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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -13 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,936 1,788 2,398
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 5.83% 5.47%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.20% 40.73% 39.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,227 1,095 1,580
10th Percentile £323 £360 £325
25th Percentile £401 £440 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -6.67% -0.94% -2.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 55 117
10th Percentile £15.00 £42.75 £25.82
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.45 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.46 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £73.50 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £66.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year -5.54% +9.92% -6.92%

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 4,816 4,390 6,105
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.62% 14.31% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,187 2,786 4,096
10th Percentile £178 £200 £180
25th Percentile £275 £318 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £425 £430
% change year-on-year -1.18% -1.16% -9.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 350 151 380
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.10 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.05 £20.62 £16.44
Median hourly rate £23.79 £29.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.97% +16.00% -5.62%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £68.87 £68.75 £70.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £27.75 £24.00
% change year-on-year -17.80% +15.63% -9.40%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 26 February 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 -14 1,677 £525 -4.59% 673
UK excluding London -7 1,119 £490 -6.67% 599
London -29 612 £550 -8.33% 183
Work from Home -19 517 £500 -4.76% 306
South East -3 327 £483 -8.10% 175
North of England -1 302 £500 -9.09% 113
Midlands -6 179 £525 - 80
Yorkshire -8 169 £500 -13.04% 26
West Midlands -5 165 £525 -2.51% 55
South West -20 141 £550 -8.33% 86
North West -8 123 £492 -1.60% 66
East of England -11 87 £473 +5.00% 74
Scotland -22 81 £425 -9.57% 64
Northern Ireland +8 16 £413 +26.92% 6
East Midlands -37 14 £420 -8.50% 25
North East -16 13 £538 +10.26% 21
Wales -10 6 £543 +0.93% 12

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 93 (4.80%) Confluence
2 49 (2.53%) nginx
3 48 (2.48%) Apache
4 41 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (0.98%) OpenStack
5 19 (0.98%) WebLogic
6 18 (0.93%) Apache Spark
7 15 (0.77%) SharePoint
8 14 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.67%) Tomcat
9 13 (0.67%) TPMS
9 13 (0.67%) WebSphere
10 10 (0.52%) JBoss
10 10 (0.52%) SAS
11 8 (0.41%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.36%) CICS
12 7 (0.36%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.26%) iPlanet
14 5 (0.26%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 52 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.62%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 8 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.052%) RMDS
5 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.052%) Shopify
5 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 603 (31.15%) AWS
2 377 (19.47%) Azure
3 186 (9.61%) GitHub
4 145 (7.49%) GCP
5 143 (7.39%) OpenShift
6 112 (5.79%) Serverless
7 111 (5.73%) AWS CloudFormation
8 98 (5.06%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
10 82 (4.24%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.82%) Amazon EKS
12 69 (3.56%) AWS Lambda
13 66 (3.41%) Amazon ECS
14 63 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
15 60 (3.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 51 (2.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 45 (2.32%) IaaS
18 40 (2.07%) Entra ID
19 38 (1.96%) Microsoft 365
20 35 (1.81%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 212 (10.95%) Firewall
2 149 (7.70%) DNS
3 134 (6.92%) TCP/IP
4 64 (3.31%) Network Security
5 63 (3.25%) VPN
6 47 (2.43%) SSH
7 44 (2.27%) DHCP
8 41 (2.12%) SSL
9 38 (1.96%) HTTP
9 38 (1.96%) SAN
10 31 (1.60%) VLAN
11 28 (1.45%) WAN
12 27 (1.39%) Wireless
13 26 (1.34%) Ethernet
13 26 (1.34%) VSAN
14 24 (1.24%) BGP
15 22 (1.14%) Kerberos
16 20 (1.03%) SNMP
16 20 (1.03%) Wireshark
17 19 (0.98%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (7.59%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.11%) SQL Server
3 85 (4.39%) Amazon RDS
4 82 (4.24%) Relational Database
5 76 (3.93%) MongoDB
6 70 (3.62%) NoSQL
7 67 (3.46%) MySQL
8 64 (3.31%) Oracle Database
9 51 (2.63%) Elasticsearch
10 29 (1.50%) DB2
11 24 (1.24%) Big Data
12 20 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
13 17 (0.88%) Hadoop
13 17 (0.88%) KDB
13 17 (0.88%) Kdb+
14 15 (0.77%) Data Lake
15 13 (0.67%) DynamoDB
15 13 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 12 (0.62%) GIS
16 12 (0.62%) Redis
Development Applications
1 272 (14.05%) Jenkins
2 213 (11.00%) Git
3 203 (10.49%) GitLab
4 143 (7.39%) JIRA
5 53 (2.74%) JUnit
6 48 (2.48%) Sonatype Nexus
7 44 (2.27%) Bitbucket
8 36 (1.86%) Eclipse
8 36 (1.86%) Maven
9 27 (1.39%) Mockito
10 26 (1.34%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.14%) Liquibase
12 19 (0.98%) SonarQube
12 19 (0.98%) Visual Studio
13 18 (0.93%) Burp Suite
14 17 (0.88%) Artifactory
14 17 (0.88%) JMeter
15 15 (0.77%) Metasploit
16 14 (0.72%) Selenium
17 13 (0.67%) Xcode
General
1 515 (26.60%) Social Skills
2 332 (17.15%) Finance
3 198 (10.23%) Public Sector
4 186 (9.61%) Analytical Skills
5 141 (7.28%) Banking
6 67 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.53%) Financial Institution
8 48 (2.48%) Military
9 41 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
10 35 (1.81%) Investment Banking
11 30 (1.55%) Front Office
12 25 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
13 21 (1.08%) Legal
14 19 (0.98%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.93%) Telecoms
16 17 (0.88%) Law
17 14 (0.72%) Manufacturing
17 14 (0.72%) Retail
18 11 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 270 (13.95%) Developer
2 248 (12.81%) Senior
3 186 (9.61%) DevOps Engineer
4 149 (7.70%) Software Engineer
5 125 (6.46%) Analyst
6 110 (5.68%) Architect
6 110 (5.68%) Java Developer
7 96 (4.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 91 (4.70%) Linux Engineer
9 86 (4.44%) Support Engineer
10 82 (4.24%) Platform Engineer
11 79 (4.08%) Lead
12 76 (3.93%) Administrator
13 74 (3.82%) AWS Engineer
14 72 (3.72%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 68 (3.51%) Site Engineer
16 58 (3.00%) AWS DevOps
17 56 (2.89%) Senior Software Engineer
18 55 (2.84%) Security Engineer
19 47 (2.43%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (7.85%) Kafka
2 123 (6.35%) REST
3 119 (6.15%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.18%) Middleware
5 73 (3.77%) Node.js
6 70 (3.62%) Spring
7 54 (2.79%) RESTful
8 53 (2.74%) LDAP
9 46 (2.38%) JSON
9 46 (2.38%) React
10 45 (2.32%) XML
11 43 (2.22%) Spring Boot
12 42 (2.17%) Web Services
13 38 (1.96%) AngularJS
14 37 (1.91%) YAML
15 35 (1.81%) SOAP
16 27 (1.39%) .NET
17 24 (1.24%) ActiveMQ
17 24 (1.24%) CSS
18 23 (1.19%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 122 (6.30%) Cloud Native
2 108 (5.58%) Data Centre
3 88 (4.55%) Linux Command Line
4 74 (3.82%) Distributed Systems
5 73 (3.77%) Management Information System
6 62 (3.20%) Public Cloud
7 56 (2.89%) PKI
8 52 (2.69%) Replication
9 48 (2.48%) Onboarding
10 45 (2.32%) Equities
11 40 (2.07%) Hybrid Cloud
12 38 (1.96%) Product Ownership
12 38 (1.96%) Security Posture
13 37 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
14 33 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
15 32 (1.65%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 31 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
17 30 (1.55%) Data Structures
18 28 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
18 28 (1.45%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 710 (36.67%) Windows
2 371 (19.16%) Unix
3 268 (13.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 150 (7.75%) Windows Server
5 89 (4.60%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.63%) CentOS
7 39 (2.01%) Android
8 36 (1.86%) Solaris
9 29 (1.50%) Mac OS
10 28 (1.45%) VMS
11 26 (1.34%) AIX
12 25 (1.29%) Mac OS X
13 23 (1.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.98%) Embedded Linux
14 19 (0.98%) Windows 10
15 16 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.72%) Kali Linux
17 13 (0.67%) Debian
18 11 (0.57%) Apple iOS
18 11 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 605 (31.25%) CI/CD
2 501 (25.88%) DevOps
3 444 (22.93%) Agile
4 376 (19.42%) Problem-Solving
5 321 (16.58%) Infrastructure as Code
6 318 (16.43%) Containerisation
7 244 (12.60%) Software Engineering
8 200 (10.33%) Observability
9 176 (9.09%) Cybersecurity
10 168 (8.68%) Computer Science
11 167 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
12 166 (8.57%) Microservices
13 154 (7.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 152 (7.85%) Test Automation
15 151 (7.80%) Incident Response
16 137 (7.08%) Platform Engineering
17 132 (6.82%) High Availability
18 126 (6.51%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 125 (6.46%) SIEM
20 124 (6.40%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 720 (37.19%) Python
2 352 (18.18%) Java
3 334 (17.25%) Bash
4 333 (17.20%) SQL
5 272 (14.05%) PowerShell
6 192 (9.92%) Shell Script
7 172 (8.88%) C++
8 132 (6.82%) JavaScript
9 104 (5.37%) Perl
10 81 (4.18%) C#
11 70 (3.62%) Go
12 53 (2.74%) C
13 43 (2.22%) Ruby
14 33 (1.70%) TypeScript
15 31 (1.60%) Rust
16 29 (1.50%) PL/SQL
17 23 (1.19%) PHP
18 22 (1.14%) Ada
19 20 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
20 14 (0.72%) Korn
Qualifications
1 714 (36.88%) Security Cleared
2 514 (26.55%) SC Cleared
3 217 (11.21%) Degree
4 174 (8.99%) DV Cleared
5 112 (5.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 87 (4.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 71 (3.67%) AWS Certification
8 39 (2.01%) CISSP
9 38 (1.96%) CompTIA Security+
10 37 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
11 35 (1.81%) Azure Certification
12 34 (1.76%) Master's Degree
13 31 (1.60%) RHCE
14 30 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
15 23 (1.19%) CCNA
16 22 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 21 (1.08%) CCNP
18 19 (0.98%) OSCP
19 18 (0.93%) Oracle Certification
20 17 (0.88%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (3.82%) NIST
2 52 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 50 (2.58%) GDPR
4 40 (2.07%) QA
5 29 (1.50%) SLA
6 23 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
7 19 (0.98%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.88%) Data Quality
8 17 (0.88%) NCSC
9 13 (0.67%) GLBA
10 12 (0.62%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.36%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.36%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.31%) Accessibility
15 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
16 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.15%) SEPA
System Software
1 416 (21.49%) Docker
2 226 (11.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 171 (8.83%) Active Directory
4 75 (3.87%) vSphere
5 71 (3.67%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (2.84%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.53%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (1.50%) NFS
9 28 (1.45%) VMware NSX
10 27 (1.39%) GPFS
11 22 (1.14%) KVM
12 18 (0.93%) Firmware
13 15 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
14 14 (0.72%) Postfix
14 14 (0.72%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 12 (0.62%) Lustre
16 9 (0.46%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.36%) Ceph
17 7 (0.36%) HDFS
17 7 (0.36%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 502 (25.93%) Kubernetes
2 418 (21.59%) Terraform
3 395 (20.40%) Ansible
4 210 (10.85%) Grafana
5 180 (9.30%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.72%) Puppet
7 68 (3.51%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.32%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.01%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.91%) Packer
11 35 (1.81%) Argo
12 34 (1.76%) vRealize
13 33 (1.70%) Podman
14 31 (1.60%) Kibana
15 27 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
16 25 (1.29%) SCCM
17 24 (1.24%) Nessus
18 21 (1.08%) SCOM
19 18 (0.93%) ITRS Geneos
19 18 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 310 (16.01%) VMware
2 308 (15.91%) Microsoft
3 252 (13.02%) Oracle
4 235 (12.14%) Splunk
5 233 (12.04%) Red Hat
6 111 (5.73%) Cisco
7 88 (4.55%) IBM
8 73 (3.77%) ServiceNow
9 57 (2.94%) Google
10 44 (2.27%) Dell
11 36 (1.86%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.76%) CyberArk
13 31 (1.60%) AppDynamics
14 27 (1.39%) SolarWinds
15 25 (1.29%) Atlassian
15 25 (1.29%) NetApp
16 24 (1.24%) Citrix
16 24 (1.24%) NVIDIA
17 22 (1.14%) CrowdStrike
17 22 (1.14%) SAP