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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,860 1,708 2,179
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.94% 5.89% 5.10%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.40% 42.25% 38.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,157 1,081 1,434
10th Percentile £335 £375 £333
25th Percentile £406 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £549 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.84% -0.27% -5.98%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £645
90th Percentile £690 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -6.67% -2.33% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 44 109
10th Percentile £33.04 £41.85 £36.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.74 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £63.75
% change year-on-year -3.85% +1.96% -1.92%

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 4,604 4,043 5,692
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.95% 13.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,976 2,655 3,844
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £470 £465
Median % change year-on-year -3.09% +1.08% -7.92%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £656 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £449 £445
% change year-on-year -2.51% +0.84% -6.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 178 390
10th Percentile £15.97 £15.25 £12.73
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.53 £15.31
Median hourly rate £47.50 £22.94 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.08% +4.26% -42.86%
75th Percentile £67.25 £57.50 £60.56
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.00 £22.25
% change year-on-year +115.91% -1.12% -24.06%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -25 1,550 £513 -6.82% 838
UK excluding London -12 1,115 £490 -6.67% 690
London -44 527 £550 -5.98% 219
Work from Home -27 479 £500 -4.76% 312
South East -4 312 £500 -9.09% 243
North of England -12 273 £475 -9.52% 117
South West -12 155 £546 -8.96% 113
Midlands -8 154 £525 +5.00% 79
Yorkshire -19 147 £461 -16.14% 36
West Midlands -7 135 £513 -4.52% 40
North West -16 116 £485 -3.00% 59
Scotland -18 94 £475 +1.60% 32
East of England -14 91 £475 -1.55% 98
Wales +3 25 £465 -20.65% 14
East Midlands -29 17 £528 +16.06% 39
Northern Ireland +11 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -21 10 £413 -21.43% 24

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 (4.19%) Confluence
2 48 (2.58%) Apache
3 29 (1.56%) nginx
4 26 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
5 21 (1.13%) Apache Spark
6 19 (1.02%) Tomcat
7 15 (0.81%) WebLogic
8 14 (0.75%) SAS
9 13 (0.70%) OpenStack
9 13 (0.70%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.59%) CICS
11 8 (0.43%) TPMS
12 7 (0.38%) JBoss
12 7 (0.38%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.27%) SharePoint
15 4 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 4 (0.22%) CMS
Applications
1 21 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.22%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.054%) InDesign
6 1 (0.054%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.054%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.054%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.054%) Odoo
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.054%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 520 (27.96%) AWS
2 375 (20.16%) Azure
3 167 (8.98%) GitHub
4 122 (6.56%) OpenShift
5 103 (5.54%) GCP
6 94 (5.05%) GitHub Actions
7 84 (4.52%) Amazon EC2
8 81 (4.35%) Amazon S3
9 70 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
10 69 (3.71%) Amazon EKS
11 68 (3.66%) AWS CloudFormation
11 68 (3.66%) Serverless
12 57 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 57 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
13 45 (2.42%) Amazon ECS
13 45 (2.42%) IaaS
14 42 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
15 41 (2.20%) Entra ID
16 40 (2.15%) PaaS
17 38 (2.04%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 173 (9.30%) Firewall
2 129 (6.94%) DNS
3 97 (5.22%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.92%) VPN
5 59 (3.17%) Network Security
6 56 (3.01%) SAN
7 47 (2.53%) WAN
8 41 (2.20%) DHCP
9 39 (2.10%) LAN
10 35 (1.88%) SSH
10 35 (1.88%) VSAN
11 32 (1.72%) HTTP
12 30 (1.61%) SNMP
13 29 (1.56%) SSL
14 23 (1.24%) Ethernet
15 22 (1.18%) NAS
16 20 (1.08%) Wireless
17 18 (0.97%) BGP
17 18 (0.97%) Kerberos
18 16 (0.86%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (6.13%) PostgreSQL
2 109 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 72 (3.87%) MySQL
4 65 (3.49%) Relational Database
5 62 (3.33%) MongoDB
6 61 (3.28%) Oracle Database
7 53 (2.85%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.31%) Elasticsearch
9 35 (1.88%) Amazon Aurora
10 28 (1.51%) NoSQL
11 22 (1.18%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.08%) Big Data
13 19 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
13 19 (1.02%) KDB
14 18 (0.97%) SAP HANA
15 16 (0.86%) DB2
15 16 (0.86%) Kdb+
16 12 (0.65%) Data Lake
16 12 (0.65%) Sybase ASE
17 11 (0.59%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 200 (10.75%) Jenkins
2 169 (9.09%) GitLab
3 167 (8.98%) Git
4 136 (7.31%) JIRA
5 31 (1.67%) Maven
6 25 (1.34%) SonarQube
7 24 (1.29%) Eclipse
7 24 (1.29%) Mockito
8 20 (1.08%) JUnit
9 18 (0.97%) Bitbucket
9 18 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
10 15 (0.81%) Visual Studio
11 14 (0.75%) Artifactory
11 14 (0.75%) Rational Rhapsody
12 13 (0.70%) Jaeger
13 11 (0.59%) DbUnit
13 11 (0.59%) jMock
14 10 (0.54%) Cucumber
15 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 381 (20.48%) Social Skills
2 253 (13.60%) Finance
3 186 (10.00%) Public Sector
4 142 (7.63%) Analytical Skills
5 103 (5.54%) Banking
6 73 (3.92%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.47%) Military
8 25 (1.34%) Financial Institution
9 24 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.24%) Aerospace
11 22 (1.18%) Front Office
12 21 (1.13%) Retail
13 20 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (0.97%) Investment Banking
14 18 (0.97%) Law
15 17 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
16 15 (0.81%) Legal
16 15 (0.81%) Manufacturing
17 14 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 11 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 231 (12.42%) Senior
2 201 (10.81%) Developer
3 172 (9.25%) DevOps Engineer
4 148 (7.96%) Linux Engineer
5 136 (7.31%) Software Engineer
6 117 (6.29%) Architect
7 107 (5.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 102 (5.48%) Analyst
9 97 (5.22%) Lead
10 77 (4.14%) Administrator
11 76 (4.09%) Java Developer
12 70 (3.76%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 64 (3.44%) AWS Engineer
14 61 (3.28%) Platform Engineer
15 60 (3.23%) Site Engineer
16 51 (2.74%) Consultant
16 51 (2.74%) Security Engineer
17 47 (2.53%) AWS DevOps
18 46 (2.47%) Embedded Engineer
19 44 (2.37%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (5.27%) Kafka
2 83 (4.46%) REST
3 78 (4.19%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.76%) Middleware
5 56 (3.01%) LDAP
6 50 (2.69%) Node.js
7 45 (2.42%) Spring Boot
8 44 (2.37%) Spring
9 42 (2.26%) Web Services
10 36 (1.94%) RESTful
11 35 (1.88%) .NET
12 33 (1.77%) YAML
13 28 (1.51%) XML
14 27 (1.45%) JSON
15 26 (1.40%) AngularJS
16 23 (1.24%) ActiveMQ
16 23 (1.24%) React
17 22 (1.18%) CSS
18 21 (1.13%) Flash
19 20 (1.08%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 137 (7.37%) Data Centre
2 103 (5.54%) Cloud Native
3 74 (3.98%) Linux Command Line
4 70 (3.76%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.66%) Management Information System
6 66 (3.55%) Distributed Systems
7 58 (3.12%) PKI
8 55 (2.96%) Replication
9 50 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
10 45 (2.42%) Public Cloud
11 42 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.88%) Product Ownership
13 34 (1.83%) Security Posture
14 31 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
15 30 (1.61%) Enterprise Storage
16 29 (1.56%) Embedded Systems
16 29 (1.56%) Security Operations Centre
17 24 (1.29%) Operational Technology
17 24 (1.29%) SCADA
18 23 (1.24%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 711 (38.23%) Windows
2 361 (19.41%) Unix
3 277 (14.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 170 (9.14%) Windows Server
5 88 (4.73%) Ubuntu
6 49 (2.63%) AIX
7 43 (2.31%) CentOS
8 38 (2.04%) Solaris
9 35 (1.88%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.67%) VMS
11 29 (1.56%) Android
12 23 (1.24%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.13%) Debian
13 21 (1.13%) Mac OS
13 21 (1.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.75%) SUSE
15 13 (0.70%) Mac OS X
16 10 (0.54%) Oracle Linux
16 10 (0.54%) Windows 10
16 10 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 536 (28.82%) CI/CD
2 443 (23.82%) DevOps
3 355 (19.09%) Agile
4 302 (16.24%) Problem-Solving
5 282 (15.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 258 (13.87%) Containerisation
7 214 (11.51%) Software Engineering
8 179 (9.62%) Observability
9 169 (9.09%) Migration
10 162 (8.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 152 (8.17%) SIEM
12 150 (8.06%) High Availability
13 142 (7.63%) Performance Tuning
14 140 (7.53%) Continuous Improvement
15 136 (7.31%) Computer Science
15 136 (7.31%) Microservices
16 134 (7.20%) Incident Response
16 134 (7.20%) Platform Engineering
17 133 (7.15%) Root Cause Analysis
18 131 (7.04%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 631 (33.92%) Python
2 315 (16.94%) SQL
3 264 (14.19%) Java
4 261 (14.03%) Bash
4 261 (14.03%) PowerShell
5 159 (8.55%) Shell Script
6 125 (6.72%) C++
7 107 (5.75%) JavaScript
8 67 (3.60%) Perl
9 62 (3.33%) C#
10 57 (3.06%) C
11 48 (2.58%) Go
12 44 (2.37%) PL/SQL
13 30 (1.61%) Ruby
14 27 (1.45%) TypeScript
15 24 (1.29%) PHP
16 22 (1.18%) Rust
17 21 (1.13%) Ada
17 21 (1.13%) MATLAB
18 19 (1.02%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 729 (39.19%) Security Cleared
2 534 (28.71%) SC Cleared
3 208 (11.18%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.57%) Degree
5 82 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 79 (4.25%) Computer Science Degree
7 52 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
8 50 (2.69%) AWS Certification
9 45 (2.42%) CISSP
10 42 (2.26%) CompTIA Security+
11 36 (1.94%) RHCE
12 29 (1.56%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.34%) CCNA
14 22 (1.18%) CCNP
15 19 (1.02%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 18 (0.97%) OCP
17 17 (0.91%) CompTIA CySA+
17 17 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
18 15 (0.81%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (4.41%) NIST
2 71 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.85%) QA
4 46 (2.47%) SLA
5 31 (1.67%) GDPR
6 30 (1.61%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (1.29%) NCSC
8 18 (0.97%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.54%) Data Quality
10 10 (0.54%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.48%) GRC
11 9 (0.48%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.43%) Accessibility
12 8 (0.43%) GLBA
13 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.27%) DICOM
14 5 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 315 (16.94%) Docker
2 218 (11.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 183 (9.84%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.30%) Virtual Machines
5 71 (3.82%) Hyper-V
6 68 (3.66%) vSphere
7 63 (3.39%) VMware ESXi
8 44 (2.37%) NFS
9 39 (2.10%) Firmware
9 39 (2.10%) VMware NSX
10 26 (1.40%) KVM
11 24 (1.29%) GPFS
12 20 (1.08%) Postfix
13 18 (0.97%) Oracle RAC
14 14 (0.75%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.59%) Ceph
16 9 (0.48%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
18 7 (0.38%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.38%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 393 (21.13%) Kubernetes
2 378 (20.32%) Ansible
3 354 (19.03%) Terraform
4 176 (9.46%) Grafana
5 142 (7.63%) Prometheus
6 70 (3.76%) Puppet
7 44 (2.37%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.26%) vCenter Server
9 30 (1.61%) Kibana
9 30 (1.61%) Oracle RMAN
9 30 (1.61%) Podman
10 29 (1.56%) vRealize
11 26 (1.40%) Red Hat Satellite
12 24 (1.29%) Nagios
12 24 (1.29%) ZABBIX
13 23 (1.24%) Argo
14 22 (1.18%) Packer
15 20 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
15 20 (1.08%) Tivoli
16 19 (1.02%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 297 (15.97%) VMware
2 255 (13.71%) Microsoft
3 247 (13.28%) Oracle
4 213 (11.45%) Red Hat
5 188 (10.11%) Splunk
6 106 (5.70%) Cisco
7 93 (5.00%) IBM
8 73 (3.92%) ServiceNow
9 45 (2.42%) CyberArk
10 44 (2.37%) Palo Alto
11 40 (2.15%) Dell
12 35 (1.88%) HP
13 33 (1.77%) Google
14 30 (1.61%) NVIDIA
15 29 (1.56%) SolarWinds
16 27 (1.45%) BeyondTrust
16 27 (1.45%) SAP
17 25 (1.34%) F5
17 25 (1.34%) NetApp
18 23 (1.24%) Citrix