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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,873 1,703 2,171
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.93% 5.86% 5.09%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.38% 42.07% 38.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,162 1,078 1,427
10th Percentile £332 £375 £330
25th Percentile £406 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £547 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.51% -0.64% -5.98%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £646
90th Percentile £693 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -6.67% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 43 109
10th Percentile £33.36 £41.40 £36.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.71 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £63.75
% change year-on-year -3.85% +1.96% -1.92%

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 4,638 4,048 5,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.73% 13.93% 13.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,987 2,661 3,836
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £467 £468
Median % change year-on-year -2.57% -0.11% -7.24%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £658 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £443 £450
% change year-on-year -1.13% -1.67% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 177 390
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.24 £12.73
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.44 £15.31
Median hourly rate £47.50 £22.88 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.65% +3.98% -43.59%
75th Percentile £67.25 £57.50 £60.56
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £21.95 £22.25
% change year-on-year +116.40% -1.35% -25.83%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 -25 1,560 £513 -6.82% 838
UK excluding London -13 1,124 £490 -6.67% 666
London -46 531 £550 -5.58% 238
Work from Home -27 477 £500 -4.76% 477
South East -3 314 £500 -9.09% 236
North of England -15 278 £475 -9.52% 111
South West -8 159 £550 -8.33% 122
Midlands -12 152 £525 +5.00% 64
Yorkshire -18 149 £463 -15.91% 36
West Midlands -8 133 £501 -6.80% 28
North West -17 119 £484 -3.20% 57
Scotland -20 94 £475 +1.60% 29
East of England -14 91 £475 - 93
Wales +7 26 £465 -20.65% 16
East Midlands -29 17 £528 +16.06% 36
Northern Ireland +7 15 £425 +30.77% 6
North East -21 10 £413 -21.43% 20

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 78 (4.16%) Confluence
2 48 (2.56%) Apache
3 29 (1.55%) nginx
4 26 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (1.12%) Apache Spark
6 20 (1.07%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (1.01%) Tomcat
8 15 (0.80%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.75%) OpenStack
9 14 (0.75%) SAS
10 13 (0.69%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.59%) CICS
12 9 (0.48%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.43%) TPMS
14 7 (0.37%) JBoss
15 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.27%) SharePoint
17 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 21 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.21%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 525 (28.03%) AWS
2 376 (20.07%) Azure
3 169 (9.02%) GitHub
4 122 (6.51%) OpenShift
5 107 (5.71%) GCP
6 95 (5.07%) GitHub Actions
7 84 (4.48%) Amazon EC2
8 82 (4.38%) Amazon S3
9 70 (3.74%) Amazon EKS
9 70 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
10 69 (3.68%) AWS CloudFormation
10 69 (3.68%) Serverless
11 58 (3.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 58 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
12 46 (2.46%) Amazon ECS
13 45 (2.40%) IaaS
14 42 (2.24%) Microsoft 365
15 41 (2.19%) Entra ID
16 40 (2.14%) PaaS
17 38 (2.03%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 174 (9.29%) Firewall
2 131 (6.99%) DNS
3 97 (5.18%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.90%) VPN
5 60 (3.20%) Network Security
6 59 (3.15%) SAN
7 47 (2.51%) WAN
8 43 (2.30%) DHCP
9 40 (2.14%) LAN
10 37 (1.98%) VSAN
11 35 (1.87%) SSH
12 34 (1.82%) SNMP
13 32 (1.71%) HTTP
14 29 (1.55%) SSL
15 23 (1.23%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.17%) NAS
17 19 (1.01%) Wireless
18 18 (0.96%) BGP
18 18 (0.96%) Kerberos
19 16 (0.85%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 72 (3.84%) MySQL
4 66 (3.52%) Relational Database
5 63 (3.36%) Oracle Database
6 62 (3.31%) MongoDB
7 53 (2.83%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.30%) Elasticsearch
9 35 (1.87%) Amazon Aurora
10 28 (1.49%) NoSQL
11 22 (1.17%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.07%) Big Data
12 20 (1.07%) SAP HANA
13 19 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
13 19 (1.01%) KDB
14 16 (0.85%) DB2
14 16 (0.85%) Kdb+
15 12 (0.64%) Data Lake
15 12 (0.64%) Sybase ASE
16 11 (0.59%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 203 (10.84%) Jenkins
2 169 (9.02%) GitLab
3 167 (8.92%) Git
4 137 (7.31%) JIRA
5 31 (1.66%) Maven
6 25 (1.33%) SonarQube
7 24 (1.28%) Eclipse
7 24 (1.28%) Mockito
8 20 (1.07%) JUnit
9 19 (1.01%) Bitbucket
9 19 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
10 15 (0.80%) Artifactory
11 14 (0.75%) Rational Rhapsody
11 14 (0.75%) Visual Studio
12 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
13 11 (0.59%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.59%) DbUnit
13 11 (0.59%) jMock
14 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 384 (20.50%) Social Skills
2 257 (13.72%) Finance
3 187 (9.98%) Public Sector
4 144 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
5 107 (5.71%) Banking
6 75 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.46%) Military
8 26 (1.39%) Financial Institution
9 24 (1.28%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.23%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.23%) Front Office
11 21 (1.12%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.12%) Retail
12 20 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.96%) Law
14 17 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
15 15 (0.80%) Legal
15 15 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 231 (12.33%) Senior
2 202 (10.78%) Developer
3 174 (9.29%) DevOps Engineer
4 150 (8.01%) Linux Engineer
5 135 (7.21%) Software Engineer
6 112 (5.98%) Architect
7 111 (5.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 105 (5.61%) Analyst
9 98 (5.23%) Lead
10 78 (4.16%) Administrator
11 76 (4.06%) Java Developer
12 70 (3.74%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 63 (3.36%) AWS Engineer
14 61 (3.26%) Platform Engineer
15 60 (3.20%) Site Engineer
16 52 (2.78%) Consultant
17 51 (2.72%) Security Engineer
18 46 (2.46%) AWS DevOps
19 45 (2.40%) Embedded Engineer
20 44 (2.35%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (5.34%) Kafka
2 84 (4.48%) REST
3 79 (4.22%) Elastic Stack
4 69 (3.68%) Middleware
5 53 (2.83%) LDAP
6 51 (2.72%) Node.js
7 46 (2.46%) Spring Boot
8 45 (2.40%) Spring
9 42 (2.24%) Web Services
10 37 (1.98%) RESTful
11 35 (1.87%) .NET
12 33 (1.76%) YAML
13 28 (1.49%) XML
14 27 (1.44%) JSON
15 26 (1.39%) AngularJS
16 24 (1.28%) React
17 23 (1.23%) ActiveMQ
17 23 (1.23%) Flash
18 22 (1.17%) CSS
19 20 (1.07%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 138 (7.37%) Data Centre
2 104 (5.55%) Cloud Native
3 78 (4.16%) Linux Command Line
4 70 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.63%) Management Information System
6 66 (3.52%) Distributed Systems
7 59 (3.15%) PKI
8 57 (3.04%) Replication
9 50 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
10 45 (2.40%) Public Cloud
11 43 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.87%) Product Ownership
13 34 (1.82%) Security Posture
14 31 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
15 30 (1.60%) Enterprise Storage
16 29 (1.55%) Embedded Systems
16 29 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
17 24 (1.28%) Operational Technology
18 23 (1.23%) Clustering
19 22 (1.17%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 713 (38.07%) Windows
2 366 (19.54%) Unix
3 274 (14.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 171 (9.13%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.48%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.72%) AIX
7 40 (2.14%) CentOS
8 38 (2.03%) Solaris
9 34 (1.82%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.66%) VMS
11 29 (1.55%) Android
12 23 (1.23%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (1.17%) Windows Server 2019
14 21 (1.12%) Mac OS
15 19 (1.01%) Debian
16 14 (0.75%) SUSE
17 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
18 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
18 10 (0.53%) Windows 10
18 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 537 (28.67%) CI/CD
2 444 (23.71%) DevOps
3 355 (18.95%) Agile
4 304 (16.23%) Problem-Solving
5 284 (15.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 258 (13.77%) Containerisation
7 214 (11.43%) Software Engineering
8 180 (9.61%) Observability
9 173 (9.24%) Migration
10 166 (8.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 149 (7.96%) High Availability
12 145 (7.74%) Performance Tuning
12 145 (7.74%) SIEM
13 140 (7.47%) Continuous Improvement
14 136 (7.26%) Microservices
15 135 (7.21%) Computer Science
16 134 (7.15%) Incident Response
17 133 (7.10%) Platform Engineering
17 133 (7.10%) Root Cause Analysis
18 130 (6.94%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 629 (33.58%) Python
2 325 (17.35%) SQL
3 266 (14.20%) Java
4 265 (14.15%) Bash
5 258 (13.77%) PowerShell
6 160 (8.54%) Shell Script
7 123 (6.57%) C++
8 107 (5.71%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.58%) Perl
10 60 (3.20%) C#
11 56 (2.99%) C
12 48 (2.56%) Go
13 45 (2.40%) PL/SQL
14 30 (1.60%) Ruby
15 27 (1.44%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.28%) PHP
17 22 (1.17%) Rust
18 21 (1.12%) Ada
18 21 (1.12%) MATLAB
19 19 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 732 (39.08%) Security Cleared
2 535 (28.56%) SC Cleared
3 210 (11.21%) DV Cleared
4 177 (9.45%) Degree
5 80 (4.27%) BPSS Clearance
6 79 (4.22%) Computer Science Degree
7 52 (2.78%) Cisco Certification
8 50 (2.67%) AWS Certification
9 45 (2.40%) CISSP
10 42 (2.24%) CompTIA Security+
11 36 (1.92%) RHCE
12 29 (1.55%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.33%) CCNA
14 22 (1.17%) CCNP
15 19 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 18 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.96%) OCP
17 17 (0.91%) CompTIA CySA+
18 15 (0.80%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (4.32%) NIST
2 70 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.83%) QA
4 47 (2.51%) SLA
5 31 (1.66%) GDPR
6 30 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (1.28%) NCSC
8 18 (0.96%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
10 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.48%) GRC
11 9 (0.48%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.43%) Accessibility
12 8 (0.43%) GLBA
13 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.27%) DICOM
14 5 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 317 (16.92%) Docker
2 219 (11.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 184 (9.82%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.27%) Virtual Machines
5 71 (3.79%) Hyper-V
6 70 (3.74%) vSphere
7 65 (3.47%) VMware ESXi
8 48 (2.56%) NFS
9 40 (2.14%) VMware NSX
10 38 (2.03%) Firmware
11 26 (1.39%) GPFS
11 26 (1.39%) KVM
12 19 (1.01%) Oracle RAC
13 17 (0.91%) Postfix
14 15 (0.80%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.59%) Ceph
16 9 (0.48%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
17 7 (0.37%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 399 (21.30%) Kubernetes
2 382 (20.40%) Ansible
3 356 (19.01%) Terraform
4 177 (9.45%) Grafana
5 143 (7.63%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.79%) Puppet
7 44 (2.35%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.30%) vCenter Server
9 31 (1.66%) Oracle RMAN
9 31 (1.66%) vRealize
10 30 (1.60%) Kibana
10 30 (1.60%) Podman
11 28 (1.49%) Red Hat Satellite
12 24 (1.28%) Nagios
12 24 (1.28%) ZABBIX
13 23 (1.23%) Argo
14 22 (1.17%) Packer
15 20 (1.07%) Data Guard
15 20 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
15 20 (1.07%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 300 (16.02%) VMware
2 257 (13.72%) Microsoft
3 253 (13.51%) Oracle
4 217 (11.59%) Red Hat
5 188 (10.04%) Splunk
6 113 (6.03%) Cisco
7 95 (5.07%) IBM
8 80 (4.27%) ServiceNow
9 48 (2.56%) Palo Alto
10 44 (2.35%) CyberArk
11 40 (2.14%) Dell
12 35 (1.87%) HP
13 34 (1.82%) Google
14 33 (1.76%) SolarWinds
15 32 (1.71%) NVIDIA
16 29 (1.55%) F5
16 29 (1.55%) SAP
17 27 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
18 25 (1.33%) NetApp
19 24 (1.28%) Citrix