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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 30 26
Rank change year-on-year -11 -4 -1
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,927 1,770 2,633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.21% 5.60% 6.19%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.08% 39.96% 41.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,205 1,052 1,778
10th Percentile £313 £350 £350
25th Percentile £402 £454 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £656 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -8.38% -0.94% -1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 59 115
10th Percentile £13.50 £44.50 £24.61
25th Percentile £41.25 £60.38 £48.32
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +7.26% -4.62%

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 4,691 4,429 6,284
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.69% 14.01% 14.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,096 2,764 4,288
10th Percentile £175 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £315 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £427
% change year-on-year -2.94% -0.35% -5.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 166 312
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.25 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.36% +7.26% +24.00%
75th Percentile £61.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.50 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £30.93 £26.09
% change year-on-year -19.17% +18.55% +15.96%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -10 1,644 £513 -6.99% 1,053
UK excluding London -1 1,104 £481 -8.38% 961
London -12 635 £550 -8.33% 231
Work from Home -14 520 £500 -4.76% 471
South East +4 299 £475 -5.00% 352
North of England -1 269 £491 -13.10% 146
Midlands +1 199 £525 -4.55% 117
West Midlands -1 182 £525 -4.63% 44
Yorkshire +8 168 £500 -20.00% 54
Scotland 0 123 £450 -8.16% 59
South West -20 122 £550 -7.02% 137
North West -8 96 £453 -17.64% 65
East of England -2 94 £475 +11.11% 130
East Midlands -21 17 £420 -2.89% 71
Northern Ireland +8 16 £400 -8.57% 15
North East -15 11 £550 +8.64% 28
Wales -11 5 £600 +11.63% 28

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 80 (4.15%) Confluence
2 66 (3.43%) Apache
3 42 (2.18%) nginx
4 37 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
5 31 (1.61%) Apache Spark
6 24 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (1.19%) OpenStack
7 23 (1.19%) WebLogic
8 21 (1.09%) WebSphere
9 17 (0.88%) JBoss
9 17 (0.88%) SharePoint
10 14 (0.73%) Mattermost
10 14 (0.73%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.67%) SAS
11 13 (0.67%) Tomcat
12 12 (0.62%) TPMS
13 11 (0.57%) IIS
13 11 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
15 5 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 60 (3.11%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.47%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Simulink
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.052%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Finacle
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) RMDS
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 579 (30.05%) AWS
2 387 (20.08%) Azure
3 182 (9.44%) GitHub
4 147 (7.63%) GCP
5 128 (6.64%) OpenShift
6 112 (5.81%) AWS CloudFormation
7 111 (5.76%) Serverless
8 104 (5.40%) Amazon EC2
9 90 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
10 83 (4.31%) Amazon S3
11 71 (3.68%) Amazon ECS
12 67 (3.48%) Amazon EKS
13 62 (3.22%) AWS Lambda
14 60 (3.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 60 (3.11%) Azure DevOps
15 59 (3.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 51 (2.65%) SaaS
17 50 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
18 48 (2.49%) IaaS
19 36 (1.87%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 217 (11.26%) Firewall
2 156 (8.10%) DNS
3 140 (7.27%) TCP/IP
4 66 (3.43%) Network Security
5 60 (3.11%) SSH
6 54 (2.80%) SSL
7 53 (2.75%) HTTP
8 48 (2.49%) DHCP
9 45 (2.34%) VPN
10 31 (1.61%) SMTP
10 31 (1.61%) VLAN
11 28 (1.45%) Wireless
12 27 (1.40%) Kerberos
12 27 (1.40%) SAN
13 25 (1.30%) VSAN
14 24 (1.25%) Skype
14 24 (1.25%) WAN
15 20 (1.04%) Ethernet
15 20 (1.04%) LAN
16 19 (0.99%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (7.01%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (5.19%) Relational Database
3 96 (4.98%) SQL Server
4 86 (4.46%) Oracle Database
5 83 (4.31%) Amazon RDS
6 80 (4.15%) NoSQL
7 75 (3.89%) MongoDB
8 69 (3.58%) MySQL
9 48 (2.49%) Elasticsearch
10 30 (1.56%) Hadoop
11 29 (1.50%) DB2
12 28 (1.45%) Big Data
13 23 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
14 16 (0.83%) Apache Hive
15 15 (0.78%) Amazon Aurora
15 15 (0.78%) Redis
16 14 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
16 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
16 14 (0.73%) HBase
17 13 (0.67%) KDB
Development Applications
1 280 (14.53%) Jenkins
2 238 (12.35%) Git
3 185 (9.60%) GitLab
4 131 (6.80%) JIRA
5 59 (3.06%) JUnit
6 53 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
7 44 (2.28%) Bitbucket
8 41 (2.13%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.30%) Liquibase
9 25 (1.30%) Maven
10 24 (1.25%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.14%) Mockito
11 22 (1.14%) Visual Studio
12 20 (1.04%) Artifactory
12 20 (1.04%) Browser DevTools
12 20 (1.04%) Xcode
13 19 (0.99%) Android Studio
14 17 (0.88%) Burp Suite
15 16 (0.83%) CircleCI
15 16 (0.83%) JMeter
General
1 578 (29.99%) Social Skills
2 359 (18.63%) Finance
3 205 (10.64%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (9.08%) Public Sector
5 160 (8.30%) Banking
6 71 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.70%) Financial Institution
7 52 (2.70%) Investment Banking
8 46 (2.39%) Military
9 44 (2.28%) Front Office
9 44 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
10 23 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 20 (1.04%) Aerospace
12 18 (0.93%) Legal
13 17 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.78%) Telecoms
15 12 (0.62%) Back Office
15 12 (0.62%) Law
16 8 (0.42%) Games
16 8 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 292 (15.15%) Developer
2 237 (12.30%) Senior
3 172 (8.93%) DevOps Engineer
4 141 (7.32%) Software Engineer
5 113 (5.86%) Java Developer
6 111 (5.76%) Analyst
7 107 (5.55%) Architect
8 99 (5.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 94 (4.88%) Support Engineer
10 93 (4.83%) Linux Engineer
11 91 (4.72%) Platform Engineer
12 78 (4.05%) Administrator
13 74 (3.84%) AWS Engineer
14 64 (3.32%) Lead
15 62 (3.22%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 61 (3.17%) Security Engineer
16 61 (3.17%) Site Engineer
17 59 (3.06%) AWS DevOps
18 57 (2.96%) C++ Software Engineer
19 54 (2.80%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 161 (8.35%) Kafka
2 134 (6.95%) REST
3 126 (6.54%) Elastic Stack
4 78 (4.05%) Middleware
5 68 (3.53%) Spring
6 67 (3.48%) Node.js
6 67 (3.48%) RESTful
7 57 (2.96%) LDAP
8 53 (2.75%) React
9 50 (2.59%) JSON
10 46 (2.39%) XML
11 45 (2.34%) AngularJS
12 38 (1.97%) SOAP
13 35 (1.82%) YAML
14 33 (1.71%) CSS
15 32 (1.66%) OAuth
16 31 (1.61%) Web Services
17 29 (1.50%) FastAPI
18 26 (1.35%) SAML
18 26 (1.35%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 105 (5.45%) Cloud Native
2 91 (4.72%) Linux Command Line
3 81 (4.20%) Data Centre
4 73 (3.79%) Replication
5 67 (3.48%) Management Information System
6 59 (3.06%) Distributed Systems
6 59 (3.06%) Public Cloud
7 57 (2.96%) Equities
8 49 (2.54%) PKI
9 45 (2.34%) Onboarding
10 44 (2.28%) Data Structures
11 42 (2.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 38 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
13 31 (1.61%) Algorithms
14 30 (1.56%) Product Ownership
15 29 (1.50%) Fixed Income
16 28 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
16 28 (1.45%) Security Operations Centre
17 27 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
17 27 (1.40%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 711 (36.90%) Windows
2 403 (20.91%) Unix
3 248 (12.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 141 (7.32%) Windows Server
5 82 (4.26%) Ubuntu
6 48 (2.49%) CentOS
7 43 (2.23%) Android
8 34 (1.76%) Mac OS
8 34 (1.76%) VMS
9 30 (1.56%) Solaris
10 27 (1.40%) Mac OS X
11 23 (1.19%) Windows 10
12 19 (0.99%) AIX
12 19 (0.99%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.93%) Amazon Linux
14 15 (0.78%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.73%) Embedded Linux
16 13 (0.67%) Kali Linux
17 12 (0.62%) Debian
18 10 (0.52%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 580 (30.10%) CI/CD
2 494 (25.64%) DevOps
3 453 (23.51%) Agile
4 379 (19.67%) Problem-Solving
5 306 (15.88%) Containerisation
6 305 (15.83%) Infrastructure as Code
7 257 (13.34%) Software Engineering
8 194 (10.07%) Observability
9 174 (9.03%) Cybersecurity
10 167 (8.67%) Computer Science
11 160 (8.30%) Test Automation
12 148 (7.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 148 (7.68%) Microservices
13 147 (7.63%) Incident Response
14 144 (7.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 135 (7.01%) Platform Engineering
16 131 (6.80%) Configuration Management
16 131 (6.80%) High Availability
17 129 (6.69%) Performance Tuning
18 123 (6.38%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 785 (40.74%) Python
2 378 (19.62%) SQL
3 375 (19.46%) Java
4 330 (17.13%) Bash
5 285 (14.79%) PowerShell
6 218 (11.31%) Shell Script
7 195 (10.12%) C++
8 141 (7.32%) JavaScript
9 135 (7.01%) Perl
10 95 (4.93%) C#
11 79 (4.10%) Go
12 57 (2.96%) C
13 41 (2.13%) Ruby
14 34 (1.76%) Groovy
15 29 (1.50%) TypeScript
16 28 (1.45%) PL/SQL
17 27 (1.40%) Rust
18 20 (1.04%) PHP
19 19 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
20 15 (0.78%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 618 (32.07%) Security Cleared
2 449 (23.30%) SC Cleared
3 217 (11.26%) Degree
4 139 (7.21%) DV Cleared
5 115 (5.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 77 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 65 (3.37%) AWS Certification
8 39 (2.02%) Master's Degree
9 35 (1.82%) CISSP
10 34 (1.76%) Azure Certification
11 31 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
12 29 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
13 24 (1.25%) CompTIA Security+
13 24 (1.25%) RHCE
14 21 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 20 (1.04%) OSCP
16 19 (0.99%) CCNP
17 17 (0.88%) CCNA
17 17 (0.88%) GPEN
18 16 (0.83%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (2.91%) NIST
2 41 (2.13%) GDPR
2 41 (2.13%) QA
3 36 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 30 (1.56%) SLA
5 21 (1.09%) Data Quality
6 18 (0.93%) PCI DSS
7 15 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
8 14 (0.73%) NCSC
9 12 (0.62%) GLBA
10 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.47%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
14 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.16%) SEPA
16 2 (0.10%) IFRS
System Software
1 398 (20.65%) Docker
2 197 (10.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 174 (9.03%) Active Directory
4 67 (3.48%) vSphere
5 52 (2.70%) Virtual Machines
6 41 (2.13%) Hyper-V
7 39 (2.02%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (1.35%) Oracle RAC
9 24 (1.25%) GPFS
9 24 (1.25%) NFS
10 21 (1.09%) KVM
11 19 (0.99%) Postfix
12 17 (0.88%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 17 (0.88%) VMware NSX
13 16 (0.83%) Firmware
14 15 (0.78%) DFS Replication
14 15 (0.78%) Dovecot
15 14 (0.73%) HDFS
16 12 (0.62%) Lustre
16 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 462 (23.98%) Kubernetes
2 394 (20.45%) Terraform
3 385 (19.98%) Ansible
4 212 (11.00%) Grafana
5 184 (9.55%) Prometheus
6 78 (4.05%) Puppet
7 69 (3.58%) Progress Chef
8 40 (2.08%) Red Hat Satellite
9 35 (1.82%) Argo
10 34 (1.76%) Packer
10 34 (1.76%) Podman
10 34 (1.76%) vCenter Server
11 33 (1.71%) Kibana
12 32 (1.66%) vRealize
13 30 (1.56%) SCCM
14 28 (1.45%) Data Guard
15 27 (1.40%) SCOM
16 26 (1.35%) Nessus
17 25 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
18 21 (1.09%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 298 (15.46%) Microsoft
2 289 (15.00%) Oracle
3 281 (14.58%) VMware
4 249 (12.92%) Splunk
5 223 (11.57%) Red Hat
6 112 (5.81%) Cisco
7 80 (4.15%) ServiceNow
8 70 (3.63%) IBM
9 57 (2.96%) Google
10 52 (2.70%) AppDynamics
11 46 (2.39%) CyberArk
11 46 (2.39%) Dell
12 32 (1.66%) CrowdStrike
13 28 (1.45%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.40%) SolarWinds
15 26 (1.35%) Sybase
16 25 (1.30%) NetApp
17 23 (1.19%) Citrix
17 23 (1.19%) Dynatrace
17 23 (1.19%) Solace