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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -17 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,913 1,797 2,396
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.48% 5.90% 5.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.44% 41.34% 39.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,209 1,109 1,581
10th Percentile £325 £374 £313
25th Percentile £401 £453 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £545
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +0.92% -6.24%
75th Percentile £613 £653 £644
90th Percentile £702 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -7.62% - -4.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 54 120
10th Percentile £15.00 £42.38 £26.14
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.94 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.25
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% +8.30% -7.31%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.61 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.50 £73.88 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year -5.06% +9.92% -6.92%

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 4,851 4,347 6,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.37% 14.26% 13.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,189 2,788 4,093
10th Percentile £180 £200 £180
25th Percentile £275 £317 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £459
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +3.49% -10.44%
75th Percentile £565 £589 £588
90th Percentile £663 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £438 £425
% change year-on-year -5.71% +2.94% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 356 149 396
10th Percentile £15.11 £16.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.91 £20.30 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £23.25
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +24.73% -12.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £69.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £27.50 £22.51
% change year-on-year -17.05% +22.17% -14.99%

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 6 March 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 6 March 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 6 March 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 1,654 £513 -6.82% 858
UK excluding London -10 1,097 £485 -7.62% 779
London -32 607 £550 -8.33% 224
Work from Home -17 508 £500 -6.54% 437
South East -3 322 £490 -6.67% 238
North of England -10 296 £500 -9.09% 126
Midlands -16 168 £501 -4.67% 85
Yorkshire -16 162 £487 -15.30% 39
West Midlands -9 154 £525 -1.13% 51
South West -21 142 £550 -8.33% 132
North West -3 125 £492 -10.55% 66
East of England -14 86 £452 +0.44% 113
Scotland -23 79 £413 -12.23% 69
Northern Ireland +7 16 £413 +26.92% 10
East Midlands -34 14 £425 -6.49% 33
North East -18 12 £550 +12.82% 21
Wales -6 6 £404 -24.88% 23

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 92 (4.81%) Confluence
2 47 (2.46%) nginx
3 43 (2.25%) Apache
4 39 (2.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (0.94%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.84%) WebLogic
7 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
7 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
8 12 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
8 12 (0.63%) TPMS
8 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
9 10 (0.52%) SAS
10 8 (0.42%) CICS
10 8 (0.42%) JBoss
11 6 (0.31%) Mattermost
11 6 (0.31%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.31%) Skype for Business
12 5 (0.26%) IIS
Applications
1 50 (2.61%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.052%) InDesign
7 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.052%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 9 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
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
Cloud Services
1 583 (30.48%) AWS
2 364 (19.03%) Azure
3 184 (9.62%) GitHub
4 143 (7.48%) OpenShift
5 139 (7.27%) GCP
6 106 (5.54%) AWS CloudFormation
7 101 (5.28%) Serverless
8 98 (5.12%) Amazon EC2
9 90 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
10 80 (4.18%) Amazon S3
11 73 (3.82%) Amazon EKS
12 64 (3.35%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (3.29%) Amazon ECS
14 61 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
15 56 (2.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 49 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 46 (2.40%) IaaS
18 41 (2.14%) Entra ID
19 36 (1.88%) SaaS
20 35 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 211 (11.03%) Firewall
2 139 (7.27%) DNS
3 128 (6.69%) TCP/IP
4 67 (3.50%) VPN
5 65 (3.40%) Network Security
6 43 (2.25%) SAN
6 43 (2.25%) SSH
7 38 (1.99%) DHCP
8 37 (1.93%) HTTP
8 37 (1.93%) SSL
9 31 (1.62%) WAN
10 29 (1.52%) VSAN
11 27 (1.41%) Wireless
12 26 (1.36%) Ethernet
13 25 (1.31%) VLAN
14 24 (1.25%) BGP
15 22 (1.15%) LAN
16 21 (1.10%) Kerberos
16 21 (1.10%) SNMP
17 20 (1.05%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (7.42%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (5.02%) SQL Server
3 80 (4.18%) Amazon RDS
3 80 (4.18%) Relational Database
4 74 (3.87%) MongoDB
5 70 (3.66%) MySQL
6 61 (3.19%) Oracle Database
7 60 (3.14%) NoSQL
8 48 (2.51%) Elasticsearch
9 26 (1.36%) DB2
10 21 (1.10%) Big Data
11 20 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
12 17 (0.89%) KDB
12 17 (0.89%) Kdb+
13 15 (0.78%) Hadoop
14 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
15 13 (0.68%) DynamoDB
16 12 (0.63%) SAP HANA
17 11 (0.58%) GIS
17 11 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 262 (13.70%) Jenkins
2 201 (10.51%) Git
3 199 (10.40%) GitLab
4 147 (7.68%) JIRA
5 51 (2.67%) JUnit
6 45 (2.35%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.20%) Bitbucket
8 37 (1.93%) Eclipse
9 36 (1.88%) Maven
10 28 (1.46%) Cucumber
11 24 (1.25%) Mockito
12 20 (1.05%) SonarQube
13 19 (0.99%) Artifactory
14 18 (0.94%) Burp Suite
14 18 (0.94%) JMeter
14 18 (0.94%) Visual Studio
15 16 (0.84%) Liquibase
16 15 (0.78%) Metasploit
16 15 (0.78%) Selenium
17 13 (0.68%) Xcode
General
1 505 (26.40%) Social Skills
2 321 (16.78%) Finance
3 193 (10.09%) Public Sector
4 177 (9.25%) Analytical Skills
5 138 (7.21%) Banking
6 63 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.51%) Military
8 40 (2.09%) Financial Institution
9 38 (1.99%) Presentation Skills
10 33 (1.73%) Investment Banking
11 26 (1.36%) Front Office
12 25 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 21 (1.10%) Legal
14 19 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
14 19 (0.99%) Law
15 18 (0.94%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.94%) Telecoms
16 16 (0.84%) Retail
17 12 (0.63%) Manufacturing
18 11 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 256 (13.38%) Developer
2 238 (12.44%) Senior
3 178 (9.30%) DevOps Engineer
4 144 (7.53%) Software Engineer
5 129 (6.74%) Analyst
6 112 (5.85%) Architect
7 99 (5.18%) Java Developer
8 96 (5.02%) Linux Engineer
9 87 (4.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 82 (4.29%) Lead
11 77 (4.03%) Support Engineer
12 75 (3.92%) Platform Engineer
13 74 (3.87%) Administrator
14 71 (3.71%) AWS Engineer
15 70 (3.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 65 (3.40%) Site Engineer
17 60 (3.14%) AWS DevOps
18 54 (2.82%) Security Engineer
19 51 (2.67%) Senior Software Engineer
20 47 (2.46%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (7.37%) Kafka
2 116 (6.06%) REST
3 111 (5.80%) Elastic Stack
4 79 (4.13%) Middleware
5 74 (3.87%) Node.js
6 68 (3.55%) Spring
7 54 (2.82%) LDAP
8 50 (2.61%) RESTful
9 46 (2.40%) JSON
10 44 (2.30%) React
10 44 (2.30%) XML
11 43 (2.25%) Spring Boot
11 43 (2.25%) Web Services
12 37 (1.93%) AngularJS
13 35 (1.83%) YAML
14 33 (1.73%) SOAP
15 27 (1.41%) .NET
16 24 (1.25%) CSS
17 23 (1.20%) SAML
18 22 (1.15%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 118 (6.17%) Cloud Native
2 115 (6.01%) Data Centre
3 89 (4.65%) Linux Command Line
4 73 (3.82%) Distributed Systems
5 71 (3.71%) Management Information System
6 58 (3.03%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.88%) PKI
8 52 (2.72%) Onboarding
9 49 (2.56%) Replication
10 42 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
11 41 (2.14%) Equities
11 41 (2.14%) Product Ownership
12 38 (1.99%) Security Operations Centre
12 38 (1.99%) Security Posture
13 32 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
14 31 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
15 30 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 29 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
16 29 (1.52%) Data Structures
17 27 (1.41%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 706 (36.91%) Windows
2 348 (18.19%) Unix
3 267 (13.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 152 (7.95%) Windows Server
5 91 (4.76%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.67%) CentOS
7 39 (2.04%) Android
8 34 (1.78%) Solaris
9 29 (1.52%) AIX
10 26 (1.36%) Mac OS
10 26 (1.36%) VMS
11 23 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.99%) Embedded Linux
13 18 (0.94%) Mac OS X
14 16 (0.84%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.73%) Kali Linux
16 13 (0.68%) Debian
17 11 (0.58%) Apple iOS
18 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 589 (30.79%) CI/CD
2 485 (25.35%) DevOps
3 430 (22.48%) Agile
4 357 (18.66%) Problem-Solving
5 309 (16.15%) Infrastructure as Code
6 307 (16.05%) Containerisation
7 236 (12.34%) Software Engineering
8 194 (10.14%) Observability
9 166 (8.68%) Cybersecurity
10 164 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
11 159 (8.31%) Computer Science
12 156 (8.15%) Microservices
13 151 (7.89%) Test Automation
14 145 (7.58%) Incident Response
14 145 (7.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 132 (6.90%) Migration
16 128 (6.69%) High Availability
16 128 (6.69%) Platform Engineering
17 126 (6.59%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 125 (6.53%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 698 (36.49%) Python
2 340 (17.77%) Java
3 328 (17.15%) SQL
4 326 (17.04%) Bash
5 273 (14.27%) PowerShell
6 189 (9.88%) Shell Script
7 169 (8.83%) C++
8 132 (6.90%) JavaScript
9 102 (5.33%) Perl
10 78 (4.08%) C#
11 62 (3.24%) Go
12 57 (2.98%) C
13 43 (2.25%) Ruby
14 34 (1.78%) TypeScript
15 31 (1.62%) PL/SQL
16 28 (1.46%) Rust
17 24 (1.25%) PHP
18 22 (1.15%) Ada
19 21 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
20 15 (0.78%) Korn
Qualifications
1 705 (36.85%) Security Cleared
2 504 (26.35%) SC Cleared
3 201 (10.51%) Degree
4 174 (9.10%) DV Cleared
5 101 (5.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 86 (4.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 68 (3.55%) AWS Certification
8 41 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
9 40 (2.09%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.04%) CISSP
11 32 (1.67%) Master's Degree
12 30 (1.57%) RHCE
13 28 (1.46%) Azure Certification
14 26 (1.36%) CCNA
15 25 (1.31%) Microsoft Certification
16 22 (1.15%) CCNP
17 21 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 20 (1.05%) Oracle Certification
19 19 (0.99%) OSCP
20 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.92%) NIST
2 52 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.51%) GDPR
4 46 (2.40%) QA
5 30 (1.57%) SLA
6 23 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
7 19 (0.99%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.89%) NCSC
9 13 (0.68%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.63%) GLBA
10 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 8 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
12 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
14 3 (0.16%) GRC
14 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 403 (21.07%) Docker
2 224 (11.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 170 (8.89%) Active Directory
4 82 (4.29%) vSphere
5 72 (3.76%) Virtual Machines
6 53 (2.77%) Hyper-V
7 51 (2.67%) VMware ESXi
8 31 (1.62%) NFS
9 28 (1.46%) GPFS
10 27 (1.41%) VMware NSX
11 22 (1.15%) KVM
12 20 (1.05%) Firmware
13 16 (0.84%) Oracle RAC
14 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 13 (0.68%) Postfix
16 12 (0.63%) Lustre
17 8 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
18 7 (0.37%) Ceph
18 7 (0.37%) QEMU
19 6 (0.31%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 491 (25.67%) Kubernetes
2 405 (21.17%) Terraform
3 388 (20.28%) Ansible
4 198 (10.35%) Grafana
5 167 (8.73%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.61%) Puppet
7 66 (3.45%) Progress Chef
8 46 (2.40%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.99%) Packer
9 38 (1.99%) vRealize
10 35 (1.83%) Argo
10 35 (1.83%) Red Hat Satellite
11 32 (1.67%) Podman
12 29 (1.52%) Kibana
13 27 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
14 25 (1.31%) SCCM
15 22 (1.15%) Nessus
16 20 (1.05%) SCOM
17 18 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.94%) VxRail
Vendors
1 309 (16.15%) VMware
2 303 (15.84%) Microsoft
3 244 (12.75%) Oracle
4 230 (12.02%) Red Hat
5 224 (11.71%) Splunk
6 108 (5.65%) Cisco
7 87 (4.55%) IBM
8 72 (3.76%) ServiceNow
9 56 (2.93%) Google
10 46 (2.40%) Dell
11 39 (2.04%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.78%) CyberArk
13 28 (1.46%) AppDynamics
13 28 (1.46%) NetApp
14 27 (1.41%) SolarWinds
15 26 (1.36%) Atlassian
16 25 (1.31%) Citrix
16 25 (1.31%) NVIDIA
17 24 (1.25%) HP
18 23 (1.20%) Sybase