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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -5 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,068 1,842 2,200
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.63% 5.70%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.51% 41.66% 40.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,289 1,121 1,388
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.11%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £636
90th Percentile £713 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 64 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.08 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.63 £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 5,234 4,422 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.76% 13.50% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,318 2,811 3,542
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.94% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 364 269 306
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.55 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +2.74% -47.05% +37.68%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1,727 £525 - 2,266
UK excluding London -20 1,183 £500 - 1,169
London -37 667 £537 -6.61% 1,286
Work from Home -26 546 £500 -3.05% 821
South East -8 337 £518 +3.50% 337
North of England -27 282 £500 - 204
South West +1 192 £565 -1.74% 192
North West -25 141 £485 +21.25% 123
Scotland -16 133 £450 -10.00% 75
Yorkshire -28 121 £500 -4.76% 50
Midlands -47 121 £470 -6.00% 104
West Midlands -45 100 £470 -6.00% 59
East of England -17 96 £483 -3.50% 215
Wales +3 28 £465 +3.33% 11
North East -24 27 £470 -18.26% 32
East Midlands -7 18 £500 +19.05% 44
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 51

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 68 (3.29%) Confluence
2 50 (2.42%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.40%) nginx
5 23 (1.11%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.06%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.97%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
9 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
9 16 (0.77%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.73%) JBoss
11 14 (0.68%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.39%) IIS
14 6 (0.29%) CMS
14 6 (0.29%) MTS
14 6 (0.29%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
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%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 594 (28.72%) AWS
2 513 (24.81%) Azure
3 171 (8.27%) GCP
4 161 (7.79%) GitHub
5 102 (4.93%) Entra ID
6 100 (4.84%) OpenShift
7 98 (4.74%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
9 89 (4.30%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
11 65 (3.14%) Serverless
12 61 (2.95%) Amazon EKS
12 61 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
13 57 (2.76%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 55 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
16 53 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.42%) IaaS
18 42 (2.03%) SaaS
19 40 (1.93%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 227 (10.98%) DNS
2 222 (10.74%) Firewall
3 142 (6.87%) TCP/IP
4 126 (6.09%) DHCP
5 87 (4.21%) VPN
6 82 (3.97%) SAN
7 77 (3.72%) Network Security
8 50 (2.42%) SSL
8 50 (2.42%) WAN
9 45 (2.18%) SSH
10 43 (2.08%) VSAN
11 41 (1.98%) VLAN
12 40 (1.93%) HTTP
13 37 (1.79%) LAN
14 29 (1.40%) SNMP
15 26 (1.26%) Kerberos
16 25 (1.21%) NAS
17 23 (1.11%) HTTPS
18 21 (1.02%) BGP
19 19 (0.92%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 99 (4.79%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.19%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.14%) MySQL
6 51 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
6 51 (2.47%) MongoDB
7 42 (2.03%) NoSQL
8 36 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
9 33 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
9 33 (1.60%) Elasticsearch
10 30 (1.45%) RDBMS
11 26 (1.26%) Big Data
12 21 (1.02%) Data Lake
13 20 (0.97%) DynamoDB
14 19 (0.92%) Power BI
15 18 (0.87%) Redis
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Exadata
16 17 (0.82%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 242 (11.70%) Git
2 238 (11.51%) Jenkins
3 199 (9.62%) GitLab
4 151 (7.30%) JIRA
5 32 (1.55%) Maven
5 32 (1.55%) SonarQube
6 31 (1.50%) Bitbucket
7 28 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (1.06%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.02%) Selenium
10 20 (0.97%) Mockito
11 16 (0.77%) JUnit
12 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.53%) Gradle
14 10 (0.48%) Eclipse
14 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
15 9 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.44%) LoadRunner
16 8 (0.39%) Cucumber
16 8 (0.39%) JMeter
General
1 433 (20.94%) Social Skills
2 301 (14.56%) Finance
3 244 (11.80%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.32%) Public Sector
5 156 (7.54%) Banking
6 84 (4.06%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.18%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.84%) Front Office
9 37 (1.79%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.31%) Military
11 26 (1.26%) Aerospace
12 25 (1.21%) Legal
13 20 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 20 (0.97%) Retail
14 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
15 18 (0.87%) Law
16 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
17 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 10 (0.48%) Aviation
18 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 302 (14.60%) Senior
2 240 (11.61%) Linux Engineer
3 198 (9.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 180 (8.70%) DevOps Engineer
5 179 (8.66%) Developer
6 107 (5.17%) Architect
7 98 (4.74%) Software Engineer
8 96 (4.64%) Platform Engineer
9 85 (4.11%) Consultant
10 80 (3.87%) Lead
11 79 (3.82%) Support Engineer
12 75 (3.63%) Cloud Engineer
13 72 (3.48%) Analyst
14 69 (3.34%) Administrator
15 66 (3.19%) Java Developer
16 65 (3.14%) AWS Engineer
17 62 (3.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 59 (2.85%) Systems Engineer
19 53 (2.56%) Network Engineer
20 51 (2.47%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 487 (23.55%) Terraform
2 128 (6.19%) Kafka
3 115 (5.56%) REST
4 72 (3.48%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.48%) Middleware
5 67 (3.24%) .NET
6 55 (2.66%) RESTful
7 49 (2.37%) Spring
8 43 (2.08%) Spring Boot
9 37 (1.79%) LDAP
9 37 (1.79%) Web Services
10 36 (1.74%) JSON
11 34 (1.64%) XML
12 31 (1.50%) YAML
13 30 (1.45%) HTML
13 30 (1.45%) SOAP
14 25 (1.21%) ARM Templates
14 25 (1.21%) RabbitMQ
14 25 (1.21%) React
15 24 (1.16%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 143 (6.91%) Onboarding
2 138 (6.67%) Cloud Native
3 129 (6.24%) Data Centre
4 105 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
5 104 (5.03%) PKI
6 92 (4.45%) Replication
7 80 (3.87%) Distributed Systems
8 70 (3.38%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.29%) Public Cloud
10 57 (2.76%) Management Information System
11 45 (2.18%) Security Posture
12 44 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
13 40 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
14 38 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
14 38 (1.84%) Enterprise Storage
15 36 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
15 36 (1.74%) Private Cloud
16 34 (1.64%) Clustering
16 34 (1.64%) Operational Technology
17 31 (1.50%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 774 (37.43%) Windows
2 420 (20.31%) Unix
3 356 (17.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 244 (11.80%) Windows Server
5 114 (5.51%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.09%) AIX
7 52 (2.51%) Solaris
8 51 (2.47%) CentOS
9 40 (1.93%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.35%) SUSE
10 28 (1.35%) VMS
11 25 (1.21%) Windows 10
12 23 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (1.02%) Rocky
14 20 (0.97%) Windows Server 2016
15 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
16 16 (0.77%) Debian
16 16 (0.77%) Mac OS
17 12 (0.58%) Android
17 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 603 (29.16%) CI/CD
2 528 (25.53%) DevOps
3 422 (20.41%) Infrastructure as Code
4 360 (17.41%) Agile
5 314 (15.18%) Problem-Solving
6 290 (14.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 267 (12.91%) Containerisation
8 246 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
9 236 (11.41%) Migration
10 225 (10.88%) Observability
11 216 (10.44%) Platform Engineering
12 203 (9.82%) Root Cause Analysis
13 202 (9.77%) High Availability
14 195 (9.43%) Software Engineering
15 178 (8.61%) Performance Tuning
16 174 (8.41%) ITIL
17 162 (7.83%) Test Automation
18 161 (7.79%) Configuration Management
19 150 (7.25%) AI
20 148 (7.16%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 742 (35.88%) Python
2 412 (19.92%) Bash
3 404 (19.54%) PowerShell
4 373 (18.04%) SQL
5 239 (11.56%) Java
6 152 (7.35%) Shell Script
7 125 (6.04%) C++
8 79 (3.82%) C
9 73 (3.53%) JavaScript
10 71 (3.43%) Perl
11 69 (3.34%) C#
12 61 (2.95%) PL/SQL
13 51 (2.47%) Go
14 42 (2.03%) Bicep
15 25 (1.21%) Groovy
16 24 (1.16%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.87%) Ada
18 16 (0.77%) Rust
18 16 (0.77%) TypeScript
19 15 (0.73%) Korn
Qualifications
1 798 (38.59%) Security Cleared
2 587 (28.38%) SC Cleared
3 242 (11.70%) DV Cleared
4 178 (8.61%) Degree
5 70 (3.38%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
8 55 (2.66%) Azure Certification
9 54 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
9 54 (2.61%) CISSP
10 22 (1.06%) CCNP
10 22 (1.06%) RHCE
11 21 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
12 20 (0.97%) CISM
13 19 (0.92%) CCNA
14 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 17 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
16 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
17 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (3.48%) NIST
2 68 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (3.29%) QA
3 32 (1.55%) SLA
4 26 (1.26%) Data Quality
5 21 (1.02%) NCSC
6 19 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
7 17 (0.82%) GDPR
8 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.48%) GRC
9 10 (0.48%) PCI DSS
10 9 (0.44%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.39%) ISO 15022
12 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 341 (16.49%) Docker
2 274 (13.25%) Active Directory
3 251 (12.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.40%) Hyper-V
5 87 (4.21%) vSphere
6 77 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
7 69 (3.34%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.05%) VMware NSX
9 42 (2.03%) Firmware
10 41 (1.98%) Oracle RAC
11 37 (1.79%) NFS
12 27 (1.31%) KVM
13 16 (0.77%) Ceph
13 16 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.73%) Postfix
15 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
16 11 (0.53%) GPFS
16 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.48%) Squid
18 7 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 455 (22.00%) Ansible
2 439 (21.23%) Kubernetes
3 186 (8.99%) Grafana
4 165 (7.98%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.30%) Puppet
6 62 (3.00%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.42%) Oracle RMAN
8 43 (2.08%) SCCM
9 40 (1.93%) Data Guard
10 38 (1.84%) vCenter Server
11 32 (1.55%) Nagios
12 28 (1.35%) Kibana
12 28 (1.35%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.31%) Microsoft Intune
14 26 (1.26%) ZABBIX
15 25 (1.21%) NetBackup
15 25 (1.21%) Packer
15 25 (1.21%) Podman
16 22 (1.06%) Istio
16 22 (1.06%) VxRail
Vendors
1 354 (17.12%) VMware
2 327 (15.81%) Microsoft
3 311 (15.04%) Oracle
4 224 (10.83%) Red Hat
5 164 (7.93%) Splunk
6 124 (6.00%) Cisco
7 113 (5.46%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.55%) IBM
9 78 (3.77%) CyberArk
10 75 (3.63%) Google
11 50 (2.42%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
13 44 (2.13%) NetApp
13 44 (2.13%) SAP
14 41 (1.98%) Palo Alto
15 37 (1.79%) F5
16 36 (1.74%) Dell
17 34 (1.64%) HP
18 33 (1.60%) Dynatrace
19 32 (1.55%) Citrix