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 1 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 31 30
Rank change year-on-year -10 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,935 1,791 2,576
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.02% 5.70% 5.74%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.69% 39.92% 40.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 1,067 1,719
10th Percentile £316 £352 £325
25th Percentile £400 £450 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £657 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.57% - -3.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 59 121
10th Percentile £12.75 £42.25 £24.34
25th Percentile £41.25 £57.82 £50.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +6.56% -6.15%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.46 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.50 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +7.26% -4.62%

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 4,756 4,486 6,379
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.34% 14.28% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,159 2,792 4,294
10th Percentile £175 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £319 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% +1.06% -8.56%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.29% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 157 383
10th Percentile £14.50 £16.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.91 £21.00 £17.23
Median hourly rate £24.00 £32.50 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -26.15% +28.71% -1.79%
75th Percentile £56.89 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.37 £69.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £29.89 £25.00
% change year-on-year -24.47% +19.56% +3.99%

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 1 February 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 1 February 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 1 February 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 -10 1,663 £510 -7.44% 804
UK excluding London -3 1,098 £480 -8.57% 713
London -16 638 £550 -8.33% 222
Work from Home -15 507 £496 -6.42% 332
South East +1 305 £475 -9.31% 229
North of England +5 275 £480 -12.73% 132
Midlands -6 190 £520 -5.72% 85
West Midlands -1 173 £525 -5.91% 49
Yorkshire +1 166 £500 -13.61% 36
South West -18 135 £550 -8.33% 118
Scotland -8 102 £450 -5.26% 81
North West -20 101 £450 -18.18% 75
East of England -8 90 £462 +7.44% 67
Northern Ireland +12 19 £400 +23.08% 5
East Midlands -22 17 £423 -11.05% 36
North East -18 13 £550 +12.82% 22
Wales -9 5 £600 +11.63% 8

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 80 (4.13%) Confluence
2 57 (2.95%) Apache
3 49 (2.53%) nginx
4 40 (2.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 26 (1.34%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.14%) OpenStack
7 21 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
8 20 (1.03%) WebSphere
9 17 (0.88%) SharePoint
10 16 (0.83%) JBoss
10 16 (0.83%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.72%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.67%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.67%) TPMS
13 12 (0.62%) SAS
13 12 (0.62%) Tomcat
14 11 (0.57%) IIS
15 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
15 10 (0.52%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 54 (2.79%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (0.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.10%) Windchill
8 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
8 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.052%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Finacle
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) RMDS
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 580 (29.97%) AWS
2 369 (19.07%) Azure
3 181 (9.35%) GitHub
4 143 (7.39%) GCP
5 139 (7.18%) OpenShift
6 114 (5.89%) AWS CloudFormation
7 110 (5.68%) Serverless
8 95 (4.91%) Amazon EC2
9 93 (4.81%) GitHub Actions
10 78 (4.03%) Amazon S3
11 70 (3.62%) Amazon ECS
12 65 (3.36%) Amazon EKS
12 65 (3.36%) AWS Lambda
13 61 (3.15%) Azure DevOps
14 55 (2.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 51 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 50 (2.58%) IaaS
17 47 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
18 44 (2.27%) SaaS
19 37 (1.91%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 207 (10.70%) Firewall
2 145 (7.49%) DNS
3 132 (6.82%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.67%) Network Security
5 52 (2.69%) VPN
6 50 (2.58%) SSH
7 46 (2.38%) DHCP
8 44 (2.27%) HTTP
9 43 (2.22%) SSL
10 34 (1.76%) SAN
11 30 (1.55%) VLAN
12 27 (1.40%) Kerberos
13 26 (1.34%) VSAN
13 26 (1.34%) Wireless
14 25 (1.29%) WAN
15 24 (1.24%) Skype
16 21 (1.09%) SMTP
17 19 (0.98%) BGP
17 19 (0.98%) Ethernet
17 19 (0.98%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (7.08%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.06%) Relational Database
3 92 (4.75%) SQL Server
4 80 (4.13%) Amazon RDS
5 73 (3.77%) MySQL
5 73 (3.77%) NoSQL
6 70 (3.62%) MongoDB
6 70 (3.62%) Oracle Database
7 51 (2.64%) Elasticsearch
8 27 (1.40%) Big Data
9 26 (1.34%) DB2
10 25 (1.29%) Hadoop
11 21 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
12 18 (0.93%) KDB
12 18 (0.93%) Kdb+
13 15 (0.78%) Apache Hive
14 14 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
14 14 (0.72%) GIS
14 14 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 13 (0.67%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 264 (13.64%) Jenkins
2 218 (11.27%) Git
3 200 (10.34%) GitLab
4 130 (6.72%) JIRA
5 51 (2.64%) JUnit
6 50 (2.58%) Sonatype Nexus
7 44 (2.27%) Bitbucket
8 32 (1.65%) Eclipse
9 26 (1.34%) Maven
10 25 (1.29%) Cucumber
11 21 (1.09%) Mockito
12 20 (1.03%) Liquibase
13 19 (0.98%) Burp Suite
14 18 (0.93%) Artifactory
15 17 (0.88%) Browser DevTools
16 16 (0.83%) Android Studio
16 16 (0.83%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.83%) JMeter
16 16 (0.83%) Metasploit
16 16 (0.83%) Xcode
General
1 524 (27.08%) Social Skills
2 337 (17.42%) Finance
3 206 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
4 183 (9.46%) Public Sector
5 146 (7.55%) Banking
6 71 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.69%) Financial Institution
8 43 (2.22%) Investment Banking
8 43 (2.22%) Military
9 41 (2.12%) Front Office
10 38 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
11 23 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 19 (0.98%) Aerospace
12 19 (0.98%) Legal
13 18 (0.93%) Telecoms
14 14 (0.72%) Law
15 13 (0.67%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.62%) Back Office
16 12 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 12 (0.62%) Retail
Job Titles
1 289 (14.94%) Developer
2 239 (12.35%) Senior
3 177 (9.15%) DevOps Engineer
4 132 (6.82%) Software Engineer
5 124 (6.41%) Analyst
6 107 (5.53%) Architect
7 106 (5.48%) Java Developer
8 98 (5.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 91 (4.70%) Support Engineer
10 90 (4.65%) Linux Engineer
11 85 (4.39%) Platform Engineer
12 79 (4.08%) Administrator
13 76 (3.93%) Lead
14 75 (3.88%) AWS Engineer
15 66 (3.41%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 64 (3.31%) Site Engineer
17 62 (3.20%) AWS DevOps
18 57 (2.95%) Security Engineer
18 57 (2.95%) Senior Software Engineer
19 51 (2.64%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (8.01%) Kafka
2 125 (6.46%) REST
3 122 (6.30%) Elastic Stack
4 84 (4.34%) Middleware
5 66 (3.41%) Spring
6 65 (3.36%) Node.js
7 58 (3.00%) RESTful
8 57 (2.95%) LDAP
9 51 (2.64%) React
10 48 (2.48%) JSON
11 46 (2.38%) XML
12 37 (1.91%) YAML
13 36 (1.86%) AngularJS
14 34 (1.76%) SOAP
15 32 (1.65%) Spring Boot
16 30 (1.55%) OAuth
17 28 (1.45%) CSS
18 27 (1.40%) SAML
19 26 (1.34%) .NET
20 25 (1.29%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 101 (5.22%) Cloud Native
2 93 (4.81%) Data Centre
3 89 (4.60%) Linux Command Line
4 69 (3.57%) Management Information System
5 64 (3.31%) Replication
6 61 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
7 57 (2.95%) Public Cloud
8 54 (2.79%) PKI
9 53 (2.74%) Equities
10 47 (2.43%) Onboarding
11 40 (2.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 38 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
13 37 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
14 35 (1.81%) Data Structures
15 32 (1.65%) Product Ownership
16 30 (1.55%) Algorithms
16 30 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
17 29 (1.50%) Fixed Income
17 29 (1.50%) Hybrid Cloud
18 27 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 718 (37.11%) Windows
2 383 (19.79%) Unix
3 247 (12.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 140 (7.24%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.39%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.64%) CentOS
7 38 (1.96%) Android
8 32 (1.65%) Solaris
9 31 (1.60%) Mac OS
10 29 (1.50%) VMS
11 27 (1.40%) Mac OS X
12 22 (1.14%) Windows 10
12 22 (1.14%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.09%) AIX
14 18 (0.93%) Embedded Linux
14 18 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.78%) Kali Linux
16 13 (0.67%) Amazon Linux
17 12 (0.62%) Debian
18 11 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 592 (30.59%) CI/CD
2 490 (25.32%) DevOps
3 433 (22.38%) Agile
4 377 (19.48%) Problem-Solving
5 317 (16.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 309 (15.97%) Containerisation
7 235 (12.14%) Software Engineering
8 197 (10.18%) Observability
9 183 (9.46%) Cybersecurity
10 169 (8.73%) Computer Science
11 162 (8.37%) Test Automation
12 154 (7.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 153 (7.91%) Continuous Improvement
14 151 (7.80%) Microservices
15 150 (7.75%) Incident Response
16 137 (7.08%) Platform Engineering
17 131 (6.77%) High Availability
18 127 (6.56%) SIEM
19 124 (6.41%) Performance Tuning
20 120 (6.20%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 756 (39.07%) Python
2 365 (18.86%) SQL
3 357 (18.45%) Java
4 340 (17.57%) Bash
5 288 (14.88%) PowerShell
6 211 (10.90%) Shell Script
7 176 (9.10%) C++
8 127 (6.56%) JavaScript
9 114 (5.89%) Perl
10 82 (4.24%) C#
11 70 (3.62%) Go
12 57 (2.95%) C
13 42 (2.17%) Ruby
14 30 (1.55%) TypeScript
15 29 (1.50%) PL/SQL
15 29 (1.50%) Rust
16 26 (1.34%) Groovy
17 24 (1.24%) PHP
18 21 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
19 17 (0.88%) Ada
Qualifications
1 658 (34.01%) Security Cleared
2 472 (24.39%) SC Cleared
3 214 (11.06%) Degree
4 162 (8.37%) DV Cleared
5 117 (6.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 81 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.10%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.86%) Master's Degree
9 35 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
10 31 (1.60%) Azure Certification
11 30 (1.55%) CISSP
11 30 (1.55%) CompTIA Security+
12 27 (1.40%) RHCE
13 25 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.09%) CCNA
15 20 (1.03%) OSCP
16 19 (0.98%) CCNP
17 17 (0.88%) CompTIA CySA+
17 17 (0.88%) GPEN
18 16 (0.83%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (3.10%) NIST
2 43 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (2.17%) GDPR
4 41 (2.12%) QA
5 31 (1.60%) SLA
6 19 (0.98%) Data Quality
6 19 (0.98%) PCI DSS
7 18 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.88%) NCSC
9 13 (0.67%) GLBA
10 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
15 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.16%) SEPA
17 2 (0.10%) Basel III
System Software
1 409 (21.14%) Docker
2 218 (11.27%) VMware Infrastructure
3 172 (8.89%) Active Directory
4 72 (3.72%) vSphere
5 61 (3.15%) Virtual Machines
6 50 (2.58%) VMware ESXi
7 47 (2.43%) Hyper-V
8 28 (1.45%) GPFS
9 26 (1.34%) NFS
10 24 (1.24%) VMware NSX
11 22 (1.14%) KVM
12 18 (0.93%) Firmware
13 16 (0.83%) Oracle RAC
14 15 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 13 (0.67%) HDFS
16 12 (0.62%) Lustre
16 12 (0.62%) Postfix
16 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
17 10 (0.52%) DFS Replication
18 9 (0.47%) Squid
Systems Management
1 468 (24.19%) Kubernetes
2 396 (20.47%) Terraform
3 374 (19.33%) Ansible
4 211 (10.90%) Grafana
5 183 (9.46%) Prometheus
6 76 (3.93%) Puppet
7 68 (3.51%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.17%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.96%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.91%) vRealize
11 35 (1.81%) Packer
12 34 (1.76%) Argo
12 34 (1.76%) Kibana
13 32 (1.65%) Podman
14 28 (1.45%) SCCM
14 28 (1.45%) SCOM
15 27 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
16 23 (1.19%) Nessus
17 21 (1.09%) ITRS Geneos
18 18 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 306 (15.81%) Microsoft
2 300 (15.50%) VMware
3 269 (13.90%) Oracle
4 245 (12.66%) Splunk
5 215 (11.11%) Red Hat
6 113 (5.84%) Cisco
7 80 (4.13%) IBM
8 75 (3.88%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.69%) Google
10 46 (2.38%) Dell
11 43 (2.22%) AppDynamics
12 40 (2.07%) CyberArk
13 29 (1.50%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.40%) SolarWinds
15 26 (1.34%) CrowdStrike
16 23 (1.19%) NetApp
17 22 (1.14%) Citrix
17 22 (1.14%) Solace
18 21 (1.09%) Commvault
18 21 (1.09%) NVIDIA