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 10 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -22 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,088 1,861 2,137
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 5.64% 5.58%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.20% 41.75% 39.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,295 1,135 1,327
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.02%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 64 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.81 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £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 5,326 4,458 5,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.51% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,359 2,851 3,485
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.42% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 388 266 280
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.19 £18.59 £19.91
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £48.03
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -47.64% +6.75%
75th Percentile £65.22 £58.75 £68.19
90th Percentile £74.43 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £51.25
% change year-on-year +3.38% -50.93% +18.84%

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 10 September 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 -28 1,743 £525 - 2,170
UK excluding London -22 1,187 £500 - 1,073
London -39 679 £539 -6.35% 1,250
Work from Home -29 554 £500 -3.85% 768
South East -11 332 £519 +7.51% 333
North of England -26 286 £500 +4.60% 159
South West +4 193 £575 - 169
North West -20 144 £497 +23.63% 92
Scotland -17 136 £450 -10.00% 69
Midlands -55 122 £470 -6.00% 89
Yorkshire -27 121 £508 +1.40% 35
West Midlands -46 101 £470 -6.00% 53
East of England -17 99 £475 -3.06% 231
North East -24 28 £466 -18.91% 33
Wales +4 27 £465 +3.33% 12
East Midlands -11 18 £500 +19.05% 35
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 33

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 64 (3.07%) Confluence
2 49 (2.35%) Apache
3 30 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
3 30 (1.44%) nginx
4 23 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 23 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 23 (1.10%) OpenStack
4 23 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 21 (1.01%) WebLogic
6 18 (0.86%) SAS
7 16 (0.77%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
8 14 (0.67%) JBoss
9 13 (0.62%) WebSphere
10 10 (0.48%) IIS
11 6 (0.29%) CMS
11 6 (0.29%) MTS
12 5 (0.24%) NetWeaver
12 5 (0.24%) WebLogic Portal
12 5 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 27 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
5 3 (0.14%) Simulink
6 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.048%) Magento
7 1 (0.048%) Odoo
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.048%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 603 (28.88%) AWS
2 522 (25.00%) Azure
3 180 (8.62%) GCP
4 163 (7.81%) GitHub
5 107 (5.12%) Entra ID
6 104 (4.98%) OpenShift
7 101 (4.84%) GitHub Actions
8 94 (4.50%) Amazon S3
9 93 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
10 84 (4.02%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.40%) Serverless
12 66 (3.16%) Microsoft 365
13 63 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (2.97%) AWS CloudFormation
15 60 (2.87%) Amazon EKS
16 56 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 53 (2.54%) IaaS
18 52 (2.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 42 (2.01%) Datadog
19 42 (2.01%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 230 (11.02%) DNS
2 223 (10.68%) Firewall
3 145 (6.94%) TCP/IP
4 128 (6.13%) DHCP
5 87 (4.17%) VPN
6 82 (3.93%) SAN
7 80 (3.83%) Network Security
8 50 (2.39%) SSL
9 49 (2.35%) WAN
10 44 (2.11%) SSH
11 41 (1.96%) HTTP
11 41 (1.96%) VSAN
12 40 (1.92%) VLAN
13 34 (1.63%) LAN
14 27 (1.29%) Kerberos
14 27 (1.29%) SNMP
15 25 (1.20%) NAS
16 23 (1.10%) HTTPS
17 21 (1.01%) BGP
18 19 (0.91%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.65%) SQL Server
2 117 (5.60%) PostgreSQL
3 101 (4.84%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.21%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.07%) MySQL
6 55 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
7 53 (2.54%) MongoDB
8 43 (2.06%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
10 35 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
11 34 (1.63%) Data Warehouse
12 29 (1.39%) RDBMS
13 27 (1.29%) Big Data
14 23 (1.10%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.96%) DynamoDB
16 19 (0.91%) Oracle Database 12c
16 19 (0.91%) Power BI
17 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 11g
18 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
18 17 (0.81%) Redis
Development Applications
1 254 (12.16%) Git
2 235 (11.25%) Jenkins
3 203 (9.72%) GitLab
4 155 (7.42%) JIRA
5 32 (1.53%) Maven
5 32 (1.53%) SonarQube
6 30 (1.44%) Bitbucket
7 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
8 20 (0.96%) Mockito
9 19 (0.91%) Artifactory
10 18 (0.86%) Selenium
11 16 (0.77%) JUnit
12 12 (0.57%) Gradle
12 12 (0.57%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
13 11 (0.53%) TeamCity
14 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.43%) JMeter
15 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
16 8 (0.38%) eggPlant
General
1 440 (21.07%) Social Skills
2 315 (15.09%) Finance
3 245 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
4 170 (8.14%) Public Sector
5 163 (7.81%) Banking
6 87 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.25%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.77%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.72%) Front Office
10 28 (1.34%) Legal
11 27 (1.29%) Aerospace
12 25 (1.20%) Military
13 21 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.91%) Retail
15 18 (0.86%) Law
15 18 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.57%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.48%) Aviation
17 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 314 (15.04%) Senior
2 237 (11.35%) Linux Engineer
3 205 (9.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 188 (9.00%) Developer
5 182 (8.72%) DevOps Engineer
6 108 (5.17%) Architect
7 100 (4.79%) Software Engineer
8 98 (4.69%) Platform Engineer
9 82 (3.93%) Support Engineer
10 81 (3.88%) Consultant
11 80 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
11 80 (3.83%) Lead
12 74 (3.54%) Analyst
13 71 (3.40%) Administrator
14 69 (3.30%) Java Developer
15 64 (3.07%) AWS Engineer
15 64 (3.07%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 61 (2.92%) Systems Engineer
17 55 (2.63%) Senior Developer
18 53 (2.54%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 495 (23.71%) Terraform
2 132 (6.32%) Kafka
3 116 (5.56%) REST
4 73 (3.50%) Elastic Stack
5 72 (3.45%) Middleware
6 67 (3.21%) .NET
7 53 (2.54%) RESTful
8 50 (2.39%) Spring
9 45 (2.16%) Spring Boot
10 40 (1.92%) LDAP
11 37 (1.77%) Web Services
12 36 (1.72%) JSON
13 34 (1.63%) XML
14 30 (1.44%) HTML
14 30 (1.44%) SOAP
14 30 (1.44%) YAML
15 27 (1.29%) ARM Templates
16 26 (1.25%) Django
16 26 (1.25%) React
17 25 (1.20%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 148 (7.09%) Onboarding
2 139 (6.66%) Cloud Native
3 134 (6.42%) Data Centre
4 108 (5.17%) PKI
5 107 (5.12%) Linux Command Line
6 95 (4.55%) Replication
7 83 (3.98%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.21%) Public Cloud
10 61 (2.92%) Management Information System
11 45 (2.16%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
13 41 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
14 40 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
15 39 (1.87%) Clustering
16 38 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
16 38 (1.82%) Enterprise Storage
16 38 (1.82%) Private Cloud
17 37 (1.77%) Operational Technology
18 34 (1.63%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 790 (37.84%) Windows
2 437 (20.93%) Unix
3 359 (17.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 254 (12.16%) Windows Server
5 109 (5.22%) Ubuntu
6 59 (2.83%) AIX
7 56 (2.68%) CentOS
8 52 (2.49%) Solaris
9 39 (1.87%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.34%) SUSE
10 28 (1.34%) VMS
10 28 (1.34%) Windows 10
11 21 (1.01%) Rocky
11 21 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.86%) Mac OS
12 18 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.81%) Oracle Linux
14 16 (0.77%) Debian
15 12 (0.57%) Android
15 12 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 615 (29.45%) CI/CD
2 543 (26.01%) DevOps
3 432 (20.69%) Infrastructure as Code
4 375 (17.96%) Agile
5 323 (15.47%) Problem-Solving
6 304 (14.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 278 (13.31%) Containerisation
8 252 (12.07%) Continuous Improvement
9 234 (11.21%) Migration
9 234 (11.21%) Observability
10 223 (10.68%) Platform Engineering
11 205 (9.82%) Software Engineering
12 203 (9.72%) High Availability
12 203 (9.72%) Root Cause Analysis
13 176 (8.43%) ITIL
13 176 (8.43%) Performance Tuning
14 165 (7.90%) Configuration Management
15 162 (7.76%) Test Automation
16 154 (7.38%) AI
17 152 (7.28%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 750 (35.92%) Python
2 415 (19.88%) Bash
3 405 (19.40%) PowerShell
4 376 (18.01%) SQL
5 240 (11.49%) Java
6 153 (7.33%) Shell Script
7 119 (5.70%) C++
8 75 (3.59%) Perl
9 74 (3.54%) C
10 70 (3.35%) JavaScript
11 69 (3.30%) C#
12 65 (3.11%) PL/SQL
13 54 (2.59%) Go
14 44 (2.11%) Bicep
15 24 (1.15%) Groovy
16 22 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.86%) Ada
18 17 (0.81%) TypeScript
19 16 (0.77%) Rust
20 14 (0.67%) Korn
Qualifications
1 804 (38.51%) Security Cleared
2 585 (28.02%) SC Cleared
3 251 (12.02%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.72%) Degree
5 70 (3.35%) AWS Certification
6 59 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 59 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
7 56 (2.68%) Azure Certification
8 55 (2.63%) Cisco Certification
8 55 (2.63%) CISSP
9 23 (1.10%) CCNP
10 22 (1.05%) CISM
10 22 (1.05%) RHCE
11 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (0.86%) CCNA
12 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 17 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 16 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
15 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.50%) NIST
2 70 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.07%) QA
4 33 (1.58%) SLA
5 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.01%) NCSC
7 20 (0.96%) GDPR
8 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
10 13 (0.62%) GRC
11 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 351 (16.81%) Docker
2 283 (13.55%) Active Directory
3 250 (11.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (4.31%) Hyper-V
5 85 (4.07%) vSphere
6 79 (3.78%) Virtual Machines
7 74 (3.54%) VMware ESXi
8 61 (2.92%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.92%) Firmware
10 39 (1.87%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.68%) NFS
12 27 (1.29%) KVM
13 17 (0.81%) Ceph
13 17 (0.81%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.67%) Postfix
15 11 (0.53%) GPFS
15 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.48%) Squid
17 7 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 465 (22.27%) Ansible
2 453 (21.70%) Kubernetes
3 185 (8.86%) Grafana
4 165 (7.90%) Prometheus
5 86 (4.12%) Puppet
6 60 (2.87%) Progress Chef
7 51 (2.44%) Oracle RMAN
8 47 (2.25%) SCCM
9 40 (1.92%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.87%) Data Guard
11 30 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
12 29 (1.39%) Kibana
12 29 (1.39%) Nagios
13 27 (1.29%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.25%) Podman
15 25 (1.20%) Packer
16 24 (1.15%) NetBackup
16 24 (1.15%) VxRail
17 22 (1.05%) ZABBIX
18 20 (0.96%) Istio
Vendors
1 353 (16.91%) VMware
2 337 (16.14%) Microsoft
3 308 (14.75%) Oracle
4 227 (10.87%) Red Hat
5 165 (7.90%) Splunk
6 123 (5.89%) Cisco
7 114 (5.46%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.50%) IBM
9 83 (3.98%) Google
10 79 (3.78%) CyberArk
11 47 (2.25%) NetApp
11 47 (2.25%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
13 41 (1.96%) SAP
14 40 (1.92%) Palo Alto
15 38 (1.82%) F5
16 37 (1.77%) Dell
17 33 (1.58%) Dynatrace
18 32 (1.53%) Citrix
19 30 (1.44%) HP