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 13 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 37 30 25
Rank change year-on-year -7 -5 +2
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,976 2,012 3,087
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.57% 5.52% 6.68%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.05% 39.12% 43.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 1,186 2,066
10th Percentile £322 £350 £355
25th Percentile £407 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 95 144
10th Percentile £12.50 £45.80 £25.05
25th Percentile £49.30 £62.50 £48.32
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.02 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.01% +7.23% -3.85%
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £71.90
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.60 £77.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £65.00
% 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 4,814 5,143 7,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.56% 14.10% 15.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,094 3,157 4,774
10th Percentile £185 £200 £181
25th Percentile £270 £325 £305
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -4.95%
75th Percentile £573 £583 £613
90th Percentile £654 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £450 £440
% change year-on-year -8.89% +2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 216 354
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.25 £14.56
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.95 £18.34
Median hourly rate £24.00 £51.25 £35.92
Median % change year-on-year -53.17% +42.68% +46.61%
75th Percentile £43.50 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £52.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year -57.00% +90.91% +22.22%

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 13 November 2025.

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 13 November 2025.

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 13 November 2025. 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 -7 1,672 £514 -6.59% 1,649
UK excluding London -2 1,109 £475 -9.52% 1,131
London -4 701 £570 -4.96% 679
Work from Home -1 574 £500 -4.76% 923
North of England +13 282 £480 -15.19% 158
South East -1 264 £475 -9.52% 435
Scotland +3 175 £479 +1.38% 65
Midlands -8 175 £475 -13.64% 124
Yorkshire +21 162 £500 -18.70% 45
West Midlands -1 162 £500 -12.66% 76
North West -2 116 £438 -16.67% 93
South West -26 116 £550 - 158
East of England -13 104 £454 -5.96% 151
East Midlands -25 13 £420 -6.46% 48
Northern Ireland +2 10 £350 -36.36% 30
North East -9 10 £550 +21.15% 20
Wales -10 6 £300 -42.86% 33

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 97 (4.91%) Confluence
2 70 (3.54%) Apache
3 57 (2.88%) nginx
4 38 (1.92%) JBoss
5 32 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
6 30 (1.52%) Apache Spark
7 28 (1.42%) OpenStack
8 24 (1.21%) WebSphere
9 22 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
10 21 (1.06%) WebLogic
11 18 (0.91%) Tomcat
12 17 (0.86%) Mattermost
12 17 (0.86%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.76%) SharePoint
13 15 (0.76%) WebSphere Application Server
14 13 (0.66%) SAS
15 11 (0.56%) IIS
16 10 (0.51%) iPlanet
17 6 (0.30%) Documentum
17 6 (0.30%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 52 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.61%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 8 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.30%) Weka
6 5 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.15%) Simulink
7 3 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.051%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 8 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.20%) SAP IBP
3 4 (0.20%) Temenos T24
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) Kondor
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.051%) Finacle
6 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.051%) RMDS
6 1 (0.051%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.051%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.051%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 612 (30.97%) AWS
2 375 (18.98%) Azure
3 189 (9.56%) GitHub
4 162 (8.20%) GCP
5 122 (6.17%) OpenShift
6 117 (5.92%) Amazon EC2
7 109 (5.52%) Amazon S3
8 105 (5.31%) Serverless
9 97 (4.91%) AWS CloudFormation
10 88 (4.45%) GitHub Actions
11 72 (3.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 71 (3.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 66 (3.34%) Azure DevOps
13 66 (3.34%) SaaS
14 63 (3.19%) IaaS
15 57 (2.88%) Amazon ECS
16 56 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
17 53 (2.68%) Amazon EKS
18 49 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
19 48 (2.43%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 229 (11.59%) Firewall
2 165 (8.35%) DNS
3 144 (7.29%) TCP/IP
4 68 (3.44%) Network Security
5 62 (3.14%) SSL
6 58 (2.94%) HTTP
7 57 (2.88%) SSH
8 55 (2.78%) DHCP
9 51 (2.58%) SAN
10 40 (2.02%) VPN
11 33 (1.67%) SMTP
12 32 (1.62%) VLAN
13 27 (1.37%) Ethernet
13 27 (1.37%) Skype
14 26 (1.32%) Wireless
15 25 (1.27%) Kerberos
16 23 (1.16%) FTP
16 23 (1.16%) WAN
17 22 (1.11%) NAS
18 21 (1.06%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (7.19%) PostgreSQL
2 132 (6.68%) Relational Database
3 100 (5.06%) SQL Server
4 94 (4.76%) MongoDB
5 89 (4.50%) Amazon RDS
6 88 (4.45%) NoSQL
7 77 (3.90%) Oracle Database
8 70 (3.54%) MySQL
9 51 (2.58%) DB2
10 45 (2.28%) Elasticsearch
11 30 (1.52%) Big Data
11 30 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
11 30 (1.52%) Hadoop
12 22 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
13 19 (0.96%) RDBMS
14 18 (0.91%) Apache Cassandra
14 18 (0.91%) Redis
15 17 (0.86%) KDB
16 14 (0.71%) Apache Hive
17 13 (0.66%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 330 (16.70%) Jenkins
2 301 (15.23%) Git
3 185 (9.36%) GitLab
4 176 (8.91%) JIRA
5 78 (3.95%) JUnit
6 71 (3.59%) Sonatype Nexus
7 59 (2.99%) Bitbucket
8 54 (2.73%) Eclipse
9 43 (2.18%) Maven
9 43 (2.18%) Visual Studio
10 29 (1.47%) Liquibase
11 28 (1.42%) Artifactory
12 27 (1.37%) Vagrant
13 25 (1.27%) Mockito
13 25 (1.27%) SonarQube
14 23 (1.16%) Cucumber
15 22 (1.11%) Gradle
16 19 (0.96%) Bitbucket Server
16 19 (0.96%) Browser DevTools
16 19 (0.96%) Xcode
General
1 625 (31.63%) Social Skills
2 429 (21.71%) Finance
3 245 (12.40%) Analytical Skills
4 208 (10.53%) Banking
5 186 (9.41%) Public Sector
6 85 (4.30%) Investment Banking
7 62 (3.14%) Front Office
8 60 (3.04%) Financial Institution
9 54 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
10 53 (2.68%) Presentation Skills
11 41 (2.07%) Military
12 24 (1.21%) Manufacturing
13 23 (1.16%) Telecoms
14 21 (1.06%) Legal
15 19 (0.96%) Law
15 19 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
16 18 (0.91%) Aerospace
17 14 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 13 (0.66%) Marketing
19 12 (0.61%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 360 (18.22%) Developer
2 222 (11.23%) Senior
3 181 (9.16%) DevOps Engineer
4 145 (7.34%) Java Developer
5 134 (6.78%) Software Engineer
6 115 (5.82%) Linux Engineer
7 102 (5.16%) Support Engineer
8 100 (5.06%) Analyst
9 99 (5.01%) Platform Engineer
10 92 (4.66%) Architect
11 91 (4.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 80 (4.05%) Administrator
13 77 (3.90%) AWS Engineer
14 66 (3.34%) C++ Software Engineer
15 64 (3.24%) Senior Developer
16 63 (3.19%) Lead
17 60 (3.04%) Python Developer
18 59 (2.99%) Security Engineer
19 57 (2.88%) Consultant
20 55 (2.78%) AWS DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (8.00%) Kafka
2 149 (7.54%) REST
3 128 (6.48%) Elastic Stack
4 101 (5.11%) Spring
5 85 (4.30%) Middleware
6 80 (4.05%) RESTful
7 75 (3.80%) Node.js
8 70 (3.54%) AngularJS
9 63 (3.19%) React
10 54 (2.73%) JSON
11 51 (2.58%) SOAP
12 50 (2.53%) LDAP
13 46 (2.33%) Web Services
14 45 (2.28%) JMS
15 41 (2.07%) FIX Protocol
15 41 (2.07%) XML
16 37 (1.87%) CSS
17 36 (1.82%) OAuth
18 34 (1.72%) FastAPI
19 31 (1.57%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 106 (5.36%) Cloud Native
2 95 (4.81%) Linux Command Line
3 79 (4.00%) Distributed Systems
3 79 (4.00%) Replication
4 75 (3.80%) Data Centre
5 74 (3.74%) Management Information System
6 68 (3.44%) Data Structures
7 65 (3.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 63 (3.19%) Equities
9 62 (3.14%) Public Cloud
10 54 (2.73%) Onboarding
11 46 (2.33%) PKI
12 45 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
13 36 (1.82%) Security Posture
14 35 (1.77%) Algorithms
15 33 (1.67%) Private Cloud
16 32 (1.62%) Fixed Income
17 30 (1.52%) Virtual Team
18 29 (1.47%) Clustering
18 29 (1.47%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 692 (35.02%) Windows
2 435 (22.01%) Unix
3 259 (13.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 139 (7.03%) Windows Server
5 83 (4.20%) Ubuntu
6 62 (3.14%) CentOS
7 46 (2.33%) VMS
8 37 (1.87%) Android
9 34 (1.72%) Mac OS
10 33 (1.67%) Solaris
11 30 (1.52%) Amazon Linux
12 27 (1.37%) Windows 10
13 26 (1.32%) Mac OS X
14 22 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
15 20 (1.01%) AIX
16 13 (0.66%) Apple iOS
16 13 (0.66%) Kali Linux
17 9 (0.46%) Debian
17 9 (0.46%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (28.90%) CI/CD
2 520 (26.32%) Agile
3 515 (26.06%) DevOps
4 389 (19.69%) Problem-Solving
5 308 (15.59%) Containerisation
6 303 (15.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 265 (13.41%) Software Engineering
8 180 (9.11%) Test Automation
9 159 (8.05%) Observability
10 156 (7.89%) Computer Science
10 156 (7.89%) Cybersecurity
11 151 (7.64%) Microservices
12 143 (7.24%) Performance Tuning
13 139 (7.03%) High Availability
14 138 (6.98%) Configuration Management
15 135 (6.83%) Migration
16 128 (6.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 128 (6.48%) Platform Engineering
17 124 (6.28%) Continuous Improvement
18 123 (6.22%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 854 (43.22%) Python
2 423 (21.41%) Java
3 400 (20.24%) SQL
4 338 (17.11%) Bash
5 291 (14.73%) PowerShell
6 234 (11.84%) C++
7 226 (11.44%) Shell Script
8 154 (7.79%) JavaScript
9 140 (7.09%) Perl
10 124 (6.28%) C#
11 86 (4.35%) Go
12 66 (3.34%) C
13 48 (2.43%) Groovy
14 36 (1.82%) TypeScript
15 32 (1.62%) Rust
16 28 (1.42%) PHP
17 23 (1.16%) PL/SQL
18 22 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
19 21 (1.06%) Ruby
20 15 (0.76%) Ada
Qualifications
1 540 (27.33%) Security Cleared
2 417 (21.10%) SC Cleared
3 200 (10.12%) Degree
4 105 (5.31%) DV Cleared
5 102 (5.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 67 (3.39%) AWS Certification
7 52 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 42 (2.13%) Master's Degree
9 41 (2.07%) CISSP
10 38 (1.92%) Azure Certification
11 36 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
12 33 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
13 21 (1.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 20 (1.01%) CCNP
14 20 (1.01%) GCIH
14 20 (1.01%) OSCP
15 18 (0.91%) CCNA
16 16 (0.81%) GCIA
16 16 (0.81%) GPEN
17 14 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (2.53%) NIST
2 46 (2.33%) QA
3 34 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 33 (1.67%) GDPR
5 25 (1.27%) Data Quality
6 17 (0.86%) NCSC
7 16 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.76%) HIPAA
9 13 (0.66%) SLA
10 9 (0.46%) SOC 2
11 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
13 6 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
14 5 (0.25%) GLBA
15 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 4 (0.20%) HL7
16 3 (0.15%) MiFID
17 2 (0.10%) Basel III
17 2 (0.10%) GAAP
17 2 (0.10%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 412 (20.85%) Docker
2 205 (10.37%) Active Directory
3 193 (9.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 62 (3.14%) vSphere
5 47 (2.38%) Virtual Machines
6 33 (1.67%) VMware ESXi
7 32 (1.62%) Hyper-V
8 25 (1.27%) Oracle RAC
9 22 (1.11%) DFS Replication
9 22 (1.11%) Postfix
10 20 (1.01%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.91%) Dovecot
11 18 (0.91%) GPFS
12 17 (0.86%) KVM
12 17 (0.86%) NFS
12 17 (0.86%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 13 (0.66%) Squid
14 12 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.56%) HDFS
16 10 (0.51%) zsh
Systems Management
1 464 (23.48%) Kubernetes
2 405 (20.50%) Terraform
3 372 (18.83%) Ansible
4 212 (10.73%) Grafana
5 191 (9.67%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.59%) Progress Chef
6 71 (3.59%) Puppet
7 56 (2.83%) Packer
8 38 (1.92%) Argo
9 34 (1.72%) Kibana
10 33 (1.67%) vCenter Server
11 32 (1.62%) SCOM
12 31 (1.57%) Consul
13 29 (1.47%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.37%) Nessus
15 25 (1.27%) ITRS Geneos
16 24 (1.21%) Data Guard
16 24 (1.21%) NetBackup
16 24 (1.21%) SCCM
16 24 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 310 (15.69%) Microsoft
2 285 (14.42%) Oracle
3 275 (13.92%) VMware
4 226 (11.44%) Red Hat
5 224 (11.34%) Splunk
6 107 (5.41%) Cisco
7 87 (4.40%) ServiceNow
8 70 (3.54%) IBM
9 65 (3.29%) Google
10 54 (2.73%) AppDynamics
11 46 (2.33%) CyberArk
12 42 (2.13%) Sybase
13 36 (1.82%) CrowdStrike
13 36 (1.82%) Solace
14 35 (1.77%) Citrix
14 35 (1.77%) Dell
15 34 (1.72%) SAP
16 31 (1.57%) F5
17 28 (1.42%) NetApp
18 27 (1.37%) Dynatrace