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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,035 1,800 2,243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 5.47% 5.76%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.40% 41.36% 41.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,269 1,118 1,457
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -5.70%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £635
90th Percentile £705 £714 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 57 121
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.02
% change year-on-year - -3.01% +7.23%

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 5,165 4,352 5,457
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.68% 13.21% 14.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,272 2,778 3,620
10th Percentile £193 £191 £200
25th Percentile £325 £308 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £459 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.54% -3.42% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £450 £472
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.66% +4.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 262 332
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.51 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.22% -11.82% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.55 £67.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £22.78 £45.00
% change year-on-year +22.91% -49.38% +63.64%

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 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 13 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 13 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 -24 1,721 £525 - 2,305
UK excluding London -16 1,203 £500 - 1,104
London -44 622 £550 -5.17% 1,346
Work from Home -27 539 £500 -4.76% 782
South East 0 346 £525 +5.00% 342
North of England -16 303 £500 - 193
South West +1 191 £550 -4.35% 166
North West -10 157 £500 +25.00% 116
Midlands -32 127 £471 -0.79% 79
Yorkshire -25 126 £500 -4.76% 39
Scotland -24 112 £425 -15.00% 81
West Midlands -30 106 £470 -3.59% 47
East of England -9 101 £479 -2.30% 217
Wales +8 29 £465 +64.60% 15
North East -19 27 £490 -14.78% 39
East Midlands -14 18 £513 +30.24% 32
Northern Ireland +1 2 - - 34

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 (3.88%) Confluence
2 52 (2.56%) Apache
3 30 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.43%) nginx
5 22 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.98%) Apache Spark
6 20 (0.98%) OpenStack
7 19 (0.93%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.88%) SAS
8 18 (0.88%) WebLogic
9 15 (0.74%) SharePoint
10 14 (0.69%) JBoss
11 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
12 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.25%) CICS
15 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
15 5 (0.25%) CMS
Applications
1 20 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.15%) Houdini
5 3 (0.15%) NUKE
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.098%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.049%) InDesign
7 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.098%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 605 (29.73%) AWS
2 495 (24.32%) Azure
3 161 (7.91%) GCP
4 157 (7.71%) GitHub
5 104 (5.11%) OpenShift
6 94 (4.62%) GitHub Actions
7 91 (4.47%) Entra ID
8 90 (4.42%) Amazon S3
9 85 (4.18%) Azure DevOps
10 84 (4.13%) Amazon EC2
11 62 (3.05%) Serverless
12 60 (2.95%) Amazon EKS
13 57 (2.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 55 (2.70%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (2.70%) Microsoft 365
15 54 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
15 54 (2.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 52 (2.56%) IaaS
17 40 (1.97%) SaaS
18 38 (1.87%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 221 (10.86%) Firewall
2 211 (10.37%) DNS
3 134 (6.58%) TCP/IP
4 111 (5.45%) DHCP
5 79 (3.88%) VPN
6 75 (3.69%) SAN
7 73 (3.59%) Network Security
8 51 (2.51%) SSL
9 47 (2.31%) VSAN
9 47 (2.31%) WAN
10 39 (1.92%) LAN
11 38 (1.87%) HTTP
11 38 (1.87%) SSH
12 35 (1.72%) VLAN
13 30 (1.47%) SNMP
14 22 (1.08%) NAS
15 20 (0.98%) IPsec
16 19 (0.93%) HTTPS
16 19 (0.93%) Kerberos
17 17 (0.84%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.14%) SQL Server
2 111 (5.45%) PostgreSQL
3 97 (4.77%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.34%) MySQL
5 65 (3.19%) Relational Database
6 55 (2.70%) MongoDB
7 52 (2.56%) Amazon RDS
8 37 (1.82%) Amazon Aurora
9 36 (1.77%) Elasticsearch
10 35 (1.72%) NoSQL
11 30 (1.47%) RDBMS
12 28 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
13 24 (1.18%) Big Data
14 23 (1.13%) DynamoDB
15 21 (1.03%) SAP HANA
16 19 (0.93%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.88%) Data Lake
17 18 (0.88%) Power BI
18 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
19 16 (0.79%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 225 (11.06%) Jenkins
2 216 (10.61%) Git
3 187 (9.19%) GitLab
4 143 (7.03%) JIRA
5 38 (1.87%) Maven
6 33 (1.62%) SonarQube
7 29 (1.43%) Bitbucket
8 26 (1.28%) Mockito
8 26 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.03%) Artifactory
10 19 (0.93%) Eclipse
11 18 (0.88%) JUnit
12 16 (0.79%) Selenium
13 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.54%) DbUnit
15 11 (0.54%) Gradle
16 10 (0.49%) jMock
16 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 424 (20.84%) Social Skills
2 299 (14.69%) Finance
3 229 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
4 185 (9.09%) Public Sector
5 147 (7.22%) Banking
6 78 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.72%) Front Office
7 35 (1.72%) Telecoms
8 33 (1.62%) Military
9 31 (1.52%) Investment Banking
10 25 (1.23%) Legal
11 24 (1.18%) Aerospace
12 23 (1.13%) Retail
13 21 (1.03%) Law
14 20 (0.98%) Manufacturing
15 19 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 15 (0.74%) Financial Institution
16 15 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
17 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
18 9 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 292 (14.35%) Senior
2 221 (10.86%) Linux Engineer
3 184 (9.04%) Developer
3 184 (9.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 172 (8.45%) DevOps Engineer
5 117 (5.75%) Software Engineer
6 103 (5.06%) Architect
7 90 (4.42%) Platform Engineer
8 82 (4.03%) Analyst
9 81 (3.98%) Lead
10 75 (3.69%) Cloud Engineer
11 74 (3.64%) Consultant
12 70 (3.44%) Java Developer
13 68 (3.34%) Support Engineer
14 63 (3.10%) AWS Engineer
15 60 (2.95%) Administrator
16 53 (2.60%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 51 (2.51%) DBA
17 51 (2.51%) Systems Engineer
18 50 (2.46%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (5.80%) Kafka
2 110 (5.41%) REST
3 72 (3.54%) Middleware
4 69 (3.39%) Elastic Stack
5 61 (3.00%) .NET
6 56 (2.75%) Spring
7 55 (2.70%) RESTful
8 48 (2.36%) Web Services
9 46 (2.26%) Spring Boot
10 39 (1.92%) LDAP
11 35 (1.72%) JSON
11 35 (1.72%) Node.js
12 33 (1.62%) XML
12 33 (1.62%) YAML
13 31 (1.52%) SOAP
14 27 (1.33%) ActiveMQ
15 23 (1.13%) HTML
15 23 (1.13%) RabbitMQ
16 22 (1.08%) Keycloak
16 22 (1.08%) React
Miscellaneous
1 135 (6.63%) Cloud Native
2 126 (6.19%) Data Centre
3 125 (6.14%) Onboarding
4 104 (5.11%) Linux Command Line
5 97 (4.77%) PKI
6 86 (4.23%) Distributed Systems
7 84 (4.13%) Replication
8 72 (3.54%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.14%) Public Cloud
10 57 (2.80%) Management Information System
11 56 (2.75%) Security Posture
12 46 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
13 38 (1.87%) Embedded Systems
14 36 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
15 33 (1.62%) Clustering
15 33 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
15 33 (1.62%) Product Ownership
16 31 (1.52%) Operational Technology
17 30 (1.47%) Private Cloud
18 26 (1.28%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 771 (37.89%) Windows
2 418 (20.54%) Unix
3 346 (17.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 222 (10.91%) Windows Server
5 108 (5.31%) Ubuntu
6 68 (3.34%) AIX
7 56 (2.75%) Solaris
8 44 (2.16%) CentOS
9 38 (1.87%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.28%) VMS
11 25 (1.23%) SUSE
11 25 (1.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.93%) Oracle Linux
13 18 (0.88%) Rocky
13 18 (0.88%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.79%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.74%) Debian
16 13 (0.64%) Android
17 10 (0.49%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 588 (28.89%) CI/CD
2 514 (25.26%) DevOps
3 387 (19.02%) Infrastructure as Code
4 364 (17.89%) Agile
5 300 (14.74%) Problem-Solving
6 272 (13.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 265 (13.02%) Containerisation
8 243 (11.94%) Migration
9 227 (11.15%) Continuous Improvement
10 212 (10.42%) Software Engineering
11 205 (10.07%) Observability
12 204 (10.02%) High Availability
13 197 (9.68%) Platform Engineering
14 184 (9.04%) Root Cause Analysis
15 178 (8.75%) Performance Tuning
16 173 (8.50%) ITIL
17 159 (7.81%) Test Automation
18 154 (7.57%) SIEM
19 150 (7.37%) Configuration Management
20 146 (7.17%) AI
Programming Languages
1 713 (35.04%) Python
2 389 (19.12%) Bash
3 387 (19.02%) PowerShell
4 364 (17.89%) SQL
5 245 (12.04%) Java
6 150 (7.37%) Shell Script
7 132 (6.49%) C++
8 91 (4.47%) JavaScript
9 79 (3.88%) C
10 72 (3.54%) C#
11 61 (3.00%) Perl
11 61 (3.00%) PL/SQL
12 48 (2.36%) Go
13 40 (1.97%) Bicep
14 22 (1.08%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (1.03%) Ada
16 20 (0.98%) TypeScript
17 19 (0.93%) Groovy
17 19 (0.93%) Rust
18 14 (0.69%) Scala
Qualifications
1 797 (39.16%) Security Cleared
2 593 (29.14%) SC Cleared
3 228 (11.20%) DV Cleared
4 174 (8.55%) Degree
5 71 (3.49%) AWS Certification
6 61 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.85%) CISSP
8 57 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
9 52 (2.56%) Azure Certification
9 52 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
10 27 (1.33%) RHCE
11 25 (1.23%) CCNP
12 24 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
13 23 (1.13%) CompTIA Security+
14 22 (1.08%) CCNA
15 18 (0.88%) CISM
15 18 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 13 (0.64%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (3.83%) NIST
2 69 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 63 (3.10%) QA
4 32 (1.57%) SLA
5 25 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.13%) GDPR
6 23 (1.13%) NCSC
7 20 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
8 18 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.69%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.64%) HIPAA
10 13 (0.64%) ISO 20022
11 11 (0.54%) GRC
12 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.29%) ISO 15022
13 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
13 6 (0.29%) JSP 440
13 6 (0.29%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 335 (16.46%) Docker
2 264 (12.97%) Active Directory
3 245 (12.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (4.37%) Hyper-V
5 84 (4.13%) vSphere
6 81 (3.98%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (3.14%) VMware NSX
8 62 (3.05%) VMware ESXi
9 42 (2.06%) NFS
10 40 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
11 37 (1.82%) Firmware
12 30 (1.47%) KVM
13 17 (0.84%) Postfix
14 15 (0.74%) Ceph
15 13 (0.64%) Virtual Servers
16 12 (0.59%) GPFS
17 11 (0.54%) Embedded Firmware
18 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
19 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
19 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 470 (23.10%) Terraform
2 450 (22.11%) Ansible
3 426 (20.93%) Kubernetes
4 167 (8.21%) Grafana
5 144 (7.08%) Prometheus
6 88 (4.32%) Puppet
7 66 (3.24%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.56%) Oracle RMAN
9 40 (1.97%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 37 (1.82%) SCCM
12 31 (1.52%) Nagios
13 29 (1.43%) Packer
14 27 (1.33%) ZABBIX
15 26 (1.28%) Red Hat Satellite
16 25 (1.23%) Kibana
17 24 (1.18%) NetBackup
17 24 (1.18%) VxRail
18 23 (1.13%) Podman
19 22 (1.08%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 342 (16.81%) VMware
2 313 (15.38%) Microsoft
3 305 (14.99%) Oracle
4 229 (11.25%) Red Hat
5 150 (7.37%) Splunk
6 124 (6.09%) Cisco
7 110 (5.41%) ServiceNow
8 103 (5.06%) IBM
9 82 (4.03%) CyberArk
10 74 (3.64%) Google
11 50 (2.46%) SolarWinds
12 48 (2.36%) SAP
13 45 (2.21%) BeyondTrust
13 45 (2.21%) Palo Alto
14 40 (1.97%) F5
15 39 (1.92%) NetApp
16 38 (1.87%) HP
17 33 (1.62%) Citrix
18 31 (1.52%) Dell
18 31 (1.52%) Sybase