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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -23 -5 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,097 1,850 2,078
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.84% 5.60% 5.49%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.55% 41.05% 39.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,317 1,105 1,223
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £435 £420 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £538
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -3.30% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £511 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +3.91% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 78 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £34.91 £49.50
25th Percentile £54.68 £52.63 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £69.13 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.35%

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 5,302 4,507 5,306
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.72% 13.63% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,348 2,877 3,290
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £281 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £660 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £449
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.35% -0.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 304 251
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.38
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -52.55% +21.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £57.25
% change year-on-year +3.38% -56.07% +41.97%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -21 1,773 £525 - 3,015
UK excluding London -24 1,163 £511 +3.91% 1,542
London -34 730 £535 -6.96% 1,521
Work from Home -25 563 £511 -0.24% 1,147
South East -17 331 £536 +12.78% 453
North of England -27 269 £500 +4.17% 225
South West -1 172 £575 +4.55% 246
North West -18 136 £493 +23.25% 124
Scotland -14 131 £450 -10.00% 107
Midlands -46 127 £477 -4.60% 148
East of England -15 111 £483 -3.50% 284
Yorkshire -34 108 £521 +4.20% 67
West Midlands -43 107 £477 -7.38% 89
North East -13 33 £475 -11.63% 35
Wales +16 28 £465 +3.33% 31
East Midlands -3 18 £491 +16.79% 59
Northern Ireland +1 3 - - 68

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 45 (2.15%) Apache
3 41 (1.96%) nginx
4 28 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.34%) WebLogic
5 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
6 23 (1.10%) Apache Spark
7 22 (1.05%) SharePoint
8 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
9 19 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 19 (0.91%) Tomcat
10 17 (0.81%) IIS
11 15 (0.72%) JBoss
12 13 (0.62%) SAS
13 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.33%) CMS
15 6 (0.29%) MTS
15 6 (0.29%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
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
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) 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%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 624 (29.76%) AWS
2 541 (25.80%) Azure
3 212 (10.11%) GCP
4 164 (7.82%) GitHub
5 115 (5.48%) Entra ID
6 109 (5.20%) OpenShift
7 102 (4.86%) GitHub Actions
8 97 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
9 95 (4.53%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.86%) Amazon EC2
11 72 (3.43%) AWS CloudFormation
12 71 (3.39%) Serverless
13 63 (3.00%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (2.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 62 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
14 62 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
15 55 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 51 (2.43%) IaaS
17 46 (2.19%) Datadog
18 42 (2.00%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.87%) DNS
2 220 (10.49%) Firewall
3 171 (8.15%) TCP/IP
4 134 (6.39%) DHCP
5 93 (4.43%) Network Security
5 93 (4.43%) VPN
6 74 (3.53%) SAN
7 56 (2.67%) SSL
8 48 (2.29%) SSH
9 46 (2.19%) HTTP
10 45 (2.15%) WAN
11 38 (1.81%) VLAN
12 31 (1.48%) BGP
12 31 (1.48%) LAN
13 28 (1.34%) Kerberos
14 27 (1.29%) VSAN
14 27 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
15 23 (1.10%) Wireless
16 22 (1.05%) 5G
16 22 (1.05%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
2 118 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.91%) Oracle Database
4 78 (3.72%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.05%) MySQL
6 60 (2.86%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.58%) MongoDB
8 50 (2.38%) NoSQL
9 37 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
10 36 (1.72%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 28 (1.34%) Big Data
13 26 (1.24%) Amazon Aurora
14 24 (1.14%) Data Lake
15 21 (1.00%) Power BI
16 20 (0.95%) Redis
17 18 (0.86%) DynamoDB
17 18 (0.86%) Hadoop
17 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
18 16 (0.76%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 295 (14.07%) Git
2 267 (12.73%) Jenkins
3 237 (11.30%) GitLab
4 164 (7.82%) JIRA
5 43 (2.05%) Maven
6 35 (1.67%) SonarQube
7 34 (1.62%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.29%) Artifactory
8 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.14%) Selenium
10 20 (0.95%) Gradle
10 20 (0.95%) Mockito
11 19 (0.91%) JUnit
12 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.81%) Cucumber
14 14 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.48%) JMeter
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 463 (22.08%) Social Skills
2 347 (16.55%) Finance
3 249 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
4 179 (8.54%) Banking
5 166 (7.92%) Public Sector
6 83 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.58%) Telecoms
8 47 (2.24%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.62%) Front Office
9 34 (1.62%) Military
10 28 (1.34%) Legal
11 25 (1.19%) Aerospace
12 24 (1.14%) Law
13 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.81%) Retail
15 14 (0.67%) Manufacturing
16 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.52%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (0.48%) Police
Job Titles
1 321 (15.31%) Senior
2 229 (10.92%) Linux Engineer
3 214 (10.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 211 (10.06%) Developer
5 194 (9.25%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (5.05%) Platform Engineer
7 100 (4.77%) Architect
8 91 (4.34%) Software Engineer
9 81 (3.86%) Cloud Engineer
9 81 (3.86%) Support Engineer
10 77 (3.67%) Java Developer
11 74 (3.53%) Analyst
12 73 (3.48%) Consultant
13 71 (3.39%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 65 (3.10%) AWS Engineer
14 65 (3.10%) Lead
15 62 (2.96%) Administrator
16 58 (2.77%) Network Engineer
17 52 (2.48%) Automation Engineer
18 51 (2.43%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 533 (25.42%) Terraform
2 146 (6.96%) Kafka
3 140 (6.68%) REST
4 83 (3.96%) Middleware
5 74 (3.53%) Elastic Stack
6 69 (3.29%) .NET
7 60 (2.86%) Spring
8 58 (2.77%) RESTful
9 54 (2.58%) Web Services
10 52 (2.48%) Spring Boot
11 51 (2.43%) LDAP
12 45 (2.15%) JSON
13 43 (2.05%) React
14 41 (1.96%) XML
15 38 (1.81%) HTML
16 35 (1.67%) SOAP
17 34 (1.62%) Flask
18 32 (1.53%) ARM Templates
19 31 (1.48%) Keycloak
19 31 (1.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 171 (8.15%) Onboarding
2 148 (7.06%) Cloud Native
3 129 (6.15%) Data Centre
4 113 (5.39%) PKI
5 106 (5.05%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.48%) Replication
7 92 (4.39%) Distributed Systems
8 74 (3.53%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.20%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.10%) Public Cloud
11 59 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
12 52 (2.48%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.96%) Private Cloud
13 41 (1.96%) Product Ownership
14 39 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.86%) Operational Technology
15 38 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
15 38 (1.81%) Embedded Systems
16 36 (1.72%) Enterprise Storage
17 33 (1.57%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 801 (38.20%) Windows
2 431 (20.55%) Unix
3 363 (17.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 252 (12.02%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.10%) Ubuntu
6 63 (3.00%) CentOS
7 54 (2.58%) Solaris
8 53 (2.53%) AIX
9 31 (1.48%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.43%) Windows 10
11 28 (1.34%) VMS
12 27 (1.29%) SUSE
13 23 (1.10%) Rocky
14 18 (0.86%) Mac OS
15 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
16 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
17 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
17 11 (0.52%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 680 (32.43%) CI/CD
2 594 (28.33%) DevOps
3 480 (22.89%) Infrastructure as Code
4 400 (19.07%) Agile
5 339 (16.17%) Problem-Solving
6 330 (15.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 312 (14.88%) Containerisation
8 280 (13.35%) Continuous Improvement
9 263 (12.54%) Observability
10 247 (11.78%) Platform Engineering
11 237 (11.30%) Migration
12 221 (10.54%) Root Cause Analysis
13 218 (10.40%) Software Engineering
14 195 (9.30%) High Availability
15 188 (8.97%) Configuration Management
16 184 (8.77%) ITIL
17 182 (8.68%) Test Automation
18 181 (8.63%) Cybersecurity
19 179 (8.54%) Stakeholder Management
20 172 (8.20%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 785 (37.43%) Python
2 469 (22.37%) Bash
3 425 (20.27%) PowerShell
4 380 (18.12%) SQL
5 262 (12.49%) Java
6 159 (7.58%) Shell Script
7 118 (5.63%) C++
8 88 (4.20%) JavaScript
9 85 (4.05%) Perl
10 77 (3.67%) C#
11 65 (3.10%) C
12 59 (2.81%) PL/SQL
13 57 (2.72%) Go
14 47 (2.24%) Bicep
15 39 (1.86%) Groovy
16 24 (1.14%) TypeScript
17 18 (0.86%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.76%) Korn
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 14 (0.67%) Ada
Qualifications
1 798 (38.05%) Security Cleared
2 555 (26.47%) SC Cleared
3 253 (12.06%) DV Cleared
4 189 (9.01%) Degree
5 77 (3.67%) AWS Certification
6 63 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 62 (2.96%) CISSP
8 56 (2.67%) Azure Certification
8 56 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
9 55 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
10 29 (1.38%) CISM
11 25 (1.19%) CCNP
11 25 (1.19%) RHCE
12 20 (0.95%) CCNA
13 19 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.86%) ISTQB
15 17 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 15 (0.72%) CompTIA Security+
16 15 (0.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (3.72%) NIST
2 77 (3.67%) QA
3 69 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 28 (1.34%) SLA
5 26 (1.24%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.10%) GDPR
7 19 (0.91%) GRC
8 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.72%) NCSC
11 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 7 (0.33%) HIPAA
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
16 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
17 4 (0.19%) MISRA C
System Software
1 394 (18.79%) Docker
2 299 (14.26%) Active Directory
3 231 (11.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 81 (3.86%) Hyper-V
5 77 (3.67%) vSphere
6 68 (3.24%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (3.00%) VMware ESXi
8 44 (2.10%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.81%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (1.62%) Firmware
11 32 (1.53%) NFS
12 25 (1.19%) KVM
12 25 (1.19%) Virtual Servers
13 13 (0.62%) Ceph
14 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
14 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.52%) GPFS
16 10 (0.48%) Postfix
16 10 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
17 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 500 (23.84%) Kubernetes
2 478 (22.79%) Ansible
3 200 (9.54%) Grafana
4 178 (8.49%) Prometheus
5 93 (4.43%) Puppet
6 63 (3.00%) Progress Chef
7 58 (2.77%) SCCM
8 48 (2.29%) Oracle RMAN
9 43 (2.05%) Microsoft Intune
10 41 (1.96%) Kibana
11 39 (1.86%) Data Guard
12 29 (1.38%) vCenter Server
13 27 (1.29%) Nagios
14 26 (1.24%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.24%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.24%) VxRail
15 24 (1.14%) Packer
15 24 (1.14%) Podman
16 21 (1.00%) Istio
17 20 (0.95%) Argo
Vendors
1 360 (17.17%) Microsoft
2 325 (15.50%) VMware
3 291 (13.88%) Oracle
4 219 (10.44%) Red Hat
5 175 (8.35%) Splunk
6 122 (5.82%) ServiceNow
7 119 (5.67%) Cisco
8 102 (4.86%) Google
9 90 (4.29%) IBM
10 85 (4.05%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.38%) NetApp
12 44 (2.10%) SolarWinds
13 42 (2.00%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.91%) F5
15 39 (1.86%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.76%) Dynatrace
17 36 (1.72%) SAP
18 35 (1.67%) Dell
19 29 (1.38%) Tenable
20 28 (1.34%) Veeam