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 18 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -18 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,879 1,748 2,225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.07% 5.94% 5.09%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.89% 42.77% 37.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,183 1,121 1,464
10th Percentile £325 £375 £325
25th Percentile £401 £445 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £549
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +0.23% -6.20%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £537 £538
% change year-on-year -8.75% -0.09% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 50 102
10th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £25.29
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £69.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 4,711 4,087 5,896
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.21% 13.89% 13.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,067 2,724 3,966
10th Percentile £181 £200 £183
25th Percentile £310 £320 £290
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £594
90th Percentile £660 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 173 406
10th Percentile £15.62 £16.30 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.31
Median hourly rate £34.00 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.61% +9.91% -26.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £67.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £24.18 £20.00
% change year-on-year +41.15% +20.90% -25.93%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 1,588 £518 -5.91% 809
UK excluding London -14 1,099 £490 -8.75% 713
London -37 557 £550 -8.33% 196
Work from Home -25 479 £500 -4.76% 281
South East -4 304 £500 -9.09% 228
North of England -13 288 £492 -10.55% 111
Midlands -6 165 £467 -6.63% 81
Yorkshire -18 152 £470 -14.55% 45
South West -14 148 £540 -10.00% 119
West Midlands -1 146 £467 -13.07% 38
North West -14 125 £503 -1.85% 39
East of England -10 92 £470 +0.53% 105
Scotland -22 86 £438 -6.42% 50
East Midlands -34 18 £525 +15.51% 42
Northern Ireland +12 15 £425 +30.77% 9
North East -13 13 £550 +4.76% 29
Wales -12 8 £404 -26.59% 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 96 (5.11%) Confluence
2 47 (2.50%) nginx
3 45 (2.39%) Apache
4 35 (1.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 26 (1.38%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.90%) SAS
8 16 (0.85%) Tomcat
8 16 (0.85%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.75%) OpenStack
10 12 (0.64%) SharePoint
11 11 (0.59%) CICS
11 11 (0.59%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.53%) TPMS
13 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.27%) JBoss
14 5 (0.27%) WebSphere Application Server
15 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 3 (0.16%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 37 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.27%) Weka
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 3 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
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%) Odoo
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%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 549 (29.22%) AWS
2 371 (19.74%) Azure
3 165 (8.78%) GitHub
4 125 (6.65%) OpenShift
5 103 (5.48%) GCP
6 95 (5.06%) Amazon EC2
7 91 (4.84%) AWS CloudFormation
8 86 (4.58%) Amazon S3
9 83 (4.42%) GitHub Actions
10 78 (4.15%) Serverless
11 72 (3.83%) Amazon EKS
12 66 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
13 65 (3.46%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.98%) Amazon ECS
15 54 (2.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 43 (2.29%) IaaS
17 40 (2.13%) Entra ID
18 39 (2.08%) Microsoft 365
18 39 (2.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 36 (1.92%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 202 (10.75%) Firewall
2 132 (7.03%) DNS
3 104 (5.53%) TCP/IP
4 70 (3.73%) VPN
5 68 (3.62%) Network Security
6 55 (2.93%) SAN
7 42 (2.24%) DHCP
8 41 (2.18%) SSH
8 41 (2.18%) VSAN
8 41 (2.18%) WAN
9 37 (1.97%) HTTP
10 34 (1.81%) LAN
11 29 (1.54%) SSL
12 28 (1.49%) SNMP
13 24 (1.28%) Ethernet
14 23 (1.22%) BGP
15 22 (1.17%) NAS
15 22 (1.17%) Wireless
16 20 (1.06%) VLAN
17 16 (0.85%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (7.13%) PostgreSQL
2 106 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 68 (3.62%) MySQL
4 67 (3.57%) MongoDB
5 66 (3.51%) Amazon RDS
6 64 (3.41%) Relational Database
7 57 (3.03%) Oracle Database
8 41 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.97%) NoSQL
10 27 (1.44%) Amazon Aurora
11 26 (1.38%) Big Data
12 23 (1.22%) DynamoDB
13 21 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
14 20 (1.06%) KDB
15 19 (1.01%) Kdb+
16 17 (0.90%) Hadoop
17 15 (0.80%) DB2
17 15 (0.80%) SAP HANA
18 14 (0.75%) Data Lake
19 12 (0.64%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 206 (10.96%) Jenkins
2 182 (9.69%) Git
3 170 (9.05%) GitLab
4 152 (8.09%) JIRA
5 32 (1.70%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.65%) Maven
7 28 (1.49%) JUnit
8 27 (1.44%) Sonatype Nexus
9 25 (1.33%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.33%) Mockito
10 24 (1.28%) SonarQube
11 16 (0.85%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.85%) Cucumber
11 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
12 12 (0.64%) Jaeger
12 12 (0.64%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.59%) DbUnit
13 11 (0.59%) jMock
14 10 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 416 (22.14%) Social Skills
2 283 (15.06%) Finance
3 195 (10.38%) Public Sector
4 161 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
5 109 (5.80%) Banking
6 69 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.55%) Military
8 29 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.38%) Financial Institution
10 21 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
10 21 (1.12%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.06%) Aerospace
11 20 (1.06%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.01%) Retail
13 18 (0.96%) Front Office
13 18 (0.96%) Legal
14 17 (0.90%) Law
14 17 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 224 (11.92%) Senior
2 219 (11.66%) Developer
3 163 (8.67%) DevOps Engineer
4 133 (7.08%) Software Engineer
5 130 (6.92%) Linux Engineer
6 121 (6.44%) Analyst
7 118 (6.28%) Architect
8 97 (5.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 91 (4.84%) Lead
10 85 (4.52%) Java Developer
11 79 (4.20%) Administrator
12 69 (3.67%) Platform Engineer
13 67 (3.57%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 64 (3.41%) AWS Engineer
15 63 (3.35%) Site Engineer
16 52 (2.77%) Consultant
16 52 (2.77%) Security Engineer
17 50 (2.66%) AWS DevOps
18 42 (2.24%) Support Engineer
19 40 (2.13%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (6.01%) Kafka
2 87 (4.63%) REST
3 77 (4.10%) Elastic Stack
4 66 (3.51%) Middleware
5 61 (3.25%) Node.js
6 50 (2.66%) Spring
7 49 (2.61%) LDAP
8 46 (2.45%) Spring Boot
9 39 (2.08%) Web Services
10 33 (1.76%) RESTful
10 33 (1.76%) YAML
11 32 (1.70%) .NET
11 32 (1.70%) XML
12 28 (1.49%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.44%) JSON
14 25 (1.33%) React
15 24 (1.28%) ActiveMQ
15 24 (1.28%) SOAP
16 22 (1.17%) CSS
17 21 (1.12%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 123 (6.55%) Data Centre
2 104 (5.53%) Cloud Native
3 83 (4.42%) Linux Command Line
4 66 (3.51%) Management Information System
5 58 (3.09%) Distributed Systems
6 56 (2.98%) Onboarding
7 52 (2.77%) PKI
7 52 (2.77%) Replication
8 50 (2.66%) Public Cloud
9 48 (2.55%) Hybrid Cloud
10 46 (2.45%) Product Ownership
11 36 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
12 31 (1.65%) Security Operations Centre
13 30 (1.60%) Security Posture
14 29 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
15 28 (1.49%) Enterprise Storage
16 26 (1.38%) Equities
17 25 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
18 24 (1.28%) Embedded Systems
19 22 (1.17%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 716 (38.11%) Windows
2 355 (18.89%) Unix
3 279 (14.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 180 (9.58%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.47%) Ubuntu
6 47 (2.50%) AIX
7 40 (2.13%) CentOS
8 37 (1.97%) Solaris
9 35 (1.86%) VMS
10 34 (1.81%) Android
11 30 (1.60%) Embedded Linux
12 25 (1.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.12%) Mac OS
14 20 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
15 19 (1.01%) Debian
16 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.69%) SUSE
17 11 (0.59%) Oracle Linux
18 10 (0.53%) Apple iOS
18 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 530 (28.21%) CI/CD
2 438 (23.31%) DevOps
3 399 (21.23%) Agile
4 322 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
5 286 (15.22%) Infrastructure as Code
6 258 (13.73%) Containerisation
7 209 (11.12%) Software Engineering
8 179 (9.53%) Observability
9 163 (8.67%) Migration
10 155 (8.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 145 (7.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 143 (7.61%) Computer Science
13 138 (7.34%) Cybersecurity
13 138 (7.34%) Platform Engineering
14 137 (7.29%) SIEM
15 134 (7.13%) Incident Response
15 134 (7.13%) Microservices
16 130 (6.92%) High Availability
17 128 (6.81%) Test Automation
18 118 (6.28%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 644 (34.27%) Python
2 312 (16.60%) SQL
3 284 (15.11%) Java
4 274 (14.58%) Bash
5 267 (14.21%) PowerShell
6 165 (8.78%) Shell Script
7 129 (6.87%) C++
8 104 (5.53%) JavaScript
9 80 (4.26%) Perl
10 62 (3.30%) C#
11 51 (2.71%) C
12 40 (2.13%) Go
13 39 (2.08%) PL/SQL
14 37 (1.97%) Ruby
15 28 (1.49%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.28%) PHP
17 23 (1.22%) Rust
18 19 (1.01%) Ada
18 19 (1.01%) MATLAB
19 17 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 742 (39.49%) Security Cleared
2 545 (29.00%) SC Cleared
3 199 (10.59%) DV Cleared
4 184 (9.79%) Degree
5 93 (4.95%) BPSS Clearance
6 79 (4.20%) Computer Science Degree
7 49 (2.61%) AWS Certification
8 48 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
9 43 (2.29%) CompTIA Security+
10 42 (2.24%) CISSP
11 32 (1.70%) RHCE
12 30 (1.60%) CCNA
13 26 (1.38%) CCNP
14 25 (1.33%) Azure Certification
15 21 (1.12%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.96%) CompTIA CySA+
16 18 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.96%) OCP
17 15 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.69%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.10%) NIST
2 66 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.55%) QA
4 38 (2.02%) SLA
5 36 (1.92%) GDPR
6 22 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.06%) NCSC
8 19 (1.01%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.64%) HIPAA
9 12 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (0.59%) Data Quality
11 10 (0.53%) GLBA
11 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.43%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
13 7 (0.37%) GRC
14 5 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.27%) DICOM
15 4 (0.21%) HL7
15 4 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 346 (18.41%) Docker
2 236 (12.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 177 (9.42%) Active Directory
4 83 (4.42%) vSphere
5 72 (3.83%) Virtual Machines
6 68 (3.62%) Hyper-V
7 65 (3.46%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (2.08%) NFS
8 39 (2.08%) VMware NSX
9 34 (1.81%) Firmware
10 28 (1.49%) GPFS
11 25 (1.33%) KVM
12 19 (1.01%) Postfix
13 17 (0.90%) Oracle RAC
14 14 (0.75%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 12 (0.64%) Ceph
16 11 (0.59%) Lustre
17 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.37%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 426 (22.67%) Kubernetes
2 382 (20.33%) Terraform
3 371 (19.74%) Ansible
4 183 (9.74%) Grafana
5 144 (7.66%) Prometheus
6 67 (3.57%) Puppet
7 51 (2.71%) Progress Chef
8 46 (2.45%) vCenter Server
9 40 (2.13%) vRealize
10 35 (1.86%) Packer
11 30 (1.60%) Kibana
12 29 (1.54%) Red Hat Satellite
13 28 (1.49%) Argo
14 27 (1.44%) Podman
15 25 (1.33%) Oracle RMAN
16 22 (1.17%) VxRail
17 20 (1.06%) SCCM
18 19 (1.01%) Nessus
19 17 (0.90%) Data Guard
19 17 (0.90%) Nagios
Vendors
1 319 (16.98%) VMware
2 278 (14.80%) Microsoft
3 253 (13.46%) Oracle
4 233 (12.40%) Red Hat
5 183 (9.74%) Splunk
6 116 (6.17%) Cisco
7 99 (5.27%) IBM
8 70 (3.73%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.77%) Dell
10 46 (2.45%) CyberArk
11 41 (2.18%) Palo Alto
12 40 (2.13%) Google
13 38 (2.02%) HP
14 37 (1.97%) SolarWinds
15 32 (1.70%) Atlassian
16 31 (1.65%) Citrix
17 28 (1.49%) NetApp
18 24 (1.28%) AppDynamics
18 24 (1.28%) BeyondTrust
18 24 (1.28%) Commvault