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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,021 1,834 2,217
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.57% 5.66%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.44% 41.68% 40.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,252 1,151 1,440
10th Percentile £351 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £439 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.14% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £704 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 56 121
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.81 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +3.85%

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 5,124 4,400 5,467
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.37% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,238 2,827 3,629
10th Percentile £192 £200 £200
25th Percentile £317 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £656 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £473
% change year-on-year +1.11% -4.91% +5.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 353 257 337
10th Percentile £14.70 £15.50 £12.47
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.40 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.27 £22.53 £39.25
% change year-on-year +21.04% -42.60% +33.96%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -25 1,711 £525 - 1,342
UK excluding London -16 1,218 £500 - 848
London -50 591 £550 -5.17% 596
Work from Home -32 549 £500 -3.85% 538
South East -1 353 £520 +3.48% 269
North of England -13 312 £500 - 158
South West -2 187 £550 -4.35% 141
North West -8 164 £497 +23.94% 98
Midlands -32 138 £474 -0.26% 76
Yorkshire -24 131 £500 -4.76% 32
West Midlands -30 117 £470 -3.59% 48
Scotland -26 108 £425 -15.00% 43
East of England -13 97 £475 -4.04% 132
Wales +8 29 £465 +64.60% 10
North East -20 24 £490 -14.78% 28
East Midlands -9 18 £513 +17.82% 28
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 39

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 86 (4.26%) Confluence
2 49 (2.42%) Apache
3 31 (1.53%) nginx
4 28 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.04%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.94%) OpenStack
7 19 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.89%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.89%) SAS
9 12 (0.59%) JBoss
10 10 (0.49%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.45%) IIS
11 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.45%) SharePoint
12 8 (0.40%) CICS
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 20 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.099%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 605 (29.94%) AWS
2 482 (23.85%) Azure
3 157 (7.77%) GCP
3 157 (7.77%) GitHub
4 99 (4.90%) OpenShift
5 92 (4.55%) Entra ID
6 91 (4.50%) GitHub Actions
7 88 (4.35%) Amazon EC2
7 88 (4.35%) Amazon S3
8 81 (4.01%) Azure DevOps
9 63 (3.12%) Amazon EKS
10 59 (2.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 56 (2.77%) Serverless
12 54 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
12 54 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
13 53 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 50 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
15 47 (2.33%) IaaS
16 40 (1.98%) SaaS
17 39 (1.93%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 222 (10.98%) Firewall
2 206 (10.19%) DNS
3 128 (6.33%) TCP/IP
4 101 (5.00%) DHCP
5 82 (4.06%) VPN
6 75 (3.71%) Network Security
7 74 (3.66%) SAN
8 48 (2.38%) SSL
9 47 (2.33%) WAN
10 46 (2.28%) VSAN
11 42 (2.08%) SSH
12 38 (1.88%) HTTP
12 38 (1.88%) LAN
13 33 (1.63%) VLAN
14 32 (1.58%) SNMP
15 22 (1.09%) NAS
16 21 (1.04%) Ethernet
16 21 (1.04%) IPsec
17 19 (0.94%) HTTPS
18 18 (0.89%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.28%) SQL Server
2 116 (5.74%) PostgreSQL
3 92 (4.55%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.41%) MongoDB
4 69 (3.41%) MySQL
5 66 (3.27%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
7 39 (1.93%) Amazon Aurora
8 37 (1.83%) Elasticsearch
9 36 (1.78%) NoSQL
10 31 (1.53%) RDBMS
11 29 (1.43%) DynamoDB
12 23 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
13 21 (1.04%) SAP HANA
14 20 (0.99%) Big Data
15 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.89%) Data Lake
17 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
18 16 (0.79%) Oracle Exadata
18 16 (0.79%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 218 (10.79%) Jenkins
2 212 (10.49%) Git
3 182 (9.01%) GitLab
4 145 (7.17%) JIRA
5 41 (2.03%) Maven
6 34 (1.68%) Mockito
7 32 (1.58%) SonarQube
8 28 (1.39%) Bitbucket
9 26 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.04%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.04%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.94%) JUnit
12 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.69%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 14 (0.69%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.69%) Selenium
14 13 (0.64%) jMock
15 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
17 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 415 (20.53%) Social Skills
2 292 (14.45%) Finance
3 204 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
4 202 (10.00%) Public Sector
5 142 (7.03%) Banking
6 77 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.93%) Military
8 32 (1.58%) Front Office
9 30 (1.48%) Telecoms
10 27 (1.34%) Investment Banking
11 24 (1.19%) Legal
12 23 (1.14%) Retail
13 22 (1.09%) Aerospace
14 20 (0.99%) Law
15 19 (0.94%) Manufacturing
16 16 (0.79%) Financial Institution
16 16 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 13 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
18 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 294 (14.55%) Senior
2 215 (10.64%) Linux Engineer
3 199 (9.85%) Developer
4 184 (9.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 170 (8.41%) DevOps Engineer
6 117 (5.79%) Software Engineer
7 102 (5.05%) Architect
8 88 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (4.11%) Analyst
10 80 (3.96%) Java Developer
11 75 (3.71%) Lead
12 72 (3.56%) Cloud Engineer
13 68 (3.36%) Consultant
14 65 (3.22%) AWS Engineer
15 64 (3.17%) Support Engineer
16 56 (2.77%) Senior Developer
17 55 (2.72%) Administrator
18 54 (2.67%) Site Reliability Engineer
19 50 (2.47%) Security Engineer
19 50 (2.47%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (5.39%) Kafka
2 107 (5.29%) REST
3 69 (3.41%) Elastic Stack
4 68 (3.36%) Middleware
5 56 (2.77%) Spring
6 51 (2.52%) .NET
7 49 (2.42%) RESTful
7 49 (2.42%) Spring Boot
8 46 (2.28%) Web Services
9 42 (2.08%) LDAP
10 41 (2.03%) Node.js
11 35 (1.73%) ActiveMQ
12 32 (1.58%) JSON
13 28 (1.39%) SOAP
13 28 (1.39%) YAML
14 26 (1.29%) XML
15 25 (1.24%) React
16 24 (1.19%) AngularJS
16 24 (1.19%) FastAPI
17 22 (1.09%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 133 (6.58%) Data Centre
2 132 (6.53%) Cloud Native
3 126 (6.23%) Onboarding
4 101 (5.00%) Linux Command Line
5 96 (4.75%) PKI
6 89 (4.40%) Distributed Systems
7 80 (3.96%) Replication
8 70 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.17%) Public Cloud
10 61 (3.02%) Management Information System
11 58 (2.87%) Security Posture
12 50 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
13 37 (1.83%) Product Ownership
14 33 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
15 32 (1.58%) Clustering
16 30 (1.48%) Embedded Systems
16 30 (1.48%) Operational Technology
17 28 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
18 27 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
19 25 (1.24%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 772 (38.20%) Windows
2 421 (20.83%) Unix
3 345 (17.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 223 (11.03%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.49%) Ubuntu
6 71 (3.51%) AIX
7 59 (2.92%) Solaris
8 43 (2.13%) CentOS
9 31 (1.53%) Embedded Linux
10 27 (1.34%) VMS
11 25 (1.24%) SUSE
12 24 (1.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.89%) Rocky
14 18 (0.89%) Windows 10
15 17 (0.84%) Android
15 17 (0.84%) Mac OS
16 15 (0.74%) Debian
17 14 (0.69%) Mac OS X
17 14 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (28.25%) CI/CD
2 493 (24.39%) DevOps
3 370 (18.31%) Infrastructure as Code
4 363 (17.96%) Agile
5 298 (14.75%) Problem-Solving
6 270 (13.36%) Containerisation
7 264 (13.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 238 (11.78%) Migration
9 217 (10.74%) Continuous Improvement
10 203 (10.04%) Software Engineering
11 200 (9.90%) High Availability
12 195 (9.65%) Observability
13 187 (9.25%) Platform Engineering
14 178 (8.81%) Root Cause Analysis
15 176 (8.71%) Performance Tuning
16 169 (8.36%) ITIL
17 160 (7.92%) SIEM
18 146 (7.22%) Test Automation
19 142 (7.03%) AI
20 138 (6.83%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 699 (34.59%) Python
2 374 (18.51%) PowerShell
3 373 (18.46%) Bash
4 347 (17.17%) SQL
5 247 (12.22%) Java
6 153 (7.57%) Shell Script
7 123 (6.09%) C++
8 89 (4.40%) JavaScript
9 70 (3.46%) C
10 69 (3.41%) C#
11 61 (3.02%) PL/SQL
12 57 (2.82%) Perl
13 46 (2.28%) Go
14 39 (1.93%) Bicep
15 22 (1.09%) Ada
16 21 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
17 20 (0.99%) Rust
18 19 (0.94%) TypeScript
19 17 (0.84%) Groovy
20 13 (0.64%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 797 (39.44%) Security Cleared
2 592 (29.29%) SC Cleared
3 227 (11.23%) DV Cleared
4 183 (9.05%) Degree
5 74 (3.66%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
7 60 (2.97%) CISSP
8 51 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
9 49 (2.42%) Azure Certification
10 28 (1.39%) CCNP
11 27 (1.34%) RHCE
12 26 (1.29%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
13 25 (1.24%) CCNA
14 19 (0.94%) CISM
15 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 17 (0.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 13 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
16 13 (0.64%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.11%) NIST
2 78 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 60 (2.97%) QA
4 30 (1.48%) SLA
5 24 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.09%) NCSC
7 21 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.04%) GDPR
8 20 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.69%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.59%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.54%) GRC
11 11 (0.54%) ISO 20022
12 9 (0.45%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 15022
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 333 (16.48%) Docker
2 267 (13.21%) Active Directory
3 240 (11.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (4.21%) Virtual Machines
5 84 (4.16%) Hyper-V
6 82 (4.06%) vSphere
7 64 (3.17%) VMware NSX
8 63 (3.12%) VMware ESXi
9 44 (2.18%) NFS
10 40 (1.98%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.73%) Firmware
12 30 (1.48%) KVM
13 20 (0.99%) Postfix
14 15 (0.74%) Ceph
15 12 (0.59%) GPFS
16 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
17 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.40%) Squid
19 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 453 (22.41%) Terraform
2 449 (22.22%) Ansible
3 418 (20.68%) Kubernetes
4 165 (8.16%) Grafana
5 141 (6.98%) Prometheus
6 80 (3.96%) Puppet
7 61 (3.02%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.57%) Oracle RMAN
9 42 (2.08%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.93%) Data Guard
11 34 (1.68%) SCCM
12 31 (1.53%) Nagios
13 29 (1.43%) Packer
14 27 (1.34%) Red Hat Satellite
15 26 (1.29%) ZABBIX
16 25 (1.24%) Podman
17 24 (1.19%) NetBackup
18 23 (1.14%) VxRail
19 22 (1.09%) Argo
19 22 (1.09%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 338 (16.72%) VMware
2 305 (15.09%) Microsoft
3 301 (14.89%) Oracle
4 229 (11.33%) Red Hat
5 155 (7.67%) Splunk
6 130 (6.43%) Cisco
7 109 (5.39%) ServiceNow
8 101 (5.00%) IBM
9 83 (4.11%) CyberArk
10 74 (3.66%) Google
11 51 (2.52%) SolarWinds
12 50 (2.47%) BeyondTrust
13 48 (2.38%) Palo Alto
14 42 (2.08%) SAP
15 41 (2.03%) NetApp
16 40 (1.98%) F5
17 39 (1.93%) HP
18 35 (1.73%) Citrix
19 30 (1.48%) Dynatrace
20 29 (1.43%) Atlassian