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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,074 1,828 2,216
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.59% 5.71%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.66% 41.49% 40.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,289 1,111 1,407
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.66%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £630
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 63 115
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £53.90 £64.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +10.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.63 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,230 4,406 5,430
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.73% 13.47% 14.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,309 2,796 3,540
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 359 270 323
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.28
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -8.55% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £24.83 £38.00
% change year-on-year +4.71% -34.66% +16.92%

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 28 August 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 28 August 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 28 August 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 1,737 £525 - 2,219
UK excluding London -21 1,179 £500 - 1,133
London -39 676 £539 -6.35% 1,254
Work from Home -30 542 £500 -4.76% 803
South East -7 337 £518 +3.50% 329
North of England -28 282 £500 - 204
South West +5 191 £562 -2.22% 190
North West -19 143 £489 +22.13% 118
Scotland -15 131 £450 -10.00% 74
Yorkshire -33 121 £500 -2.91% 51
Midlands -43 120 £471 -5.75% 103
West Midlands -46 99 £470 -6.00% 54
East of England -17 96 £475 -5.00% 215
Wales 0 28 £465 +3.33% 11
North East -21 25 £471 -18.04% 36
East Midlands -12 18 £500 +19.05% 48
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 29

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 69 (3.33%) Confluence
2 51 (2.46%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.40%) nginx
5 23 (1.11%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
7 21 (1.01%) Apache Spark
8 20 (0.96%) SharePoint
9 18 (0.87%) SAS
10 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
10 16 (0.77%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.72%) JBoss
12 14 (0.68%) WebSphere
13 11 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 8 (0.39%) IIS
15 6 (0.29%) CMS
15 6 (0.29%) NetWeaver
15 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) MTS
Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
4 3 (0.14%) Simulink
5 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 596 (28.74%) AWS
2 509 (24.54%) Azure
3 169 (8.15%) GCP
4 160 (7.71%) GitHub
5 104 (5.01%) OpenShift
6 102 (4.92%) Entra ID
7 97 (4.68%) GitHub Actions
8 90 (4.34%) Azure DevOps
9 88 (4.24%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.91%) Amazon EC2
11 64 (3.09%) Serverless
12 61 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
13 59 (2.84%) Amazon EKS
14 56 (2.70%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (2.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 55 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
16 52 (2.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.46%) IaaS
18 43 (2.07%) SaaS
19 38 (1.83%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 227 (10.95%) DNS
2 220 (10.61%) Firewall
3 140 (6.75%) TCP/IP
4 125 (6.03%) DHCP
5 89 (4.29%) VPN
6 84 (4.05%) SAN
7 77 (3.71%) Network Security
8 52 (2.51%) WAN
9 50 (2.41%) SSL
10 45 (2.17%) SSH
11 44 (2.12%) VSAN
12 40 (1.93%) HTTP
13 39 (1.88%) LAN
13 39 (1.88%) VLAN
14 30 (1.45%) SNMP
15 26 (1.25%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.25%) NAS
16 23 (1.11%) HTTPS
17 21 (1.01%) BGP
18 19 (0.92%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 99 (4.77%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.23%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.13%) MySQL
6 53 (2.56%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.46%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.03%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
11 32 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
12 30 (1.45%) RDBMS
13 25 (1.21%) Big Data
14 19 (0.92%) Data Lake
14 19 (0.92%) DynamoDB
14 19 (0.92%) Power BI
15 18 (0.87%) Redis
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Exadata
16 17 (0.82%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 239 (11.52%) Git
2 236 (11.38%) Jenkins
3 193 (9.31%) GitLab
4 151 (7.28%) JIRA
5 31 (1.49%) Bitbucket
5 31 (1.49%) Maven
6 29 (1.40%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.25%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (1.06%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.01%) Mockito
9 21 (1.01%) Selenium
10 16 (0.77%) JUnit
11 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
15 8 (0.39%) Cucumber
15 8 (0.39%) JMeter
General
1 434 (20.93%) Social Skills
2 307 (14.80%) Finance
3 244 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 162 (7.81%) Banking
6 82 (3.95%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.07%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.78%) Front Office
8 37 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.25%) Aerospace
9 26 (1.25%) Military
10 25 (1.21%) Legal
11 21 (1.01%) Retail
12 19 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 19 (0.92%) Law
12 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
14 11 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
16 9 (0.43%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 302 (14.56%) Senior
2 240 (11.57%) Linux Engineer
3 199 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 182 (8.78%) Developer
5 176 (8.49%) DevOps Engineer
6 107 (5.16%) Architect
7 99 (4.77%) Software Engineer
8 97 (4.68%) Platform Engineer
9 84 (4.05%) Consultant
10 80 (3.86%) Lead
11 78 (3.76%) Support Engineer
12 75 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
13 74 (3.57%) Analyst
14 68 (3.28%) Administrator
14 68 (3.28%) Java Developer
15 64 (3.09%) AWS Engineer
16 60 (2.89%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 57 (2.75%) Systems Engineer
18 54 (2.60%) Network Engineer
19 51 (2.46%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 483 (23.29%) Terraform
2 130 (6.27%) Kafka
3 116 (5.59%) REST
4 72 (3.47%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.47%) Middleware
5 67 (3.23%) .NET
6 56 (2.70%) RESTful
7 49 (2.36%) Spring
8 43 (2.07%) Spring Boot
9 37 (1.78%) LDAP
10 36 (1.74%) JSON
11 35 (1.69%) Web Services
11 35 (1.69%) XML
12 30 (1.45%) HTML
12 30 (1.45%) SOAP
12 30 (1.45%) YAML
13 25 (1.21%) ARM Templates
13 25 (1.21%) RabbitMQ
13 25 (1.21%) React
14 24 (1.16%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 143 (6.89%) Onboarding
2 134 (6.46%) Cloud Native
3 131 (6.32%) Data Centre
4 105 (5.06%) Linux Command Line
4 105 (5.06%) PKI
5 94 (4.53%) Replication
6 84 (4.05%) Distributed Systems
7 70 (3.38%) Hybrid Cloud
8 67 (3.23%) Public Cloud
9 57 (2.75%) Management Information System
10 45 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 43 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
12 41 (1.98%) Enterprise Storage
13 40 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
14 39 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
15 36 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
15 36 (1.74%) Private Cloud
16 34 (1.64%) Clustering
17 33 (1.59%) Operational Technology
18 32 (1.54%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 780 (37.61%) Windows
2 414 (19.96%) Unix
3 357 (17.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 242 (11.67%) Windows Server
5 116 (5.59%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.13%) AIX
7 52 (2.51%) CentOS
7 52 (2.51%) Solaris
8 40 (1.93%) Embedded Linux
9 27 (1.30%) SUSE
10 26 (1.25%) VMS
11 25 (1.21%) Windows 10
12 23 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
13 19 (0.92%) Windows Server 2016
14 18 (0.87%) Rocky
15 17 (0.82%) Mac OS
16 16 (0.77%) Debian
17 12 (0.58%) Android
17 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 594 (28.64%) CI/CD
2 523 (25.22%) DevOps
3 417 (20.11%) Infrastructure as Code
4 364 (17.55%) Agile
5 316 (15.24%) Problem-Solving
6 292 (14.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 265 (12.78%) Containerisation
8 243 (11.72%) Continuous Improvement
9 242 (11.67%) Migration
10 223 (10.75%) Observability
11 216 (10.41%) Platform Engineering
12 205 (9.88%) High Availability
13 202 (9.74%) Root Cause Analysis
14 197 (9.50%) Software Engineering
15 181 (8.73%) Performance Tuning
16 174 (8.39%) ITIL
17 164 (7.91%) Test Automation
18 160 (7.71%) Configuration Management
19 150 (7.23%) AI
20 149 (7.18%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 745 (35.92%) Python
2 407 (19.62%) Bash
3 405 (19.53%) PowerShell
4 375 (18.08%) SQL
5 241 (11.62%) Java
6 150 (7.23%) Shell Script
7 125 (6.03%) C++
8 79 (3.81%) C
9 73 (3.52%) JavaScript
9 73 (3.52%) Perl
10 69 (3.33%) C#
11 61 (2.94%) PL/SQL
12 51 (2.46%) Go
13 42 (2.03%) Bicep
14 24 (1.16%) Search Processing Language
15 23 (1.11%) Groovy
16 19 (0.92%) Ada
17 16 (0.77%) Rust
17 16 (0.77%) TypeScript
18 15 (0.72%) Korn
Qualifications
1 799 (38.52%) Security Cleared
2 590 (28.45%) SC Cleared
3 241 (11.62%) DV Cleared
4 180 (8.68%) Degree
5 71 (3.42%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
8 55 (2.65%) Azure Certification
8 55 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
9 54 (2.60%) CISSP
10 23 (1.11%) CCNP
11 22 (1.06%) RHCE
12 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
13 20 (0.96%) CISM
14 19 (0.92%) CCNA
15 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 17 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
17 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
18 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.52%) NIST
2 68 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (3.28%) QA
3 31 (1.49%) SLA
4 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
5 21 (1.01%) NCSC
6 19 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
7 17 (0.82%) GDPR
8 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
9 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
10 10 (0.48%) GRC
11 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.39%) ISO 15022
13 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 339 (16.35%) Docker
2 275 (13.26%) Active Directory
3 256 (12.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (4.44%) Hyper-V
5 88 (4.24%) vSphere
6 77 (3.71%) Virtual Machines
7 67 (3.23%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.04%) VMware NSX
9 42 (2.03%) Firmware
10 41 (1.98%) Oracle RAC
11 39 (1.88%) NFS
12 27 (1.30%) KVM
13 16 (0.77%) Ceph
13 16 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.72%) Postfix
15 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
16 12 (0.58%) GPFS
17 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 10 (0.48%) Squid
19 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 457 (22.03%) Ansible
2 437 (21.07%) Kubernetes
3 179 (8.63%) Grafana
4 160 (7.71%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.34%) Puppet
6 63 (3.04%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.41%) Oracle RMAN
8 43 (2.07%) SCCM
9 41 (1.98%) vCenter Server
10 40 (1.93%) Data Guard
11 33 (1.59%) Nagios
12 28 (1.35%) Kibana
13 27 (1.30%) Microsoft Intune
13 27 (1.30%) NetBackup
13 27 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 26 (1.25%) Packer
15 23 (1.11%) VxRail
16 22 (1.06%) Argo
16 22 (1.06%) Podman
Vendors
1 357 (17.21%) VMware
2 330 (15.91%) Microsoft
3 311 (15.00%) Oracle
4 227 (10.95%) Red Hat
5 162 (7.81%) Splunk
6 123 (5.93%) Cisco
7 115 (5.54%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.63%) IBM
9 78 (3.76%) CyberArk
10 74 (3.57%) Google
11 50 (2.41%) SolarWinds
12 48 (2.31%) NetApp
13 45 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.12%) SAP
15 42 (2.03%) Palo Alto
16 38 (1.83%) F5
17 35 (1.69%) HP
18 34 (1.64%) Dell
19 33 (1.59%) Citrix
19 33 (1.59%) Dynatrace