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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,097 1,867 2,155
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.84% 5.65% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.31% 41.75% 39.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,306 1,138 1,340
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.14% -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 64 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.81 £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 £79.00 £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 5,335 4,472 5,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.54% 14.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,366 2,860 3,510
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £305 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £585
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 269 281
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.05 £18.82 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -47.05% +5.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.75 £68.00
90th Percentile £74.36 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +3.38% -49.70% +14.29%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -24 1,754 £525 - 1,583
UK excluding London -21 1,193 £500 - 902
London -39 683 £536 -6.78% 793
Work from Home -27 553 £500 -3.85% 556
South East -13 333 £523 +8.29% 292
North of England -24 286 £500 +4.17% 129
South West -2 192 £575 - 149
North West -18 143 £497 +23.63% 66
Scotland -14 135 £450 -10.00% 47
Yorkshire -31 121 £508 +1.40% 32
Midlands -49 121 £470 -6.00% 86
East of England -15 107 £491 - 182
West Midlands -51 100 £470 -6.00% 52
North East -22 29 £470 -18.26% 31
Wales +3 27 £465 +3.33% 11
East Midlands -7 18 £500 +19.05% 33
Northern Ireland -7 2 - - 25

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 (3.20%) Confluence
2 50 (2.38%) Apache
3 30 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
3 30 (1.43%) nginx
4 23 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 23 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 23 (1.10%) OpenStack
4 23 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 22 (1.05%) WebLogic
6 18 (0.86%) SAS
7 17 (0.81%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 16 (0.76%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.67%) JBoss
10 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.48%) IIS
12 6 (0.29%) CMS
12 6 (0.29%) MTS
13 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
13 5 (0.24%) NetWeaver
13 5 (0.24%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 27 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
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
6 2 (0.095%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 9 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
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 FAH
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%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 604 (28.80%) AWS
2 523 (24.94%) Azure
3 182 (8.68%) GCP
4 167 (7.96%) GitHub
5 107 (5.10%) Entra ID
6 105 (5.01%) OpenShift
7 104 (4.96%) GitHub Actions
8 95 (4.53%) Azure DevOps
9 94 (4.48%) Amazon S3
10 84 (4.01%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.39%) Serverless
12 66 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
13 63 (3.00%) AWS CloudFormation
13 63 (3.00%) AWS Lambda
14 59 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
15 55 (2.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 53 (2.53%) IaaS
17 52 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 42 (2.00%) Datadog
18 42 (2.00%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 229 (10.92%) DNS
2 222 (10.59%) Firewall
3 146 (6.96%) TCP/IP
4 129 (6.15%) DHCP
5 87 (4.15%) VPN
6 82 (3.91%) SAN
7 80 (3.81%) Network Security
8 50 (2.38%) SSL
8 50 (2.38%) WAN
9 44 (2.10%) SSH
10 40 (1.91%) HTTP
10 40 (1.91%) VLAN
11 39 (1.86%) VSAN
12 34 (1.62%) LAN
13 28 (1.34%) Kerberos
14 27 (1.29%) SNMP
15 25 (1.19%) NAS
16 23 (1.10%) HTTPS
17 22 (1.05%) Wireless
18 21 (1.00%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (5.67%) PostgreSQL
2 118 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 101 (4.82%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.24%) Relational Database
5 66 (3.15%) MySQL
6 55 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.58%) MongoDB
8 43 (2.05%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
10 35 (1.67%) Elasticsearch
11 34 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
12 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
13 27 (1.29%) Big Data
14 23 (1.10%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
16 19 (0.91%) Power BI
17 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 11g
17 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
18 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
18 17 (0.81%) Redis
Development Applications
1 266 (12.68%) Git
2 240 (11.44%) Jenkins
3 206 (9.82%) GitLab
4 160 (7.63%) JIRA
5 35 (1.67%) SonarQube
6 33 (1.57%) Maven
7 30 (1.43%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
9 23 (1.10%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.00%) Mockito
11 18 (0.86%) Selenium
12 17 (0.81%) JUnit
13 13 (0.62%) Gradle
14 12 (0.57%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.52%) Eclipse
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 9 (0.43%) JMeter
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
18 8 (0.38%) Cucumber
General
1 444 (21.17%) Social Skills
2 313 (14.93%) Finance
3 246 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.20%) Public Sector
5 163 (7.77%) Banking
6 87 (4.15%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.38%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.76%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.72%) Front Office
10 29 (1.38%) Legal
11 27 (1.29%) Aerospace
12 26 (1.24%) Military
13 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.86%) Law
14 18 (0.86%) Retail
15 17 (0.81%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
17 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
18 10 (0.48%) Aviation
18 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 313 (14.93%) Senior
2 239 (11.40%) Linux Engineer
3 209 (9.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 188 (8.97%) Developer
5 185 (8.82%) DevOps Engineer
6 108 (5.15%) Architect
7 100 (4.77%) Software Engineer
8 99 (4.72%) Platform Engineer
9 82 (3.91%) Support Engineer
10 81 (3.86%) Consultant
11 80 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
11 80 (3.81%) Lead
12 74 (3.53%) Analyst
13 71 (3.39%) Administrator
14 70 (3.34%) Java Developer
15 65 (3.10%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 64 (3.05%) AWS Engineer
17 61 (2.91%) Systems Engineer
18 53 (2.53%) DBA
18 53 (2.53%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 498 (23.75%) Terraform
2 132 (6.29%) Kafka
3 117 (5.58%) REST
4 74 (3.53%) Middleware
5 73 (3.48%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.20%) .NET
7 54 (2.58%) RESTful
8 51 (2.43%) Spring
9 46 (2.19%) Spring Boot
10 42 (2.00%) LDAP
11 38 (1.81%) Web Services
12 37 (1.76%) JSON
13 35 (1.67%) XML
14 31 (1.48%) HTML
14 31 (1.48%) SOAP
15 30 (1.43%) YAML
16 27 (1.29%) ARM Templates
16 27 (1.29%) Django
16 27 (1.29%) React
17 26 (1.24%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 148 (7.06%) Onboarding
2 139 (6.63%) Cloud Native
3 133 (6.34%) Data Centre
4 108 (5.15%) PKI
5 107 (5.10%) Linux Command Line
6 97 (4.63%) Replication
7 83 (3.96%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.43%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.24%) Public Cloud
10 61 (2.91%) Management Information System
11 45 (2.15%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
13 42 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
14 39 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
15 38 (1.81%) Clustering
15 38 (1.81%) Embedded Systems
15 38 (1.81%) Enterprise Storage
15 38 (1.81%) Private Cloud
16 37 (1.76%) Operational Technology
17 35 (1.67%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 792 (37.77%) Windows
2 436 (20.79%) Unix
3 365 (17.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 255 (12.16%) Windows Server
5 112 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 59 (2.81%) AIX
7 57 (2.72%) CentOS
8 52 (2.48%) Solaris
9 39 (1.86%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.43%) VMS
11 28 (1.34%) SUSE
11 28 (1.34%) Windows 10
12 23 (1.10%) Rocky
13 21 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
14 19 (0.91%) Mac OS
15 18 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
16 16 (0.76%) Debian
16 16 (0.76%) Oracle Linux
17 12 (0.57%) Android
17 12 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 622 (29.66%) CI/CD
2 550 (26.23%) DevOps
3 436 (20.79%) Infrastructure as Code
4 379 (18.07%) Agile
5 329 (15.69%) Problem-Solving
6 310 (14.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 283 (13.50%) Containerisation
8 252 (12.02%) Continuous Improvement
9 237 (11.30%) Observability
10 234 (11.16%) Migration
11 224 (10.68%) Platform Engineering
12 206 (9.82%) Software Engineering
13 205 (9.78%) Root Cause Analysis
14 203 (9.68%) High Availability
15 174 (8.30%) ITIL
15 174 (8.30%) Performance Tuning
16 167 (7.96%) Configuration Management
16 167 (7.96%) Test Automation
17 154 (7.34%) AI
18 152 (7.25%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 760 (36.24%) Python
2 422 (20.12%) Bash
3 406 (19.36%) PowerShell
4 377 (17.98%) SQL
5 241 (11.49%) Java
6 153 (7.30%) Shell Script
7 118 (5.63%) C++
8 76 (3.62%) Perl
9 73 (3.48%) C
10 71 (3.39%) JavaScript
11 69 (3.29%) C#
12 65 (3.10%) PL/SQL
13 54 (2.58%) Go
14 44 (2.10%) Bicep
15 26 (1.24%) Groovy
16 22 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.86%) Ada
18 17 (0.81%) TypeScript
19 16 (0.76%) Rust
20 14 (0.67%) Scala
Qualifications
1 809 (38.58%) Security Cleared
2 586 (27.94%) SC Cleared
3 256 (12.21%) DV Cleared
4 184 (8.77%) Degree
5 70 (3.34%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 59 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
8 56 (2.67%) Azure Certification
9 55 (2.62%) CISSP
10 54 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
11 23 (1.10%) RHCE
12 22 (1.05%) CCNP
12 22 (1.05%) CISM
13 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.86%) CCNA
14 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 17 (0.81%) ISTQB
16 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.76%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.48%) NIST
2 70 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.05%) QA
4 32 (1.53%) SLA
5 26 (1.24%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.00%) NCSC
7 20 (0.95%) GDPR
8 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 13 (0.62%) GRC
11 11 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 358 (17.07%) Docker
2 284 (13.54%) Active Directory
3 248 (11.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.34%) Hyper-V
5 84 (4.01%) vSphere
6 78 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
7 72 (3.43%) VMware ESXi
8 60 (2.86%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.96%) Firmware
10 39 (1.86%) Oracle RAC
11 36 (1.72%) NFS
12 26 (1.24%) KVM
13 17 (0.81%) Ceph
13 17 (0.81%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.67%) Postfix
15 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.52%) GPFS
17 10 (0.48%) Squid
18 7 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 469 (22.37%) Ansible
2 456 (21.75%) Kubernetes
3 186 (8.87%) Grafana
4 166 (7.92%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.24%) Puppet
6 61 (2.91%) Progress Chef
7 51 (2.43%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.29%) SCCM
9 40 (1.91%) Data Guard
9 40 (1.91%) vCenter Server
10 30 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
11 29 (1.38%) Kibana
11 29 (1.38%) Nagios
12 27 (1.29%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.24%) Podman
14 25 (1.19%) Packer
15 24 (1.14%) NetBackup
15 24 (1.14%) VxRail
16 22 (1.05%) ZABBIX
17 20 (0.95%) Istio
Vendors
1 351 (16.74%) VMware
2 338 (16.12%) Microsoft
3 307 (14.64%) Oracle
4 229 (10.92%) Red Hat
5 165 (7.87%) Splunk
6 122 (5.82%) Cisco
7 114 (5.44%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.48%) IBM
9 85 (4.05%) Google
10 79 (3.77%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.29%) NetApp
12 47 (2.24%) SolarWinds
13 45 (2.15%) BeyondTrust
14 41 (1.96%) SAP
15 39 (1.86%) Palo Alto
16 38 (1.81%) Dell
16 38 (1.81%) F5
17 33 (1.57%) Dynatrace
18 32 (1.53%) Citrix
19 30 (1.43%) HP