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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,063 1,812 2,239
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.50% 5.76%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.48% 41.55% 41.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,282 1,123 1,459
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £429 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.44%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £706 £717 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 58 121
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.26
% change year-on-year - -3.36% +7.62%

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 5,226 4,361 5,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.74% 13.23% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,307 2,783 3,626
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £320 £308 £332
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 £455 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +1.11% -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 262 333
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.19 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.58 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.78% -18.07% -25.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £67.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.33 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +18.83% -45.88% +54.55%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -20 1,749 £525 - 2,006
UK excluding London -15 1,215 £500 - 978
London -41 638 £550 -4.35% 1,157
Work from Home -27 544 £500 -4.31% 680
South East -3 353 £523 +4.50% 299
North of England -17 304 £500 - 172
South West -5 193 £550 -4.35% 139
North West -17 156 £500 +25.00% 105
Yorkshire -23 128 £500 -4.76% 38
Midlands -30 127 £471 -0.79% 77
Scotland -24 113 £425 -15.00% 76
West Midlands -35 105 £470 -5.53% 47
East of England -10 102 £479 -2.30% 192
Wales +6 29 £465 +64.60% 12
North East -20 27 £490 -14.78% 29
East Midlands -12 19 £513 +17.82% 30
Northern Ireland -2 2 - - 36

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 (3.78%) Confluence
2 52 (2.52%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (1.31%) nginx
5 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 20 (0.97%) OpenStack
7 18 (0.87%) SAS
8 17 (0.82%) SharePoint
8 17 (0.82%) Tomcat
8 17 (0.82%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.68%) JBoss
10 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
12 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
14 5 (0.24%) CICS
14 5 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 23 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) InDesign
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle ERP
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
1 610 (29.57%) AWS
2 507 (24.58%) Azure
3 164 (7.95%) GCP
4 158 (7.66%) GitHub
5 106 (5.14%) OpenShift
6 95 (4.60%) Entra ID
7 94 (4.56%) GitHub Actions
8 90 (4.36%) Amazon S3
9 89 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
10 84 (4.07%) Amazon EC2
11 62 (3.01%) Serverless
12 60 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
13 58 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
14 57 (2.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 55 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
16 54 (2.62%) AWS CloudFormation
16 54 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.47%) IaaS
18 40 (1.94%) SaaS
19 38 (1.84%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 221 (10.71%) Firewall
2 214 (10.37%) DNS
3 136 (6.59%) TCP/IP
4 114 (5.53%) DHCP
5 84 (4.07%) VPN
6 77 (3.73%) SAN
7 73 (3.54%) Network Security
8 50 (2.42%) WAN
9 49 (2.38%) SSL
10 48 (2.33%) VSAN
11 40 (1.94%) LAN
12 38 (1.84%) SSH
13 37 (1.79%) HTTP
14 36 (1.75%) VLAN
15 30 (1.45%) SNMP
16 24 (1.16%) NAS
17 20 (0.97%) IPsec
18 19 (0.92%) BGP
18 19 (0.92%) HTTPS
18 19 (0.92%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (6.11%) SQL Server
2 112 (5.43%) PostgreSQL
3 97 (4.70%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.30%) MySQL
5 65 (3.15%) Relational Database
6 55 (2.67%) MongoDB
7 52 (2.52%) Amazon RDS
8 37 (1.79%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.70%) Elasticsearch
9 35 (1.70%) NoSQL
10 30 (1.45%) RDBMS
11 28 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
12 24 (1.16%) Big Data
13 23 (1.11%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.02%) SAP HANA
15 19 (0.92%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.87%) Data Lake
16 18 (0.87%) Power BI
17 17 (0.82%) Sybase ASE
18 16 (0.78%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 229 (11.10%) Jenkins
2 223 (10.81%) Git
3 190 (9.21%) GitLab
4 144 (6.98%) JIRA
5 37 (1.79%) Maven
6 33 (1.60%) SonarQube
7 30 (1.45%) Bitbucket
8 26 (1.26%) Mockito
8 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
9 22 (1.07%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.02%) Eclipse
11 18 (0.87%) JUnit
11 18 (0.87%) Selenium
12 15 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 11 (0.53%) DbUnit
14 11 (0.53%) Gradle
15 10 (0.48%) jMock
15 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
General
1 428 (20.75%) Social Skills
2 302 (14.64%) Finance
3 233 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
4 183 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 154 (7.46%) Banking
6 79 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.75%) Front Office
7 36 (1.75%) Telecoms
8 33 (1.60%) Investment Banking
8 33 (1.60%) Military
9 25 (1.21%) Legal
10 24 (1.16%) Aerospace
11 22 (1.07%) Retail
12 21 (1.02%) Law
13 20 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 19 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 15 (0.73%) Financial Institution
15 15 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
16 11 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 296 (14.35%) Senior
2 221 (10.71%) Linux Engineer
3 189 (9.16%) Developer
4 187 (9.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 174 (8.43%) DevOps Engineer
6 116 (5.62%) Software Engineer
7 106 (5.14%) Architect
8 91 (4.41%) Platform Engineer
9 80 (3.88%) Analyst
9 80 (3.88%) Lead
10 76 (3.68%) Consultant
11 75 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
12 74 (3.59%) Java Developer
13 71 (3.44%) Support Engineer
14 63 (3.05%) AWS Engineer
15 59 (2.86%) Administrator
16 53 (2.57%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 51 (2.47%) DBA
17 51 (2.47%) Network Engineer
17 51 (2.47%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (5.82%) Kafka
2 110 (5.33%) REST
3 71 (3.44%) Middleware
4 69 (3.34%) Elastic Stack
5 65 (3.15%) .NET
6 56 (2.71%) RESTful
7 54 (2.62%) Spring
8 49 (2.38%) Web Services
9 46 (2.23%) Spring Boot
10 38 (1.84%) LDAP
11 35 (1.70%) JSON
11 35 (1.70%) Node.js
11 35 (1.70%) XML
12 33 (1.60%) SOAP
12 33 (1.60%) YAML
13 27 (1.31%) ActiveMQ
14 25 (1.21%) HTML
15 23 (1.11%) RabbitMQ
16 22 (1.07%) Keycloak
16 22 (1.07%) React
Miscellaneous
1 140 (6.79%) Cloud Native
2 132 (6.40%) Data Centre
3 131 (6.35%) Onboarding
4 105 (5.09%) Linux Command Line
5 101 (4.90%) PKI
6 87 (4.22%) Distributed Systems
7 85 (4.12%) Replication
8 73 (3.54%) Hybrid Cloud
9 66 (3.20%) Public Cloud
10 61 (2.96%) Management Information System
11 54 (2.62%) Security Posture
12 45 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
13 40 (1.94%) Embedded Systems
14 37 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
15 36 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
16 34 (1.65%) Product Ownership
17 33 (1.60%) Clustering
18 31 (1.50%) Private Cloud
19 30 (1.45%) Operational Technology
20 27 (1.31%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 781 (37.86%) Windows
2 418 (20.26%) Unix
3 346 (16.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 228 (11.05%) Windows Server
5 112 (5.43%) Ubuntu
6 67 (3.25%) AIX
7 53 (2.57%) Solaris
8 48 (2.33%) CentOS
9 39 (1.89%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.26%) VMS
11 25 (1.21%) SUSE
12 23 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (1.07%) Windows 10
14 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
15 18 (0.87%) Mac OS
15 18 (0.87%) Rocky
16 16 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
17 15 (0.73%) Debian
18 14 (0.68%) Android
19 10 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 592 (28.70%) CI/CD
2 519 (25.16%) DevOps
3 396 (19.20%) Infrastructure as Code
4 370 (17.94%) Agile
5 308 (14.93%) Problem-Solving
6 275 (13.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 269 (13.04%) Containerisation
8 244 (11.83%) Migration
9 232 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
10 214 (10.37%) Software Engineering
11 211 (10.23%) Observability
12 207 (10.03%) High Availability
13 199 (9.65%) Platform Engineering
14 186 (9.02%) Root Cause Analysis
15 178 (8.63%) Performance Tuning
16 171 (8.29%) ITIL
17 162 (7.85%) Test Automation
18 156 (7.56%) SIEM
19 151 (7.32%) Configuration Management
20 147 (7.13%) AI
Programming Languages
1 721 (34.95%) Python
2 397 (19.24%) Bash
3 394 (19.10%) PowerShell
4 365 (17.69%) SQL
5 252 (12.22%) Java
6 151 (7.32%) Shell Script
7 136 (6.59%) C++
8 89 (4.31%) JavaScript
9 80 (3.88%) C
10 76 (3.68%) C#
11 61 (2.96%) Perl
12 59 (2.86%) PL/SQL
13 50 (2.42%) Go
14 40 (1.94%) Bicep
15 22 (1.07%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (1.02%) Ada
17 20 (0.97%) TypeScript
18 19 (0.92%) Groovy
18 19 (0.92%) Rust
19 14 (0.68%) Scala
Qualifications
1 804 (38.97%) Security Cleared
2 598 (28.99%) SC Cleared
3 233 (11.29%) DV Cleared
4 177 (8.58%) Degree
5 72 (3.49%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.76%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.71%) CISSP
9 55 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
10 53 (2.57%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.31%) RHCE
12 24 (1.16%) CCNP
13 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.02%) CCNA
15 20 (0.97%) CompTIA Security+
16 19 (0.92%) CISM
17 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 16 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.73%) NIST
2 69 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 63 (3.05%) QA
4 31 (1.50%) SLA
5 25 (1.21%) Data Quality
6 24 (1.16%) GDPR
7 23 (1.11%) NCSC
8 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
9 18 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
10 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.63%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.63%) ISO 20022
12 11 (0.53%) GRC
13 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.39%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 15022
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.29%) JSP 440
15 6 (0.29%) NIST 800
16 5 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 336 (16.29%) Docker
2 271 (13.14%) Active Directory
3 247 (11.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (4.31%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.17%) vSphere
6 80 (3.88%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (3.15%) VMware NSX
8 63 (3.05%) VMware ESXi
9 41 (1.99%) NFS
10 39 (1.89%) Firmware
10 39 (1.89%) Oracle RAC
11 30 (1.45%) KVM
12 17 (0.82%) Postfix
13 15 (0.73%) Ceph
14 13 (0.63%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.58%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.58%) GPFS
16 10 (0.48%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 477 (23.12%) Terraform
2 456 (22.10%) Ansible
3 436 (21.13%) Kubernetes
4 170 (8.24%) Grafana
5 147 (7.13%) Prometheus
6 88 (4.27%) Puppet
7 66 (3.20%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.47%) Oracle RMAN
9 41 (1.99%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.89%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.89%) SCCM
11 31 (1.50%) Nagios
12 29 (1.41%) Packer
13 27 (1.31%) ZABBIX
14 26 (1.26%) Red Hat Satellite
15 25 (1.21%) Kibana
15 25 (1.21%) VxRail
16 24 (1.16%) NetBackup
17 23 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
17 23 (1.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 346 (16.77%) VMware
2 325 (15.75%) Microsoft
3 307 (14.88%) Oracle
4 226 (10.95%) Red Hat
5 152 (7.37%) Splunk
6 125 (6.06%) Cisco
7 113 (5.48%) ServiceNow
8 100 (4.85%) IBM
9 81 (3.93%) CyberArk
10 76 (3.68%) Google
11 50 (2.42%) SolarWinds
12 49 (2.38%) SAP
13 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
13 45 (2.18%) Palo Alto
14 40 (1.94%) F5
15 38 (1.84%) HP
15 38 (1.84%) NetApp
16 34 (1.65%) Dell
16 34 (1.65%) Dynatrace
17 33 (1.60%) Citrix