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

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -12 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,968 1,779 2,464
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.92% 5.74% 5.53%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.66% 40.12% 39.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,242 1,073 1,625
10th Percentile £318 £356 £325
25th Percentile £400 £450 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £623 £656 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.10% - -4.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 55 124
10th Percentile £13.25 £41.75 £25.50
25th Percentile £41.25 £57.82 £48.23
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.75
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.00% -6.54%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.50 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% +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 4,840 4,434 6,238
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.10% 14.32% 14.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,214 2,778 4,189
10th Percentile £178 £199 £181
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -7.37% +2.70% -10.19%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £408 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -9.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 154 386
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.15 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.96 £16.94
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.89 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.38% +18.38% -1.87%
75th Percentile £54.38 £64.31 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.00 £69.63 £72.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £25.15
% change year-on-year -18.18% +9.35% -1.90%

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 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 13 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 13 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 -11 1,699 £507 -7.99% 726
UK excluding London -2 1,126 £483 -8.10% 634
London -16 636 £550 -8.33% 153
Work from Home -19 523 £492 -8.55% 317
South East 0 325 £479 -8.37% 185
North of England -2 291 £478 -13.09% 124
Midlands -5 191 £519 -5.64% 91
West Midlands -1 176 £525 -4.72% 64
Yorkshire -3 175 £500 -13.04% 33
South West -18 136 £550 -8.33% 95
North West -15 108 £462 -9.85% 72
Scotland -13 93 £425 -10.53% 72
East of England -9 90 £470 +4.44% 68
Northern Ireland +9 18 £400 +23.08% 4
East Midlands -33 15 £423 -11.89% 27
North East -17 13 £550 +16.83% 20
Wales -10 6 £571 +6.28% 9

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 84 (4.27%) Confluence
2 54 (2.74%) Apache
3 48 (2.44%) nginx
4 41 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 24 (1.22%) Apache Spark
6 20 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.97%) OpenStack
8 16 (0.81%) SharePoint
8 16 (0.81%) WebLogic
9 15 (0.76%) WebSphere
10 14 (0.71%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.66%) JBoss
11 13 (0.66%) Mattermost
11 13 (0.66%) TPMS
12 10 (0.51%) SAS
13 9 (0.46%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.36%) IIS
14 7 (0.36%) iPlanet
14 7 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
15 6 (0.30%) CICS
Applications
1 53 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.30%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 6 (0.30%) Weka
5 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.10%) Windchill
7 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
7 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.051%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.15%) 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 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.051%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.051%) RMDS
6 1 (0.051%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.051%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 586 (29.78%) AWS
2 375 (19.05%) Azure
3 192 (9.76%) GitHub
4 147 (7.47%) GCP
5 136 (6.91%) OpenShift
6 115 (5.84%) AWS CloudFormation
7 114 (5.79%) Serverless
8 98 (4.98%) Amazon EC2
9 95 (4.83%) GitHub Actions
10 81 (4.12%) Amazon S3
11 71 (3.61%) Amazon ECS
11 71 (3.61%) Amazon EKS
12 68 (3.46%) AWS Lambda
13 61 (3.10%) Azure DevOps
14 58 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 51 (2.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 47 (2.39%) IaaS
17 43 (2.18%) Microsoft 365
18 40 (2.03%) Entra ID
18 40 (2.03%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 209 (10.62%) Firewall
2 154 (7.83%) DNS
3 131 (6.66%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.61%) Network Security
5 62 (3.15%) VPN
6 50 (2.54%) SSH
7 46 (2.34%) DHCP
8 43 (2.18%) HTTP
8 43 (2.18%) SSL
9 34 (1.73%) SAN
10 31 (1.58%) VLAN
11 30 (1.52%) Wireless
12 28 (1.42%) WAN
13 24 (1.22%) BGP
13 24 (1.22%) Kerberos
13 24 (1.22%) VSAN
14 22 (1.12%) Ethernet
14 22 (1.12%) Skype
15 20 (1.02%) SNMP
15 20 (1.02%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (7.37%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (4.83%) SQL Server
3 93 (4.73%) Relational Database
4 85 (4.32%) Amazon RDS
5 82 (4.17%) MongoDB
6 74 (3.76%) NoSQL
7 72 (3.66%) MySQL
8 64 (3.25%) Oracle Database
9 54 (2.74%) Elasticsearch
10 27 (1.37%) DB2
11 25 (1.27%) Big Data
12 23 (1.17%) Hadoop
13 21 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
14 19 (0.97%) KDB
14 19 (0.97%) Kdb+
15 16 (0.81%) Data Lake
16 14 (0.71%) Apache Hive
17 13 (0.66%) Apache Cassandra
17 13 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 12 (0.61%) HBase
Development Applications
1 271 (13.77%) Jenkins
2 218 (11.08%) Git
3 206 (10.47%) GitLab
4 137 (6.96%) JIRA
5 51 (2.59%) JUnit
6 49 (2.49%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.13%) Bitbucket
8 32 (1.63%) Eclipse
9 30 (1.52%) Maven
9 30 (1.52%) Mockito
10 25 (1.27%) Cucumber
11 21 (1.07%) Liquibase
12 18 (0.91%) Burp Suite
13 16 (0.81%) Artifactory
13 16 (0.81%) Browser DevTools
13 16 (0.81%) JMeter
14 15 (0.76%) Android Studio
14 15 (0.76%) Metasploit
14 15 (0.76%) Xcode
15 14 (0.71%) Selenium
General
1 530 (26.93%) Social Skills
2 337 (17.12%) Finance
3 199 (10.11%) Analytical Skills
4 195 (9.91%) Public Sector
5 143 (7.27%) Banking
6 69 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.64%) Financial Institution
8 46 (2.34%) Military
9 37 (1.88%) Investment Banking
9 37 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
10 33 (1.68%) Front Office
11 23 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
12 22 (1.12%) Legal
13 19 (0.97%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.91%) Telecoms
15 17 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (0.71%) Law
17 13 (0.66%) Manufacturing
18 12 (0.61%) Retail
19 11 (0.56%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 297 (15.09%) Developer
2 249 (12.65%) Senior
3 182 (9.25%) DevOps Engineer
4 138 (7.01%) Software Engineer
5 127 (6.45%) Analyst
6 116 (5.89%) Java Developer
7 107 (5.44%) Architect
8 98 (4.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 90 (4.57%) Support Engineer
10 87 (4.42%) Linux Engineer
10 87 (4.42%) Platform Engineer
11 81 (4.12%) Lead
12 77 (3.91%) Administrator
13 76 (3.86%) AWS Engineer
14 69 (3.51%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 66 (3.35%) Site Engineer
16 59 (3.00%) AWS DevOps
17 57 (2.90%) Senior Software Engineer
18 55 (2.79%) Senior Developer
19 54 (2.74%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 161 (8.18%) Kafka
2 131 (6.66%) REST
3 123 (6.25%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.12%) Middleware
5 69 (3.51%) Spring
6 66 (3.35%) Node.js
7 58 (2.95%) RESTful
8 54 (2.74%) LDAP
9 53 (2.69%) React
10 51 (2.59%) JSON
11 49 (2.49%) XML
12 39 (1.98%) AngularJS
12 39 (1.98%) Spring Boot
13 38 (1.93%) SOAP
14 35 (1.78%) YAML
15 31 (1.58%) Web Services
16 27 (1.37%) ActiveMQ
16 27 (1.37%) CSS
17 26 (1.32%) OAuth
18 25 (1.27%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 109 (5.54%) Cloud Native
2 106 (5.39%) Data Centre
3 90 (4.57%) Linux Command Line
4 70 (3.56%) Management Information System
5 68 (3.46%) Distributed Systems
6 58 (2.95%) Public Cloud
7 57 (2.90%) Replication
8 56 (2.85%) PKI
9 51 (2.59%) Onboarding
10 50 (2.54%) Equities
11 39 (1.98%) Security Operations Centre
12 38 (1.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 36 (1.83%) Product Ownership
14 34 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
14 34 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
15 33 (1.68%) Data Structures
15 33 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
16 30 (1.52%) Fixed Income
16 30 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
17 29 (1.47%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 720 (36.59%) Windows
2 395 (20.07%) Unix
3 258 (13.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 151 (7.67%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.42%) Ubuntu
6 50 (2.54%) CentOS
7 39 (1.98%) Android
8 33 (1.68%) Mac OS X
9 31 (1.58%) Solaris
10 30 (1.52%) Mac OS
11 29 (1.47%) VMS
12 22 (1.12%) AIX
13 21 (1.07%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (1.02%) Windows 10
15 18 (0.91%) Embedded Linux
16 14 (0.71%) Kali Linux
16 14 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
17 12 (0.61%) Amazon Linux
17 12 (0.61%) Debian
18 10 (0.51%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 601 (30.54%) CI/CD
2 492 (25.00%) DevOps
3 436 (22.15%) Agile
4 389 (19.77%) Problem-Solving
5 323 (16.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 314 (15.96%) Containerisation
7 237 (12.04%) Software Engineering
8 200 (10.16%) Observability
9 186 (9.45%) Cybersecurity
10 172 (8.74%) Computer Science
11 168 (8.54%) Test Automation
12 167 (8.49%) Microservices
13 161 (8.18%) Continuous Improvement
14 157 (7.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 152 (7.72%) Incident Response
16 141 (7.16%) Platform Engineering
17 134 (6.81%) High Availability
18 133 (6.76%) SIEM
19 123 (6.25%) Performance Tuning
19 123 (6.25%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 761 (38.67%) Python
2 362 (18.39%) Java
3 353 (17.94%) SQL
4 336 (17.07%) Bash
5 287 (14.58%) PowerShell
6 209 (10.62%) Shell Script
7 173 (8.79%) C++
8 133 (6.76%) JavaScript
9 112 (5.69%) Perl
10 78 (3.96%) C#
11 73 (3.71%) Go
12 56 (2.85%) C
13 43 (2.18%) Ruby
14 32 (1.63%) TypeScript
15 31 (1.58%) Rust
16 26 (1.32%) PL/SQL
17 25 (1.27%) PHP
18 20 (1.02%) Groovy
18 20 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
19 18 (0.91%) Ada
Qualifications
1 699 (35.52%) Security Cleared
2 501 (25.46%) SC Cleared
3 217 (11.03%) Degree
4 175 (8.89%) DV Cleared
5 115 (5.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 90 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 68 (3.46%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
9 34 (1.73%) CISSP
9 34 (1.73%) Master's Degree
10 33 (1.68%) Azure Certification
10 33 (1.68%) CompTIA Security+
11 27 (1.37%) RHCE
12 25 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
13 21 (1.07%) CCNA
14 20 (1.02%) CCNP
15 19 (0.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 19 (0.97%) OSCP
16 17 (0.86%) CEH
16 17 (0.86%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (3.46%) NIST
2 51 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (2.13%) GDPR
3 42 (2.13%) QA
4 29 (1.47%) SLA
5 21 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
6 19 (0.97%) Data Quality
7 18 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.81%) NCSC
9 13 (0.66%) GLBA
10 10 (0.51%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.36%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
15 5 (0.25%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.15%) SEPA
System Software
1 414 (21.04%) Docker
2 229 (11.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 177 (8.99%) Active Directory
4 74 (3.76%) vSphere
5 66 (3.35%) Virtual Machines
6 53 (2.69%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.49%) VMware ESXi
8 28 (1.42%) GPFS
9 27 (1.37%) NFS
10 25 (1.27%) VMware NSX
11 21 (1.07%) KVM
12 18 (0.91%) Firmware
13 15 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.71%) Postfix
15 13 (0.66%) Oracle RAC
16 12 (0.61%) HDFS
16 12 (0.61%) Lustre
16 12 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
17 9 (0.46%) QEMU
18 8 (0.41%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 485 (24.64%) Kubernetes
2 411 (20.88%) Terraform
3 387 (19.66%) Ansible
4 213 (10.82%) Grafana
5 187 (9.50%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.76%) Puppet
7 64 (3.25%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.18%) vCenter Server
9 40 (2.03%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.88%) Argo
11 36 (1.83%) Packer
11 36 (1.83%) vRealize
12 35 (1.78%) Kibana
13 33 (1.68%) Podman
14 28 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
15 27 (1.37%) SCOM
16 25 (1.27%) SCCM
17 24 (1.22%) Nessus
18 20 (1.02%) ITRS Geneos
19 17 (0.86%) Nmap
Vendors
1 315 (16.01%) VMware
2 311 (15.80%) Microsoft
3 257 (13.06%) Oracle
4 245 (12.45%) Splunk
5 227 (11.53%) Red Hat
6 114 (5.79%) Cisco
7 80 (4.07%) IBM
8 78 (3.96%) ServiceNow
9 55 (2.79%) Google
10 45 (2.29%) Dell
11 42 (2.13%) CyberArk
12 34 (1.73%) AppDynamics
13 33 (1.68%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.42%) SolarWinds
15 26 (1.32%) CrowdStrike
16 24 (1.22%) Citrix
16 24 (1.22%) NetApp
17 23 (1.17%) NVIDIA
18 21 (1.07%) Databricks
19 20 (1.02%) HP