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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -19 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,930 1,684 2,209
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.93% 5.83% 5.15%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.16% 42.17% 38.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,198 1,087 1,465
10th Percentile £347 £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 £489 £510 £550
% change year-on-year -4.17% -7.27% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 38 118
10th Percentile £33.99 £47.52 £43.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.09 £53.13
Median hourly rate £60.17 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.44% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £70.86 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.42 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -5.52% - -

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 4,806 3,993 5,778
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.83% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,074 2,634 3,897
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £314 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £467 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.71% -1.68% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 347 177 406
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £34.13 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.14% -2.22% -48.99%
75th Percentile £65.00 £49.75 £61.56
90th Percentile £72.80 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.25 £18.94 £22.50
% change year-on-year +75.60% -15.84% -43.18%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -20 1,616 £513 -6.82% 676
UK excluding London -12 1,155 £489 -4.17% 550
London -44 557 £550 -6.38% 197
Work from Home -29 487 £500 -4.76% 266
South East -5 320 £500 -5.84% 181
North of England -14 296 £475 -9.52% 85
South West -7 162 £538 -10.42% 119
Yorkshire -20 152 £480 -10.70% 18
Midlands -12 150 £493 -1.50% 50
West Midlands -14 130 £481 -3.80% 28
North West -19 130 £468 +2.02% 52
Scotland -20 99 £475 - 34
East of England -16 92 £475 +0.26% 72
Wales +4 27 £465 -20.65% 17
East Midlands -23 17 £530 +16.61% 22
Northern Ireland +10 14 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -21 14 £446 -18.12% 16

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 (4.04%) Confluence
2 52 (2.69%) Apache
3 31 (1.61%) nginx
4 25 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.04%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.93%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.88%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.67%) SAS
10 12 (0.62%) OpenStack
10 12 (0.62%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.57%) CICS
12 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.36%) JBoss
14 7 (0.36%) SharePoint
15 6 (0.31%) IIS
15 6 (0.31%) TPMS
15 6 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 23 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.57%) 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 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.052%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.052%) Odoo
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
6 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 548 (28.39%) AWS
2 396 (20.52%) Azure
3 167 (8.65%) GitHub
4 123 (6.37%) GCP
5 117 (6.06%) OpenShift
6 98 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
7 83 (4.30%) Amazon EC2
7 83 (4.30%) Amazon S3
8 70 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
9 69 (3.58%) Amazon EKS
10 64 (3.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 63 (3.26%) Serverless
12 62 (3.21%) AWS CloudFormation
13 54 (2.80%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.59%) Entra ID
15 45 (2.33%) IaaS
16 44 (2.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 42 (2.18%) Microsoft 365
18 41 (2.12%) PaaS
19 39 (2.02%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 189 (9.79%) Firewall
2 145 (7.51%) DNS
3 94 (4.87%) TCP/IP
4 79 (4.09%) VPN
5 66 (3.42%) SAN
6 64 (3.32%) Network Security
7 49 (2.54%) DHCP
7 49 (2.54%) WAN
8 42 (2.18%) LAN
9 35 (1.81%) SNMP
9 35 (1.81%) SSL
9 35 (1.81%) VSAN
10 33 (1.71%) SSH
11 28 (1.45%) HTTP
12 26 (1.35%) NAS
13 23 (1.19%) Ethernet
14 19 (0.98%) BGP
14 19 (0.98%) IPsec
15 18 (0.93%) VLAN
16 17 (0.88%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (5.96%) SQL Server
2 113 (5.85%) PostgreSQL
3 74 (3.83%) MySQL
4 72 (3.73%) Oracle Database
5 63 (3.26%) MongoDB
5 63 (3.26%) Relational Database
6 51 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
7 42 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
8 37 (1.92%) Amazon Aurora
9 27 (1.40%) NoSQL
10 25 (1.30%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
11 20 (1.04%) SAP HANA
12 18 (0.93%) Big Data
13 17 (0.88%) DB2
13 17 (0.88%) KDB
14 15 (0.78%) Power BI
15 14 (0.73%) Kdb+
16 13 (0.67%) Sybase ASE
17 12 (0.62%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 204 (10.57%) Jenkins
2 173 (8.96%) GitLab
3 169 (8.76%) Git
4 138 (7.15%) JIRA
5 33 (1.71%) Maven
6 29 (1.50%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.35%) Mockito
8 24 (1.24%) Eclipse
9 21 (1.09%) JUnit
10 19 (0.98%) Sonatype Nexus
11 18 (0.93%) Bitbucket
12 16 (0.83%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.73%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.73%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.73%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.67%) Jaeger
14 13 (0.67%) jMock
15 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket Server
16 10 (0.52%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 389 (20.16%) Social Skills
2 269 (13.94%) Finance
3 203 (10.52%) Public Sector
4 153 (7.93%) Analytical Skills
5 121 (6.27%) Banking
6 77 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.33%) Military
8 24 (1.24%) Financial Institution
8 24 (1.24%) Front Office
9 23 (1.19%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.19%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.14%) Retail
11 21 (1.09%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.09%) Law
12 20 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 17 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
15 16 (0.83%) Legal
16 14 (0.73%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.62%) Police
Job Titles
1 247 (12.80%) Senior
2 191 (9.90%) Developer
3 184 (9.53%) Linux Engineer
4 180 (9.33%) DevOps Engineer
5 135 (6.99%) Software Engineer
6 125 (6.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 109 (5.65%) Analyst
8 107 (5.54%) Architect
9 100 (5.18%) Lead
10 78 (4.04%) Administrator
11 75 (3.89%) AWS Engineer
12 74 (3.83%) Java Developer
13 66 (3.42%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 62 (3.21%) Consultant
15 56 (2.90%) Platform Engineer
15 56 (2.90%) Site Engineer
16 55 (2.85%) Security Engineer
17 52 (2.69%) AWS DevOps
18 48 (2.49%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 47 (2.44%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 92 (4.77%) Kafka
2 80 (4.15%) REST
3 76 (3.94%) Elastic Stack
4 71 (3.68%) Middleware
5 51 (2.64%) LDAP
6 50 (2.59%) Spring Boot
7 49 (2.54%) Spring
8 48 (2.49%) Node.js
9 44 (2.28%) Web Services
10 42 (2.18%) RESTful
11 38 (1.97%) .NET
12 35 (1.81%) YAML
13 28 (1.45%) AngularJS
14 27 (1.40%) JSON
15 26 (1.35%) XML
16 25 (1.30%) ActiveMQ
17 24 (1.24%) SOAP
18 23 (1.19%) React
19 21 (1.09%) CSS
19 21 (1.09%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 154 (7.98%) Data Centre
2 111 (5.75%) Cloud Native
3 79 (4.09%) Linux Command Line
4 77 (3.99%) Onboarding
5 73 (3.78%) Management Information System
6 69 (3.58%) Distributed Systems
7 66 (3.42%) PKI
8 60 (3.11%) Replication
9 48 (2.49%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
10 47 (2.44%) Public Cloud
10 47 (2.44%) Security Posture
11 36 (1.87%) Product Ownership
12 32 (1.66%) Enterprise Storage
13 31 (1.61%) Embedded Systems
14 30 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
14 30 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
15 25 (1.30%) Operational Technology
16 24 (1.24%) Clustering
16 24 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 736 (38.13%) Windows
2 375 (19.43%) Unix
3 303 (15.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 185 (9.59%) Windows Server
5 100 (5.18%) Ubuntu
6 55 (2.85%) AIX
7 45 (2.33%) Solaris
8 44 (2.28%) CentOS
9 35 (1.81%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.55%) VMS
11 25 (1.30%) Android
12 24 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (1.14%) Debian
13 22 (1.14%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.98%) Mac OS
15 14 (0.73%) SUSE
16 13 (0.67%) Windows 10
17 12 (0.62%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.57%) Oracle Linux
18 11 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 547 (28.34%) CI/CD
2 470 (24.35%) DevOps
3 366 (18.96%) Agile
4 297 (15.39%) Problem-Solving
5 295 (15.28%) Infrastructure as Code
6 246 (12.75%) Containerisation
7 206 (10.67%) Software Engineering
8 189 (9.79%) Observability
9 188 (9.74%) Migration
10 185 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 161 (8.34%) High Availability
12 160 (8.29%) Performance Tuning
13 156 (8.08%) SIEM
14 150 (7.77%) Continuous Improvement
15 148 (7.67%) Root Cause Analysis
16 138 (7.15%) ITIL
17 133 (6.89%) Incident Response
18 132 (6.84%) Computer Science
19 131 (6.79%) Microservices
20 128 (6.63%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 639 (33.11%) Python
2 324 (16.79%) SQL
3 283 (14.66%) Bash
4 278 (14.40%) PowerShell
5 255 (13.21%) Java
6 156 (8.08%) Shell Script
7 129 (6.68%) C++
8 102 (5.28%) JavaScript
9 63 (3.26%) Perl
10 60 (3.11%) C
11 58 (3.01%) C#
12 49 (2.54%) Go
13 47 (2.44%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.35%) Ruby
15 25 (1.30%) TypeScript
16 23 (1.19%) Rust
17 21 (1.09%) Ada
17 21 (1.09%) MATLAB
18 19 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
19 16 (0.83%) PHP
Qualifications
1 753 (39.02%) Security Cleared
2 548 (28.39%) SC Cleared
3 221 (11.45%) DV Cleared
4 190 (9.84%) Degree
5 77 (3.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 73 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (3.06%) CISSP
8 56 (2.90%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.90%) Cisco Certification
9 44 (2.28%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.02%) Azure Certification
11 35 (1.81%) RHCE
12 25 (1.30%) CCNP
13 24 (1.24%) CCNA
14 20 (1.04%) CISM
14 20 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.98%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.93%) OCP
17 17 (0.88%) CompTIA CySA+
18 16 (0.83%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.40%) NIST
2 73 (3.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.90%) QA
4 50 (2.59%) SLA
5 28 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
5 28 (1.45%) GDPR
6 22 (1.14%) NCSC
7 17 (0.88%) PCI DSS
8 12 (0.62%) HIPAA
9 11 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (0.47%) Data Quality
10 9 (0.47%) GRC
11 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.41%) SOC 2
12 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 6 (0.31%) GLBA
13 6 (0.31%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 322 (16.68%) Docker
2 226 (11.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 195 (10.10%) Active Directory
4 81 (4.20%) Virtual Machines
5 69 (3.58%) vSphere
6 67 (3.47%) Hyper-V
7 62 (3.21%) VMware ESXi
8 51 (2.64%) NFS
9 47 (2.44%) VMware NSX
10 39 (2.02%) Firmware
11 29 (1.50%) KVM
12 24 (1.24%) Oracle RAC
13 22 (1.14%) GPFS
14 21 (1.09%) Postfix
15 13 (0.67%) Ceph
15 13 (0.67%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.41%) Squid
18 7 (0.36%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 395 (20.47%) Ansible
2 390 (20.21%) Kubernetes
3 369 (19.12%) Terraform
4 179 (9.27%) Grafana
5 147 (7.62%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.68%) Puppet
7 49 (2.54%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.12%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.97%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.55%) Podman
11 28 (1.45%) Red Hat Satellite
11 28 (1.45%) vRealize
12 27 (1.40%) Packer
13 26 (1.35%) Kibana
14 25 (1.30%) Data Guard
15 24 (1.24%) ZABBIX
16 23 (1.19%) Nagios
17 22 (1.14%) Tivoli
18 21 (1.09%) Argo
19 20 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 313 (16.22%) VMware
2 267 (13.83%) Oracle
3 259 (13.42%) Microsoft
4 232 (12.02%) Red Hat
5 189 (9.79%) Splunk
6 125 (6.48%) Cisco
7 94 (4.87%) IBM
8 85 (4.40%) ServiceNow
9 54 (2.80%) Palo Alto
10 50 (2.59%) CyberArk
10 50 (2.59%) Google
11 40 (2.07%) Dell
12 37 (1.92%) F5
12 37 (1.92%) SolarWinds
13 33 (1.71%) Citrix
13 33 (1.71%) HP
13 33 (1.71%) NVIDIA
14 32 (1.66%) SAP
15 29 (1.50%) BeyondTrust
16 26 (1.35%) NetApp