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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 31 27
Rank change year-on-year -10 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,928 1,777 2,637
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.19% 5.60% 6.09%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.96% 39.79% 41.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,210 1,055 1,774
10th Percentile £313 £356 £350
25th Percentile £402 £455 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £618 £659 £650
90th Percentile £714 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.10% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 62 119
10th Percentile £13.00 £45.00 £23.72
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.94 £48.32
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £74.63 £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 4,707 4,466 6,341
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.68% 14.07% 14.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,121 2,781 4,310
10th Percentile £173 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £288
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £690 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 329 169 329
10th Percentile £14.80 £16.25 £14.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.08 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.36% +16.67% +20.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.20 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.79 £32.50 £25.25
% change year-on-year -26.81% +28.71% +12.22%

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 18 January 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 18 January 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 18 January 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 -10 1,653 £513 -6.99% 1,209
UK excluding London -1 1,106 £483 -8.10% 1,159
London -12 637 £550 -8.33% 196
Work from Home -13 508 £500 -6.76% 464
South East +5 302 £475 -9.31% 397
North of England +3 269 £485 -11.91% 192
Midlands +3 203 £525 -4.55% 139
West Midlands +2 185 £525 -4.72% 43
Yorkshire +9 168 £500 -17.36% 74
South West -18 125 £550 -8.33% 168
Scotland -1 118 £450 -8.16% 68
North West -13 95 £452 -17.91% 83
East of England -7 91 £475 +11.76% 159
East Midlands -18 18 £420 -4.55% 93
Northern Ireland +7 16 £400 +23.08% 24
North East -16 12 £550 +8.64% 36
Wales -8 5 £600 +11.63% 42

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 79 (4.10%) Confluence
2 67 (3.48%) Apache
3 44 (2.28%) nginx
4 37 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
5 29 (1.50%) Apache Spark
6 23 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
6 23 (1.19%) OpenStack
6 23 (1.19%) WebLogic
7 21 (1.09%) WebSphere
8 16 (0.83%) JBoss
8 16 (0.83%) SharePoint
9 14 (0.73%) Mattermost
9 14 (0.73%) Skype for Business
10 13 (0.67%) SAS
11 12 (0.62%) Tomcat
11 12 (0.62%) TPMS
12 11 (0.57%) IIS
12 11 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
13 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
14 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 60 (3.11%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.47%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.052%) Siemens NX
9 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
4 3 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
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%) Shopify
6 1 (0.052%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 578 (29.98%) AWS
2 379 (19.66%) Azure
3 185 (9.60%) GitHub
4 144 (7.47%) GCP
5 129 (6.69%) OpenShift
6 114 (5.91%) AWS CloudFormation
7 107 (5.55%) Serverless
8 100 (5.19%) Amazon EC2
9 90 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
10 80 (4.15%) Amazon S3
11 72 (3.73%) Amazon ECS
12 67 (3.48%) Amazon EKS
13 61 (3.16%) AWS Lambda
13 61 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
14 59 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 59 (3.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 51 (2.65%) SaaS
16 50 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
17 49 (2.54%) IaaS
18 37 (1.92%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 211 (10.94%) Firewall
2 156 (8.09%) DNS
3 138 (7.16%) TCP/IP
4 65 (3.37%) Network Security
5 57 (2.96%) SSH
6 51 (2.65%) SSL
7 49 (2.54%) HTTP
8 48 (2.49%) DHCP
9 47 (2.44%) VPN
10 31 (1.61%) VLAN
11 30 (1.56%) SMTP
12 29 (1.50%) SAN
12 29 (1.50%) Wireless
13 27 (1.40%) Kerberos
14 26 (1.35%) VSAN
15 25 (1.30%) WAN
16 24 (1.24%) Skype
17 20 (1.04%) Ethernet
17 20 (1.04%) LAN
18 19 (0.99%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (7.00%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (5.19%) Relational Database
3 97 (5.03%) SQL Server
4 84 (4.36%) Oracle Database
5 79 (4.10%) Amazon RDS
6 76 (3.94%) NoSQL
7 75 (3.89%) MongoDB
8 72 (3.73%) MySQL
9 48 (2.49%) Elasticsearch
10 28 (1.45%) DB2
10 28 (1.45%) Hadoop
11 26 (1.35%) Big Data
12 22 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.83%) Apache Hive
14 14 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
14 14 (0.73%) HBase
14 14 (0.73%) Redis
15 13 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
15 13 (0.67%) Data Lake
15 13 (0.67%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 270 (14.00%) Jenkins
2 233 (12.09%) Git
3 186 (9.65%) GitLab
4 128 (6.64%) JIRA
5 58 (3.01%) JUnit
6 52 (2.70%) Sonatype Nexus
7 44 (2.28%) Bitbucket
8 39 (2.02%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.30%) Maven
10 24 (1.24%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.14%) Liquibase
12 21 (1.09%) Mockito
13 20 (1.04%) Visual Studio
14 19 (0.99%) Browser DevTools
15 18 (0.93%) Android Studio
15 18 (0.93%) Artifactory
15 18 (0.93%) Burp Suite
15 18 (0.93%) Xcode
16 16 (0.83%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.83%) JMeter
General
1 567 (29.41%) Social Skills
2 348 (18.05%) Finance
3 208 (10.79%) Analytical Skills
4 180 (9.34%) Public Sector
5 154 (7.99%) Banking
6 72 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.70%) Financial Institution
8 51 (2.65%) Investment Banking
9 45 (2.33%) Military
10 44 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
11 42 (2.18%) Front Office
12 23 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 19 (0.99%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.93%) Legal
15 16 (0.83%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.83%) Telecoms
16 12 (0.62%) Back Office
16 12 (0.62%) Law
17 10 (0.52%) Retail
18 8 (0.41%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 292 (15.15%) Developer
2 234 (12.14%) Senior
3 172 (8.92%) DevOps Engineer
4 134 (6.95%) Software Engineer
5 120 (6.22%) Analyst
6 109 (5.65%) Java Developer
7 105 (5.45%) Architect
8 100 (5.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 92 (4.77%) Linux Engineer
9 92 (4.77%) Support Engineer
10 88 (4.56%) Platform Engineer
11 77 (3.99%) Administrator
12 73 (3.79%) AWS Engineer
13 68 (3.53%) Lead
14 66 (3.42%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 64 (3.32%) Security Engineer
15 64 (3.32%) Site Engineer
16 59 (3.06%) AWS DevOps
17 54 (2.80%) C++ Software Engineer
18 53 (2.75%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (8.20%) Kafka
2 131 (6.79%) REST
3 121 (6.28%) Elastic Stack
4 78 (4.05%) Middleware
5 67 (3.48%) RESTful
6 66 (3.42%) Node.js
7 65 (3.37%) Spring
8 60 (3.11%) LDAP
9 54 (2.80%) React
10 51 (2.65%) JSON
11 47 (2.44%) XML
12 42 (2.18%) AngularJS
13 37 (1.92%) SOAP
14 35 (1.82%) YAML
15 32 (1.66%) OAuth
16 31 (1.61%) CSS
17 29 (1.50%) FastAPI
17 29 (1.50%) Web Services
18 26 (1.35%) GraphQL
18 26 (1.35%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (5.29%) Cloud Native
2 92 (4.77%) Linux Command Line
3 83 (4.30%) Data Centre
4 74 (3.84%) Replication
5 71 (3.68%) Management Information System
6 58 (3.01%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
7 55 (2.85%) Equities
8 51 (2.65%) PKI
9 46 (2.39%) Onboarding
10 42 (2.18%) Data Structures
11 39 (2.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 38 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (1.71%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.66%) Security Operations Centre
15 29 (1.50%) Algorithms
16 27 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
16 27 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
16 27 (1.40%) Fixed Income
16 27 (1.40%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 712 (36.93%) Windows
2 397 (20.59%) Unix
3 251 (13.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 137 (7.11%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.41%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.65%) CentOS
7 43 (2.23%) Android
8 34 (1.76%) Mac OS
8 34 (1.76%) VMS
9 30 (1.56%) Solaris
10 27 (1.40%) Mac OS X
11 23 (1.19%) Windows 10
12 19 (0.99%) AIX
12 19 (0.99%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.88%) Amazon Linux
14 15 (0.78%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.73%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.73%) Kali Linux
16 12 (0.62%) Debian
17 11 (0.57%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 578 (29.98%) CI/CD
2 487 (25.26%) DevOps
3 448 (23.24%) Agile
4 374 (19.40%) Problem-Solving
5 306 (15.87%) Infrastructure as Code
6 302 (15.66%) Containerisation
7 247 (12.81%) Software Engineering
8 200 (10.37%) Observability
9 183 (9.49%) Cybersecurity
10 164 (8.51%) Computer Science
11 158 (8.20%) Test Automation
12 152 (7.88%) Continuous Improvement
12 152 (7.88%) Incident Response
13 145 (7.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 142 (7.37%) Microservices
15 134 (6.95%) Platform Engineering
16 131 (6.79%) High Availability
17 128 (6.64%) Performance Tuning
18 127 (6.59%) Configuration Management
19 124 (6.43%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 780 (40.46%) Python
2 373 (19.35%) SQL
3 366 (18.98%) Java
4 329 (17.06%) Bash
5 284 (14.73%) PowerShell
6 220 (11.41%) Shell Script
7 187 (9.70%) C++
8 138 (7.16%) JavaScript
9 131 (6.79%) Perl
10 91 (4.72%) C#
11 76 (3.94%) Go
12 57 (2.96%) C
13 41 (2.13%) Ruby
14 30 (1.56%) Groovy
15 29 (1.50%) Rust
16 28 (1.45%) TypeScript
17 26 (1.35%) PL/SQL
18 22 (1.14%) PHP
19 18 (0.93%) Kusto Query Language
20 15 (0.78%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 632 (32.78%) Security Cleared
2 458 (23.76%) SC Cleared
3 213 (11.05%) Degree
4 147 (7.62%) DV Cleared
5 113 (5.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 78 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.11%) AWS Certification
8 35 (1.82%) Master's Degree
9 31 (1.61%) Azure Certification
9 31 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
10 30 (1.56%) CISSP
11 26 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
12 25 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
12 25 (1.30%) RHCE
13 20 (1.04%) OSCP
14 19 (0.99%) CCNP
15 18 (0.93%) CCNA
16 17 (0.88%) GPEN
17 16 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.83%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (2.96%) NIST
2 41 (2.13%) GDPR
2 41 (2.13%) QA
3 40 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 30 (1.56%) SLA
5 20 (1.04%) Data Quality
6 18 (0.93%) PCI DSS
7 16 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (0.83%) NCSC
8 12 (0.62%) GLBA
9 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 9 (0.47%) SOC 2
12 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.16%) SEPA
16 2 (0.10%) IFRS
System Software
1 400 (20.75%) Docker
2 204 (10.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 169 (8.77%) Active Directory
4 71 (3.68%) vSphere
5 53 (2.75%) Virtual Machines
6 45 (2.33%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (2.13%) Hyper-V
8 27 (1.40%) GPFS
8 27 (1.40%) NFS
9 24 (1.24%) Oracle RAC
10 21 (1.09%) KVM
11 20 (1.04%) Postfix
12 17 (0.88%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 17 (0.88%) VMware NSX
13 16 (0.83%) Firmware
14 15 (0.78%) Dovecot
15 14 (0.73%) DFS Replication
15 14 (0.73%) HDFS
16 12 (0.62%) Lustre
16 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 460 (23.86%) Kubernetes
2 390 (20.23%) Terraform
3 385 (19.97%) Ansible
4 207 (10.74%) Grafana
5 183 (9.49%) Prometheus
6 77 (3.99%) Puppet
7 66 (3.42%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.18%) Red Hat Satellite
9 37 (1.92%) vCenter Server
10 36 (1.87%) Packer
11 35 (1.82%) vRealize
12 34 (1.76%) Argo
13 33 (1.71%) Kibana
13 33 (1.71%) Podman
14 30 (1.56%) SCCM
15 29 (1.50%) SCOM
16 26 (1.35%) Data Guard
16 26 (1.35%) Nessus
17 25 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
18 20 (1.04%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 295 (15.30%) Microsoft
2 288 (14.94%) Oracle
2 288 (14.94%) VMware
3 251 (13.02%) Splunk
4 221 (11.46%) Red Hat
5 119 (6.17%) Cisco
6 83 (4.30%) ServiceNow
7 73 (3.79%) IBM
8 53 (2.75%) Google
9 51 (2.65%) AppDynamics
10 47 (2.44%) Dell
11 44 (2.28%) CyberArk
12 31 (1.61%) CrowdStrike
12 31 (1.61%) Palo Alto
13 27 (1.40%) SolarWinds
14 26 (1.35%) Sybase
15 25 (1.30%) NetApp
16 23 (1.19%) Citrix
16 23 (1.19%) Solace
17 21 (1.09%) Dynatrace