpenShift
6 93 (4.89%) GitHub Actions
7 82 (4.31%) Amazon S3
8 80 (4.21%) Amazon EC2
9 68 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
10 66 (3.47%) Amazon EKS
11 60 (3.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 58 (3.05%) Serverless
13 53 (2.79%) Entra ID
14 50 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
15 49 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
16 45 (2.37%) IaaS
17 44 (2.31%) Microsoft 365
18 43 (2.26%) PaaS
18 43 (2.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 36 (1.89%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 188 (9.89%) Firewall
2 148 (7.79%) DNS
3 94 (4.94%) TCP/IP
4 80 (4.21%) VPN
5 66 (3.47%) Network Security
5 66 (3.47%) SAN
6 53 (2.79%) DHCP
7 49 (2.58%) WAN
8 41 (2.16%) LAN
9 37 (1.95%) SSL
10 36 (1.89%) SNMP
11 32 (1.68%) SSH
11 32 (1.68%) VSAN
12 29 (1.53%) HTTP
13 26 (1.37%) NAS
14 23 (1.21%) Ethernet
15 22 (1.16%) VLAN
16 19 (1.00%) BGP
16 19 (1.00%) IPsec
17 17 (0.89%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.94%) SQL Server
2 109 (5.73%) PostgreSQL
3 72 (3.79%) MySQL
4 71 (3.73%) Oracle Database
5 63 (3.31%) MongoDB
6 61 (3.21%) Relational Database
7 50 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
8 45 (2.37%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 26 (1.37%) DynamoDB
10 26 (1.37%) NoSQL
11 20 (1.05%) SAP HANA
12 19 (1.00%) Big Data
13 18 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
14 17 (0.89%) Db2
14 17 (0.89%) KDB
15 14 (0.74%) Kdb+
15 14 (0.74%) Power BI
15 14 (0.74%) Sybase ASE
16 13 (0.68%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 211 (11.10%) Jenkins
2 180 (9.47%) GitLab
3 168 (8.84%) Git
4 145 (7.63%) JIRA
5 33 (1.74%) Maven
6 30 (1.58%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.37%) Mockito
8 23 (1.21%) Eclipse
9 21 (1.10%) JUnit
10 20 (1.05%) Bitbucket
11 19 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
12 17 (0.89%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.68%) Jaeger
14 13 (0.68%) jMock
15 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
16 10 (0.53%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 389 (20.46%) Social Skills
2 271 (14.26%) Finance
3 195 (10.26%) Public Sector
4 156 (8.21%) Analytical Skills
5 129 (6.79%) Banking
6 80 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.26%) Military
8 25 (1.32%) Front Office
9 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.21%) Financial Institution
9 23 (1.21%) Law
9 23 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.16%) Investment Banking
10 22 (1.16%) Retail
11 20 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (0.89%) Legal
14 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
15 12 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 247 (12.99%) Senior
2 189 (9.94%) Developer
3 187 (9.84%) Linux Engineer
4 175 (9.21%) DevOps Engineer
5 131 (6.89%) Software Engineer
6 130 (6.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 103 (5.42%) Architect
8 100 (5.26%) Analyst
9 95 (5.00%) Lead
10 74 (3.89%) Java Developer
11 72 (3.79%) Administrator
12 70 (3.68%) AWS Engineer
13 64 (3.37%) Consultant
14 57 (3.00%) Platform Engineer
15 56 (2.95%) Security Engineer
16 55 (2.89%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 53 (2.79%) Support Engineer
18 49 (2.58%) AWS DevOps
19 47 (2.47%) Embedded Engineer
19 47 (2.47%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (4.79%) Kafka
2 82 (4.31%) REST
3 77 (4.05%) Middleware
4 69 (3.63%) Elastic Stack
5 54 (2.84%) Spring Boot
6 51 (2.68%) LDAP
6 51 (2.68%) Spring
7 46 (2.42%) Web Services
8 45 (2.37%) Node.js
9 42 (2.21%) RESTful
10 40 (2.10%) .NET
11 32 (1.68%) YAML
12 27 (1.42%) AngularJS
12 27 (1.42%) JSON
13 26 (1.37%) SOAP
14 25 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
14 25 (1.32%) XML
15 21 (1.10%) React
16 20 (1.05%) Flash
17 19 (1.00%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 155 (8.15%) Data Centre
2 103 (5.42%) Cloud Native
3 81 (4.26%) Onboarding
4 76 (4.00%) Linux Command Line
5 74 (3.89%) Management Information System
6 71 (3.73%) PKI
7 69 (3.63%) Distributed Systems
8 59 (3.10%) Replication
9 48 (2.52%) Public Cloud
10 47 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
10 47 (2.47%) Security Posture
11 46 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
12 34 (1.79%) Product Ownership
13 33 (1.74%) Enterprise Storage
14 31 (1.63%) Embedded Systems
15 30 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
16 29 (1.53%) Security Operations Centre
17 25 (1.32%) Clustering
17 25 (1.32%) Operational Technology
18 24 (1.26%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 733 (38.56%) Windows
2 380 (19.99%) Unix
3 300 (15.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 191 (10.05%) Windows Server
5 99 (5.21%) Ubuntu
6 55 (2.89%) AIX
7 49 (2.58%) Solaris
8 44 (2.31%) CentOS
9 34 (1.79%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.47%) VMS
11 24 (1.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (1.16%) Android
13 21 (1.10%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (1.00%) Debian
15 18 (0.95%) Mac OS
16 15 (0.79%) SUSE
17 13 (0.68%) Windows 10
18 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
18 12 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 530 (27.88%) CI/CD
2 457 (24.04%) DevOps
3 356 (18.73%) Agile
4 284 (14.94%) Problem-Solving
5 281 (14.78%) Infrastructure as Code
6 243 (12.78%) Containerisation
7 202 (10.63%) Software Engineering
8 189 (9.94%) Migration
9 186 (9.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 182 (9.57%) Observability
11 157 (8.26%) High Availability
12 156 (8.21%) SIEM
13 155 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
14 154 (8.10%) Performance Tuning
15 146 (7.68%) Root Cause Analysis
16 139 (7.31%) ITIL
17 133 (7.00%) Test Automation
18 132 (6.94%) Cybersecurity
19 128 (6.73%) Incident Response
19 128 (6.73%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 623 (32.77%) Python
2 322 (16.94%) SQL
3 285 (14.99%) PowerShell
4 277 (14.57%) Bash
5 255 (13.41%) Java
6 151 (7.94%) Shell Script
7 124 (6.52%) C++
8 97 (5.10%) JavaScript
9 63 (3.31%) Perl
10 60 (3.16%) C
10 60 (3.16%) C#
11 49 (2.58%) Go
12 48 (2.52%) PL/SQL
13 24 (1.26%) Rust
14 23 (1.21%) TypeScript
15 21 (1.10%) Ada
16 20 (1.05%) MATLAB
16 20 (1.05%) Ruby
17 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.84%) PHP
Qualifications
1 740 (38.93%) Security Cleared
2 547 (28.77%) SC Cleared
3 210 (11.05%) DV Cleared
4 191 (10.05%) Degree
5 70 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
6 69 (3.63%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (3.10%) AWS Certification
7 59 (3.10%) CISSP
8 55 (2.89%) Cisco Certification
9 44 (2.31%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.05%) Azure Certification
11 35 (1.84%) RHCE
12 25 (1.32%) CCNP
13 23 (1.21%) CCNA
14 20 (1.05%) CISM
14 20 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
15 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
15 17 (0.89%) Oracle Certification
16 16 (0.84%) GIAC
16 16 (0.84%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.68%) NIST
2 77 (4.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (3.05%) QA
4 50 (2.63%) SLA
5 28 (1.47%) Cyber Essentials
6 26 (1.37%) GDPR
7 22 (1.16%) NCSC
8 17 (0.89%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.63%) Disclosure Scotland
9 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 9 (0.47%) Data Quality
11 9 (0.47%) GRC
12 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.42%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.32%) GLBA
13 6 (0.32%) ISO 20022
13 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
System Software
1 320 (16.83%) Docker
2 225 (11.84%) VMware Infrastructure
3 203 (10.68%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.21%) Virtual Machines
5 68 (3.58%) Hyper-V
6 65 (3.42%) VMware ESXi
6 65 (3.42%) vSphere
7 52 (2.74%) NFS
8 48 (2.52%) VMware NSX
9 38 (2.00%) Firmware
10 29 (1.53%) KVM
11 24 (1.26%) Oracle RAC
12 21 (1.10%) GPFS
12 21 (1.10%) Postfix
13 12 (0.63%) Ceph
13 12 (0.63%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.58%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.47%) BitLocker
16 8 (0.42%) Squid
17 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 393 (20.67%) Ansible
2 376 (19.78%) Kubernetes
3 347 (18.25%) Terraform
4 172 (9.05%) Grafana
5 142 (7.47%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.73%) Puppet
7 47 (2.47%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.26%) vCenter Server
9 36 (1.89%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.58%) Podman
11 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
12 26 (1.37%) Packer
13 25 (1.32%) Kibana
13 25 (1.32%) Nagios
14 24 (1.26%) vRealize
14 24 (1.26%) ZABBIX
15 22 (1.16%) Data Guard
15 22 (1.16%) Tivoli
16 21 (1.10%) Argo
17 20 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 303 (15.94%) VMware
2 274 (14.41%) Oracle
3 254 (13.36%) Microsoft
4 226 (11.89%) Red Hat
5 184 (9.68%) Splunk
6 120 (6.31%) Cisco
7 103 (5.42%) IBM
8 87 (4.58%) ServiceNow
9 55 (2.89%) Palo Alto
10 54 (2.84%) CyberArk
11 51 (2.68%) Google
12 38 (2.00%) F5
13 36 (1.89%) SAP
14 35 (1.84%) Citrix
14 35 (1.84%) SolarWinds
15 34 (1.79%) Dell
16 33 (1.74%) NVIDIA
17 32 (1.68%) BeyondTrust
17 32 (1.68%) HP
18 27 (1.42%) Sybase