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 24 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 31 33
Rank change year-on-year -21 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,924 1,740 2,258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.78% 5.79% 5.20%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.69% 41.56% 38.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,193 1,124 1,461
10th Percentile £344 £374 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £540
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -1.85% -6.09%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £540
% change year-on-year -1.60% -7.41% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 41 140
10th Percentile £36.23 £51.06 £48.00
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £57.50
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.80 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% - -

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 4,848 4,187 5,862
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 13.94% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,096 2,731 3,861
10th Percentile £190 £200 £188
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £455
% change year-on-year - -1.10% -1.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 214 432
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.44 £16.00
Median hourly rate £28.00 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -9.02% -45.18%
75th Percentile £64.38 £41.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.23 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.08 £18.87 £27.50
% change year-on-year +43.51% -31.38% -26.67%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 1,613 £513 -6.82% 543
UK excluding London -17 1,140 £492 -1.60% 486
London -54 561 £545 -6.03% 116
Work from Home -35 505 £500 -4.76% 221
South East -3 302 £513 -4.21% 168
North of England -18 300 £484 -6.88% 99
South West -9 170 £538 -10.42% 77
Yorkshire -22 153 £500 -6.98% 22
Midlands -11 149 £475 -5.00% 42
North West -27 132 £469 +13.42% 60
West Midlands -15 128 £471 -5.85% 19
East of England -14 96 £475 - 85
Scotland -31 91 £450 -4.96% 15
Wales +5 27 £465 +64.60% 10
East Midlands -15 18 £530 +16.61% 23
North East -27 16 £413 -13.61% 17
Northern Ireland 0 11 £425 +25.93% 6

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 85 (4.42%) Confluence
2 47 (2.44%) Apache
3 30 (1.56%) nginx
4 28 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
5 24 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.09%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.94%) Apache Spark
8 16 (0.83%) WebLogic
9 12 (0.62%) SAS
10 11 (0.57%) CICS
11 10 (0.52%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.52%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
13 7 (0.36%) IIS
14 6 (0.31%) JBoss
14 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.31%) SharePoint
14 6 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.26%) CMS
16 4 (0.21%) TPMS
Applications
1 19 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.10%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.052%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Actimize
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) Odoo
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.052%) Shopify
5 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 553 (28.74%) AWS
2 398 (20.69%) Azure
3 155 (8.06%) GitHub
4 127 (6.60%) GCP
5 108 (5.61%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.73%) GitHub Actions
7 85 (4.42%) Amazon S3
8 83 (4.31%) Amazon EC2
9 67 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
9 67 (3.48%) Entra ID
10 63 (3.27%) Amazon EKS
11 62 (3.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 55 (2.86%) Serverless
13 49 (2.55%) AWS CloudFormation
14 47 (2.44%) IaaS
15 46 (2.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 45 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
17 44 (2.29%) Microsoft 365
18 43 (2.23%) PaaS
19 40 (2.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 179 (9.30%) Firewall
2 136 (7.07%) DNS
3 80 (4.16%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.79%) VPN
5 70 (3.64%) SAN
6 68 (3.53%) Network Security
7 51 (2.65%) DHCP
8 47 (2.44%) WAN
9 37 (1.92%) LAN
9 37 (1.92%) SSL
10 35 (1.82%) SNMP
11 31 (1.61%) VSAN
12 30 (1.56%) HTTP
12 30 (1.56%) SSH
13 26 (1.35%) NAS
14 24 (1.25%) Ethernet
15 23 (1.20%) VLAN
16 19 (0.99%) IPsec
17 17 (0.88%) BGP
17 17 (0.88%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.82%) SQL Server
2 109 (5.67%) PostgreSQL
3 76 (3.95%) Oracle Database
4 75 (3.90%) MySQL
5 64 (3.33%) Relational Database
6 61 (3.17%) MongoDB
7 52 (2.70%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (1.98%) Amazon Aurora
10 28 (1.46%) DynamoDB
10 28 (1.46%) NoSQL
11 21 (1.09%) Big Data
12 20 (1.04%) SAP HANA
13 19 (0.99%) KDB
14 18 (0.94%) RDBMS
15 17 (0.88%) Data Warehouse
16 16 (0.83%) Sybase ASE
17 15 (0.78%) Db2
17 15 (0.78%) Kdb+
18 14 (0.73%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 215 (11.17%) Jenkins
2 192 (9.98%) GitLab
3 160 (8.32%) Git
4 150 (7.80%) JIRA
5 32 (1.66%) Maven
6 31 (1.61%) SonarQube
7 27 (1.40%) Mockito
8 21 (1.09%) Eclipse
9 20 (1.04%) Bitbucket
10 17 (0.88%) Artifactory
10 17 (0.88%) JUnit
10 17 (0.88%) Sonatype Nexus
11 15 (0.78%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.73%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.73%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.68%) jMock
14 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket Server
15 10 (0.52%) Jaeger
16 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.47%) Cucumber
General
1 386 (20.06%) Social Skills
2 274 (14.24%) Finance
3 197 (10.24%) Public Sector
4 164 (8.52%) Analytical Skills
5 128 (6.65%) Banking
6 81 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.23%) Military
8 26 (1.35%) Front Office
8 26 (1.35%) Retail
9 24 (1.25%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.20%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.20%) Legal
10 23 (1.20%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.04%) Financial Institution
12 20 (1.04%) Law
13 19 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
15 16 (0.83%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.62%) Police
Job Titles
1 243 (12.63%) Senior
2 190 (9.88%) Linux Engineer
3 189 (9.82%) Developer
4 186 (9.67%) DevOps Engineer
5 137 (7.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 126 (6.55%) Software Engineer
7 100 (5.20%) Analyst
8 99 (5.15%) Architect
9 88 (4.57%) Lead
10 70 (3.64%) Java Developer
11 69 (3.59%) AWS Engineer
12 68 (3.53%) Consultant
13 66 (3.43%) Administrator
14 60 (3.12%) Platform Engineer
15 58 (3.01%) Support Engineer
16 56 (2.91%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 50 (2.60%) AWS DevOps
17 50 (2.60%) Security Engineer
18 48 (2.49%) Site Engineer
19 47 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (4.63%) Kafka
2 86 (4.47%) REST
3 82 (4.26%) Middleware
4 69 (3.59%) Elastic Stack
5 54 (2.81%) LDAP
6 50 (2.60%) Spring
7 49 (2.55%) Spring Boot
8 44 (2.29%) RESTful
8 44 (2.29%) Web Services
9 43 (2.23%) Node.js
10 39 (2.03%) .NET
11 33 (1.72%) YAML
12 27 (1.40%) ActiveMQ
13 26 (1.35%) React
14 25 (1.30%) AngularJS
14 25 (1.30%) SOAP
15 23 (1.20%) JSON
16 20 (1.04%) Flash
16 20 (1.04%) Keycloak
17 19 (0.99%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 150 (7.80%) Data Centre
2 117 (6.08%) Cloud Native
3 88 (4.57%) Onboarding
4 86 (4.47%) Linux Command Line
5 73 (3.79%) PKI
6 71 (3.69%) Distributed Systems
7 70 (3.64%) Management Information System
8 65 (3.38%) Replication
9 52 (2.70%) Security Posture
10 51 (2.65%) Public Cloud
11 49 (2.55%) Hybrid Cloud
12 48 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
13 37 (1.92%) Product Ownership
14 29 (1.51%) Embedded Systems
15 28 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
15 28 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
15 28 (1.46%) Enterprise Storage
16 26 (1.35%) Clustering
17 24 (1.25%) Legacy Applications
17 24 (1.25%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 733 (38.10%) Windows
2 389 (20.22%) Unix
3 310 (16.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 188 (9.77%) Windows Server
5 108 (5.61%) Ubuntu
6 60 (3.12%) AIX
7 50 (2.60%) Solaris
8 43 (2.23%) CentOS
9 32 (1.66%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.35%) VMS
11 24 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (1.14%) SUSE
13 20 (1.04%) Android
14 18 (0.94%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.83%) Debian
16 15 (0.78%) Mac OS
17 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
18 12 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
18 12 (0.62%) Windows 10
18 12 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 537 (27.91%) CI/CD
2 469 (24.38%) DevOps
3 361 (18.76%) Agile
4 299 (15.54%) Infrastructure as Code
5 286 (14.86%) Problem-Solving
6 251 (13.05%) Containerisation
7 205 (10.65%) Software Engineering
8 199 (10.34%) Migration
9 194 (10.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 172 (8.94%) Continuous Improvement
10 172 (8.94%) Observability
11 167 (8.68%) High Availability
12 161 (8.37%) Performance Tuning
13 145 (7.54%) ITIL
14 143 (7.43%) Root Cause Analysis
15 142 (7.38%) SIEM
16 129 (6.70%) Platform Engineering
17 128 (6.65%) Test Automation
18 127 (6.60%) Configuration Management
19 126 (6.55%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 633 (32.90%) Python
2 318 (16.53%) SQL
3 291 (15.12%) Bash
4 282 (14.66%) PowerShell
5 235 (12.21%) Java
6 148 (7.69%) Shell Script
7 119 (6.19%) C++
8 90 (4.68%) JavaScript
9 61 (3.17%) Perl
10 60 (3.12%) C
11 59 (3.07%) C#
12 49 (2.55%) Go
12 49 (2.55%) PL/SQL
13 22 (1.14%) Ada
13 22 (1.14%) Rust
14 20 (1.04%) MATLAB
14 20 (1.04%) TypeScript
15 19 (0.99%) Search Processing Language
16 17 (0.88%) Ruby
17 16 (0.83%) PHP
Qualifications
1 737 (38.31%) Security Cleared
2 546 (28.38%) SC Cleared
3 205 (10.65%) DV Cleared
4 179 (9.30%) Degree
5 70 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
6 66 (3.43%) AWS Certification
7 59 (3.07%) CISSP
8 56 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
9 53 (2.75%) Cisco Certification
10 40 (2.08%) Azure Certification
11 36 (1.87%) CompTIA Security+
11 36 (1.87%) RHCE
12 24 (1.25%) CCNA
13 23 (1.20%) CCNP
14 20 (1.04%) CISM
14 20 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
15 16 (0.83%) GIAC
16 15 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.78%) Oracle Certification
17 14 (0.73%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.63%) NIST
2 84 (4.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.75%) QA
4 43 (2.23%) SLA
5 23 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
5 23 (1.20%) GDPR
5 23 (1.20%) NCSC
6 17 (0.88%) PCI DSS
7 15 (0.78%) Disclosure Scotland
8 12 (0.62%) HIPAA
9 11 (0.57%) GRC
9 11 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.52%) Data Quality
10 10 (0.52%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.36%) NIST 800
12 6 (0.31%) ISO 31000
13 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 5 (0.26%) DICOM
13 5 (0.26%) ISO 20022
14 4 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 325 (16.89%) Docker
2 225 (11.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 217 (11.28%) Active Directory
4 86 (4.47%) Virtual Machines
5 67 (3.48%) vSphere
6 66 (3.43%) Hyper-V
6 66 (3.43%) VMware ESXi
7 52 (2.70%) NFS
8 49 (2.55%) VMware NSX
9 36 (1.87%) Firmware
10 33 (1.72%) KVM
11 28 (1.46%) Oracle RAC
12 21 (1.09%) GPFS
12 21 (1.09%) Postfix
13 11 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.52%) Ceph
14 10 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.42%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.36%) Squid
16 7 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 401 (20.84%) Ansible
2 378 (19.65%) Kubernetes
3 373 (19.39%) Terraform
4 167 (8.68%) Grafana
5 144 (7.48%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.85%) Puppet
7 53 (2.75%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.18%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.03%) Oracle RMAN
10 32 (1.66%) Red Hat Satellite
11 28 (1.46%) Packer
12 27 (1.40%) Nagios
12 27 (1.40%) Podman
13 25 (1.30%) Data Guard
13 25 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 24 (1.25%) vRealize
15 22 (1.14%) Tivoli
16 21 (1.09%) Argo
16 21 (1.09%) Kibana
17 19 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 303 (15.75%) VMware
2 274 (14.24%) Oracle
3 259 (13.46%) Microsoft
4 231 (12.01%) Red Hat
5 158 (8.21%) Splunk
6 122 (6.34%) Cisco
7 107 (5.56%) IBM
8 89 (4.63%) ServiceNow
9 62 (3.22%) Google
10 60 (3.12%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.60%) Palo Alto
12 41 (2.13%) SAP
12 41 (2.13%) SolarWinds
13 39 (2.03%) BeyondTrust
14 38 (1.98%) F5
15 33 (1.72%) HP
16 32 (1.66%) Citrix
16 32 (1.66%) Dell
17 30 (1.56%) NVIDIA
17 30 (1.56%) Sybase