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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -23 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,892 1,729 2,239
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.75% 5.81% 5.10%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.54% 41.47% 38.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,166 1,119 1,451
10th Percentile £349 £370 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £540
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -1.85% -6.09%
75th Percentile £610 £626 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -1.40% -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 38 133
10th Percentile £37.13 £47.52 £46.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £56.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.41 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% - -

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 4,785 4,169 5,861
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.49% 14.01% 13.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,056 2,719 3,865
10th Percentile £190 £200 £188
25th Percentile £316 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 211 423
10th Percentile £14.60 £15.33 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.19 £17.44 £15.82
Median hourly rate £30.24 £21.28 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +42.11% -10.59% -49.89%
75th Percentile £64.06 £39.38 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.20 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £18.87 £25.00
% change year-on-year +48.38% -24.52% -37.65%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -27 1,586 £513 -6.82% 581
UK excluding London -17 1,122 £493 -1.40% 531
London -51 555 £548 -5.60% 129
Work from Home -31 487 £500 -4.31% 239
North of England -15 301 £484 -6.97% 96
South East -8 287 £515 -1.90% 168
South West -4 165 £538 -10.42% 95
Yorkshire -22 155 £500 -6.98% 21
Midlands -16 146 £474 -5.25% 50
North West -18 132 £469 +16.67% 59
West Midlands -15 126 £469 -6.20% 22
East of England -11 98 £475 +0.26% 81
Scotland -30 93 £450 -5.26% 15
Wales +2 26 £465 +64.60% 11
East Midlands -23 17 £530 +17.78% 28
North East -29 15 £446 -6.54% 16
Northern Ireland +2 12 £425 +30.77% 29

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 86 (4.55%) Confluence
2 48 (2.54%) Apache
3 30 (1.59%) nginx
4 26 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (1.11%) Tomcat
6 19 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.95%) WebLogic
8 17 (0.90%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.63%) SAS
9 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 10 (0.53%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.48%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.37%) IIS
15 6 (0.32%) JBoss
15 6 (0.32%) SharePoint
15 6 (0.32%) TPMS
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Actimize
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
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 ERP
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
5 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 539 (28.49%) AWS
2 389 (20.56%) Azure
3 153 (8.09%) GitHub
4 124 (6.55%) GCP
5 105 (5.55%) OpenShift
6 87 (4.60%) GitHub Actions
7 81 (4.28%) Amazon S3
8 78 (4.12%) Amazon EC2
9 65 (3.44%) Amazon EKS
10 64 (3.38%) Azure DevOps
10 64 (3.38%) Entra ID
11 60 (3.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 54 (2.85%) Serverless
13 45 (2.38%) IaaS
13 45 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
14 44 (2.33%) AWS Lambda
15 43 (2.27%) AWS CloudFormation
15 43 (2.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 41 (2.17%) PaaS
17 37 (1.96%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 183 (9.67%) Firewall
2 137 (7.24%) DNS
3 84 (4.44%) TCP/IP
4 77 (4.07%) VPN
5 69 (3.65%) Network Security
6 67 (3.54%) SAN
7 51 (2.70%) DHCP
8 47 (2.48%) WAN
9 41 (2.17%) SSL
10 38 (2.01%) LAN
11 37 (1.96%) SNMP
12 33 (1.74%) SSH
13 31 (1.64%) VSAN
14 30 (1.59%) HTTP
15 26 (1.37%) NAS
16 22 (1.16%) Ethernet
17 21 (1.11%) VLAN
18 19 (1.00%) IPsec
19 17 (0.90%) BGP
19 17 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.97%) SQL Server
2 108 (5.71%) PostgreSQL
3 75 (3.96%) Oracle Database
4 72 (3.81%) MySQL
5 66 (3.49%) Relational Database
6 61 (3.22%) MongoDB
7 48 (2.54%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (2.01%) Amazon Aurora
10 27 (1.43%) DynamoDB
10 27 (1.43%) NoSQL
11 20 (1.06%) Big Data
11 20 (1.06%) SAP HANA
12 18 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
12 18 (0.95%) RDBMS
13 17 (0.90%) Db2
13 17 (0.90%) KDB
14 15 (0.79%) Sybase ASE
15 14 (0.74%) Kdb+
15 14 (0.74%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 208 (10.99%) Jenkins
2 186 (9.83%) GitLab
3 164 (8.67%) Git
4 149 (7.88%) JIRA
5 31 (1.64%) Maven
5 31 (1.64%) SonarQube
6 26 (1.37%) Mockito
7 21 (1.11%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.95%) Bitbucket
8 18 (0.95%) JUnit
9 17 (0.90%) Artifactory
9 17 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
10 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
10 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
10 14 (0.74%) Visual Studio
11 13 (0.69%) jMock
12 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
12 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
13 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 9 (0.48%) Cucumber
General
1 379 (20.03%) Social Skills
2 272 (14.38%) Finance
3 196 (10.36%) Public Sector
4 162 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
5 129 (6.82%) Banking
6 82 (4.33%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.27%) Military
8 26 (1.37%) Front Office
9 25 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 24 (1.27%) Retail
11 23 (1.22%) Investment Banking
12 22 (1.16%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.11%) Financial Institution
13 21 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 20 (1.06%) Law
15 19 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 19 (1.00%) Legal
16 17 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
17 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
18 12 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 241 (12.74%) Senior
2 188 (9.94%) Developer
2 188 (9.94%) Linux Engineer
3 183 (9.67%) DevOps Engineer
4 136 (7.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 127 (6.71%) Software Engineer
6 101 (5.34%) Analyst
7 96 (5.07%) Architect
8 90 (4.76%) Lead
9 72 (3.81%) Java Developer
10 67 (3.54%) AWS Engineer
11 66 (3.49%) Consultant
12 65 (3.44%) Administrator
13 57 (3.01%) Platform Engineer
14 56 (2.96%) Support Engineer
15 53 (2.80%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 50 (2.64%) Security Engineer
17 48 (2.54%) AWS DevOps
18 46 (2.43%) Embedded Engineer
19 45 (2.38%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (4.55%) Kafka
2 83 (4.39%) Middleware
2 83 (4.39%) REST
3 69 (3.65%) Elastic Stack
4 50 (2.64%) LDAP
4 50 (2.64%) Spring
4 50 (2.64%) Spring Boot
5 46 (2.43%) Web Services
6 44 (2.33%) RESTful
7 43 (2.27%) Node.js
8 39 (2.06%) .NET
9 29 (1.53%) YAML
10 26 (1.37%) ActiveMQ
10 26 (1.37%) SOAP
11 25 (1.32%) AngularJS
11 25 (1.32%) JSON
12 23 (1.22%) React
12 23 (1.22%) XML
13 20 (1.06%) Flash
14 19 (1.00%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 149 (7.88%) Data Centre
2 114 (6.03%) Cloud Native
3 85 (4.49%) Onboarding
4 82 (4.33%) Linux Command Line
5 71 (3.75%) Management Information System
5 71 (3.75%) PKI
6 68 (3.59%) Distributed Systems
7 63 (3.33%) Replication
8 51 (2.70%) Public Cloud
9 50 (2.64%) Security Posture
10 49 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
11 48 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (1.90%) Product Ownership
13 30 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
13 30 (1.59%) Enterprise Storage
14 28 (1.48%) Embedded Systems
15 27 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
16 26 (1.37%) Security Operations Centre
17 25 (1.32%) Cyber Threat
17 25 (1.32%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 731 (38.64%) Windows
2 387 (20.45%) Unix
3 296 (15.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 185 (9.78%) Windows Server
5 105 (5.55%) Ubuntu
6 58 (3.07%) AIX
7 50 (2.64%) Solaris
8 42 (2.22%) CentOS
9 33 (1.74%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.53%) VMS
11 23 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (1.06%) Android
13 19 (1.00%) Debian
13 19 (1.00%) SUSE
14 18 (0.95%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.79%) Mac OS
16 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
17 12 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
17 12 (0.63%) Windows 10
17 12 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 524 (27.70%) CI/CD
2 455 (24.05%) DevOps
3 355 (18.76%) Agile
4 284 (15.01%) Infrastructure as Code
5 275 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
6 242 (12.79%) Containerisation
7 200 (10.57%) Software Engineering
8 196 (10.36%) Migration
9 193 (10.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 175 (9.25%) Observability
11 165 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 161 (8.51%) High Availability
13 159 (8.40%) Performance Tuning
14 145 (7.66%) SIEM
15 141 (7.45%) Root Cause Analysis
16 137 (7.24%) ITIL
17 127 (6.71%) Test Automation
18 126 (6.66%) Microservices
19 125 (6.61%) Platform Engineering
20 122 (6.45%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 617 (32.61%) Python
2 317 (16.75%) SQL
3 281 (14.85%) Bash
4 278 (14.69%) PowerShell
5 237 (12.53%) Java
6 144 (7.61%) Shell Script
7 118 (6.24%) C++
8 91 (4.81%) JavaScript
9 62 (3.28%) Perl
10 58 (3.07%) C
10 58 (3.07%) C#
11 50 (2.64%) PL/SQL
12 46 (2.43%) Go
13 23 (1.22%) Rust
14 21 (1.11%) Ada
14 21 (1.11%) TypeScript
15 20 (1.06%) MATLAB
16 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
17 17 (0.90%) Ruby
18 15 (0.79%) PHP
Qualifications
1 720 (38.05%) Security Cleared
2 532 (28.12%) SC Cleared
3 204 (10.78%) DV Cleared
4 182 (9.62%) Degree
5 66 (3.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 63 (3.33%) AWS Certification
7 61 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 60 (3.17%) CISSP
9 53 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
10 40 (2.11%) Azure Certification
11 39 (2.06%) CompTIA Security+
12 35 (1.85%) RHCE
13 24 (1.27%) CCNA
14 23 (1.22%) CCNP
15 21 (1.11%) CISM
15 21 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
16 16 (0.85%) GIAC
17 15 (0.79%) Oracle Certification
18 14 (0.74%) OCP
19 13 (0.69%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.70%) NIST
2 82 (4.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (2.85%) QA
4 45 (2.38%) SLA
5 26 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
5 26 (1.37%) GDPR
6 22 (1.16%) NCSC
7 19 (1.00%) PCI DSS
8 14 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
9 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
11 10 (0.53%) GRC
12 9 (0.48%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.32%) GLBA
14 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 5 (0.26%) DICOM
15 5 (0.26%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 314 (16.60%) Docker
2 223 (11.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 210 (11.10%) Active Directory
4 82 (4.33%) Virtual Machines
5 66 (3.49%) vSphere
6 65 (3.44%) Hyper-V
7 64 (3.38%) VMware ESXi
8 52 (2.75%) NFS
9 48 (2.54%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.96%) Firmware
11 32 (1.69%) KVM
12 28 (1.48%) Oracle RAC
13 21 (1.11%) GPFS
13 21 (1.11%) Postfix
14 11 (0.58%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.58%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.53%) Ceph
16 9 (0.48%) BitLocker
17 8 (0.42%) Squid
18 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 392 (20.72%) Ansible
2 364 (19.24%) Kubernetes
3 358 (18.92%) Terraform
4 168 (8.88%) Grafana
5 143 (7.56%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.91%) Puppet
7 51 (2.70%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.17%) vCenter Server
9 38 (2.01%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.59%) Podman
11 27 (1.43%) Nagios
11 27 (1.43%) Packer
12 25 (1.32%) Red Hat Satellite
12 25 (1.32%) ZABBIX
13 24 (1.27%) Data Guard
13 24 (1.27%) vRealize
14 22 (1.16%) Argo
14 22 (1.16%) Kibana
14 22 (1.16%) Tivoli
15 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 295 (15.59%) VMware
2 271 (14.32%) Oracle
3 251 (13.27%) Microsoft
4 219 (11.58%) Red Hat
5 164 (8.67%) Splunk
6 120 (6.34%) Cisco
7 107 (5.66%) IBM
8 89 (4.70%) ServiceNow
9 57 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 55 (2.91%) Google
11 53 (2.80%) Palo Alto
12 41 (2.17%) SolarWinds
13 39 (2.06%) F5
13 39 (2.06%) SAP
14 37 (1.96%) BeyondTrust
15 34 (1.80%) Citrix
16 33 (1.74%) HP
17 32 (1.69%) Dell
17 32 (1.69%) NVIDIA
18 29 (1.53%) Sybase