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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -19 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,890 1,773 2,185
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.99% 6.05% 5.03%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.29% 43.21% 37.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,187 1,122 1,435
10th Percentile £325 £374 £325
25th Percentile £402 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £639
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -7.24% -2.78% +0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 53 106
10th Percentile £30.24 £40.50 £28.44
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £48.00
Median hourly rate £62.82 £65.00 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.36% +4.84% -4.62%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.71 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £62.00
% change year-on-year -3.24% +5.24% -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 4,691 4,103 5,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.90% 14.01% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,048 2,705 3,915
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £319 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -7.74%
75th Percentile £575 £589 £588
90th Percentile £658 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 182 399
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.74 £18.10 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.60 £24.09 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.85% +9.50% -44.02%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.88 £22.00
% change year-on-year +107.65% +3.98% -26.67%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -24 1,586 £513 -6.82% 812
UK excluding London -14 1,126 £487 -7.24% 651
London -45 546 £550 -5.17% 229
Work from Home -28 480 £500 -4.76% 311
South East -5 317 £500 -9.09% 211
North of England -16 282 £475 -13.64% 108
South West -13 159 £550 -8.33% 117
Midlands -12 155 £513 +2.55% 72
Yorkshire -20 152 £455 -17.27% 39
West Midlands -2 137 £493 -8.29% 33
North West -19 120 £485 -6.78% 50
Scotland -21 94 £450 -3.74% 31
East of England -9 92 £475 -3.06% 102
Wales -4 18 £465 -20.65% 23
East Midlands -35 16 £530 +16.61% 39
Northern Ireland +11 15 £425 +30.77% 4
North East -23 10 £413 -23.26% 19

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 85 (4.50%) Confluence
2 49 (2.59%) Apache
3 34 (1.80%) nginx
4 28 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
5 24 (1.27%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.90%) Tomcat
8 16 (0.85%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.74%) OpenStack
9 14 (0.74%) SAS
10 13 (0.69%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
12 10 (0.53%) TPMS
13 6 (0.32%) JBoss
13 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.32%) SharePoint
13 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 26 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.21%) Weka
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Actimize
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 537 (28.41%) AWS
2 369 (19.52%) Azure
3 172 (9.10%) GitHub
4 123 (6.51%) OpenShift
5 107 (5.66%) GCP
6 95 (5.03%) Amazon EC2
7 94 (4.97%) GitHub Actions
8 87 (4.60%) Amazon S3
9 83 (4.39%) AWS CloudFormation
10 76 (4.02%) Serverless
11 75 (3.97%) Amazon EKS
12 67 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
13 64 (3.39%) AWS Lambda
14 58 (3.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 57 (3.02%) Amazon ECS
16 46 (2.43%) IaaS
17 42 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
18 39 (2.06%) Entra ID
18 39 (2.06%) SaaS
18 39 (2.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 186 (9.84%) Firewall
2 128 (6.77%) DNS
3 101 (5.34%) TCP/IP
4 74 (3.92%) VPN
5 65 (3.44%) Network Security
6 54 (2.86%) SAN
7 46 (2.43%) WAN
8 38 (2.01%) DHCP
8 38 (2.01%) HTTP
8 38 (2.01%) SSH
9 37 (1.96%) LAN
10 35 (1.85%) VSAN
11 32 (1.69%) SNMP
12 31 (1.64%) SSL
13 24 (1.27%) Ethernet
14 21 (1.11%) Wireless
15 20 (1.06%) NAS
16 18 (0.95%) BGP
17 16 (0.85%) Kerberos
18 15 (0.79%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.72%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 74 (3.92%) MySQL
4 66 (3.49%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.44%) Amazon RDS
5 65 (3.44%) MongoDB
6 62 (3.28%) Oracle Database
7 43 (2.28%) Elasticsearch
8 33 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
9 32 (1.69%) NoSQL
10 23 (1.22%) Big Data
10 23 (1.22%) DynamoDB
11 19 (1.01%) KDB
12 18 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
12 18 (0.95%) Kdb+
13 16 (0.85%) DB2
13 16 (0.85%) SAP HANA
14 14 (0.74%) Hadoop
15 13 (0.69%) Data Lake
16 11 (0.58%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 210 (11.11%) Jenkins
2 177 (9.37%) Git
3 167 (8.84%) GitLab
4 144 (7.62%) JIRA
5 32 (1.69%) Maven
6 28 (1.48%) Sonatype Nexus
7 27 (1.43%) Bitbucket
7 27 (1.43%) JUnit
8 25 (1.32%) Eclipse
8 25 (1.32%) SonarQube
9 24 (1.27%) Mockito
10 17 (0.90%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
12 15 (0.79%) Cucumber
13 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
13 13 (0.69%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
14 11 (0.58%) jMock
15 10 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 407 (21.53%) Social Skills
2 275 (14.55%) Finance
3 189 (10.00%) Public Sector
4 149 (7.88%) Analytical Skills
5 104 (5.50%) Banking
6 73 (3.86%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.54%) Military
8 27 (1.43%) Financial Institution
9 25 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.11%) Aerospace
10 21 (1.11%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.06%) Front Office
11 20 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (1.01%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.01%) Retail
13 17 (0.90%) Law
14 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
15 13 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
16 12 (0.63%) Legal
Job Titles
1 228 (12.06%) Senior
2 219 (11.59%) Developer
3 172 (9.10%) DevOps Engineer
4 137 (7.25%) Linux Engineer
5 135 (7.14%) Software Engineer
6 117 (6.19%) Architect
7 108 (5.71%) Analyst
8 101 (5.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 96 (5.08%) Lead
10 86 (4.55%) Java Developer
11 77 (4.07%) Administrator
12 74 (3.92%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 68 (3.60%) Site Engineer
14 64 (3.39%) AWS Engineer
15 60 (3.17%) Platform Engineer
16 53 (2.80%) Security Engineer
17 52 (2.75%) Consultant
18 49 (2.59%) AWS DevOps
19 44 (2.33%) Embedded Engineer
20 43 (2.28%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (5.93%) Kafka
2 88 (4.66%) REST
3 78 (4.13%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.70%) Middleware
5 60 (3.17%) Node.js
6 51 (2.70%) Spring
7 50 (2.65%) LDAP
8 47 (2.49%) Spring Boot
9 41 (2.17%) Web Services
10 36 (1.90%) .NET
10 36 (1.90%) RESTful
11 32 (1.69%) XML
12 31 (1.64%) YAML
13 28 (1.48%) JSON
14 26 (1.38%) AngularJS
15 24 (1.27%) SOAP
16 23 (1.22%) ActiveMQ
16 23 (1.22%) React
17 22 (1.16%) CSS
18 20 (1.06%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 127 (6.72%) Data Centre
2 98 (5.19%) Cloud Native
3 74 (3.92%) Linux Command Line
4 70 (3.70%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.60%) Management Information System
6 64 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
7 55 (2.91%) PKI
8 52 (2.75%) Replication
9 49 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
10 46 (2.43%) Public Cloud
11 41 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (1.90%) Product Ownership
13 33 (1.75%) Security Posture
14 30 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
15 29 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
15 29 (1.53%) Security Operations Centre
16 27 (1.43%) Embedded Systems
17 22 (1.16%) Clustering
17 22 (1.16%) Equities
17 22 (1.16%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 716 (37.88%) Windows
2 368 (19.47%) Unix
3 269 (14.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 168 (8.89%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.50%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.70%) AIX
7 41 (2.17%) CentOS
8 37 (1.96%) Solaris
9 35 (1.85%) VMS
10 33 (1.75%) Embedded Linux
11 31 (1.64%) Android
12 23 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (1.06%) Debian
13 20 (1.06%) Mac OS
13 20 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
14 13 (0.69%) SUSE
15 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
16 9 (0.48%) Windows 10
16 9 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (28.62%) CI/CD
2 443 (23.44%) DevOps
3 377 (19.95%) Agile
4 311 (16.46%) Problem-Solving
5 287 (15.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 262 (13.86%) Containerisation
7 216 (11.43%) Software Engineering
8 183 (9.68%) Observability
9 167 (8.84%) Migration
10 157 (8.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 146 (7.72%) SIEM
12 143 (7.57%) Computer Science
13 142 (7.51%) Continuous Improvement
14 141 (7.46%) High Availability
14 141 (7.46%) Microservices
15 135 (7.14%) Performance Tuning
16 133 (7.04%) Cybersecurity
16 133 (7.04%) Incident Response
17 130 (6.88%) Platform Engineering
17 130 (6.88%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 643 (34.02%) Python
2 315 (16.67%) SQL
3 285 (15.08%) Java
4 261 (13.81%) Bash
5 257 (13.60%) PowerShell
6 163 (8.62%) Shell Script
7 128 (6.77%) C++
8 108 (5.71%) JavaScript
9 73 (3.86%) Perl
10 63 (3.33%) C#
11 56 (2.96%) C
12 45 (2.38%) Go
13 42 (2.22%) PL/SQL
14 36 (1.90%) Ruby
15 29 (1.53%) TypeScript
16 27 (1.43%) PHP
17 21 (1.11%) Ada
17 21 (1.11%) Rust
18 19 (1.01%) MATLAB
19 18 (0.95%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 743 (39.31%) Security Cleared
2 543 (28.73%) SC Cleared
3 211 (11.16%) DV Cleared
4 181 (9.58%) Degree
5 88 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
6 83 (4.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 50 (2.65%) AWS Certification
8 46 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
9 43 (2.28%) CISSP
10 42 (2.22%) CompTIA Security+
11 34 (1.80%) RHCE
12 28 (1.48%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.32%) CCNA
14 21 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
15 18 (0.95%) CCNP
15 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.95%) OCP
16 17 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
17 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (4.34%) NIST
2 71 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.80%) QA
4 40 (2.12%) SLA
5 34 (1.80%) GDPR
6 29 (1.53%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (1.27%) NCSC
8 20 (1.06%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.58%) Data Quality
9 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
10 10 (0.53%) GLBA
10 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 9 (0.48%) GRC
12 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 5 (0.26%) DICOM
14 4 (0.21%) HL7
14 4 (0.21%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 327 (17.30%) Docker
2 218 (11.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 173 (9.15%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.23%) Virtual Machines
5 70 (3.70%) Hyper-V
6 68 (3.60%) vSphere
7 60 (3.17%) VMware ESXi
8 40 (2.12%) NFS
9 39 (2.06%) Firmware
10 38 (2.01%) VMware NSX
11 26 (1.38%) GPFS
11 26 (1.38%) KVM
12 19 (1.01%) Postfix
13 18 (0.95%) Oracle RAC
14 15 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.58%) Ceph
16 10 (0.53%) Lustre
17 8 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
18 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 410 (21.69%) Kubernetes
2 375 (19.84%) Ansible
3 372 (19.68%) Terraform
4 182 (9.63%) Grafana
5 141 (7.46%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.92%) Puppet
7 50 (2.65%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.22%) vCenter Server
9 30 (1.59%) vRealize
10 29 (1.53%) Kibana
10 29 (1.53%) Oracle RMAN
11 28 (1.48%) Podman
12 26 (1.38%) Red Hat Satellite
13 25 (1.32%) Packer
14 23 (1.22%) Nagios
14 23 (1.22%) ZABBIX
15 21 (1.11%) Argo
15 21 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
16 20 (1.06%) Tivoli
17 18 (0.95%) Netcool
Vendors
1 295 (15.61%) VMware
2 269 (14.23%) Microsoft
3 257 (13.60%) Oracle
4 209 (11.06%) Red Hat
5 185 (9.79%) Splunk
6 103 (5.45%) Cisco
7 96 (5.08%) IBM
8 71 (3.76%) ServiceNow
9 46 (2.43%) Dell
10 45 (2.38%) CyberArk
11 43 (2.28%) Palo Alto
12 36 (1.90%) Google
13 35 (1.85%) HP
14 33 (1.75%) SolarWinds
15 27 (1.43%) Atlassian
16 26 (1.38%) BeyondTrust
16 26 (1.38%) NVIDIA
17 25 (1.32%) NetApp
18 24 (1.27%) SAP
19 23 (1.22%) F5