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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -12 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,915 1,749 2,437
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.67% 5.79% 5.49%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.09% 40.55% 39.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 1,068 1,605
10th Percentile £320 £356 £325
25th Percentile £401 £440 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £622 £650 £650
90th Percentile £722 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -7.62% -0.94% -1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 54 120
10th Percentile £12.50 £42.38 £26.14
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.42 £48.23
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.61 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £73.88 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £61.50
% change year-on-year -6.02% +8.13% -5.38%

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 4,777 4,313 6,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.66% 14.28% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,170 2,731 4,141
10th Percentile £178 £200 £181
25th Percentile £273 £316 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £419 £425 £430
% change year-on-year -1.53% -1.16% -9.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 149 385
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.95 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £16.54
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +16.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £53.75 £65.00 £61.99
90th Percentile £70.00 £69.00 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.75 £25.00
% change year-on-year -18.92% +11.00% -11.03%

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 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 24 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 24 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 1,652 £515 -6.36% 691
UK excluding London -6 1,102 £485 -7.62% 619
London -27 609 £550 -8.33% 187
Work from Home -18 510 £500 -4.76% 289
South East +1 326 £483 -8.10% 182
North of England -3 299 £500 -9.09% 124
Midlands -8 177 £525 - 88
Yorkshire -5 170 £500 -13.04% 33
West Midlands -9 163 £525 -2.51% 62
South West -20 134 £550 -8.33% 82
North West -13 119 £492 -1.60% 68
Scotland -17 85 £425 -9.09% 70
East of England -9 79 £473 +5.00% 69
Northern Ireland +9 16 £413 +26.92% 6
East Midlands -37 14 £420 -7.59% 26
North East -17 13 £538 +10.26% 23
Wales -9 6 £543 +0.93% 10

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 87 (4.54%) Confluence
2 49 (2.56%) nginx
3 48 (2.51%) Apache
4 42 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (0.99%) OpenStack
5 19 (0.99%) WebLogic
6 18 (0.94%) Apache Spark
7 15 (0.78%) SharePoint
8 14 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
9 13 (0.68%) TPMS
9 13 (0.68%) WebSphere
10 10 (0.52%) JBoss
10 10 (0.52%) SAS
11 9 (0.47%) Skype for Business
12 8 (0.42%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.31%) CICS
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.26%) iPlanet
14 5 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 52 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) 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 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.052%) RMDS
5 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.052%) Shopify
5 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 598 (31.23%) AWS
2 374 (19.53%) Azure
3 187 (9.77%) GitHub
4 145 (7.57%) GCP
5 142 (7.42%) OpenShift
6 112 (5.85%) AWS CloudFormation
6 112 (5.85%) Serverless
7 97 (5.07%) Amazon EC2
8 93 (4.86%) GitHub Actions
9 81 (4.23%) Amazon S3
10 74 (3.86%) Amazon EKS
11 69 (3.60%) AWS Lambda
12 66 (3.45%) Amazon ECS
13 63 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
14 59 (3.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 50 (2.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 44 (2.30%) IaaS
17 39 (2.04%) Entra ID
17 39 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
18 36 (1.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 209 (10.91%) Firewall
2 149 (7.78%) DNS
3 126 (6.58%) TCP/IP
4 64 (3.34%) Network Security
5 63 (3.29%) VPN
6 46 (2.40%) SSH
7 44 (2.30%) DHCP
8 42 (2.19%) SSL
9 38 (1.98%) HTTP
9 38 (1.98%) SAN
10 31 (1.62%) VLAN
11 28 (1.46%) WAN
11 28 (1.46%) Wireless
12 25 (1.31%) VSAN
13 23 (1.20%) BGP
14 22 (1.15%) Kerberos
15 20 (1.04%) SNMP
15 20 (1.04%) Wireshark
16 19 (0.99%) LAN
17 18 (0.94%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (7.52%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (5.01%) SQL Server
3 84 (4.39%) Amazon RDS
3 84 (4.39%) Relational Database
4 74 (3.86%) MongoDB
5 71 (3.71%) NoSQL
6 68 (3.55%) MySQL
7 63 (3.29%) Oracle Database
8 51 (2.66%) Elasticsearch
9 29 (1.51%) DB2
10 24 (1.25%) Big Data
11 20 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
12 17 (0.89%) Hadoop
12 17 (0.89%) KDB
12 17 (0.89%) Kdb+
13 15 (0.78%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 12 (0.63%) DynamoDB
15 12 (0.63%) GIS
15 12 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 270 (14.10%) Jenkins
2 210 (10.97%) Git
3 204 (10.65%) GitLab
4 137 (7.15%) JIRA
5 52 (2.72%) JUnit
6 48 (2.51%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.19%) Bitbucket
8 35 (1.83%) Maven
9 28 (1.46%) Eclipse
10 25 (1.31%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.31%) Mockito
11 22 (1.15%) Liquibase
12 18 (0.94%) Burp Suite
12 18 (0.94%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.89%) Artifactory
14 16 (0.84%) JMeter
15 15 (0.78%) Metasploit
16 14 (0.73%) Android Studio
16 14 (0.73%) Selenium
16 14 (0.73%) Xcode
General
1 511 (26.68%) Social Skills
2 331 (17.28%) Finance
3 197 (10.29%) Public Sector
4 185 (9.66%) Analytical Skills
5 141 (7.36%) Banking
6 67 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.56%) Financial Institution
8 42 (2.19%) Military
9 35 (1.83%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.78%) Presentation Skills
11 30 (1.57%) Front Office
12 25 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 21 (1.10%) Legal
14 19 (0.99%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.94%) Telecoms
16 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
17 14 (0.73%) Law
17 14 (0.73%) Retail
18 13 (0.68%) Manufacturing
19 11 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 274 (14.31%) Developer
2 248 (12.95%) Senior
3 186 (9.71%) DevOps Engineer
4 136 (7.10%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.58%) Analyst
6 111 (5.80%) Java Developer
7 109 (5.69%) Architect
8 95 (4.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 88 (4.60%) Linux Engineer
10 85 (4.44%) Support Engineer
11 83 (4.33%) Platform Engineer
12 80 (4.18%) Lead
13 77 (4.02%) Administrator
14 74 (3.86%) AWS Engineer
15 72 (3.76%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 68 (3.55%) Site Engineer
17 58 (3.03%) AWS DevOps
18 55 (2.87%) Senior Software Engineer
19 53 (2.77%) Security Engineer
20 47 (2.45%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (7.83%) Kafka
2 123 (6.42%) REST
3 120 (6.27%) Elastic Stack
4 80 (4.18%) Middleware
5 69 (3.60%) Spring
6 65 (3.39%) Node.js
7 54 (2.82%) RESTful
8 53 (2.77%) LDAP
9 47 (2.45%) JSON
9 47 (2.45%) React
10 46 (2.40%) XML
11 42 (2.19%) Spring Boot
12 38 (1.98%) AngularJS
13 37 (1.93%) YAML
14 35 (1.83%) SOAP
15 33 (1.72%) Web Services
16 27 (1.41%) .NET
17 25 (1.31%) CSS
18 22 (1.15%) ActiveMQ
18 22 (1.15%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 120 (6.27%) Cloud Native
2 105 (5.48%) Data Centre
3 88 (4.60%) Linux Command Line
4 76 (3.97%) Management Information System
5 72 (3.76%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (3.24%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.87%) PKI
8 51 (2.66%) Replication
9 47 (2.45%) Onboarding
10 45 (2.35%) Equities
11 39 (2.04%) Hybrid Cloud
12 38 (1.98%) Product Ownership
12 38 (1.98%) Security Operations Centre
13 36 (1.88%) Security Posture
14 32 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
14 32 (1.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 31 (1.62%) Data Structures
15 31 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
16 29 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
17 28 (1.46%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 694 (36.24%) Windows
2 374 (19.53%) Unix
3 265 (13.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 148 (7.73%) Windows Server
5 86 (4.49%) Ubuntu
6 50 (2.61%) CentOS
7 40 (2.09%) Android
8 35 (1.83%) Solaris
9 30 (1.57%) Mac OS
10 28 (1.46%) VMS
11 26 (1.36%) Mac OS X
12 25 (1.31%) AIX
13 23 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.99%) Windows 10
15 18 (0.94%) Embedded Linux
16 16 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
17 14 (0.73%) Kali Linux
18 13 (0.68%) Debian
19 11 (0.57%) Apple iOS
19 11 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 593 (30.97%) CI/CD
2 499 (26.06%) DevOps
3 429 (22.40%) Agile
4 375 (19.58%) Problem-Solving
5 320 (16.71%) Infrastructure as Code
6 318 (16.61%) Containerisation
7 231 (12.06%) Software Engineering
8 201 (10.50%) Observability
9 176 (9.19%) Cybersecurity
10 168 (8.77%) Computer Science
11 166 (8.67%) Continuous Improvement
11 166 (8.67%) Microservices
12 153 (7.99%) Incident Response
13 152 (7.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 150 (7.83%) Test Automation
15 138 (7.21%) Platform Engineering
16 129 (6.74%) High Availability
17 127 (6.63%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 122 (6.37%) SIEM
19 121 (6.32%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 716 (37.39%) Python
2 351 (18.33%) Java
3 334 (17.44%) SQL
4 332 (17.34%) Bash
5 268 (13.99%) PowerShell
6 193 (10.08%) Shell Script
7 161 (8.41%) C++
8 124 (6.48%) JavaScript
9 106 (5.54%) Perl
10 73 (3.81%) C#
11 72 (3.76%) Go
12 52 (2.72%) C
13 43 (2.25%) Ruby
14 32 (1.67%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.57%) Rust
16 29 (1.51%) PL/SQL
17 23 (1.20%) PHP
18 22 (1.15%) Ada
19 20 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
20 13 (0.68%) Korn
Qualifications
1 701 (36.61%) Security Cleared
2 502 (26.21%) SC Cleared
3 214 (11.17%) Degree
4 173 (9.03%) DV Cleared
5 111 (5.80%) Computer Science Degree
6 85 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
7 68 (3.55%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.09%) CISSP
9 38 (1.98%) CompTIA Security+
10 36 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.78%) Azure Certification
11 34 (1.78%) Master's Degree
12 30 (1.57%) Microsoft Certification
12 30 (1.57%) RHCE
13 22 (1.15%) CCNA
14 21 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 20 (1.04%) CCNP
16 19 (0.99%) OSCP
17 17 (0.89%) GPEN
17 17 (0.89%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.81%) NIST
2 52 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 49 (2.56%) GDPR
4 40 (2.09%) QA
5 29 (1.51%) SLA
6 23 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
7 19 (0.99%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.89%) Data Quality
9 16 (0.84%) NCSC
10 13 (0.68%) GLBA
11 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.31%) Accessibility
15 6 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
17 3 (0.16%) GRC
17 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 413 (21.57%) Docker
2 225 (11.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 170 (8.88%) Active Directory
4 75 (3.92%) vSphere
5 71 (3.71%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (2.92%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.56%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (1.51%) NFS
9 27 (1.41%) GPFS
9 27 (1.41%) VMware NSX
10 22 (1.15%) KVM
11 17 (0.89%) Firmware
12 14 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
12 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 13 (0.68%) Postfix
14 12 (0.63%) Lustre
15 9 (0.47%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.37%) Ceph
16 7 (0.37%) HDFS
16 7 (0.37%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 500 (26.11%) Kubernetes
2 415 (21.67%) Terraform
3 391 (20.42%) Ansible
4 210 (10.97%) Grafana
5 181 (9.45%) Prometheus
6 70 (3.66%) Puppet
7 65 (3.39%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.35%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.04%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.93%) Packer
11 35 (1.83%) Argo
12 34 (1.78%) vRealize
13 33 (1.72%) Podman
14 31 (1.62%) Kibana
15 27 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
16 25 (1.31%) SCCM
17 24 (1.25%) Nessus
18 22 (1.15%) SCOM
19 18 (0.94%) ITRS Geneos
20 17 (0.89%) Nmap
Vendors
1 308 (16.08%) VMware
2 299 (15.61%) Microsoft
3 250 (13.05%) Oracle
4 237 (12.38%) Splunk
5 232 (12.11%) Red Hat
6 111 (5.80%) Cisco
7 87 (4.54%) IBM
8 74 (3.86%) ServiceNow
9 56 (2.92%) Google
10 43 (2.25%) Dell
11 35 (1.83%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.78%) CyberArk
13 31 (1.62%) AppDynamics
14 27 (1.41%) SolarWinds
15 25 (1.31%) NetApp
16 24 (1.25%) Citrix
17 23 (1.20%) Atlassian
17 23 (1.20%) CrowdStrike
17 23 (1.20%) NVIDIA
18 21 (1.10%) HP