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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,096 1,847 2,153
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.61% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.45% 41.57% 39.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,304 1,117 1,329
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.02%
75th Percentile £613 £633 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.10% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 66 115
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.44 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.35%

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 5,313 4,443 5,440
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.50% 14.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,351 2,842 3,506
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £582
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £440 £450
% change year-on-year +2.27% -2.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 272 279
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.43
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.74 £20.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -48.67% +6.80%
75th Percentile £65.17 £57.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.36 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +29.22% -52.10% +17.15%

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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 -23 1,762 £525 - 1,876
UK excluding London -21 1,199 £501 +0.10% 926
London -38 683 £535 -6.96% 1,042
Work from Home -25 554 £500 -4.31% 2,158
South East -14 337 £525 +8.81% 290
North of England -20 288 £500 +5.15% 139
South West +6 192 £575 +4.55% 147
North West -19 143 £497 +23.94% 74
Scotland -19 132 £450 -10.00% 50
Yorkshire -25 122 £515 +2.95% 32
Midlands -44 120 £470 -6.00% 86
East of England -11 110 £500 +1.78% 197
West Midlands -49 100 £470 -6.00% 55
North East -17 30 £475 -17.39% 33
Wales +5 28 £465 +3.33% 14
East Midlands -11 17 £491 +16.79% 30
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 25

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 67 (3.20%) Confluence
2 47 (2.24%) Apache
3 31 (1.48%) nginx
4 27 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.10%) OpenStack
5 23 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 23 (1.10%) WebLogic
6 20 (0.95%) Apache Spark
7 17 (0.81%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 17 (0.81%) SAS
8 15 (0.72%) JBoss
8 15 (0.72%) Tomcat
9 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
10 9 (0.43%) IIS
11 6 (0.29%) CMS
11 6 (0.29%) MTS
12 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.24%) WebLogic Portal
12 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
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
6 2 (0.095%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 9 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.048%) Magento
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Internet Expenses
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 606 (28.91%) AWS
2 517 (24.67%) Azure
3 182 (8.68%) GCP
4 166 (7.92%) GitHub
5 108 (5.15%) OpenShift
6 106 (5.06%) Entra ID
7 103 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
8 93 (4.44%) Amazon S3
9 91 (4.34%) Azure DevOps
10 83 (3.96%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.39%) Serverless
12 66 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
13 64 (3.05%) AWS CloudFormation
14 63 (3.01%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
16 56 (2.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 53 (2.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 51 (2.43%) IaaS
19 43 (2.05%) Datadog
20 42 (2.00%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 226 (10.78%) DNS
2 220 (10.50%) Firewall
3 151 (7.20%) TCP/IP
4 129 (6.15%) DHCP
5 88 (4.20%) VPN
6 82 (3.91%) Network Security
7 80 (3.82%) SAN
8 51 (2.43%) WAN
9 50 (2.39%) SSL
10 43 (2.05%) SSH
11 40 (1.91%) HTTP
11 40 (1.91%) VLAN
12 38 (1.81%) VSAN
13 34 (1.62%) LAN
14 27 (1.29%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.24%) SNMP
16 23 (1.10%) HTTPS
16 23 (1.10%) NAS
17 22 (1.05%) Wireless
18 21 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.77%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (5.49%) SQL Server
3 100 (4.77%) Oracle Database
4 72 (3.44%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.10%) MySQL
6 55 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.58%) MongoDB
8 43 (2.05%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
10 35 (1.67%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
12 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
13 27 (1.29%) Big Data
14 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.91%) Data Lake
15 19 (0.91%) Power BI
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 11g
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
17 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
17 17 (0.81%) Redis
Development Applications
1 271 (12.93%) Git
2 243 (11.59%) Jenkins
3 207 (9.88%) GitLab
4 159 (7.59%) JIRA
5 36 (1.72%) Maven
5 36 (1.72%) SonarQube
6 30 (1.43%) Bitbucket
7 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
8 24 (1.15%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.00%) Mockito
10 18 (0.86%) Selenium
11 17 (0.81%) JUnit
12 16 (0.76%) Eclipse
12 16 (0.76%) Gradle
13 12 (0.57%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
14 11 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.43%) JMeter
16 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 448 (21.37%) Social Skills
2 313 (14.93%) Finance
3 245 (11.69%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.30%) Public Sector
5 164 (7.82%) Banking
6 88 (4.20%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.34%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.67%) Front Office
10 32 (1.53%) Military
11 29 (1.38%) Legal
12 28 (1.34%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.91%) Law
15 18 (0.86%) Retail
16 17 (0.81%) Manufacturing
17 15 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
18 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.48%) Aviation
20 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 318 (15.17%) Senior
2 242 (11.55%) Linux Engineer
3 209 (9.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 191 (9.11%) Developer
5 185 (8.83%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (5.06%) Software Engineer
7 104 (4.96%) Architect
8 100 (4.77%) Platform Engineer
9 81 (3.86%) Cloud Engineer
9 81 (3.86%) Support Engineer
10 80 (3.82%) Lead
11 79 (3.77%) Consultant
12 74 (3.53%) Analyst
13 71 (3.39%) Java Developer
14 69 (3.29%) Administrator
15 66 (3.15%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 65 (3.10%) AWS Engineer
17 60 (2.86%) Systems Engineer
18 53 (2.53%) DBA
18 53 (2.53%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 500 (23.85%) Terraform
2 133 (6.35%) Kafka
3 120 (5.73%) REST
4 76 (3.63%) Middleware
5 74 (3.53%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.20%) .NET
7 54 (2.58%) RESTful
7 54 (2.58%) Spring
8 49 (2.34%) Spring Boot
9 43 (2.05%) LDAP
9 43 (2.05%) Web Services
10 38 (1.81%) JSON
11 36 (1.72%) XML
12 31 (1.48%) HTML
12 31 (1.48%) SOAP
13 30 (1.43%) YAML
14 28 (1.34%) Django
14 28 (1.34%) Node.js
14 28 (1.34%) React
15 27 (1.29%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 147 (7.01%) Onboarding
2 135 (6.44%) Cloud Native
3 131 (6.25%) Data Centre
4 110 (5.25%) PKI
5 107 (5.10%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.48%) Replication
7 85 (4.06%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.24%) Public Cloud
10 63 (3.01%) Management Information System
11 47 (2.24%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
13 40 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
14 39 (1.86%) Embedded Systems
14 39 (1.86%) Operational Technology
14 39 (1.86%) Private Cloud
15 38 (1.81%) Clustering
15 38 (1.81%) Enterprise Storage
15 38 (1.81%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 785 (37.45%) Windows
2 438 (20.90%) Unix
3 364 (17.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 247 (11.78%) Windows Server
5 112 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 59 (2.81%) AIX
7 58 (2.77%) CentOS
8 54 (2.58%) Solaris
9 39 (1.86%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.43%) VMS
11 29 (1.38%) Windows 10
12 28 (1.34%) SUSE
13 23 (1.10%) Rocky
14 20 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
15 19 (0.91%) Mac OS
16 17 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
17 16 (0.76%) Debian
17 16 (0.76%) Oracle Linux
18 13 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
19 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 628 (29.96%) CI/CD
2 548 (26.15%) DevOps
3 440 (20.99%) Infrastructure as Code
4 384 (18.32%) Agile
5 331 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
6 314 (14.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 289 (13.79%) Containerisation
8 253 (12.07%) Continuous Improvement
9 238 (11.35%) Observability
10 229 (10.93%) Migration
11 227 (10.83%) Platform Engineering
12 216 (10.31%) Software Engineering
13 203 (9.69%) High Availability
13 203 (9.69%) Root Cause Analysis
14 172 (8.21%) Performance Tuning
15 171 (8.16%) Configuration Management
15 171 (8.16%) ITIL
16 170 (8.11%) Test Automation
17 155 (7.40%) AI
18 154 (7.35%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 758 (36.16%) Python
2 425 (20.28%) Bash
3 404 (19.27%) PowerShell
4 376 (17.94%) SQL
5 244 (11.64%) Java
6 148 (7.06%) Shell Script
7 123 (5.87%) C++
8 77 (3.67%) Perl
9 76 (3.63%) JavaScript
10 75 (3.58%) C
11 74 (3.53%) C#
12 65 (3.10%) PL/SQL
13 55 (2.62%) Go
14 44 (2.10%) Bicep
15 26 (1.24%) Groovy
16 21 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.86%) Ada
17 18 (0.86%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 14 (0.67%) Scala
Qualifications
1 806 (38.45%) Security Cleared
2 581 (27.72%) SC Cleared
3 252 (12.02%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.73%) Degree
5 71 (3.39%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
8 57 (2.72%) CISSP
9 56 (2.67%) Azure Certification
10 55 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
11 24 (1.15%) CISM
11 24 (1.15%) RHCE
12 22 (1.05%) CCNP
13 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.86%) CCNA
14 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 17 (0.81%) ISTQB
16 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.72%) CompTIA Security+
18 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.58%) NIST
2 72 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 68 (3.24%) QA
4 32 (1.53%) SLA
5 23 (1.10%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.00%) GDPR
7 20 (0.95%) NCSC
8 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
9 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
10 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
11 14 (0.67%) GRC
12 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 9 (0.43%) ISO 31000
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
17 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 365 (17.41%) Docker
2 278 (13.26%) Active Directory
3 248 (11.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.34%) Hyper-V
5 81 (3.86%) vSphere
6 77 (3.67%) Virtual Machines
7 73 (3.48%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (2.81%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.96%) Firmware
10 39 (1.86%) Oracle RAC
11 36 (1.72%) NFS
12 26 (1.24%) KVM
13 19 (0.91%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.81%) Ceph
15 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.67%) Postfix
16 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.52%) GPFS
18 10 (0.48%) Squid
19 7 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 467 (22.28%) Ansible
2 462 (22.04%) Kubernetes
3 188 (8.97%) Grafana
4 168 (8.02%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.29%) Puppet
6 62 (2.96%) Progress Chef
7 51 (2.43%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.29%) SCCM
9 40 (1.91%) Data Guard
9 40 (1.91%) vCenter Server
10 30 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
11 29 (1.38%) Kibana
12 28 (1.34%) Nagios
12 28 (1.34%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.24%) Packer
13 26 (1.24%) Podman
13 26 (1.24%) VxRail
14 24 (1.15%) NetBackup
15 22 (1.05%) ZABBIX
16 21 (1.00%) Istio
Vendors
1 351 (16.75%) VMware
2 343 (16.36%) Microsoft
3 303 (14.46%) Oracle
4 228 (10.88%) Red Hat
5 167 (7.97%) Splunk
6 123 (5.87%) Cisco
7 112 (5.34%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.48%) IBM
9 86 (4.10%) Google
10 79 (3.77%) CyberArk
11 47 (2.24%) NetApp
12 46 (2.19%) SolarWinds
13 45 (2.15%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.91%) Dell
15 39 (1.86%) F5
15 39 (1.86%) Palo Alto
15 39 (1.86%) SAP
16 32 (1.53%) Dynatrace
17 30 (1.43%) Citrix
17 30 (1.43%) HP