Linux Contracts

Linux
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Linux skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Linux over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 31 34 26
Rank change year-on-year +3 -8 +4
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,754 2,206 4,199
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 6.00% 5.06% 7.04%
As % of the Operating Systems category 43.04% 37.96% 43.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,109 1,450 2,925
10th Percentile £374 £332 £413
25th Percentile £440 £425 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% +0.88%
75th Percentile £650 £643 £675
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £540 £538
% change year-on-year -0.56% +0.37% +7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 106 164
10th Percentile £40.50 £28.44 £36.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £48.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.44% -6.92% +8.33%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £73.75
90th Percentile - - £77.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.25 £60.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +7.85% -6.92% +8.33%

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 4,075 5,812 9,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.94% 13.33% 16.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,687 3,913 6,831
10th Percentile £200 £183 £190
25th Percentile £319 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £468 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% -7.33% +1.00%
75th Percentile £594 £588 £638
90th Percentile £699 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 397 416
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.75 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £15.50 £17.75
Median hourly rate £24.18 £22.00 £39.30
Median % change year-on-year +9.91% -44.02% +74.67%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £22.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +4.55% -29.60% +56.25%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Linux as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Linux in the UK

Linux
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Linux.

Daily rate trend for Linux in the UK

Linux
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Linux in the UK

Linux
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Linux.

Hourly rate trend for Linux in the UK

Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Linux over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Linux in the UK

Linux
Top 17 Contract 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 30 April 2025. 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 +3 1,386 £550 - 1,642
UK excluding London +3 926 £537 -0.56% 1,069
London 0 630 £588 +3.98% 683
Work from Home +9 610 £525 - 1,115
Scotland +8 230 £468 -21.43% 94
North of England +9 204 £550 +15.18% 256
South East -7 200 £550 +4.76% 242
South West +9 144 £600 - 159
Yorkshire +6 99 £550 +10.00% 64
North West +20 95 £510 +13.31% 163
Midlands -8 72 £500 -9.09% 116
East of England +2 70 £490 +15.29% 173
West Midlands -4 54 £537 -2.36% 79
East Midlands -11 18 £455 -15.44% 36
North East 0 13 £525 -4.55% 31
Wales -14 10 £586 +1.91% 17
Northern Ireland -10 6 £325 -34.18% 30

Linux
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 89 (5.07%) Confluence
2 70 (3.99%) Apache
3 50 (2.85%) Apache Spark
4 43 (2.45%) nginx
5 39 (2.22%) Microsoft Exchange
6 25 (1.43%) OpenStack
7 24 (1.37%) JBoss
7 24 (1.37%) Tomcat
8 18 (1.03%) CMS
8 18 (1.03%) SharePoint
9 16 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 16 (0.91%) SAS
10 14 (0.80%) IIS
11 12 (0.68%) Jupyter
11 12 (0.68%) Traefik
11 12 (0.68%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.57%) WebLogic
13 9 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
14 8 (0.46%) Documentum
14 8 (0.46%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 27 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (0.80%) MS Visio
3 13 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.057%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 6 (0.34%) SAP IBP
2 5 (0.29%) Kondor
2 5 (0.29%) Oracle Applications
3 4 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.23%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.17%) Fidessa
4 3 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.11%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Cash Management
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle iProcurement
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 465 (26.51%) AWS
2 301 (17.16%) Azure
3 92 (5.25%) GCP
4 86 (4.90%) GitHub
5 83 (4.73%) OpenShift
6 82 (4.68%) AWS CloudFormation
7 59 (3.36%) Amazon EC2
8 52 (2.96%) Entra ID
9 50 (2.85%) Amazon S3
9 50 (2.85%) Azure DevOps
10 46 (2.62%) Microsoft 365
11 45 (2.57%) Cloud Computing
12 42 (2.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 40 (2.28%) IaaS
13 40 (2.28%) Serverless
14 31 (1.77%) Amazon ECS
14 31 (1.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 29 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
16 27 (1.54%) Amazon EKS
17 25 (1.43%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 187 (10.66%) DNS
2 132 (7.53%) Firewall
3 116 (6.61%) TCP/IP
4 99 (5.64%) DHCP
5 75 (4.28%) HTTP
5 75 (4.28%) VPN
6 73 (4.16%) SAN
7 51 (2.91%) LAN
8 50 (2.85%) Network Security
9 49 (2.79%) WAN
10 35 (2.00%) SMTP
11 31 (1.77%) NAS
12 25 (1.43%) Wireless
13 24 (1.37%) Ethernet
14 23 (1.31%) Wireshark
15 22 (1.25%) MPLS
16 20 (1.14%) Internet
16 20 (1.14%) SSL
17 18 (1.03%) 5G
18 17 (0.97%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (7.35%) MongoDB
2 114 (6.50%) SQL Server
3 100 (5.70%) Relational Database
4 88 (5.02%) PostgreSQL
5 70 (3.99%) Oracle Database
6 69 (3.93%) MySQL
7 63 (3.59%) DB2
8 53 (3.02%) Big Data
9 50 (2.85%) Elasticsearch
10 44 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
11 39 (2.22%) Hadoop
12 38 (2.17%) NoSQL
13 29 (1.65%) RDBMS
14 26 (1.48%) KDB
15 24 (1.37%) Apache Cassandra
16 20 (1.14%) Kdb+
17 16 (0.91%) Apache Hive
17 16 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
18 14 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
18 14 (0.80%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 253 (14.42%) Jenkins
2 250 (14.25%) Git
3 151 (8.61%) JIRA
4 150 (8.55%) GitLab
5 80 (4.56%) JUnit
6 67 (3.82%) Bitbucket
7 32 (1.82%) Cucumber
8 30 (1.71%) Subversion
9 28 (1.60%) Maven
10 25 (1.43%) Jasmine
11 24 (1.37%) Eclipse
11 24 (1.37%) SonarQube
12 23 (1.31%) GoogleTest
12 23 (1.31%) TeamCity
13 22 (1.25%) Bitbucket Server
13 22 (1.25%) Sonatype Nexus
14 19 (1.08%) Artifactory
15 16 (0.91%) Robot Framework
16 13 (0.74%) JMeter
17 12 (0.68%) LoadRunner
General
1 477 (27.19%) Social Skills
2 344 (19.61%) Finance
3 193 (11.00%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (10.03%) Banking
5 137 (7.81%) Public Sector
6 79 (4.50%) Investment Banking
7 57 (3.25%) Telecoms
8 51 (2.91%) Front Office
9 26 (1.48%) Financial Institution
10 25 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
11 24 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 23 (1.31%) Manufacturing
13 22 (1.25%) Law
13 22 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
14 20 (1.14%) Legal
15 19 (1.08%) Electronics
15 19 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (1.03%) Military
17 16 (0.91%) Marketing
18 10 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 297 (16.93%) Developer
2 201 (11.46%) Senior
3 166 (9.46%) DevOps Engineer
4 134 (7.64%) Architect
4 134 (7.64%) Linux Engineer
5 128 (7.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 125 (7.13%) Java Developer
7 96 (5.47%) Lead
8 87 (4.96%) Software Engineer
9 65 (3.71%) Support Engineer
10 63 (3.59%) Analyst
10 63 (3.59%) Senior Developer
11 62 (3.53%) Administrator
12 60 (3.42%) Platform Engineer
13 59 (3.36%) Python Developer
14 53 (3.02%) Consultant
15 52 (2.96%) Senior DevOps
16 50 (2.85%) AWS Engineer
17 49 (2.79%) Linux Developer
17 49 (2.79%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (6.67%) Spring
2 100 (5.70%) Kafka
3 73 (4.16%) Spring Boot
4 60 (3.42%) Elastic Stack
5 59 (3.36%) Middleware
6 52 (2.96%) REST
6 52 (2.96%) RESTful
7 44 (2.51%) HTML
8 40 (2.28%) SOAP
9 39 (2.22%) JMS
9 39 (2.22%) LDAP
10 34 (1.94%) AngularJS
11 33 (1.88%) CSS
12 32 (1.82%) .NET
12 32 (1.82%) Web Services
13 27 (1.54%) YAML
14 26 (1.48%) Node.js
14 26 (1.48%) React
15 24 (1.37%) cloud-init
15 24 (1.37%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 93 (5.30%) Data Centre
2 69 (3.93%) Data Structures
3 59 (3.36%) Linux Command Line
4 53 (3.02%) Management Information System
5 51 (2.91%) Algorithms
5 51 (2.91%) Equities
6 45 (2.57%) Cloud Native
6 45 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
6 45 (2.57%) Public Cloud
7 44 (2.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 43 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
9 42 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
10 40 (2.28%) PKI
11 35 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
12 34 (1.94%) Clustering
12 34 (1.94%) Replication
13 33 (1.88%) Product Ownership
14 31 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.60%) Hedge funds
16 24 (1.37%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 641 (36.55%) Windows
2 367 (20.92%) Unix
3 328 (18.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 208 (11.86%) Windows Server
5 75 (4.28%) CentOS
6 63 (3.59%) Ubuntu
7 48 (2.74%) AIX
8 47 (2.68%) Solaris
9 31 (1.77%) Mac OS
10 25 (1.43%) Windows Server 2016
11 24 (1.37%) Embedded Linux
12 20 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (1.08%) VMS
13 19 (1.08%) Windows 10
14 17 (0.97%) Apple iOS
14 17 (0.97%) Rocky
15 16 (0.91%) HPUX
16 14 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
17 12 (0.68%) Android
18 11 (0.63%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 426 (24.29%) DevOps
2 392 (22.35%) CI/CD
3 382 (21.78%) Problem-Solving
4 368 (20.98%) Agile
5 224 (12.77%) Software Engineering
6 220 (12.54%) Containerisation
7 196 (11.17%) Infrastructure as Code
8 166 (9.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 158 (9.01%) High Availability
10 148 (8.44%) Test Automation
11 139 (7.92%) Migration
12 137 (7.81%) Continuous Integration
12 137 (7.81%) Microservices
13 126 (7.18%) SDLC
14 125 (7.13%) Configuration Management
15 100 (5.70%) ITIL
16 98 (5.59%) Performance Tuning
17 91 (5.19%) Scrum
18 86 (4.90%) Infrastructure Automation
19 82 (4.68%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 670 (38.20%) Python
2 355 (20.24%) SQL
3 352 (20.07%) Java
4 292 (16.65%) Bash
5 198 (11.29%) PowerShell
6 158 (9.01%) Shell Script
7 130 (7.41%) C++
8 117 (6.67%) Perl
9 98 (5.59%) JavaScript
10 65 (3.71%) C
11 63 (3.59%) PL/SQL
12 54 (3.08%) Go
13 53 (3.02%) C#
14 30 (1.71%) TypeScript
15 22 (1.25%) Ada
16 21 (1.20%) Scala
17 19 (1.08%) Groovy
18 18 (1.03%) Tcl
19 17 (0.97%) Rust
20 16 (0.91%) PHP
Qualifications
1 491 (27.99%) Security Cleared
2 370 (21.09%) SC Cleared
3 126 (7.18%) Degree
4 124 (7.07%) DV Cleared
5 64 (3.65%) Cisco Certification
6 46 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
7 43 (2.45%) AWS Certification
8 36 (2.05%) CCNP
9 26 (1.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 23 (1.31%) CISSP
10 23 (1.31%) RHCE
11 15 (0.86%) ISEB
11 15 (0.86%) ISTQB
11 15 (0.86%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 15 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
12 13 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 13 (0.74%) Azure Certification
12 13 (0.74%) Oracle Certification
12 13 (0.74%) RHCA
13 12 (0.68%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (2.57%) QA
2 42 (2.39%) GDPR
3 26 (1.48%) NIST
4 23 (1.31%) SLA
5 21 (1.20%) NCSC
6 20 (1.14%) Accessibility
7 19 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 17 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.97%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
11 8 (0.46%) Data Quality
12 7 (0.40%) HL7
13 6 (0.34%) WCAG
14 5 (0.29%) Basel III
14 5 (0.29%) GxP
14 5 (0.29%) MiFID
14 5 (0.29%) NIST 800
15 4 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 4 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 324 (18.47%) Docker
2 185 (10.55%) Active Directory
3 183 (10.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (2.74%) Hyper-V
5 47 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
6 39 (2.22%) vSphere
7 26 (1.48%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (1.20%) Firmware
9 20 (1.14%) NFS
10 18 (1.03%) Virtual Servers
11 16 (0.91%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 15 (0.86%) VMware NSX
13 10 (0.57%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 10 (0.57%) BitLocker
13 10 (0.57%) GPFS
13 10 (0.57%) Oracle RAC
13 10 (0.57%) Samba
14 9 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.51%) Terminal Services
15 8 (0.46%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 443 (25.26%) Kubernetes
2 391 (22.29%) Ansible
3 364 (20.75%) Terraform
4 133 (7.58%) Puppet
5 114 (6.50%) Grafana
6 84 (4.79%) Prometheus
7 78 (4.45%) Progress Chef
8 47 (2.68%) vCenter Server
9 43 (2.45%) Packer
10 34 (1.94%) Kibana
11 31 (1.77%) ZABBIX
12 27 (1.54%) Nagios
13 26 (1.48%) Argo
13 26 (1.48%) Rancher
14 25 (1.43%) Consul
15 22 (1.25%) Istio
16 21 (1.20%) Microsoft Intune
17 19 (1.08%) HAProxy
17 19 (1.08%) SCCM
18 18 (1.03%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 298 (16.99%) VMware
2 248 (14.14%) Microsoft
3 241 (13.74%) Red Hat
4 211 (12.03%) Oracle
5 133 (7.58%) Splunk
6 126 (7.18%) Cisco
7 67 (3.82%) Sybase
8 66 (3.76%) IBM
9 60 (3.42%) Google
10 59 (3.36%) ServiceNow
11 49 (2.79%) HP
12 41 (2.34%) SAP
13 37 (2.11%) Atlassian
14 36 (2.05%) CyberArk
14 36 (2.05%) Veritas
15 31 (1.77%) Dell
16 29 (1.65%) SolarWinds
17 27 (1.54%) F5
18 26 (1.48%) AppDynamics
18 26 (1.48%) Juniper