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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -13 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,889 1,762 2,400
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.53% 5.90% 5.39%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.49% 41.42% 39.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,200 1,087 1,583
10th Percentile £325 £369 £319
25th Percentile £401 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -5.17%
75th Percentile £618 £656 £649
90th Percentile £714 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -7.24% - -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 54 120
10th Percentile £15.00 £42.38 £26.14
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.94 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.25
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% +8.30% -7.31%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.61 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.88 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year -6.02% +9.92% -6.92%

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 4,784 4,254 6,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.47% 14.25% 13.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,155 2,723 4,116
10th Percentile £177 £200 £180
25th Percentile £275 £317 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £569 £600 £588
90th Percentile £670 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £436 £425
% change year-on-year -5.44% +2.65% -10.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 146 396
10th Percentile £15.02 £16.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.91 £20.96 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.25 £30.93 £23.88
Median % change year-on-year -24.83% +29.55% -14.73%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £60.94
90th Percentile £68.68 £69.38 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £28.50 £23.14
% change year-on-year -19.96% +23.19% -14.58%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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 3 March 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 -14 1,634 £513 -6.82% 900
UK excluding London -10 1,080 £487 -7.24% 812
London -31 605 £550 -8.33% 200
Work from Home -19 506 £500 -6.72% 485
South East -1 320 £485 -7.62% 245
North of England -5 289 £500 -9.09% 131
Midlands -17 168 £513 -2.33% 102
Yorkshire -12 157 £500 -13.04% 44
West Midlands -8 154 £525 -1.13% 61
South West -21 137 £550 -8.33% 137
North West -10 123 £492 -6.29% 61
East of England -12 84 £462 +2.67% 114
Scotland -26 78 £413 -12.23% 61
Northern Ireland +9 16 £413 +26.92% 13
East Midlands -41 14 £425 -6.49% 41
North East -16 12 £550 +12.82% 26
Wales -11 6 £404 -24.88% 27

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 91 (4.82%) Confluence
2 47 (2.49%) nginx
3 44 (2.33%) Apache
4 40 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (0.95%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.85%) WebLogic
7 14 (0.74%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.69%) Tomcat
8 13 (0.69%) WebSphere
9 12 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
9 12 (0.64%) TPMS
10 10 (0.53%) SAS
11 9 (0.48%) JBoss
12 8 (0.42%) CICS
13 6 (0.32%) IIS
13 6 (0.32%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.32%) Skype for Business
14 5 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 50 (2.65%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.053%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
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%) ION MarketView
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%) RMDS
5 1 (0.053%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 578 (30.60%) AWS
2 362 (19.16%) Azure
3 182 (9.63%) GitHub
4 142 (7.52%) OpenShift
5 140 (7.41%) GCP
6 107 (5.66%) AWS CloudFormation
7 103 (5.45%) Serverless
8 95 (5.03%) Amazon EC2
9 89 (4.71%) GitHub Actions
10 79 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 72 (3.81%) Amazon EKS
12 65 (3.44%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (3.34%) Amazon ECS
14 60 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
15 57 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 48 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 45 (2.38%) IaaS
18 41 (2.17%) Entra ID
19 35 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
19 35 (1.85%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 210 (11.12%) Firewall
2 139 (7.36%) DNS
3 128 (6.78%) TCP/IP
4 65 (3.44%) Network Security
4 65 (3.44%) VPN
5 44 (2.33%) SSH
6 40 (2.12%) SAN
7 38 (2.01%) HTTP
8 37 (1.96%) DHCP
8 37 (1.96%) SSL
9 30 (1.59%) WAN
10 27 (1.43%) VSAN
10 27 (1.43%) Wireless
11 26 (1.38%) Ethernet
12 25 (1.32%) VLAN
13 24 (1.27%) BGP
14 22 (1.16%) Kerberos
15 21 (1.11%) LAN
16 20 (1.06%) Wireshark
17 19 (1.01%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (7.52%) PostgreSQL
2 97 (5.13%) SQL Server
3 80 (4.24%) Amazon RDS
3 80 (4.24%) Relational Database
4 72 (3.81%) MongoDB
5 70 (3.71%) MySQL
6 62 (3.28%) NoSQL
6 62 (3.28%) Oracle Database
7 48 (2.54%) Elasticsearch
8 26 (1.38%) DB2
9 22 (1.16%) Big Data
10 19 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
11 17 (0.90%) KDB
11 17 (0.90%) Kdb+
12 15 (0.79%) Hadoop
13 14 (0.74%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.69%) DynamoDB
15 11 (0.58%) RDBMS
15 11 (0.58%) Redis
15 11 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 261 (13.82%) Jenkins
2 204 (10.80%) Git
3 197 (10.43%) GitLab
4 145 (7.68%) JIRA
5 50 (2.65%) JUnit
6 47 (2.49%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.22%) Bitbucket
8 36 (1.91%) Eclipse
8 36 (1.91%) Maven
9 26 (1.38%) Cucumber
10 23 (1.22%) Mockito
11 19 (1.01%) Visual Studio
12 18 (0.95%) Burp Suite
12 18 (0.95%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.90%) JMeter
13 17 (0.90%) Liquibase
14 16 (0.85%) Artifactory
15 15 (0.79%) Metasploit
16 13 (0.69%) Selenium
16 13 (0.69%) Xcode
General
1 501 (26.52%) Social Skills
2 322 (17.05%) Finance
3 192 (10.16%) Public Sector
4 176 (9.32%) Analytical Skills
5 137 (7.25%) Banking
6 63 (3.34%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.54%) Military
8 43 (2.28%) Financial Institution
9 38 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
10 33 (1.75%) Investment Banking
11 27 (1.43%) Front Office
12 25 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
13 20 (1.06%) Legal
14 19 (1.01%) Aerospace
14 19 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.95%) Law
15 18 (0.95%) Telecoms
16 16 (0.85%) Retail
17 13 (0.69%) Manufacturing
18 11 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 256 (13.55%) Developer
2 235 (12.44%) Senior
3 180 (9.53%) DevOps Engineer
4 145 (7.68%) Software Engineer
5 128 (6.78%) Analyst
6 113 (5.98%) Architect
7 100 (5.29%) Java Developer
8 93 (4.92%) Linux Engineer
9 86 (4.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 77 (4.08%) Lead
10 77 (4.08%) Platform Engineer
10 77 (4.08%) Support Engineer
11 74 (3.92%) Administrator
12 71 (3.76%) AWS Engineer
13 70 (3.71%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 66 (3.49%) Site Engineer
15 58 (3.07%) AWS DevOps
16 52 (2.75%) Security Engineer
16 52 (2.75%) Senior Software Engineer
17 47 (2.49%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (7.46%) Kafka
2 114 (6.03%) REST
3 110 (5.82%) Elastic Stack
4 80 (4.24%) Middleware
5 72 (3.81%) Node.js
6 68 (3.60%) Spring
7 54 (2.86%) LDAP
8 49 (2.59%) RESTful
9 45 (2.38%) JSON
10 44 (2.33%) React
11 43 (2.28%) Spring Boot
11 43 (2.28%) Web Services
11 43 (2.28%) XML
12 37 (1.96%) AngularJS
13 35 (1.85%) YAML
14 33 (1.75%) SOAP
15 28 (1.48%) .NET
16 24 (1.27%) CSS
16 24 (1.27%) SAML
17 22 (1.16%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 117 (6.19%) Cloud Native
2 113 (5.98%) Data Centre
3 86 (4.55%) Linux Command Line
4 71 (3.76%) Management Information System
5 70 (3.71%) Distributed Systems
6 59 (3.12%) Public Cloud
7 53 (2.81%) PKI
8 52 (2.75%) Onboarding
9 49 (2.59%) Replication
10 42 (2.22%) Equities
11 41 (2.17%) Product Ownership
12 40 (2.12%) Hybrid Cloud
13 38 (2.01%) Security Operations Centre
13 38 (2.01%) Security Posture
14 32 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
15 31 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
16 30 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 29 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
17 29 (1.54%) Data Structures
18 27 (1.43%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 699 (37.00%) Windows
2 352 (18.63%) Unix
3 262 (13.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 149 (7.89%) Windows Server
5 89 (4.71%) Ubuntu
6 50 (2.65%) CentOS
7 39 (2.06%) Android
8 36 (1.91%) Solaris
9 27 (1.43%) AIX
10 26 (1.38%) Mac OS
10 26 (1.38%) VMS
11 23 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (1.01%) Embedded Linux
13 18 (0.95%) Mac OS X
14 17 (0.90%) Windows 10
15 15 (0.79%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.74%) Kali Linux
17 13 (0.69%) Debian
18 11 (0.58%) Apple iOS
19 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 585 (30.97%) CI/CD
2 485 (25.67%) DevOps
3 424 (22.45%) Agile
4 359 (19.00%) Problem-Solving
5 310 (16.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 307 (16.25%) Containerisation
7 237 (12.55%) Software Engineering
8 194 (10.27%) Observability
9 168 (8.89%) Cybersecurity
10 163 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
11 159 (8.42%) Computer Science
12 155 (8.21%) Microservices
13 145 (7.68%) Incident Response
14 143 (7.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 142 (7.52%) Test Automation
16 130 (6.88%) Platform Engineering
17 128 (6.78%) High Availability
18 127 (6.72%) Migration
19 125 (6.62%) SIEM
19 125 (6.62%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 694 (36.74%) Python
2 339 (17.95%) Java
3 327 (17.31%) Bash
4 320 (16.94%) SQL
5 268 (14.19%) PowerShell
6 189 (10.01%) Shell Script
7 167 (8.84%) C++
8 131 (6.93%) JavaScript
9 103 (5.45%) Perl
10 80 (4.24%) C#
11 64 (3.39%) Go
12 53 (2.81%) C
13 43 (2.28%) Ruby
14 34 (1.80%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.59%) PL/SQL
16 28 (1.48%) Rust
17 24 (1.27%) PHP
18 23 (1.22%) Ada
19 20 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
20 14 (0.74%) Korn
Qualifications
1 694 (36.74%) Security Cleared
2 496 (26.26%) SC Cleared
3 201 (10.64%) Degree
4 172 (9.11%) DV Cleared
5 103 (5.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 83 (4.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 65 (3.44%) AWS Certification
8 39 (2.06%) CompTIA Security+
9 38 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
9 38 (2.01%) CISSP
10 31 (1.64%) RHCE
11 30 (1.59%) Master's Degree
12 27 (1.43%) Azure Certification
13 24 (1.27%) CCNA
13 24 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
14 22 (1.16%) CCNP
15 21 (1.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 19 (1.01%) OSCP
17 18 (0.95%) Oracle Certification
18 17 (0.90%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (3.92%) NIST
2 52 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.54%) GDPR
4 42 (2.22%) QA
5 30 (1.59%) SLA
6 23 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
7 19 (1.01%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.90%) NCSC
9 14 (0.74%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.64%) GLBA
10 12 (0.64%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 8 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.32%) Accessibility
14 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
15 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 402 (21.28%) Docker
2 219 (11.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 171 (9.05%) Active Directory
4 77 (4.08%) vSphere
5 69 (3.65%) Virtual Machines
6 51 (2.70%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (1.54%) NFS
9 27 (1.43%) GPFS
9 27 (1.43%) VMware NSX
10 23 (1.22%) KVM
11 19 (1.01%) Firmware
12 15 (0.79%) Oracle RAC
13 14 (0.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 13 (0.69%) Postfix
15 12 (0.64%) Lustre
16 8 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.37%) Ceph
17 7 (0.37%) QEMU
18 6 (0.32%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 491 (25.99%) Kubernetes
2 405 (21.44%) Terraform
3 383 (20.28%) Ansible
4 199 (10.53%) Grafana
5 169 (8.95%) Prometheus
6 68 (3.60%) Puppet
7 66 (3.49%) Progress Chef
8 44 (2.33%) vCenter Server
9 37 (1.96%) Packer
10 36 (1.91%) Red Hat Satellite
11 35 (1.85%) Argo
11 35 (1.85%) vRealize
12 32 (1.69%) Podman
13 29 (1.54%) Kibana
13 29 (1.54%) Single Sign-On
14 25 (1.32%) SCCM
15 22 (1.16%) Nessus
16 20 (1.06%) SCOM
17 18 (0.95%) ITRS Geneos
18 17 (0.90%) Nmap
Vendors
1 304 (16.09%) VMware
2 298 (15.78%) Microsoft
3 244 (12.92%) Oracle
4 230 (12.18%) Red Hat
5 224 (11.86%) Splunk
6 106 (5.61%) Cisco
7 86 (4.55%) IBM
8 70 (3.71%) ServiceNow
9 56 (2.96%) Google
10 45 (2.38%) Dell
11 38 (2.01%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.80%) CyberArk
13 29 (1.54%) AppDynamics
14 27 (1.43%) NetApp
15 26 (1.38%) SolarWinds
16 25 (1.32%) Atlassian
17 24 (1.27%) Citrix
17 24 (1.27%) NVIDIA
18 21 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
18 21 (1.11%) F5