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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 31 33
Rank change year-on-year -21 +2 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,878 1,717 2,235
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.85% 5.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.64% 41.88% 38.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,148 1,110 1,462
10th Percentile £345 £375 £340
25th Percentile £413 £432 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% -0.74% -6.09%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -1.80% -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 36 123
10th Percentile £35.18 £45.16 £46.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £54.38 £55.63
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £70.44 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -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 4,738 4,100 5,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.57% 13.96% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,015 2,690 3,912
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £315 £313 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £465 £470
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% -1.12% -5.95%
75th Percentile £574 £585 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 194 409
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.15 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.33 £15.50
Median hourly rate £31.75 £21.95 £22.52
Median % change year-on-year +44.65% -2.53% -50.02%
75th Percentile £63.75 £41.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.48 £18.87 £24.18
% change year-on-year +56.23% -21.96% -40.43%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 -28 1,575 £510 -7.27% 721
UK excluding London -17 1,126 £491 -1.80% 582
London -54 546 £530 -7.83% 200
Work from Home -36 479 £500 -3.85% 316
South East -6 302 £513 -2.38% 205
North of England -12 291 £475 -9.52% 93
South West -3 163 £538 -10.42% 114
Yorkshire -22 149 £500 -6.98% 21
Midlands -24 145 £475 -5.00% 55
North West -17 128 £466 +1.58% 55
West Midlands -19 124 £471 -5.85% 30
Scotland -23 99 £500 +5.26% 24
East of England -13 94 £475 +0.53% 84
Wales +2 26 £465 -20.65% 16
East Midlands -27 18 £530 +17.78% 25
North East -18 14 £446 -6.54% 17
Northern Ireland +4 12 £425 +30.77% 6

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 84 (4.47%) Confluence
2 48 (2.56%) Apache
3 31 (1.65%) nginx
4 26 (1.38%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.17%) Tomcat
6 20 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.96%) WebLogic
8 16 (0.85%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.64%) SAS
9 12 (0.64%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.59%) CICS
10 11 (0.59%) OpenStack
11 9 (0.48%) NetWeaver
12 8 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.37%) IIS
13 7 (0.37%) JBoss
13 7 (0.37%) SharePoint
14 6 (0.32%) TPMS
14 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.27%) CMS
Applications
1 19 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
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 ERP
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 533 (28.38%) AWS
2 381 (20.29%) Azure
3 159 (8.47%) GitHub
4 121 (6.44%) GCP
5 104 (5.54%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.85%) GitHub Actions
7 80 (4.26%) Amazon S3
8 78 (4.15%) Amazon EC2
9 66 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
10 65 (3.46%) Amazon EKS
11 60 (3.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 56 (2.98%) Serverless
13 52 (2.77%) Entra ID
14 47 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
14 47 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
15 45 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
16 44 (2.34%) IaaS
17 43 (2.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 42 (2.24%) PaaS
19 36 (1.92%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 184 (9.80%) Firewall
2 145 (7.72%) DNS
3 93 (4.95%) TCP/IP
4 79 (4.21%) VPN
5 66 (3.51%) SAN
6 65 (3.46%) Network Security
7 52 (2.77%) DHCP
8 48 (2.56%) WAN
9 40 (2.13%) LAN
10 38 (2.02%) SSL
11 36 (1.92%) SNMP
12 31 (1.65%) SSH
12 31 (1.65%) VSAN
13 28 (1.49%) HTTP
14 26 (1.38%) NAS
15 23 (1.22%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.17%) VLAN
17 19 (1.01%) BGP
17 19 (1.01%) IPsec
18 17 (0.91%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (6.07%) SQL Server
2 109 (5.80%) PostgreSQL
3 72 (3.83%) Oracle Database
4 71 (3.78%) MySQL
5 63 (3.35%) MongoDB
6 62 (3.30%) Relational Database
7 48 (2.56%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (1.97%) Amazon Aurora
10 26 (1.38%) DynamoDB
10 26 (1.38%) NoSQL
11 20 (1.06%) SAP HANA
12 19 (1.01%) Big Data
13 18 (0.96%) Data Warehouse
14 17 (0.91%) Db2
14 17 (0.91%) KDB
15 15 (0.80%) RDBMS
16 14 (0.75%) Kdb+
16 14 (0.75%) Power BI
16 14 (0.75%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 209 (11.13%) Jenkins
2 175 (9.32%) GitLab
3 161 (8.57%) Git
4 147 (7.83%) JIRA
5 31 (1.65%) Maven
6 29 (1.54%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.38%) Mockito
8 22 (1.17%) Eclipse
9 20 (1.06%) JUnit
10 19 (1.01%) Bitbucket
11 18 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.85%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.75%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.75%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.75%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.69%) jMock
15 12 (0.64%) Jaeger
16 11 (0.59%) Bitbucket Server
17 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 9 (0.48%) Cucumber
General
1 384 (20.45%) Social Skills
2 269 (14.32%) Finance
3 197 (10.49%) Public Sector
4 158 (8.41%) Analytical Skills
5 128 (6.82%) Banking
6 80 (4.26%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (2.24%) Military
8 25 (1.33%) Front Office
9 23 (1.22%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.22%) Investment Banking
9 23 (1.22%) Law
9 23 (1.22%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.17%) Financial Institution
10 22 (1.17%) Retail
11 20 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 17 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (0.91%) Legal
14 15 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 12 (0.64%) Police
Job Titles
1 244 (12.99%) Senior
2 193 (10.28%) Developer
3 183 (9.74%) Linux Engineer
4 175 (9.32%) DevOps Engineer
5 131 (6.98%) Software Engineer
6 129 (6.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 103 (5.48%) Analyst
8 98 (5.22%) Architect
9 95 (5.06%) Lead
10 74 (3.94%) Java Developer
11 70 (3.73%) AWS Engineer
12 69 (3.67%) Administrator
13 64 (3.41%) Consultant
14 56 (2.98%) Platform Engineer
15 53 (2.82%) Security Engineer
15 53 (2.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 51 (2.72%) Support Engineer
17 50 (2.66%) AWS DevOps
18 47 (2.50%) AWS DevOps Engineer
19 46 (2.45%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (4.69%) Kafka
2 80 (4.26%) REST
3 76 (4.05%) Middleware
4 65 (3.46%) Elastic Stack
5 52 (2.77%) Spring Boot
6 51 (2.72%) Spring
7 48 (2.56%) LDAP
8 46 (2.45%) Web Services
9 44 (2.34%) Node.js
10 43 (2.29%) RESTful
11 40 (2.13%) .NET
12 30 (1.60%) YAML
13 26 (1.38%) AngularJS
13 26 (1.38%) SOAP
14 25 (1.33%) ActiveMQ
14 25 (1.33%) JSON
14 25 (1.33%) XML
15 20 (1.06%) Flash
15 20 (1.06%) React
16 18 (0.96%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 151 (8.04%) Data Centre
2 104 (5.54%) Cloud Native
3 81 (4.31%) Onboarding
4 76 (4.05%) Linux Command Line
5 73 (3.89%) Management Information System
6 68 (3.62%) PKI
7 67 (3.57%) Distributed Systems
8 59 (3.14%) Replication
9 47 (2.50%) Hybrid Cloud
9 47 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (2.50%) Public Cloud
10 46 (2.45%) Security Posture
11 36 (1.92%) Product Ownership
12 31 (1.65%) Enterprise Storage
13 30 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
13 30 (1.60%) Security Operations Centre
14 29 (1.54%) Embedded Systems
15 26 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
16 25 (1.33%) Operational Technology
17 24 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 727 (38.71%) Windows
2 379 (20.18%) Unix
3 292 (15.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 187 (9.96%) Windows Server
5 98 (5.22%) Ubuntu
6 55 (2.93%) AIX
7 49 (2.61%) Solaris
8 42 (2.24%) CentOS
9 33 (1.76%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.49%) VMS
11 24 (1.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (1.12%) Android
12 21 (1.12%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (1.01%) Debian
14 18 (0.96%) Mac OS
15 15 (0.80%) SUSE
16 13 (0.69%) Windows 10
17 12 (0.64%) Mac OS X
17 12 (0.64%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.59%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 515 (27.42%) CI/CD
2 449 (23.91%) DevOps
3 354 (18.85%) Agile
4 282 (15.02%) Problem-Solving
5 280 (14.91%) Infrastructure as Code
6 233 (12.41%) Containerisation
7 201 (10.70%) Software Engineering
8 188 (10.01%) Migration
9 185 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 177 (9.42%) Observability
11 156 (8.31%) Continuous Improvement
12 154 (8.20%) High Availability
13 153 (8.15%) Performance Tuning
14 151 (8.04%) SIEM
15 145 (7.72%) Root Cause Analysis
16 137 (7.29%) ITIL
17 131 (6.98%) Cybersecurity
18 130 (6.92%) Test Automation
19 127 (6.76%) Computer Science
19 127 (6.76%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 616 (32.80%) Python
2 321 (17.09%) SQL
3 281 (14.96%) PowerShell
4 277 (14.75%) Bash
5 250 (13.31%) Java
6 148 (7.88%) Shell Script
7 121 (6.44%) C++
8 94 (5.01%) JavaScript
9 63 (3.35%) Perl
10 60 (3.19%) C#
11 57 (3.04%) C
12 51 (2.72%) PL/SQL
13 48 (2.56%) Go
14 22 (1.17%) Rust
14 22 (1.17%) TypeScript
15 21 (1.12%) Ada
16 20 (1.06%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.01%) Ruby
17 19 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
18 15 (0.80%) PHP
Qualifications
1 730 (38.87%) Security Cleared
2 542 (28.86%) SC Cleared
3 205 (10.92%) DV Cleared
4 191 (10.17%) Degree
5 69 (3.67%) Computer Science Degree
6 68 (3.62%) BPSS Clearance
7 63 (3.35%) AWS Certification
8 57 (3.04%) CISSP
9 54 (2.88%) Cisco Certification
10 45 (2.40%) CompTIA Security+
11 38 (2.02%) Azure Certification
12 34 (1.81%) RHCE
13 25 (1.33%) CCNP
14 23 (1.22%) CCNA
15 21 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
16 20 (1.06%) CISM
17 19 (1.01%) CompTIA CySA+
18 15 (0.80%) GIAC
18 15 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
19 14 (0.75%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.74%) NIST
2 78 (4.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (3.04%) QA
4 49 (2.61%) SLA
5 27 (1.44%) Cyber Essentials
6 25 (1.33%) GDPR
7 22 (1.17%) NCSC
8 17 (0.91%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.75%) Disclosure Scotland
10 12 (0.64%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
13 9 (0.48%) GRC
14 8 (0.43%) SOC 2
15 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.32%) GLBA
16 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
17 5 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 5 (0.27%) DICOM
17 5 (0.27%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 308 (16.40%) Docker
2 222 (11.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 198 (10.54%) Active Directory
4 77 (4.10%) Virtual Machines
5 66 (3.51%) Hyper-V
6 65 (3.46%) vSphere
7 63 (3.35%) VMware ESXi
8 52 (2.77%) NFS
9 48 (2.56%) VMware NSX
10 38 (2.02%) Firmware
11 29 (1.54%) KVM
12 24 (1.28%) Oracle RAC
13 21 (1.12%) GPFS
13 21 (1.12%) Postfix
14 12 (0.64%) Ceph
14 12 (0.64%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.43%) BitLocker
16 8 (0.43%) Squid
17 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 387 (20.61%) Ansible
2 362 (19.28%) Kubernetes
3 344 (18.32%) Terraform
4 168 (8.95%) Grafana
5 139 (7.40%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.83%) Puppet
7 49 (2.61%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.18%) vCenter Server
9 35 (1.86%) Oracle RMAN
10 29 (1.54%) Podman
10 29 (1.54%) Red Hat Satellite
11 26 (1.38%) Packer
12 25 (1.33%) Nagios
13 24 (1.28%) vRealize
13 24 (1.28%) ZABBIX
14 23 (1.22%) Kibana
15 22 (1.17%) Tivoli
16 21 (1.12%) Argo
16 21 (1.12%) Data Guard
17 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 299 (15.92%) VMware
2 274 (14.59%) Oracle
3 248 (13.21%) Microsoft
4 219 (11.66%) Red Hat
5 176 (9.37%) Splunk
6 119 (6.34%) Cisco
7 102 (5.43%) IBM
8 86 (4.58%) ServiceNow
9 54 (2.88%) Palo Alto
10 53 (2.82%) CyberArk
11 51 (2.72%) Google
12 38 (2.02%) F5
13 37 (1.97%) SolarWinds
14 36 (1.92%) SAP
15 34 (1.81%) Citrix
15 34 (1.81%) Dell
16 33 (1.76%) BeyondTrust
16 33 (1.76%) NVIDIA
17 32 (1.70%) HP
18 27 (1.44%) Sybase