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 20 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -13 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,944 1,775 2,445
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.76% 5.75% 5.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.37% 39.97% 39.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,224 1,081 1,602
10th Percentile £320 £356 £325
25th Percentile £401 £431 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £653 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.10% - -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 96 53 124
10th Percentile £13.75 £42.00 £27.75
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.39 £48.31
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.50 £74.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% +7.26% -4.62%

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 4,815 4,441 6,184
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.79% 14.40% 13.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,176 2,801 4,141
10th Percentile £176 £200 £181
25th Percentile £267 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £473 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.40% +1.61% -9.71%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £690 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 347 152 389
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.55 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.84 £20.30 £16.92
Median hourly rate £23.00 £28.71 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -19.87% +13.68% -3.77%
75th Percentile £55.43 £64.06 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.25 £69.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £25.00 £25.22
% change year-on-year -10.00% -0.85% -4.78%

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 20 February 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 20 February 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 20 February 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 -13 1,676 £518 -5.91% 761
UK excluding London -4 1,110 £483 -8.10% 707
London -23 628 £550 -8.33% 192
Work from Home -16 518 £500 -4.76% 372
South East 0 319 £483 -7.66% 198
North of England -1 299 £492 -10.55% 133
Midlands -5 182 £525 - 93
Yorkshire -5 171 £500 -13.04% 35
West Midlands -8 168 £525 -1.13% 66
South West -16 137 £550 -8.33% 100
North West -8 120 £475 -2.56% 76
Scotland -19 90 £425 -9.09% 95
East of England -11 84 £473 +5.00% 78
Northern Ireland +9 16 £413 +26.92% 7
East Midlands -32 14 £420 -12.41% 26
North East -18 13 £550 +12.82% 23
Wales -6 7 £571 +6.28% 16

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 88 (4.53%) Confluence
2 48 (2.47%) Apache
2 48 (2.47%) nginx
3 41 (2.11%) Microsoft Exchange
4 19 (0.98%) OpenStack
5 18 (0.93%) Apache Spark
5 18 (0.93%) WebLogic
6 15 (0.77%) SharePoint
7 14 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
7 14 (0.72%) WebSphere
8 13 (0.67%) TPMS
9 12 (0.62%) JBoss
10 11 (0.57%) Tomcat
11 10 (0.51%) SAS
11 10 (0.51%) Skype for Business
12 9 (0.46%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.31%) CICS
13 6 (0.31%) IIS
13 6 (0.31%) iPlanet
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 52 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
7 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.051%) Simulink
7 1 (0.051%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.051%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.051%) RMDS
5 1 (0.051%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.051%) Shopify
5 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 593 (30.50%) AWS
2 375 (19.29%) Azure
3 186 (9.57%) GitHub
4 146 (7.51%) GCP
5 137 (7.05%) OpenShift
6 115 (5.92%) Serverless
7 112 (5.76%) AWS CloudFormation
8 99 (5.09%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.68%) GitHub Actions
10 83 (4.27%) Amazon S3
11 73 (3.76%) Amazon EKS
12 69 (3.55%) AWS Lambda
13 67 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
14 62 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
15 58 (2.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 52 (2.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 47 (2.42%) IaaS
18 39 (2.01%) Entra ID
18 39 (2.01%) SaaS
19 38 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 211 (10.85%) Firewall
2 155 (7.97%) DNS
3 131 (6.74%) TCP/IP
4 67 (3.45%) Network Security
5 64 (3.29%) VPN
6 49 (2.52%) SSH
7 46 (2.37%) SSL
8 45 (2.31%) DHCP
9 42 (2.16%) HTTP
10 32 (1.65%) SAN
10 32 (1.65%) VLAN
11 29 (1.49%) Wireless
12 28 (1.44%) WAN
13 24 (1.23%) BGP
13 24 (1.23%) VSAN
14 23 (1.18%) Kerberos
15 21 (1.08%) Ethernet
16 20 (1.03%) SNMP
16 20 (1.03%) Wireshark
17 19 (0.98%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 146 (7.51%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (4.89%) SQL Server
3 89 (4.58%) Relational Database
4 85 (4.37%) Amazon RDS
5 81 (4.17%) MongoDB
6 74 (3.81%) NoSQL
7 69 (3.55%) MySQL
8 65 (3.34%) Oracle Database
9 54 (2.78%) Elasticsearch
10 31 (1.59%) DB2
11 24 (1.23%) Big Data
12 20 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
13 17 (0.87%) Hadoop
13 17 (0.87%) KDB
13 17 (0.87%) Kdb+
14 16 (0.82%) Data Lake
15 14 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 13 (0.67%) Apache Cassandra
17 12 (0.62%) GIS
17 12 (0.62%) Redis
Development Applications
1 266 (13.68%) Jenkins
2 219 (11.27%) Git
3 201 (10.34%) GitLab
4 139 (7.15%) JIRA
5 53 (2.73%) JUnit
6 48 (2.47%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.16%) Bitbucket
8 32 (1.65%) Maven
9 30 (1.54%) Eclipse
9 30 (1.54%) Mockito
10 25 (1.29%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.13%) Liquibase
12 18 (0.93%) Burp Suite
13 17 (0.87%) Artifactory
14 16 (0.82%) JMeter
14 16 (0.82%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.77%) Browser DevTools
15 15 (0.77%) Metasploit
16 14 (0.72%) Android Studio
16 14 (0.72%) Selenium
General
1 516 (26.54%) Social Skills
2 335 (17.23%) Finance
3 196 (10.08%) Public Sector
4 193 (9.93%) Analytical Skills
5 139 (7.15%) Banking
6 69 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.57%) Financial Institution
8 43 (2.21%) Military
9 37 (1.90%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
11 30 (1.54%) Front Office
12 23 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
13 21 (1.08%) Legal
14 20 (1.03%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.93%) Telecoms
16 17 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
17 15 (0.77%) Law
18 14 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 14 (0.72%) Manufacturing
19 13 (0.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 293 (15.07%) Developer
2 251 (12.91%) Senior
3 184 (9.47%) DevOps Engineer
4 142 (7.30%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.48%) Analyst
6 117 (6.02%) Java Developer
7 108 (5.56%) Architect
8 97 (4.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 88 (4.53%) Support Engineer
10 87 (4.48%) Linux Engineer
11 82 (4.22%) Platform Engineer
12 80 (4.12%) Lead
13 79 (4.06%) Administrator
14 74 (3.81%) AWS Engineer
15 70 (3.60%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 67 (3.45%) Site Engineer
17 58 (2.98%) AWS DevOps
18 56 (2.88%) Senior Software Engineer
19 54 (2.78%) Senior Developer
20 52 (2.67%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 161 (8.28%) Kafka
2 130 (6.69%) REST
3 121 (6.22%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.17%) Middleware
5 72 (3.70%) Spring
6 67 (3.45%) Node.js
7 57 (2.93%) RESTful
8 55 (2.83%) LDAP
9 52 (2.67%) React
10 51 (2.62%) JSON
11 48 (2.47%) XML
12 43 (2.21%) Spring Boot
13 40 (2.06%) AngularJS
13 40 (2.06%) SOAP
14 36 (1.85%) YAML
15 34 (1.75%) Web Services
16 27 (1.39%) ActiveMQ
16 27 (1.39%) CSS
17 25 (1.29%) .NET
17 25 (1.29%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 116 (5.97%) Cloud Native
2 105 (5.40%) Data Centre
3 93 (4.78%) Linux Command Line
4 73 (3.76%) Management Information System
5 69 (3.55%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (3.19%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.83%) PKI
8 54 (2.78%) Replication
9 49 (2.52%) Onboarding
10 47 (2.42%) Equities
11 40 (2.06%) Security Operations Centre
12 38 (1.95%) Product Ownership
13 34 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 34 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
13 34 (1.75%) Security Posture
14 33 (1.70%) Data Structures
14 33 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
15 32 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
16 30 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
17 28 (1.44%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 706 (36.32%) Windows
2 387 (19.91%) Unix
3 259 (13.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 152 (7.82%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.48%) Ubuntu
6 49 (2.52%) CentOS
7 39 (2.01%) Android
8 34 (1.75%) Solaris
9 30 (1.54%) Mac OS
9 30 (1.54%) Mac OS X
10 28 (1.44%) VMS
11 25 (1.29%) AIX
12 22 (1.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.98%) Windows 10
14 18 (0.93%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.72%) Kali Linux
15 14 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
16 13 (0.67%) Debian
17 11 (0.57%) Apple iOS
18 10 (0.51%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 593 (30.50%) CI/CD
2 495 (25.46%) DevOps
3 439 (22.58%) Agile
4 384 (19.75%) Problem-Solving
5 317 (16.31%) Infrastructure as Code
6 312 (16.05%) Containerisation
7 244 (12.55%) Software Engineering
8 194 (9.98%) Observability
9 183 (9.41%) Cybersecurity
10 172 (8.85%) Computer Science
11 170 (8.74%) Microservices
12 165 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
13 161 (8.28%) Test Automation
14 154 (7.92%) Incident Response
15 153 (7.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 136 (7.00%) Platform Engineering
17 128 (6.58%) High Availability
18 127 (6.53%) SIEM
19 124 (6.38%) Site Reliability Engineering
20 121 (6.22%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 729 (37.50%) Python
2 364 (18.72%) Java
3 344 (17.70%) SQL
4 329 (16.92%) Bash
5 266 (13.68%) PowerShell
6 204 (10.49%) Shell Script
7 168 (8.64%) C++
8 131 (6.74%) JavaScript
9 109 (5.61%) Perl
10 77 (3.96%) C#
11 68 (3.50%) Go
12 56 (2.88%) C
13 43 (2.21%) Ruby
14 34 (1.75%) TypeScript
15 31 (1.59%) Rust
16 28 (1.44%) PL/SQL
17 23 (1.18%) PHP
18 22 (1.13%) Ada
18 22 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
19 17 (0.87%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 694 (35.70%) Security Cleared
2 496 (25.51%) SC Cleared
3 216 (11.11%) Degree
4 173 (8.90%) DV Cleared
5 114 (5.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 85 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 69 (3.55%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.06%) CISSP
9 38 (1.95%) CompTIA Security+
10 37 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.75%) Master's Degree
12 33 (1.70%) Azure Certification
13 31 (1.59%) Microsoft Certification
14 27 (1.39%) RHCE
15 22 (1.13%) CCNA
16 21 (1.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 21 (1.08%) CCNP
17 19 (0.98%) OSCP
18 17 (0.87%) CEH
18 17 (0.87%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (3.70%) NIST
2 53 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 44 (2.26%) GDPR
4 40 (2.06%) QA
5 30 (1.54%) SLA
6 22 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
7 19 (0.98%) Data Quality
8 18 (0.93%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.77%) NCSC
10 13 (0.67%) GLBA
11 12 (0.62%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.46%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.31%) Accessibility
14 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
14 6 (0.31%) NIST 800
15 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 3 (0.15%) SEPA
System Software
1 409 (21.04%) Docker
2 224 (11.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 172 (8.85%) Active Directory
4 75 (3.86%) vSphere
5 70 (3.60%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (2.88%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.52%) VMware ESXi
8 28 (1.44%) GPFS
8 28 (1.44%) NFS
9 26 (1.34%) VMware NSX
10 24 (1.23%) KVM
11 18 (0.93%) Firmware
12 14 (0.72%) Oracle RAC
12 14 (0.72%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 13 (0.67%) Postfix
14 12 (0.62%) Lustre
14 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.41%) QEMU
16 7 (0.36%) Ceph
16 7 (0.36%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 489 (25.15%) Kubernetes
2 413 (21.24%) Terraform
3 387 (19.91%) Ansible
4 210 (10.80%) Grafana
5 182 (9.36%) Prometheus
6 70 (3.60%) Puppet
7 64 (3.29%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.31%) vCenter Server
9 40 (2.06%) Red Hat Satellite
10 35 (1.80%) Argo
10 35 (1.80%) vRealize
11 34 (1.75%) Packer
12 33 (1.70%) Kibana
12 33 (1.70%) Podman
13 27 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
14 26 (1.34%) Nessus
15 25 (1.29%) SCCM
16 23 (1.18%) SCOM
17 18 (0.93%) ITRS Geneos
18 17 (0.87%) Nmap
Vendors
1 306 (15.74%) VMware
2 303 (15.59%) Microsoft
3 254 (13.07%) Oracle
4 244 (12.55%) Splunk
5 227 (11.68%) Red Hat
6 111 (5.71%) Cisco
7 87 (4.48%) IBM
8 79 (4.06%) ServiceNow
9 55 (2.83%) Google
10 42 (2.16%) Dell
11 35 (1.80%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.75%) CyberArk
13 32 (1.65%) AppDynamics
14 28 (1.44%) SolarWinds
15 24 (1.23%) Citrix
15 24 (1.23%) NetApp
16 23 (1.18%) CrowdStrike
16 23 (1.18%) NVIDIA
17 21 (1.08%) Atlassian
18 20 (1.03%) Commvault