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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,074 1,838 2,172
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.65% 5.67%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.47% 41.79% 40.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,295 1,126 1,367
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.44%
75th Percentile £614 £626 £635
90th Percentile £715 £715 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 65 114
10th Percentile £43.18 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.25 £65.00
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 £79.13 £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 5,255 4,398 5,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 13.53% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,335 2,804 3,505
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 269 303
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.55 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -30.46% -14.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £66.01
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +3.38% -47.05% +28.21%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 -25 1,728 £525 - 2,396
UK excluding London -22 1,183 £500 - 1,196
London -39 672 £537 -6.61% 1,383
Work from Home -26 549 £500 -3.66% 824
South East -8 338 £518 +3.50% 355
North of England -27 284 £500 +5.04% 204
South West +2 188 £575 - 191
North West -25 144 £497 +24.25% 121
Scotland -15 136 £450 -10.00% 80
Yorkshire -26 120 £508 -0.05% 49
Midlands -47 120 £470 -6.00% 101
West Midlands -47 99 £470 -6.00% 57
East of England -17 97 £479 -4.25% 232
Wales +2 28 £465 +3.33% 10
North East -21 27 £470 -18.26% 35
East Midlands -12 18 £500 +19.05% 43
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 45

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 67 (3.23%) Confluence
2 50 (2.41%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.40%) nginx
5 23 (1.11%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.06%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.96%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
9 17 (0.82%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
11 15 (0.72%) JBoss
12 14 (0.68%) WebSphere
13 12 (0.58%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.43%) IIS
15 6 (0.29%) CMS
15 6 (0.29%) MTS
15 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.24%) NetWeaver
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 29 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
4 3 (0.14%) Simulink
5 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
1 7 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.19%) Actimize
2 4 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.096%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.096%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.048%) Magento
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 597 (28.78%) AWS
2 514 (24.78%) Azure
3 175 (8.44%) GCP
4 163 (7.86%) GitHub
5 105 (5.06%) Entra ID
6 101 (4.87%) GitHub Actions
7 99 (4.77%) OpenShift
8 92 (4.44%) Azure DevOps
9 88 (4.24%) Amazon S3
10 79 (3.81%) Amazon EC2
11 67 (3.23%) Serverless
12 63 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
13 61 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
14 59 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
15 57 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 57 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
16 51 (2.46%) IaaS
16 51 (2.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 42 (2.03%) SaaS
18 41 (1.98%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.99%) DNS
2 222 (10.70%) Firewall
3 142 (6.85%) TCP/IP
4 127 (6.12%) DHCP
5 86 (4.15%) VPN
6 81 (3.91%) SAN
7 78 (3.76%) Network Security
8 50 (2.41%) SSL
8 50 (2.41%) WAN
9 45 (2.17%) SSH
10 42 (2.03%) VSAN
11 41 (1.98%) VLAN
12 40 (1.93%) HTTP
13 37 (1.78%) LAN
14 28 (1.35%) SNMP
15 26 (1.25%) Kerberos
16 24 (1.16%) NAS
17 23 (1.11%) HTTPS
18 21 (1.01%) BGP
19 19 (0.92%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.64%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 100 (4.82%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.18%) MySQL
4 66 (3.18%) Relational Database
5 52 (2.51%) MongoDB
6 50 (2.41%) Amazon RDS
7 42 (2.03%) NoSQL
8 36 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
9 34 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
10 32 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
11 30 (1.45%) RDBMS
12 26 (1.25%) Big Data
13 21 (1.01%) Data Lake
14 20 (0.96%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.92%) Power BI
16 18 (0.87%) Redis
17 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
17 17 (0.82%) Oracle Exadata
18 16 (0.77%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 248 (11.96%) Git
2 235 (11.33%) Jenkins
3 199 (9.59%) GitLab
4 157 (7.57%) JIRA
5 32 (1.54%) Maven
6 31 (1.49%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.49%) SonarQube
7 28 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 20 (0.96%) Mockito
9 19 (0.92%) Artifactory
9 19 (0.92%) Selenium
10 15 (0.72%) JUnit
11 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 10 (0.48%) Eclipse
13 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.43%) JMeter
14 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
15 8 (0.39%) eggPlant
General
1 436 (21.02%) Social Skills
2 309 (14.90%) Finance
3 246 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.29%) Public Sector
5 160 (7.71%) Banking
6 85 (4.10%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.27%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.83%) Front Office
9 37 (1.78%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.30%) Military
11 26 (1.25%) Aerospace
11 26 (1.25%) Legal
12 21 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 20 (0.96%) Retail
14 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.82%) Law
16 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
17 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 10 (0.48%) Aviation
18 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 310 (14.95%) Senior
2 239 (11.52%) Linux Engineer
3 200 (9.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 184 (8.87%) Developer
5 179 (8.63%) DevOps Engineer
6 110 (5.30%) Architect
7 98 (4.73%) Platform Engineer
8 97 (4.68%) Software Engineer
9 85 (4.10%) Consultant
10 78 (3.76%) Support Engineer
11 76 (3.66%) Cloud Engineer
11 76 (3.66%) Lead
12 74 (3.57%) Analyst
13 69 (3.33%) Administrator
14 67 (3.23%) Java Developer
15 63 (3.04%) AWS Engineer
15 63 (3.04%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 59 (2.84%) Systems Engineer
17 54 (2.60%) Senior Developer
18 52 (2.51%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 486 (23.43%) Terraform
2 127 (6.12%) Kafka
3 113 (5.45%) REST
4 73 (3.52%) Middleware
5 71 (3.42%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.23%) .NET
7 53 (2.56%) RESTful
8 50 (2.41%) Spring
9 44 (2.12%) Spring Boot
10 38 (1.83%) LDAP
10 38 (1.83%) Web Services
11 35 (1.69%) JSON
12 34 (1.64%) XML
13 30 (1.45%) HTML
13 30 (1.45%) SOAP
13 30 (1.45%) YAML
14 26 (1.25%) ARM Templates
15 25 (1.21%) Django
15 25 (1.21%) RabbitMQ
15 25 (1.21%) React
Miscellaneous
1 145 (6.99%) Onboarding
2 138 (6.65%) Cloud Native
3 132 (6.36%) Data Centre
4 105 (5.06%) PKI
5 104 (5.01%) Linux Command Line
6 92 (4.44%) Replication
7 83 (4.00%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
9 70 (3.38%) Public Cloud
10 60 (2.89%) Management Information System
11 46 (2.22%) Security Posture
12 44 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
13 39 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
14 38 (1.83%) Private Cloud
15 37 (1.78%) Embedded Systems
15 37 (1.78%) Enterprise Storage
16 36 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
17 35 (1.69%) Clustering
17 35 (1.69%) Operational Technology
18 32 (1.54%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 779 (37.56%) Windows
2 429 (20.68%) Unix
3 360 (17.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 248 (11.96%) Windows Server
5 113 (5.45%) Ubuntu
6 63 (3.04%) AIX
7 54 (2.60%) CentOS
8 52 (2.51%) Solaris
9 40 (1.93%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.40%) VMS
11 28 (1.35%) SUSE
12 27 (1.30%) Windows 10
13 22 (1.06%) Rocky
13 22 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
14 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
14 19 (0.92%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.77%) Debian
15 16 (0.77%) Mac OS
16 12 (0.58%) Android
16 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 606 (29.22%) CI/CD
2 532 (25.65%) DevOps
3 428 (20.64%) Infrastructure as Code
4 370 (17.84%) Agile
5 320 (15.43%) Problem-Solving
6 294 (14.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 272 (13.11%) Containerisation
8 246 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
9 234 (11.28%) Migration
10 227 (10.95%) Observability
11 220 (10.61%) Platform Engineering
12 203 (9.79%) High Availability
13 202 (9.74%) Root Cause Analysis
14 194 (9.35%) Software Engineering
15 178 (8.58%) Performance Tuning
16 176 (8.49%) ITIL
17 164 (7.91%) Configuration Management
18 160 (7.71%) Test Automation
19 152 (7.33%) AI
20 150 (7.23%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 750 (36.16%) Python
2 415 (20.01%) Bash
3 404 (19.48%) PowerShell
4 372 (17.94%) SQL
5 242 (11.67%) Java
6 154 (7.43%) Shell Script
7 120 (5.79%) C++
8 74 (3.57%) C
8 74 (3.57%) Perl
9 72 (3.47%) JavaScript
10 69 (3.33%) C#
11 61 (2.94%) PL/SQL
12 52 (2.51%) Go
13 43 (2.07%) Bicep
14 25 (1.21%) Groovy
15 23 (1.11%) Search Processing Language
16 18 (0.87%) Ada
17 16 (0.77%) Rust
17 16 (0.77%) TypeScript
18 14 (0.68%) Korn
Qualifications
1 798 (38.48%) Security Cleared
2 585 (28.21%) SC Cleared
3 244 (11.76%) DV Cleared
4 180 (8.68%) Degree
5 70 (3.38%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
8 56 (2.70%) Azure Certification
8 56 (2.70%) CISSP
9 53 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
10 22 (1.06%) CCNP
10 22 (1.06%) RHCE
11 21 (1.01%) CISM
11 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (0.87%) CCNA
12 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 17 (0.82%) ISTQB
14 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 16 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
15 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (3.47%) NIST
2 70 (3.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.09%) QA
4 33 (1.59%) SLA
5 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.01%) NCSC
7 19 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
7 19 (0.92%) GDPR
8 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
9 11 (0.53%) GRC
9 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
10 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.39%) ISO 15022
12 7 (0.34%) ISO 31000
12 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
13 5 (0.24%) MISRA
14 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 346 (16.68%) Docker
2 277 (13.36%) Active Directory
3 250 (12.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (4.34%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.15%) vSphere
6 77 (3.71%) Virtual Machines
7 71 (3.42%) VMware ESXi
8 62 (2.99%) VMware NSX
9 42 (2.03%) Firmware
10 40 (1.93%) Oracle RAC
11 37 (1.78%) NFS
12 27 (1.30%) KVM
13 17 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.77%) Ceph
15 15 (0.72%) Postfix
16 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
17 11 (0.53%) GPFS
17 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 10 (0.48%) Squid
19 7 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 459 (22.13%) Ansible
2 442 (21.31%) Kubernetes
3 185 (8.92%) Grafana
4 164 (7.91%) Prometheus
5 88 (4.24%) Puppet
6 62 (2.99%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.41%) Oracle RMAN
8 44 (2.12%) SCCM
9 40 (1.93%) Data Guard
10 38 (1.83%) vCenter Server
11 31 (1.49%) Nagios
12 29 (1.40%) Kibana
13 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
13 28 (1.35%) Red Hat Satellite
14 25 (1.21%) NetBackup
14 25 (1.21%) Packer
14 25 (1.21%) Podman
14 25 (1.21%) ZABBIX
15 22 (1.06%) Istio
15 22 (1.06%) VxRail
Vendors
1 353 (17.02%) VMware
2 329 (15.86%) Microsoft
3 311 (15.00%) Oracle
4 225 (10.85%) Red Hat
5 164 (7.91%) Splunk
6 123 (5.93%) Cisco
7 113 (5.45%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.53%) IBM
9 78 (3.76%) CyberArk
9 78 (3.76%) Google
10 49 (2.36%) SolarWinds
11 45 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
11 45 (2.17%) NetApp
12 42 (2.03%) SAP
13 40 (1.93%) Palo Alto
14 37 (1.78%) F5
15 35 (1.69%) Dell
16 32 (1.54%) Citrix
16 32 (1.54%) Dynatrace
16 32 (1.54%) HP