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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -19 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,894 1,773 2,189
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.09% 6.02% 5.04%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.29% 43.02% 37.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,198 1,130 1,441
10th Percentile £335 £374 £325
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 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £537 £538
% change year-on-year -8.38% -0.09% -0.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 53 104
10th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £25.50
25th Percentile £42.41 £55.00 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.88 £68.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.25
% change year-on-year -3.24% +8.30% -7.31%

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 4,701 4,121 5,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.14% 13.99% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,067 2,730 3,918
10th Percentile £185 £200 £183
25th Percentile £312 £325 £291
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £575 £599 £591
90th Percentile £657 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £440
% change year-on-year -5.56% +2.27% -7.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 327 179 398
10th Percentile £15.81 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.41 £18.13 £15.19
Median hourly rate £34.00 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.61% +9.91% -41.33%
75th Percentile £67.54 £62.50 £59.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £69.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.57 £24.18 £21.00
% change year-on-year +42.95% +15.14% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -23 1,599 £518 -5.91% 792
UK excluding London -14 1,107 £492 -8.38% 693
London -43 560 £550 -6.78% 211
Work from Home -25 483 £500 -6.89% 286
South East -5 305 £500 -9.09% 217
North of England -13 293 £492 -10.55% 101
Midlands -6 162 £474 -5.25% 81
Yorkshire -17 154 £465 -15.45% 35
South West -16 151 £540 -10.00% 114
West Midlands +1 143 £474 -11.78% 38
North West -12 129 £500 -2.44% 39
East of England -11 93 £473 -1.82% 100
Scotland -20 87 £450 -3.74% 51
East Midlands -35 18 £525 +15.51% 42
Northern Ireland +9 15 £425 +30.77% 20
North East -19 13 £550 +4.76% 28
Wales -12 8 £404 -26.59% 26

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
1 100 (5.28%) Confluence
2 48 (2.53%) nginx
3 47 (2.48%) Apache
4 35 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.43%) Apache Spark
6 23 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.90%) SAS
7 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 16 (0.84%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.74%) OpenStack
10 12 (0.63%) SharePoint
10 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
12 10 (0.53%) TPMS
13 6 (0.32%) JBoss
13 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
15 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 36 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.26%) Weka
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 3 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 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
1 558 (29.46%) AWS
2 376 (19.85%) Azure
3 170 (8.98%) GitHub
4 128 (6.76%) OpenShift
5 105 (5.54%) GCP
6 100 (5.28%) Amazon EC2
7 92 (4.86%) AWS CloudFormation
8 90 (4.75%) Amazon S3
9 88 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
10 80 (4.22%) Serverless
11 74 (3.91%) Amazon EKS
12 68 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
13 67 (3.54%) AWS Lambda
14 58 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 57 (3.01%) Amazon ECS
16 42 (2.22%) IaaS
16 42 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 41 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
18 40 (2.11%) Entra ID
19 36 (1.90%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 204 (10.77%) Firewall
2 130 (6.86%) DNS
3 103 (5.44%) TCP/IP
4 70 (3.70%) VPN
5 68 (3.59%) Network Security
6 55 (2.90%) SAN
7 42 (2.22%) WAN
8 41 (2.16%) DHCP
9 39 (2.06%) SSH
9 39 (2.06%) VSAN
10 37 (1.95%) HTTP
11 35 (1.85%) LAN
12 30 (1.58%) SSL
13 28 (1.48%) SNMP
14 24 (1.27%) Ethernet
15 23 (1.21%) BGP
16 22 (1.16%) NAS
17 21 (1.11%) Wireless
18 20 (1.06%) VLAN
19 15 (0.79%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (7.23%) PostgreSQL
2 104 (5.49%) SQL Server
3 69 (3.64%) Amazon RDS
4 67 (3.54%) MongoDB
4 67 (3.54%) MySQL
5 62 (3.27%) Oracle Database
5 62 (3.27%) Relational Database
6 42 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
7 38 (2.01%) NoSQL
8 32 (1.69%) Amazon Aurora
9 26 (1.37%) Big Data
10 24 (1.27%) DynamoDB
11 21 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
12 20 (1.06%) KDB
13 19 (1.00%) Kdb+
14 17 (0.90%) Hadoop
15 16 (0.84%) SAP HANA
16 15 (0.79%) Data Lake
16 15 (0.79%) DB2
17 12 (0.63%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 214 (11.30%) Jenkins
2 187 (9.87%) Git
3 174 (9.19%) GitLab
4 157 (8.29%) JIRA
5 32 (1.69%) Bitbucket
5 32 (1.69%) Maven
6 29 (1.53%) Sonatype Nexus
7 28 (1.48%) JUnit
8 25 (1.32%) Mockito
9 24 (1.27%) Eclipse
9 24 (1.27%) SonarQube
10 18 (0.95%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.84%) Cucumber
11 16 (0.84%) Visual Studio
12 12 (0.63%) Jaeger
12 12 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
13 11 (0.58%) jMock
14 10 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 417 (22.02%) Social Skills
2 281 (14.84%) Finance
3 197 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 162 (8.55%) Analytical Skills
5 109 (5.76%) Banking
6 69 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.53%) Military
8 27 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.37%) Financial Institution
10 21 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
10 21 (1.11%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.06%) Aerospace
12 19 (1.00%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.00%) Legal
12 19 (1.00%) Retail
13 18 (0.95%) Front Office
14 16 (0.84%) Law
15 15 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 223 (11.77%) Senior
2 218 (11.51%) Developer
3 171 (9.03%) DevOps Engineer
4 135 (7.13%) Linux Engineer
5 132 (6.97%) Software Engineer
6 119 (6.28%) Analyst
6 119 (6.28%) Architect
7 98 (5.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 95 (5.02%) Lead
9 85 (4.49%) Java Developer
10 81 (4.28%) Administrator
11 70 (3.70%) Platform Engineer
12 68 (3.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 67 (3.54%) AWS Engineer
14 64 (3.38%) Site Engineer
15 53 (2.80%) Security Engineer
16 52 (2.75%) AWS DevOps
17 50 (2.64%) Consultant
18 42 (2.22%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 42 (2.22%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (5.97%) Kafka
2 86 (4.54%) REST
3 81 (4.28%) Elastic Stack
4 69 (3.64%) Middleware
5 61 (3.22%) Node.js
6 51 (2.69%) Spring
7 48 (2.53%) LDAP
8 47 (2.48%) Spring Boot
9 40 (2.11%) Web Services
10 34 (1.80%) RESTful
11 33 (1.74%) .NET
11 33 (1.74%) YAML
12 32 (1.69%) XML
13 27 (1.43%) JSON
14 26 (1.37%) AngularJS
15 24 (1.27%) ActiveMQ
15 24 (1.27%) SOAP
16 23 (1.21%) React
17 21 (1.11%) CSS
18 20 (1.06%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 125 (6.60%) Data Centre
2 105 (5.54%) Cloud Native
3 79 (4.17%) Linux Command Line
4 68 (3.59%) Management Information System
5 60 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
6 59 (3.12%) Onboarding
7 54 (2.85%) Replication
8 51 (2.69%) PKI
9 50 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
9 50 (2.64%) Public Cloud
10 46 (2.43%) Product Ownership
11 37 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
12 31 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
12 31 (1.64%) Security Posture
13 28 (1.48%) Enterprise Storage
14 27 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
15 24 (1.27%) Clustering
15 24 (1.27%) Embedded Systems
15 24 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
15 24 (1.27%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 718 (37.91%) Windows
2 360 (19.01%) Unix
3 287 (15.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 182 (9.61%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.44%) Ubuntu
6 46 (2.43%) AIX
7 40 (2.11%) CentOS
8 37 (1.95%) Solaris
9 34 (1.80%) VMS
10 33 (1.74%) Android
11 30 (1.58%) 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%) Apple iOS
19 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 533 (28.14%) CI/CD
2 448 (23.65%) DevOps
3 398 (21.01%) Agile
4 325 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
5 285 (15.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 262 (13.83%) Containerisation
7 206 (10.88%) Software Engineering
8 180 (9.50%) Observability
9 166 (8.76%) Migration
10 156 (8.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 150 (7.92%) Continuous Improvement
12 145 (7.66%) Computer Science
13 139 (7.34%) Platform Engineering
13 139 (7.34%) SIEM
14 138 (7.29%) Cybersecurity
15 136 (7.18%) Microservices
16 135 (7.13%) High Availability
16 135 (7.13%) Incident Response
17 130 (6.86%) Performance Tuning
18 127 (6.71%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 649 (34.27%) Python
2 313 (16.53%) SQL
3 285 (15.05%) Java
4 278 (14.68%) Bash
5 272 (14.36%) PowerShell
6 167 (8.82%) Shell Script
7 126 (6.65%) C++
8 102 (5.39%) JavaScript
9 81 (4.28%) Perl
10 62 (3.27%) C#
11 52 (2.75%) C
12 41 (2.16%) Go
12 41 (2.16%) PL/SQL
13 37 (1.95%) Ruby
14 28 (1.48%) TypeScript
15 24 (1.27%) PHP
16 22 (1.16%) Rust
17 19 (1.00%) Ada
17 19 (1.00%) MATLAB
18 17 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 754 (39.81%) Security Cleared
2 555 (29.30%) SC Cleared
3 203 (10.72%) DV Cleared
4 184 (9.71%) Degree
5 93 (4.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 81 (4.28%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.69%) AWS Certification
8 49 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
9 43 (2.27%) CompTIA Security+
10 42 (2.22%) CISSP
11 34 (1.80%) RHCE
12 31 (1.64%) CCNA
13 27 (1.43%) Azure Certification
14 26 (1.37%) CCNP
15 21 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.95%) CompTIA CySA+
16 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.69%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (4.01%) NIST
2 66 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.53%) QA
4 38 (2.01%) SLA
5 36 (1.90%) GDPR
6 22 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.11%) NCSC
8 19 (1.00%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.63%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
9 12 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.53%) GLBA
10 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
11 8 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
11 8 (0.42%) GRC
12 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 5 (0.26%) DICOM
13 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 350 (18.48%) Docker
2 231 (12.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 174 (9.19%) Active Directory
4 78 (4.12%) vSphere
5 73 (3.85%) Virtual Machines
6 68 (3.59%) Hyper-V
7 64 (3.38%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (2.01%) NFS
8 38 (2.01%) VMware NSX
9 34 (1.80%) Firmware
10 27 (1.43%) GPFS
11 25 (1.32%) 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
1 426 (22.49%) Kubernetes
2 389 (20.54%) Terraform
3 376 (19.85%) Ansible
4 187 (9.87%) Grafana
5 148 (7.81%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.64%) Puppet
7 52 (2.75%) Progress Chef
8 44 (2.32%) vCenter Server
9 37 (1.95%) vRealize
10 35 (1.85%) Packer
11 31 (1.64%) Kibana
12 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
13 28 (1.48%) Oracle RMAN
13 28 (1.48%) Podman
14 26 (1.37%) Argo
15 20 (1.06%) SCCM
15 20 (1.06%) VxRail
16 19 (1.00%) Data Guard
16 19 (1.00%) Nessus
17 18 (0.95%) Nagios
Vendors
1 315 (16.63%) VMware
2 276 (14.57%) Microsoft
3 254 (13.41%) Oracle
4 232 (12.25%) Red Hat
5 184 (9.71%) Splunk
6 115 (6.07%) Cisco
7 97 (5.12%) IBM
8 73 (3.85%) ServiceNow
9 50 (2.64%) Dell
10 44 (2.32%) CyberArk
11 42 (2.22%) Palo Alto
12 38 (2.01%) Google
12 38 (2.01%) HP
13 35 (1.85%) SolarWinds
14 32 (1.69%) Atlassian
15 30 (1.58%) Citrix
16 28 (1.48%) NetApp
17 24 (1.27%) SAP
18 23 (1.21%) F5
18 23 (1.21%) NVIDIA