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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 33 30
Rank change year-on-year -23 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,031 1,832 2,216
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.58% 5.68%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.33% 41.82% 40.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,260 1,149 1,444
10th Percentile £357 £361 £350
25th Percentile £425 £432 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £705 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 56 121
10th Percentile £35.70 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.81 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% 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 5,164 4,381 5,453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.67% 13.33% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,262 2,811 3,624
10th Percentile £190 £200 £200
25th Percentile £318 £313 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.11% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £662 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +1.44% -5.16% +5.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 356 256 336
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.46
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.92 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.25 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.53 £40.00
% change year-on-year +18.33% -43.68% +36.52%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 1,716 £525 -0.24% 1,282
UK excluding London -17 1,219 £500 - 773
London -52 595 £550 -5.17% 596
Work from Home -27 549 £500 -4.76% 485
South East +1 356 £519 +1.97% 248
North of England -16 308 £500 - 150
South West -2 190 £550 -4.35% 119
North West -8 159 £500 +25.00% 90
Midlands -27 134 £474 -0.26% 70
Yorkshire -24 130 £500 -4.76% 28
West Midlands -34 113 £470 -3.59% 42
Scotland -27 108 £425 -15.00% 48
East of England -16 100 £479 -2.30% 128
Wales +10 29 £465 +64.60% 11
North East -20 26 £480 -16.52% 32
East Midlands -12 18 £513 +22.02% 28
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 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 82 (4.04%) Confluence
2 49 (2.41%) Apache
3 30 (1.48%) nginx
4 28 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.98%) OpenStack
6 20 (0.98%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.89%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.89%) SAS
9 12 (0.59%) JBoss
10 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.44%) IIS
11 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.44%) SharePoint
12 7 (0.34%) CICS
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 21 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.098%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.098%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Internet Expenses
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
1 602 (29.64%) AWS
2 489 (24.08%) Azure
3 157 (7.73%) GCP
3 157 (7.73%) GitHub
4 101 (4.97%) OpenShift
5 92 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
6 91 (4.48%) Entra ID
7 86 (4.23%) Amazon S3
7 86 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
8 85 (4.19%) Amazon EC2
9 62 (3.05%) Amazon EKS
10 58 (2.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 57 (2.81%) Serverless
12 54 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
12 54 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
13 53 (2.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 51 (2.51%) AWS Lambda
15 47 (2.31%) IaaS
16 41 (2.02%) SaaS
17 39 (1.92%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 224 (11.03%) Firewall
2 213 (10.49%) DNS
3 134 (6.60%) TCP/IP
4 108 (5.32%) DHCP
5 84 (4.14%) VPN
6 74 (3.64%) Network Security
7 72 (3.55%) SAN
8 50 (2.46%) SSL
9 47 (2.31%) VSAN
10 46 (2.26%) WAN
11 41 (2.02%) SSH
12 40 (1.97%) HTTP
13 37 (1.82%) LAN
14 33 (1.62%) VLAN
15 32 (1.58%) SNMP
16 22 (1.08%) NAS
17 21 (1.03%) Ethernet
17 21 (1.03%) IPsec
18 19 (0.94%) HTTPS
19 18 (0.89%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.25%) SQL Server
2 113 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
3 92 (4.53%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.40%) MySQL
5 66 (3.25%) MongoDB
6 65 (3.20%) Relational Database
7 52 (2.56%) Amazon RDS
8 37 (1.82%) Amazon Aurora
9 36 (1.77%) Elasticsearch
10 35 (1.72%) NoSQL
11 31 (1.53%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.33%) DynamoDB
13 23 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
14 22 (1.08%) Big Data
15 21 (1.03%) SAP HANA
16 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.89%) Data Lake
18 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
19 16 (0.79%) Oracle Exadata
19 16 (0.79%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 220 (10.83%) Jenkins
2 211 (10.39%) Git
3 183 (9.01%) GitLab
4 143 (7.04%) JIRA
5 41 (2.02%) Maven
6 32 (1.58%) Mockito
7 30 (1.48%) SonarQube
8 28 (1.38%) Bitbucket
9 27 (1.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.03%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.03%) Eclipse
11 17 (0.84%) JUnit
12 16 (0.79%) Selenium
13 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.64%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 12 (0.59%) DbUnit
15 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
16 11 (0.54%) Gradle
16 11 (0.54%) jMock
General
1 413 (20.33%) Social Skills
2 296 (14.57%) Finance
3 214 (10.54%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (9.75%) Public Sector
5 143 (7.04%) Banking
6 77 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.87%) Military
8 33 (1.62%) Telecoms
9 32 (1.58%) Front Office
10 27 (1.33%) Investment Banking
11 24 (1.18%) Legal
12 23 (1.13%) Aerospace
12 23 (1.13%) Retail
13 21 (1.03%) Law
14 19 (0.94%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.79%) Financial Institution
16 16 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 11 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
17 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 295 (14.52%) Senior
2 216 (10.64%) Linux Engineer
3 197 (9.70%) Developer
4 186 (9.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 172 (8.47%) DevOps Engineer
6 115 (5.66%) Software Engineer
7 103 (5.07%) Architect
8 91 (4.48%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (4.09%) Analyst
10 78 (3.84%) Java Developer
10 78 (3.84%) Lead
11 72 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
12 68 (3.35%) Consultant
13 66 (3.25%) Support Engineer
14 65 (3.20%) AWS Engineer
15 56 (2.76%) Administrator
15 56 (2.76%) Senior Developer
16 53 (2.61%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 51 (2.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 50 (2.46%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (5.51%) Kafka
2 108 (5.32%) REST
3 69 (3.40%) Elastic Stack
3 69 (3.40%) Middleware
4 55 (2.71%) Spring
5 53 (2.61%) .NET
6 51 (2.51%) RESTful
7 46 (2.26%) Spring Boot
8 44 (2.17%) Web Services
9 42 (2.07%) LDAP
10 39 (1.92%) Node.js
11 33 (1.62%) ActiveMQ
11 33 (1.62%) JSON
12 31 (1.53%) YAML
13 29 (1.43%) XML
14 27 (1.33%) SOAP
15 24 (1.18%) React
16 23 (1.13%) FastAPI
17 22 (1.08%) RabbitMQ
18 21 (1.03%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 132 (6.50%) Cloud Native
2 130 (6.40%) Data Centre
3 127 (6.25%) Onboarding
4 101 (4.97%) Linux Command Line
5 96 (4.73%) PKI
6 87 (4.28%) Distributed Systems
7 80 (3.94%) Replication
8 70 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
9 65 (3.20%) Public Cloud
10 60 (2.95%) Management Information System
11 57 (2.81%) Security Posture
12 50 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.77%) Product Ownership
14 34 (1.67%) Embedded Systems
15 33 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
16 32 (1.58%) Clustering
17 30 (1.48%) Operational Technology
18 28 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
19 26 (1.28%) Enterprise Storage
20 25 (1.23%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 777 (38.26%) Windows
2 424 (20.88%) Unix
3 342 (16.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 227 (11.18%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.47%) Ubuntu
6 70 (3.45%) AIX
7 58 (2.86%) Solaris
8 44 (2.17%) CentOS
9 34 (1.67%) Embedded Linux
10 25 (1.23%) SUSE
10 25 (1.23%) VMS
11 24 (1.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
13 18 (0.89%) Rocky
13 18 (0.89%) Windows 10
14 17 (0.84%) Mac OS
15 16 (0.79%) Android
16 15 (0.74%) Debian
17 14 (0.69%) Mac OS X
17 14 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 580 (28.56%) CI/CD
2 503 (24.77%) DevOps
3 379 (18.66%) Infrastructure as Code
4 365 (17.97%) Agile
5 302 (14.87%) Problem-Solving
6 270 (13.29%) Containerisation
7 266 (13.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 239 (11.77%) Migration
9 218 (10.73%) Continuous Improvement
10 206 (10.14%) Software Engineering
11 201 (9.90%) High Availability
11 201 (9.90%) Observability
12 195 (9.60%) Platform Engineering
13 185 (9.11%) Root Cause Analysis
14 174 (8.57%) Performance Tuning
15 172 (8.47%) ITIL
16 161 (7.93%) SIEM
17 152 (7.48%) Test Automation
18 147 (7.24%) AI
19 140 (6.89%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 709 (34.91%) Python
2 386 (19.01%) Bash
3 384 (18.91%) PowerShell
4 352 (17.33%) SQL
5 248 (12.21%) Java
6 153 (7.53%) Shell Script
7 129 (6.35%) C++
8 90 (4.43%) JavaScript
9 74 (3.64%) C
10 72 (3.55%) C#
11 61 (3.00%) PL/SQL
12 57 (2.81%) Perl
13 47 (2.31%) Go
14 39 (1.92%) Bicep
15 22 (1.08%) Ada
16 21 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
17 20 (0.98%) Rust
18 18 (0.89%) Groovy
18 18 (0.89%) TypeScript
19 13 (0.64%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 795 (39.14%) Security Cleared
2 596 (29.35%) SC Cleared
3 224 (11.03%) DV Cleared
4 181 (8.91%) Degree
5 71 (3.50%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.95%) CISSP
8 57 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
9 51 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
10 47 (2.31%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.33%) RHCE
12 26 (1.28%) CCNP
12 26 (1.28%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
13 23 (1.13%) CCNA
14 19 (0.94%) CISM
15 18 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 13 (0.64%) RHCSA
17 13 (0.64%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.09%) NIST
2 78 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 60 (2.95%) QA
4 30 (1.48%) SLA
5 25 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.08%) NCSC
7 21 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.03%) GDPR
8 20 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.69%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.64%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.59%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.54%) GRC
13 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
14 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 15022
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 334 (16.45%) Docker
2 267 (13.15%) Active Directory
3 244 (12.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (4.38%) Hyper-V
5 82 (4.04%) Virtual Machines
5 82 (4.04%) vSphere
6 64 (3.15%) VMware NSX
7 63 (3.10%) VMware ESXi
8 42 (2.07%) NFS
9 40 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (1.77%) Firmware
11 30 (1.48%) KVM
12 18 (0.89%) Postfix
13 15 (0.74%) Ceph
14 12 (0.59%) GPFS
15 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
16 9 (0.44%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 459 (22.60%) Terraform
2 451 (22.21%) Ansible
3 419 (20.63%) Kubernetes
4 167 (8.22%) Grafana
5 144 (7.09%) Prometheus
6 81 (3.99%) Puppet
7 61 (3.00%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.56%) Oracle RMAN
9 42 (2.07%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 34 (1.67%) SCCM
12 31 (1.53%) Nagios
13 30 (1.48%) Packer
14 27 (1.33%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.33%) ZABBIX
15 25 (1.23%) Podman
16 24 (1.18%) NetBackup
16 24 (1.18%) VxRail
17 22 (1.08%) Argo
17 22 (1.08%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 341 (16.79%) VMware
2 309 (15.21%) Microsoft
3 302 (14.87%) Oracle
4 225 (11.08%) Red Hat
5 158 (7.78%) Splunk
6 129 (6.35%) Cisco
7 112 (5.51%) ServiceNow
8 99 (4.87%) IBM
9 84 (4.14%) CyberArk
10 73 (3.59%) Google
11 51 (2.51%) SolarWinds
12 49 (2.41%) BeyondTrust
13 48 (2.36%) Palo Alto
14 43 (2.12%) SAP
15 42 (2.07%) F5
16 40 (1.97%) NetApp
17 39 (1.92%) HP
18 33 (1.62%) Citrix
19 31 (1.53%) Dynatrace
20 29 (1.43%) Dell