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 4 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,097 1,849 2,096
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.84% 5.57% 5.52%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.37% 41.06% 39.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,312 1,103 1,242
10th Percentile £354 £338 £350
25th Percentile £430 £420 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £536
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% -3.08% -2.50%
75th Percentile £622 £625 £638
90th Percentile £721 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +3.66% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 79 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £40.30 £49.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £53.28 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +9.15%
75th Percentile £69.13 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +6.40%

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 5,326 4,503 5,342
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.57% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,358 2,868 3,332
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £284 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £474
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.01% -5.25%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £661 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 406 303 254
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.06
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £52.75
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -52.32% +20.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.68 £69.45
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £57.00
% change year-on-year +6.00% -55.88% +41.35%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 -21 1,767 £525 +0.24% 3,571
UK excluding London -22 1,175 £510 +3.66% 2,374
London -34 716 £535 -6.96% 1,607
Work from Home -27 561 £510 -1.11% 1,926
South East -14 329 £525 +10.53% 559
North of England -25 274 £500 +5.15% 360
South West +1 175 £575 +4.55% 355
North West -15 137 £493 +22.94% 191
Scotland -15 133 £450 -10.00% 301
Midlands -37 130 £477 -4.60% 241
East of England -8 114 £483 -3.50% 347
Yorkshire -29 112 £521 +4.25% 102
West Midlands -39 111 £476 -4.80% 139
North East -13 33 £475 -11.63% 72
Wales +9 27 £465 +3.33% 127
East Midlands -1 17 £481 +14.52% 102
Northern Ireland -4 3 - - 121

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 (3.10%) Confluence
2 46 (2.19%) Apache
3 34 (1.62%) nginx
4 28 (1.34%) WebLogic
5 27 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
6 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
7 23 (1.10%) Apache Spark
8 22 (1.05%) SharePoint
9 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 19 (0.91%) Tomcat
11 16 (0.76%) IIS
11 16 (0.76%) SAS
12 15 (0.72%) JBoss
13 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.33%) CMS
15 6 (0.29%) MTS
15 6 (0.29%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle FAH
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%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 623 (29.71%) AWS
2 530 (25.27%) Azure
3 208 (9.92%) GCP
4 165 (7.87%) GitHub
5 111 (5.29%) Entra ID
6 110 (5.25%) OpenShift
7 101 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
8 96 (4.58%) Amazon S3
8 96 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
9 81 (3.86%) Amazon EC2
10 73 (3.48%) Serverless
11 70 (3.34%) AWS CloudFormation
12 64 (3.05%) Amazon EKS
12 64 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
12 64 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
13 61 (2.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 56 (2.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 50 (2.38%) IaaS
16 46 (2.19%) Datadog
17 40 (1.91%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 225 (10.73%) DNS
2 214 (10.21%) Firewall
3 167 (7.96%) TCP/IP
4 131 (6.25%) DHCP
5 88 (4.20%) Network Security
6 85 (4.05%) VPN
7 77 (3.67%) SAN
8 55 (2.62%) SSL
9 47 (2.24%) HTTP
10 46 (2.19%) WAN
11 45 (2.15%) SSH
12 38 (1.81%) VLAN
13 32 (1.53%) LAN
14 31 (1.48%) BGP
15 28 (1.34%) Kerberos
15 28 (1.34%) VSAN
16 25 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
17 23 (1.10%) Wireless
18 22 (1.05%) HTTPS
19 21 (1.00%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 102 (4.86%) Oracle Database
4 78 (3.72%) Relational Database
5 67 (3.20%) MySQL
6 57 (2.72%) Amazon RDS
7 53 (2.53%) MongoDB
8 49 (2.34%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
10 33 (1.57%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 28 (1.34%) Amazon Aurora
12 28 (1.34%) Big Data
13 23 (1.10%) Data Lake
14 21 (1.00%) Power BI
14 21 (1.00%) Redis
15 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
16 18 (0.86%) Hadoop
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
17 16 (0.76%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 290 (13.83%) Git
2 254 (12.11%) Jenkins
3 232 (11.06%) GitLab
4 160 (7.63%) JIRA
5 42 (2.00%) Maven
6 35 (1.67%) SonarQube
7 34 (1.62%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
9 26 (1.24%) Artifactory
10 23 (1.10%) Selenium
11 19 (0.91%) Gradle
11 19 (0.91%) Mockito
12 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
12 18 (0.86%) JUnit
13 15 (0.72%) Cucumber
14 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.48%) JMeter
16 10 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 460 (21.94%) Social Skills
2 343 (16.36%) Finance
3 243 (11.59%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (8.39%) Banking
5 167 (7.96%) Public Sector
6 85 (4.05%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.58%) Telecoms
8 47 (2.24%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.62%) Front Office
10 33 (1.57%) Military
11 28 (1.34%) Legal
12 24 (1.14%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 22 (1.05%) Law
14 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.81%) Retail
15 15 (0.72%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.48%) Aviation
16 10 (0.48%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 318 (15.16%) Senior
2 235 (11.21%) Linux Engineer
3 212 (10.11%) Developer
4 211 (10.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 187 (8.92%) DevOps Engineer
6 105 (5.01%) Platform Engineer
7 100 (4.77%) Architect
8 94 (4.48%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.91%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.86%) Support Engineer
11 79 (3.77%) Java Developer
12 78 (3.72%) Analyst
13 72 (3.43%) Consultant
14 69 (3.29%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 68 (3.24%) Lead
16 65 (3.10%) AWS Engineer
17 61 (2.91%) Administrator
18 59 (2.81%) Network Engineer
19 53 (2.53%) Automation Engineer
20 52 (2.48%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 521 (24.85%) Terraform
2 147 (7.01%) Kafka
3 133 (6.34%) REST
4 83 (3.96%) Middleware
5 75 (3.58%) Elastic Stack
6 65 (3.10%) .NET
7 61 (2.91%) Spring
8 59 (2.81%) RESTful
9 53 (2.53%) Spring Boot
9 53 (2.53%) Web Services
10 50 (2.38%) LDAP
11 45 (2.15%) JSON
12 41 (1.96%) XML
13 40 (1.91%) React
14 37 (1.76%) HTML
15 34 (1.62%) SOAP
16 33 (1.57%) Flask
17 32 (1.53%) Keycloak
18 31 (1.48%) YAML
19 30 (1.43%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 160 (7.63%) Onboarding
2 150 (7.15%) Cloud Native
3 132 (6.29%) Data Centre
4 114 (5.44%) PKI
5 109 (5.20%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.43%) Replication
7 91 (4.34%) Distributed Systems
8 69 (3.29%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.20%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.10%) Public Cloud
11 55 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
12 49 (2.34%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.96%) Private Cloud
13 41 (1.96%) Product Ownership
14 40 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
15 39 (1.86%) Operational Technology
16 38 (1.81%) Embedded Systems
17 37 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
17 37 (1.76%) Enterprise Storage
18 33 (1.57%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 790 (37.67%) Windows
2 435 (20.74%) Unix
3 366 (17.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 250 (11.92%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.29%) Ubuntu
6 63 (3.00%) CentOS
7 54 (2.58%) Solaris
8 53 (2.53%) AIX
9 32 (1.53%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.43%) Windows 10
11 27 (1.29%) SUSE
11 27 (1.29%) VMS
12 23 (1.10%) Rocky
13 18 (0.86%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
15 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (0.57%) Debian
17 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 668 (31.86%) CI/CD
2 576 (27.47%) DevOps
3 470 (22.41%) Infrastructure as Code
4 399 (19.03%) Agile
5 338 (16.12%) Problem-Solving
6 326 (15.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 310 (14.78%) Containerisation
8 273 (13.02%) Continuous Improvement
9 254 (12.11%) Observability
10 238 (11.35%) Platform Engineering
11 232 (11.06%) Migration
12 219 (10.44%) Software Engineering
13 218 (10.40%) Root Cause Analysis
14 193 (9.20%) High Availability
15 186 (8.87%) Configuration Management
16 178 (8.49%) ITIL
16 178 (8.49%) Test Automation
17 169 (8.06%) Cybersecurity
17 169 (8.06%) Performance Tuning
17 169 (8.06%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 780 (37.20%) Python
2 461 (21.98%) Bash
3 413 (19.69%) PowerShell
4 386 (18.41%) SQL
5 263 (12.54%) Java
6 158 (7.53%) Shell Script
7 119 (5.67%) C++
8 85 (4.05%) JavaScript
8 85 (4.05%) Perl
9 74 (3.53%) C#
10 68 (3.24%) C
11 60 (2.86%) Go
12 59 (2.81%) PL/SQL
13 42 (2.00%) Bicep
14 31 (1.48%) Groovy
15 24 (1.14%) TypeScript
16 18 (0.86%) Search Processing Language
17 16 (0.76%) Ada
17 16 (0.76%) Korn
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
Qualifications
1 792 (37.77%) Security Cleared
2 555 (26.47%) SC Cleared
3 249 (11.87%) DV Cleared
4 184 (8.77%) Degree
5 73 (3.48%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.91%) CISSP
6 61 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 58 (2.77%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.67%) Azure Certification
9 53 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
10 28 (1.34%) CISM
11 25 (1.19%) CCNP
11 25 (1.19%) RHCE
12 22 (1.05%) CCNA
13 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.86%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 15 (0.72%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (3.72%) NIST
2 76 (3.62%) QA
3 70 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 29 (1.38%) SLA
5 25 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.05%) GDPR
7 18 (0.86%) GRC
8 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.72%) NCSC
11 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
16 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
17 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 381 (18.17%) Docker
2 290 (13.83%) Active Directory
3 239 (11.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 83 (3.96%) Hyper-V
5 81 (3.86%) vSphere
6 67 (3.20%) VMware ESXi
7 65 (3.10%) Virtual Machines
8 48 (2.29%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.81%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (1.62%) Firmware
10 34 (1.62%) NFS
11 25 (1.19%) KVM
12 24 (1.14%) Virtual Servers
13 13 (0.62%) Ceph
14 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
14 12 (0.57%) GPFS
14 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.48%) Postfix
16 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 8 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 497 (23.70%) Kubernetes
2 473 (22.56%) Ansible
3 203 (9.68%) Grafana
4 182 (8.68%) Prometheus
5 92 (4.39%) Puppet
6 62 (2.96%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.48%) SCCM
8 48 (2.29%) Oracle RMAN
9 38 (1.81%) Data Guard
10 36 (1.72%) Microsoft Intune
11 32 (1.53%) Kibana
12 31 (1.48%) vCenter Server
13 28 (1.34%) Nagios
14 27 (1.29%) VxRail
15 26 (1.24%) NetBackup
15 26 (1.24%) Red Hat Satellite
16 24 (1.14%) Packer
16 24 (1.14%) Podman
17 21 (1.00%) Istio
18 20 (0.95%) Argo
Vendors
1 351 (16.74%) Microsoft
2 338 (16.12%) VMware
3 294 (14.02%) Oracle
4 220 (10.49%) Red Hat
5 174 (8.30%) Splunk
6 124 (5.91%) Cisco
7 115 (5.48%) ServiceNow
8 99 (4.72%) Google
9 89 (4.24%) IBM
10 82 (3.91%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.38%) NetApp
12 44 (2.10%) SolarWinds
13 42 (2.00%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.91%) F5
15 39 (1.86%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.76%) Dynatrace
17 36 (1.72%) SAP
18 35 (1.67%) Dell
19 31 (1.48%) Tenable
20 28 (1.34%) Veeam