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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,032 1,820 2,234
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.53% 5.74%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.37% 41.68% 40.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,269 1,135 1,446
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -5.20%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 57 121
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.02
% change year-on-year - -3.01% +7.23%

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 5,161 4,367 5,453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.66% 13.26% 14.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,265 2,793 3,610
10th Percentile £193 £200 £200
25th Percentile £320 £313 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £450 £473
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.91% +5.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 358 259 334
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.44
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% -31.80%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.15 £67.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.56 £45.00
% change year-on-year +18.17% -49.87% +63.64%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -24 1,719 £525 - 1,407
UK excluding London -16 1,210 £500 - 805
London -49 611 £550 -5.17% 700
Work from Home -30 541 £500 -4.76% 522
South East -3 349 £525 +3.19% 260
North of England -17 303 £500 - 151
South West +2 191 £550 -4.35% 119
North West -7 158 £500 +25.00% 92
Midlands -29 132 £473 -0.53% 74
Yorkshire -25 125 £500 -4.76% 31
West Midlands -34 111 £470 -3.59% 46
Scotland -24 110 £425 -15.00% 56
East of England -11 101 £479 -2.30% 134
Wales +10 29 £465 +64.60% 11
North East -19 27 £490 -14.78% 28
East Midlands -9 18 £513 +22.02% 28
Northern Ireland 0 2 - - 22

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 81 (3.99%) Confluence
2 51 (2.51%) Apache
3 29 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
3 29 (1.43%) nginx
4 24 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 20 (0.98%) WebLogic
6 19 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.94%) OpenStack
6 19 (0.94%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.89%) SAS
8 14 (0.69%) JBoss
9 12 (0.59%) SharePoint
10 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.44%) IIS
11 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
13 5 (0.25%) CICS
13 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
13 5 (0.25%) CMS
13 5 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 20 (0.98%) 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%) 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 E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
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%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 604 (29.72%) AWS
2 492 (24.21%) Azure
3 157 (7.73%) GCP
4 156 (7.68%) GitHub
5 103 (5.07%) OpenShift
6 93 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
7 91 (4.48%) Amazon S3
8 88 (4.33%) Entra ID
9 87 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
10 85 (4.18%) Amazon EC2
11 63 (3.10%) Serverless
12 62 (3.05%) Amazon EKS
13 59 (2.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 56 (2.76%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (2.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 54 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
16 54 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
17 52 (2.56%) IaaS
18 39 (1.92%) SaaS
19 38 (1.87%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 223 (10.97%) Firewall
2 215 (10.58%) DNS
3 136 (6.69%) TCP/IP
4 110 (5.41%) DHCP
5 82 (4.04%) VPN
6 74 (3.64%) SAN
7 72 (3.54%) Network Security
8 50 (2.46%) SSL
9 48 (2.36%) WAN
10 47 (2.31%) VSAN
11 40 (1.97%) HTTP
12 39 (1.92%) LAN
13 37 (1.82%) SSH
14 35 (1.72%) VLAN
15 31 (1.53%) SNMP
16 22 (1.08%) NAS
17 20 (0.98%) Ethernet
17 20 (0.98%) IPsec
18 19 (0.94%) HTTPS
18 19 (0.94%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (6.00%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
3 94 (4.63%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.35%) MySQL
5 64 (3.15%) Relational Database
6 59 (2.90%) MongoDB
7 54 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
8 38 (1.87%) Amazon Aurora
9 36 (1.77%) Elasticsearch
9 36 (1.77%) NoSQL
10 30 (1.48%) RDBMS
11 27 (1.33%) Data Warehouse
12 26 (1.28%) DynamoDB
13 24 (1.18%) Big Data
14 21 (1.03%) SAP HANA
15 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.84%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.84%) Power BI
16 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.79%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 222 (10.93%) Jenkins
2 217 (10.68%) Git
3 183 (9.01%) GitLab
4 144 (7.09%) JIRA
5 40 (1.97%) Maven
6 32 (1.57%) SonarQube
7 30 (1.48%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.33%) Mockito
9 26 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.03%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.03%) Eclipse
11 16 (0.79%) JUnit
11 16 (0.79%) Selenium
12 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.64%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 12 (0.59%) DbUnit
14 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
15 11 (0.54%) Gradle
15 11 (0.54%) jMock
General
1 418 (20.57%) Social Skills
2 295 (14.52%) Finance
3 222 (10.93%) Analytical Skills
4 189 (9.30%) Public Sector
5 146 (7.19%) Banking
6 76 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.72%) Front Office
7 35 (1.72%) Military
8 34 (1.67%) Telecoms
9 30 (1.48%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.28%) Legal
11 24 (1.18%) Aerospace
12 23 (1.13%) Retail
13 20 (0.98%) Law
13 20 (0.98%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
16 15 (0.74%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
18 8 (0.39%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 293 (14.42%) Senior
2 220 (10.83%) Linux Engineer
3 186 (9.15%) Developer
3 186 (9.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 171 (8.42%) DevOps Engineer
5 117 (5.76%) Software Engineer
6 103 (5.07%) Architect
7 88 (4.33%) Platform Engineer
8 82 (4.04%) Analyst
9 81 (3.99%) Lead
10 73 (3.59%) Cloud Engineer
11 72 (3.54%) Consultant
12 68 (3.35%) Java Developer
12 68 (3.35%) Support Engineer
13 64 (3.15%) AWS Engineer
14 60 (2.95%) Administrator
15 53 (2.61%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 51 (2.51%) DBA
16 51 (2.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 51 (2.51%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (5.46%) Kafka
2 108 (5.31%) REST
3 69 (3.40%) Elastic Stack
3 69 (3.40%) Middleware
4 57 (2.81%) .NET
5 54 (2.66%) Spring
6 51 (2.51%) RESTful
7 45 (2.21%) Spring Boot
8 44 (2.17%) Web Services
9 42 (2.07%) LDAP
10 37 (1.82%) Node.js
11 35 (1.72%) JSON
12 32 (1.57%) YAML
13 31 (1.53%) XML
14 29 (1.43%) ActiveMQ
15 28 (1.38%) SOAP
16 22 (1.08%) RabbitMQ
16 22 (1.08%) React
17 21 (1.03%) ARM Templates
17 21 (1.03%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 134 (6.59%) Cloud Native
2 128 (6.30%) Data Centre
3 122 (6.00%) Onboarding
4 104 (5.12%) Linux Command Line
5 97 (4.77%) PKI
6 88 (4.33%) Distributed Systems
7 82 (4.04%) Replication
8 72 (3.54%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.15%) Public Cloud
10 58 (2.85%) Security Posture
11 57 (2.81%) Management Information System
12 48 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
13 37 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
14 35 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
15 34 (1.67%) Product Ownership
16 33 (1.62%) Clustering
17 31 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
17 31 (1.53%) Operational Technology
18 29 (1.43%) Private Cloud
19 27 (1.33%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 772 (37.99%) Windows
2 418 (20.57%) Unix
3 346 (17.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 223 (10.97%) Windows Server
5 109 (5.36%) Ubuntu
6 68 (3.35%) AIX
7 56 (2.76%) Solaris
8 44 (2.17%) CentOS
9 37 (1.82%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.28%) SUSE
11 25 (1.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (1.18%) VMS
13 19 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.89%) Rocky
14 18 (0.89%) Windows 10
15 17 (0.84%) Mac OS
16 16 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
17 15 (0.74%) Debian
18 14 (0.69%) Android
19 11 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 586 (28.84%) CI/CD
2 512 (25.20%) DevOps
3 385 (18.95%) Infrastructure as Code
4 365 (17.96%) Agile
5 303 (14.91%) Problem-Solving
6 271 (13.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 269 (13.24%) Containerisation
8 243 (11.96%) Migration
9 224 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 210 (10.33%) Software Engineering
11 204 (10.04%) High Availability
11 204 (10.04%) Observability
12 191 (9.40%) Platform Engineering
13 188 (9.25%) Root Cause Analysis
14 178 (8.76%) Performance Tuning
15 173 (8.51%) ITIL
16 157 (7.73%) SIEM
17 154 (7.58%) Test Automation
18 147 (7.23%) AI
18 147 (7.23%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 706 (34.74%) Python
2 387 (19.05%) Bash
3 383 (18.85%) PowerShell
4 361 (17.77%) SQL
5 245 (12.06%) Java
6 152 (7.48%) Shell Script
7 132 (6.50%) C++
8 90 (4.43%) JavaScript
9 78 (3.84%) C
10 72 (3.54%) C#
11 61 (3.00%) Perl
11 61 (3.00%) PL/SQL
12 47 (2.31%) Go
13 39 (1.92%) Bicep
14 21 (1.03%) Ada
14 21 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
15 19 (0.94%) Groovy
15 19 (0.94%) Rust
16 18 (0.89%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.64%) Scala
Qualifications
1 802 (39.47%) Security Cleared
2 599 (29.48%) SC Cleared
3 229 (11.27%) DV Cleared
4 171 (8.42%) Degree
5 72 (3.54%) AWS Certification
6 62 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.95%) CISSP
8 56 (2.76%) Cisco Certification
9 51 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
10 49 (2.41%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.33%) RHCE
12 25 (1.23%) CCNP
12 25 (1.23%) CompTIA Security+
12 25 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 22 (1.08%) CCNA
14 18 (0.89%) CISM
14 18 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 15 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.69%) ISTQB
17 13 (0.64%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (3.89%) NIST
2 72 (3.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 62 (3.05%) QA
4 31 (1.53%) SLA
5 25 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.13%) GDPR
6 23 (1.13%) NCSC
7 20 (0.98%) Disclosure Scotland
8 19 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.69%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.64%) HIPAA
10 13 (0.64%) ISO 20022
11 11 (0.54%) GRC
12 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.30%) ISO 15022
13 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
13 6 (0.30%) JSP 440
13 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 334 (16.44%) Docker
2 265 (13.04%) Active Directory
3 244 (12.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (4.33%) Hyper-V
5 83 (4.08%) vSphere
6 81 (3.99%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (3.20%) VMware NSX
8 61 (3.00%) VMware ESXi
9 42 (2.07%) NFS
10 40 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
11 36 (1.77%) Firmware
12 29 (1.43%) KVM
13 18 (0.89%) Postfix
14 14 (0.69%) Ceph
15 12 (0.59%) GPFS
15 12 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
16 10 (0.49%) Embedded Firmware
16 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 464 (22.83%) Terraform
2 445 (21.90%) Ansible
3 425 (20.92%) Kubernetes
4 167 (8.22%) Grafana
5 143 (7.04%) Prometheus
6 86 (4.23%) Puppet
7 65 (3.20%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.56%) Oracle RMAN
9 40 (1.97%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 36 (1.77%) SCCM
12 31 (1.53%) Nagios
13 29 (1.43%) Packer
14 27 (1.33%) ZABBIX
15 26 (1.28%) Red Hat Satellite
16 24 (1.18%) NetBackup
16 24 (1.18%) Podman
16 24 (1.18%) VxRail
17 23 (1.13%) Kibana
18 22 (1.08%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 339 (16.68%) VMware
2 314 (15.45%) Microsoft
3 301 (14.81%) Oracle
4 228 (11.22%) Red Hat
5 156 (7.68%) Splunk
6 127 (6.25%) Cisco
7 114 (5.61%) ServiceNow
8 100 (4.92%) IBM
9 80 (3.94%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.49%) Google
11 50 (2.46%) SolarWinds
12 48 (2.36%) Palo Alto
13 45 (2.21%) SAP
14 44 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
15 41 (2.02%) F5
16 39 (1.92%) NetApp
17 38 (1.87%) HP
18 33 (1.62%) Citrix
19 31 (1.53%) Dynatrace
19 31 (1.53%) Sybase