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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,105 1,802 2,095
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.53% 5.53%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.32% 40.78% 39.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,315 1,078 1,245
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £425 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.46% -2.46% -3.09%
75th Percentile £616 £625 £638
90th Percentile £718 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £494 £525
% change year-on-year +1.32% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 76 112
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £49.00
25th Percentile £54.68 £53.41 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +10.80%
75th Percentile £69.13 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.85%

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 5,354 4,419 5,323
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 13.55% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,381 2,820 3,321
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £280 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £662 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 295 255
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.10
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.53
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +19.02%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £69.22
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.20
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.25% +32.23%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -21 1,773 £525 - 2,342
UK excluding London -21 1,181 £500 +1.32% 1,332
London -30 712 £535 -6.96% 1,027
Work from Home -20 568 £500 -4.76% 959
South East -15 328 £525 +10.53% 348
North of England -19 281 £500 +5.26% 200
South West -2 176 £575 +4.55% 253
North West -16 138 £492 +22.69% 116
Scotland -18 131 £450 -10.00% 79
Midlands -38 127 £477 -4.60% 152
East of England -8 118 £483 -1.78% 231
Yorkshire -27 117 £518 +3.50% 48
West Midlands -41 110 £477 -4.60% 98
North East -13 34 £480 -10.70% 37
Wales +9 27 £465 +3.33% 23
East Midlands -12 14 £481 +14.52% 54
Northern Ireland -5 3 - - 66

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 63 (2.99%) Confluence
2 44 (2.09%) Apache
3 33 (1.57%) nginx
4 27 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (1.28%) WebLogic
5 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.05%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.05%) SharePoint
7 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
8 18 (0.86%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 16 (0.76%) SAS
10 15 (0.71%) JBoss
11 13 (0.62%) Tomcat
12 12 (0.57%) IIS
13 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.33%) CMS
15 6 (0.29%) MTS
15 6 (0.29%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.048%) Magento
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 626 (29.74%) AWS
2 523 (24.85%) Azure
3 203 (9.64%) GCP
4 164 (7.79%) GitHub
5 113 (5.37%) OpenShift
6 108 (5.13%) Entra ID
7 104 (4.94%) GitHub Actions
8 95 (4.51%) Azure DevOps
9 93 (4.42%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.85%) Amazon EC2
11 73 (3.47%) Serverless
12 69 (3.28%) AWS CloudFormation
13 65 (3.09%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (2.99%) Amazon EKS
15 62 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
16 61 (2.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 54 (2.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 51 (2.42%) IaaS
19 46 (2.19%) SaaS
20 44 (2.09%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.83%) DNS
2 216 (10.26%) Firewall
3 163 (7.74%) TCP/IP
4 131 (6.22%) DHCP
5 87 (4.13%) Network Security
6 86 (4.09%) VPN
7 77 (3.66%) SAN
8 54 (2.57%) SSL
9 46 (2.19%) HTTP
10 45 (2.14%) SSH
10 45 (2.14%) WAN
11 37 (1.76%) VLAN
12 31 (1.47%) LAN
13 29 (1.38%) BGP
14 28 (1.33%) VSAN
15 27 (1.28%) Kerberos
16 25 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
17 23 (1.09%) Wireless
18 22 (1.05%) HTTPS
19 21 (1.00%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.70%) PostgreSQL
2 113 (5.37%) SQL Server
3 100 (4.75%) Oracle Database
4 74 (3.52%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.09%) MySQL
6 54 (2.57%) Amazon RDS
7 51 (2.42%) MongoDB
8 48 (2.28%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
10 32 (1.52%) Amazon Aurora
11 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.28%) Big Data
13 22 (1.05%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.00%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.95%) Power BI
15 20 (0.95%) Redis
16 18 (0.86%) Hadoop
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
17 17 (0.81%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 285 (13.54%) Git
2 252 (11.97%) Jenkins
3 234 (11.12%) GitLab
4 156 (7.41%) JIRA
5 40 (1.90%) Maven
6 35 (1.66%) SonarQube
7 32 (1.52%) Bitbucket
8 26 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
9 25 (1.19%) Artifactory
10 24 (1.14%) Selenium
11 22 (1.05%) Mockito
12 19 (0.90%) JUnit
13 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
13 18 (0.86%) Gradle
14 16 (0.76%) Cucumber
15 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
16 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
17 10 (0.48%) JMeter
18 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 459 (21.81%) Social Skills
2 342 (16.25%) Finance
3 250 (11.88%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (8.36%) Banking
5 170 (8.08%) Public Sector
6 92 (4.37%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.57%) Telecoms
8 44 (2.09%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.66%) Front Office
10 33 (1.57%) Military
11 30 (1.43%) Legal
12 27 (1.28%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 22 (1.05%) Law
14 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.81%) Retail
15 14 (0.67%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.48%) Aviation
16 10 (0.48%) Financial Institution
17 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 320 (15.20%) Senior
2 236 (11.21%) Linux Engineer
3 213 (10.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 206 (9.79%) Developer
5 187 (8.88%) DevOps Engineer
6 104 (4.94%) Platform Engineer
7 102 (4.85%) Architect
8 96 (4.56%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.90%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.85%) Support Engineer
11 76 (3.61%) Analyst
11 76 (3.61%) Java Developer
12 73 (3.47%) Consultant
13 71 (3.37%) Lead
14 68 (3.23%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 67 (3.18%) AWS Engineer
16 64 (3.04%) Administrator
17 57 (2.71%) Network Engineer
17 57 (2.71%) Systems Engineer
18 55 (2.61%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 517 (24.56%) Terraform
2 144 (6.84%) Kafka
3 130 (6.18%) REST
4 83 (3.94%) Middleware
5 78 (3.71%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.18%) .NET
7 59 (2.80%) Spring
8 57 (2.71%) RESTful
9 53 (2.52%) Spring Boot
10 49 (2.33%) Web Services
11 46 (2.19%) LDAP
12 42 (2.00%) JSON
13 40 (1.90%) XML
14 37 (1.76%) React
15 36 (1.71%) HTML
16 35 (1.66%) SOAP
17 32 (1.52%) Flask
18 30 (1.43%) Django
18 30 (1.43%) Node.js
18 30 (1.43%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 161 (7.65%) Onboarding
2 146 (6.94%) Cloud Native
3 138 (6.56%) Data Centre
4 111 (5.27%) PKI
5 105 (4.99%) Linux Command Line
6 91 (4.32%) Distributed Systems
7 89 (4.23%) Replication
8 70 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
9 69 (3.28%) Management Information System
10 66 (3.14%) Public Cloud
11 48 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
11 48 (2.28%) Security Posture
12 42 (2.00%) Private Cloud
13 41 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
14 40 (1.90%) Operational Technology
15 39 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
16 38 (1.81%) Enterprise Storage
16 38 (1.81%) Product Ownership
17 35 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
18 34 (1.62%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 790 (37.53%) Windows
2 440 (20.90%) Unix
3 365 (17.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 251 (11.92%) Windows Server
5 109 (5.18%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.09%) CentOS
7 57 (2.71%) AIX
8 56 (2.66%) Solaris
9 32 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.47%) Windows 10
11 27 (1.28%) VMS
12 26 (1.24%) SUSE
13 22 (1.05%) Rocky
14 18 (0.86%) Mac OS
15 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
17 14 (0.67%) Debian
17 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
18 13 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
19 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 661 (31.40%) CI/CD
2 566 (26.89%) DevOps
3 465 (22.09%) Infrastructure as Code
4 391 (18.57%) Agile
5 344 (16.34%) Problem-Solving
6 332 (15.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 307 (14.58%) Containerisation
8 270 (12.83%) Continuous Improvement
9 254 (12.07%) Observability
10 238 (11.31%) Platform Engineering
11 235 (11.16%) Migration
12 217 (10.31%) Root Cause Analysis
13 215 (10.21%) Software Engineering
14 193 (9.17%) High Availability
15 184 (8.74%) Configuration Management
16 177 (8.41%) Test Automation
17 173 (8.22%) ITIL
18 168 (7.98%) Stakeholder Management
19 167 (7.93%) Cybersecurity
20 166 (7.89%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 775 (36.82%) Python
2 444 (21.09%) Bash
3 404 (19.19%) PowerShell
4 382 (18.15%) SQL
5 261 (12.40%) Java
6 159 (7.55%) Shell Script
7 121 (5.75%) C++
8 86 (4.09%) JavaScript
9 83 (3.94%) Perl
10 77 (3.66%) C#
11 69 (3.28%) C
12 60 (2.85%) Go
12 60 (2.85%) PL/SQL
13 42 (2.00%) Bicep
14 29 (1.38%) Groovy
15 23 (1.09%) TypeScript
16 20 (0.95%) Search Processing Language
17 16 (0.76%) Korn
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
18 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 793 (37.67%) Security Cleared
2 556 (26.41%) SC Cleared
3 250 (11.88%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.69%) Degree
5 74 (3.52%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.90%) CISSP
7 59 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
7 59 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
8 56 (2.66%) Azure Certification
9 28 (1.33%) CISM
10 25 (1.19%) CCNP
10 25 (1.19%) RHCE
11 22 (1.05%) CCNA
12 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.86%) ISTQB
14 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 16 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.56%) NIST
2 73 (3.47%) QA
3 69 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 31 (1.47%) SLA
5 24 (1.14%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.05%) GDPR
7 18 (0.86%) GRC
8 17 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.71%) NCSC
11 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
16 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 377 (17.91%) Docker
2 286 (13.59%) Active Directory
3 243 (11.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (3.99%) Hyper-V
5 80 (3.80%) vSphere
6 68 (3.23%) Virtual Machines
6 68 (3.23%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (2.42%) VMware NSX
8 38 (1.81%) Oracle RAC
9 36 (1.71%) NFS
10 35 (1.66%) Firmware
11 26 (1.24%) KVM
12 23 (1.09%) Virtual Servers
13 13 (0.62%) Ceph
13 13 (0.62%) Postfix
14 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
14 12 (0.57%) GPFS
14 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 8 (0.38%) Squid
15 8 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 485 (23.04%) Kubernetes
2 466 (22.14%) Ansible
3 199 (9.45%) Grafana
4 180 (8.55%) Prometheus
5 91 (4.32%) Puppet
6 60 (2.85%) Progress Chef
7 48 (2.28%) Oracle RMAN
7 48 (2.28%) SCCM
8 38 (1.81%) Data Guard
9 34 (1.62%) Kibana
10 33 (1.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 32 (1.52%) vCenter Server
12 29 (1.38%) Nagios
13 28 (1.33%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.28%) NetBackup
14 27 (1.28%) VxRail
15 26 (1.24%) Podman
16 24 (1.14%) Packer
17 22 (1.05%) Argo
17 22 (1.05%) Istio
Vendors
1 347 (16.48%) Microsoft
2 342 (16.25%) VMware
3 292 (13.87%) Oracle
4 222 (10.55%) Red Hat
5 173 (8.22%) Splunk
6 124 (5.89%) Cisco
7 114 (5.42%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.47%) Google
8 94 (4.47%) IBM
9 83 (3.94%) CyberArk
10 47 (2.23%) NetApp
11 46 (2.19%) SolarWinds
12 44 (2.09%) BeyondTrust
13 40 (1.90%) F5
14 39 (1.85%) Palo Alto
15 37 (1.76%) Dynatrace
16 36 (1.71%) Dell
17 35 (1.66%) SAP
18 31 (1.47%) Tenable
19 28 (1.33%) Citrix