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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 33 33
Rank change year-on-year -20 0 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,006 1,821 2,254
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 5.59% 5.45%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.60% 41.50% 39.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,242 1,156 1,456
10th Percentile £350 £364 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -1.87% -6.96%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £638
90th Percentile £695 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 53 136
10th Percentile £35.18 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £57.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.76 £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 5,066 4,388 5,728
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.61% 13.47% 13.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,216 2,821 3,773
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £324
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 340 248 401
10th Percentile £15.73 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -6.12% -42.35%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.02 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.58 £21.90 £31.00
% change year-on-year +21.37% -29.35% +3.33%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -26 1,687 £520 -3.17% 713
UK excluding London -17 1,209 £500 - 588
London -48 578 £550 -4.35% 237
Work from Home -33 541 £500 - 332
South East 0 344 £518 -0.62% 184
North of England -11 321 £485 -3.00% 110
South West -3 178 £538 -6.52% 81
North West -13 163 £484 +17.05% 67
Midlands -6 142 £476 +0.21% 63
Yorkshire -22 142 £500 -4.76% 24
West Midlands -15 120 £474 -0.26% 36
Scotland -27 107 £450 -6.83% 28
East of England -20 91 £475 -3.06% 78
Wales +5 29 £465 +64.60% 11
North East -26 22 £480 +0.52% 20
East Midlands -8 19 £525 +15.51% 27
Northern Ireland -1 5 - - 46

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 83 (4.14%) Confluence
2 52 (2.59%) Apache
3 34 (1.69%) nginx
4 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.10%) Tomcat
7 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.90%) SAS
8 18 (0.90%) WebLogic
9 15 (0.75%) OpenStack
10 11 (0.55%) CICS
11 10 (0.50%) JBoss
11 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
12 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
12 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.40%) IIS
14 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
15 5 (0.25%) CMS
16 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%) Odoo
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 FAH
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
1 598 (29.81%) AWS
2 449 (22.38%) Azure
3 153 (7.63%) GitHub
4 145 (7.23%) GCP
5 107 (5.33%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.54%) Amazon S3
7 90 (4.49%) Amazon EC2
8 89 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
9 87 (4.34%) Entra ID
10 71 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
11 61 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 60 (2.99%) Amazon EKS
12 60 (2.99%) Serverless
13 54 (2.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 52 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
15 51 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
15 51 (2.54%) AWS Lambda
16 45 (2.24%) IaaS
17 40 (1.99%) PaaS
17 40 (1.99%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 201 (10.02%) Firewall
2 180 (8.97%) DNS
3 113 (5.63%) TCP/IP
4 82 (4.09%) VPN
5 81 (4.04%) DHCP
6 75 (3.74%) Network Security
6 75 (3.74%) SAN
7 46 (2.29%) WAN
8 41 (2.04%) SSL
9 38 (1.89%) VSAN
10 36 (1.79%) LAN
11 35 (1.74%) HTTP
11 35 (1.74%) SSH
12 31 (1.55%) SNMP
13 30 (1.50%) VLAN
14 25 (1.25%) NAS
15 23 (1.15%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.10%) IPsec
17 18 (0.90%) BGP
17 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (6.08%) SQL Server
2 118 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
3 94 (4.69%) Oracle Database
4 70 (3.49%) MySQL
5 68 (3.39%) MongoDB
6 67 (3.34%) Relational Database
7 58 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.09%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.94%) Amazon Aurora
10 30 (1.50%) RDBMS
11 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
12 27 (1.35%) NoSQL
13 23 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
14 22 (1.10%) Big Data
15 21 (1.05%) SAP HANA
16 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.90%) KDB
17 18 (0.90%) Sybase ASE
18 17 (0.85%) DataStage
19 16 (0.80%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 211 (10.52%) Jenkins
2 187 (9.32%) Git
3 182 (9.07%) GitLab
4 145 (7.23%) JIRA
5 32 (1.60%) Maven
5 32 (1.60%) Mockito
6 31 (1.55%) SonarQube
7 23 (1.15%) Bitbucket
8 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
8 21 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
9 19 (0.95%) Artifactory
10 18 (0.90%) 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%) TeamCity
17 8 (0.40%) Cucumber
General
1 397 (19.79%) Social Skills
2 289 (14.41%) Finance
3 209 (10.42%) Public Sector
4 181 (9.02%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (6.98%) Banking
6 72 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.94%) Military
8 30 (1.50%) Front Office
9 27 (1.35%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 25 (1.25%) Legal
12 24 (1.20%) Retail
13 21 (1.05%) Law
14 20 (1.00%) Financial Institution
14 20 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.90%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
16 15 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 285 (14.21%) Senior
2 207 (10.32%) Developer
3 201 (10.02%) Linux Engineer
4 179 (8.92%) DevOps Engineer
5 164 (8.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 120 (5.98%) Software Engineer
7 101 (5.03%) Architect
8 89 (4.44%) Analyst
9 83 (4.14%) Platform Engineer
10 81 (4.04%) Java Developer
11 79 (3.94%) Lead
12 67 (3.34%) Cloud Engineer
12 67 (3.34%) Consultant
13 65 (3.24%) AWS Engineer
14 61 (3.04%) Support Engineer
15 55 (2.74%) Administrator
16 54 (2.69%) Senior Developer
16 54 (2.69%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 53 (2.64%) DBA
17 53 (2.64%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (5.23%) Kafka
2 92 (4.59%) REST
3 72 (3.59%) Middleware
4 66 (3.29%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.84%) Spring
6 50 (2.49%) Spring Boot
7 47 (2.34%) Web Services
8 44 (2.19%) .NET
8 44 (2.19%) LDAP
9 43 (2.14%) RESTful
10 40 (1.99%) Node.js
11 33 (1.65%) ActiveMQ
12 27 (1.35%) JSON
12 27 (1.35%) SOAP
13 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
14 24 (1.20%) React
14 24 (1.20%) YAML
15 23 (1.15%) XML
16 20 (1.00%) Keycloak
17 19 (0.95%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 139 (6.93%) Data Centre
2 134 (6.68%) Cloud Native
3 114 (5.68%) Onboarding
4 99 (4.94%) Linux Command Line
5 87 (4.34%) Distributed Systems
5 87 (4.34%) PKI
6 75 (3.74%) Replication
7 62 (3.09%) Hybrid Cloud
7 62 (3.09%) Public Cloud
8 61 (3.04%) Management Information System
9 58 (2.89%) Security Posture
10 54 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
11 35 (1.74%) Product Ownership
12 30 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
13 29 (1.45%) Enterprise Storage
14 28 (1.40%) Clustering
14 28 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
15 27 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
15 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
16 24 (1.20%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 756 (37.69%) Windows
2 424 (21.14%) Unix
3 336 (16.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 202 (10.07%) Windows Server
5 103 (5.13%) Ubuntu
6 74 (3.69%) AIX
7 62 (3.09%) Solaris
8 40 (1.99%) CentOS
9 33 (1.65%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.40%) VMS
11 25 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (1.20%) SUSE
13 17 (0.85%) Android
13 17 (0.85%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.80%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
14 16 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
16 14 (0.70%) Debian
16 14 (0.70%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 570 (28.41%) CI/CD
2 487 (24.28%) DevOps
3 361 (18.00%) Agile
4 353 (17.60%) Infrastructure as Code
5 293 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
6 267 (13.31%) Containerisation
7 242 (12.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 230 (11.47%) Migration
9 204 (10.17%) Software Engineering
10 189 (9.42%) High Availability
11 188 (9.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 188 (9.37%) Observability
12 177 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
13 172 (8.57%) Platform Engineering
13 172 (8.57%) Root Cause Analysis
14 164 (8.18%) ITIL
15 153 (7.63%) SIEM
16 136 (6.78%) AI
17 135 (6.73%) Test Automation
18 133 (6.63%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 691 (34.45%) Python
2 349 (17.40%) Bash
3 339 (16.90%) SQL
4 338 (16.85%) PowerShell
5 251 (12.51%) Java
6 152 (7.58%) Shell Script
7 123 (6.13%) C++
8 84 (4.19%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.34%) C
10 65 (3.24%) PL/SQL
11 63 (3.14%) C#
12 55 (2.74%) Perl
13 50 (2.49%) Go
14 33 (1.65%) Bicep
15 24 (1.20%) Ada
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (1.05%) TypeScript
17 20 (1.00%) Rust
18 15 (0.75%) Groovy
19 14 (0.70%) PHP
Qualifications
1 781 (38.93%) Security Cleared
2 576 (28.71%) SC Cleared
3 228 (11.37%) DV Cleared
4 179 (8.92%) Degree
5 77 (3.84%) AWS Certification
6 65 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.94%) CISSP
8 57 (2.84%) Cisco Certification
9 49 (2.44%) Azure Certification
10 48 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 31 (1.55%) CompTIA Security+
12 27 (1.35%) RHCE
13 25 (1.25%) CCNA
13 25 (1.25%) CCNP
14 22 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.90%) CISM
16 17 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 14 (0.70%) GIAC
17 14 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.14%) NIST
2 78 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 55 (2.74%) QA
4 33 (1.65%) SLA
5 23 (1.15%) Data Quality
5 23 (1.15%) NCSC
6 21 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
7 20 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.00%) GDPR
8 15 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.55%) GRC
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%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 331 (16.50%) Docker
2 250 (12.46%) Active Directory
3 233 (11.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.69%) Virtual Machines
5 74 (3.69%) Hyper-V
6 73 (3.64%) vSphere
7 66 (3.29%) VMware ESXi
8 57 (2.84%) VMware NSX
9 46 (2.29%) NFS
10 40 (1.99%) Oracle RAC
11 34 (1.69%) Firmware
11 34 (1.69%) KVM
12 20 (1.00%) Postfix
13 14 (0.70%) GPFS
14 13 (0.65%) Ceph
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
1 433 (21.59%) Terraform
2 427 (21.29%) Ansible
3 409 (20.39%) Kubernetes
4 171 (8.52%) Grafana
5 144 (7.18%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.44%) Puppet
7 54 (2.69%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.59%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.29%) vCenter Server
10 37 (1.84%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.55%) Nagios
12 27 (1.35%) Packer
13 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.25%) Red Hat Satellite
15 24 (1.20%) SCCM
16 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
17 21 (1.05%) Argo
17 21 (1.05%) Podman
17 21 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
18 20 (1.00%) Netcool
Vendors
1 320 (15.95%) VMware
2 298 (14.86%) Microsoft
3 295 (14.71%) Oracle
4 228 (11.37%) Red Hat
5 152 (7.58%) Splunk
6 129 (6.43%) Cisco
7 108 (5.38%) IBM
8 99 (4.94%) ServiceNow
9 75 (3.74%) CyberArk
10 70 (3.49%) Google
11 47 (2.34%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.29%) BeyondTrust
12 46 (2.29%) Palo Alto
13 42 (2.09%) SAP
14 41 (2.04%) NetApp
15 39 (1.94%) F5
16 38 (1.89%) HP
17 33 (1.65%) Citrix
18 31 (1.55%) Sybase
19 28 (1.40%) Dynatrace