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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -21 +1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,001 1,830 2,282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.63% 5.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.47% 41.70% 39.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,249 1,160 1,471
10th Percentile £350 £367 £340
25th Percentile £418 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 53 142
10th Percentile £35.18 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £58.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.76 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - -0.38%

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 5,070 4,389 5,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.51% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,235 2,824 3,818
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £315
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £464 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.27% -2.37% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £576 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 244 435
10th Percentile £15.73 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -6.12% -42.35%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.81 £64.38
90th Percentile £70.02 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £21.90 £30.50
% change year-on-year +20.73% -28.20% +4.10%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 1,679 £520 -3.17% 699
UK excluding London -17 1,198 £500 - 616
London -46 580 £545 -5.63% 185
Work from Home -30 541 £500 - 301
South East -3 335 £518 -0.62% 195
North of England -14 314 £492 -1.60% 116
South West -2 184 £538 -6.52% 94
North West -14 155 £484 +20.40% 70
Midlands -17 144 £475 - 65
Yorkshire -22 144 £500 -4.76% 28
West Midlands -17 123 £471 -0.79% 40
Scotland -28 105 £450 -8.26% 28
East of England -22 90 £475 -3.06% 81
Wales +11 29 £465 +64.60% 14
North East -23 21 £480 +0.52% 19
East Midlands -8 18 £528 +16.06% 25
Northern Ireland -2 5 - - 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 85 (4.25%) Confluence
2 50 (2.50%) Apache
3 35 (1.75%) nginx
4 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.10%) Tomcat
7 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.90%) SAS
8 18 (0.90%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.65%) OpenStack
10 11 (0.55%) CICS
11 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.45%) SharePoint
11 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.40%) IIS
12 8 (0.40%) JBoss
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.050%) Houdini
5 1 (0.050%) InDesign
5 1 (0.050%) NUKE
5 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.100%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Odoo
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 594 (29.69%) AWS
2 428 (21.39%) Azure
3 152 (7.60%) GitHub
4 139 (6.95%) GCP
5 111 (5.55%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.55%) Amazon S3
7 90 (4.50%) GitHub Actions
8 89 (4.45%) Amazon EC2
9 77 (3.85%) Entra ID
10 67 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
11 60 (3.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 59 (2.95%) Serverless
13 57 (2.85%) Amazon EKS
14 50 (2.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 49 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
15 49 (2.45%) AWS Lambda
15 49 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
16 46 (2.30%) IaaS
17 41 (2.05%) PaaS
18 39 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 192 (9.60%) Firewall
2 169 (8.45%) DNS
3 103 (5.15%) TCP/IP
4 78 (3.90%) Network Security
5 76 (3.80%) SAN
6 74 (3.70%) VPN
7 69 (3.45%) DHCP
8 47 (2.35%) WAN
9 39 (1.95%) SSL
10 37 (1.85%) LAN
11 35 (1.75%) VSAN
12 32 (1.60%) HTTP
12 32 (1.60%) SNMP
13 31 (1.55%) SSH
14 28 (1.40%) NAS
14 28 (1.40%) VLAN
15 23 (1.15%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.10%) IPsec
17 20 (1.00%) BGP
18 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (6.10%) SQL Server
2 119 (5.95%) PostgreSQL
3 92 (4.60%) Oracle Database
4 72 (3.60%) MySQL
5 70 (3.50%) Relational Database
6 68 (3.40%) MongoDB
7 57 (2.85%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.15%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.45%) RDBMS
11 28 (1.40%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.10%) Big Data
12 22 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
13 20 (1.00%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.95%) KDB
14 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
15 17 (0.85%) DataStage
15 17 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
16 15 (0.75%) Db2
Development Applications
1 213 (10.64%) Jenkins
2 187 (9.35%) GitLab
3 183 (9.15%) Git
4 150 (7.50%) JIRA
5 33 (1.65%) Maven
6 32 (1.60%) Mockito
7 31 (1.55%) SonarQube
8 22 (1.10%) Bitbucket
9 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
9 21 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
10 18 (0.90%) Artifactory
11 17 (0.85%) JUnit
12 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
14 13 (0.65%) jMock
15 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
17 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
18 8 (0.40%) TeamCity
General
1 395 (19.74%) Social Skills
2 284 (14.19%) Finance
3 207 (10.34%) Public Sector
4 178 (8.90%) Analytical Skills
5 139 (6.95%) Banking
6 74 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.85%) Military
8 29 (1.45%) Front Office
9 28 (1.40%) Investment Banking
9 28 (1.40%) Telecoms
10 24 (1.20%) Legal
10 24 (1.20%) Retail
11 21 (1.05%) Law
12 19 (0.95%) Aerospace
12 19 (0.95%) Financial Institution
12 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
15 15 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 272 (13.59%) Senior
2 208 (10.39%) Developer
3 199 (9.95%) Linux Engineer
4 185 (9.25%) DevOps Engineer
5 160 (8.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 121 (6.05%) Software Engineer
7 100 (5.00%) Architect
8 92 (4.60%) Analyst
9 83 (4.15%) Lead
10 80 (4.00%) Java Developer
11 76 (3.80%) Platform Engineer
12 67 (3.35%) Consultant
13 66 (3.30%) AWS Engineer
14 64 (3.20%) Cloud Engineer
15 62 (3.10%) Support Engineer
16 56 (2.80%) Administrator
16 56 (2.80%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 53 (2.65%) DBA
17 53 (2.65%) Senior Developer
18 50 (2.50%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (5.00%) Kafka
2 93 (4.65%) REST
3 74 (3.70%) Middleware
4 71 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.85%) Spring
6 49 (2.45%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.40%) LDAP
8 47 (2.35%) Web Services
9 43 (2.15%) .NET
9 43 (2.15%) RESTful
10 42 (2.10%) Node.js
11 32 (1.60%) ActiveMQ
12 27 (1.35%) SOAP
13 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
13 26 (1.30%) JSON
14 25 (1.25%) YAML
15 24 (1.20%) React
16 23 (1.15%) XML
17 19 (0.95%) FastAPI
17 19 (0.95%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 141 (7.05%) Data Centre
2 132 (6.60%) Cloud Native
3 104 (5.20%) Onboarding
4 98 (4.90%) Linux Command Line
5 86 (4.30%) PKI
6 82 (4.10%) Distributed Systems
7 74 (3.70%) Replication
8 59 (2.95%) Public Cloud
9 55 (2.75%) Management Information System
9 55 (2.75%) Security Posture
10 54 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
10 54 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
11 35 (1.75%) Product Ownership
12 30 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 30 (1.50%) Enterprise Storage
13 28 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
14 27 (1.35%) Clustering
14 27 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
14 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
15 24 (1.20%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 748 (37.38%) Windows
2 420 (20.99%) Unix
3 332 (16.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 192 (9.60%) Windows Server
5 103 (5.15%) Ubuntu
6 71 (3.55%) AIX
7 60 (3.00%) Solaris
8 40 (2.00%) CentOS
9 32 (1.60%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.45%) VMS
11 24 (1.20%) SUSE
11 24 (1.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.85%) Android
13 15 (0.75%) Mac OS
13 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
13 15 (0.75%) Oracle Linux
13 15 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.70%) Debian
14 14 (0.70%) Windows 10
15 13 (0.65%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 558 (27.89%) CI/CD
2 478 (23.89%) DevOps
3 360 (17.99%) Agile
4 344 (17.19%) Infrastructure as Code
5 295 (14.74%) Problem-Solving
6 267 (13.34%) Containerisation
7 230 (11.49%) Migration
8 229 (11.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 204 (10.19%) Software Engineering
10 187 (9.35%) Continuous Improvement
10 187 (9.35%) High Availability
11 179 (8.95%) Observability
12 174 (8.70%) Performance Tuning
13 169 (8.45%) Root Cause Analysis
14 160 (8.00%) Platform Engineering
15 156 (7.80%) ITIL
16 154 (7.70%) SIEM
17 136 (6.80%) Microservices
17 136 (6.80%) Test Automation
18 134 (6.70%) AI
Programming Languages
1 681 (34.03%) Python
2 340 (16.99%) SQL
3 334 (16.69%) Bash
4 318 (15.89%) PowerShell
5 251 (12.54%) Java
6 151 (7.55%) Shell Script
7 122 (6.10%) C++
8 86 (4.30%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.35%) C
10 64 (3.20%) PL/SQL
11 62 (3.10%) C#
12 56 (2.80%) Perl
13 50 (2.50%) Go
14 24 (1.20%) Ada
15 22 (1.10%) TypeScript
16 21 (1.05%) Bicep
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 19 (0.95%) Rust
18 15 (0.75%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 781 (39.03%) Security Cleared
2 582 (29.09%) SC Cleared
3 223 (11.14%) DV Cleared
4 176 (8.80%) Degree
5 71 (3.55%) AWS Certification
6 69 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.85%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.80%) CISSP
9 51 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
10 45 (2.25%) Azure Certification
11 33 (1.65%) CompTIA Security+
12 29 (1.45%) RHCE
13 25 (1.25%) CCNA
13 25 (1.25%) CCNP
14 21 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.90%) CISM
16 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 14 (0.70%) GIAC
17 14 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.25%) NIST
2 80 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.80%) QA
4 35 (1.75%) SLA
5 23 (1.15%) NCSC
6 21 (1.05%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
6 21 (1.05%) GDPR
7 20 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.55%) GRC
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.35%) ISO 20022
13 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
16 4 (0.20%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 333 (16.64%) Docker
2 239 (11.94%) Active Directory
3 235 (11.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (4.75%) Virtual Machines
5 72 (3.60%) Hyper-V
6 70 (3.50%) vSphere
7 69 (3.45%) VMware ESXi
8 57 (2.85%) VMware NSX
9 47 (2.35%) NFS
10 39 (1.95%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.75%) Firmware
12 32 (1.60%) KVM
13 21 (1.05%) Postfix
14 15 (0.75%) GPFS
15 12 (0.60%) Ceph
16 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.35%) Squid
18 7 (0.35%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 424 (21.19%) Ansible
2 416 (20.79%) Terraform
3 404 (20.19%) Kubernetes
4 170 (8.50%) Grafana
5 146 (7.30%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.60%) Puppet
7 55 (2.75%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.55%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.30%) vCenter Server
10 36 (1.80%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.55%) Nagios
12 29 (1.45%) Packer
13 26 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 22 (1.10%) Kibana
14 22 (1.10%) Podman
14 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
15 21 (1.05%) Argo
16 20 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
16 20 (1.00%) vRealize
Vendors
1 318 (15.89%) VMware
2 295 (14.74%) Oracle
3 283 (14.14%) Microsoft
4 225 (11.24%) Red Hat
5 156 (7.80%) Splunk
6 128 (6.40%) Cisco
7 110 (5.50%) IBM
8 94 (4.70%) ServiceNow
9 72 (3.60%) CyberArk
10 68 (3.40%) Google
11 46 (2.30%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.25%) Palo Alto
13 44 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.00%) SAP
15 39 (1.95%) F5
16 38 (1.90%) NetApp
17 37 (1.85%) HP
18 34 (1.70%) Citrix
19 30 (1.50%) Sybase
20 28 (1.40%) Tenable