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

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 30 31
Rank change year-on-year -11 +1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,919 1,764 2,564
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.99% 5.68% 5.69%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.51% 40.02% 40.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,215 1,044 1,709
10th Percentile £316 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £449 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £656 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.57% - -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 59 122
10th Percentile £12.50 £42.25 £24.43
25th Percentile £41.25 £57.82 £50.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.75
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.00% -6.54%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.46 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +7.26% -4.62%

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 4,737 4,408 6,403
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.33% 14.19% 14.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,151 2,733 4,305
10th Percentile £173 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% +1.06% -8.56%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.35% - -6.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 157 393
10th Percentile £14.30 £16.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.76 £21.00 £16.86
Median hourly rate £23.79 £32.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.81% +30.00% -2.76%
75th Percentile £55.64 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.62 £69.25 £72.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.54 £29.89 £23.14
% change year-on-year -24.60% +29.20% -4.18%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 2 February 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 -12 1,649 £510 -7.44% 790
UK excluding London -1 1,089 £480 -8.57% 694
London -14 632 £550 -8.33% 223
Work from Home -16 503 £500 -7.41% 335
South East 0 305 £475 -9.09% 223
North of England +3 272 £480 -12.73% 128
Midlands -7 185 £520 -5.55% 83
West Midlands -1 170 £525 -4.72% 50
Yorkshire -2 163 £500 -13.61% 33
South West -17 135 £550 -8.33% 115
North West -18 101 £450 -18.18% 73
Scotland -7 100 £450 -7.60% 80
East of England -9 91 £470 +9.30% 66
Northern Ireland +11 19 £400 +23.08% 3
East Midlands -23 15 £423 -11.05% 33
North East -16 13 £550 +12.82% 23
Wales -7 5 £600 +11.63% 8

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 78 (4.06%) Confluence
2 56 (2.92%) Apache
3 47 (2.45%) nginx
4 40 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 26 (1.35%) Apache Spark
6 21 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (1.04%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.99%) WebSphere
9 17 (0.89%) SharePoint
10 16 (0.83%) JBoss
11 15 (0.78%) WebLogic
12 14 (0.73%) Skype for Business
13 13 (0.68%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.68%) TPMS
14 12 (0.63%) SAS
15 11 (0.57%) IIS
16 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
16 10 (0.52%) Tomcat
16 10 (0.52%) WebSphere Application Server
17 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 52 (2.71%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.10%) Windchill
8 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
8 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.052%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Finacle
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) RMDS
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 573 (29.86%) AWS
2 364 (18.97%) Azure
3 176 (9.17%) GitHub
4 140 (7.30%) GCP
5 138 (7.19%) OpenShift
6 113 (5.89%) AWS CloudFormation
7 110 (5.73%) Serverless
8 95 (4.95%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.74%) GitHub Actions
10 78 (4.06%) Amazon S3
11 70 (3.65%) Amazon ECS
12 65 (3.39%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (3.34%) Amazon EKS
14 59 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
15 55 (2.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 51 (2.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.61%) IaaS
18 47 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
19 44 (2.29%) SaaS
20 36 (1.88%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 206 (10.73%) Firewall
2 145 (7.56%) DNS
3 130 (6.77%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.70%) Network Security
5 52 (2.71%) VPN
6 49 (2.55%) SSH
7 46 (2.40%) DHCP
8 43 (2.24%) HTTP
9 42 (2.19%) SSL
10 34 (1.77%) SAN
11 30 (1.56%) VLAN
12 27 (1.41%) Kerberos
13 26 (1.35%) VSAN
13 26 (1.35%) Wireless
14 25 (1.30%) WAN
15 24 (1.25%) Skype
16 20 (1.04%) SMTP
17 19 (0.99%) BGP
17 19 (0.99%) Ethernet
17 19 (0.99%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (6.98%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.16%) Relational Database
3 92 (4.79%) SQL Server
4 80 (4.17%) Amazon RDS
5 73 (3.80%) MySQL
6 72 (3.75%) NoSQL
7 70 (3.65%) MongoDB
8 68 (3.54%) Oracle Database
9 51 (2.66%) Elasticsearch
10 27 (1.41%) Big Data
11 26 (1.35%) DB2
12 25 (1.30%) Hadoop
13 21 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
14 18 (0.94%) KDB
14 18 (0.94%) Kdb+
15 15 (0.78%) Apache Hive
16 14 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
16 14 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 13 (0.68%) GIS
17 13 (0.68%) HBase
Development Applications
1 260 (13.55%) Jenkins
2 215 (11.20%) Git
3 199 (10.37%) GitLab
4 127 (6.62%) JIRA
5 49 (2.55%) JUnit
5 49 (2.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 42 (2.19%) Bitbucket
7 32 (1.67%) Eclipse
8 25 (1.30%) Cucumber
8 25 (1.30%) Maven
9 21 (1.09%) Mockito
10 20 (1.04%) Liquibase
11 19 (0.99%) Burp Suite
12 17 (0.89%) Artifactory
12 17 (0.89%) Browser DevTools
13 16 (0.83%) Android Studio
13 16 (0.83%) JMeter
13 16 (0.83%) Metasploit
13 16 (0.83%) Xcode
14 15 (0.78%) Visual Studio
General
1 519 (27.05%) Social Skills
2 334 (17.40%) Finance
3 204 (10.63%) Analytical Skills
4 181 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 145 (7.56%) Banking
6 69 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.71%) Financial Institution
8 43 (2.24%) Investment Banking
8 43 (2.24%) Military
9 41 (2.14%) Front Office
10 38 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
11 23 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 19 (0.99%) Aerospace
12 19 (0.99%) Legal
13 17 (0.89%) Telecoms
14 14 (0.73%) Law
15 13 (0.68%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.63%) Back Office
16 12 (0.63%) Retail
17 11 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 287 (14.96%) Developer
2 237 (12.35%) Senior
3 175 (9.12%) DevOps Engineer
4 130 (6.77%) Software Engineer
5 123 (6.41%) Analyst
6 107 (5.58%) Java Developer
7 105 (5.47%) Architect
8 96 (5.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 91 (4.74%) Linux Engineer
10 90 (4.69%) Support Engineer
11 85 (4.43%) Platform Engineer
12 79 (4.12%) Administrator
13 76 (3.96%) Lead
14 74 (3.86%) AWS Engineer
15 66 (3.44%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 64 (3.34%) Site Engineer
17 61 (3.18%) AWS DevOps
18 56 (2.92%) Security Engineer
18 56 (2.92%) Senior Software Engineer
19 51 (2.66%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (8.08%) Kafka
2 124 (6.46%) REST
3 121 (6.31%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.22%) Middleware
5 65 (3.39%) Node.js
5 65 (3.39%) Spring
6 59 (3.07%) RESTful
7 56 (2.92%) LDAP
8 51 (2.66%) React
9 47 (2.45%) JSON
10 46 (2.40%) XML
11 36 (1.88%) AngularJS
11 36 (1.88%) YAML
12 34 (1.77%) SOAP
13 32 (1.67%) Spring Boot
14 30 (1.56%) OAuth
15 28 (1.46%) CSS
16 27 (1.41%) SAML
17 26 (1.35%) .NET
18 25 (1.30%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 100 (5.21%) Cloud Native
2 92 (4.79%) Data Centre
3 89 (4.64%) Linux Command Line
4 69 (3.60%) Management Information System
5 62 (3.23%) Replication
6 61 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
7 57 (2.97%) Public Cloud
8 54 (2.81%) PKI
9 52 (2.71%) Equities
10 47 (2.45%) Onboarding
11 40 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 37 (1.93%) Security Operations Centre
13 35 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
13 35 (1.82%) Data Structures
14 32 (1.67%) Product Ownership
15 30 (1.56%) Algorithms
15 30 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
16 29 (1.51%) Fixed Income
16 29 (1.51%) Hybrid Cloud
17 27 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 712 (37.10%) Windows
2 379 (19.75%) Unix
3 246 (12.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 139 (7.24%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.43%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.66%) CentOS
7 36 (1.88%) Android
8 30 (1.56%) Mac OS
8 30 (1.56%) Solaris
9 29 (1.51%) VMS
10 27 (1.41%) Mac OS X
11 22 (1.15%) Windows Server 2016
12 21 (1.09%) Windows 10
13 20 (1.04%) AIX
14 18 (0.94%) Embedded Linux
14 18 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.78%) Kali Linux
16 13 (0.68%) Amazon Linux
17 12 (0.63%) Debian
18 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 588 (30.64%) CI/CD
2 484 (25.22%) DevOps
3 427 (22.25%) Agile
4 375 (19.54%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (16.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 306 (15.95%) Containerisation
7 230 (11.99%) Software Engineering
8 195 (10.16%) Observability
9 182 (9.48%) Cybersecurity
10 166 (8.65%) Computer Science
11 161 (8.39%) Test Automation
12 151 (7.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 150 (7.82%) Continuous Improvement
13 150 (7.82%) Microservices
14 149 (7.76%) Incident Response
15 137 (7.14%) Platform Engineering
16 131 (6.83%) High Availability
17 127 (6.62%) SIEM
18 124 (6.46%) Performance Tuning
19 119 (6.20%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 750 (39.08%) Python
2 361 (18.81%) SQL
3 351 (18.29%) Java
4 337 (17.56%) Bash
5 286 (14.90%) PowerShell
6 207 (10.79%) Shell Script
7 173 (9.02%) C++
8 126 (6.57%) JavaScript
9 113 (5.89%) Perl
10 80 (4.17%) C#
11 69 (3.60%) Go
12 55 (2.87%) C
13 42 (2.19%) Ruby
14 29 (1.51%) Rust
14 29 (1.51%) TypeScript
15 28 (1.46%) PL/SQL
16 26 (1.35%) Groovy
17 24 (1.25%) PHP
18 21 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
19 17 (0.89%) Ada
Qualifications
1 655 (34.13%) Security Cleared
2 470 (24.49%) SC Cleared
3 209 (10.89%) Degree
4 162 (8.44%) DV Cleared
5 116 (6.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 81 (4.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.13%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.88%) Master's Degree
9 35 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
10 30 (1.56%) Azure Certification
10 30 (1.56%) CISSP
10 30 (1.56%) CompTIA Security+
11 27 (1.41%) RHCE
12 25 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
13 21 (1.09%) CCNA
14 20 (1.04%) OSCP
15 19 (0.99%) CCNP
16 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
16 17 (0.89%) GPEN
17 16 (0.83%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (3.07%) NIST
2 42 (2.19%) GDPR
2 42 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 41 (2.14%) QA
4 31 (1.62%) SLA
5 19 (0.99%) Data Quality
5 19 (0.99%) PCI DSS
6 18 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (0.89%) NCSC
8 13 (0.68%) GLBA
9 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
11 7 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 7 (0.36%) SOC 2
12 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
14 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
14 3 (0.16%) SEPA
15 2 (0.10%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 407 (21.21%) Docker
2 217 (11.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 169 (8.81%) Active Directory
4 72 (3.75%) vSphere
5 61 (3.18%) Virtual Machines
6 50 (2.61%) VMware ESXi
7 46 (2.40%) Hyper-V
8 28 (1.46%) GPFS
9 26 (1.35%) NFS
10 24 (1.25%) VMware NSX
11 21 (1.09%) KVM
12 17 (0.89%) Firmware
13 15 (0.78%) Oracle RAC
13 15 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 13 (0.68%) HDFS
15 12 (0.63%) Lustre
15 12 (0.63%) Postfix
15 12 (0.63%) Virtual Servers
16 10 (0.52%) DFS Replication
17 9 (0.47%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 464 (24.18%) Kubernetes
2 391 (20.38%) Terraform
3 368 (19.18%) Ansible
4 209 (10.89%) Grafana
5 181 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 75 (3.91%) Puppet
7 67 (3.49%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.19%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.98%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.93%) vRealize
11 35 (1.82%) Packer
12 34 (1.77%) Argo
12 34 (1.77%) Kibana
13 31 (1.62%) Podman
14 28 (1.46%) SCOM
15 27 (1.41%) SCCM
15 27 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
16 23 (1.20%) Nessus
17 21 (1.09%) ITRS Geneos
18 18 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 304 (15.84%) Microsoft
2 299 (15.58%) VMware
3 264 (13.76%) Oracle
4 243 (12.66%) Splunk
5 214 (11.15%) Red Hat
6 110 (5.73%) Cisco
7 79 (4.12%) IBM
8 75 (3.91%) ServiceNow
9 51 (2.66%) Google
10 45 (2.34%) Dell
11 42 (2.19%) AppDynamics
12 40 (2.08%) CyberArk
13 29 (1.51%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.41%) SolarWinds
15 26 (1.35%) CrowdStrike
16 22 (1.15%) Citrix
16 22 (1.15%) Solace
17 21 (1.09%) Commvault
17 21 (1.09%) NetApp
17 21 (1.09%) Sybase