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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,066 1,802 2,231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.48% 5.76%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.55% 41.47% 41.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,288 1,113 1,451
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.40%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £719 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 59 120
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.13
25th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,224 4,345 5,413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.22% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,316 2,770 3,594
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £318 £308 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £461 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.98% -2.89% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £668 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 263 331
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.12% -10.91% -30.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.70 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.33 £23.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +18.83% -40.26% +40.00%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -21 1,746 £525 - 650
UK excluding London -16 1,209 £500 - 541
London -42 644 £550 -4.35% 187
Work from Home -24 539 £500 -4.76% 270
South East -2 354 £523 +4.50% 188
North of England -22 295 £500 - 110
South West -4 194 £550 -4.35% 98
North West -18 148 £500 +25.00% 58
Yorkshire -23 127 £500 -4.76% 27
Midlands -36 122 £470 -1.05% 54
Scotland -15 116 £438 -12.50% 28
East of England -12 103 £479 -2.30% 75
West Midlands -37 100 £470 -6.00% 29
Wales +4 30 £465 +64.60% 7
North East -16 27 £490 -14.78% 25
East Midlands -14 19 £513 +22.02% 25
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 4

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 75 (3.63%) Confluence
2 52 (2.52%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (1.31%) nginx
5 24 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.02%) OpenStack
7 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
8 18 (0.87%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) Tomcat
9 17 (0.82%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.73%) JBoss
11 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.44%) IIS
13 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) CICS
15 5 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 24 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) InDesign
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 609 (29.48%) AWS
2 513 (24.83%) Azure
3 168 (8.13%) GCP
4 158 (7.65%) GitHub
5 109 (5.28%) OpenShift
6 98 (4.74%) Entra ID
7 94 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
8 90 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
9 87 (4.21%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
11 63 (3.05%) Serverless
12 59 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
12 59 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
13 57 (2.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 56 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
16 53 (2.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.47%) IaaS
18 40 (1.94%) SaaS
19 38 (1.84%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 224 (10.84%) Firewall
2 216 (10.45%) DNS
3 134 (6.49%) TCP/IP
4 118 (5.71%) DHCP
5 84 (4.07%) VPN
6 76 (3.68%) SAN
7 74 (3.58%) Network Security
8 50 (2.42%) WAN
9 48 (2.32%) SSL
9 48 (2.32%) VSAN
10 40 (1.94%) LAN
11 39 (1.89%) SSH
12 38 (1.84%) HTTP
13 37 (1.79%) VLAN
14 30 (1.45%) SNMP
15 23 (1.11%) NAS
16 20 (0.97%) HTTPS
16 20 (0.97%) IPsec
16 20 (0.97%) Kerberos
17 19 (0.92%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.05%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.32%) PostgreSQL
3 96 (4.65%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.29%) MySQL
5 65 (3.15%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.57%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
8 36 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
8 36 (1.74%) NoSQL
9 34 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
10 30 (1.45%) RDBMS
11 28 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
12 25 (1.21%) Big Data
13 22 (1.06%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.02%) SAP HANA
15 18 (0.87%) Data Lake
15 18 (0.87%) Oracle Database 12c
15 18 (0.87%) Power BI
16 17 (0.82%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.77%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 229 (11.08%) Jenkins
2 223 (10.79%) Git
3 188 (9.10%) GitLab
4 148 (7.16%) JIRA
5 36 (1.74%) Maven
6 32 (1.55%) Bitbucket
6 32 (1.55%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
8 24 (1.16%) Mockito
9 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.02%) Eclipse
10 19 (0.92%) Selenium
11 17 (0.82%) JUnit
12 15 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.53%) Gradle
15 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 10 (0.48%) DbUnit
15 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
16 9 (0.44%) Cucumber
General
1 428 (20.72%) Social Skills
2 308 (14.91%) Finance
3 237 (11.47%) Analytical Skills
4 181 (8.76%) Public Sector
5 159 (7.70%) Banking
6 78 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.79%) Front Office
7 37 (1.79%) Telecoms
8 35 (1.69%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.65%) Military
10 26 (1.26%) Aerospace
11 25 (1.21%) Legal
12 22 (1.06%) Retail
13 21 (1.02%) Law
14 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
17 15 (0.73%) Financial Institution
18 11 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
19 9 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 298 (14.42%) Senior
2 225 (10.89%) Linux Engineer
3 192 (9.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 185 (8.95%) Developer
5 175 (8.47%) DevOps Engineer
6 114 (5.52%) Software Engineer
7 106 (5.13%) Architect
8 94 (4.55%) Platform Engineer
9 78 (3.78%) Consultant
9 78 (3.78%) Lead
10 77 (3.73%) Analyst
10 77 (3.73%) Cloud Engineer
11 75 (3.63%) Support Engineer
12 71 (3.44%) Java Developer
13 63 (3.05%) AWS Engineer
14 59 (2.86%) Administrator
15 53 (2.57%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 52 (2.52%) Network Engineer
16 52 (2.52%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 51 (2.47%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (5.76%) Kafka
2 111 (5.37%) REST
3 72 (3.48%) Middleware
4 70 (3.39%) Elastic Stack
5 66 (3.19%) .NET
6 56 (2.71%) RESTful
7 52 (2.52%) Spring
8 49 (2.37%) Web Services
9 44 (2.13%) Spring Boot
10 36 (1.74%) LDAP
10 36 (1.74%) XML
11 35 (1.69%) JSON
12 34 (1.65%) Node.js
13 33 (1.60%) YAML
14 32 (1.55%) SOAP
15 26 (1.26%) HTML
16 25 (1.21%) ActiveMQ
17 23 (1.11%) ARM Templates
17 23 (1.11%) React
18 22 (1.06%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 140 (6.78%) Cloud Native
2 134 (6.49%) Onboarding
3 130 (6.29%) Data Centre
4 104 (5.03%) Linux Command Line
4 104 (5.03%) PKI
5 85 (4.11%) Distributed Systems
5 85 (4.11%) Replication
6 73 (3.53%) Hybrid Cloud
7 66 (3.19%) Public Cloud
8 62 (3.00%) Management Information System
9 53 (2.57%) Security Posture
10 44 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
11 40 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
12 39 (1.89%) Embedded Systems
13 36 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
13 36 (1.74%) Product Ownership
14 34 (1.65%) Clustering
15 33 (1.60%) Private Cloud
16 32 (1.55%) Operational Technology
17 30 (1.45%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 785 (38.00%) Windows
2 415 (20.09%) Unix
3 352 (17.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 231 (11.18%) Windows Server
5 116 (5.61%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.10%) AIX
7 54 (2.61%) Solaris
8 52 (2.52%) CentOS
9 39 (1.89%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.26%) VMS
11 25 (1.21%) SUSE
12 24 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
13 23 (1.11%) Windows 10
14 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
15 18 (0.87%) Rocky
16 17 (0.82%) Mac OS
16 17 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
17 15 (0.73%) Debian
18 13 (0.63%) Android
19 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 596 (28.85%) CI/CD
2 520 (25.17%) DevOps
3 404 (19.55%) Infrastructure as Code
4 374 (18.10%) Agile
5 310 (15.00%) Problem-Solving
6 282 (13.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 271 (13.12%) Containerisation
8 245 (11.86%) Migration
9 232 (11.23%) Continuous Improvement
10 213 (10.31%) Observability
11 208 (10.07%) High Availability
11 208 (10.07%) Software Engineering
12 203 (9.83%) Platform Engineering
13 193 (9.34%) Root Cause Analysis
14 176 (8.52%) Performance Tuning
15 171 (8.28%) ITIL
16 163 (7.89%) Test Automation
17 155 (7.50%) SIEM
18 153 (7.41%) Configuration Management
19 146 (7.07%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 728 (35.24%) Python
2 400 (19.36%) Bash
2 400 (19.36%) PowerShell
3 366 (17.72%) SQL
4 251 (12.15%) Java
5 148 (7.16%) Shell Script
6 134 (6.49%) C++
7 88 (4.26%) JavaScript
8 78 (3.78%) C
9 76 (3.68%) C#
10 60 (2.90%) Perl
10 60 (2.90%) PL/SQL
11 50 (2.42%) Go
12 41 (1.98%) Bicep
13 22 (1.06%) Search Processing Language
14 21 (1.02%) Ada
15 19 (0.92%) Groovy
16 18 (0.87%) TypeScript
17 17 (0.82%) Rust
18 13 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 807 (39.06%) Security Cleared
2 600 (29.04%) SC Cleared
3 235 (11.37%) DV Cleared
4 178 (8.62%) Degree
5 71 (3.44%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
8 55 (2.66%) Azure Certification
8 55 (2.66%) CISSP
8 55 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
9 27 (1.31%) RHCE
10 24 (1.16%) CCNP
11 21 (1.02%) CCNA
12 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.92%) CISM
14 18 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
14 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 17 (0.82%) ISTQB
16 15 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.68%) NIST
2 68 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 65 (3.15%) QA
4 31 (1.50%) SLA
5 25 (1.21%) Data Quality
6 24 (1.16%) GDPR
7 23 (1.11%) NCSC
8 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
9 18 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
10 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.63%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.63%) ISO 20022
12 11 (0.53%) GRC
13 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 15022
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.29%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 339 (16.41%) Docker
2 274 (13.26%) Active Directory
3 254 (12.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.40%) vSphere
5 88 (4.26%) Hyper-V
6 77 (3.73%) Virtual Machines
7 66 (3.19%) VMware ESXi
8 65 (3.15%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.98%) NFS
10 40 (1.94%) Oracle RAC
11 39 (1.89%) Firmware
12 27 (1.31%) KVM
13 17 (0.82%) Postfix
14 15 (0.73%) Ceph
15 14 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
16 12 (0.58%) Embedded Firmware
16 12 (0.58%) GPFS
17 10 (0.48%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 479 (23.18%) Terraform
2 454 (21.97%) Ansible
3 438 (21.20%) Kubernetes
4 172 (8.33%) Grafana
5 149 (7.21%) Prometheus
6 90 (4.36%) Puppet
7 67 (3.24%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.47%) Oracle RMAN
9 40 (1.94%) SCCM
10 39 (1.89%) Data Guard
11 38 (1.84%) vCenter Server
12 31 (1.50%) Nagios
13 29 (1.40%) Packer
14 27 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.31%) ZABBIX
15 25 (1.21%) Kibana
15 25 (1.21%) NetBackup
15 25 (1.21%) VxRail
16 24 (1.16%) Microsoft Intune
17 23 (1.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 354 (17.13%) VMware
2 331 (16.02%) Microsoft
3 307 (14.86%) Oracle
4 231 (11.18%) Red Hat
5 150 (7.26%) Splunk
6 127 (6.15%) Cisco
7 112 (5.42%) ServiceNow
8 97 (4.70%) IBM
9 80 (3.87%) CyberArk
10 78 (3.78%) Google
11 50 (2.42%) SolarWinds
12 49 (2.37%) SAP
13 46 (2.23%) Palo Alto
14 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
15 40 (1.94%) NetApp
16 39 (1.89%) F5
17 38 (1.84%) HP
18 34 (1.65%) Dell
18 34 (1.65%) Dynatrace
19 33 (1.60%) Citrix