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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,106 1,841 2,152
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.59% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.40% 41.34% 39.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,306 1,109 1,315
10th Percentile £350 £348 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.05% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 73 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £52.81 £54.25 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +9.15%
75th Percentile £69.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.25 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.35%

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 5,345 4,453 5,451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.82% 13.51% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,363 2,846 3,476
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £674 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 399 281 270
10th Percentile £14.49 £15.50 £15.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £27.00 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.36% -49.70% +5.26%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.74 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -54.27% +19.88%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 1,771 £525 - 2,779
UK excluding London -20 1,207 £500 +0.05% 1,409
London -34 687 £525 -8.70% 1,446
Work from Home -26 553 £500 -4.76% 973
South East -15 343 £525 +10.53% 427
North of England -18 286 £500 +5.26% 195
South West +4 186 £575 +4.55% 241
North West -12 142 £497 +23.63% 116
Scotland -17 136 £450 -10.00% 77
Midlands -47 120 £470 -6.00% 152
Yorkshire -29 119 £516 +3.25% 40
East of England -10 118 £491 - 262
West Midlands -43 101 £470 -6.00% 101
North East -20 33 £470 -18.26% 39
Wales +8 27 £465 +3.33% 24
East Midlands -10 16 £481 +14.52% 51
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 47

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 66 (3.13%) Confluence
2 45 (2.14%) Apache
3 32 (1.52%) nginx
4 26 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.19%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
6 24 (1.14%) SharePoint
7 23 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
8 21 (1.00%) Apache Spark
9 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 17 (0.81%) SAS
11 15 (0.71%) JBoss
12 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
13 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.43%) IIS
15 6 (0.28%) CMS
15 6 (0.28%) MTS
15 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
5 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.047%) Simulink
6 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 610 (28.96%) AWS
2 517 (24.55%) Azure
3 187 (8.88%) GCP
4 161 (7.64%) GitHub
5 109 (5.18%) OpenShift
6 108 (5.13%) Entra ID
7 100 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.37%) Amazon S3
8 92 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
9 84 (3.99%) Amazon EC2
10 70 (3.32%) Serverless
11 66 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
12 63 (2.99%) AWS CloudFormation
13 62 (2.94%) AWS Lambda
14 61 (2.90%) Amazon EKS
15 56 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 53 (2.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 49 (2.33%) IaaS
18 44 (2.09%) Datadog
19 43 (2.04%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 229 (10.87%) DNS
2 218 (10.35%) Firewall
3 161 (7.64%) TCP/IP
4 129 (6.13%) DHCP
5 87 (4.13%) VPN
6 84 (3.99%) Network Security
7 79 (3.75%) SAN
8 53 (2.52%) SSL
9 51 (2.42%) WAN
10 45 (2.14%) HTTP
10 45 (2.14%) SSH
11 41 (1.95%) VLAN
12 36 (1.71%) LAN
12 36 (1.71%) VSAN
13 26 (1.23%) BGP
13 26 (1.23%) Kerberos
14 24 (1.14%) HTTPS
14 24 (1.14%) SNMP
14 24 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
14 24 (1.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.75%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.27%) SQL Server
3 100 (4.75%) Oracle Database
4 71 (3.37%) Relational Database
5 63 (2.99%) MySQL
6 56 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
7 53 (2.52%) MongoDB
8 45 (2.14%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.66%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
11 28 (1.33%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.28%) Big Data
13 21 (1.00%) Power BI
14 20 (0.95%) Data Lake
14 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 11g
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
16 18 (0.85%) Redis
Development Applications
1 276 (13.11%) Git
2 246 (11.68%) Jenkins
3 217 (10.30%) GitLab
4 160 (7.60%) JIRA
5 37 (1.76%) SonarQube
6 35 (1.66%) Maven
7 32 (1.52%) Bitbucket
8 26 (1.23%) Artifactory
9 25 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (1.04%) Selenium
11 21 (1.00%) Mockito
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.81%) Gradle
13 17 (0.81%) JUnit
14 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) Cucumber
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.47%) Rational Rhapsody
17 9 (0.43%) JMeter
General
1 448 (21.27%) Social Skills
2 320 (15.19%) Finance
3 250 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.17%) Public Sector
5 165 (7.83%) Banking
6 90 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.47%) Telecoms
8 39 (1.85%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.61%) Military
10 33 (1.57%) Front Office
11 30 (1.42%) Legal
12 29 (1.38%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (1.00%) Law
15 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.81%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.47%) Aviation
18 9 (0.43%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 324 (15.38%) Senior
2 249 (11.82%) Linux Engineer
3 214 (10.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 193 (9.16%) Developer
5 186 (8.83%) DevOps Engineer
6 102 (4.84%) Architect
6 102 (4.84%) Platform Engineer
6 102 (4.84%) Software Engineer
7 82 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
8 81 (3.85%) Support Engineer
9 76 (3.61%) Lead
10 75 (3.56%) Analyst
11 74 (3.51%) Consultant
12 70 (3.32%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 69 (3.28%) Java Developer
14 67 (3.18%) Administrator
15 66 (3.13%) AWS Engineer
16 59 (2.80%) Systems Engineer
17 57 (2.71%) Network Engineer
18 53 (2.52%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 504 (23.93%) Terraform
2 137 (6.51%) Kafka
3 123 (5.84%) REST
4 80 (3.80%) Middleware
5 75 (3.56%) Elastic Stack
6 68 (3.23%) .NET
7 55 (2.61%) Spring
8 54 (2.56%) RESTful
9 50 (2.37%) Spring Boot
10 45 (2.14%) Web Services
11 44 (2.09%) LDAP
12 38 (1.80%) JSON
13 35 (1.66%) XML
14 32 (1.52%) HTML
15 31 (1.47%) SOAP
16 30 (1.42%) YAML
17 29 (1.38%) Django
17 29 (1.38%) Node.js
18 28 (1.33%) Flask
18 28 (1.33%) React
Miscellaneous
1 149 (7.08%) Onboarding
2 138 (6.55%) Cloud Native
3 133 (6.32%) Data Centre
4 109 (5.18%) Linux Command Line
4 109 (5.18%) PKI
5 95 (4.51%) Replication
6 85 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
7 72 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
8 67 (3.18%) Management Information System
9 64 (3.04%) Public Cloud
10 47 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 47 (2.23%) Security Posture
11 41 (1.95%) Private Cloud
12 40 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
13 39 (1.85%) Clustering
13 39 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
14 38 (1.80%) Operational Technology
14 38 (1.80%) Product Ownership
15 36 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
15 36 (1.71%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 792 (37.61%) Windows
2 437 (20.75%) Unix
3 370 (17.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 247 (11.73%) Windows Server
5 113 (5.37%) Ubuntu
6 62 (2.94%) CentOS
7 57 (2.71%) AIX
8 53 (2.52%) Solaris
9 38 (1.80%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.47%) VMS
11 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
12 28 (1.33%) SUSE
13 21 (1.00%) Rocky
14 19 (0.90%) Mac OS
15 18 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.71%) Debian
16 15 (0.71%) Oracle Linux
16 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
17 13 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
18 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 641 (30.44%) CI/CD
2 555 (26.35%) DevOps
3 447 (21.23%) Infrastructure as Code
4 387 (18.38%) Agile
5 334 (15.86%) Problem-Solving
6 323 (15.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 298 (14.15%) Containerisation
8 257 (12.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 241 (11.44%) Observability
10 233 (11.06%) Platform Engineering
11 228 (10.83%) Migration
12 213 (10.11%) Software Engineering
13 209 (9.92%) Root Cause Analysis
14 202 (9.59%) High Availability
15 174 (8.26%) Configuration Management
16 171 (8.12%) ITIL
16 171 (8.12%) Test Automation
17 170 (8.07%) Performance Tuning
18 159 (7.55%) Cybersecurity
19 157 (7.45%) AI
Programming Languages
1 759 (36.04%) Python
2 430 (20.42%) Bash
3 403 (19.14%) PowerShell
4 373 (17.71%) SQL
5 245 (11.63%) Java
6 148 (7.03%) Shell Script
7 122 (5.79%) C++
8 79 (3.75%) Perl
9 77 (3.66%) JavaScript
10 76 (3.61%) C#
11 74 (3.51%) C
12 64 (3.04%) PL/SQL
13 56 (2.66%) Go
14 41 (1.95%) Bicep
15 28 (1.33%) Groovy
16 20 (0.95%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.85%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.76%) Ada
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Korn
Qualifications
1 810 (38.46%) Security Cleared
2 576 (27.35%) SC Cleared
3 257 (12.20%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.69%) Degree
5 73 (3.47%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.80%) CISSP
7 59 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
8 58 (2.75%) Azure Certification
9 57 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
10 26 (1.23%) CISM
10 26 (1.23%) RHCE
11 24 (1.14%) CCNP
12 21 (1.00%) CCNA
12 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (0.66%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.61%) NIST
2 72 (3.42%) QA
3 71 (3.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.52%) SLA
5 24 (1.14%) Data Quality
6 20 (0.95%) GDPR
7 19 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
8 18 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.76%) NCSC
10 15 (0.71%) GRC
11 11 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.43%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 367 (17.43%) Docker
2 282 (13.39%) Active Directory
3 245 (11.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.32%) Hyper-V
5 85 (4.04%) vSphere
6 73 (3.47%) Virtual Machines
6 73 (3.47%) VMware ESXi
7 59 (2.80%) VMware NSX
8 43 (2.04%) Firmware
9 39 (1.85%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (1.61%) NFS
11 26 (1.23%) KVM
12 20 (0.95%) Virtual Servers
13 17 (0.81%) Ceph
14 14 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.66%) Postfix
15 13 (0.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.52%) GPFS
17 10 (0.47%) Squid
18 6 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 473 (22.46%) Ansible
2 465 (22.08%) Kubernetes
3 191 (9.07%) Grafana
4 172 (8.17%) Prometheus
5 88 (4.18%) Puppet
6 60 (2.85%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.47%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.28%) SCCM
9 40 (1.90%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.85%) vCenter Server
11 31 (1.47%) Kibana
12 30 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
12 30 (1.42%) Nagios
13 28 (1.33%) Red Hat Satellite
13 28 (1.33%) VxRail
14 26 (1.23%) Packer
14 26 (1.23%) Podman
15 24 (1.14%) NetBackup
16 22 (1.04%) Istio
17 21 (1.00%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 351 (16.67%) VMware
2 341 (16.19%) Microsoft
3 295 (14.01%) Oracle
4 227 (10.78%) Red Hat
5 167 (7.93%) Splunk
6 124 (5.89%) Cisco
7 113 (5.37%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.46%) IBM
9 86 (4.08%) Google
10 79 (3.75%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.28%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.14%) BeyondTrust
12 45 (2.14%) NetApp
13 40 (1.90%) F5
13 40 (1.90%) Palo Alto
14 38 (1.80%) Dell
15 36 (1.71%) SAP
16 33 (1.57%) Dynatrace
17 30 (1.42%) Tenable
18 29 (1.38%) HP