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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,044 1,812 2,246
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 5.50% 5.77%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.45% 41.63% 41.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,270 1,126 1,458
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.87%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £633
90th Percentile £707 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 58 122
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.26
Median % change year-on-year - -3.36% +12.10%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.02
% change year-on-year - -3.01% +7.23%

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 5,181 4,353 5,464
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 13.22% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,277 2,780 3,621
10th Percentile £193 £191 £200
25th Percentile £319 £311 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +1.44% -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 262 334
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.44
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.19 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.58 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.78% -19.41% -24.36%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.55 £67.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £23.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +21.74% -48.89% +63.64%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -24 1,730 £525 - 1,272
UK excluding London -16 1,209 £500 - 760
London -42 625 £550 -4.35% 600
Work from Home -29 537 £500 -4.76% 492
South East -2 350 £525 +3.96% 243
North of England -16 304 £500 - 150
South West -1 192 £550 -4.35% 113
North West -8 156 £500 +25.00% 91
Yorkshire -23 128 £500 -4.76% 32
Midlands -31 126 £471 -0.79% 68
Scotland -23 113 £425 -15.00% 53
West Midlands -37 105 £470 -6.00% 41
East of England -9 101 £479 -2.30% 126
Wales +5 29 £465 +64.60% 11
North East -20 27 £490 -14.78% 27
East Midlands -18 18 £513 +17.82% 27
Northern Ireland 0 2 - - 18

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 (3.82%) Confluence
2 52 (2.54%) Apache
3 30 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (1.32%) nginx
5 22 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.98%) Apache Spark
6 20 (0.98%) OpenStack
7 18 (0.88%) SAS
8 17 (0.83%) Tomcat
8 17 (0.83%) WebLogic
9 15 (0.73%) SharePoint
10 14 (0.68%) JBoss
11 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
12 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
15 5 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 21 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.098%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.098%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 608 (29.75%) AWS
2 502 (24.56%) Azure
3 163 (7.97%) GCP
4 157 (7.68%) GitHub
5 105 (5.14%) OpenShift
6 94 (4.60%) Entra ID
6 94 (4.60%) GitHub Actions
7 90 (4.40%) Amazon S3
8 88 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
9 84 (4.11%) Amazon EC2
10 62 (3.03%) Serverless
11 60 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
12 57 (2.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 56 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
14 55 (2.69%) AWS Lambda
15 54 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
15 54 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 51 (2.50%) IaaS
17 40 (1.96%) SaaS
18 37 (1.81%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 220 (10.76%) Firewall
2 212 (10.37%) DNS
3 135 (6.60%) TCP/IP
4 113 (5.53%) DHCP
5 81 (3.96%) VPN
6 75 (3.67%) SAN
7 73 (3.57%) Network Security
8 49 (2.40%) SSL
8 49 (2.40%) WAN
9 48 (2.35%) VSAN
10 40 (1.96%) LAN
11 38 (1.86%) SSH
12 37 (1.81%) HTTP
13 36 (1.76%) VLAN
14 30 (1.47%) SNMP
15 23 (1.13%) NAS
16 20 (0.98%) IPsec
17 19 (0.93%) HTTPS
17 19 (0.93%) Kerberos
18 17 (0.83%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (6.16%) SQL Server
2 111 (5.43%) PostgreSQL
3 96 (4.70%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.28%) MySQL
5 65 (3.18%) Relational Database
6 55 (2.69%) MongoDB
7 52 (2.54%) Amazon RDS
8 37 (1.81%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.71%) Elasticsearch
9 35 (1.71%) NoSQL
10 30 (1.47%) RDBMS
11 28 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
12 24 (1.17%) Big Data
13 23 (1.13%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.03%) SAP HANA
15 19 (0.93%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.88%) Data Lake
16 18 (0.88%) Power BI
17 17 (0.83%) Sybase ASE
18 16 (0.78%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 229 (11.20%) Jenkins
2 222 (10.86%) Git
3 190 (9.30%) GitLab
4 144 (7.05%) JIRA
5 37 (1.81%) Maven
6 33 (1.61%) SonarQube
7 30 (1.47%) Bitbucket
8 26 (1.27%) Mockito
8 26 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 22 (1.08%) Artifactory
10 19 (0.93%) Eclipse
11 18 (0.88%) JUnit
12 16 (0.78%) Selenium
13 15 (0.73%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.54%) DbUnit
15 11 (0.54%) Gradle
16 10 (0.49%) jMock
16 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 426 (20.84%) Social Skills
2 299 (14.63%) Finance
3 232 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
4 183 (8.95%) Public Sector
5 148 (7.24%) Banking
6 77 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.76%) Telecoms
8 35 (1.71%) Front Office
9 33 (1.61%) Military
10 31 (1.52%) Investment Banking
11 25 (1.22%) Legal
12 24 (1.17%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.08%) Retail
14 21 (1.03%) Law
15 20 (0.98%) Manufacturing
16 19 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 15 (0.73%) Financial Institution
17 15 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
18 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
19 9 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 294 (14.38%) Senior
2 221 (10.81%) Linux Engineer
3 185 (9.05%) Developer
3 185 (9.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 173 (8.46%) DevOps Engineer
5 116 (5.68%) Software Engineer
6 104 (5.09%) Architect
7 91 (4.45%) Platform Engineer
8 80 (3.91%) Analyst
8 80 (3.91%) Lead
9 75 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
10 73 (3.57%) Consultant
11 70 (3.42%) Java Developer
11 70 (3.42%) Support Engineer
12 63 (3.08%) AWS Engineer
13 59 (2.89%) Administrator
14 53 (2.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 51 (2.50%) DBA
16 50 (2.45%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 50 (2.45%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (5.82%) Kafka
2 110 (5.38%) REST
3 71 (3.47%) Middleware
4 69 (3.38%) Elastic Stack
5 63 (3.08%) .NET
6 56 (2.74%) RESTful
7 54 (2.64%) Spring
8 47 (2.30%) Web Services
9 46 (2.25%) Spring Boot
10 37 (1.81%) LDAP
11 35 (1.71%) JSON
11 35 (1.71%) Node.js
12 33 (1.61%) XML
12 33 (1.61%) YAML
13 31 (1.52%) SOAP
14 27 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
15 23 (1.13%) HTML
15 23 (1.13%) RabbitMQ
16 22 (1.08%) Keycloak
16 22 (1.08%) React
Miscellaneous
1 139 (6.80%) Cloud Native
2 129 (6.31%) Data Centre
2 129 (6.31%) Onboarding
3 105 (5.14%) Linux Command Line
4 100 (4.89%) PKI
5 86 (4.21%) Distributed Systems
6 84 (4.11%) Replication
7 72 (3.52%) Hybrid Cloud
8 66 (3.23%) Public Cloud
9 60 (2.94%) Management Information System
10 54 (2.64%) Security Posture
11 45 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
12 40 (1.96%) Embedded Systems
13 36 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
14 34 (1.66%) Product Ownership
15 33 (1.61%) Clustering
15 33 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
16 31 (1.52%) Private Cloud
17 30 (1.47%) Operational Technology
18 26 (1.27%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 774 (37.87%) Windows
2 415 (20.30%) Unix
3 344 (16.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 225 (11.01%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.43%) Ubuntu
6 67 (3.28%) AIX
7 53 (2.59%) Solaris
8 47 (2.30%) CentOS
9 39 (1.91%) Embedded Linux
10 25 (1.22%) SUSE
10 25 (1.22%) VMS
11 23 (1.13%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (1.03%) Windows 10
13 19 (0.93%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.88%) Rocky
15 17 (0.83%) Mac OS
16 15 (0.73%) Debian
16 15 (0.73%) Windows Server 2016
17 13 (0.64%) Android
18 10 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 591 (28.91%) CI/CD
2 517 (25.29%) DevOps
3 394 (19.28%) Infrastructure as Code
4 365 (17.86%) Agile
5 302 (14.77%) Problem-Solving
6 273 (13.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 268 (13.11%) Containerisation
8 242 (11.84%) Migration
9 230 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
10 214 (10.47%) Software Engineering
11 209 (10.23%) Observability
12 206 (10.08%) High Availability
13 198 (9.69%) Platform Engineering
14 185 (9.05%) Root Cause Analysis
15 178 (8.71%) Performance Tuning
16 171 (8.37%) ITIL
17 159 (7.78%) Test Automation
18 155 (7.58%) SIEM
19 151 (7.39%) Configuration Management
20 146 (7.14%) AI
Programming Languages
1 720 (35.23%) Python
2 396 (19.37%) Bash
3 393 (19.23%) PowerShell
4 363 (17.76%) SQL
5 245 (11.99%) Java
6 151 (7.39%) Shell Script
7 134 (6.56%) C++
8 89 (4.35%) JavaScript
9 80 (3.91%) C
10 73 (3.57%) C#
11 61 (2.98%) Perl
12 59 (2.89%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.40%) Go
14 40 (1.96%) Bicep
15 22 (1.08%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (1.03%) Ada
17 20 (0.98%) TypeScript
18 19 (0.93%) Groovy
18 19 (0.93%) Rust
19 14 (0.68%) Scala
Qualifications
1 798 (39.04%) Security Cleared
2 593 (29.01%) SC Cleared
3 231 (11.30%) DV Cleared
4 174 (8.51%) Degree
5 72 (3.52%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.79%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.74%) CISSP
9 53 (2.59%) Azure Certification
10 52 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
11 27 (1.32%) RHCE
12 24 (1.17%) CCNP
13 21 (1.03%) CCNA
13 21 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
14 20 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
15 19 (0.93%) CISM
16 18 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 16 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.77%) NIST
2 69 (3.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 63 (3.08%) QA
4 31 (1.52%) SLA
5 25 (1.22%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.13%) GDPR
6 23 (1.13%) NCSC
7 20 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
8 18 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.64%) HIPAA
10 13 (0.64%) ISO 20022
11 11 (0.54%) GRC
12 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.39%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.29%) ISO 15022
14 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.29%) JSP 440
14 6 (0.29%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 336 (16.44%) Docker
2 268 (13.11%) Active Directory
3 246 (12.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (4.35%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.21%) vSphere
6 80 (3.91%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (3.18%) VMware NSX
8 63 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
9 41 (2.01%) NFS
10 39 (1.91%) Firmware
10 39 (1.91%) Oracle RAC
11 30 (1.47%) KVM
12 17 (0.83%) Postfix
13 15 (0.73%) Ceph
14 13 (0.64%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.59%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.59%) GPFS
16 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 476 (23.29%) Terraform
2 455 (22.26%) Ansible
3 433 (21.18%) Kubernetes
4 168 (8.22%) Grafana
5 145 (7.09%) Prometheus
6 88 (4.31%) Puppet
7 66 (3.23%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.50%) Oracle RMAN
9 41 (2.01%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.91%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.91%) SCCM
11 31 (1.52%) Nagios
12 29 (1.42%) Packer
13 27 (1.32%) ZABBIX
14 26 (1.27%) Red Hat Satellite
15 25 (1.22%) Kibana
15 25 (1.22%) VxRail
16 24 (1.17%) NetBackup
17 23 (1.13%) Podman
18 22 (1.08%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 343 (16.78%) VMware
2 318 (15.56%) Microsoft
3 303 (14.82%) Oracle
4 225 (11.01%) Red Hat
5 151 (7.39%) Splunk
6 125 (6.12%) Cisco
7 113 (5.53%) ServiceNow
8 100 (4.89%) IBM
9 80 (3.91%) CyberArk
10 75 (3.67%) Google
11 50 (2.45%) SolarWinds
12 47 (2.30%) SAP
13 45 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
13 45 (2.20%) Palo Alto
14 40 (1.96%) F5
15 38 (1.86%) HP
15 38 (1.86%) NetApp
16 33 (1.61%) Citrix
16 33 (1.61%) Dynatrace
17 32 (1.57%) Dell