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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 34 33
Rank change year-on-year -19 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,009 1,816 2,251
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 5.56% 5.48%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.59% 41.48% 39.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,250 1,150 1,455
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £612 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 53 134
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £58.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.88 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,075 4,378 5,709
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.62% 13.40% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,226 2,816 3,762
10th Percentile £193 £200 £190
25th Percentile £320 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.08% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 247 395
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.88% -43.11%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.23 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £21.59 £27.50
% change year-on-year +23.48% -21.49% -7.25%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 1,699 £520 -1.52% 810
UK excluding London -16 1,212 £500 - 655
London -52 581 £550 -4.35% 282
Work from Home -30 547 £500 - 346
South East +1 344 £518 -0.29% 193
North of England -11 325 £489 -2.30% 116
South West -2 176 £539 -6.30% 100
North West -12 167 £485 +20.52% 68
Midlands -11 147 £473 -0.53% 73
Yorkshire -18 142 £500 -4.76% 25
West Midlands -18 124 £470 -1.05% 42
Scotland -25 102 £450 -7.22% 38
East of England -18 94 £475 -3.06% 82
Wales +5 29 £465 +64.60% 12
North East -22 22 £480 +0.52% 24
East Midlands -7 20 £513 +12.76% 31
Northern Ireland +2 3 - - 50

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 82 (4.08%) Confluence
2 51 (2.54%) Apache
3 32 (1.59%) nginx
4 29 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.05%) WebLogic
7 20 (1.00%) Tomcat
8 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
9 18 (0.90%) SAS
10 17 (0.85%) OpenStack
11 11 (0.55%) CICS
12 10 (0.50%) JBoss
12 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
13 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
13 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.40%) IIS
15 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.25%) CMS
17 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.100%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.100%) Houdini
5 2 (0.100%) NUKE
6 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.050%) InDesign
6 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.100%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 601 (29.92%) AWS
2 455 (22.65%) Azure
3 156 (7.77%) GitHub
4 149 (7.42%) GCP
5 107 (5.33%) OpenShift
6 92 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
7 91 (4.53%) Amazon S3
8 90 (4.48%) Amazon EC2
9 88 (4.38%) Entra ID
10 72 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
11 63 (3.14%) Amazon EKS
12 61 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 61 (3.04%) Serverless
13 55 (2.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 54 (2.69%) Microsoft 365
15 53 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
16 52 (2.59%) AWS Lambda
17 45 (2.24%) IaaS
18 42 (2.09%) SaaS
19 40 (1.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 204 (10.15%) Firewall
2 181 (9.01%) DNS
3 113 (5.62%) TCP/IP
4 84 (4.18%) DHCP
4 84 (4.18%) VPN
5 77 (3.83%) Network Security
6 73 (3.63%) SAN
7 47 (2.34%) WAN
8 42 (2.09%) SSL
9 39 (1.94%) VSAN
10 36 (1.79%) LAN
10 36 (1.79%) SSH
11 32 (1.59%) HTTP
12 31 (1.54%) SNMP
12 31 (1.54%) VLAN
13 25 (1.24%) NAS
14 23 (1.14%) Ethernet
15 22 (1.10%) IPsec
16 19 (0.95%) BGP
17 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.22%) SQL Server
2 119 (5.92%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.73%) Oracle Database
4 70 (3.48%) MySQL
5 69 (3.43%) Relational Database
6 68 (3.38%) MongoDB
7 57 (2.84%) Amazon RDS
8 40 (1.99%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.94%) Amazon Aurora
10 30 (1.49%) NoSQL
10 30 (1.49%) RDBMS
11 29 (1.44%) DynamoDB
12 24 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
13 22 (1.10%) Big Data
14 21 (1.05%) SAP HANA
15 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.90%) Sybase ASE
17 17 (0.85%) Data Lake
17 17 (0.85%) DataStage
17 17 (0.85%) KDB
Development Applications
1 216 (10.75%) Jenkins
2 195 (9.71%) Git
3 187 (9.31%) GitLab
4 144 (7.17%) JIRA
5 38 (1.89%) Maven
6 33 (1.64%) Mockito
7 32 (1.59%) SonarQube
8 25 (1.24%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
10 20 (1.00%) Artifactory
10 20 (1.00%) JUnit
11 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
13 13 (0.65%) jMock
14 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
16 9 (0.45%) Selenium
16 9 (0.45%) TeamCity
General
1 403 (20.06%) Social Skills
2 288 (14.34%) Finance
3 203 (10.10%) Public Sector
4 187 (9.31%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (6.97%) Banking
6 73 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.94%) Military
8 31 (1.54%) Front Office
9 27 (1.34%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.19%) Legal
11 24 (1.19%) Retail
12 20 (1.00%) Financial Institution
12 20 (1.00%) Law
13 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 15 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 288 (14.34%) Senior
2 203 (10.10%) Developer
3 201 (10.00%) Linux Engineer
4 179 (8.91%) DevOps Engineer
5 166 (8.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 117 (5.82%) Software Engineer
7 103 (5.13%) Architect
8 88 (4.38%) Analyst
9 81 (4.03%) Java Developer
10 80 (3.98%) Platform Engineer
11 79 (3.93%) Lead
12 67 (3.33%) Cloud Engineer
13 66 (3.29%) AWS Engineer
13 66 (3.29%) Consultant
14 60 (2.99%) Support Engineer
15 57 (2.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 56 (2.79%) Administrator
16 56 (2.79%) Senior Developer
17 53 (2.64%) DBA
18 52 (2.59%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (5.33%) Kafka
2 96 (4.78%) REST
3 71 (3.53%) Middleware
4 68 (3.38%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.84%) Spring
6 50 (2.49%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.39%) Web Services
8 47 (2.34%) RESTful
9 45 (2.24%) .NET
10 44 (2.19%) LDAP
11 41 (2.04%) Node.js
12 34 (1.69%) ActiveMQ
13 29 (1.44%) JSON
14 27 (1.34%) SOAP
15 26 (1.29%) AngularJS
15 26 (1.29%) React
15 26 (1.29%) YAML
16 23 (1.14%) XML
17 20 (1.00%) Keycloak
17 20 (1.00%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 137 (6.82%) Data Centre
2 134 (6.67%) Cloud Native
3 117 (5.82%) Onboarding
4 104 (5.18%) Linux Command Line
5 90 (4.48%) Distributed Systems
6 89 (4.43%) PKI
7 76 (3.78%) Replication
8 63 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
8 63 (3.14%) Public Cloud
9 59 (2.94%) Management Information System
10 58 (2.89%) Security Posture
11 53 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (1.79%) Product Ownership
13 31 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
14 29 (1.44%) Enterprise Storage
15 28 (1.39%) Clustering
15 28 (1.39%) Embedded Systems
16 27 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
16 27 (1.34%) Operational Technology
17 24 (1.19%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 757 (37.68%) Windows
2 429 (21.35%) Unix
3 331 (16.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 203 (10.10%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.33%) Ubuntu
6 74 (3.68%) AIX
7 61 (3.04%) Solaris
8 41 (2.04%) CentOS
9 31 (1.54%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.39%) VMS
11 24 (1.19%) SUSE
12 23 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.85%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.80%) Android
14 16 (0.80%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
15 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
15 15 (0.75%) Rocky
16 14 (0.70%) Debian
16 14 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 574 (28.57%) CI/CD
2 488 (24.29%) DevOps
3 361 (17.97%) Agile
4 355 (17.67%) Infrastructure as Code
5 294 (14.63%) Problem-Solving
6 273 (13.59%) Containerisation
7 244 (12.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 233 (11.60%) Migration
9 202 (10.05%) Software Engineering
10 198 (9.86%) Continuous Improvement
11 192 (9.56%) High Availability
12 189 (9.41%) Observability
13 178 (8.86%) Performance Tuning
14 174 (8.66%) Root Cause Analysis
15 169 (8.41%) Platform Engineering
16 165 (8.21%) ITIL
17 154 (7.67%) SIEM
18 138 (6.87%) AI
19 137 (6.82%) Test Automation
20 132 (6.57%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 691 (34.40%) Python
2 351 (17.47%) Bash
3 347 (17.27%) SQL
4 342 (17.02%) PowerShell
5 253 (12.59%) Java
6 157 (7.81%) Shell Script
7 116 (5.77%) C++
8 86 (4.28%) JavaScript
9 64 (3.19%) C
9 64 (3.19%) C#
10 63 (3.14%) PL/SQL
11 54 (2.69%) Perl
12 52 (2.59%) Go
13 33 (1.64%) Bicep
14 23 (1.14%) Ada
15 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (1.05%) TypeScript
16 20 (1.00%) Rust
17 16 (0.80%) Groovy
18 14 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 782 (38.92%) Security Cleared
2 579 (28.82%) SC Cleared
3 228 (11.35%) DV Cleared
4 176 (8.76%) Degree
5 75 (3.73%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 61 (3.04%) Cisco Certification
7 61 (3.04%) CISSP
8 49 (2.44%) Azure Certification
9 46 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
10 30 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
11 28 (1.39%) CCNP
12 27 (1.34%) RHCE
13 25 (1.24%) CCNA
14 22 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.95%) CISM
16 17 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 14 (0.70%) GIAC
18 13 (0.65%) RHCSA
18 13 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (4.18%) NIST
2 80 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.79%) QA
4 33 (1.64%) SLA
5 25 (1.24%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.14%) NCSC
7 22 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
7 22 (1.10%) GDPR
8 20 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
9 15 (0.75%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.60%) GRC
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
17 4 (0.20%) Accessibility
System Software
1 333 (16.58%) Docker
2 250 (12.44%) Active Directory
3 233 (11.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.68%) Virtual Machines
5 76 (3.78%) Hyper-V
6 74 (3.68%) vSphere
7 64 (3.19%) VMware ESXi
8 55 (2.74%) VMware NSX
9 46 (2.29%) NFS
10 39 (1.94%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.74%) KVM
12 34 (1.69%) Firmware
13 20 (1.00%) Postfix
14 14 (0.70%) Ceph
14 14 (0.70%) GPFS
15 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.35%) Squid
17 7 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 440 (21.90%) Terraform
2 434 (21.60%) Ansible
3 418 (20.81%) Kubernetes
4 170 (8.46%) Grafana
5 148 (7.37%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.53%) Puppet
7 56 (2.79%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.54%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.29%) vCenter Server
10 37 (1.84%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.54%) Nagios
12 27 (1.34%) Packer
13 26 (1.29%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.24%) Red Hat Satellite
15 24 (1.19%) Podman
15 24 (1.19%) SCCM
16 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
17 21 (1.05%) Argo
17 21 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
18 20 (1.00%) Kibana
Vendors
1 320 (15.93%) VMware
2 301 (14.98%) Microsoft
3 300 (14.93%) Oracle
4 226 (11.25%) Red Hat
5 153 (7.62%) Splunk
6 128 (6.37%) Cisco
7 106 (5.28%) IBM
8 100 (4.98%) ServiceNow
9 75 (3.73%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.53%) Google
11 47 (2.34%) Palo Alto
11 47 (2.34%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.29%) BeyondTrust
13 42 (2.09%) SAP
14 40 (1.99%) F5
15 39 (1.94%) NetApp
16 38 (1.89%) HP
17 33 (1.64%) Citrix
18 31 (1.54%) Sybase
19 29 (1.44%) Dynatrace