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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 36 30 25
Rank change year-on-year -6 -5 +1
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,978 2,018 3,051
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.53% 5.53% 6.63%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.96% 39.14% 43.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,227 1,183 2,045
10th Percentile £320 £350 £350
25th Percentile £406 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 96 143
10th Percentile £12.50 £46.00 £25.04
25th Percentile £52.13 £62.50 £48.39
Median hourly rate £65.00 £66.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.26% +6.40% -3.85%
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £72.20
90th Percentile £68.80 £71.13 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £67.02 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.01% +3.11% -

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 4,829 5,156 7,023
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.49% 14.13% 15.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,118 3,160 4,769
10th Percentile £181 £200 £182
25th Percentile £270 £325 £302
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -5.88%
75th Percentile £573 £585 £610
90th Percentile £661 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £450 £440
% change year-on-year -10.00% +2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 372 220 350
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.25 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.63 £18.50
Median hourly rate £24.00 £50.00 £35.92
Median % change year-on-year -52.00% +39.20% +43.68%
75th Percentile £43.75 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £51.25 £30.00
% change year-on-year -54.15% +70.83% +33.33%

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 20 November 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 20 November 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 20 November 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 -9 1,680 £515 -6.36% 1,373
UK excluding London -1 1,121 £475 -9.52% 898
London -6 691 £575 -4.17% 611
Work from Home -2 576 £500 -4.76% 706
North of England +9 283 £476 -16.12% 158
South East +1 269 £475 -9.52% 308
Midlands -5 190 £500 -9.09% 93
West Midlands -1 176 £511 -10.74% 65
Scotland +5 169 £479 +0.84% 59
Yorkshire +13 160 £500 -19.61% 38
North West +1 119 £438 -16.67% 99
South West -24 119 £550 - 152
East of England -10 99 £454 -3.71% 113
East Midlands -28 14 £420 -6.46% 28
Northern Ireland +2 10 £350 -36.36% 24
North East -10 10 £550 +21.15% 21
Wales -7 5 £300 -42.86% 18

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
1 103 (5.21%) Confluence
2 72 (3.64%) Apache
3 57 (2.88%) nginx
4 37 (1.87%) JBoss
5 33 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
6 30 (1.52%) Apache Spark
7 27 (1.37%) OpenStack
8 26 (1.31%) WebSphere
9 22 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
10 20 (1.01%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.91%) WebLogic
12 16 (0.81%) SharePoint
13 15 (0.76%) Mattermost
13 15 (0.76%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.76%) WebSphere Application Server
14 12 (0.61%) SAS
15 11 (0.56%) IIS
16 10 (0.51%) iPlanet
17 6 (0.30%) NetWeaver
17 6 (0.30%) TPMS
Applications
1 52 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.61%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.30%) Weka
6 5 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 3 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.051%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 8 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.20%) SAP IBP
3 4 (0.20%) Temenos T24
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) Kondor
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.051%) Finacle
6 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.051%) RMDS
6 1 (0.051%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.051%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.051%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 611 (30.89%) AWS
2 376 (19.01%) Azure
3 185 (9.35%) GitHub
4 159 (8.04%) GCP
5 124 (6.27%) OpenShift
6 119 (6.02%) Amazon EC2
7 109 (5.51%) Amazon S3
8 108 (5.46%) Serverless
9 102 (5.16%) AWS CloudFormation
10 85 (4.30%) GitHub Actions
11 72 (3.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 72 (3.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 65 (3.29%) SaaS
13 64 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
14 62 (3.13%) Amazon ECS
14 62 (3.13%) IaaS
15 61 (3.08%) AWS Lambda
16 55 (2.78%) Amazon EKS
17 51 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
18 46 (2.33%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 229 (11.58%) Firewall
2 167 (8.44%) DNS
3 149 (7.53%) TCP/IP
4 68 (3.44%) Network Security
5 63 (3.19%) SSL
6 62 (3.13%) HTTP
7 59 (2.98%) DHCP
8 58 (2.93%) SSH
9 49 (2.48%) SAN
10 38 (1.92%) VPN
11 37 (1.87%) SMTP
12 32 (1.62%) VLAN
13 28 (1.42%) Ethernet
14 27 (1.37%) Wireless
15 25 (1.26%) Kerberos
15 25 (1.26%) Skype
16 23 (1.16%) FTP
16 23 (1.16%) VSAN
17 22 (1.11%) NAS
17 22 (1.11%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (7.18%) PostgreSQL
2 131 (6.62%) Relational Database
3 98 (4.95%) SQL Server
4 93 (4.70%) MongoDB
5 92 (4.65%) Amazon RDS
6 88 (4.45%) NoSQL
7 79 (3.99%) Oracle Database
8 70 (3.54%) MySQL
9 49 (2.48%) DB2
10 44 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
11 30 (1.52%) Hadoop
12 29 (1.47%) Big Data
13 27 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
14 22 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
15 18 (0.91%) RDBMS
15 18 (0.91%) Redis
16 17 (0.86%) Apache Cassandra
17 16 (0.81%) KDB
18 15 (0.76%) Apache Hive
19 13 (0.66%) HBase
Development Applications
1 332 (16.78%) Jenkins
2 298 (15.07%) Git
3 187 (9.45%) GitLab
4 177 (8.95%) JIRA
5 79 (3.99%) JUnit
6 70 (3.54%) Sonatype Nexus
7 58 (2.93%) Bitbucket
8 54 (2.73%) Eclipse
9 44 (2.22%) Visual Studio
10 42 (2.12%) Maven
11 29 (1.47%) Liquibase
12 27 (1.37%) Artifactory
12 27 (1.37%) Vagrant
13 26 (1.31%) Mockito
13 26 (1.31%) SonarQube
14 24 (1.21%) Cucumber
15 21 (1.06%) Gradle
16 19 (0.96%) Bitbucket Server
16 19 (0.96%) Browser DevTools
16 19 (0.96%) Xcode
General
1 632 (31.95%) Social Skills
2 435 (21.99%) Finance
3 244 (12.34%) Analytical Skills
4 204 (10.31%) Banking
5 184 (9.30%) Public Sector
6 80 (4.04%) Investment Banking
7 60 (3.03%) Financial Institution
7 60 (3.03%) Front Office
8 57 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
9 54 (2.73%) Presentation Skills
10 43 (2.17%) Military
11 25 (1.26%) Manufacturing
12 24 (1.21%) Telecoms
13 22 (1.11%) Legal
14 19 (0.96%) Law
14 19 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
15 18 (0.91%) Aerospace
16 13 (0.66%) Marketing
17 12 (0.61%) Back Office
17 12 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 359 (18.15%) Developer
2 224 (11.32%) Senior
3 182 (9.20%) DevOps Engineer
4 142 (7.18%) Java Developer
5 132 (6.67%) Software Engineer
6 104 (5.26%) Linux Engineer
7 101 (5.11%) Analyst
7 101 (5.11%) Support Engineer
8 99 (5.01%) Platform Engineer
9 95 (4.80%) Architect
10 93 (4.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 79 (3.99%) Administrator
12 77 (3.89%) AWS Engineer
13 64 (3.24%) C++ Software Engineer
14 63 (3.19%) Lead
15 62 (3.13%) Senior Developer
16 59 (2.98%) Python Developer
16 59 (2.98%) Security Engineer
17 56 (2.83%) AWS DevOps
17 56 (2.83%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 162 (8.19%) Kafka
2 148 (7.48%) REST
3 129 (6.52%) Elastic Stack
4 99 (5.01%) Spring
5 86 (4.35%) Middleware
6 80 (4.04%) RESTful
7 78 (3.94%) Node.js
8 68 (3.44%) AngularJS
9 62 (3.13%) React
10 53 (2.68%) JSON
10 53 (2.68%) SOAP
11 51 (2.58%) LDAP
12 47 (2.38%) Web Services
13 43 (2.17%) JMS
14 42 (2.12%) XML
15 41 (2.07%) FIX Protocol
16 37 (1.87%) CSS
17 36 (1.82%) OAuth
18 33 (1.67%) FastAPI
19 31 (1.57%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 105 (5.31%) Cloud Native
2 95 (4.80%) Linux Command Line
3 80 (4.04%) Replication
4 77 (3.89%) Distributed Systems
5 71 (3.59%) Data Centre
6 69 (3.49%) Management Information System
7 67 (3.39%) Data Structures
8 63 (3.19%) Equities
8 63 (3.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 61 (3.08%) Public Cloud
10 52 (2.63%) Onboarding
10 52 (2.63%) PKI
11 45 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
12 36 (1.82%) Algorithms
13 35 (1.77%) Security Posture
14 34 (1.72%) Fixed Income
15 32 (1.62%) Private Cloud
16 29 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
16 29 (1.47%) Hedge funds
17 27 (1.37%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 707 (35.74%) Windows
2 437 (22.09%) Unix
3 260 (13.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 142 (7.18%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.30%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.24%) CentOS
7 43 (2.17%) VMS
8 40 (2.02%) Android
9 34 (1.72%) Mac OS
9 34 (1.72%) Solaris
10 30 (1.52%) Amazon Linux
11 27 (1.37%) Mac OS X
12 25 (1.26%) Windows 10
13 23 (1.16%) AIX
14 22 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
15 13 (0.66%) Kali Linux
16 11 (0.56%) Apple iOS
16 11 (0.56%) Debian
17 9 (0.46%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 580 (29.32%) CI/CD
2 524 (26.49%) Agile
3 520 (26.29%) DevOps
4 399 (20.17%) Problem-Solving
5 314 (15.87%) Containerisation
6 308 (15.57%) Infrastructure as Code
7 266 (13.45%) Software Engineering
8 180 (9.10%) Test Automation
9 164 (8.29%) Observability
10 159 (8.04%) Cybersecurity
11 154 (7.79%) Microservices
12 153 (7.74%) Computer Science
13 146 (7.38%) High Availability
14 144 (7.28%) Configuration Management
15 142 (7.18%) Performance Tuning
16 134 (6.77%) Platform Engineering
17 131 (6.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 131 (6.62%) Migration
18 127 (6.42%) ITIL
19 124 (6.27%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 860 (43.48%) Python
2 424 (21.44%) Java
3 398 (20.12%) SQL
4 349 (17.64%) Bash
5 299 (15.12%) PowerShell
6 233 (11.78%) C++
7 222 (11.22%) Shell Script
8 155 (7.84%) JavaScript
9 146 (7.38%) Perl
10 126 (6.37%) C#
11 87 (4.40%) Go
12 67 (3.39%) C
13 46 (2.33%) Groovy
14 34 (1.72%) TypeScript
15 29 (1.47%) PHP
16 27 (1.37%) Rust
17 25 (1.26%) PL/SQL
18 22 (1.11%) Ruby
19 21 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
20 14 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 550 (27.81%) Security Cleared
2 421 (21.28%) SC Cleared
3 197 (9.96%) Degree
4 109 (5.51%) DV Cleared
5 101 (5.11%) Computer Science Degree
6 74 (3.74%) AWS Certification
7 55 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
8 42 (2.12%) Master's Degree
9 40 (2.02%) CISSP
10 37 (1.87%) Azure Certification
11 36 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
12 31 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
13 27 (1.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 20 (1.01%) CCNP
14 20 (1.01%) OSCP
15 19 (0.96%) GCIH
16 17 (0.86%) CCNA
17 16 (0.81%) GCIA
17 16 (0.81%) GPEN
18 14 (0.71%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (2.63%) NIST
2 48 (2.43%) QA
3 36 (1.82%) GDPR
4 35 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 24 (1.21%) Data Quality
6 16 (0.81%) NCSC
7 15 (0.76%) HIPAA
7 15 (0.76%) PCI DSS
8 13 (0.66%) SLA
9 9 (0.46%) SOC 2
10 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
12 6 (0.30%) GLBA
13 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.20%) HL7
14 3 (0.15%) Accessibility
14 3 (0.15%) MiFID
14 3 (0.15%) NIST 800
15 2 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 418 (21.13%) Docker
2 202 (10.21%) Active Directory
3 199 (10.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (3.24%) vSphere
5 46 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
6 34 (1.72%) Hyper-V
7 33 (1.67%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (1.31%) Postfix
9 25 (1.26%) Oracle RAC
10 22 (1.11%) DFS Replication
11 20 (1.01%) GPFS
11 20 (1.01%) VMware NSX
12 19 (0.96%) NFS
13 18 (0.91%) Dovecot
14 17 (0.86%) KVM
15 16 (0.81%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 13 (0.66%) Squid
17 12 (0.61%) HDFS
17 12 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
18 10 (0.51%) zsh
Systems Management
1 465 (23.51%) Kubernetes
2 410 (20.73%) Terraform
3 372 (18.81%) Ansible
4 214 (10.82%) Grafana
5 190 (9.61%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.74%) Progress Chef
6 74 (3.74%) Puppet
7 57 (2.88%) Packer
8 39 (1.97%) Argo
9 35 (1.77%) Kibana
10 33 (1.67%) vCenter Server
11 31 (1.57%) Consul
11 31 (1.57%) SCOM
12 30 (1.52%) Red Hat Satellite
13 28 (1.42%) ITRS Geneos
13 28 (1.42%) Nessus
14 27 (1.37%) vRealize
15 26 (1.31%) SCCM
16 24 (1.21%) NetBackup
16 24 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 307 (15.52%) Microsoft
2 286 (14.46%) Oracle
3 281 (14.21%) VMware
4 228 (11.53%) Splunk
5 224 (11.32%) Red Hat
6 107 (5.41%) Cisco
7 85 (4.30%) ServiceNow
8 75 (3.79%) IBM
9 64 (3.24%) Google
10 56 (2.83%) AppDynamics
11 47 (2.38%) CyberArk
12 40 (2.02%) Sybase
13 38 (1.92%) Dell
14 36 (1.82%) CrowdStrike
15 35 (1.77%) Solace
16 33 (1.67%) Citrix
17 32 (1.62%) SAP
18 30 (1.52%) F5
19 28 (1.42%) HP
19 28 (1.42%) NetApp