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 24 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -18 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,891 1,762 2,208
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.07% 5.96% 5.06%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.37% 42.88% 37.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,191 1,125 1,451
10th Percentile £335 £374 £333
25th Percentile £402 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £647
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £537 £538
% change year-on-year -9.54% -0.05% -0.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 53 106
10th Percentile £27.02 £40.50 £28.44
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.25
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.88% -7.31%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £68.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.50
% change year-on-year -3.24% +7.85% -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 4,684 4,109 5,847
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.08% 13.91% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,056 2,725 3,940
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £320 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £594
90th Percentile £659 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 178 400
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.44
Median hourly rate £36.93 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.72% +9.91% -41.33%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £23.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year +82.35% +9.52% -30.00%

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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 1,591 £513 -6.82% 619
UK excluding London -13 1,102 £486 -9.54% 547
London -44 561 £550 -6.78% 160
Work from Home -26 487 £500 -6.72% 462
South East -6 307 £500 -9.09% 192
North of England -12 287 £475 -13.64% 73
Yorkshire -19 157 £463 -15.86% 24
Midlands -1 156 £493 -1.45% 67
South West -16 152 £545 -9.17% 85
West Midlands +1 136 £480 -10.61% 32
North West -15 119 £489 -6.01% 29
East of England -8 91 £475 -3.06% 80
Scotland -16 90 £450 -3.74% 40
East Midlands -34 18 £525 +15.51% 35
Northern Ireland +10 15 £425 +30.77% 16
Wales -14 11 £475 -13.64% 13
North East -17 11 £456 -13.10% 20

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 99 (5.24%) Confluence
2 48 (2.54%) Apache
2 48 (2.54%) nginx
3 29 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (1.43%) Apache Spark
5 24 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
6 17 (0.90%) Tomcat
6 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
7 15 (0.79%) OpenStack
7 15 (0.79%) SAS
8 13 (0.69%) WebSphere
9 11 (0.58%) CICS
10 10 (0.53%) TPMS
11 6 (0.32%) JBoss
11 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.32%) SharePoint
11 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
12 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 33 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.26%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.053%) Odoo
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 556 (29.40%) AWS
2 372 (19.67%) Azure
3 174 (9.20%) GitHub
4 126 (6.66%) OpenShift
5 106 (5.61%) GCP
6 99 (5.24%) Amazon EC2
7 91 (4.81%) AWS CloudFormation
8 90 (4.76%) Amazon S3
9 89 (4.71%) GitHub Actions
10 80 (4.23%) Serverless
11 73 (3.86%) Amazon EKS
12 68 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
13 67 (3.54%) AWS Lambda
14 59 (3.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 57 (3.01%) Amazon ECS
16 42 (2.22%) IaaS
16 42 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 39 (2.06%) Microsoft 365
18 37 (1.96%) SaaS
19 35 (1.85%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 197 (10.42%) Firewall
2 132 (6.98%) DNS
3 105 (5.55%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.75%) VPN
5 65 (3.44%) Network Security
6 56 (2.96%) SAN
7 44 (2.33%) WAN
8 40 (2.12%) DHCP
9 39 (2.06%) SSH
10 38 (2.01%) HTTP
11 35 (1.85%) LAN
11 35 (1.85%) VSAN
12 31 (1.64%) SSL
13 28 (1.48%) SNMP
14 24 (1.27%) Ethernet
15 22 (1.16%) NAS
16 19 (1.00%) Wireless
17 17 (0.90%) BGP
17 17 (0.90%) Kerberos
18 15 (0.79%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
2 105 (5.55%) SQL Server
3 69 (3.65%) Amazon RDS
3 69 (3.65%) MySQL
4 67 (3.54%) MongoDB
5 65 (3.44%) Relational Database
6 63 (3.33%) Oracle Database
7 42 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
8 38 (2.01%) NoSQL
9 32 (1.69%) Amazon Aurora
10 26 (1.37%) Big Data
11 24 (1.27%) DynamoDB
12 21 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
13 20 (1.06%) KDB
14 19 (1.00%) Kdb+
15 17 (0.90%) Hadoop
16 16 (0.85%) DB2
16 16 (0.85%) SAP HANA
17 15 (0.79%) Data Lake
18 12 (0.63%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 215 (11.37%) Jenkins
2 187 (9.89%) Git
3 173 (9.15%) GitLab
4 160 (8.46%) JIRA
5 34 (1.80%) Bitbucket
6 32 (1.69%) Maven
7 30 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (1.48%) JUnit
9 25 (1.32%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.32%) Mockito
10 24 (1.27%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.95%) Artifactory
12 16 (0.85%) Cucumber
12 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
13 13 (0.69%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
14 11 (0.58%) jMock
15 10 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 413 (21.84%) Social Skills
2 280 (14.81%) Finance
3 196 (10.36%) Public Sector
4 154 (8.14%) Analytical Skills
5 110 (5.82%) Banking
6 71 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.54%) Military
8 26 (1.37%) Financial Institution
8 26 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
9 21 (1.11%) Aerospace
9 21 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (1.11%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.06%) Investment Banking
11 19 (1.00%) Retail
12 18 (0.95%) Front Office
13 16 (0.85%) Law
14 14 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
15 13 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (0.69%) Legal
15 13 (0.69%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 228 (12.06%) Senior
2 222 (11.74%) Developer
3 171 (9.04%) DevOps Engineer
4 135 (7.14%) Linux Engineer
5 131 (6.93%) Software Engineer
6 119 (6.29%) Architect
7 113 (5.98%) Analyst
8 101 (5.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 95 (5.02%) Lead
10 88 (4.65%) Java Developer
11 79 (4.18%) Administrator
12 69 (3.65%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 68 (3.60%) AWS Engineer
14 65 (3.44%) Site Engineer
15 60 (3.17%) Platform Engineer
16 53 (2.80%) AWS DevOps
16 53 (2.80%) Security Engineer
17 50 (2.64%) Consultant
18 43 (2.27%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 43 (2.27%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (5.92%) Kafka
2 87 (4.60%) REST
3 79 (4.18%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.70%) Middleware
5 60 (3.17%) Node.js
6 51 (2.70%) Spring
7 48 (2.54%) LDAP
8 47 (2.49%) Spring Boot
9 40 (2.12%) Web Services
10 34 (1.80%) .NET
10 34 (1.80%) RESTful
11 32 (1.69%) XML
12 30 (1.59%) YAML
13 27 (1.43%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.43%) JSON
14 25 (1.32%) SOAP
15 24 (1.27%) ActiveMQ
15 24 (1.27%) React
16 22 (1.16%) CSS
17 21 (1.11%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 126 (6.66%) Data Centre
2 105 (5.55%) Cloud Native
3 74 (3.91%) Linux Command Line
4 69 (3.65%) Management Information System
5 62 (3.28%) Distributed Systems
5 62 (3.28%) Onboarding
6 55 (2.91%) Replication
7 52 (2.75%) PKI
8 51 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 50 (2.64%) Public Cloud
10 41 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
11 34 (1.80%) Product Ownership
12 32 (1.69%) Security Posture
13 31 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
14 29 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
14 29 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
15 24 (1.27%) Clustering
15 24 (1.27%) Embedded Systems
15 24 (1.27%) Equities
16 22 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 714 (37.76%) Windows
2 367 (19.41%) Unix
3 275 (14.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 171 (9.04%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.49%) Ubuntu
6 48 (2.54%) AIX
7 42 (2.22%) CentOS
8 37 (1.96%) Solaris
9 36 (1.90%) VMS
10 33 (1.75%) Android
11 30 (1.59%) Embedded Linux
12 25 (1.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.11%) Mac OS
14 20 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
15 19 (1.00%) Debian
16 14 (0.74%) SUSE
17 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
18 12 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
19 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
20 9 (0.48%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 534 (28.24%) CI/CD
2 449 (23.74%) DevOps
3 390 (20.62%) Agile
4 315 (16.66%) Problem-Solving
5 285 (15.07%) Infrastructure as Code
6 256 (13.54%) Containerisation
7 209 (11.05%) Software Engineering
8 180 (9.52%) Observability
9 168 (8.88%) Migration
10 156 (8.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 144 (7.62%) Computer Science
12 142 (7.51%) Continuous Improvement
12 142 (7.51%) SIEM
13 139 (7.35%) Microservices
14 136 (7.19%) High Availability
14 136 (7.19%) Incident Response
15 132 (6.98%) Cybersecurity
15 132 (6.98%) Performance Tuning
16 130 (6.87%) Test Automation
17 129 (6.82%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 649 (34.32%) Python
2 319 (16.87%) SQL
3 289 (15.28%) Java
4 267 (14.12%) Bash
5 261 (13.80%) PowerShell
6 167 (8.83%) Shell Script
7 127 (6.72%) C++
8 105 (5.55%) JavaScript
9 75 (3.97%) Perl
10 62 (3.28%) C#
11 52 (2.75%) C
12 43 (2.27%) Go
13 41 (2.17%) PL/SQL
14 37 (1.96%) Ruby
15 27 (1.43%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.27%) PHP
17 22 (1.16%) Rust
18 20 (1.06%) Ada
19 19 (1.00%) Kusto Query Language
19 19 (1.00%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 745 (39.40%) Security Cleared
2 549 (29.03%) SC Cleared
3 202 (10.68%) DV Cleared
4 177 (9.36%) Degree
5 91 (4.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 81 (4.28%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.70%) AWS Certification
8 43 (2.27%) CompTIA Security+
9 41 (2.17%) CISSP
10 40 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.80%) RHCE
12 27 (1.43%) Azure Certification
13 23 (1.22%) CCNA
14 21 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
15 18 (0.95%) CCNP
15 18 (0.95%) CompTIA CySA+
15 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.95%) OCP
16 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 13 (0.69%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.07%) NIST
2 67 (3.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.54%) QA
4 39 (2.06%) SLA
5 36 (1.90%) GDPR
6 22 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.11%) NCSC
8 20 (1.06%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.74%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.58%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.53%) GLBA
11 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.48%) GRC
13 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 8 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
15 4 (0.21%) HL7
15 4 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 346 (18.30%) Docker
2 222 (11.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 171 (9.04%) Active Directory
4 74 (3.91%) Virtual Machines
5 72 (3.81%) vSphere
6 68 (3.60%) Hyper-V
7 62 (3.28%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (2.01%) NFS
8 38 (2.01%) VMware NSX
9 35 (1.85%) Firmware
10 27 (1.43%) GPFS
11 26 (1.37%) KVM
12 19 (1.00%) Oracle RAC
12 19 (1.00%) Postfix
13 15 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 12 (0.63%) Ceph
15 11 (0.58%) Lustre
16 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.37%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 424 (22.42%) Kubernetes
2 391 (20.68%) Terraform
3 378 (19.99%) Ansible
4 185 (9.78%) Grafana
5 146 (7.72%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.65%) Puppet
7 52 (2.75%) Progress Chef
8 44 (2.33%) vCenter Server
9 35 (1.85%) Packer
10 31 (1.64%) Kibana
10 31 (1.64%) vRealize
11 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
12 28 (1.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 27 (1.43%) Podman
14 25 (1.32%) Argo
15 20 (1.06%) SCCM
15 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
16 19 (1.00%) Data Guard
17 18 (0.95%) Nessus
17 18 (0.95%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 299 (15.81%) VMware
2 271 (14.33%) Microsoft
3 256 (13.54%) Oracle
4 216 (11.42%) Red Hat
5 185 (9.78%) Splunk
6 103 (5.45%) Cisco
7 93 (4.92%) IBM
8 73 (3.86%) ServiceNow
9 46 (2.43%) Dell
10 44 (2.33%) CyberArk
11 42 (2.22%) Palo Alto
12 39 (2.06%) Google
13 34 (1.80%) HP
14 32 (1.69%) Atlassian
15 30 (1.59%) SolarWinds
16 28 (1.48%) NetApp
17 24 (1.27%) SAP
18 23 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
18 23 (1.22%) F5
18 23 (1.22%) NVIDIA