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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 30 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +4 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,886 1,776 2,185
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.97% 6.06% 5.06%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.34% 43.24% 37.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,181 1,123 1,439
10th Percentile £331 £374 £331
25th Percentile £403 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £541
% change year-on-year -6.67% -3.00% +0.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 54 105
10th Percentile £29.98 £40.50 £30.88
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.09 £50.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.74 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.61% +4.80% -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 4,675 4,107 5,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.83% 14.02% 13.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,032 2,706 3,887
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £319 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.06% -6.93%
75th Percentile £575 £589 £588
90th Percentile £656 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £431 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -4.22% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 184 394
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.15 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.13 £18.10 £15.50
Median hourly rate £47.50 £24.09 £22.08
Median % change year-on-year +97.18% +9.13% -43.40%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.88 £22.50
% change year-on-year +107.65% +1.67% -25.00%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 1,581 £513 -6.82% 829
UK excluding London -15 1,130 £490 -6.67% 674
London -46 541 £550 -5.58% 233
Work from Home -28 479 £500 -4.76% 291
South East -4 319 £500 -9.09% 223
North of England -14 281 £475 -13.64% 115
South West -12 159 £550 -8.33% 120
Midlands -12 154 £525 +5.00% 75
Yorkshire -18 151 £460 -16.36% 38
West Midlands -2 136 £501 -6.80% 34
North West -16 120 £485 -6.78% 57
Scotland -21 95 £450 -3.74% 34
East of England -15 92 £475 -3.06% 94
Wales -2 20 £465 -20.65% 25
Northern Ireland +9 16 £425 +30.77% 6
East Midlands -35 16 £530 +16.61% 41
North East -22 10 £413 -23.26% 20

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 (4.40%) Confluence
2 49 (2.60%) Apache
3 33 (1.75%) nginx
4 28 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
5 24 (1.27%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.90%) Tomcat
8 15 (0.80%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.74%) OpenStack
9 14 (0.74%) SAS
10 13 (0.69%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
12 9 (0.48%) TPMS
13 6 (0.32%) JBoss
13 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.32%) SharePoint
13 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 26 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.21%) Weka
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
5 2 (0.11%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 533 (28.26%) AWS
2 375 (19.88%) Azure
3 170 (9.01%) GitHub
4 126 (6.68%) OpenShift
5 107 (5.67%) GCP
6 94 (4.98%) Amazon EC2
6 94 (4.98%) GitHub Actions
7 87 (4.61%) Amazon S3
8 80 (4.24%) AWS CloudFormation
9 75 (3.98%) Amazon EKS
10 73 (3.87%) Serverless
11 69 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
12 62 (3.29%) AWS Lambda
13 58 (3.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 54 (2.86%) Amazon ECS
15 46 (2.44%) IaaS
16 43 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
17 39 (2.07%) Entra ID
18 38 (2.01%) SaaS
18 38 (2.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 183 (9.70%) Firewall
2 125 (6.63%) DNS
3 101 (5.36%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.87%) VPN
5 66 (3.50%) Network Security
6 54 (2.86%) SAN
7 47 (2.49%) WAN
8 38 (2.01%) HTTP
9 37 (1.96%) DHCP
9 37 (1.96%) LAN
10 36 (1.91%) SSH
10 36 (1.91%) VSAN
11 31 (1.64%) SNMP
12 30 (1.59%) SSL
13 24 (1.27%) Ethernet
14 21 (1.11%) Wireless
15 20 (1.06%) NAS
16 18 (0.95%) BGP
17 17 (0.90%) Kerberos
18 15 (0.80%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (6.57%) PostgreSQL
2 112 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 74 (3.92%) MySQL
4 66 (3.50%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.39%) Amazon RDS
5 64 (3.39%) MongoDB
6 62 (3.29%) Oracle Database
7 43 (2.28%) Elasticsearch
8 33 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
9 30 (1.59%) NoSQL
10 23 (1.22%) Big Data
10 23 (1.22%) DynamoDB
11 19 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
12 17 (0.90%) KDB
13 16 (0.85%) DB2
13 16 (0.85%) Kdb+
13 16 (0.85%) SAP HANA
14 14 (0.74%) Hadoop
15 13 (0.69%) Data Lake
16 11 (0.58%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 209 (11.08%) Jenkins
2 174 (9.23%) Git
3 168 (8.91%) GitLab
4 141 (7.48%) JIRA
5 32 (1.70%) Maven
6 26 (1.38%) JUnit
6 26 (1.38%) Sonatype Nexus
7 25 (1.33%) Bitbucket
7 25 (1.33%) Eclipse
7 25 (1.33%) SonarQube
8 24 (1.27%) Mockito
9 16 (0.85%) Artifactory
9 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
10 14 (0.74%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
11 13 (0.69%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
12 11 (0.58%) jMock
13 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 405 (21.47%) Social Skills
2 273 (14.48%) Finance
3 186 (9.86%) Public Sector
4 151 (8.01%) Analytical Skills
5 104 (5.51%) Banking
6 72 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.55%) Military
8 27 (1.43%) Financial Institution
9 25 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.11%) Aerospace
10 21 (1.11%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.06%) Front Office
11 20 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.06%) Retail
12 19 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 17 (0.90%) Law
14 15 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 14 (0.74%) Legal
16 13 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 13 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 229 (12.14%) Senior
2 213 (11.29%) Developer
3 174 (9.23%) DevOps Engineer
4 140 (7.42%) Linux Engineer
5 134 (7.10%) Software Engineer
6 117 (6.20%) Architect
7 107 (5.67%) Analyst
8 101 (5.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 96 (5.09%) Lead
10 82 (4.35%) Java Developer
11 77 (4.08%) Administrator
12 72 (3.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 66 (3.50%) Site Engineer
14 65 (3.45%) AWS Engineer
15 61 (3.23%) Platform Engineer
16 53 (2.81%) Security Engineer
17 51 (2.70%) Consultant
18 49 (2.60%) AWS DevOps
19 44 (2.33%) Embedded Engineer
20 43 (2.28%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 110 (5.83%) Kafka
2 88 (4.67%) REST
3 78 (4.14%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.71%) Middleware
5 57 (3.02%) Node.js
6 51 (2.70%) LDAP
7 49 (2.60%) Spring
8 46 (2.44%) Spring Boot
9 41 (2.17%) Web Services
10 36 (1.91%) .NET
11 35 (1.86%) RESTful
12 32 (1.70%) XML
13 31 (1.64%) YAML
14 28 (1.48%) JSON
15 26 (1.38%) AngularJS
16 24 (1.27%) SOAP
17 23 (1.22%) ActiveMQ
17 23 (1.22%) React
18 22 (1.17%) CSS
19 20 (1.06%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 129 (6.84%) Data Centre
2 99 (5.25%) Cloud Native
3 73 (3.87%) Linux Command Line
4 71 (3.76%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.61%) Management Information System
6 65 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
7 55 (2.92%) PKI
8 51 (2.70%) Replication
9 49 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
10 46 (2.44%) Public Cloud
11 41 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
12 36 (1.91%) Product Ownership
13 33 (1.75%) Security Posture
14 30 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
15 29 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
15 29 (1.54%) Security Operations Centre
16 27 (1.43%) Embedded Systems
17 24 (1.27%) Operational Technology
18 22 (1.17%) Clustering
18 22 (1.17%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 718 (38.07%) Windows
2 365 (19.35%) Unix
3 271 (14.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 169 (8.96%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.51%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.70%) AIX
7 41 (2.17%) CentOS
8 36 (1.91%) Solaris
9 34 (1.80%) VMS
10 33 (1.75%) Embedded Linux
11 30 (1.59%) Android
12 23 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (1.06%) Debian
13 20 (1.06%) Mac OS
13 20 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
14 13 (0.69%) SUSE
15 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
16 9 (0.48%) Windows 10
16 9 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (28.69%) CI/CD
2 446 (23.65%) DevOps
3 378 (20.04%) Agile
4 310 (16.44%) Problem-Solving
5 287 (15.22%) Infrastructure as Code
6 262 (13.89%) Containerisation
7 217 (11.51%) Software Engineering
8 181 (9.60%) Observability
9 167 (8.85%) Migration
10 156 (8.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 149 (7.90%) SIEM
12 143 (7.58%) Continuous Improvement
12 143 (7.58%) High Availability
13 140 (7.42%) Computer Science
14 139 (7.37%) Microservices
15 137 (7.26%) Performance Tuning
16 134 (7.10%) Cybersecurity
16 134 (7.10%) Incident Response
17 132 (7.00%) Platform Engineering
18 128 (6.79%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 643 (34.09%) Python
2 314 (16.65%) SQL
3 279 (14.79%) Java
4 264 (14.00%) Bash
5 262 (13.89%) PowerShell
6 160 (8.48%) Shell Script
7 127 (6.73%) C++
8 107 (5.67%) JavaScript
9 71 (3.76%) Perl
10 63 (3.34%) C#
11 56 (2.97%) C
12 47 (2.49%) Go
13 42 (2.23%) PL/SQL
14 32 (1.70%) Ruby
15 28 (1.48%) TypeScript
16 27 (1.43%) PHP
17 21 (1.11%) Ada
17 21 (1.11%) Rust
18 19 (1.01%) MATLAB
18 19 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 739 (39.18%) Security Cleared
2 538 (28.53%) SC Cleared
3 212 (11.24%) DV Cleared
4 181 (9.60%) Degree
5 85 (4.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 83 (4.40%) Computer Science Degree
7 49 (2.60%) AWS Certification
8 48 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
9 44 (2.33%) CISSP
10 42 (2.23%) CompTIA Security+
11 35 (1.86%) RHCE
12 28 (1.48%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.33%) CCNA
14 21 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
15 19 (1.01%) CCNP
16 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 17 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
18 15 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 14 (0.74%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (4.35%) NIST
2 72 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.81%) QA
4 41 (2.17%) SLA
5 33 (1.75%) GDPR
6 30 (1.59%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (1.27%) NCSC
8 19 (1.01%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.58%) Data Quality
9 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
10 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 9 (0.48%) GLBA
11 9 (0.48%) GRC
12 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 5 (0.27%) DICOM
13 5 (0.27%) ISO 31000
14 4 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 329 (17.44%) Docker
2 219 (11.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 176 (9.33%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.24%) Virtual Machines
5 70 (3.71%) Hyper-V
6 67 (3.55%) vSphere
7 60 (3.18%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (2.07%) Firmware
8 39 (2.07%) NFS
9 38 (2.01%) VMware NSX
10 26 (1.38%) KVM
11 25 (1.33%) GPFS
12 19 (1.01%) Postfix
13 18 (0.95%) Oracle RAC
14 16 (0.85%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.58%) Ceph
16 10 (0.53%) Lustre
17 8 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
18 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 409 (21.69%) Kubernetes
2 378 (20.04%) Ansible
3 372 (19.72%) Terraform
4 182 (9.65%) Grafana
5 141 (7.48%) Prometheus
6 76 (4.03%) Puppet
7 50 (2.65%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.23%) vCenter Server
9 29 (1.54%) Kibana
9 29 (1.54%) Oracle RMAN
9 29 (1.54%) vRealize
10 28 (1.48%) Podman
11 26 (1.38%) Red Hat Satellite
12 25 (1.33%) Packer
13 23 (1.22%) Nagios
13 23 (1.22%) ZABBIX
14 22 (1.17%) Argo
15 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
15 20 (1.06%) Tivoli
16 18 (0.95%) Netcool
Vendors
1 295 (15.64%) VMware
2 269 (14.26%) Microsoft
3 253 (13.41%) Oracle
4 209 (11.08%) Red Hat
5 187 (9.92%) Splunk
6 104 (5.51%) Cisco
7 95 (5.04%) IBM
8 71 (3.76%) ServiceNow
9 46 (2.44%) CyberArk
9 46 (2.44%) Dell
10 44 (2.33%) Palo Alto
11 35 (1.86%) Google
11 35 (1.86%) HP
12 33 (1.75%) SolarWinds
13 27 (1.43%) BeyondTrust
13 27 (1.43%) NVIDIA
14 26 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 25 (1.33%) NetApp
16 24 (1.27%) SAP
17 23 (1.22%) F5