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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,116 1,837 2,155
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.55% 5.62%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.31% 41.08% 39.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,320 1,103 1,292
10th Percentile £350 £341 £350
25th Percentile £425 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -2.44% -3.09%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £498 £525
% change year-on-year +0.45% -5.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 74 115
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £53.73 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +9.15%
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% +4.35%

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 5,383 4,472 5,428
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.81% 13.52% 14.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,394 2,850 3,416
10th Percentile £190 £186 £200
25th Percentile £313 £285 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £663 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 297 258
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.18
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +14.43%
75th Percentile £65.22 £55.85 £69.45
90th Percentile £74.54 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +29.22% -55.68% +29.70%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -22 1,780 £525 - 3,016
UK excluding London -20 1,195 £500 +0.45% 1,576
London -31 706 £525 -8.70% 1,503
Work from Home -23 565 £500 -4.76% 1,077
South East -17 332 £525 +10.53% 448
North of England -17 284 £500 +5.26% 224
South West +2 181 £575 +4.55% 291
North West -15 140 £492 +22.69% 135
Scotland -18 133 £450 -10.00% 90
Midlands -44 125 £475 -5.00% 168
East of England -13 120 £475 -3.31% 276
Yorkshire -30 118 £518 +3.50% 53
West Midlands -38 108 £475 -5.00% 112
North East -12 34 £480 -10.70% 37
Wales +11 27 £465 +3.33% 26
East Midlands -12 14 £481 +14.52% 56
Northern Ireland -8 3 - - 71

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 (3.02%) Confluence
2 44 (2.08%) Apache
3 34 (1.61%) nginx
4 27 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.18%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
7 23 (1.09%) SharePoint
8 22 (1.04%) Apache Spark
9 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
10 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.76%) SAS
12 15 (0.71%) JBoss
13 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
14 11 (0.52%) IIS
14 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.33%) CMS
16 6 (0.28%) MTS
16 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
17 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
17 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 620 (29.30%) AWS
2 519 (24.53%) Azure
3 195 (9.22%) GCP
4 163 (7.70%) GitHub
5 112 (5.29%) OpenShift
6 107 (5.06%) Entra ID
7 103 (4.87%) GitHub Actions
8 94 (4.44%) Azure DevOps
9 93 (4.40%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.83%) Amazon EC2
11 73 (3.45%) Serverless
12 68 (3.21%) AWS CloudFormation
13 65 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (2.98%) Amazon EKS
14 63 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
15 60 (2.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 54 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.41%) IaaS
18 45 (2.13%) SaaS
19 44 (2.08%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 229 (10.82%) DNS
2 217 (10.26%) Firewall
3 166 (7.84%) TCP/IP
4 133 (6.29%) DHCP
5 87 (4.11%) Network Security
5 87 (4.11%) VPN
6 76 (3.59%) SAN
7 53 (2.50%) SSL
8 49 (2.32%) WAN
9 47 (2.22%) HTTP
10 44 (2.08%) SSH
11 37 (1.75%) VLAN
12 35 (1.65%) LAN
13 29 (1.37%) BGP
13 29 (1.37%) VSAN
14 27 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
15 26 (1.23%) Kerberos
16 23 (1.09%) Wireless
17 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
17 22 (1.04%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.72%) PostgreSQL
2 114 (5.39%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.87%) Oracle Database
4 75 (3.54%) Relational Database
5 66 (3.12%) MySQL
6 54 (2.55%) Amazon RDS
7 51 (2.41%) MongoDB
8 47 (2.22%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
10 32 (1.51%) Amazon Aurora
11 29 (1.37%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.28%) Big Data
13 22 (1.04%) DynamoDB
14 21 (0.99%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.99%) Power BI
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 11g
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 12c
15 19 (0.90%) Redis
16 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 282 (13.33%) Git
2 249 (11.77%) Jenkins
3 228 (10.78%) GitLab
4 157 (7.42%) JIRA
5 37 (1.75%) Maven
6 35 (1.65%) SonarQube
7 31 (1.47%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.13%) Artifactory
9 24 (1.13%) Selenium
10 23 (1.09%) Mockito
11 19 (0.90%) JUnit
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
12 18 (0.85%) Gradle
13 16 (0.76%) Cucumber
14 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.47%) JMeter
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 456 (21.55%) Social Skills
2 338 (15.97%) Finance
3 250 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.13%) Public Sector
5 170 (8.03%) Banking
6 91 (4.30%) Documentation Skills
7 55 (2.60%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.80%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.61%) Front Office
10 33 (1.56%) Military
11 30 (1.42%) Legal
12 27 (1.28%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (0.99%) Law
15 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.80%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.47%) Aviation
17 10 (0.47%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 320 (15.12%) Senior
2 238 (11.25%) Linux Engineer
3 216 (10.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 199 (9.40%) Developer
5 187 (8.84%) DevOps Engineer
6 104 (4.91%) Platform Engineer
7 100 (4.73%) Architect
8 98 (4.63%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.83%) Support Engineer
11 75 (3.54%) Analyst
11 75 (3.54%) Consultant
12 74 (3.50%) Java Developer
12 74 (3.50%) Lead
13 69 (3.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 67 (3.17%) AWS Engineer
15 65 (3.07%) Administrator
16 59 (2.79%) Network Engineer
17 56 (2.65%) Systems Engineer
18 54 (2.55%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 515 (24.34%) Terraform
2 142 (6.71%) Kafka
3 129 (6.10%) REST
4 83 (3.92%) Middleware
5 76 (3.59%) Elastic Stack
6 70 (3.31%) .NET
7 58 (2.74%) Spring
8 56 (2.65%) RESTful
9 52 (2.46%) Spring Boot
10 49 (2.32%) Web Services
11 45 (2.13%) LDAP
12 42 (1.98%) JSON
13 40 (1.89%) XML
14 35 (1.65%) HTML
14 35 (1.65%) React
14 35 (1.65%) SOAP
15 30 (1.42%) Flask
15 30 (1.42%) Keycloak
15 30 (1.42%) Node.js
15 30 (1.42%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 159 (7.51%) Onboarding
2 144 (6.81%) Cloud Native
3 138 (6.52%) Data Centre
4 110 (5.20%) PKI
5 102 (4.82%) Linux Command Line
6 90 (4.25%) Distributed Systems
7 89 (4.21%) Replication
8 71 (3.36%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.21%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.07%) Public Cloud
11 48 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
11 48 (2.27%) Security Posture
12 42 (1.98%) Private Cloud
13 41 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
14 40 (1.89%) Operational Technology
15 38 (1.80%) Product Ownership
16 37 (1.75%) Embedded Systems
16 37 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
17 35 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
18 34 (1.61%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 801 (37.85%) Windows
2 443 (20.94%) Unix
3 370 (17.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 252 (11.91%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.25%) Ubuntu
6 66 (3.12%) CentOS
7 59 (2.79%) AIX
8 57 (2.69%) Solaris
9 31 (1.47%) Embedded Linux
9 31 (1.47%) Windows 10
10 27 (1.28%) VMS
11 26 (1.23%) SUSE
12 22 (1.04%) Rocky
13 20 (0.95%) Mac OS
14 17 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
16 14 (0.66%) Debian
16 14 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
17 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 660 (31.19%) CI/CD
2 565 (26.70%) DevOps
3 462 (21.83%) Infrastructure as Code
4 391 (18.48%) Agile
5 342 (16.16%) Problem-Solving
6 333 (15.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 303 (14.32%) Containerisation
8 265 (12.52%) Continuous Improvement
9 254 (12.00%) Observability
10 238 (11.25%) Platform Engineering
11 237 (11.20%) Migration
12 219 (10.35%) Root Cause Analysis
13 213 (10.07%) Software Engineering
14 201 (9.50%) High Availability
15 183 (8.65%) Configuration Management
16 177 (8.36%) Test Automation
17 175 (8.27%) ITIL
18 172 (8.13%) Stakeholder Management
19 169 (7.99%) Performance Tuning
20 165 (7.80%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 771 (36.44%) Python
2 440 (20.79%) Bash
3 406 (19.19%) PowerShell
4 381 (18.01%) SQL
5 256 (12.10%) Java
6 154 (7.28%) Shell Script
7 118 (5.58%) C++
8 84 (3.97%) JavaScript
9 82 (3.88%) Perl
10 79 (3.73%) C#
11 68 (3.21%) C
12 63 (2.98%) PL/SQL
13 60 (2.84%) Go
14 42 (1.98%) Bicep
15 29 (1.37%) Groovy
16 22 (1.04%) TypeScript
17 21 (0.99%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.76%) Korn
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 802 (37.90%) Security Cleared
2 566 (26.75%) SC Cleared
3 252 (11.91%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.65%) Degree
5 74 (3.50%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.88%) CISSP
7 60 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.84%) Cisco Certification
7 60 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
8 56 (2.65%) Azure Certification
9 27 (1.28%) CCNP
9 27 (1.28%) CISM
10 25 (1.18%) RHCE
11 22 (1.04%) CCNA
12 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
14 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 16 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.54%) QA
2 74 (3.50%) NIST
3 69 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 31 (1.47%) SLA
5 23 (1.09%) Data Quality
6 21 (0.99%) GDPR
7 18 (0.85%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.80%) GRC
9 16 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.71%) NCSC
11 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 10 (0.47%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 4 (0.19%) ISO 9001
17 4 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 372 (17.58%) Docker
2 287 (13.56%) Active Directory
3 248 (11.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (4.06%) Hyper-V
5 81 (3.83%) vSphere
6 70 (3.31%) VMware ESXi
7 69 (3.26%) Virtual Machines
8 53 (2.50%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.89%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (1.65%) Firmware
10 35 (1.65%) NFS
11 26 (1.23%) KVM
12 23 (1.09%) Virtual Servers
13 13 (0.61%) Ceph
13 13 (0.61%) Postfix
14 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
14 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.52%) GPFS
16 8 (0.38%) Squid
16 8 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 476 (22.50%) Kubernetes
2 466 (22.02%) Ansible
3 195 (9.22%) Grafana
4 177 (8.36%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.25%) Puppet
6 60 (2.84%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.46%) Oracle RMAN
8 49 (2.32%) SCCM
9 40 (1.89%) Data Guard
10 33 (1.56%) Kibana
11 32 (1.51%) Microsoft Intune
11 32 (1.51%) vCenter Server
12 31 (1.47%) Nagios
13 28 (1.32%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.28%) NetBackup
14 27 (1.28%) VxRail
15 25 (1.18%) Podman
16 24 (1.13%) Packer
17 22 (1.04%) Istio
18 20 (0.95%) Argo
Vendors
1 349 (16.49%) VMware
2 347 (16.40%) Microsoft
3 294 (13.89%) Oracle
4 224 (10.59%) Red Hat
5 173 (8.18%) Splunk
6 127 (6.00%) Cisco
7 114 (5.39%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.54%) IBM
9 92 (4.35%) Google
10 82 (3.88%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.27%) SolarWinds
12 47 (2.22%) NetApp
13 46 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
14 41 (1.94%) F5
15 40 (1.89%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.75%) Dell
16 37 (1.75%) Dynatrace
17 35 (1.65%) SAP
18 31 (1.47%) Tenable
19 29 (1.37%) HP