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 27 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 34 31
Rank change year-on-year -20 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,004 1,834 2,236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.57% 5.57%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.45% 41.43% 39.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,250 1,161 1,446
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -5.45%
75th Percentile £612 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 55 132
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.63 £59.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.88 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,080 4,427 5,608
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.62% 13.43% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,231 2,856 3,709
10th Percentile £193 £200 £193
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £465
% change year-on-year - -3.23% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 251 375
10th Percentile £15.53 £15.50 £12.60
25th Percentile £17.94 £18.12 £16.83
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.20 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £21.90 £34.50
% change year-on-year +20.87% -36.52% +6.15%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 -25 1,699 £525 -2.05% 837
UK excluding London -15 1,217 £500 - 608
London -50 576 £550 -5.17% 320
Work from Home -29 542 £500 -1.23% 333
South East +3 347 £518 +0.98% 203
North of England -10 327 £492 -1.60% 119
South West -6 178 £540 -6.09% 94
North West -13 169 £485 +20.52% 66
Midlands -13 144 £473 -0.53% 66
Yorkshire -24 141 £500 -4.76% 28
West Midlands -21 122 £470 -5.53% 38
Scotland -22 104 £450 -9.27% 41
East of England -17 94 £479 -2.30% 76
Wales +8 29 £465 +64.60% 9
North East -23 23 £490 +2.62% 26
East Midlands -7 19 £513 +13.89% 28
Northern Ireland -3 2 - - 14

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 84 (4.19%) Confluence
2 52 (2.59%) Apache
3 33 (1.65%) nginx
4 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.05%) WebLogic
7 20 (1.00%) Tomcat
8 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
9 18 (0.90%) SAS
10 17 (0.85%) OpenStack
11 12 (0.60%) JBoss
12 11 (0.55%) CICS
13 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
14 9 (0.45%) IIS
14 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
14 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.25%) CMS
17 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.100%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.050%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.050%) InDesign
6 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.100%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 596 (29.74%) AWS
2 457 (22.80%) Azure
3 156 (7.78%) GitHub
4 147 (7.34%) GCP
5 107 (5.34%) OpenShift
6 90 (4.49%) GitHub Actions
7 89 (4.44%) Amazon EC2
7 89 (4.44%) Amazon S3
8 87 (4.34%) Entra ID
9 73 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
10 62 (3.09%) Amazon EKS
11 59 (2.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 59 (2.94%) Serverless
12 54 (2.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 53 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
14 51 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
14 51 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
15 43 (2.15%) IaaS
16 40 (2.00%) SaaS
17 38 (1.90%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 208 (10.38%) Firewall
2 182 (9.08%) DNS
3 114 (5.69%) TCP/IP
4 84 (4.19%) DHCP
5 83 (4.14%) VPN
6 77 (3.84%) Network Security
7 74 (3.69%) SAN
8 47 (2.35%) WAN
9 44 (2.20%) SSL
10 40 (2.00%) VSAN
11 37 (1.85%) LAN
12 36 (1.80%) SSH
13 33 (1.65%) HTTP
14 32 (1.60%) VLAN
15 31 (1.55%) SNMP
16 24 (1.20%) NAS
17 22 (1.10%) Ethernet
18 21 (1.05%) IPsec
19 18 (0.90%) BGP
19 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (6.39%) SQL Server
2 118 (5.89%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.74%) Oracle Database
4 70 (3.49%) MySQL
5 68 (3.39%) MongoDB
5 68 (3.39%) Relational Database
6 57 (2.84%) Amazon RDS
7 40 (2.00%) Elasticsearch
8 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
9 31 (1.55%) RDBMS
10 30 (1.50%) NoSQL
11 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
12 25 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
13 21 (1.05%) SAP HANA
14 20 (1.00%) Big Data
15 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.90%) DataStage
16 18 (0.90%) Sybase ASE
17 17 (0.85%) Data Lake
18 15 (0.75%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 216 (10.78%) Jenkins
2 198 (9.88%) Git
3 182 (9.08%) GitLab
4 142 (7.09%) JIRA
5 38 (1.90%) Maven
6 33 (1.65%) Mockito
7 32 (1.60%) SonarQube
8 26 (1.30%) Bitbucket
9 25 (1.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.05%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.95%) JUnit
12 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
14 13 (0.65%) jMock
15 12 (0.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
17 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
18 9 (0.45%) Selenium
General
1 407 (20.31%) Social Skills
2 285 (14.22%) Finance
3 206 (10.28%) Public Sector
4 188 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (6.99%) Banking
6 72 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (2.00%) Military
8 31 (1.55%) Front Office
9 27 (1.35%) Investment Banking
10 24 (1.20%) Legal
10 24 (1.20%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.15%) Retail
12 20 (1.00%) Law
13 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
13 18 (0.90%) Financial Institution
13 18 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
13 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 288 (14.37%) Senior
2 202 (10.08%) Linux Engineer
3 200 (9.98%) Developer
4 177 (8.83%) DevOps Engineer
5 169 (8.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 118 (5.89%) Software Engineer
7 100 (4.99%) Architect
8 85 (4.24%) Analyst
9 83 (4.14%) Platform Engineer
10 81 (4.04%) Java Developer
11 77 (3.84%) Lead
12 68 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
13 66 (3.29%) Consultant
14 64 (3.19%) AWS Engineer
15 61 (3.04%) Support Engineer
16 57 (2.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 56 (2.79%) Administrator
17 56 (2.79%) Senior Developer
18 53 (2.64%) DBA
19 52 (2.59%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (5.29%) Kafka
2 100 (4.99%) REST
3 70 (3.49%) Middleware
4 68 (3.39%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.84%) Spring
6 49 (2.45%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.40%) Web Services
8 47 (2.35%) RESTful
9 46 (2.30%) .NET
10 44 (2.20%) LDAP
11 42 (2.10%) Node.js
12 34 (1.70%) ActiveMQ
13 30 (1.50%) JSON
14 27 (1.35%) SOAP
14 27 (1.35%) YAML
15 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
16 25 (1.25%) React
17 23 (1.15%) XML
18 21 (1.05%) Keycloak
19 20 (1.00%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 138 (6.89%) Data Centre
2 135 (6.74%) Cloud Native
3 120 (5.99%) Onboarding
4 104 (5.19%) Linux Command Line
5 91 (4.54%) Distributed Systems
5 91 (4.54%) PKI
6 78 (3.89%) Replication
7 63 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
7 63 (3.14%) Public Cloud
8 59 (2.94%) Management Information System
9 58 (2.89%) Security Posture
10 50 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
11 37 (1.85%) Product Ownership
12 32 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
13 31 (1.55%) Clustering
14 29 (1.45%) Embedded Systems
14 29 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
14 29 (1.45%) Enterprise Storage
15 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
16 24 (1.20%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 759 (37.87%) Windows
2 420 (20.96%) Unix
3 336 (16.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 208 (10.38%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 74 (3.69%) AIX
7 62 (3.09%) Solaris
8 41 (2.05%) CentOS
9 30 (1.50%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.40%) VMS
11 23 (1.15%) SUSE
11 23 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.90%) Windows 10
13 17 (0.85%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.80%) Android
14 16 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
15 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
15 15 (0.75%) Rocky
16 14 (0.70%) Debian
16 14 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 568 (28.34%) CI/CD
2 488 (24.35%) DevOps
3 358 (17.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 357 (17.81%) Agile
5 291 (14.52%) Problem-Solving
6 276 (13.77%) Containerisation
7 250 (12.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 235 (11.73%) Migration
9 209 (10.43%) Continuous Improvement
10 203 (10.13%) Software Engineering
11 194 (9.68%) High Availability
12 190 (9.48%) Observability
13 178 (8.88%) Performance Tuning
14 175 (8.73%) Platform Engineering
15 169 (8.43%) Root Cause Analysis
16 161 (8.03%) ITIL
17 154 (7.68%) SIEM
18 139 (6.94%) AI
18 139 (6.94%) Test Automation
19 134 (6.69%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 691 (34.48%) Python
2 352 (17.56%) Bash
3 348 (17.37%) PowerShell
4 342 (17.07%) SQL
5 250 (12.48%) Java
6 153 (7.63%) Shell Script
7 116 (5.79%) C++
8 87 (4.34%) JavaScript
9 66 (3.29%) C#
10 64 (3.19%) C
11 61 (3.04%) PL/SQL
12 54 (2.69%) Perl
13 52 (2.59%) Go
14 35 (1.75%) Bicep
15 23 (1.15%) Ada
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (1.05%) TypeScript
17 20 (1.00%) Rust
18 16 (0.80%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 784 (39.12%) Security Cleared
2 580 (28.94%) SC Cleared
3 227 (11.33%) DV Cleared
4 171 (8.53%) Degree
5 77 (3.84%) AWS Certification
6 67 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.99%) CISSP
8 59 (2.94%) Cisco Certification
9 48 (2.40%) Azure Certification
10 43 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
11 29 (1.45%) CompTIA Security+
12 28 (1.40%) CCNP
13 27 (1.35%) RHCE
14 24 (1.20%) CCNA
15 22 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
16 19 (0.95%) CISM
17 18 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.65%) GIAC
18 13 (0.65%) RHCSA
18 13 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.14%) NIST
2 78 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.84%) QA
4 31 (1.55%) SLA
5 25 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.05%) GDPR
7 21 (1.05%) NCSC
8 20 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.70%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.60%) GRC
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
17 4 (0.20%) Accessibility
System Software
1 330 (16.47%) Docker
2 252 (12.57%) Active Directory
3 236 (11.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (4.64%) Virtual Machines
5 75 (3.74%) vSphere
6 74 (3.69%) Hyper-V
7 65 (3.24%) VMware ESXi
8 56 (2.79%) VMware NSX
9 46 (2.30%) NFS
10 40 (2.00%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.75%) Firmware
12 34 (1.70%) KVM
13 20 (1.00%) Postfix
14 14 (0.70%) Ceph
15 13 (0.65%) GPFS
16 10 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.35%) Squid
18 7 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 445 (22.21%) Terraform
2 439 (21.91%) Ansible
3 418 (20.86%) Kubernetes
4 166 (8.28%) Grafana
5 143 (7.14%) Prometheus
6 75 (3.74%) Puppet
7 57 (2.84%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.59%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.30%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.90%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.55%) Nagios
12 28 (1.40%) Packer
13 26 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.25%) SCCM
15 24 (1.20%) Podman
16 22 (1.10%) Argo
16 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
17 20 (1.00%) NetBackup
17 20 (1.00%) Netcool
Vendors
1 325 (16.22%) VMware
2 303 (15.12%) Microsoft
3 295 (14.72%) Oracle
4 228 (11.38%) Red Hat
5 151 (7.53%) Splunk
6 130 (6.49%) Cisco
7 106 (5.29%) IBM
8 103 (5.14%) ServiceNow
9 76 (3.79%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.54%) Google
11 47 (2.35%) Palo Alto
11 47 (2.35%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.30%) BeyondTrust
13 42 (2.10%) SAP
14 40 (2.00%) NetApp
15 39 (1.95%) F5
16 38 (1.90%) HP
17 33 (1.65%) Citrix
18 31 (1.55%) Sybase
19 29 (1.45%) Dynatrace