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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 34 31
Rank change year-on-year -23 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,985 1,816 2,218
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.78% 5.53% 5.57%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.24% 41.44% 39.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,237 1,148 1,435
10th Percentile £358 £362 £350
25th Percentile £425 £430 £437
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -5.45%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 54 131
10th Percentile £33.99 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £58.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,058 4,382 5,550
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.35% 13.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,207 2,824 3,671
10th Percentile £193 £200 £193
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £468
% change year-on-year +1.11% -3.76% +3.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 252 368
10th Percentile £15.58 £15.50 £12.68
25th Percentile £17.98 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.64% -12.96% -36.47%
75th Percentile £64.06 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.48 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.20 £37.08
% change year-on-year +20.09% -40.13% +7.49%

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 29 July 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 -24 1,683 £525 -2.05% 834
UK excluding London -16 1,201 £500 - 600
London -49 575 £550 -5.17% 320
Work from Home -30 539 £500 -4.76% 337
South East +3 349 £519 +1.97% 193
North of England -15 318 £500 - 125
South West -3 178 £541 -5.87% 91
North West -8 168 £485 +20.82% 72
Midlands -19 139 £471 -0.79% 66
Yorkshire -21 133 £500 -4.76% 29
West Midlands -29 118 £470 -3.59% 39
Scotland -28 102 £425 -15.00% 38
East of England -18 92 £491 -1.75% 79
Wales +7 29 £465 +64.60% 9
North East -29 23 £490 +2.62% 24
East Midlands -8 18 £513 +13.89% 27
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 14

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 82 (4.13%) Confluence
2 51 (2.57%) Apache
3 32 (1.61%) nginx
4 28 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
5 26 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.06%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.96%) Apache Spark
7 19 (0.96%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.91%) SAS
9 17 (0.86%) OpenStack
10 13 (0.65%) JBoss
11 11 (0.55%) CICS
12 9 (0.45%) IIS
12 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
12 9 (0.45%) SharePoint
12 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 19 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.15%) Houdini
5 3 (0.15%) NUKE
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.050%) InDesign
7 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 590 (29.72%) AWS
2 463 (23.32%) Azure
3 158 (7.96%) GitHub
4 151 (7.61%) GCP
5 99 (4.99%) OpenShift
6 90 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
7 88 (4.43%) Entra ID
8 87 (4.38%) Amazon EC2
8 87 (4.38%) Amazon S3
9 75 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
10 63 (3.17%) Amazon EKS
11 58 (2.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 57 (2.87%) Serverless
13 53 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
14 52 (2.62%) AWS CloudFormation
14 52 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 50 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
16 45 (2.27%) IaaS
17 41 (2.07%) SaaS
18 39 (1.96%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 210 (10.58%) Firewall
2 185 (9.32%) DNS
3 115 (5.79%) TCP/IP
4 89 (4.48%) DHCP
5 80 (4.03%) VPN
6 73 (3.68%) Network Security
6 73 (3.68%) SAN
7 47 (2.37%) WAN
8 44 (2.22%) SSL
9 42 (2.12%) VSAN
10 37 (1.86%) LAN
10 37 (1.86%) SSH
11 32 (1.61%) SNMP
11 32 (1.61%) VLAN
12 31 (1.56%) HTTP
13 22 (1.11%) NAS
14 21 (1.06%) Ethernet
14 21 (1.06%) IPsec
15 18 (0.91%) Cisco Nexus
16 16 (0.81%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.40%) SQL Server
2 118 (5.94%) PostgreSQL
3 92 (4.63%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.48%) MySQL
5 68 (3.43%) Relational Database
6 66 (3.32%) MongoDB
7 53 (2.67%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (1.96%) Amazon Aurora
9 38 (1.91%) Elasticsearch
10 30 (1.51%) NoSQL
10 30 (1.51%) RDBMS
11 29 (1.46%) DynamoDB
12 25 (1.26%) Data Warehouse
13 21 (1.06%) Big Data
13 21 (1.06%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.96%) Oracle Database 12c
15 18 (0.91%) DataStage
16 17 (0.86%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.86%) Sybase ASE
17 15 (0.76%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 215 (10.83%) Jenkins
2 200 (10.08%) Git
3 179 (9.02%) GitLab
4 141 (7.10%) JIRA
5 38 (1.91%) Maven
6 33 (1.66%) Mockito
7 32 (1.61%) SonarQube
8 27 (1.36%) Bitbucket
9 26 (1.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.06%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.06%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.96%) JUnit
12 15 (0.76%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.71%) DbUnit
14 13 (0.65%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 13 (0.65%) jMock
15 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
17 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
18 9 (0.45%) Selenium
General
1 406 (20.45%) Social Skills
2 286 (14.41%) Finance
3 199 (10.03%) Public Sector
4 193 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (7.05%) Banking
6 73 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (2.02%) Military
8 31 (1.56%) Front Office
9 27 (1.36%) Investment Banking
10 25 (1.26%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.21%) Legal
12 22 (1.11%) Retail
13 20 (1.01%) Law
14 19 (0.96%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.91%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.86%) Financial Institution
17 16 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
17 16 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
18 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 286 (14.41%) Senior
2 206 (10.38%) Linux Engineer
3 196 (9.87%) Developer
4 172 (8.66%) DevOps Engineer
4 172 (8.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 117 (5.89%) Software Engineer
6 99 (4.99%) Architect
7 84 (4.23%) Platform Engineer
8 83 (4.18%) Analyst
9 78 (3.93%) Java Developer
10 77 (3.88%) Lead
11 71 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
12 67 (3.38%) Consultant
13 62 (3.12%) AWS Engineer
14 61 (3.07%) Support Engineer
15 56 (2.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 55 (2.77%) Senior Developer
17 53 (2.67%) Administrator
18 51 (2.57%) Security Engineer
19 50 (2.52%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (5.24%) Kafka
2 99 (4.99%) REST
3 70 (3.53%) Middleware
4 68 (3.43%) Elastic Stack
5 56 (2.82%) Spring
6 48 (2.42%) .NET
6 48 (2.42%) Spring Boot
6 48 (2.42%) Web Services
7 45 (2.27%) RESTful
8 41 (2.07%) LDAP
8 41 (2.07%) Node.js
9 34 (1.71%) ActiveMQ
10 30 (1.51%) JSON
11 27 (1.36%) SOAP
11 27 (1.36%) YAML
12 26 (1.31%) AngularJS
13 25 (1.26%) React
14 23 (1.16%) XML
15 21 (1.06%) Keycloak
16 20 (1.01%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 137 (6.90%) Data Centre
2 134 (6.75%) Cloud Native
3 123 (6.20%) Onboarding
4 103 (5.19%) Linux Command Line
5 90 (4.53%) PKI
6 89 (4.48%) Distributed Systems
7 78 (3.93%) Replication
8 65 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
9 62 (3.12%) Public Cloud
10 59 (2.97%) Management Information System
11 58 (2.92%) Security Posture
12 50 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.81%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.61%) Clustering
15 31 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
16 29 (1.46%) Embedded Systems
17 27 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
17 27 (1.36%) Enterprise Storage
17 27 (1.36%) Operational Technology
18 24 (1.21%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 755 (38.04%) Windows
2 421 (21.21%) Unix
3 337 (16.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 215 (10.83%) Windows Server
5 106 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 73 (3.68%) AIX
7 62 (3.12%) Solaris
8 42 (2.12%) CentOS
9 30 (1.51%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.41%) VMS
11 24 (1.21%) SUSE
12 23 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.86%) Oracle Linux
13 17 (0.86%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.81%) Android
14 16 (0.81%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.81%) Rocky
15 14 (0.71%) Debian
15 14 (0.71%) Mac OS X
15 14 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 561 (28.26%) CI/CD
2 485 (24.43%) DevOps
3 359 (18.09%) Infrastructure as Code
4 350 (17.63%) Agile
5 286 (14.41%) Problem-Solving
6 267 (13.45%) Containerisation
7 250 (12.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 232 (11.69%) Migration
9 211 (10.63%) Continuous Improvement
10 201 (10.13%) Software Engineering
11 194 (9.77%) High Availability
12 190 (9.57%) Observability
13 177 (8.92%) Platform Engineering
14 175 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
15 173 (8.72%) Root Cause Analysis
16 164 (8.26%) ITIL
17 156 (7.86%) SIEM
18 141 (7.10%) AI
19 136 (6.85%) Configuration Management
19 136 (6.85%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 689 (34.71%) Python
2 356 (17.93%) PowerShell
3 354 (17.83%) Bash
4 337 (16.98%) SQL
5 247 (12.44%) Java
6 148 (7.46%) Shell Script
7 117 (5.89%) C++
8 89 (4.48%) JavaScript
9 69 (3.48%) C#
10 67 (3.38%) C
11 60 (3.02%) PL/SQL
12 57 (2.87%) Perl
13 51 (2.57%) Go
14 37 (1.86%) Bicep
15 23 (1.16%) Ada
16 21 (1.06%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (1.06%) TypeScript
17 20 (1.01%) Rust
18 17 (0.86%) Groovy
19 13 (0.65%) Scala
Qualifications
1 778 (39.19%) Security Cleared
2 577 (29.07%) SC Cleared
3 222 (11.18%) DV Cleared
4 174 (8.77%) Degree
5 76 (3.83%) AWS Certification
6 66 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.02%) CISSP
8 59 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
9 51 (2.57%) Azure Certification
10 43 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
11 28 (1.41%) CCNP
12 26 (1.31%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.31%) RHCE
13 24 (1.21%) CCNA
13 24 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 19 (0.96%) CISM
15 18 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
18 12 (0.60%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (4.13%) NIST
2 77 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (2.92%) QA
4 30 (1.51%) SLA
5 25 (1.26%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.06%) GDPR
6 21 (1.06%) NCSC
7 20 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.01%) Disclosure Scotland
8 14 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.60%) GRC
9 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
11 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.40%) ISO 20022
13 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
16 4 (0.20%) Accessibility
System Software
1 327 (16.47%) Docker
2 255 (12.85%) Active Directory
3 232 (11.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (4.53%) Virtual Machines
5 78 (3.93%) vSphere
6 76 (3.83%) Hyper-V
7 62 (3.12%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (2.92%) VMware NSX
9 45 (2.27%) NFS
10 39 (1.96%) Oracle RAC
11 33 (1.66%) Firmware
12 31 (1.56%) KVM
13 20 (1.01%) Postfix
14 13 (0.65%) Ceph
14 13 (0.65%) GPFS
15 10 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 447 (22.52%) Terraform
2 436 (21.96%) Ansible
3 416 (20.96%) Kubernetes
4 162 (8.16%) Grafana
5 139 (7.00%) Prometheus
6 77 (3.88%) Puppet
7 58 (2.92%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.57%) Oracle RMAN
9 43 (2.17%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.91%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.56%) Nagios
12 28 (1.41%) Packer
12 28 (1.41%) SCCM
13 27 (1.36%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.31%) ZABBIX
15 24 (1.21%) Podman
16 23 (1.16%) Argo
17 22 (1.11%) Tivoli
18 21 (1.06%) VxRail
19 20 (1.01%) Kibana
Vendors
1 323 (16.27%) VMware
2 299 (15.06%) Microsoft
3 295 (14.86%) Oracle
4 224 (11.28%) Red Hat
5 150 (7.56%) Splunk
6 128 (6.45%) Cisco
7 104 (5.24%) IBM
8 103 (5.19%) ServiceNow
9 79 (3.98%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.58%) Google
11 48 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
12 47 (2.37%) Palo Alto
12 47 (2.37%) SolarWinds
13 42 (2.12%) SAP
14 40 (2.02%) NetApp
15 39 (1.96%) F5
16 38 (1.91%) HP
17 32 (1.61%) Citrix
18 30 (1.51%) Dynatrace
18 30 (1.51%) Sybase