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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -19 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,899 1,691 2,215
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.89% 5.84% 5.14%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.97% 42.06% 38.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,173 1,095 1,466
10th Percentile £350 £375 £340
25th Percentile £413 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £520 £545
% change year-on-year -5.72% -4.63% +3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 37 119
10th Percentile £33.90 £46.34 £44.35
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £53.75
Median hourly rate £61.42 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.52% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.04 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% - -

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 4,751 4,020 5,784
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.74% 13.89% 13.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,028 2,649 3,888
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £315 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £467 £470
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% -0.64% -6.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £676 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 184 404
10th Percentile £14.65 £15.15 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.33 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.73% -2.22% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £44.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £71.85 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £22.79
% change year-on-year +72.23% -17.20% -40.81%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -25 1,588 £513 -6.82% 948
UK excluding London -17 1,134 £490 -5.72% 722
London -42 548 £550 -5.98% 302
Work from Home -27 484 £500 -4.76% 412
South East -5 307 £505 -8.18% 237
North of England -12 298 £475 -9.52% 103
South West -5 160 £538 -10.42% 147
Yorkshire -18 154 £480 -10.70% 23
Midlands -18 146 £500 +0.05% 64
North West -16 130 £468 -4.93% 60
West Midlands -14 126 £493 -1.50% 37
Scotland -24 98 £488 +2.63% 45
East of England -16 90 £475 +0.26% 106
Wales +4 27 £465 -20.65% 19
East Midlands -28 17 £530 +16.61% 27
North East -23 14 £446 -18.12% 20
Northern Ireland +8 13 £425 +30.77% 15

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 78 (4.11%) Confluence
2 52 (2.74%) Apache
3 31 (1.63%) nginx
4 26 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.05%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.95%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.68%) SAS
10 12 (0.63%) OpenStack
10 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
12 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.37%) JBoss
14 7 (0.37%) SharePoint
15 6 (0.32%) IIS
15 6 (0.32%) TPMS
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 22 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.053%) InDesign
5 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 538 (28.33%) AWS
2 392 (20.64%) Azure
3 165 (8.69%) GitHub
4 123 (6.48%) GCP
5 117 (6.16%) OpenShift
6 97 (5.11%) GitHub Actions
7 81 (4.27%) Amazon EC2
7 81 (4.27%) Amazon S3
8 70 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
9 68 (3.58%) Amazon EKS
10 63 (3.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 62 (3.26%) Serverless
12 59 (3.11%) AWS CloudFormation
13 54 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.63%) Entra ID
15 44 (2.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 43 (2.26%) IaaS
17 42 (2.21%) Microsoft 365
18 41 (2.16%) PaaS
19 38 (2.00%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 187 (9.85%) Firewall
2 145 (7.64%) DNS
3 94 (4.95%) TCP/IP
4 78 (4.11%) VPN
5 66 (3.48%) SAN
6 63 (3.32%) Network Security
7 49 (2.58%) DHCP
7 49 (2.58%) WAN
8 42 (2.21%) LAN
9 35 (1.84%) SNMP
9 35 (1.84%) SSL
10 34 (1.79%) VSAN
11 32 (1.69%) SSH
12 28 (1.47%) HTTP
13 26 (1.37%) NAS
14 23 (1.21%) Ethernet
15 19 (1.00%) BGP
15 19 (1.00%) IPsec
15 19 (1.00%) VLAN
16 17 (0.90%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.90%) SQL Server
2 111 (5.85%) PostgreSQL
3 72 (3.79%) MySQL
4 71 (3.74%) Oracle Database
5 62 (3.26%) Relational Database
6 61 (3.21%) MongoDB
7 50 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.16%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 26 (1.37%) NoSQL
11 25 (1.32%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
12 20 (1.05%) SAP HANA
13 18 (0.95%) Big Data
14 17 (0.90%) KDB
15 16 (0.84%) DB2
16 15 (0.79%) Power BI
17 14 (0.74%) Kdb+
18 13 (0.68%) Sybase ASE
19 12 (0.63%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 203 (10.69%) Jenkins
2 173 (9.11%) GitLab
3 167 (8.79%) Git
4 137 (7.21%) JIRA
5 33 (1.74%) Maven
6 29 (1.53%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.37%) Mockito
8 23 (1.21%) Eclipse
9 21 (1.11%) JUnit
10 19 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
11 18 (0.95%) Bitbucket
12 16 (0.84%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.68%) Jaeger
14 13 (0.68%) jMock
15 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
16 10 (0.53%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 383 (20.17%) Social Skills
2 267 (14.06%) Finance
3 200 (10.53%) Public Sector
4 150 (7.90%) Analytical Skills
5 123 (6.48%) Banking
6 78 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (2.32%) Military
8 24 (1.26%) Front Office
9 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.21%) Financial Institution
9 23 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.16%) Retail
11 21 (1.11%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.11%) Law
12 20 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 17 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
15 16 (0.84%) Legal
16 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 245 (12.90%) Senior
2 189 (9.95%) Developer
3 185 (9.74%) Linux Engineer
4 177 (9.32%) DevOps Engineer
5 133 (7.00%) Software Engineer
6 124 (6.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 107 (5.63%) Architect
8 101 (5.32%) Analyst
9 99 (5.21%) Lead
10 76 (4.00%) Administrator
11 75 (3.95%) AWS Engineer
12 73 (3.84%) Java Developer
13 63 (3.32%) Consultant
13 63 (3.32%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 56 (2.95%) Platform Engineer
15 55 (2.90%) Security Engineer
16 54 (2.84%) Site Engineer
17 51 (2.69%) AWS DevOps
18 48 (2.53%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 47 (2.47%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (4.74%) Kafka
2 80 (4.21%) REST
3 75 (3.95%) Elastic Stack
4 73 (3.84%) Middleware
5 51 (2.69%) LDAP
6 50 (2.63%) Spring Boot
7 49 (2.58%) Spring
8 46 (2.42%) Node.js
9 44 (2.32%) Web Services
10 42 (2.21%) RESTful
11 38 (2.00%) .NET
12 34 (1.79%) YAML
13 27 (1.42%) AngularJS
14 26 (1.37%) JSON
15 25 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
15 25 (1.32%) XML
16 24 (1.26%) SOAP
17 21 (1.11%) Flash
17 21 (1.11%) React
18 19 (1.00%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 152 (8.00%) Data Centre
2 110 (5.79%) Cloud Native
3 77 (4.05%) Onboarding
4 76 (4.00%) Linux Command Line
5 71 (3.74%) Management Information System
6 69 (3.63%) Distributed Systems
7 65 (3.42%) PKI
8 60 (3.16%) Replication
9 48 (2.53%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
10 47 (2.47%) Public Cloud
10 47 (2.47%) Security Posture
11 36 (1.90%) Product Ownership
12 32 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
13 31 (1.63%) Embedded Systems
14 30 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
14 30 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
15 25 (1.32%) Operational Technology
16 24 (1.26%) Cyber Threat
16 24 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 723 (38.07%) Windows
2 371 (19.54%) Unix
3 301 (15.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 183 (9.64%) Windows Server
5 100 (5.27%) Ubuntu
6 55 (2.90%) AIX
7 46 (2.42%) Solaris
8 44 (2.32%) CentOS
9 35 (1.84%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.58%) VMS
11 24 (1.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (1.21%) Android
13 22 (1.16%) Debian
13 22 (1.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (1.00%) Mac OS
15 14 (0.74%) SUSE
16 13 (0.68%) Windows 10
17 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
18 11 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 538 (28.33%) CI/CD
2 459 (24.17%) DevOps
3 355 (18.69%) Agile
4 290 (15.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 290 (15.27%) Problem-Solving
5 243 (12.80%) Containerisation
6 203 (10.69%) Software Engineering
7 187 (9.85%) Migration
8 183 (9.64%) Observability
9 179 (9.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 159 (8.37%) High Availability
11 158 (8.32%) Performance Tuning
12 156 (8.21%) SIEM
13 150 (7.90%) Continuous Improvement
14 147 (7.74%) Root Cause Analysis
15 139 (7.32%) ITIL
16 131 (6.90%) Incident Response
17 128 (6.74%) Cybersecurity
17 128 (6.74%) Microservices
18 127 (6.69%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 627 (33.02%) Python
2 320 (16.85%) SQL
3 279 (14.69%) Bash
4 278 (14.64%) PowerShell
5 250 (13.16%) Java
6 153 (8.06%) Shell Script
7 126 (6.64%) C++
8 100 (5.27%) JavaScript
9 62 (3.26%) Perl
10 60 (3.16%) C
11 58 (3.05%) C#
12 49 (2.58%) Go
13 46 (2.42%) PL/SQL
14 25 (1.32%) Ruby
15 23 (1.21%) Rust
15 23 (1.21%) TypeScript
16 21 (1.11%) Ada
16 21 (1.11%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.84%) PHP
Qualifications
1 737 (38.81%) Security Cleared
2 542 (28.54%) SC Cleared
3 211 (11.11%) DV Cleared
4 187 (9.85%) Degree
5 74 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
6 70 (3.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (3.11%) CISSP
8 56 (2.95%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.95%) Cisco Certification
9 44 (2.32%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.05%) Azure Certification
11 35 (1.84%) RHCE
12 25 (1.32%) CCNP
13 24 (1.26%) CCNA
14 20 (1.05%) CISM
14 20 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (1.00%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 17 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
18 16 (0.84%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.48%) NIST
2 73 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.95%) QA
4 50 (2.63%) SLA
5 28 (1.47%) Cyber Essentials
5 28 (1.47%) GDPR
6 22 (1.16%) NCSC
7 17 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
9 11 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (0.47%) Data Quality
10 9 (0.47%) GRC
11 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.42%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.32%) Accessibility
12 6 (0.32%) GLBA
12 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
13 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 5 (0.26%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 315 (16.59%) Docker
2 221 (11.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 195 (10.27%) Active Directory
4 81 (4.27%) Virtual Machines
5 66 (3.48%) Hyper-V
5 66 (3.48%) vSphere
6 61 (3.21%) VMware ESXi
7 52 (2.74%) NFS
8 47 (2.47%) VMware NSX
9 38 (2.00%) Firmware
10 29 (1.53%) KVM
11 23 (1.21%) Oracle RAC
12 22 (1.16%) GPFS
13 21 (1.11%) Postfix
14 13 (0.68%) Ceph
14 13 (0.68%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 9 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.42%) Squid
17 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 389 (20.48%) Ansible
2 384 (20.22%) Kubernetes
3 363 (19.12%) Terraform
4 176 (9.27%) Grafana
5 145 (7.64%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.63%) Puppet
7 48 (2.53%) Progress Chef
8 40 (2.11%) vCenter Server
9 37 (1.95%) Oracle RMAN
10 29 (1.53%) Podman
11 28 (1.47%) Red Hat Satellite
12 26 (1.37%) Packer
12 26 (1.37%) vRealize
13 25 (1.32%) Kibana
14 24 (1.26%) Data Guard
14 24 (1.26%) ZABBIX
15 23 (1.21%) Nagios
16 22 (1.16%) Tivoli
17 21 (1.11%) Argo
18 20 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 306 (16.11%) VMware
2 264 (13.90%) Oracle
3 257 (13.53%) Microsoft
4 229 (12.06%) Red Hat
5 184 (9.69%) Splunk
6 122 (6.42%) Cisco
7 93 (4.90%) IBM
8 84 (4.42%) ServiceNow
9 54 (2.84%) Palo Alto
10 50 (2.63%) CyberArk
11 49 (2.58%) Google
12 37 (1.95%) F5
13 36 (1.90%) Dell
14 35 (1.84%) SolarWinds
15 33 (1.74%) Citrix
15 33 (1.74%) NVIDIA
15 33 (1.74%) SAP
16 31 (1.63%) HP
17 29 (1.53%) BeyondTrust
18 26 (1.37%) Atlassian