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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 34 32
Rank change year-on-year -20 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,009 1,824 2,252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 5.58% 5.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.53% 41.45% 39.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,248 1,159 1,454
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £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 53 135
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £60.00
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 5,082 4,401 5,693
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.47% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,223 2,842 3,754
10th Percentile £193 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £324
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.08% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 247 393
10th Percentile £15.76 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.94 £18.10 £16.32
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.88% -43.11%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.20 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £21.59 £31.13
% change year-on-year +22.60% -30.63% -0.40%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 1,700 £525 -1.27% 925
UK excluding London -17 1,217 £500 - 749
London -53 579 £550 -4.35% 320
Work from Home -27 544 £500 - 414
South East +2 343 £518 +0.98% 221
North of England -10 326 £489 -2.30% 131
South West -5 179 £540 -6.09% 130
North West -8 168 £485 +20.52% 80
Midlands -12 146 £474 -0.26% 82
Yorkshire -20 142 £500 -4.76% 29
West Midlands -17 123 £470 -1.05% 51
Scotland -26 104 £450 -7.22% 46
East of England -16 95 £475 -3.06% 87
Wales +6 29 £465 +64.60% 12
North East -19 22 £480 +0.52% 23
East Midlands -6 20 £513 +12.76% 31
Northern Ireland 0 3 - - 53

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 83 (4.13%) Confluence
2 51 (2.54%) Apache
3 32 (1.59%) nginx
4 29 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.39%) 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 11 (0.55%) CICS
11 11 (0.55%) JBoss
12 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
13 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
13 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.40%) IIS
15 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.25%) CMS
17 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
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%) Simulink
5 2 (0.100%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.100%) Houdini
5 2 (0.100%) NUKE
6 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
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%) Cloudability
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 Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
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%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 595 (29.62%) AWS
2 455 (22.65%) Azure
3 157 (7.81%) GitHub
4 147 (7.32%) GCP
5 107 (5.33%) OpenShift
6 92 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
7 89 (4.43%) Amazon EC2
7 89 (4.43%) Amazon S3
7 89 (4.43%) Entra ID
8 73 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
9 63 (3.14%) Amazon EKS
10 60 (2.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 60 (2.99%) Serverless
11 55 (2.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 54 (2.69%) Microsoft 365
13 52 (2.59%) AWS CloudFormation
14 51 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
15 45 (2.24%) IaaS
16 42 (2.09%) SaaS
17 40 (1.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 208 (10.35%) Firewall
2 184 (9.16%) DNS
3 114 (5.67%) TCP/IP
4 85 (4.23%) DHCP
5 83 (4.13%) VPN
6 77 (3.83%) Network Security
7 73 (3.63%) SAN
8 46 (2.29%) WAN
9 43 (2.14%) SSL
10 40 (1.99%) VSAN
11 36 (1.79%) LAN
11 36 (1.79%) SSH
12 33 (1.64%) HTTP
13 32 (1.59%) VLAN
14 31 (1.54%) SNMP
15 24 (1.19%) NAS
16 22 (1.10%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.10%) IPsec
17 19 (0.95%) BGP
18 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.22%) SQL Server
2 119 (5.92%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.73%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.43%) MySQL
5 68 (3.38%) MongoDB
5 68 (3.38%) Relational Database
6 57 (2.84%) Amazon RDS
7 39 (1.94%) Amazon Aurora
7 39 (1.94%) Elasticsearch
8 30 (1.49%) NoSQL
8 30 (1.49%) RDBMS
9 29 (1.44%) DynamoDB
10 24 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
11 21 (1.05%) SAP HANA
12 20 (1.00%) Big Data
13 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
14 18 (0.90%) Sybase ASE
15 17 (0.85%) Data Lake
15 17 (0.85%) DataStage
15 17 (0.85%) KDB
Development Applications
1 217 (10.80%) Jenkins
2 195 (9.71%) Git
3 183 (9.11%) GitLab
4 143 (7.12%) JIRA
5 38 (1.89%) Maven
6 33 (1.64%) Mockito
7 32 (1.59%) SonarQube
8 25 (1.24%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
10 20 (1.00%) Artifactory
10 20 (1.00%) JUnit
11 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
13 13 (0.65%) jMock
14 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
16 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
16 9 (0.45%) TeamCity
General
1 405 (20.16%) Social Skills
2 288 (14.34%) Finance
3 205 (10.20%) Public Sector
4 189 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (6.97%) Banking
6 72 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (1.99%) Military
8 31 (1.54%) Front Office
9 27 (1.34%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.19%) Legal
11 24 (1.19%) Retail
12 20 (1.00%) Financial Institution
12 20 (1.00%) Law
13 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 15 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 290 (14.44%) Senior
2 204 (10.15%) Developer
3 200 (9.96%) Linux Engineer
4 179 (8.91%) DevOps Engineer
5 166 (8.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 117 (5.82%) Software Engineer
7 102 (5.08%) Architect
8 88 (4.38%) Analyst
9 83 (4.13%) Platform Engineer
10 81 (4.03%) Java Developer
10 81 (4.03%) Lead
11 67 (3.33%) Cloud Engineer
12 66 (3.29%) Consultant
13 65 (3.24%) AWS Engineer
14 60 (2.99%) Support Engineer
15 57 (2.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 56 (2.79%) Administrator
16 56 (2.79%) Senior Developer
17 53 (2.64%) DBA
18 52 (2.59%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (5.28%) Kafka
2 98 (4.88%) REST
3 71 (3.53%) Middleware
4 69 (3.43%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.84%) Spring
6 50 (2.49%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.39%) Web Services
8 47 (2.34%) RESTful
9 45 (2.24%) .NET
10 44 (2.19%) LDAP
11 42 (2.09%) Node.js
12 34 (1.69%) ActiveMQ
13 30 (1.49%) JSON
14 27 (1.34%) SOAP
15 26 (1.29%) AngularJS
15 26 (1.29%) React
16 25 (1.24%) YAML
17 23 (1.14%) XML
18 20 (1.00%) Keycloak
18 20 (1.00%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 139 (6.92%) Data Centre
2 133 (6.62%) Cloud Native
3 117 (5.82%) Onboarding
4 104 (5.18%) Linux Command Line
5 92 (4.58%) Distributed Systems
6 90 (4.48%) PKI
7 77 (3.83%) Replication
8 63 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
8 63 (3.14%) Public Cloud
9 59 (2.94%) Management Information System
10 58 (2.89%) Security Posture
11 52 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (1.79%) Product Ownership
13 32 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
14 30 (1.49%) Clustering
15 28 (1.39%) Embedded Systems
15 28 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
15 28 (1.39%) Operational Technology
16 27 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
17 24 (1.19%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 758 (37.73%) Windows
2 426 (21.20%) Unix
3 333 (16.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 204 (10.15%) Windows Server
5 106 (5.28%) Ubuntu
6 74 (3.68%) AIX
7 61 (3.04%) Solaris
8 41 (2.04%) CentOS
9 31 (1.54%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.39%) VMS
11 23 (1.14%) SUSE
11 23 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.85%) Windows 10
13 16 (0.80%) Android
13 16 (0.80%) Mac OS
13 16 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
14 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
14 15 (0.75%) Rocky
15 14 (0.70%) Debian
15 14 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (28.42%) CI/CD
2 488 (24.29%) DevOps
3 362 (18.02%) Agile
4 356 (17.72%) Infrastructure as Code
5 296 (14.73%) Problem-Solving
6 274 (13.64%) Containerisation
7 247 (12.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 233 (11.60%) Migration
9 204 (10.15%) Software Engineering
10 203 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
11 194 (9.66%) High Availability
12 190 (9.46%) Observability
13 178 (8.86%) Performance Tuning
14 174 (8.66%) Root Cause Analysis
15 172 (8.56%) Platform Engineering
16 165 (8.21%) ITIL
17 155 (7.72%) SIEM
18 139 (6.92%) Test Automation
19 138 (6.87%) AI
20 133 (6.62%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 688 (34.25%) Python
2 349 (17.37%) Bash
3 346 (17.22%) SQL
4 345 (17.17%) PowerShell
5 252 (12.54%) Java
6 157 (7.81%) Shell Script
7 117 (5.82%) C++
8 86 (4.28%) JavaScript
9 64 (3.19%) C
9 64 (3.19%) C#
10 63 (3.14%) PL/SQL
11 54 (2.69%) Perl
12 52 (2.59%) Go
13 33 (1.64%) Bicep
14 23 (1.14%) Ada
15 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (1.05%) TypeScript
16 20 (1.00%) Rust
17 16 (0.80%) Groovy
18 14 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 784 (39.02%) Security Cleared
2 581 (28.92%) SC Cleared
3 228 (11.35%) DV Cleared
4 175 (8.71%) Degree
5 76 (3.78%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.99%) CISSP
8 59 (2.94%) Cisco Certification
9 49 (2.44%) Azure Certification
10 45 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
11 30 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
12 28 (1.39%) CCNP
13 27 (1.34%) RHCE
14 24 (1.19%) CCNA
15 22 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
16 19 (0.95%) CISM
17 17 (0.85%) 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 (4.13%) NIST
2 78 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.79%) QA
4 33 (1.64%) SLA
5 25 (1.24%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
6 22 (1.10%) GDPR
7 21 (1.05%) NCSC
8 20 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
9 15 (0.75%) 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
1 332 (16.53%) Docker
2 252 (12.54%) Active Directory
3 236 (11.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.68%) Virtual Machines
5 76 (3.78%) Hyper-V
6 75 (3.73%) vSphere
7 64 (3.19%) VMware ESXi
8 56 (2.79%) VMware NSX
9 46 (2.29%) NFS
10 39 (1.94%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.74%) KVM
12 34 (1.69%) Firmware
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%) Embedded Firmware
18 7 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 440 (21.90%) Terraform
2 438 (21.80%) Ansible
3 418 (20.81%) Kubernetes
4 168 (8.36%) Grafana
5 145 (7.22%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.58%) Puppet
7 56 (2.79%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.54%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.29%) vCenter Server
10 37 (1.84%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.54%) Nagios
12 27 (1.34%) Packer
13 26 (1.29%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.24%) Red Hat Satellite
14 25 (1.24%) SCCM
15 24 (1.19%) Podman
16 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
17 21 (1.05%) Argo
17 21 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
18 20 (1.00%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 322 (16.03%) VMware
2 303 (15.08%) Microsoft
3 299 (14.88%) Oracle
4 226 (11.25%) Red Hat
5 154 (7.67%) Splunk
6 128 (6.37%) Cisco
7 106 (5.28%) IBM
8 101 (5.03%) ServiceNow
9 75 (3.73%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.53%) Google
11 47 (2.34%) Palo Alto
11 47 (2.34%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.29%) BeyondTrust
13 42 (2.09%) SAP
14 40 (1.99%) NetApp
15 39 (1.94%) F5
16 38 (1.89%) HP
17 33 (1.64%) Citrix
18 31 (1.54%) Sybase
19 29 (1.44%) Dynatrace