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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -13 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,909 1,774 2,451
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.68% 5.77% 5.49%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.03% 40.36% 39.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,211 1,079 1,609
10th Percentile £320 £356 £325
25th Percentile £401 £435 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -8.10% -0.94% -2.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 54 121
10th Percentile £12.75 £42.38 £26.25
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.42 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.61 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.50 £73.88 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £61.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% +9.02% -6.15%

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 4,769 4,395 6,214
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.70% 14.30% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,156 2,780 4,165
10th Percentile £176 £200 £181
25th Percentile £267 £313 £281
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.38% +2.15% -9.71%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £690 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 150 387
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.03 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £16.63
Median hourly rate £22.91 £29.00 £25.18
Median % change year-on-year -21.02% +15.17% -4.91%
75th Percentile £54.69 £64.69 £61.99
90th Percentile £69.99 £68.88 £71.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £25.18
% change year-on-year -18.18% +9.21% -4.95%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -14 1,646 £518 -5.91% 690
UK excluding London -5 1,095 £483 -8.10% 614
London -26 609 £550 -8.33% 184
Work from Home -17 509 £500 -4.76% 310
South East 0 321 £483 -8.10% 177
North of England -4 294 £492 -10.55% 128
Midlands -8 177 £525 - 85
Yorkshire -10 166 £500 -13.04% 33
West Midlands -6 163 £525 -1.13% 61
South West -18 134 £550 -8.33% 83
North West -11 118 £475 -5.00% 72
Scotland -20 86 £425 -9.09% 68
East of England -8 81 £473 +5.00% 70
Northern Ireland +7 16 £413 +26.92% 5
East Midlands -35 14 £420 -7.59% 24
North East -23 13 £538 +10.26% 24
Wales -10 6 £543 +0.93% 10

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 87 (4.56%) Confluence
2 49 (2.57%) nginx
3 48 (2.51%) Apache
4 42 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.00%) OpenStack
5 19 (1.00%) WebLogic
6 18 (0.94%) Apache Spark
7 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
8 14 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 14 (0.73%) WebSphere
9 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
9 13 (0.68%) TPMS
10 12 (0.63%) JBoss
11 10 (0.52%) SAS
12 9 (0.47%) Skype for Business
13 8 (0.42%) Mattermost
14 6 (0.31%) CICS
14 6 (0.31%) IIS
14 6 (0.31%) iPlanet
14 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 52 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.052%) Simulink
8 1 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.052%) RMDS
5 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.052%) Shopify
5 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 593 (31.06%) AWS
2 368 (19.28%) Azure
3 186 (9.74%) GitHub
4 142 (7.44%) GCP
5 138 (7.23%) OpenShift
6 113 (5.92%) Serverless
7 112 (5.87%) AWS CloudFormation
8 98 (5.13%) Amazon EC2
9 92 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
10 82 (4.30%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.88%) Amazon EKS
12 69 (3.61%) AWS Lambda
13 66 (3.46%) Amazon ECS
14 62 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
15 59 (3.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 50 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 45 (2.36%) IaaS
18 39 (2.04%) Entra ID
18 39 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
19 36 (1.89%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 208 (10.90%) Firewall
2 150 (7.86%) DNS
3 126 (6.60%) TCP/IP
4 65 (3.40%) Network Security
5 63 (3.30%) VPN
6 47 (2.46%) SSH
7 44 (2.30%) DHCP
8 43 (2.25%) SSL
9 39 (2.04%) HTTP
10 33 (1.73%) SAN
11 31 (1.62%) VLAN
12 28 (1.47%) WAN
12 28 (1.47%) Wireless
13 25 (1.31%) VSAN
14 23 (1.20%) BGP
14 23 (1.20%) Kerberos
15 20 (1.05%) SNMP
15 20 (1.05%) Wireshark
16 19 (1.00%) Ethernet
16 19 (1.00%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (7.49%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (4.98%) SQL Server
3 85 (4.45%) Amazon RDS
4 84 (4.40%) Relational Database
5 74 (3.88%) MongoDB
6 71 (3.72%) NoSQL
7 67 (3.51%) MySQL
8 64 (3.35%) Oracle Database
9 51 (2.67%) Elasticsearch
10 29 (1.52%) DB2
11 24 (1.26%) Big Data
12 20 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
13 17 (0.89%) Hadoop
13 17 (0.89%) KDB
13 17 (0.89%) Kdb+
14 15 (0.79%) Data Lake
15 13 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 12 (0.63%) DynamoDB
16 12 (0.63%) GIS
16 12 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 269 (14.09%) Jenkins
2 214 (11.21%) Git
3 203 (10.63%) GitLab
4 137 (7.18%) JIRA
5 52 (2.72%) JUnit
6 48 (2.51%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.20%) Bitbucket
8 34 (1.78%) Maven
9 27 (1.41%) Eclipse
10 25 (1.31%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.31%) Mockito
11 22 (1.15%) Liquibase
12 18 (0.94%) Burp Suite
12 18 (0.94%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.89%) Artifactory
14 16 (0.84%) JMeter
15 15 (0.79%) Metasploit
16 14 (0.73%) Android Studio
16 14 (0.73%) Selenium
16 14 (0.73%) Xcode
General
1 510 (26.72%) Social Skills
2 329 (17.23%) Finance
3 197 (10.32%) Public Sector
4 185 (9.69%) Analytical Skills
5 136 (7.12%) Banking
6 67 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.51%) Financial Institution
8 42 (2.20%) Military
9 34 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.78%) Presentation Skills
10 29 (1.52%) Front Office
11 24 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
12 21 (1.10%) Legal
13 20 (1.05%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.94%) Telecoms
15 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
16 15 (0.79%) Law
17 14 (0.73%) Manufacturing
17 14 (0.73%) Retail
18 12 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 274 (14.35%) Developer
2 247 (12.94%) Senior
3 185 (9.69%) DevOps Engineer
4 138 (7.23%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.60%) Analyst
6 111 (5.81%) Java Developer
7 109 (5.71%) Architect
8 94 (4.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 88 (4.61%) Linux Engineer
10 85 (4.45%) Support Engineer
11 83 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
12 81 (4.24%) Lead
13 76 (3.98%) Administrator
14 73 (3.82%) AWS Engineer
15 70 (3.67%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 67 (3.51%) Site Engineer
17 57 (2.99%) AWS DevOps
18 56 (2.93%) Senior Software Engineer
19 51 (2.67%) Security Engineer
20 47 (2.46%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (7.86%) Kafka
2 123 (6.44%) REST
3 121 (6.34%) Elastic Stack
4 80 (4.19%) Middleware
5 69 (3.61%) Spring
6 65 (3.40%) Node.js
7 54 (2.83%) LDAP
7 54 (2.83%) RESTful
8 47 (2.46%) JSON
8 47 (2.46%) React
9 45 (2.36%) XML
10 42 (2.20%) Spring Boot
11 38 (1.99%) AngularJS
12 36 (1.89%) YAML
13 35 (1.83%) SOAP
14 33 (1.73%) Web Services
15 26 (1.36%) .NET
16 25 (1.31%) CSS
17 22 (1.15%) ActiveMQ
17 22 (1.15%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 117 (6.13%) Cloud Native
2 104 (5.45%) Data Centre
3 87 (4.56%) Linux Command Line
4 74 (3.88%) Management Information System
5 72 (3.77%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (3.25%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.88%) PKI
8 52 (2.72%) Replication
9 47 (2.46%) Onboarding
10 45 (2.36%) Equities
11 38 (1.99%) Product Ownership
11 38 (1.99%) Security Operations Centre
12 35 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
13 34 (1.78%) Security Posture
14 33 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 32 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
16 31 (1.62%) Data Structures
16 31 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
17 29 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
18 28 (1.47%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 694 (36.35%) Windows
2 372 (19.49%) Unix
3 259 (13.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 149 (7.81%) Windows Server
5 86 (4.50%) Ubuntu
6 48 (2.51%) CentOS
7 39 (2.04%) Android
8 35 (1.83%) Solaris
9 30 (1.57%) Mac OS
10 27 (1.41%) VMS
11 26 (1.36%) Mac OS X
12 25 (1.31%) AIX
13 23 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (1.00%) Windows 10
15 18 (0.94%) Embedded Linux
16 16 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
17 14 (0.73%) Kali Linux
18 13 (0.68%) Debian
19 11 (0.58%) Apple iOS
19 11 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 588 (30.80%) CI/CD
2 493 (25.83%) DevOps
3 428 (22.42%) Agile
4 375 (19.64%) Problem-Solving
5 314 (16.45%) Containerisation
5 314 (16.45%) Infrastructure as Code
6 232 (12.15%) Software Engineering
7 198 (10.37%) Observability
8 176 (9.22%) Cybersecurity
9 168 (8.80%) Computer Science
10 166 (8.70%) Microservices
11 165 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
12 151 (7.91%) Incident Response
12 151 (7.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 151 (7.91%) Test Automation
13 137 (7.18%) Platform Engineering
14 129 (6.76%) High Availability
15 124 (6.50%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 121 (6.34%) SIEM
17 116 (6.08%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 708 (37.09%) Python
2 351 (18.39%) Java
3 332 (17.39%) SQL
4 326 (17.08%) Bash
5 264 (13.83%) PowerShell
6 192 (10.06%) Shell Script
7 162 (8.49%) C++
8 124 (6.50%) JavaScript
9 108 (5.66%) Perl
10 74 (3.88%) C#
11 70 (3.67%) Go
12 54 (2.83%) C
13 43 (2.25%) Ruby
14 32 (1.68%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.57%) Rust
16 29 (1.52%) PL/SQL
17 23 (1.20%) PHP
18 22 (1.15%) Ada
19 20 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
20 14 (0.73%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 696 (36.46%) Security Cleared
2 498 (26.09%) SC Cleared
3 214 (11.21%) Degree
4 171 (8.96%) DV Cleared
5 111 (5.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 85 (4.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 69 (3.61%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.10%) CISSP
9 38 (1.99%) CompTIA Security+
10 37 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.78%) Master's Degree
12 33 (1.73%) Azure Certification
13 31 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
14 29 (1.52%) RHCE
15 22 (1.15%) CCNA
16 21 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 21 (1.10%) CCNP
17 19 (1.00%) OSCP
18 17 (0.89%) GPEN
19 16 (0.84%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.82%) NIST
2 52 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 46 (2.41%) GDPR
4 40 (2.10%) QA
5 29 (1.52%) SLA
6 23 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (0.89%) Data Quality
7 17 (0.89%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.84%) NCSC
9 13 (0.68%) GLBA
10 11 (0.58%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.31%) Accessibility
14 6 (0.31%) NIST 800
15 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
16 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 411 (21.53%) Docker
2 220 (11.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 171 (8.96%) Active Directory
4 73 (3.82%) vSphere
5 69 (3.61%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (2.93%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.57%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (1.41%) GPFS
8 27 (1.41%) NFS
8 27 (1.41%) VMware NSX
9 22 (1.15%) KVM
10 17 (0.89%) Firmware
11 14 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
11 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 13 (0.68%) Postfix
13 12 (0.63%) Lustre
14 10 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.42%) QEMU
16 7 (0.37%) Ceph
16 7 (0.37%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 492 (25.77%) Kubernetes
2 410 (21.48%) Terraform
3 385 (20.17%) Ansible
4 209 (10.95%) Grafana
5 180 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 68 (3.56%) Puppet
7 63 (3.30%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.36%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.04%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.94%) Packer
11 35 (1.83%) Argo
12 34 (1.78%) vRealize
13 32 (1.68%) Podman
14 31 (1.62%) Kibana
15 27 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
16 25 (1.31%) SCCM
17 24 (1.26%) Nessus
18 22 (1.15%) SCOM
19 18 (0.94%) ITRS Geneos
20 17 (0.89%) Nmap
Vendors
1 303 (15.87%) VMware
2 298 (15.61%) Microsoft
3 250 (13.10%) Oracle
4 238 (12.47%) Splunk
5 227 (11.89%) Red Hat
6 109 (5.71%) Cisco
7 88 (4.61%) IBM
8 76 (3.98%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.78%) Google
10 41 (2.15%) Dell
11 35 (1.83%) CyberArk
11 35 (1.83%) Palo Alto
12 32 (1.68%) AppDynamics
13 27 (1.41%) SolarWinds
14 24 (1.26%) Citrix
15 23 (1.20%) CrowdStrike
15 23 (1.20%) NetApp
15 23 (1.20%) NVIDIA
16 22 (1.15%) Atlassian
17 19 (1.00%) Commvault