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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -13 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,929 1,772 2,466
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.71% 5.77% 5.52%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.16% 40.25% 39.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 1,080 1,618
10th Percentile £320 £356 £325
25th Percentile £401 £436 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £653 £650
90th Percentile £724 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -8.10% -0.94% -3.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 54 124
10th Percentile £13.25 £42.38 £27.75
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.42 £48.31
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.61 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.50 £73.88 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% +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 4,803 4,403 6,227
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.73% 14.33% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,177 2,792 4,174
10th Percentile £176 £200 £180
25th Percentile £268 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £474 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.65% +1.88% -9.71%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £693 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 151 389
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.49 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.62 £16.92
Median hourly rate £23.00 £29.00 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -20.69% +14.85% -4.68%
75th Percentile £55.00 £64.38 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.99 £68.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £26.25 £25.22
% change year-on-year -14.29% +4.10% -4.81%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -14 1,666 £513 -6.82% 734
UK excluding London -6 1,104 £483 -8.10% 683
London -24 621 £550 -8.33% 188
Work from Home -16 515 £500 -4.76% 346
South East +4 321 £483 -8.10% 190
North of England 0 298 £492 -10.55% 131
Midlands -8 180 £525 - 89
Yorkshire -8 168 £500 -13.04% 34
West Midlands -5 166 £525 -1.13% 64
South West -20 135 £550 -8.33% 95
North West -10 120 £475 -5.00% 73
Scotland -20 86 £425 -9.33% 95
East of England -10 82 £473 +5.00% 76
Northern Ireland +7 16 £413 +26.92% 6
North East -20 15 £538 +10.26% 25
East Midlands -32 14 £420 -7.59% 25
Wales -8 6 £543 +0.93% 14

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 89 (4.61%) Confluence
2 50 (2.59%) nginx
3 48 (2.49%) Apache
4 42 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (0.98%) OpenStack
5 19 (0.98%) WebLogic
6 18 (0.93%) Apache Spark
7 15 (0.78%) SharePoint
8 14 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
8 14 (0.73%) WebSphere
9 13 (0.67%) Tomcat
9 13 (0.67%) TPMS
10 12 (0.62%) JBoss
11 10 (0.52%) SAS
12 9 (0.47%) Skype for Business
13 8 (0.41%) Mattermost
14 6 (0.31%) CICS
14 6 (0.31%) IIS
14 6 (0.31%) iPlanet
14 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 52 (2.70%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
7 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.052%) Simulink
7 1 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.052%) RMDS
5 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.052%) Shopify
5 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 594 (30.79%) AWS
2 372 (19.28%) Azure
3 186 (9.64%) GitHub
4 143 (7.41%) GCP
5 138 (7.15%) OpenShift
6 115 (5.96%) Serverless
7 112 (5.81%) AWS CloudFormation
8 99 (5.13%) Amazon EC2
9 92 (4.77%) GitHub Actions
10 83 (4.30%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.84%) Amazon EKS
12 69 (3.58%) AWS Lambda
13 67 (3.47%) Amazon ECS
14 63 (3.27%) Azure DevOps
15 60 (3.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 51 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 47 (2.44%) IaaS
18 40 (2.07%) Microsoft 365
19 39 (2.02%) Entra ID
20 37 (1.92%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 211 (10.94%) Firewall
2 152 (7.88%) DNS
3 127 (6.58%) TCP/IP
4 67 (3.47%) Network Security
5 64 (3.32%) VPN
6 49 (2.54%) SSH
7 45 (2.33%) DHCP
8 44 (2.28%) SSL
9 40 (2.07%) HTTP
10 33 (1.71%) SAN
11 32 (1.66%) VLAN
12 29 (1.50%) Wireless
13 28 (1.45%) WAN
14 25 (1.30%) VSAN
15 24 (1.24%) BGP
16 23 (1.19%) Kerberos
17 20 (1.04%) Ethernet
17 20 (1.04%) SNMP
17 20 (1.04%) Wireshark
18 19 (0.98%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (7.62%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 86 (4.46%) Amazon RDS
3 86 (4.46%) Relational Database
4 78 (4.04%) MongoDB
5 73 (3.78%) NoSQL
6 70 (3.63%) MySQL
7 65 (3.37%) Oracle Database
8 51 (2.64%) Elasticsearch
9 29 (1.50%) DB2
10 24 (1.24%) Big Data
11 20 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
12 17 (0.88%) Hadoop
12 17 (0.88%) KDB
12 17 (0.88%) Kdb+
13 15 (0.78%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.67%) GIS
14 13 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 12 (0.62%) Amazon Aurora
15 12 (0.62%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 270 (14.00%) Jenkins
2 217 (11.25%) Git
3 203 (10.52%) GitLab
4 139 (7.21%) JIRA
5 52 (2.70%) JUnit
6 48 (2.49%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.18%) Bitbucket
8 34 (1.76%) Maven
9 29 (1.50%) Mockito
10 28 (1.45%) Eclipse
11 25 (1.30%) Cucumber
12 22 (1.14%) Liquibase
13 18 (0.93%) Burp Suite
13 18 (0.93%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.88%) Artifactory
15 16 (0.83%) JMeter
16 15 (0.78%) Metasploit
17 14 (0.73%) Android Studio
17 14 (0.73%) Selenium
17 14 (0.73%) Xcode
General
1 516 (26.75%) Social Skills
2 330 (17.11%) Finance
3 200 (10.37%) Public Sector
4 189 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 136 (7.05%) Banking
6 68 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.54%) Financial Institution
8 42 (2.18%) Military
9 35 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
10 34 (1.76%) Investment Banking
11 29 (1.50%) Front Office
12 24 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
13 21 (1.09%) Legal
14 20 (1.04%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.93%) Telecoms
16 17 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
17 15 (0.78%) Law
18 14 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 14 (0.73%) Manufacturing
18 14 (0.73%) Retail
Job Titles
1 280 (14.52%) Developer
2 252 (13.06%) Senior
3 188 (9.75%) DevOps Engineer
4 139 (7.21%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.53%) Analyst
6 114 (5.91%) Java Developer
7 109 (5.65%) Architect
8 97 (5.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 88 (4.56%) Linux Engineer
10 86 (4.46%) Support Engineer
11 84 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
12 81 (4.20%) Lead
13 77 (3.99%) Administrator
14 74 (3.84%) AWS Engineer
15 71 (3.68%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 68 (3.53%) Site Engineer
17 58 (3.01%) AWS DevOps
18 56 (2.90%) Senior Software Engineer
19 51 (2.64%) Security Engineer
20 50 (2.59%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (7.98%) Kafka
2 125 (6.48%) REST
3 121 (6.27%) Elastic Stack
4 82 (4.25%) Middleware
5 72 (3.73%) Spring
6 66 (3.42%) Node.js
7 56 (2.90%) RESTful
8 55 (2.85%) LDAP
9 49 (2.54%) JSON
10 48 (2.49%) React
11 46 (2.38%) XML
12 44 (2.28%) Spring Boot
13 39 (2.02%) AngularJS
14 37 (1.92%) YAML
15 36 (1.87%) SOAP
16 34 (1.76%) Web Services
17 26 (1.35%) .NET
17 26 (1.35%) ActiveMQ
17 26 (1.35%) CSS
18 23 (1.19%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 117 (6.07%) Cloud Native
2 106 (5.50%) Data Centre
3 88 (4.56%) Linux Command Line
4 75 (3.89%) Management Information System
5 72 (3.73%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (3.21%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.85%) PKI
8 53 (2.75%) Replication
9 47 (2.44%) Onboarding
10 45 (2.33%) Equities
11 38 (1.97%) Product Ownership
11 38 (1.97%) Security Operations Centre
12 35 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
13 34 (1.76%) Security Posture
14 33 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
14 33 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 31 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
15 31 (1.61%) Data Structures
15 31 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
16 28 (1.45%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 704 (36.50%) Windows
2 378 (19.60%) Unix
3 262 (13.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 153 (7.93%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.51%) Ubuntu
6 48 (2.49%) CentOS
7 39 (2.02%) Android
8 36 (1.87%) Solaris
9 30 (1.56%) Mac OS
10 28 (1.45%) Mac OS X
10 28 (1.45%) VMS
11 25 (1.30%) AIX
12 23 (1.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.98%) Windows 10
14 18 (0.93%) Embedded Linux
15 16 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.73%) Kali Linux
17 13 (0.67%) Debian
18 11 (0.57%) Apple iOS
18 11 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 593 (30.74%) CI/CD
2 499 (25.87%) DevOps
3 434 (22.50%) Agile
4 380 (19.70%) Problem-Solving
5 318 (16.49%) Infrastructure as Code
6 317 (16.43%) Containerisation
7 237 (12.29%) Software Engineering
8 198 (10.26%) Observability
9 176 (9.12%) Cybersecurity
10 171 (8.86%) Computer Science
11 170 (8.81%) Microservices
12 165 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
13 157 (8.14%) Test Automation
14 155 (8.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 151 (7.83%) Incident Response
16 138 (7.15%) Platform Engineering
17 129 (6.69%) High Availability
18 125 (6.48%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 121 (6.27%) SIEM
20 118 (6.12%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 716 (37.12%) Python
2 359 (18.61%) Java
3 339 (17.57%) SQL
4 330 (17.11%) Bash
5 265 (13.74%) PowerShell
6 196 (10.16%) Shell Script
7 163 (8.45%) C++
8 127 (6.58%) JavaScript
9 109 (5.65%) Perl
10 74 (3.84%) C#
11 70 (3.63%) Go
12 55 (2.85%) C
13 43 (2.23%) Ruby
14 33 (1.71%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.56%) Rust
16 29 (1.50%) PL/SQL
17 23 (1.19%) PHP
18 22 (1.14%) Ada
19 21 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
20 16 (0.83%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 699 (36.24%) Security Cleared
2 500 (25.92%) SC Cleared
3 217 (11.25%) Degree
4 172 (8.92%) DV Cleared
5 113 (5.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 85 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
7 70 (3.63%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.07%) CISSP
9 38 (1.97%) CompTIA Security+
10 37 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.76%) Azure Certification
11 34 (1.76%) Master's Degree
12 31 (1.61%) Microsoft Certification
13 29 (1.50%) RHCE
14 22 (1.14%) CCNA
15 21 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 21 (1.09%) CCNP
16 19 (0.98%) OSCP
17 17 (0.88%) GPEN
18 16 (0.83%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.78%) NIST
2 52 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 46 (2.38%) GDPR
4 40 (2.07%) QA
5 30 (1.56%) SLA
6 23 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
7 18 (0.93%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.88%) Data Quality
9 16 (0.83%) NCSC
10 13 (0.67%) GLBA
11 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 7 (0.36%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.31%) Accessibility
15 6 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
17 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
17 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 414 (21.46%) Docker
2 223 (11.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 172 (8.92%) Active Directory
4 74 (3.84%) vSphere
5 70 (3.63%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (2.90%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.54%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (1.40%) GPFS
8 27 (1.40%) NFS
8 27 (1.40%) VMware NSX
9 23 (1.19%) KVM
10 18 (0.93%) Firmware
11 14 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
11 14 (0.73%) Postfix
11 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 12 (0.62%) Lustre
12 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
13 8 (0.41%) QEMU
14 7 (0.36%) Ceph
14 7 (0.36%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 495 (25.66%) Kubernetes
2 414 (21.46%) Terraform
3 387 (20.06%) Ansible
4 211 (10.94%) Grafana
5 182 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 68 (3.53%) Puppet
7 63 (3.27%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.33%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.02%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.92%) Packer
11 35 (1.81%) Argo
12 34 (1.76%) vRealize
13 32 (1.66%) Podman
14 31 (1.61%) Kibana
15 27 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
16 26 (1.35%) Nessus
17 25 (1.30%) SCCM
18 22 (1.14%) SCOM
19 18 (0.93%) ITRS Geneos
20 17 (0.88%) Nmap
Vendors
1 306 (15.86%) VMware
2 299 (15.50%) Microsoft
3 252 (13.06%) Oracle
4 238 (12.34%) Splunk
5 230 (11.92%) Red Hat
6 111 (5.75%) Cisco
7 88 (4.56%) IBM
8 77 (3.99%) ServiceNow
9 54 (2.80%) Google
10 43 (2.23%) Dell
11 36 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 35 (1.81%) CyberArk
13 32 (1.66%) AppDynamics
14 28 (1.45%) SolarWinds
15 24 (1.24%) Citrix
15 24 (1.24%) NetApp
16 23 (1.19%) CrowdStrike
16 23 (1.19%) NVIDIA
17 22 (1.14%) Atlassian
18 19 (0.98%) Commvault