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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 33 33
Rank change year-on-year -20 0 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,000 1,828 2,269
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.62% 5.38%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.39% 41.68% 39.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,245 1,159 1,460
10th Percentile £350 £365 £340
25th Percentile £415 £425 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.62% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 53 139
10th Percentile £35.44 £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 £73.63 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - -0.38%

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 5,078 4,386 5,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.49% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,231 2,829 3,790
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £468
% change year-on-year - -3.76% +3.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 244 422
10th Percentile £15.77 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.34
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -5.51% -42.73%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £21.90 £31.13
% change year-on-year +20.73% -29.64% +4.97%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -26 1,677 £520 -2.80% 622
UK excluding London -17 1,197 £500 - 532
London -53 580 £545 -5.22% 184
Work from Home -30 541 £500 - 274
South East -3 335 £518 -0.29% 168
North of England -10 315 £492 -1.60% 105
South West -5 183 £540 -6.09% 78
North West -16 156 £484 +20.40% 60
Yorkshire -20 144 £500 -4.76% 26
Midlands -14 142 £475 - 58
West Midlands -17 121 £473 -0.53% 35
Scotland -27 106 £450 -7.02% 24
East of England -21 90 £475 -3.06% 67
Wales +7 29 £465 +64.60% 13
North East -22 21 £480 +0.52% 20
East Midlands -11 18 £528 +16.06% 23
Northern Ireland -2 5 - - 30

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 85 (4.25%) Confluence
2 51 (2.55%) Apache
3 36 (1.80%) nginx
4 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.10%) Tomcat
7 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.90%) SAS
8 18 (0.90%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.70%) OpenStack
10 11 (0.55%) CICS
11 9 (0.45%) JBoss
11 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.45%) SharePoint
11 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.40%) IIS
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.10%) Houdini
5 2 (0.10%) NUKE
6 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.050%) InDesign
6 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
6 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%) Cloudability
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 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
1 595 (29.75%) AWS
2 433 (21.65%) Azure
3 153 (7.65%) GitHub
4 139 (6.95%) GCP
5 111 (5.55%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.55%) Amazon S3
7 90 (4.50%) Amazon EC2
8 89 (4.45%) GitHub Actions
9 78 (3.90%) Entra ID
10 69 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
11 60 (3.00%) Serverless
12 59 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 56 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
14 50 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
14 50 (2.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 47 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
16 45 (2.25%) IaaS
17 40 (2.00%) PaaS
18 39 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 196 (9.80%) Firewall
2 171 (8.55%) DNS
3 103 (5.15%) TCP/IP
4 76 (3.80%) Network Security
4 76 (3.80%) SAN
5 74 (3.70%) DHCP
5 74 (3.70%) VPN
6 47 (2.35%) WAN
7 40 (2.00%) SSL
8 38 (1.90%) VSAN
9 37 (1.85%) LAN
10 33 (1.65%) HTTP
11 32 (1.60%) SNMP
12 31 (1.55%) SSH
13 29 (1.45%) VLAN
14 26 (1.30%) NAS
15 23 (1.15%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.10%) IPsec
17 18 (0.90%) BGP
17 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (6.05%) SQL Server
2 118 (5.90%) PostgreSQL
3 92 (4.60%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.45%) MySQL
5 68 (3.40%) MongoDB
6 67 (3.35%) Relational Database
7 58 (2.90%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.05%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
11 28 (1.40%) NoSQL
11 28 (1.40%) RDBMS
12 22 (1.10%) Big Data
12 22 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
13 20 (1.00%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.95%) KDB
14 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
15 17 (0.85%) DataStage
15 17 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
16 15 (0.75%) Db2
Development Applications
1 211 (10.55%) Jenkins
2 184 (9.20%) GitLab
3 182 (9.10%) Git
4 149 (7.45%) JIRA
5 33 (1.65%) Maven
6 32 (1.60%) Mockito
7 31 (1.55%) SonarQube
8 24 (1.20%) Bitbucket
9 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
10 20 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
11 18 (0.90%) Artifactory
12 17 (0.85%) JUnit
13 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
14 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
15 13 (0.65%) jMock
16 12 (0.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
17 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
18 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
19 8 (0.40%) TeamCity
General
1 395 (19.75%) Social Skills
2 283 (14.15%) Finance
3 206 (10.30%) Public Sector
4 179 (8.95%) Analytical Skills
5 139 (6.95%) Banking
6 73 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.85%) Military
8 29 (1.45%) Front Office
9 28 (1.40%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.20%) Legal
11 24 (1.20%) Retail
12 21 (1.05%) Law
13 19 (0.95%) Aerospace
13 19 (0.95%) Financial Institution
13 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 275 (13.75%) Senior
2 207 (10.35%) Developer
3 200 (10.00%) Linux Engineer
4 182 (9.10%) DevOps Engineer
5 159 (7.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 122 (6.10%) Software Engineer
7 101 (5.05%) Architect
8 89 (4.45%) Analyst
9 82 (4.10%) Lead
10 80 (4.00%) Java Developer
11 78 (3.90%) Platform Engineer
12 67 (3.35%) Consultant
13 66 (3.30%) AWS Engineer
14 65 (3.25%) Cloud Engineer
15 62 (3.10%) Support Engineer
16 55 (2.75%) Administrator
16 55 (2.75%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 53 (2.65%) DBA
17 53 (2.65%) Senior Developer
18 48 (2.40%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (5.00%) Kafka
2 93 (4.65%) REST
3 74 (3.70%) Middleware
4 69 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.85%) Spring
6 49 (2.45%) Spring Boot
7 47 (2.35%) Web Services
8 45 (2.25%) LDAP
9 42 (2.10%) .NET
9 42 (2.10%) Node.js
9 42 (2.10%) RESTful
10 32 (1.60%) ActiveMQ
11 27 (1.35%) SOAP
12 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
12 26 (1.30%) JSON
13 25 (1.25%) YAML
14 23 (1.15%) React
14 23 (1.15%) XML
15 19 (0.95%) FastAPI
15 19 (0.95%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 144 (7.20%) Data Centre
2 131 (6.55%) Cloud Native
3 106 (5.30%) Onboarding
4 98 (4.90%) Linux Command Line
5 86 (4.30%) PKI
6 83 (4.15%) Distributed Systems
7 75 (3.75%) Replication
8 60 (3.00%) Public Cloud
9 56 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
9 56 (2.80%) Security Posture
10 55 (2.75%) Management Information System
11 54 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.75%) Product Ownership
13 31 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
14 29 (1.45%) Enterprise Storage
15 28 (1.40%) Clustering
15 28 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
16 27 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
16 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
17 24 (1.20%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 749 (37.45%) Windows
2 420 (21.00%) Unix
3 331 (16.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 194 (9.70%) Windows Server
5 102 (5.10%) Ubuntu
6 72 (3.60%) AIX
7 61 (3.05%) Solaris
8 39 (1.95%) CentOS
9 32 (1.60%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.40%) VMS
11 25 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (1.20%) SUSE
13 17 (0.85%) Android
14 16 (0.80%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.80%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
15 15 (0.75%) Oracle Linux
16 14 (0.70%) Debian
16 14 (0.70%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 558 (27.90%) CI/CD
2 475 (23.75%) DevOps
3 360 (18.00%) Agile
4 343 (17.15%) Infrastructure as Code
5 295 (14.75%) Problem-Solving
6 264 (13.20%) Containerisation
7 232 (11.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 228 (11.40%) Migration
9 206 (10.30%) Software Engineering
10 189 (9.45%) Continuous Improvement
11 188 (9.40%) High Availability
12 179 (8.95%) Observability
13 174 (8.70%) Performance Tuning
14 168 (8.40%) Root Cause Analysis
15 164 (8.20%) Platform Engineering
16 160 (8.00%) ITIL
17 153 (7.65%) SIEM
18 136 (6.80%) Microservices
18 136 (6.80%) Test Automation
19 134 (6.70%) AI
Programming Languages
1 686 (34.30%) Python
2 341 (17.05%) SQL
3 337 (16.85%) Bash
4 325 (16.25%) PowerShell
5 249 (12.45%) Java
6 152 (7.60%) Shell Script
7 123 (6.15%) C++
8 85 (4.25%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.35%) C
10 65 (3.25%) PL/SQL
11 62 (3.10%) C#
12 55 (2.75%) Perl
13 50 (2.50%) Go
14 24 (1.20%) Ada
15 22 (1.10%) TypeScript
16 21 (1.05%) Bicep
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 19 (0.95%) Rust
18 15 (0.75%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 780 (39.00%) Security Cleared
2 580 (29.00%) SC Cleared
3 224 (11.20%) DV Cleared
4 172 (8.60%) Degree
5 72 (3.60%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.85%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.80%) CISSP
9 47 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
10 45 (2.25%) Azure Certification
11 31 (1.55%) CompTIA Security+
12 28 (1.40%) RHCE
13 25 (1.25%) CCNA
13 25 (1.25%) CCNP
14 21 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.90%) CISM
16 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 14 (0.70%) GIAC
17 14 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.15%) NIST
2 78 (3.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.80%) QA
4 34 (1.70%) SLA
5 23 (1.15%) NCSC
6 21 (1.05%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
6 21 (1.05%) GDPR
7 20 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.55%) GRC
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.35%) ISO 20022
13 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
16 4 (0.20%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 332 (16.60%) Docker
2 243 (12.15%) Active Directory
3 236 (11.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.70%) Virtual Machines
5 74 (3.70%) Hyper-V
6 73 (3.65%) vSphere
7 67 (3.35%) VMware ESXi
8 60 (3.00%) VMware NSX
9 46 (2.30%) NFS
10 39 (1.95%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.75%) Firmware
12 32 (1.60%) KVM
13 20 (1.00%) Postfix
14 14 (0.70%) GPFS
15 12 (0.60%) Ceph
16 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.35%) Squid
18 7 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 425 (21.25%) Ansible
2 419 (20.95%) Terraform
3 407 (20.35%) Kubernetes
4 171 (8.55%) Grafana
5 145 (7.25%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.55%) Puppet
7 54 (2.70%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.55%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.30%) vCenter Server
10 36 (1.80%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.55%) Nagios
12 29 (1.45%) Packer
13 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.25%) Red Hat Satellite
15 22 (1.10%) Argo
15 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
16 21 (1.05%) Kibana
16 21 (1.05%) Podman
17 20 (1.00%) Netcool
17 20 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 320 (16.00%) VMware
2 292 (14.60%) Oracle
3 285 (14.25%) Microsoft
4 223 (11.15%) Red Hat
5 152 (7.60%) Splunk
6 127 (6.35%) Cisco
7 109 (5.45%) IBM
8 97 (4.85%) ServiceNow
9 73 (3.65%) CyberArk
10 68 (3.40%) Google
11 46 (2.30%) Palo Alto
11 46 (2.30%) SolarWinds
12 44 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
13 40 (2.00%) NetApp
13 40 (2.00%) SAP
14 39 (1.95%) F5
15 38 (1.90%) HP
16 33 (1.65%) Citrix
17 30 (1.50%) Sybase
18 28 (1.40%) Tenable