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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,115 1,835 2,153
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.58% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.47% 41.38% 39.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,313 1,107 1,313
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 73 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.59 £54.25 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.57%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.13 £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 5,359 4,434 5,454
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.82% 13.48% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,367 2,835 3,479
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £673 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 284 268
10th Percentile £14.21 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.45
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -49.70% +5.26%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.90 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -54.27% +19.88%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 1,783 £525 - 2,874
UK excluding London -21 1,209 £510 +2.00% 1,414
London -35 693 £525 -8.70% 1,529
Work from Home -27 558 £500 -4.76% 1,006
South East -15 342 £525 +10.53% 403
North of England -20 288 £500 +5.26% 192
South West +4 186 £575 +4.55% 261
North West -13 144 £497 +23.63% 115
Scotland -17 132 £450 -10.00% 80
Midlands -45 124 £471 -5.75% 143
East of England -8 119 £491 - 274
Yorkshire -32 118 £518 +3.50% 39
West Midlands -45 105 £471 -5.75% 98
North East -16 34 £475 -11.63% 38
Wales +10 27 £465 +3.33% 24
East Midlands -13 16 £481 +14.52% 45
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 52

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 65 (3.07%) Confluence
2 44 (2.08%) Apache
3 32 (1.51%) nginx
4 26 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.18%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
6 24 (1.13%) SharePoint
7 21 (0.99%) Apache Spark
7 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
8 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 17 (0.80%) SAS
10 15 (0.71%) JBoss
11 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
12 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.47%) IIS
14 6 (0.28%) CMS
14 6 (0.28%) MTS
14 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 613 (28.98%) AWS
2 521 (24.63%) Azure
3 188 (8.89%) GCP
4 160 (7.57%) GitHub
5 110 (5.20%) OpenShift
6 109 (5.15%) Entra ID
7 100 (4.73%) GitHub Actions
8 93 (4.40%) Amazon S3
9 92 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
10 84 (3.97%) Amazon EC2
11 72 (3.40%) Serverless
12 66 (3.12%) AWS CloudFormation
13 65 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (3.03%) Microsoft 365
15 62 (2.93%) Amazon EKS
16 59 (2.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 54 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 50 (2.36%) IaaS
19 45 (2.13%) Datadog
20 44 (2.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 227 (10.73%) DNS
2 222 (10.50%) Firewall
3 163 (7.71%) TCP/IP
4 130 (6.15%) DHCP
5 88 (4.16%) VPN
6 87 (4.11%) Network Security
7 79 (3.74%) SAN
8 52 (2.46%) SSL
9 51 (2.41%) WAN
10 46 (2.17%) HTTP
11 43 (2.03%) SSH
12 41 (1.94%) VLAN
13 36 (1.70%) LAN
13 36 (1.70%) VSAN
14 28 (1.32%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.23%) BGP
16 24 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
16 24 (1.13%) Wireless
17 23 (1.09%) SNMP
18 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.58%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.20%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.87%) Oracle Database
4 71 (3.36%) Relational Database
5 63 (2.98%) MySQL
6 56 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
7 50 (2.36%) MongoDB
8 45 (2.13%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.65%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
11 28 (1.32%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.28%) Big Data
13 23 (1.09%) DynamoDB
14 21 (0.99%) Power BI
15 20 (0.95%) Data Lake
16 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 11g
16 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
17 18 (0.85%) Redis
Development Applications
1 277 (13.10%) Git
2 246 (11.63%) Jenkins
3 217 (10.26%) GitLab
4 158 (7.47%) JIRA
5 37 (1.75%) Maven
5 37 (1.75%) SonarQube
6 33 (1.56%) Bitbucket
7 26 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
8 25 (1.18%) Artifactory
9 24 (1.13%) Selenium
10 23 (1.09%) Mockito
11 19 (0.90%) JUnit
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.80%) Gradle
14 15 (0.71%) Cucumber
15 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
16 12 (0.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
18 10 (0.47%) Rational Rhapsody
19 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 451 (21.32%) Social Skills
2 321 (15.18%) Finance
3 252 (11.91%) Analytical Skills
4 170 (8.04%) Public Sector
5 167 (7.90%) Banking
6 91 (4.30%) Documentation Skills
7 51 (2.41%) Telecoms
8 39 (1.84%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.61%) Military
10 33 (1.56%) Front Office
11 30 (1.42%) Legal
12 29 (1.37%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (0.99%) Law
15 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.80%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.47%) Aviation
18 9 (0.43%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 321 (15.18%) Senior
2 247 (11.68%) Linux Engineer
3 213 (10.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 193 (9.13%) Developer
5 185 (8.75%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (5.01%) Architect
7 103 (4.87%) Platform Engineer
8 102 (4.82%) Software Engineer
9 83 (3.92%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.83%) Support Engineer
11 76 (3.59%) Analyst
11 76 (3.59%) Lead
12 73 (3.45%) Consultant
13 70 (3.31%) Java Developer
14 68 (3.22%) AWS Engineer
14 68 (3.22%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 67 (3.17%) Administrator
16 59 (2.79%) Systems Engineer
17 58 (2.74%) Network Engineer
18 52 (2.46%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 502 (23.74%) Terraform
2 139 (6.57%) Kafka
3 124 (5.86%) REST
4 80 (3.78%) Middleware
5 73 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
6 68 (3.22%) .NET
7 56 (2.65%) Spring
8 54 (2.55%) RESTful
9 51 (2.41%) Spring Boot
10 46 (2.17%) Web Services
11 45 (2.13%) LDAP
12 38 (1.80%) JSON
13 35 (1.65%) XML
14 33 (1.56%) SOAP
15 32 (1.51%) HTML
16 30 (1.42%) YAML
17 29 (1.37%) Node.js
18 28 (1.32%) Flask
18 28 (1.32%) Keycloak
18 28 (1.32%) React
Miscellaneous
1 154 (7.28%) Onboarding
2 139 (6.57%) Cloud Native
3 134 (6.34%) Data Centre
4 111 (5.25%) PKI
5 109 (5.15%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.40%) Replication
7 86 (4.07%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.36%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.17%) Management Information System
9 67 (3.17%) Public Cloud
10 48 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
10 48 (2.27%) Security Posture
11 41 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
12 40 (1.89%) Embedded Systems
12 40 (1.89%) Operational Technology
12 40 (1.89%) Private Cloud
13 39 (1.84%) Clustering
14 36 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
14 36 (1.70%) Enterprise Storage
14 36 (1.70%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 800 (37.83%) Windows
2 439 (20.76%) Unix
3 374 (17.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 253 (11.96%) Windows Server
5 113 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 62 (2.93%) CentOS
7 58 (2.74%) AIX
8 56 (2.65%) Solaris
9 38 (1.80%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.47%) VMS
11 30 (1.42%) SUSE
11 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
12 21 (0.99%) Rocky
13 19 (0.90%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.71%) Debian
15 15 (0.71%) Oracle Linux
15 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
16 13 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 645 (30.50%) CI/CD
2 556 (26.29%) DevOps
3 446 (21.09%) Infrastructure as Code
4 386 (18.25%) Agile
5 336 (15.89%) Problem-Solving
6 325 (15.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 298 (14.09%) Containerisation
8 255 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
9 244 (11.54%) Observability
10 236 (11.16%) Platform Engineering
11 235 (11.11%) Migration
12 213 (10.07%) Software Engineering
13 211 (9.98%) Root Cause Analysis
14 200 (9.46%) High Availability
15 177 (8.37%) Configuration Management
16 175 (8.27%) Test Automation
17 172 (8.13%) ITIL
18 171 (8.09%) Performance Tuning
19 163 (7.71%) Stakeholder Management
20 160 (7.57%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 757 (35.79%) Python
2 430 (20.33%) Bash
3 406 (19.20%) PowerShell
4 372 (17.59%) SQL
5 251 (11.87%) Java
6 152 (7.19%) Shell Script
7 122 (5.77%) C++
8 79 (3.74%) Perl
9 78 (3.69%) C#
10 77 (3.64%) JavaScript
11 74 (3.50%) C
12 64 (3.03%) PL/SQL
13 58 (2.74%) Go
14 41 (1.94%) Bicep
15 29 (1.37%) Groovy
16 22 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.85%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.76%) Ada
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Korn
Qualifications
1 812 (38.39%) Security Cleared
2 575 (27.19%) SC Cleared
3 252 (11.91%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.61%) Degree
5 73 (3.45%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (2.84%) CISSP
7 59 (2.79%) Azure Certification
8 58 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
9 57 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
10 27 (1.28%) CISM
11 25 (1.18%) RHCE
12 24 (1.13%) CCNP
13 21 (0.99%) CCNA
13 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
14 19 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
16 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
18 14 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (3.74%) NIST
2 74 (3.50%) QA
3 73 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.51%) SLA
5 24 (1.13%) Data Quality
6 21 (0.99%) GDPR
7 19 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
8 18 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.76%) GRC
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.76%) NCSC
10 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.47%) ISO 31000
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 368 (17.40%) Docker
2 283 (13.38%) Active Directory
3 245 (11.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (4.16%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.07%) vSphere
6 75 (3.55%) VMware ESXi
7 73 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
8 59 (2.79%) VMware NSX
9 43 (2.03%) Firmware
10 39 (1.84%) Oracle RAC
11 34 (1.61%) NFS
12 26 (1.23%) KVM
13 22 (1.04%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.66%) Ceph
14 14 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.66%) Postfix
15 13 (0.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.52%) GPFS
17 8 (0.38%) Squid
18 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 467 (22.08%) Ansible
2 466 (22.03%) Kubernetes
3 190 (8.98%) Grafana
4 171 (8.09%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.21%) Puppet
6 60 (2.84%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.46%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.27%) SCCM
9 40 (1.89%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.84%) vCenter Server
11 31 (1.47%) Kibana
12 30 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
12 30 (1.42%) Nagios
12 30 (1.42%) VxRail
13 28 (1.32%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.23%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.23%) Podman
15 25 (1.18%) Packer
16 22 (1.04%) Istio
17 21 (0.99%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 352 (16.64%) VMware
2 343 (16.22%) Microsoft
3 295 (13.95%) Oracle
4 229 (10.83%) Red Hat
5 172 (8.13%) Splunk
6 126 (5.96%) Cisco
7 112 (5.30%) ServiceNow
8 93 (4.40%) IBM
9 89 (4.21%) Google
10 80 (3.78%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.27%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.17%) NetApp
13 45 (2.13%) BeyondTrust
14 41 (1.94%) Dell
14 41 (1.94%) F5
14 41 (1.94%) Palo Alto
15 36 (1.70%) SAP
16 34 (1.61%) Dynatrace
17 31 (1.47%) HP
17 31 (1.47%) Tenable