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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 36 29
Rank change year-on-year -22 -7 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,110 1,877 2,091
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.82% 5.66% 5.58%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.38% 41.08% 39.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,319 1,139 1,228
10th Percentile £358 £334 £350
25th Percentile £438 £418 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +4.50% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 72 117
10th Percentile £43.60 £32.25 £50.25
25th Percentile £56.06 £52.88 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £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% +3.85%

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 5,358 4,569 5,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.77% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,383 2,926 3,249
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £470
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -4.26% -5.05%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £420 £444
% change year-on-year +7.14% -5.41% -1.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 308 248
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.30 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £23.63
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £55.33
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% -54.81% +21.75%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.32 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £23.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +12.04% -60.00% +35.29%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 -22 1,781 £525 +0.99% 2,430
UK excluding London -24 1,164 £514 +4.50% 1,244
London -32 741 £536 -5.22% 1,238
Work from Home -29 563 £513 -0.63% 1,218
South East -15 331 £537 +12.99% 343
North of England -33 270 £500 +5.04% 199
South West -3 168 £575 +4.55% 213
North West -23 134 £497 +23.63% 108
Scotland -20 132 £468 -6.50% 80
Midlands -50 126 £476 -4.80% 136
East of England -14 113 £496 +1.02% 207
Yorkshire -36 112 £518 +3.50% 62
West Midlands -46 107 £475 -6.31% 81
North East -16 32 £480 -10.70% 30
Wales +13 31 £465 +3.33% 28
East Midlands -9 17 £481 +14.52% 55
Northern Ireland -1 3 - - 60

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 68 (3.22%) Confluence
2 46 (2.18%) Apache
3 42 (1.99%) nginx
4 28 (1.33%) WebLogic
5 26 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
6 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
7 22 (1.04%) Apache Spark
7 22 (1.04%) SharePoint
8 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
8 20 (0.95%) Tomcat
9 19 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 18 (0.85%) IIS
11 15 (0.71%) JBoss
12 14 (0.66%) SAS
13 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.33%) CMS
15 6 (0.28%) MTS
15 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
Applications
1 29 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
5 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.047%) Simulink
6 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 623 (29.53%) AWS
2 545 (25.83%) Azure
3 215 (10.19%) GCP
4 168 (7.96%) GitHub
5 116 (5.50%) Entra ID
6 114 (5.40%) OpenShift
7 106 (5.02%) GitHub Actions
8 98 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
9 95 (4.50%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.84%) Amazon EC2
11 73 (3.46%) Serverless
12 70 (3.32%) AWS CloudFormation
13 64 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 64 (3.03%) Amazon EKS
14 63 (2.99%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.89%) Microsoft 365
16 55 (2.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 52 (2.46%) IaaS
18 46 (2.18%) Datadog
19 43 (2.04%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.81%) DNS
2 220 (10.43%) Firewall
3 174 (8.25%) TCP/IP
4 134 (6.35%) DHCP
5 94 (4.45%) VPN
6 93 (4.41%) Network Security
7 75 (3.55%) SAN
8 56 (2.65%) SSL
9 48 (2.27%) SSH
10 46 (2.18%) WAN
11 45 (2.13%) HTTP
12 40 (1.90%) VLAN
13 31 (1.47%) BGP
13 31 (1.47%) LAN
14 29 (1.37%) Kerberos
14 29 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
15 27 (1.28%) VSAN
16 25 (1.18%) Wireless
17 23 (1.09%) 5G
18 21 (1.00%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (5.92%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.21%) SQL Server
3 105 (4.98%) Oracle Database
4 77 (3.65%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.03%) MySQL
6 60 (2.84%) Amazon RDS
7 52 (2.46%) MongoDB
8 49 (2.32%) NoSQL
9 38 (1.80%) Data Warehouse
10 35 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.37%) RDBMS
12 25 (1.18%) Big Data
12 25 (1.18%) Data Lake
13 24 (1.14%) Amazon Aurora
14 20 (0.95%) Power BI
14 20 (0.95%) Redis
15 19 (0.90%) DynamoDB
16 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 12c
17 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
18 16 (0.76%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 304 (14.41%) Git
2 273 (12.94%) Jenkins
3 241 (11.42%) GitLab
4 169 (8.01%) JIRA
5 45 (2.13%) Maven
6 36 (1.71%) SonarQube
7 35 (1.66%) Bitbucket
8 29 (1.37%) Artifactory
8 29 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.14%) Selenium
10 22 (1.04%) Mockito
11 21 (1.00%) Gradle
11 21 (1.00%) JUnit
12 20 (0.95%) Cucumber
13 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
14 14 (0.66%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.47%) JMeter
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 473 (22.42%) Social Skills
2 351 (16.64%) Finance
3 243 (11.52%) Analytical Skills
4 179 (8.48%) Banking
5 159 (7.54%) Public Sector
6 78 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (2.65%) Telecoms
8 49 (2.32%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.71%) Front Office
10 34 (1.61%) Military
11 29 (1.37%) Legal
12 25 (1.18%) Aerospace
13 24 (1.14%) Law
14 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.81%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
18 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.47%) Police
Job Titles
1 327 (15.50%) Senior
2 231 (10.95%) Linux Engineer
3 222 (10.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 215 (10.19%) Developer
5 193 (9.15%) DevOps Engineer
6 107 (5.07%) Platform Engineer
7 105 (4.98%) Architect
8 91 (4.31%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
9 82 (3.89%) Support Engineer
10 75 (3.55%) Java Developer
11 74 (3.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 73 (3.46%) Consultant
13 72 (3.41%) Analyst
14 67 (3.18%) AWS Engineer
15 66 (3.13%) Administrator
16 65 (3.08%) Lead
17 58 (2.75%) Network Engineer
18 52 (2.46%) DBA
18 52 (2.46%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 541 (25.64%) Terraform
2 146 (6.92%) Kafka
2 146 (6.92%) REST
3 86 (4.08%) Middleware
4 73 (3.46%) Elastic Stack
5 70 (3.32%) .NET
6 58 (2.75%) RESTful
6 58 (2.75%) Spring
7 56 (2.65%) Web Services
8 53 (2.51%) LDAP
9 51 (2.42%) Spring Boot
10 45 (2.13%) JSON
11 44 (2.09%) React
12 41 (1.94%) XML
13 37 (1.75%) SOAP
14 35 (1.66%) Flask
14 35 (1.66%) HTML
15 32 (1.52%) ARM Templates
15 32 (1.52%) Django
15 32 (1.52%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 168 (7.96%) Onboarding
2 149 (7.06%) Cloud Native
3 127 (6.02%) Data Centre
4 113 (5.36%) PKI
5 106 (5.02%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.45%) Replication
7 93 (4.41%) Distributed Systems
8 74 (3.51%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.22%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.08%) Public Cloud
11 59 (2.80%) Enterprise Software
12 56 (2.65%) Security Posture
13 43 (2.04%) Product Ownership
14 42 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
14 42 (1.99%) Private Cloud
15 41 (1.94%) Operational Technology
16 39 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
17 38 (1.80%) Enterprise Storage
18 36 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
19 34 (1.61%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 798 (37.82%) Windows
2 415 (19.67%) Unix
3 366 (17.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 248 (11.75%) Windows Server
5 110 (5.21%) Ubuntu
6 63 (2.99%) CentOS
7 52 (2.46%) Solaris
8 50 (2.37%) AIX
9 32 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
11 29 (1.37%) VMS
12 26 (1.23%) SUSE
13 25 (1.18%) macOS
14 24 (1.14%) Rocky
15 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
17 13 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
18 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
18 11 (0.52%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 684 (32.42%) CI/CD
2 598 (28.34%) DevOps
3 485 (22.99%) Infrastructure as Code
4 403 (19.10%) Agile
5 340 (16.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 338 (16.02%) Problem-Solving
7 322 (15.26%) Containerisation
8 282 (13.36%) Continuous Improvement
9 267 (12.65%) Observability
10 253 (11.99%) Platform Engineering
11 238 (11.28%) Migration
12 225 (10.66%) Software Engineering
13 219 (10.38%) Root Cause Analysis
14 197 (9.34%) High Availability
15 196 (9.29%) Configuration Management
16 186 (8.82%) Test Automation
17 185 (8.77%) Stakeholder Management
18 184 (8.72%) ITIL
19 183 (8.67%) Cybersecurity
20 168 (7.96%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 796 (37.73%) Python
2 479 (22.70%) Bash
3 421 (19.95%) PowerShell
4 381 (18.06%) SQL
5 263 (12.46%) Java
6 162 (7.68%) Shell Script
7 121 (5.73%) C++
8 88 (4.17%) JavaScript
9 87 (4.12%) Perl
10 76 (3.60%) C#
11 66 (3.13%) C
12 58 (2.75%) Go
12 58 (2.75%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.32%) Bicep
14 40 (1.90%) Groovy
15 26 (1.23%) TypeScript
16 18 (0.85%) Search Processing Language
17 16 (0.76%) Korn
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
18 14 (0.66%) Ada
Qualifications
1 798 (37.82%) Security Cleared
2 552 (26.16%) SC Cleared
3 257 (12.18%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.67%) Degree
5 78 (3.70%) AWS Certification
6 62 (2.94%) CISSP
6 62 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.65%) Azure Certification
9 52 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
10 30 (1.42%) CISM
11 25 (1.18%) CCNP
12 22 (1.04%) RHCE
13 21 (1.00%) CCNA
13 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
15 17 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 15 (0.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 14 (0.66%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.65%) QA
2 70 (3.32%) NIST
3 60 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 28 (1.33%) SLA
5 26 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.09%) GDPR
7 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (0.81%) GRC
8 16 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
8 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.71%) NCSC
10 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
11 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
12 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
12 8 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.33%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.33%) MISRA
14 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
14 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA C
System Software
1 404 (19.15%) Docker
2 294 (13.93%) Active Directory
3 231 (10.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (3.79%) Hyper-V
5 78 (3.70%) vSphere
6 71 (3.36%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
8 44 (2.09%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.80%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (1.71%) Firmware
11 33 (1.56%) NFS
12 27 (1.28%) KVM
13 26 (1.23%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.66%) Ceph
15 13 (0.62%) Embedded Firmware
15 13 (0.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.52%) GPFS
17 10 (0.47%) Postfix
17 10 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
18 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 507 (24.03%) Kubernetes
2 479 (22.70%) Ansible
3 200 (9.48%) Grafana
4 178 (8.44%) Prometheus
5 92 (4.36%) Puppet
6 61 (2.89%) Progress Chef
7 58 (2.75%) SCCM
8 48 (2.27%) Oracle RMAN
9 44 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
10 39 (1.85%) Data Guard
11 37 (1.75%) Kibana
12 30 (1.42%) vCenter Server
13 28 (1.33%) Nagios
14 26 (1.23%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.23%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.23%) VxRail
15 25 (1.18%) Podman
16 24 (1.14%) Packer
17 21 (1.00%) Istio
18 20 (0.95%) Argo
Vendors
1 363 (17.20%) Microsoft
2 325 (15.40%) VMware
3 283 (13.41%) Oracle
4 218 (10.33%) Red Hat
5 177 (8.39%) Splunk
6 125 (5.92%) ServiceNow
7 119 (5.64%) Cisco
8 105 (4.98%) Google
9 94 (4.45%) IBM
10 76 (3.60%) CyberArk
11 51 (2.42%) NetApp
12 45 (2.13%) SolarWinds
13 40 (1.90%) F5
14 39 (1.85%) Palo Alto
15 38 (1.80%) Dynatrace
16 35 (1.66%) Dell
17 33 (1.56%) BeyondTrust
17 33 (1.56%) SAP
18 31 (1.47%) Tenable
19 29 (1.37%) CrowdStrike