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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,058 1,819 2,238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.84% 5.55% 5.75%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.58% 41.31% 41.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,281 1,120 1,440
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £430 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -4.44%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £636
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £533
% change year-on-year - -6.19% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 60 119
10th Percentile £42.97 £41.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £54.00 £54.81 £63.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,200 4,403 5,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.43% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,294 2,806 3,569
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £316 £308 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £687
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £470
% change year-on-year - -4.26% +4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 268 331
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.54 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.48 £17.22
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.83 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.71% -9.71% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.26 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.80 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £23.50 £38.25
% change year-on-year +28.72% -38.56% +39.09%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -22 1,733 £525 - 631
UK excluding London -17 1,193 £500 - 527
London -38 649 £550 -4.35% 169
Work from Home -30 538 £500 -3.85% 269
South East -5 345 £519 +3.75% 187
North of England -26 288 £500 - 102
South West -3 193 £551 -4.13% 90
North West -16 145 £494 +23.50% 54
Yorkshire -25 125 £500 -4.76% 27
Midlands -36 121 £470 -5.53% 60
Scotland -21 119 £450 -10.00% 24
East of England -10 103 £479 -2.30% 79
West Midlands -43 99 £470 -6.00% 34
Wales +4 29 £465 +55.00% 4
North East -15 25 £471 -18.04% 21
East Midlands -12 19 £513 +13.89% 25
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 1

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 73 (3.55%) Confluence
2 51 (2.48%) Apache
3 30 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
4 26 (1.26%) nginx
5 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.02%) OpenStack
7 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
8 18 (0.87%) SharePoint
9 16 (0.78%) Tomcat
9 16 (0.78%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.73%) JBoss
11 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
12 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
12 9 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
14 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 28 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.15%) Houdini
3 3 (0.15%) NUKE
3 3 (0.15%) Simulink
4 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
5 1 (0.049%) InDesign
5 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
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%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 597 (29.01%) AWS
2 507 (24.64%) Azure
3 170 (8.26%) GCP
4 156 (7.58%) GitHub
5 104 (5.05%) OpenShift
6 99 (4.81%) Entra ID
7 93 (4.52%) GitHub Actions
8 88 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
9 85 (4.13%) Amazon S3
10 79 (3.84%) Amazon EC2
11 62 (3.01%) Serverless
12 58 (2.82%) Amazon EKS
13 57 (2.77%) Microsoft 365
14 55 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
14 55 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
15 54 (2.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 51 (2.48%) IaaS
16 51 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 41 (1.99%) SaaS
18 37 (1.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 223 (10.84%) Firewall
2 218 (10.59%) DNS
3 138 (6.71%) TCP/IP
4 120 (5.83%) DHCP
5 87 (4.23%) VPN
6 78 (3.79%) SAN
7 77 (3.74%) Network Security
8 50 (2.43%) WAN
9 49 (2.38%) SSL
10 46 (2.24%) VSAN
11 40 (1.94%) LAN
11 40 (1.94%) SSH
12 39 (1.90%) VLAN
13 37 (1.80%) HTTP
14 30 (1.46%) SNMP
15 24 (1.17%) NAS
16 22 (1.07%) Kerberos
17 21 (1.02%) HTTPS
18 20 (0.97%) BGP
18 20 (0.97%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (5.98%) SQL Server
2 111 (5.39%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.62%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.26%) MySQL
5 64 (3.11%) Relational Database
6 54 (2.62%) MongoDB
7 49 (2.38%) Amazon RDS
8 38 (1.85%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.70%) Amazon Aurora
10 33 (1.60%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
11 29 (1.41%) RDBMS
12 25 (1.21%) Big Data
13 21 (1.02%) SAP HANA
14 20 (0.97%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.87%) Data Lake
15 18 (0.87%) Power BI
16 17 (0.83%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.83%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.78%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 230 (11.18%) Jenkins
2 226 (10.98%) Git
3 186 (9.04%) GitLab
4 151 (7.34%) JIRA
5 33 (1.60%) Bitbucket
5 33 (1.60%) Maven
6 29 (1.41%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (1.07%) Mockito
9 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.02%) Eclipse
10 19 (0.92%) Selenium
11 16 (0.78%) JUnit
12 15 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.53%) Gradle
15 10 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
16 9 (0.44%) JMeter
16 9 (0.44%) LoadRunner
General
1 425 (20.65%) Social Skills
2 304 (14.77%) Finance
3 237 (11.52%) Analytical Skills
4 177 (8.60%) Public Sector
5 159 (7.73%) Banking
6 78 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.90%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.80%) Front Office
9 35 (1.70%) Investment Banking
10 33 (1.60%) Military
11 25 (1.21%) Legal
12 24 (1.17%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.07%) Law
14 21 (1.02%) Retail
15 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
16 18 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 15 (0.73%) Financial Institution
17 15 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
18 10 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
19 9 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 293 (14.24%) Senior
2 229 (11.13%) Linux Engineer
3 193 (9.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 182 (8.84%) Developer
5 171 (8.31%) DevOps Engineer
6 111 (5.39%) Software Engineer
7 104 (5.05%) Architect
8 94 (4.57%) Platform Engineer
9 79 (3.84%) Consultant
10 78 (3.79%) Lead
11 76 (3.69%) Analyst
11 76 (3.69%) Support Engineer
12 75 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
13 69 (3.35%) Java Developer
14 63 (3.06%) AWS Engineer
15 60 (2.92%) Administrator
16 54 (2.62%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 53 (2.58%) Network Engineer
17 53 (2.58%) Systems Engineer
18 51 (2.48%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 475 (23.08%) Terraform
2 121 (5.88%) Kafka
3 110 (5.34%) REST
4 72 (3.50%) Middleware
5 68 (3.30%) Elastic Stack
6 66 (3.21%) .NET
7 56 (2.72%) RESTful
8 49 (2.38%) Spring
9 45 (2.19%) Web Services
10 41 (1.99%) Spring Boot
11 37 (1.80%) LDAP
12 35 (1.70%) XML
13 33 (1.60%) JSON
14 31 (1.51%) Node.js
14 31 (1.51%) YAML
15 30 (1.46%) SOAP
16 28 (1.36%) HTML
17 24 (1.17%) ARM Templates
17 24 (1.17%) React
18 23 (1.12%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 135 (6.56%) Onboarding
2 133 (6.46%) Cloud Native
3 132 (6.41%) Data Centre
4 103 (5.00%) PKI
5 101 (4.91%) Linux Command Line
6 87 (4.23%) Replication
7 82 (3.98%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.50%) Hybrid Cloud
9 62 (3.01%) Public Cloud
10 56 (2.72%) Management Information System
11 48 (2.33%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
13 40 (1.94%) Embedded Systems
13 40 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
14 36 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
15 34 (1.65%) Clustering
15 34 (1.65%) Product Ownership
16 33 (1.60%) Enterprise Storage
16 33 (1.60%) Private Cloud
17 32 (1.55%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 791 (38.44%) Windows
2 414 (20.12%) Unix
3 349 (16.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 233 (11.32%) Windows Server
5 114 (5.54%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.16%) AIX
7 53 (2.58%) Solaris
8 51 (2.48%) CentOS
9 40 (1.94%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.26%) SUSE
10 26 (1.26%) VMS
11 23 (1.12%) Windows 10
12 22 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.87%) Mac OS
15 17 (0.83%) Rocky
15 17 (0.83%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.73%) Debian
17 13 (0.63%) Android
18 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 589 (28.62%) CI/CD
2 511 (24.83%) DevOps
3 403 (19.58%) Infrastructure as Code
4 370 (17.98%) Agile
5 307 (14.92%) Problem-Solving
6 283 (13.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 261 (12.68%) Containerisation
8 242 (11.76%) Migration
9 237 (11.52%) Continuous Improvement
10 211 (10.25%) Observability
11 207 (10.06%) High Availability
11 207 (10.06%) Software Engineering
12 206 (10.01%) Platform Engineering
13 196 (9.52%) Root Cause Analysis
14 177 (8.60%) Performance Tuning
15 170 (8.26%) ITIL
16 163 (7.92%) Test Automation
17 156 (7.58%) Configuration Management
18 151 (7.34%) SIEM
19 146 (7.09%) AI
Programming Languages
1 731 (35.52%) Python
2 402 (19.53%) PowerShell
3 398 (19.34%) Bash
4 363 (17.64%) SQL
5 247 (12.00%) Java
6 149 (7.24%) Shell Script
7 137 (6.66%) C++
8 85 (4.13%) JavaScript
9 79 (3.84%) C
10 77 (3.74%) C#
11 63 (3.06%) Perl
12 59 (2.87%) PL/SQL
13 47 (2.28%) Go
14 42 (2.04%) Bicep
15 21 (1.02%) Groovy
15 21 (1.02%) Search Processing Language
16 20 (0.97%) Ada
17 17 (0.83%) Rust
17 17 (0.83%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.63%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 798 (38.78%) Security Cleared
2 589 (28.62%) SC Cleared
3 236 (11.47%) DV Cleared
4 178 (8.65%) Degree
5 71 (3.45%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.82%) Cisco Certification
8 56 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
9 54 (2.62%) Azure Certification
10 53 (2.58%) CISSP
11 25 (1.21%) RHCE
12 24 (1.17%) CCNP
13 21 (1.02%) CCNA
14 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.92%) CISM
16 18 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
16 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 16 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.55%) NIST
2 68 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 66 (3.21%) QA
4 30 (1.46%) SLA
5 26 (1.26%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.02%) NCSC
7 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
7 20 (0.97%) GDPR
8 16 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.63%) ISO 20022
9 13 (0.63%) PCI DSS
10 11 (0.53%) GRC
11 10 (0.49%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.24%) ISO 15022
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 330 (16.03%) Docker
2 276 (13.41%) Active Directory
3 256 (12.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (4.47%) vSphere
5 89 (4.32%) Hyper-V
6 77 (3.74%) Virtual Machines
7 66 (3.21%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.06%) VMware NSX
9 42 (2.04%) Firmware
10 41 (1.99%) NFS
11 39 (1.90%) Oracle RAC
12 28 (1.36%) KVM
13 16 (0.78%) Ceph
14 15 (0.73%) Postfix
15 14 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
16 13 (0.63%) Embedded Firmware
17 12 (0.58%) GPFS
18 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
19 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
19 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 448 (21.77%) Ansible
2 427 (20.75%) Kubernetes
3 170 (8.26%) Grafana
4 150 (7.29%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.37%) Puppet
6 66 (3.21%) Progress Chef
7 49 (2.38%) Oracle RMAN
8 41 (1.99%) SCCM
9 39 (1.90%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.85%) Data Guard
11 32 (1.55%) Nagios
12 27 (1.31%) Kibana
12 27 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
12 27 (1.31%) ZABBIX
13 26 (1.26%) Packer
14 25 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
14 25 (1.21%) NetBackup
14 25 (1.21%) VxRail
15 23 (1.12%) Podman
16 22 (1.07%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 355 (17.25%) VMware
2 334 (16.23%) Microsoft
3 308 (14.97%) Oracle
4 226 (10.98%) Red Hat
5 153 (7.43%) Splunk
6 126 (6.12%) Cisco
7 111 (5.39%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.57%) IBM
9 80 (3.89%) CyberArk
10 76 (3.69%) Google
11 50 (2.43%) SolarWinds
12 48 (2.33%) SAP
13 45 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.14%) Palo Alto
15 43 (2.09%) NetApp
16 38 (1.85%) F5
16 38 (1.85%) HP
17 34 (1.65%) Dell
18 33 (1.60%) Citrix
19 32 (1.55%) Sybase