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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -18 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,069 1,795 2,245
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.47% 5.78%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.68% 41.35% 41.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,290 1,109 1,450
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.66%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 59 120
10th Percentile £42.97 £41.25 £51.13
25th Percentile £54.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,214 4,341 5,435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.73% 13.23% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,307 2,767 3,591
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £318 £308 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £668 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 263 331
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.12% -10.91% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.70 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.33 £23.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +18.83% -40.26% +40.00%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 19 August 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 -21 1,751 £525 - 1,620
UK excluding London -16 1,210 £500 - 842
London -36 647 £550 -4.35% 906
Work from Home -25 538 £500 -3.85% 544
South East -4 353 £519 +3.75% 269
North of England -22 298 £500 - 144
South West -1 193 £550 -4.35% 143
North West -17 150 £500 +24.69% 87
Yorkshire -21 128 £500 -4.76% 30
Midlands -35 123 £470 -1.05% 69
Scotland -20 116 £438 -12.50% 57
East of England -13 103 £479 -2.30% 158
West Midlands -44 101 £470 -6.00% 33
Wales +6 29 £465 +64.60% 7
North East -15 27 £490 -14.78% 28
East Midlands -11 19 £513 +22.02% 36
Northern Ireland 0 2 - - 17

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 75 (3.62%) Confluence
2 51 (2.46%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (1.30%) nginx
5 24 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.01%) OpenStack
7 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
8 18 (0.87%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) Tomcat
9 17 (0.82%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.72%) JBoss
11 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.43%) IIS
13 9 (0.43%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) CICS
15 5 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
4 3 (0.14%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) InDesign
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 611 (29.53%) AWS
2 517 (24.99%) Azure
3 171 (8.26%) GCP
4 157 (7.59%) GitHub
5 109 (5.27%) OpenShift
6 98 (4.74%) Entra ID
7 94 (4.54%) GitHub Actions
8 91 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
9 87 (4.20%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.91%) Amazon EC2
11 63 (3.04%) Serverless
12 59 (2.85%) Amazon EKS
12 59 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
13 57 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 56 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
16 53 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.46%) IaaS
18 40 (1.93%) SaaS
19 38 (1.84%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 225 (10.87%) Firewall
2 217 (10.49%) DNS
3 134 (6.48%) TCP/IP
4 119 (5.75%) DHCP
5 85 (4.11%) VPN
6 77 (3.72%) SAN
7 76 (3.67%) Network Security
8 50 (2.42%) WAN
9 48 (2.32%) SSL
10 47 (2.27%) VSAN
11 40 (1.93%) LAN
12 38 (1.84%) HTTP
12 38 (1.84%) SSH
12 38 (1.84%) VLAN
13 30 (1.45%) SNMP
14 24 (1.16%) NAS
15 20 (0.97%) BGP
15 20 (0.97%) HTTPS
15 20 (0.97%) IPsec
15 20 (0.97%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.04%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.32%) PostgreSQL
3 96 (4.64%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.29%) MySQL
5 65 (3.14%) Relational Database
6 54 (2.61%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.46%) Amazon RDS
8 38 (1.84%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
11 30 (1.45%) RDBMS
12 28 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
13 25 (1.21%) Big Data
14 22 (1.06%) DynamoDB
15 21 (1.01%) SAP HANA
16 18 (0.87%) Data Lake
16 18 (0.87%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.87%) Power BI
17 17 (0.82%) Sybase ASE
18 16 (0.77%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 231 (11.16%) Jenkins
2 225 (10.87%) Git
3 188 (9.09%) GitLab
4 152 (7.35%) JIRA
5 36 (1.74%) Maven
6 33 (1.59%) Bitbucket
7 32 (1.55%) SonarQube
8 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.16%) Mockito
10 21 (1.01%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.01%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.92%) Selenium
12 18 (0.87%) JUnit
13 15 (0.72%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.53%) Gradle
16 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 10 (0.48%) DbUnit
16 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
17 9 (0.43%) jMock
General
1 429 (20.73%) Social Skills
2 310 (14.98%) Finance
3 238 (11.50%) Analytical Skills
4 181 (8.75%) Public Sector
5 159 (7.68%) Banking
6 78 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.84%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.79%) Front Office
9 35 (1.69%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.64%) Military
11 25 (1.21%) Legal
12 24 (1.16%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.06%) Law
13 22 (1.06%) Retail
14 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
17 15 (0.72%) Financial Institution
18 11 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
19 9 (0.43%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 298 (14.40%) Senior
2 226 (10.92%) Linux Engineer
3 192 (9.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 184 (8.89%) Developer
5 175 (8.46%) DevOps Engineer
6 113 (5.46%) Software Engineer
7 105 (5.07%) Architect
8 94 (4.54%) Platform Engineer
9 79 (3.82%) Consultant
9 79 (3.82%) Lead
10 78 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
11 77 (3.72%) Analyst
12 76 (3.67%) Support Engineer
13 71 (3.43%) Java Developer
14 64 (3.09%) AWS Engineer
15 59 (2.85%) Administrator
16 53 (2.56%) Network Engineer
16 53 (2.56%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 52 (2.51%) Security Engineer
17 52 (2.51%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (5.85%) Kafka
2 113 (5.46%) REST
3 72 (3.48%) Middleware
4 70 (3.38%) Elastic Stack
5 66 (3.19%) .NET
6 57 (2.75%) RESTful
7 53 (2.56%) Spring
8 49 (2.37%) Web Services
9 45 (2.17%) Spring Boot
10 36 (1.74%) LDAP
10 36 (1.74%) XML
11 35 (1.69%) JSON
12 33 (1.59%) Node.js
12 33 (1.59%) YAML
13 32 (1.55%) SOAP
14 27 (1.30%) HTML
15 25 (1.21%) ActiveMQ
16 24 (1.16%) React
17 23 (1.11%) ARM Templates
17 23 (1.11%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 142 (6.86%) Cloud Native
2 134 (6.48%) Onboarding
3 133 (6.43%) Data Centre
4 104 (5.03%) Linux Command Line
5 103 (4.98%) PKI
6 86 (4.16%) Distributed Systems
6 86 (4.16%) Replication
7 73 (3.53%) Hybrid Cloud
8 65 (3.14%) Public Cloud
9 62 (3.00%) Management Information System
10 54 (2.61%) Security Posture
11 44 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
12 40 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
13 39 (1.88%) Embedded Systems
14 36 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
15 35 (1.69%) Product Ownership
16 34 (1.64%) Clustering
17 33 (1.59%) Private Cloud
18 32 (1.55%) Operational Technology
19 31 (1.50%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 790 (38.18%) Windows
2 416 (20.11%) Unix
3 352 (17.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 234 (11.31%) Windows Server
5 115 (5.56%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.09%) AIX
7 54 (2.61%) Solaris
8 52 (2.51%) CentOS
9 39 (1.88%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.26%) VMS
11 25 (1.21%) SUSE
12 24 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
13 23 (1.11%) Windows 10
14 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
15 18 (0.87%) Mac OS
15 18 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.82%) Rocky
17 15 (0.72%) Debian
18 13 (0.63%) Android
19 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 596 (28.81%) CI/CD
2 522 (25.23%) DevOps
3 405 (19.57%) Infrastructure as Code
4 373 (18.03%) Agile
5 309 (14.93%) Problem-Solving
6 282 (13.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 270 (13.05%) Containerisation
8 244 (11.79%) Migration
9 234 (11.31%) Continuous Improvement
10 214 (10.34%) Observability
11 209 (10.10%) High Availability
12 208 (10.05%) Software Engineering
13 203 (9.81%) Platform Engineering
14 195 (9.42%) Root Cause Analysis
15 179 (8.65%) Performance Tuning
16 171 (8.26%) ITIL
17 164 (7.93%) Test Automation
18 157 (7.59%) Configuration Management
19 156 (7.54%) SIEM
20 146 (7.06%) AI
Programming Languages
1 735 (35.52%) Python
2 403 (19.48%) Bash
2 403 (19.48%) PowerShell
3 368 (17.79%) SQL
4 253 (12.23%) Java
5 147 (7.10%) Shell Script
6 137 (6.62%) C++
7 87 (4.20%) JavaScript
8 78 (3.77%) C
9 76 (3.67%) C#
10 60 (2.90%) Perl
10 60 (2.90%) PL/SQL
11 50 (2.42%) Go
12 41 (1.98%) Bicep
13 22 (1.06%) Search Processing Language
14 21 (1.01%) Ada
15 19 (0.92%) Groovy
16 17 (0.82%) Rust
16 17 (0.82%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.63%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 804 (38.86%) Security Cleared
2 597 (28.85%) SC Cleared
3 234 (11.31%) DV Cleared
4 178 (8.60%) Degree
5 73 (3.53%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.71%) Azure Certification
9 55 (2.66%) CISSP
10 54 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
11 27 (1.30%) RHCE
12 24 (1.16%) CCNP
13 21 (1.01%) CCNA
14 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.92%) CISM
16 18 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
16 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
18 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.62%) NIST
2 68 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 66 (3.19%) QA
4 31 (1.50%) SLA
5 25 (1.21%) Data Quality
6 24 (1.16%) GDPR
7 22 (1.06%) NCSC
8 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
9 17 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
10 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.63%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.63%) ISO 20022
12 11 (0.53%) GRC
13 9 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 15022
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.29%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 341 (16.48%) Docker
2 275 (13.29%) Active Directory
3 255 (12.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (4.45%) vSphere
5 88 (4.25%) Hyper-V
6 77 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
7 67 (3.24%) VMware ESXi
8 64 (3.09%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.98%) NFS
10 40 (1.93%) Firmware
10 40 (1.93%) Oracle RAC
11 27 (1.30%) KVM
12 17 (0.82%) Postfix
13 15 (0.72%) Ceph
14 14 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.58%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.58%) GPFS
16 10 (0.48%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 480 (23.20%) Terraform
2 454 (21.94%) Ansible
3 441 (21.31%) Kubernetes
4 173 (8.36%) Grafana
5 150 (7.25%) Prometheus
6 90 (4.35%) Puppet
7 68 (3.29%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.46%) Oracle RMAN
9 41 (1.98%) SCCM
10 39 (1.88%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.88%) vCenter Server
11 32 (1.55%) Nagios
12 29 (1.40%) Packer
13 27 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 26 (1.26%) Kibana
15 25 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
15 25 (1.21%) NetBackup
15 25 (1.21%) VxRail
16 23 (1.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 356 (17.21%) VMware
2 335 (16.19%) Microsoft
3 308 (14.89%) Oracle
4 232 (11.21%) Red Hat
5 153 (7.39%) Splunk
6 127 (6.14%) Cisco
7 110 (5.32%) ServiceNow
8 97 (4.69%) IBM
9 80 (3.87%) CyberArk
10 79 (3.82%) Google
11 50 (2.42%) SolarWinds
12 49 (2.37%) SAP
13 45 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
13 45 (2.17%) Palo Alto
14 41 (1.98%) NetApp
15 39 (1.88%) F5
16 38 (1.84%) HP
17 35 (1.69%) Dell
18 34 (1.64%) Dynatrace
19 33 (1.59%) Citrix