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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -19 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,109 1,862 2,156
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.64% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.52% 41.73% 39.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,314 1,128 1,335
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.14% -2.33% -4.02%
75th Percentile £613 £633 £638
90th Percentile £714 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 65 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.34 £55.00 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £69.88 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.38 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,337 4,462 5,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.52% 14.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,371 2,848 3,506
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £304 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £687
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.78% -0.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 275 280
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.53 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £19.91
Median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year +4.69% -48.44% +8.41%
75th Percentile £65.17 £58.13 £68.19
90th Percentile £74.36 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -49.70% +14.29%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 - 1,709
UK excluding London -22 1,203 £500 - 916
London -35 688 £535 -6.96% 892
Work from Home -27 558 £500 -3.85% 2,106
South East -10 335 £525 +8.81% 300
North of England -22 289 £500 +4.17% 134
South West +2 196 £575 - 145
North West -17 144 £497 +23.63% 73
Scotland -18 132 £450 -10.00% 51
Yorkshire -26 122 £515 +1.43% 30
Midlands -52 121 £470 -6.00% 83
East of England -13 110 £500 +1.78% 186
West Midlands -47 101 £470 -6.00% 52
North East -21 30 £475 -17.39% 31
Wales +4 28 £465 +3.33% 13
East Midlands -12 17 £491 +16.79% 30
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 25

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 67 (3.18%) Confluence
2 49 (2.32%) Apache
3 31 (1.47%) nginx
4 29 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.09%) OpenStack
5 23 (1.09%) SharePoint
5 23 (1.09%) WebLogic
6 22 (1.04%) Apache Spark
7 17 (0.81%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 17 (0.81%) SAS
8 16 (0.76%) Tomcat
9 15 (0.71%) JBoss
10 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.52%) IIS
12 6 (0.28%) CMS
12 6 (0.28%) MTS
13 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
13 5 (0.24%) WebLogic Portal
13 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.095%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 9 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.047%) Magento
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle E-Business Tax
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Internet Expenses
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 607 (28.78%) AWS
2 523 (24.80%) Azure
3 182 (8.63%) GCP
4 169 (8.01%) GitHub
5 108 (5.12%) Entra ID
5 108 (5.12%) OpenShift
6 106 (5.03%) GitHub Actions
7 95 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
8 93 (4.41%) Amazon S3
9 83 (3.94%) Amazon EC2
10 71 (3.37%) Serverless
11 66 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
12 64 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
13 63 (2.99%) AWS Lambda
14 61 (2.89%) Amazon EKS
15 56 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 53 (2.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 52 (2.47%) IaaS
18 42 (1.99%) Datadog
18 42 (1.99%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.81%) DNS
2 221 (10.48%) Firewall
3 152 (7.21%) TCP/IP
4 129 (6.12%) DHCP
5 88 (4.17%) VPN
6 82 (3.89%) Network Security
7 81 (3.84%) SAN
8 51 (2.42%) WAN
9 50 (2.37%) SSL
10 44 (2.09%) SSH
11 40 (1.90%) HTTP
11 40 (1.90%) VLAN
12 39 (1.85%) VSAN
13 34 (1.61%) LAN
14 28 (1.33%) SNMP
15 27 (1.28%) Kerberos
16 24 (1.14%) NAS
17 23 (1.09%) HTTPS
18 22 (1.04%) Wireless
19 21 (1.00%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (5.78%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.50%) SQL Server
3 101 (4.79%) Oracle Database
4 72 (3.41%) Relational Database
5 66 (3.13%) MySQL
6 55 (2.61%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.56%) MongoDB
8 43 (2.04%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.71%) Amazon Aurora
10 35 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
12 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
13 27 (1.28%) Big Data
14 22 (1.04%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
16 19 (0.90%) Power BI
17 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 11g
17 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 12c
18 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
18 17 (0.81%) Redis
Development Applications
1 271 (12.85%) Git
2 244 (11.57%) Jenkins
3 208 (9.86%) GitLab
4 160 (7.59%) JIRA
5 36 (1.71%) Maven
5 36 (1.71%) SonarQube
6 30 (1.42%) Bitbucket
7 27 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 24 (1.14%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.00%) Mockito
10 18 (0.85%) Selenium
11 17 (0.81%) Eclipse
11 17 (0.81%) JUnit
12 16 (0.76%) Gradle
13 12 (0.57%) Rational Rhapsody
13 12 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
15 10 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.43%) JMeter
16 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 448 (21.24%) Social Skills
2 316 (14.98%) Finance
3 248 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (8.35%) Public Sector
5 164 (7.78%) Banking
6 88 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.37%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.75%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.66%) Front Office
10 33 (1.56%) Military
11 29 (1.38%) Legal
12 28 (1.33%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.90%) Law
15 18 (0.85%) Retail
16 17 (0.81%) Manufacturing
17 15 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
18 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.47%) Aviation
19 10 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 318 (15.08%) Senior
2 241 (11.43%) Linux Engineer
3 209 (9.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 190 (9.01%) Developer
5 189 (8.96%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (5.03%) Architect
6 106 (5.03%) Software Engineer
7 100 (4.74%) Platform Engineer
8 81 (3.84%) Cloud Engineer
8 81 (3.84%) Consultant
8 81 (3.84%) Support Engineer
9 80 (3.79%) Lead
10 74 (3.51%) Analyst
11 71 (3.37%) Java Developer
12 70 (3.32%) Administrator
13 66 (3.13%) AWS Engineer
13 66 (3.13%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 60 (2.84%) Systems Engineer
15 54 (2.56%) DBA
16 53 (2.51%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 503 (23.85%) Terraform
2 133 (6.31%) Kafka
3 122 (5.78%) REST
4 76 (3.60%) Middleware
5 74 (3.51%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.18%) .NET
7 54 (2.56%) RESTful
7 54 (2.56%) Spring
8 49 (2.32%) Spring Boot
9 44 (2.09%) Web Services
10 42 (1.99%) LDAP
11 38 (1.80%) JSON
12 36 (1.71%) XML
13 31 (1.47%) HTML
13 31 (1.47%) SOAP
14 30 (1.42%) YAML
15 29 (1.38%) Node.js
16 28 (1.33%) Django
16 28 (1.33%) React
17 27 (1.28%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 148 (7.02%) Onboarding
2 138 (6.54%) Cloud Native
3 131 (6.21%) Data Centre
4 110 (5.22%) PKI
5 107 (5.07%) Linux Command Line
6 96 (4.55%) Replication
7 86 (4.08%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.22%) Public Cloud
10 63 (2.99%) Management Information System
11 47 (2.23%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
13 42 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
14 39 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
14 39 (1.85%) Operational Technology
14 39 (1.85%) Private Cloud
15 38 (1.80%) Clustering
15 38 (1.80%) Enterprise Storage
15 38 (1.80%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 794 (37.65%) Windows
2 442 (20.96%) Unix
3 364 (17.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 251 (11.90%) Windows Server
5 112 (5.31%) Ubuntu
6 60 (2.84%) AIX
7 58 (2.75%) CentOS
8 54 (2.56%) Solaris
9 39 (1.85%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.42%) VMS
11 29 (1.38%) Windows 10
12 28 (1.33%) SUSE
13 23 (1.09%) Rocky
14 20 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
15 19 (0.90%) Mac OS
16 17 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
17 16 (0.76%) Debian
17 16 (0.76%) Oracle Linux
18 13 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
19 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 636 (30.16%) CI/CD
2 556 (26.36%) DevOps
3 443 (21.01%) Infrastructure as Code
4 389 (18.44%) Agile
5 333 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
6 313 (14.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 289 (13.70%) Containerisation
8 254 (12.04%) Continuous Improvement
9 242 (11.47%) Observability
10 235 (11.14%) Migration
11 228 (10.81%) Platform Engineering
12 215 (10.19%) Software Engineering
13 207 (9.82%) Root Cause Analysis
14 204 (9.67%) High Availability
15 174 (8.25%) ITIL
15 174 (8.25%) Performance Tuning
16 173 (8.20%) Configuration Management
17 170 (8.06%) Test Automation
18 155 (7.35%) AI
19 154 (7.30%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 764 (36.23%) Python
2 426 (20.20%) Bash
3 406 (19.25%) PowerShell
4 380 (18.02%) SQL
5 245 (11.62%) Java
6 152 (7.21%) Shell Script
7 124 (5.88%) C++
8 77 (3.65%) JavaScript
8 77 (3.65%) Perl
9 75 (3.56%) C#
10 73 (3.46%) C
11 65 (3.08%) PL/SQL
12 55 (2.61%) Go
13 44 (2.09%) Bicep
14 26 (1.23%) Groovy
15 22 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
16 18 (0.85%) Ada
16 18 (0.85%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
18 14 (0.66%) Scala
Qualifications
1 814 (38.60%) Security Cleared
2 589 (27.93%) SC Cleared
3 252 (11.95%) DV Cleared
4 185 (8.77%) Degree
5 71 (3.37%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
8 57 (2.70%) CISSP
9 56 (2.66%) Azure Certification
10 55 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
11 24 (1.14%) CISM
11 24 (1.14%) RHCE
12 22 (1.04%) CCNP
13 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.85%) CCNA
14 18 (0.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 17 (0.81%) ISTQB
16 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
18 14 (0.66%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.56%) NIST
2 72 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 67 (3.18%) QA
4 32 (1.52%) SLA
5 25 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.00%) GDPR
7 20 (0.95%) NCSC
8 19 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
9 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
10 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
11 14 (0.66%) GRC
12 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 9 (0.43%) ISO 31000
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
17 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 365 (17.31%) Docker
2 280 (13.28%) Active Directory
3 249 (11.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.31%) Hyper-V
5 82 (3.89%) vSphere
6 78 (3.70%) Virtual Machines
7 74 (3.51%) VMware ESXi
8 60 (2.84%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.94%) Firmware
10 39 (1.85%) Oracle RAC
11 36 (1.71%) NFS
12 26 (1.23%) KVM
13 19 (0.90%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.81%) Ceph
15 14 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.66%) Postfix
16 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.52%) GPFS
18 10 (0.47%) Squid
19 7 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 473 (22.43%) Ansible
2 463 (21.95%) Kubernetes
3 189 (8.96%) Grafana
4 169 (8.01%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.27%) Puppet
6 62 (2.94%) Progress Chef
7 51 (2.42%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.28%) SCCM
9 40 (1.90%) Data Guard
9 40 (1.90%) vCenter Server
10 30 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
11 29 (1.38%) Kibana
11 29 (1.38%) Nagios
12 28 (1.33%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.23%) Packer
13 26 (1.23%) Podman
13 26 (1.23%) VxRail
14 24 (1.14%) NetBackup
15 23 (1.09%) ZABBIX
16 21 (1.00%) Istio
Vendors
1 352 (16.69%) VMware
2 345 (16.36%) Microsoft
3 305 (14.46%) Oracle
4 228 (10.81%) Red Hat
5 167 (7.92%) Splunk
6 123 (5.83%) Cisco
7 113 (5.36%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.46%) IBM
9 86 (4.08%) Google
10 79 (3.75%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.28%) NetApp
12 47 (2.23%) SolarWinds
13 45 (2.13%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.90%) Dell
14 40 (1.90%) SAP
15 39 (1.85%) F5
15 39 (1.85%) Palo Alto
16 33 (1.56%) Dynatrace
17 30 (1.42%) Citrix
17 30 (1.42%) HP