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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,087 1,840 2,148
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.63% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.41% 41.71% 39.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,297 1,113 1,324
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £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 113 67 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £53.90 £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 £78.50 £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 5,295 4,411 5,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.49% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,336 2,820 3,502
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £581
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £445 £450
% change year-on-year +1.12% -1.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 272 275
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.54
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.74 £20.15
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -49.19% +6.02%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.32 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.75
% change year-on-year +29.22% -52.32% +14.97%

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 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 14 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 14 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 -22 1,754 £525 - 3,066
UK excluding London -21 1,193 £500 - 1,530
London -36 681 £535 -6.96% 1,657
Work from Home -26 556 £500 -3.85% 2,555
South East -13 337 £525 +8.81% 443
North of England -22 285 £500 +4.60% 220
South West +2 188 £575 +4.55% 252
North West -19 141 £497 +23.63% 132
Scotland -16 132 £450 -10.00% 106
Yorkshire -23 121 £515 +2.95% 47
Midlands -48 120 £470 -6.00% 151
East of England -14 111 £505 +2.80% 302
West Midlands -45 100 £470 -6.00% 101
North East -15 30 £475 -17.39% 42
Wales +7 28 £465 +3.33% 28
East Midlands -11 17 £491 +16.79% 49
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 47

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 66 (3.16%) Confluence
2 47 (2.25%) Apache
3 31 (1.49%) nginx
4 26 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.10%) OpenStack
5 23 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 23 (1.10%) WebLogic
6 20 (0.96%) Apache Spark
7 17 (0.81%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 17 (0.81%) SAS
8 15 (0.72%) JBoss
8 15 (0.72%) Tomcat
9 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
10 9 (0.43%) IIS
11 6 (0.29%) CMS
11 6 (0.29%) MTS
12 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
12 5 (0.24%) WebLogic Portal
12 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.096%) 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 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.096%) 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
1 605 (28.99%) AWS
2 513 (24.58%) Azure
3 181 (8.67%) GCP
4 164 (7.86%) GitHub
5 108 (5.17%) OpenShift
6 106 (5.08%) Entra ID
7 102 (4.89%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.41%) Amazon S3
9 90 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
10 83 (3.98%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.40%) Serverless
12 66 (3.16%) Microsoft 365
13 64 (3.07%) AWS CloudFormation
14 63 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.92%) Amazon EKS
16 56 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 53 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 50 (2.40%) IaaS
19 43 (2.06%) Datadog
20 42 (2.01%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 225 (10.78%) DNS
2 218 (10.45%) Firewall
3 153 (7.33%) TCP/IP
4 128 (6.13%) DHCP
5 87 (4.17%) VPN
6 82 (3.93%) Network Security
7 80 (3.83%) SAN
8 50 (2.40%) SSL
8 50 (2.40%) WAN
9 43 (2.06%) SSH
10 40 (1.92%) HTTP
10 40 (1.92%) VLAN
11 38 (1.82%) VSAN
12 33 (1.58%) LAN
13 27 (1.29%) Kerberos
14 26 (1.25%) SNMP
15 23 (1.10%) HTTPS
15 23 (1.10%) NAS
16 22 (1.05%) Wireless
17 21 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.75%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (5.51%) SQL Server
3 100 (4.79%) Oracle Database
4 72 (3.45%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.11%) MySQL
6 55 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
7 53 (2.54%) MongoDB
8 43 (2.06%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.63%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
12 29 (1.39%) RDBMS
13 27 (1.29%) Big Data
14 20 (0.96%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.91%) Data Lake
15 19 (0.91%) Power BI
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 11g
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
17 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
18 16 (0.77%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 269 (12.89%) Git
2 242 (11.60%) Jenkins
3 207 (9.92%) GitLab
4 157 (7.52%) JIRA
5 36 (1.72%) Maven
5 36 (1.72%) SonarQube
6 30 (1.44%) Bitbucket
7 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
8 24 (1.15%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.01%) Mockito
10 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
10 18 (0.86%) Selenium
11 17 (0.81%) JUnit
12 16 (0.77%) Gradle
13 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.53%) TeamCity
15 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 10 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
16 9 (0.43%) JMeter
16 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 446 (21.37%) Social Skills
2 311 (14.90%) Finance
3 245 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.34%) Public Sector
5 164 (7.86%) Banking
6 88 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.35%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.68%) Front Office
10 34 (1.63%) Military
11 29 (1.39%) Legal
12 28 (1.34%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.91%) Law
15 18 (0.86%) Retail
16 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (0.77%) Manufacturing
18 10 (0.48%) Aviation
18 10 (0.48%) Financial Institution
19 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 318 (15.24%) Senior
2 242 (11.60%) Linux Engineer
3 207 (9.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 192 (9.20%) Developer
5 184 (8.82%) DevOps Engineer
6 103 (4.94%) Architect
6 103 (4.94%) Software Engineer
7 99 (4.74%) Platform Engineer
8 81 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
8 81 (3.88%) Support Engineer
9 79 (3.79%) Lead
10 78 (3.74%) Consultant
11 74 (3.55%) Analyst
12 71 (3.40%) Java Developer
13 68 (3.26%) Administrator
14 66 (3.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 65 (3.11%) AWS Engineer
16 60 (2.87%) Systems Engineer
17 53 (2.54%) DBA
17 53 (2.54%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 497 (23.81%) Terraform
2 133 (6.37%) Kafka
3 120 (5.75%) REST
4 75 (3.59%) Middleware
5 74 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.21%) .NET
7 54 (2.59%) RESTful
8 53 (2.54%) Spring
9 49 (2.35%) Spring Boot
10 45 (2.16%) Web Services
11 43 (2.06%) LDAP
12 38 (1.82%) JSON
13 36 (1.72%) XML
14 31 (1.49%) HTML
14 31 (1.49%) SOAP
15 30 (1.44%) YAML
16 29 (1.39%) Node.js
17 28 (1.34%) Django
17 28 (1.34%) React
18 27 (1.29%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 147 (7.04%) Onboarding
2 135 (6.47%) Cloud Native
3 130 (6.23%) Data Centre
4 109 (5.22%) PKI
5 106 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.50%) Replication
7 85 (4.07%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.40%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.21%) Public Cloud
10 63 (3.02%) Management Information System
11 47 (2.25%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
13 40 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.87%) Embedded Systems
14 39 (1.87%) Operational Technology
14 39 (1.87%) Private Cloud
15 38 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
15 38 (1.82%) Product Ownership
16 37 (1.77%) Clustering
16 37 (1.77%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 784 (37.57%) Windows
2 438 (20.99%) Unix
3 362 (17.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 246 (11.79%) Windows Server
5 112 (5.37%) Ubuntu
6 59 (2.83%) AIX
7 58 (2.78%) CentOS
8 54 (2.59%) Solaris
9 39 (1.87%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.39%) VMS
10 29 (1.39%) Windows 10
11 28 (1.34%) SUSE
12 23 (1.10%) Rocky
13 20 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
14 19 (0.91%) Mac OS
15 17 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
16 16 (0.77%) Debian
16 16 (0.77%) Oracle Linux
17 13 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
18 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 626 (30.00%) CI/CD
2 544 (26.07%) DevOps
3 436 (20.89%) Infrastructure as Code
4 384 (18.40%) Agile
5 329 (15.76%) Problem-Solving
6 313 (15.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 286 (13.70%) Containerisation
8 251 (12.03%) Continuous Improvement
9 236 (11.31%) Observability
10 227 (10.88%) Migration
11 226 (10.83%) Platform Engineering
12 212 (10.16%) Software Engineering
13 203 (9.73%) Root Cause Analysis
14 202 (9.68%) High Availability
15 172 (8.24%) Performance Tuning
16 171 (8.19%) ITIL
17 170 (8.15%) Configuration Management
18 168 (8.05%) Test Automation
19 154 (7.38%) AI
19 154 (7.38%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 754 (36.13%) Python
2 424 (20.32%) Bash
3 403 (19.31%) PowerShell
4 376 (18.02%) SQL
5 243 (11.64%) Java
6 148 (7.09%) Shell Script
7 125 (5.99%) C++
8 78 (3.74%) JavaScript
9 77 (3.69%) Perl
10 76 (3.64%) C#
11 75 (3.59%) C
12 65 (3.11%) PL/SQL
13 55 (2.64%) Go
14 43 (2.06%) Bicep
15 26 (1.25%) Groovy
16 21 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.86%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.77%) Ada
18 16 (0.77%) Rust
19 14 (0.67%) Korn
Qualifications
1 803 (38.48%) Security Cleared
2 579 (27.74%) SC Cleared
3 250 (11.98%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.72%) Degree
5 71 (3.40%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
8 56 (2.68%) Azure Certification
8 56 (2.68%) CISSP
9 55 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
10 24 (1.15%) CISM
10 24 (1.15%) RHCE
11 22 (1.05%) CCNP
12 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.86%) CCNA
13 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (0.81%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.72%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (3.55%) NIST
2 71 (3.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 68 (3.26%) QA
4 32 (1.53%) SLA
5 23 (1.10%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.01%) GDPR
7 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
7 19 (0.91%) NCSC
8 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
10 14 (0.67%) GRC
11 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.43%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 359 (17.20%) Docker
2 277 (13.27%) Active Directory
3 247 (11.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (4.31%) Hyper-V
5 81 (3.88%) vSphere
6 76 (3.64%) Virtual Machines
7 72 (3.45%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (2.83%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.96%) Firmware
10 39 (1.87%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.68%) NFS
12 26 (1.25%) KVM
13 19 (0.91%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.81%) Ceph
15 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.67%) Postfix
16 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.53%) GPFS
18 10 (0.48%) Squid
19 6 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 465 (22.28%) Ansible
2 456 (21.85%) Kubernetes
3 187 (8.96%) Grafana
4 167 (8.00%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.26%) Puppet
6 62 (2.97%) Progress Chef
7 51 (2.44%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.30%) SCCM
9 40 (1.92%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.87%) vCenter Server
11 30 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
12 29 (1.39%) Kibana
13 28 (1.34%) Nagios
13 28 (1.34%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.25%) Packer
14 26 (1.25%) Podman
14 26 (1.25%) VxRail
15 24 (1.15%) NetBackup
16 22 (1.05%) ZABBIX
17 21 (1.01%) Istio
Vendors
1 350 (16.77%) VMware
2 343 (16.44%) Microsoft
3 303 (14.52%) Oracle
4 225 (10.78%) Red Hat
5 167 (8.00%) Splunk
6 123 (5.89%) Cisco
7 112 (5.37%) ServiceNow
8 93 (4.46%) IBM
9 86 (4.12%) Google
10 79 (3.79%) CyberArk
11 46 (2.20%) NetApp
11 46 (2.20%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
13 39 (1.87%) Dell
13 39 (1.87%) F5
13 39 (1.87%) Palo Alto
13 39 (1.87%) SAP
14 32 (1.53%) Dynatrace
15 30 (1.44%) HP
16 29 (1.39%) Citrix