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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -19 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,907 1,759 2,300
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.25% 6.05% 5.21%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.01% 42.78% 38.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,216 1,135 1,521
10th Percentile £325 £375 £324
25th Percentile £401 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £543
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +1.29% -7.18%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £534 £533
% change year-on-year -7.78% +0.09% -1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 48 105
10th Percentile £21.30 £43.65 £25.61
25th Percentile £41.25 £56.03 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.21 £69.50 £70.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 4,766 4,112 5,971
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.62% 14.14% 13.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,124 2,743 3,996
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £300 £325 £285
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £460
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.26% -10.24%
75th Percentile £568 £600 £594
90th Percentile £654 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £438
% change year-on-year -5.56% +2.86% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 164 405
10th Percentile £15.15 £16.55 £12.80
25th Percentile £18.31 £18.18 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.00 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% +12.09% -25.80%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.69 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.12 £67.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.79 £24.42 £20.00
% change year-on-year -2.59% +22.10% -24.53%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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 -22 1,627 £520 -5.45% 832
UK excluding London -10 1,121 £492 -7.78% 721
London -43 570 £550 -8.33% 200
Work from Home -26 488 £500 -6.54% 308
South East -2 314 £500 -9.09% 206
North of England -7 305 £500 -9.09% 125
Midlands -9 173 £475 -9.52% 75
Yorkshire -15 165 £475 -13.64% 41
West Midlands -2 155 £475 -12.04% 41
South West -19 149 £539 -10.21% 144
North West -14 130 £538 +7.50% 58
East of England -14 89 £452 -3.32% 117
Scotland -21 83 £419 -10.90% 44
East Midlands -37 17 £478 +4.03% 34
Northern Ireland +7 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -14 12 £550 +4.76% 27
Wales -14 8 £404 -26.59% 23

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 96 (5.03%) Confluence
2 45 (2.36%) nginx
3 44 (2.31%) Apache
4 38 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 17 (0.89%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.84%) WebLogic
7 15 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
8 13 (0.68%) SAS
8 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
9 11 (0.58%) TPMS
10 10 (0.52%) CICS
11 9 (0.47%) WebSphere
12 6 (0.31%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.21%) JBoss
14 3 (0.16%) IBM HTTP Server
14 3 (0.16%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 45 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.52%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.26%) Weka
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 3 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) Odoo
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%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 559 (29.31%) AWS
2 376 (19.72%) Azure
3 177 (9.28%) GitHub
4 138 (7.24%) OpenShift
5 125 (6.55%) GCP
6 99 (5.19%) AWS CloudFormation
7 98 (5.14%) Amazon EC2
8 97 (5.09%) Serverless
9 92 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
10 81 (4.25%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.88%) Amazon EKS
12 65 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
13 64 (3.36%) AWS Lambda
14 59 (3.09%) Amazon ECS
15 57 (2.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 47 (2.46%) IaaS
17 42 (2.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 39 (2.05%) Entra ID
19 37 (1.94%) SaaS
20 36 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 213 (11.17%) Firewall
2 137 (7.18%) DNS
3 105 (5.51%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.72%) VPN
5 70 (3.67%) Network Security
6 51 (2.67%) SAN
7 46 (2.41%) SSH
8 40 (2.10%) DHCP
8 40 (2.10%) VSAN
9 37 (1.94%) WAN
10 35 (1.84%) HTTP
11 32 (1.68%) SNMP
11 32 (1.68%) SSL
12 31 (1.63%) LAN
13 24 (1.26%) Ethernet
14 23 (1.21%) BGP
14 23 (1.21%) Wireless
15 20 (1.05%) NAS
16 19 (1.00%) Kerberos
16 19 (1.00%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (7.50%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (4.98%) SQL Server
3 73 (3.83%) Amazon RDS
4 69 (3.62%) MySQL
5 67 (3.51%) Relational Database
6 66 (3.46%) MongoDB
7 60 (3.15%) Oracle Database
8 46 (2.41%) NoSQL
9 39 (2.05%) Elasticsearch
10 23 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
11 19 (1.00%) KDB
12 18 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
12 18 (0.94%) Kdb+
13 17 (0.89%) Big Data
13 17 (0.89%) DynamoDB
14 16 (0.84%) DB2
15 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
16 13 (0.68%) Hadoop
17 12 (0.63%) SAP HANA
17 12 (0.63%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 243 (12.74%) Jenkins
2 197 (10.33%) Git
3 187 (9.81%) GitLab
4 154 (8.08%) JIRA
5 37 (1.94%) Bitbucket
5 37 (1.94%) JUnit
6 34 (1.78%) Sonatype Nexus
7 33 (1.73%) Maven
8 28 (1.47%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.31%) Mockito
10 21 (1.10%) Cucumber
11 20 (1.05%) Artifactory
11 20 (1.05%) SonarQube
12 16 (0.84%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.68%) JMeter
14 12 (0.63%) Selenium
15 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
15 11 (0.58%) Liquibase
16 10 (0.52%) Burp Suite
16 10 (0.52%) jMock
General
1 451 (23.65%) Social Skills
2 302 (15.84%) Finance
3 187 (9.81%) Public Sector
4 158 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
5 126 (6.61%) Banking
6 63 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.41%) Military
8 38 (1.99%) Financial Institution
9 32 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
10 23 (1.21%) Investment Banking
11 22 (1.15%) Front Office
11 22 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
11 22 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 21 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 20 (1.05%) Aerospace
14 19 (1.00%) Retail
15 18 (0.94%) Legal
16 17 (0.89%) Law
17 14 (0.73%) Manufacturing
18 10 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 235 (12.32%) Senior
2 231 (12.11%) Developer
3 164 (8.60%) DevOps Engineer
4 136 (7.13%) Software Engineer
5 125 (6.55%) Architect
6 120 (6.29%) Analyst
7 118 (6.19%) Linux Engineer
8 92 (4.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 86 (4.51%) Lead
10 83 (4.35%) Java Developer
11 81 (4.25%) Administrator
12 74 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
13 71 (3.72%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 66 (3.46%) AWS Engineer
14 66 (3.46%) Site Engineer
15 52 (2.73%) AWS DevOps
15 52 (2.73%) Consultant
16 51 (2.67%) Security Engineer
17 49 (2.57%) Support Engineer
18 41 (2.15%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (6.14%) Kafka
2 110 (5.77%) REST
3 99 (5.19%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.67%) Node.js
5 68 (3.57%) Middleware
6 54 (2.83%) LDAP
7 53 (2.78%) Spring
8 46 (2.41%) RESTful
9 43 (2.25%) Spring Boot
10 41 (2.15%) Web Services
11 34 (1.78%) XML
11 34 (1.78%) YAML
12 33 (1.73%) JSON
13 30 (1.57%) React
14 29 (1.52%) .NET
14 29 (1.52%) AngularJS
15 28 (1.47%) SOAP
16 22 (1.15%) ActiveMQ
16 22 (1.15%) SAML
17 20 (1.05%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 116 (6.08%) Data Centre
2 110 (5.77%) Cloud Native
3 80 (4.20%) Linux Command Line
4 73 (3.83%) Distributed Systems
5 65 (3.41%) Public Cloud
6 64 (3.36%) Management Information System
7 56 (2.94%) PKI
8 55 (2.88%) Onboarding
9 52 (2.73%) Replication
10 49 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
11 43 (2.25%) Product Ownership
12 34 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
13 33 (1.73%) Security Operations Centre
14 31 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.63%) Equities
15 29 (1.52%) Security Posture
16 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
16 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Storage
17 25 (1.31%) Fixed Income
18 23 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 712 (37.34%) Windows
2 334 (17.51%) Unix
3 275 (14.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 166 (8.70%) Windows Server
5 89 (4.67%) Ubuntu
6 44 (2.31%) AIX
7 43 (2.25%) CentOS
8 36 (1.89%) Android
9 35 (1.84%) Solaris
10 34 (1.78%) VMS
11 29 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
12 24 (1.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.10%) Mac OS
14 19 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
15 17 (0.89%) Debian
16 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
17 11 (0.58%) SUSE
18 10 (0.52%) Apple iOS
18 10 (0.52%) Windows 10
18 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (29.94%) CI/CD
2 474 (24.86%) DevOps
3 413 (21.66%) Agile
4 337 (17.67%) Problem-Solving
5 299 (15.68%) Containerisation
5 299 (15.68%) Infrastructure as Code
6 215 (11.27%) Software Engineering
7 188 (9.86%) Observability
8 157 (8.23%) Migration
9 152 (7.97%) Computer Science
9 152 (7.97%) Microservices
10 151 (7.92%) Cybersecurity
10 151 (7.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 149 (7.81%) Continuous Improvement
12 141 (7.39%) Test Automation
13 139 (7.29%) Incident Response
14 138 (7.24%) High Availability
15 136 (7.13%) Platform Engineering
16 126 (6.61%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 124 (6.50%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 668 (35.03%) Python
2 310 (16.26%) SQL
3 296 (15.52%) Bash
4 294 (15.42%) Java
5 273 (14.32%) PowerShell
6 179 (9.39%) Shell Script
7 140 (7.34%) C++
8 109 (5.72%) JavaScript
9 89 (4.67%) Perl
10 67 (3.51%) C#
11 52 (2.73%) Go
12 51 (2.67%) C
13 42 (2.20%) Ruby
14 39 (2.05%) PL/SQL
15 32 (1.68%) TypeScript
16 25 (1.31%) PHP
17 24 (1.26%) Rust
18 20 (1.05%) MATLAB
19 18 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
20 17 (0.89%) Ada
Qualifications
1 744 (39.01%) Security Cleared
2 548 (28.74%) SC Cleared
3 193 (10.12%) Degree
3 193 (10.12%) DV Cleared
4 93 (4.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 92 (4.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 52 (2.73%) AWS Certification
7 43 (2.25%) Cisco Certification
8 40 (2.10%) CompTIA Security+
9 39 (2.05%) CISSP
10 26 (1.36%) CCNA
10 26 (1.36%) RHCE
11 25 (1.31%) CCNP
11 25 (1.31%) Master's Degree
12 23 (1.21%) Azure Certification
13 21 (1.10%) Oracle Certification
14 18 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
14 18 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.94%) OCP
15 17 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.93%) NIST
2 59 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 49 (2.57%) QA
4 43 (2.25%) GDPR
5 35 (1.84%) SLA
6 26 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
7 22 (1.15%) NCSC
8 21 (1.10%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.68%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.58%) GLBA
10 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.52%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
13 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
14 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.21%) DICOM
15 4 (0.21%) GRC
15 4 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 382 (20.03%) Docker
2 237 (12.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 166 (8.70%) Active Directory
4 93 (4.88%) vSphere
5 71 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
6 63 (3.30%) Hyper-V
7 59 (3.09%) VMware ESXi
8 40 (2.10%) VMware NSX
9 36 (1.89%) NFS
10 33 (1.73%) Firmware
11 27 (1.42%) GPFS
12 21 (1.10%) KVM
13 17 (0.89%) Oracle RAC
13 17 (0.89%) Postfix
14 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.58%) Ceph
15 11 (0.58%) Lustre
16 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 471 (24.70%) Kubernetes
2 400 (20.98%) Terraform
3 384 (20.14%) Ansible
4 196 (10.28%) Grafana
5 163 (8.55%) Prometheus
6 66 (3.46%) Puppet
7 59 (3.09%) Progress Chef
8 48 (2.52%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.05%) vRealize
10 36 (1.89%) Argo
11 35 (1.84%) Packer
12 31 (1.63%) Podman
13 29 (1.52%) Red Hat Satellite
14 25 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
15 22 (1.15%) Kibana
15 22 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
16 21 (1.10%) VxRail
17 20 (1.05%) SCCM
18 18 (0.94%) Nessus
19 17 (0.89%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 318 (16.68%) VMware
2 280 (14.68%) Microsoft
3 243 (12.74%) Oracle
4 229 (12.01%) Red Hat
5 195 (10.23%) Splunk
6 109 (5.72%) Cisco
7 97 (5.09%) IBM
8 69 (3.62%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.73%) Dell
10 51 (2.67%) Google
11 41 (2.15%) Palo Alto
12 37 (1.94%) SolarWinds
13 36 (1.89%) CyberArk
13 36 (1.89%) HP
14 29 (1.52%) Citrix
14 29 (1.52%) NetApp
15 28 (1.47%) Atlassian
16 26 (1.36%) NVIDIA
17 24 (1.26%) AppDynamics
18 23 (1.21%) F5