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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,125 1,820 2,108
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.57% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.57% 41.26% 39.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,323 1,092 1,279
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £614 £633 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.60% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 74 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £53.73 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +10.80%
75th Percentile £69.63 £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% +4.85%

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 5,370 4,411 5,321
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.49% 14.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,375 2,811 3,378
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £326
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 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 408 290 256
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.50 £16.13
25th Percentile £17.44 £18.87 £21.66
Median hourly rate £27.33 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.67% -53.43% +15.66%
75th Percentile £65.42 £57.50 £69.77
90th Percentile £74.78 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £57.25
% change year-on-year +29.22% -56.07% +24.78%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -21 1,790 £525 - 2,458
UK excluding London -21 1,210 £508 +1.60% 1,459
London -30 702 £525 -8.70% 1,043
Work from Home -25 562 £500 -4.76% 971
South East -17 337 £525 +10.53% 416
North of England -23 289 £500 +5.26% 218
South West +1 186 £575 +4.55% 276
North West -9 144 £497 +23.63% 134
Scotland -13 135 £450 -10.00% 81
Midlands -46 125 £475 -5.00% 164
East of England -12 120 £479 -2.54% 238
Yorkshire -31 118 £518 +3.50% 48
West Midlands -36 108 £475 -5.00% 115
North East -10 35 £480 -10.70% 37
Wales +9 27 £465 +3.33% 23
East Midlands -16 14 £481 +14.52% 49
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 59

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 64 (3.01%) Confluence
2 44 (2.07%) Apache
3 33 (1.55%) nginx
4 27 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.18%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
6 24 (1.13%) SharePoint
7 22 (1.04%) Apache Spark
8 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
9 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 16 (0.75%) SAS
11 15 (0.71%) JBoss
12 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
13 12 (0.56%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.52%) IIS
15 6 (0.28%) CMS
15 6 (0.28%) MTS
15 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.42%) 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 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.094%) 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 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 618 (29.08%) AWS
2 523 (24.61%) Azure
3 191 (8.99%) GCP
4 161 (7.58%) GitHub
5 111 (5.22%) Entra ID
5 111 (5.22%) OpenShift
6 101 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
7 94 (4.42%) Amazon S3
8 91 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
9 83 (3.91%) Amazon EC2
10 73 (3.44%) Serverless
11 67 (3.15%) AWS CloudFormation
12 66 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
14 63 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
15 61 (2.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 54 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.35%) IaaS
18 44 (2.07%) Datadog
18 44 (2.07%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 229 (10.78%) DNS
2 223 (10.49%) Firewall
3 164 (7.72%) TCP/IP
4 131 (6.16%) DHCP
5 90 (4.24%) VPN
6 88 (4.14%) Network Security
7 79 (3.72%) SAN
8 54 (2.54%) SSL
9 50 (2.35%) WAN
10 46 (2.16%) HTTP
11 44 (2.07%) SSH
12 41 (1.93%) VLAN
13 35 (1.65%) LAN
13 35 (1.65%) VSAN
14 28 (1.32%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.22%) BGP
16 25 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
16 25 (1.18%) Wireless
17 23 (1.08%) SNMP
18 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.18%) SQL Server
3 104 (4.89%) Oracle Database
4 73 (3.44%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.06%) MySQL
6 56 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
7 52 (2.45%) MongoDB
8 46 (2.16%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.65%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
10 28 (1.32%) RDBMS
11 27 (1.27%) Big Data
12 23 (1.08%) DynamoDB
13 21 (0.99%) Data Lake
13 21 (0.99%) Power BI
14 19 (0.89%) Oracle Database 11g
14 19 (0.89%) Oracle Database 12c
14 19 (0.89%) Redis
15 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 280 (13.18%) Git
2 248 (11.67%) Jenkins
3 223 (10.49%) GitLab
4 157 (7.39%) JIRA
5 38 (1.79%) Maven
6 36 (1.69%) SonarQube
7 31 (1.46%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.13%) Artifactory
9 24 (1.13%) Mockito
9 24 (1.13%) Selenium
10 20 (0.94%) JUnit
11 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
11 18 (0.85%) Gradle
12 16 (0.75%) Cucumber
13 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 9 (0.42%) JMeter
16 9 (0.42%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 455 (21.41%) Social Skills
2 328 (15.44%) Finance
3 251 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.19%) Public Sector
5 170 (8.00%) Banking
6 91 (4.28%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.45%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.79%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.60%) Front Office
9 34 (1.60%) Military
10 30 (1.41%) Legal
11 29 (1.36%) Aerospace
12 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 21 (0.99%) Law
14 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.80%) Retail
15 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.47%) Aviation
16 10 (0.47%) Financial Institution
17 9 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 321 (15.11%) Senior
2 241 (11.34%) Linux Engineer
3 215 (10.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 197 (9.27%) Developer
5 184 (8.66%) DevOps Engineer
6 104 (4.89%) Architect
7 103 (4.85%) Software Engineer
8 102 (4.80%) Platform Engineer
9 81 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
9 81 (3.81%) Support Engineer
10 77 (3.62%) Lead
11 75 (3.53%) Analyst
12 74 (3.48%) Consultant
12 74 (3.48%) Java Developer
13 69 (3.25%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 67 (3.15%) AWS Engineer
15 66 (3.11%) Administrator
16 59 (2.78%) Systems Engineer
17 58 (2.73%) Network Engineer
18 53 (2.49%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 508 (23.91%) Terraform
2 143 (6.73%) Kafka
3 128 (6.02%) REST
4 82 (3.86%) Middleware
5 73 (3.44%) Elastic Stack
6 68 (3.20%) .NET
7 58 (2.73%) Spring
8 55 (2.59%) RESTful
9 52 (2.45%) Spring Boot
10 47 (2.21%) Web Services
11 46 (2.16%) LDAP
12 39 (1.84%) JSON
13 37 (1.74%) XML
14 34 (1.60%) SOAP
15 33 (1.55%) HTML
16 30 (1.41%) Keycloak
16 30 (1.41%) Node.js
16 30 (1.41%) React
16 30 (1.41%) YAML
17 29 (1.36%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 157 (7.39%) Onboarding
2 139 (6.54%) Cloud Native
3 136 (6.40%) Data Centre
4 111 (5.22%) PKI
5 108 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.38%) Replication
7 89 (4.19%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.15%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.06%) Public Cloud
11 49 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
12 48 (2.26%) Security Posture
13 42 (1.98%) Private Cloud
14 41 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
14 41 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.88%) Operational Technology
16 39 (1.84%) Clustering
17 37 (1.74%) Product Ownership
18 36 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
18 36 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 805 (37.88%) Windows
2 442 (20.80%) Unix
3 377 (17.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 256 (12.05%) Windows Server
5 113 (5.32%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.01%) CentOS
7 60 (2.82%) AIX
8 58 (2.73%) Solaris
9 39 (1.84%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.46%) VMS
10 31 (1.46%) Windows 10
11 30 (1.41%) SUSE
12 21 (0.99%) Rocky
13 19 (0.89%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
15 16 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.71%) Debian
16 15 (0.71%) Oracle Linux
16 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.56%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 652 (30.68%) CI/CD
2 558 (26.26%) DevOps
3 454 (21.36%) Infrastructure as Code
4 390 (18.35%) Agile
5 340 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
6 328 (15.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 300 (14.12%) Containerisation
8 258 (12.14%) Continuous Improvement
9 248 (11.67%) Observability
10 239 (11.25%) Migration
11 236 (11.11%) Platform Engineering
12 217 (10.21%) Software Engineering
13 214 (10.07%) Root Cause Analysis
14 202 (9.51%) High Availability
15 184 (8.66%) Configuration Management
16 180 (8.47%) Test Automation
17 178 (8.38%) ITIL
18 172 (8.09%) Performance Tuning
19 169 (7.95%) Stakeholder Management
20 163 (7.67%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 767 (36.09%) Python
2 435 (20.47%) Bash
3 411 (19.34%) PowerShell
4 377 (17.74%) SQL
5 254 (11.95%) Java
6 154 (7.25%) Shell Script
7 124 (5.84%) C++
8 82 (3.86%) Perl
9 80 (3.76%) JavaScript
10 79 (3.72%) C#
11 74 (3.48%) C
12 64 (3.01%) PL/SQL
13 58 (2.73%) Go
14 41 (1.93%) Bicep
15 29 (1.36%) Groovy
16 22 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
17 19 (0.89%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.75%) Korn
18 16 (0.75%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 812 (38.21%) Security Cleared
2 575 (27.06%) SC Cleared
3 252 (11.86%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.61%) Degree
5 73 (3.44%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (2.82%) CISSP
7 59 (2.78%) Azure Certification
8 58 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
9 57 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
10 27 (1.27%) CISM
11 25 (1.18%) RHCE
12 24 (1.13%) CCNP
13 21 (0.99%) CCNA
13 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
14 19 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
16 16 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
18 14 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.62%) NIST
2 75 (3.53%) QA
3 73 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.51%) SLA
5 23 (1.08%) Data Quality
6 21 (0.99%) GDPR
7 19 (0.89%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.80%) GRC
9 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.75%) NCSC
10 12 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.47%) ISO 31000
12 9 (0.42%) 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
1 372 (17.51%) Docker
2 286 (13.46%) Active Directory
3 249 (11.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (4.19%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.05%) vSphere
6 77 (3.62%) VMware ESXi
7 74 (3.48%) Virtual Machines
8 57 (2.68%) VMware NSX
9 44 (2.07%) Firmware
10 39 (1.84%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.65%) NFS
12 26 (1.22%) KVM
13 22 (1.04%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.71%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.66%) Ceph
15 14 (0.66%) Postfix
15 14 (0.66%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.52%) GPFS
17 8 (0.38%) Squid
18 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 471 (22.16%) Ansible
1 471 (22.16%) Kubernetes
2 193 (9.08%) Grafana
3 174 (8.19%) Prometheus
4 89 (4.19%) Puppet
5 61 (2.87%) Progress Chef
6 52 (2.45%) Oracle RMAN
7 49 (2.31%) SCCM
8 40 (1.88%) Data Guard
9 38 (1.79%) vCenter Server
10 32 (1.51%) Kibana
11 31 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
12 30 (1.41%) Nagios
12 30 (1.41%) VxRail
13 29 (1.36%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.27%) NetBackup
15 26 (1.22%) Podman
16 24 (1.13%) Packer
17 21 (0.99%) Failover Clustering
17 21 (0.99%) Istio
Vendors
1 354 (16.66%) VMware
2 343 (16.14%) Microsoft
3 297 (13.98%) Oracle
4 227 (10.68%) Red Hat
5 172 (8.09%) Splunk
6 125 (5.88%) Cisco
7 114 (5.36%) ServiceNow
8 97 (4.56%) IBM
9 89 (4.19%) Google
10 82 (3.86%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.26%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
12 46 (2.16%) NetApp
13 41 (1.93%) Dell
13 41 (1.93%) F5
14 40 (1.88%) Palo Alto
15 36 (1.69%) SAP
16 35 (1.65%) Dynatrace
17 31 (1.46%) Citrix
17 31 (1.46%) Tenable