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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -18 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,895 1,766 2,211
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.08% 5.98% 5.06%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.34% 42.94% 37.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,200 1,127 1,455
10th Percentile £335 £374 £328
25th Percentile £402 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £646 £649
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £538 £538
% change year-on-year -8.47% - -0.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 53 106
10th Percentile £23.61 £40.50 £25.72
25th Percentile £43.34 £55.00 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £68.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.50
% change year-on-year -3.24% +7.85% -6.92%

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 4,697 4,113 5,864
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.12% 13.93% 13.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,064 2,724 3,954
10th Percentile £185 £200 £183
25th Percentile £313 £320 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £575 £596 £593
90th Percentile £658 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £448
% change year-on-year -5.56% +0.56% -5.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 180 401
10th Percentile £15.94 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.25
Median hourly rate £34.57 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.95% +9.91% -41.33%
75th Percentile £67.69 £62.50 £59.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.68 £23.59 £21.00
% change year-on-year +51.24% +12.33% -30.00%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 1,596 £518 -5.91% 699
UK excluding London -13 1,104 £492 -8.47% 634
London -40 562 £550 -5.28% 174
Work from Home -24 487 £500 -6.89% 259
South East -2 305 £500 -9.09% 205
North of England -8 294 £492 -10.55% 89
Midlands -9 155 £480 -4.00% 74
Yorkshire -16 154 £465 -15.45% 32
South West -14 151 £545 -9.17% 104
West Midlands -2 136 £480 -10.61% 33
North West -6 129 £500 -2.44% 32
East of England -4 93 £473 -3.57% 91
Scotland -24 87 £450 -3.74% 47
East Midlands -33 18 £525 +15.51% 40
Northern Ireland +11 15 £425 +30.77% 18
North East -18 14 £550 +4.76% 25
Wales -11 11 £475 -13.64% 24

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 97 (5.12%) Confluence
2 48 (2.53%) nginx
3 47 (2.48%) Apache
4 35 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.42%) Apache Spark
6 23 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.90%) SAS
7 17 (0.90%) Tomcat
7 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 15 (0.79%) OpenStack
9 12 (0.63%) SharePoint
9 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 10 (0.53%) TPMS
12 6 (0.32%) JBoss
12 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 5 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 34 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.26%) Weka
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 3 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.053%) Odoo
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 554 (29.23%) AWS
2 369 (19.47%) Azure
3 172 (9.08%) GitHub
4 126 (6.65%) OpenShift
5 104 (5.49%) GCP
6 100 (5.28%) Amazon EC2
7 92 (4.85%) AWS CloudFormation
8 91 (4.80%) Amazon S3
9 90 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
10 81 (4.27%) Serverless
11 74 (3.91%) Amazon EKS
12 69 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
13 68 (3.59%) AWS Lambda
14 60 (3.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 58 (3.06%) Amazon ECS
16 43 (2.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 42 (2.22%) IaaS
18 41 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
19 40 (2.11%) Entra ID
20 37 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 203 (10.71%) Firewall
2 132 (6.97%) DNS
3 105 (5.54%) TCP/IP
4 70 (3.69%) VPN
5 68 (3.59%) Network Security
6 55 (2.90%) SAN
7 44 (2.32%) WAN
8 41 (2.16%) DHCP
9 40 (2.11%) SSH
10 38 (2.01%) HTTP
11 35 (1.85%) LAN
11 35 (1.85%) VSAN
12 31 (1.64%) SSL
13 28 (1.48%) SNMP
14 24 (1.27%) Ethernet
15 23 (1.21%) BGP
16 22 (1.16%) NAS
17 20 (1.06%) VLAN
17 20 (1.06%) Wireless
18 17 (0.90%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (7.12%) PostgreSQL
2 104 (5.49%) SQL Server
3 70 (3.69%) Amazon RDS
4 69 (3.64%) MySQL
5 67 (3.54%) MongoDB
6 64 (3.38%) Relational Database
7 62 (3.27%) Oracle Database
8 42 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (2.01%) NoSQL
10 32 (1.69%) Amazon Aurora
11 26 (1.37%) Big Data
12 24 (1.27%) DynamoDB
13 21 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
14 20 (1.06%) KDB
15 19 (1.00%) Kdb+
16 17 (0.90%) Hadoop
17 16 (0.84%) SAP HANA
18 15 (0.79%) Data Lake
18 15 (0.79%) DB2
19 12 (0.63%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 215 (11.35%) Jenkins
2 189 (9.97%) Git
3 176 (9.29%) GitLab
4 157 (8.28%) JIRA
5 32 (1.69%) Bitbucket
5 32 (1.69%) Maven
6 30 (1.58%) Sonatype Nexus
7 28 (1.48%) JUnit
8 25 (1.32%) Eclipse
8 25 (1.32%) Mockito
9 24 (1.27%) SonarQube
10 18 (0.95%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.84%) Cucumber
11 16 (0.84%) Visual Studio
12 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
13 12 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
14 11 (0.58%) jMock
15 10 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.47%) Selenium
General
1 414 (21.85%) Social Skills
2 280 (14.78%) Finance
3 197 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 162 (8.55%) Analytical Skills
5 110 (5.80%) Banking
6 69 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.53%) Military
8 26 (1.37%) Financial Institution
8 26 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
9 21 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (1.11%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.06%) Aerospace
10 20 (1.06%) Investment Banking
11 19 (1.00%) Legal
11 19 (1.00%) Retail
12 18 (0.95%) Front Office
13 16 (0.84%) Law
14 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
15 13 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 227 (11.98%) Senior
2 220 (11.61%) Developer
3 172 (9.08%) DevOps Engineer
4 135 (7.12%) Linux Engineer
5 132 (6.97%) Software Engineer
6 119 (6.28%) Architect
7 112 (5.91%) Analyst
8 98 (5.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 95 (5.01%) Lead
10 86 (4.54%) Java Developer
11 83 (4.38%) Administrator
12 72 (3.80%) Platform Engineer
13 68 (3.59%) AWS Engineer
13 68 (3.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 64 (3.38%) Site Engineer
15 53 (2.80%) AWS DevOps
15 53 (2.80%) Security Engineer
16 49 (2.59%) Consultant
17 44 (2.32%) Support Engineer
18 43 (2.27%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (5.91%) Kafka
2 86 (4.54%) REST
3 80 (4.22%) Elastic Stack
4 69 (3.64%) Middleware
5 61 (3.22%) Node.js
6 51 (2.69%) Spring
7 48 (2.53%) LDAP
8 47 (2.48%) Spring Boot
9 40 (2.11%) Web Services
10 34 (1.79%) .NET
10 34 (1.79%) RESTful
11 32 (1.69%) XML
11 32 (1.69%) YAML
12 27 (1.42%) AngularJS
12 27 (1.42%) JSON
13 24 (1.27%) ActiveMQ
13 24 (1.27%) React
13 24 (1.27%) SOAP
14 22 (1.16%) CSS
15 21 (1.11%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 127 (6.70%) Data Centre
2 105 (5.54%) Cloud Native
3 72 (3.80%) Linux Command Line
4 68 (3.59%) Management Information System
5 62 (3.27%) Distributed Systems
5 62 (3.27%) Onboarding
6 52 (2.74%) PKI
6 52 (2.74%) Replication
7 51 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
8 50 (2.64%) Public Cloud
9 46 (2.43%) Product Ownership
10 40 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
11 32 (1.69%) Security Posture
12 31 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
13 28 (1.48%) Enterprise Storage
14 26 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
15 24 (1.27%) Clustering
15 24 (1.27%) Embedded Systems
15 24 (1.27%) Equities
16 23 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 722 (38.10%) Windows
2 365 (19.26%) Unix
3 287 (15.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 184 (9.71%) Windows Server
5 83 (4.38%) Ubuntu
6 46 (2.43%) AIX
7 40 (2.11%) CentOS
8 37 (1.95%) Solaris
9 34 (1.79%) VMS
10 33 (1.74%) Android
11 30 (1.58%) Embedded Linux
12 25 (1.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.11%) Mac OS
14 20 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
15 19 (1.00%) Debian
16 14 (0.74%) SUSE
17 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
18 12 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
19 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
20 9 (0.47%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 537 (28.34%) CI/CD
2 451 (23.80%) DevOps
3 389 (20.53%) Agile
4 322 (16.99%) Problem-Solving
5 286 (15.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 263 (13.88%) Containerisation
7 209 (11.03%) Software Engineering
8 180 (9.50%) Observability
9 167 (8.81%) Migration
10 156 (8.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 148 (7.81%) Continuous Improvement
12 146 (7.70%) Computer Science
13 141 (7.44%) Platform Engineering
13 141 (7.44%) SIEM
14 139 (7.34%) Cybersecurity
15 137 (7.23%) Microservices
16 136 (7.18%) High Availability
16 136 (7.18%) Incident Response
17 129 (6.81%) Performance Tuning
18 127 (6.70%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 654 (34.51%) Python
2 315 (16.62%) SQL
3 287 (15.15%) Java
4 281 (14.83%) Bash
5 273 (14.41%) PowerShell
6 168 (8.87%) Shell Script
7 126 (6.65%) C++
8 104 (5.49%) JavaScript
9 83 (4.38%) Perl
10 62 (3.27%) C#
11 52 (2.74%) C
12 43 (2.27%) Go
13 41 (2.16%) PL/SQL
14 37 (1.95%) Ruby
15 28 (1.48%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.27%) PHP
17 22 (1.16%) Rust
18 19 (1.00%) Ada
18 19 (1.00%) Kusto Query Language
18 19 (1.00%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 754 (39.79%) Security Cleared
2 557 (29.39%) SC Cleared
3 202 (10.66%) DV Cleared
4 181 (9.55%) Degree
5 93 (4.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 82 (4.33%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.69%) AWS Certification
8 48 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
9 43 (2.27%) CompTIA Security+
10 41 (2.16%) CISSP
11 34 (1.79%) RHCE
12 31 (1.64%) CCNA
13 27 (1.42%) Azure Certification
14 26 (1.37%) CCNP
15 21 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.95%) CompTIA CySA+
16 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.69%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (4.01%) NIST
2 66 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.53%) QA
4 39 (2.06%) SLA
5 36 (1.90%) GDPR
6 22 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.11%) NCSC
8 20 (1.06%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.74%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.58%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.53%) GLBA
11 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.47%) GRC
13 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 8 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
15 4 (0.21%) HL7
15 4 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 350 (18.47%) Docker
2 226 (11.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 178 (9.39%) Active Directory
4 74 (3.91%) Virtual Machines
5 72 (3.80%) vSphere
6 69 (3.64%) Hyper-V
7 62 (3.27%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (2.01%) VMware NSX
9 36 (1.90%) NFS
10 34 (1.79%) Firmware
11 26 (1.37%) KVM
12 25 (1.32%) GPFS
13 19 (1.00%) Oracle RAC
13 19 (1.00%) Postfix
14 15 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 12 (0.63%) Ceph
16 11 (0.58%) Lustre
17 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.37%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 428 (22.59%) Kubernetes
2 392 (20.69%) Terraform
3 377 (19.89%) Ansible
4 187 (9.87%) Grafana
5 148 (7.81%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.64%) Puppet
7 52 (2.74%) Progress Chef
8 44 (2.32%) vCenter Server
9 36 (1.90%) Packer
10 31 (1.64%) Kibana
10 31 (1.64%) vRealize
11 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
12 28 (1.48%) Oracle RMAN
12 28 (1.48%) Podman
13 25 (1.32%) Argo
14 20 (1.06%) SCCM
14 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
15 19 (1.00%) Data Guard
16 18 (0.95%) Nessus
16 18 (0.95%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 309 (16.31%) VMware
2 278 (14.67%) Microsoft
3 253 (13.35%) Oracle
4 230 (12.14%) Red Hat
5 185 (9.76%) Splunk
6 110 (5.80%) Cisco
7 90 (4.75%) IBM
8 71 (3.75%) ServiceNow
9 46 (2.43%) Dell
10 43 (2.27%) CyberArk
11 42 (2.22%) Palo Alto
12 39 (2.06%) Google
13 34 (1.79%) HP
14 32 (1.69%) Atlassian
15 30 (1.58%) Citrix
15 30 (1.58%) SolarWinds
16 28 (1.48%) NetApp
17 24 (1.27%) SAP
18 23 (1.21%) F5
18 23 (1.21%) NVIDIA