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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -23 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,009 1,834 2,217
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.57% 5.66%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.44% 41.68% 40.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,244 1,151 1,440
10th Percentile £352 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £439 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £705 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 56 121
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.81 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +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 5,094 4,400 5,467
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.37% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,215 2,827 3,629
10th Percentile £193 £200 £200
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £656 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £473
% change year-on-year +1.11% -4.91% +5.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 257 337
10th Percentile £15.53 £15.50 £12.47
25th Percentile £17.84 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.45 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.88 £22.53 £39.25
% change year-on-year +23.75% -42.60% +33.96%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 - 1,055
UK excluding London -16 1,211 £500 - 723
London -55 586 £550 -5.17% 421
Work from Home -31 547 £500 -3.85% 433
South East 0 351 £525 +4.48% 232
North of England -15 311 £500 - 142
South West -3 186 £550 -4.35% 128
North West -8 164 £497 +23.94% 82
Midlands -29 138 £474 -0.26% 68
Yorkshire -24 130 £500 -4.76% 32
West Midlands -30 117 £470 -3.59% 39
Scotland -26 108 £425 -15.00% 37
East of England -16 94 £483 -2.53% 107
Wales +7 29 £465 +64.60% 7
North East -21 24 £490 -14.78% 28
East Midlands -8 18 £513 +17.82% 28
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 20

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 86 (4.28%) Confluence
2 48 (2.39%) Apache
3 31 (1.54%) nginx
4 28 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.05%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.95%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.90%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.90%) SAS
9 17 (0.85%) OpenStack
10 12 (0.60%) JBoss
11 9 (0.45%) IIS
11 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.45%) SharePoint
11 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.40%) CICS
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
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 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.100%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.050%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 603 (30.01%) AWS
2 479 (23.84%) Azure
3 157 (7.81%) GCP
4 156 (7.77%) GitHub
5 99 (4.93%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
7 90 (4.48%) Entra ID
8 88 (4.38%) Amazon EC2
8 88 (4.38%) Amazon S3
9 80 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
10 63 (3.14%) Amazon EKS
11 59 (2.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 56 (2.79%) Serverless
13 54 (2.69%) AWS CloudFormation
13 54 (2.69%) Microsoft 365
14 53 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 50 (2.49%) AWS Lambda
16 47 (2.34%) IaaS
17 40 (1.99%) SaaS
18 39 (1.94%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 222 (11.05%) Firewall
2 202 (10.05%) DNS
3 125 (6.22%) TCP/IP
4 100 (4.98%) DHCP
5 82 (4.08%) VPN
6 75 (3.73%) Network Security
7 74 (3.68%) SAN
8 48 (2.39%) SSL
9 47 (2.34%) WAN
10 46 (2.29%) VSAN
11 39 (1.94%) SSH
12 38 (1.89%) LAN
13 35 (1.74%) HTTP
14 33 (1.64%) VLAN
15 32 (1.59%) SNMP
16 22 (1.10%) NAS
17 21 (1.05%) Ethernet
17 21 (1.05%) IPsec
18 19 (0.95%) HTTPS
19 18 (0.90%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.22%) SQL Server
2 113 (5.62%) PostgreSQL
3 91 (4.53%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.29%) MongoDB
4 66 (3.29%) MySQL
4 66 (3.29%) Relational Database
5 53 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
6 39 (1.94%) Amazon Aurora
7 37 (1.84%) Elasticsearch
8 33 (1.64%) NoSQL
9 31 (1.54%) RDBMS
10 29 (1.44%) DynamoDB
11 23 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
12 21 (1.05%) SAP HANA
13 20 (1.00%) Big Data
14 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
15 18 (0.90%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.80%) Oracle Exadata
18 15 (0.75%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 214 (10.65%) Jenkins
2 206 (10.25%) Git
3 178 (8.86%) GitLab
4 144 (7.17%) JIRA
5 40 (1.99%) Maven
6 34 (1.69%) Mockito
7 32 (1.59%) SonarQube
8 28 (1.39%) Bitbucket
9 26 (1.29%) 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%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
14 13 (0.65%) jMock
15 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
16 11 (0.55%) Selenium
17 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
General
1 413 (20.56%) Social Skills
2 289 (14.39%) Finance
3 202 (10.05%) Public Sector
4 201 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (6.97%) Banking
6 76 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.94%) Military
8 32 (1.59%) Front Office
9 27 (1.34%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.19%) Legal
12 23 (1.14%) Retail
13 22 (1.10%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.95%) Law
14 19 (0.95%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.80%) Financial Institution
15 16 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
16 13 (0.65%) Influencing Skills
17 11 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 292 (14.53%) Senior
2 215 (10.70%) Linux Engineer
3 195 (9.71%) Developer
4 183 (9.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 170 (8.46%) DevOps Engineer
6 114 (5.67%) Software Engineer
7 101 (5.03%) Architect
8 88 (4.38%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (4.13%) Analyst
10 80 (3.98%) Java Developer
11 75 (3.73%) Lead
12 72 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
13 68 (3.38%) Consultant
14 64 (3.19%) AWS Engineer
14 64 (3.19%) Support Engineer
15 55 (2.74%) Administrator
15 55 (2.74%) Senior Developer
16 54 (2.69%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 50 (2.49%) Security Engineer
17 50 (2.49%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (5.28%) Kafka
2 102 (5.08%) REST
3 68 (3.38%) Middleware
4 67 (3.33%) Elastic Stack
5 56 (2.79%) Spring
6 49 (2.44%) .NET
6 49 (2.44%) Spring Boot
7 46 (2.29%) RESTful
7 46 (2.29%) Web Services
8 42 (2.09%) LDAP
9 41 (2.04%) Node.js
10 35 (1.74%) ActiveMQ
11 31 (1.54%) JSON
12 28 (1.39%) SOAP
13 27 (1.34%) YAML
14 24 (1.19%) AngularJS
14 24 (1.19%) React
14 24 (1.19%) XML
15 21 (1.05%) FastAPI
15 21 (1.05%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 133 (6.62%) Data Centre
2 132 (6.57%) Cloud Native
3 124 (6.17%) Onboarding
4 101 (5.03%) Linux Command Line
5 96 (4.78%) PKI
6 89 (4.43%) Distributed Systems
7 80 (3.98%) Replication
8 70 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.19%) Public Cloud
10 61 (3.04%) Management Information System
11 58 (2.89%) Security Posture
12 50 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.79%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.59%) Clustering
14 32 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
15 30 (1.49%) Embedded Systems
15 30 (1.49%) Operational Technology
16 28 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
17 27 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
18 25 (1.24%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 769 (38.28%) Windows
2 419 (20.86%) Unix
3 343 (17.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 222 (11.05%) Windows Server
5 110 (5.48%) Ubuntu
6 71 (3.53%) AIX
7 59 (2.94%) Solaris
8 43 (2.14%) CentOS
9 31 (1.54%) Embedded Linux
10 27 (1.34%) VMS
11 25 (1.24%) SUSE
12 24 (1.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.95%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.90%) Windows 10
15 17 (0.85%) Android
15 17 (0.85%) Mac OS
15 17 (0.85%) Rocky
16 14 (0.70%) Debian
16 14 (0.70%) Mac OS X
16 14 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 565 (28.12%) CI/CD
2 489 (24.34%) DevOps
3 367 (18.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 359 (17.87%) Agile
5 296 (14.73%) Problem-Solving
6 269 (13.39%) Containerisation
7 263 (13.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 236 (11.75%) Migration
9 217 (10.80%) Continuous Improvement
10 199 (9.91%) High Availability
10 199 (9.91%) Software Engineering
11 194 (9.66%) Observability
12 186 (9.26%) Platform Engineering
13 178 (8.86%) Root Cause Analysis
14 175 (8.71%) Performance Tuning
15 169 (8.41%) ITIL
16 159 (7.91%) SIEM
17 143 (7.12%) Test Automation
18 141 (7.02%) AI
19 138 (6.87%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 692 (34.44%) Python
2 372 (18.52%) PowerShell
3 368 (18.32%) Bash
4 341 (16.97%) SQL
5 245 (12.20%) Java
6 149 (7.42%) Shell Script
7 122 (6.07%) C++
8 86 (4.28%) JavaScript
9 70 (3.48%) C
10 67 (3.33%) C#
11 60 (2.99%) PL/SQL
12 56 (2.79%) Perl
13 45 (2.24%) Go
14 39 (1.94%) Bicep
15 22 (1.10%) Ada
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 20 (1.00%) Rust
18 19 (0.95%) TypeScript
19 17 (0.85%) Groovy
20 13 (0.65%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 795 (39.57%) Security Cleared
2 591 (29.42%) SC Cleared
3 227 (11.30%) DV Cleared
4 179 (8.91%) Degree
5 74 (3.68%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.99%) Cisco Certification
7 60 (2.99%) CISSP
8 49 (2.44%) Azure Certification
9 47 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
10 28 (1.39%) CCNP
11 27 (1.34%) RHCE
12 26 (1.29%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
13 25 (1.24%) CCNA
14 19 (0.95%) CISM
15 17 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 17 (0.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
16 13 (0.65%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (4.08%) NIST
2 77 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.84%) QA
4 30 (1.49%) SLA
5 24 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.10%) NCSC
7 21 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.05%) GDPR
8 20 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.70%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.55%) GRC
12 9 (0.45%) ISO 20022
12 9 (0.45%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
16 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 329 (16.38%) Docker
2 264 (13.14%) Active Directory
3 240 (11.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (4.23%) Virtual Machines
5 84 (4.18%) Hyper-V
6 82 (4.08%) vSphere
7 64 (3.19%) VMware NSX
8 63 (3.14%) VMware ESXi
9 44 (2.19%) NFS
10 40 (1.99%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.74%) Firmware
12 30 (1.49%) KVM
13 20 (1.00%) Postfix
14 15 (0.75%) Ceph
15 12 (0.60%) GPFS
16 10 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
17 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.40%) Squid
19 7 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 452 (22.50%) Terraform
2 447 (22.25%) Ansible
3 415 (20.66%) Kubernetes
4 163 (8.11%) Grafana
5 139 (6.92%) Prometheus
6 80 (3.98%) Puppet
7 61 (3.04%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.59%) Oracle RMAN
9 42 (2.09%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.94%) Data Guard
11 34 (1.69%) SCCM
12 31 (1.54%) Nagios
13 29 (1.44%) Packer
14 27 (1.34%) Red Hat Satellite
15 26 (1.29%) ZABBIX
16 25 (1.24%) Podman
17 24 (1.19%) NetBackup
18 23 (1.14%) VxRail
19 22 (1.10%) Argo
19 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 337 (16.77%) VMware
2 303 (15.08%) Microsoft
3 298 (14.83%) Oracle
4 229 (11.40%) Red Hat
5 155 (7.72%) Splunk
6 130 (6.47%) Cisco
7 109 (5.43%) ServiceNow
8 100 (4.98%) IBM
9 82 (4.08%) CyberArk
10 74 (3.68%) Google
11 51 (2.54%) SolarWinds
12 48 (2.39%) BeyondTrust
12 48 (2.39%) Palo Alto
13 42 (2.09%) SAP
14 41 (2.04%) NetApp
15 39 (1.94%) F5
15 39 (1.94%) HP
16 35 (1.74%) Citrix
17 30 (1.49%) Dynatrace
18 29 (1.44%) Atlassian