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

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 31 29
Rank change year-on-year -10 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,947 1,768 2,597
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.14% 5.61% 5.87%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.04% 39.78% 40.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,224 1,052 1,749
10th Percentile £314 £356 £325
25th Percentile £401 £454 £442
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £618 £658 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.10% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 61 120
10th Percentile £13.00 £45.00 £24.03
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.50 £48.32
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.18 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.84% -4.62%

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 4,744 4,445 6,347
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.52% 14.09% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,146 2,764 4,298
10th Percentile £173 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £319 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £474
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +0.26% -8.01%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £409 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -3.87% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 160 358
10th Percentile £14.50 £16.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.03 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.00 £34.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.54% +15.00% +20.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £63.54
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.10 £72.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £31.79 £25.63
% change year-on-year -26.08% +24.06% +7.71%

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 25 January 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 25 January 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 25 January 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 -9 1,664 £508 -8.14% 1,235
UK excluding London -2 1,106 £483 -8.10% 1,203
London -11 648 £550 -8.33% 202
Work from Home -14 511 £492 -8.55% 507
South East -1 303 £475 -7.09% 393
North of England -2 263 £482 -13.15% 204
Midlands -1 198 £519 -5.81% 140
West Midlands -3 179 £525 -4.72% 54
Yorkshire +2 164 £500 -14.16% 80
South West -18 135 £550 -8.33% 180
Scotland -2 117 £450 -8.16% 88
North West -22 93 £453 -17.64% 89
East of England -7 89 £475 +10.47% 164
Northern Ireland +9 19 £400 +23.08% 21
East Midlands -22 19 £420 -6.67% 83
North East -15 12 £550 +8.64% 36
Wales -10 5 £600 +11.63% 44

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 (4.16%) Confluence
2 65 (3.34%) Apache
3 47 (2.41%) nginx
4 37 (1.90%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.39%) Apache Spark
6 24 (1.23%) WebLogic
7 23 (1.18%) OpenStack
8 21 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
8 21 (1.08%) WebSphere
9 16 (0.82%) JBoss
9 16 (0.82%) SharePoint
10 14 (0.72%) Mattermost
10 14 (0.72%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.67%) SAS
11 13 (0.67%) Tomcat
11 13 (0.67%) TPMS
12 11 (0.56%) IIS
12 11 (0.56%) WebSphere Application Server
13 10 (0.51%) iPlanet
14 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 59 (3.03%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.051%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.051%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.051%) Finacle
6 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.051%) RMDS
6 1 (0.051%) Shopify
6 1 (0.051%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 595 (30.56%) AWS
2 383 (19.67%) Azure
3 187 (9.60%) GitHub
4 145 (7.45%) GCP
5 135 (6.93%) OpenShift
6 115 (5.91%) AWS CloudFormation
7 111 (5.70%) Serverless
8 100 (5.14%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
10 83 (4.26%) Amazon S3
11 71 (3.65%) Amazon ECS
12 68 (3.49%) Amazon EKS
13 64 (3.29%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
15 58 (2.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 56 (2.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.57%) IaaS
18 48 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
19 45 (2.31%) SaaS
20 38 (1.95%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 209 (10.73%) Firewall
2 145 (7.45%) DNS
3 137 (7.04%) TCP/IP
4 68 (3.49%) Network Security
5 55 (2.82%) SSH
6 48 (2.47%) HTTP
6 48 (2.47%) SSL
6 48 (2.47%) VPN
7 47 (2.41%) DHCP
8 34 (1.75%) SAN
9 31 (1.59%) VLAN
10 27 (1.39%) Kerberos
10 27 (1.39%) Wireless
11 26 (1.34%) VSAN
11 26 (1.34%) WAN
12 24 (1.23%) Skype
13 23 (1.18%) SMTP
14 20 (1.03%) Ethernet
14 20 (1.03%) LAN
15 19 (0.98%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (6.88%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.08%) Relational Database
3 93 (4.78%) SQL Server
4 78 (4.01%) Amazon RDS
5 77 (3.95%) NoSQL
5 77 (3.95%) Oracle Database
6 74 (3.80%) MongoDB
7 72 (3.70%) MySQL
8 51 (2.62%) Elasticsearch
9 27 (1.39%) Big Data
10 26 (1.34%) DB2
10 26 (1.34%) Hadoop
11 20 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
12 16 (0.82%) Apache Hive
13 14 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
13 14 (0.72%) HBase
13 14 (0.72%) KDB
13 14 (0.72%) Kdb+
13 14 (0.72%) Redis
14 13 (0.67%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 266 (13.66%) Jenkins
2 229 (11.76%) Git
3 191 (9.81%) GitLab
4 133 (6.83%) JIRA
5 56 (2.88%) JUnit
6 52 (2.67%) Sonatype Nexus
7 46 (2.36%) Bitbucket
8 35 (1.80%) Eclipse
9 26 (1.34%) Maven
10 25 (1.28%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.13%) Liquibase
12 21 (1.08%) Mockito
13 19 (0.98%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.92%) Artifactory
14 18 (0.92%) Browser DevTools
14 18 (0.92%) Burp Suite
15 17 (0.87%) Android Studio
15 17 (0.87%) Xcode
16 16 (0.82%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.82%) JMeter
General
1 547 (28.09%) Social Skills
2 347 (17.82%) Finance
3 207 (10.63%) Analytical Skills
4 182 (9.35%) Public Sector
5 153 (7.86%) Banking
6 71 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.67%) Financial Institution
8 50 (2.57%) Investment Banking
9 44 (2.26%) Military
10 41 (2.11%) Front Office
10 41 (2.11%) Presentation Skills
11 23 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
12 19 (0.98%) Aerospace
12 19 (0.98%) Legal
13 18 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 15 (0.77%) Manufacturing
15 13 (0.67%) Law
16 12 (0.62%) Back Office
17 10 (0.51%) Retail
18 9 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 293 (15.05%) Developer
2 233 (11.97%) Senior
3 177 (9.09%) DevOps Engineer
4 137 (7.04%) Software Engineer
5 120 (6.16%) Analyst
6 107 (5.50%) Java Developer
7 106 (5.44%) Architect
8 102 (5.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 94 (4.83%) Support Engineer
10 93 (4.78%) Linux Engineer
11 91 (4.67%) Platform Engineer
12 75 (3.85%) Administrator
12 75 (3.85%) AWS Engineer
13 71 (3.65%) Lead
14 69 (3.54%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 67 (3.44%) Site Engineer
16 63 (3.24%) Security Engineer
17 62 (3.18%) AWS DevOps
18 56 (2.88%) Senior Software Engineer
19 53 (2.72%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (7.91%) Kafka
2 129 (6.63%) REST
3 124 (6.37%) Elastic Stack
4 82 (4.21%) Middleware
5 67 (3.44%) Node.js
5 67 (3.44%) Spring
6 64 (3.29%) RESTful
7 56 (2.88%) LDAP
8 52 (2.67%) React
9 49 (2.52%) JSON
10 46 (2.36%) XML
11 39 (2.00%) AngularJS
12 37 (1.90%) YAML
13 35 (1.80%) SOAP
14 31 (1.59%) OAuth
15 29 (1.49%) CSS
15 29 (1.49%) Spring Boot
16 27 (1.39%) SAML
16 27 (1.39%) Web Services
17 26 (1.34%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 104 (5.34%) Cloud Native
2 92 (4.73%) Linux Command Line
3 90 (4.62%) Data Centre
4 70 (3.60%) Management Information System
4 70 (3.60%) Replication
5 59 (3.03%) Public Cloud
6 57 (2.93%) Distributed Systems
7 53 (2.72%) Equities
8 49 (2.52%) PKI
9 45 (2.31%) Onboarding
10 40 (2.05%) Data Structures
11 38 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
11 38 (1.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 34 (1.75%) Security Operations Centre
13 33 (1.69%) Product Ownership
14 29 (1.49%) Algorithms
14 29 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
15 28 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
16 27 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
16 27 (1.39%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 723 (37.13%) Windows
2 396 (20.34%) Unix
3 249 (12.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 140 (7.19%) Windows Server
5 83 (4.26%) Ubuntu
6 52 (2.67%) CentOS
7 43 (2.21%) Android
8 35 (1.80%) Mac OS
9 31 (1.59%) Solaris
9 31 (1.59%) VMS
10 26 (1.34%) Mac OS X
11 23 (1.18%) Windows 10
12 21 (1.08%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.92%) AIX
14 17 (0.87%) Embedded Linux
14 17 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.77%) Amazon Linux
16 14 (0.72%) Kali Linux
17 12 (0.62%) Apple iOS
17 12 (0.62%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 591 (30.35%) CI/CD
2 493 (25.32%) DevOps
3 445 (22.86%) Agile
4 371 (19.05%) Problem-Solving
5 313 (16.08%) Infrastructure as Code
6 305 (15.67%) Containerisation
7 246 (12.63%) Software Engineering
8 202 (10.37%) Observability
9 182 (9.35%) Cybersecurity
10 165 (8.47%) Computer Science
11 161 (8.27%) Test Automation
12 158 (8.12%) Continuous Improvement
13 153 (7.86%) Incident Response
14 151 (7.76%) Microservices
15 149 (7.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 140 (7.19%) Platform Engineering
17 132 (6.78%) High Availability
18 126 (6.47%) SIEM
19 124 (6.37%) Configuration Management
19 124 (6.37%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 774 (39.75%) Python
2 379 (19.47%) SQL
3 369 (18.95%) Java
4 339 (17.41%) Bash
5 284 (14.59%) PowerShell
6 216 (11.09%) Shell Script
7 185 (9.50%) C++
8 134 (6.88%) JavaScript
9 130 (6.68%) Perl
10 86 (4.42%) C#
11 75 (3.85%) Go
12 61 (3.13%) C
13 42 (2.16%) Ruby
14 30 (1.54%) TypeScript
15 28 (1.44%) Groovy
15 28 (1.44%) Rust
16 27 (1.39%) PL/SQL
17 22 (1.13%) PHP
18 19 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
19 16 (0.82%) Ada
Qualifications
1 644 (33.08%) Security Cleared
2 464 (23.83%) SC Cleared
3 215 (11.04%) Degree
4 154 (7.91%) DV Cleared
5 114 (5.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 81 (4.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 61 (3.13%) AWS Certification
8 35 (1.80%) Master's Degree
9 34 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
10 31 (1.59%) Azure Certification
11 30 (1.54%) CISSP
12 26 (1.34%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
12 26 (1.34%) RHCE
13 20 (1.03%) CCNA
13 20 (1.03%) OSCP
14 19 (0.98%) CCNP
15 17 (0.87%) GPEN
16 16 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.82%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (2.93%) NIST
2 42 (2.16%) GDPR
2 42 (2.16%) QA
3 41 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 33 (1.69%) SLA
5 19 (0.98%) Data Quality
6 18 (0.92%) PCI DSS
7 17 (0.87%) NCSC
8 16 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.67%) GLBA
10 11 (0.56%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
14 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
15 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.15%) SEPA
17 2 (0.10%) Basel III
System Software
1 410 (21.06%) Docker
2 207 (10.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 171 (8.78%) Active Directory
4 72 (3.70%) vSphere
5 53 (2.72%) Virtual Machines
6 48 (2.47%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (2.11%) Hyper-V
8 28 (1.44%) GPFS
9 27 (1.39%) NFS
10 24 (1.23%) VMware NSX
11 21 (1.08%) KVM
12 20 (1.03%) Oracle RAC
13 18 (0.92%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 17 (0.87%) Firmware
15 14 (0.72%) HDFS
16 13 (0.67%) Lustre
16 13 (0.67%) Postfix
17 12 (0.62%) DFS Replication
17 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
18 10 (0.51%) Squid
Systems Management
1 471 (24.19%) Kubernetes
2 397 (20.39%) Terraform
3 388 (19.93%) Ansible
4 215 (11.04%) Grafana
5 186 (9.55%) Prometheus
6 77 (3.95%) Puppet
7 66 (3.39%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.21%) Red Hat Satellite
9 38 (1.95%) vRealize
10 37 (1.90%) Packer
10 37 (1.90%) vCenter Server
11 35 (1.80%) Argo
12 34 (1.75%) Kibana
13 32 (1.64%) Podman
14 30 (1.54%) SCCM
15 28 (1.44%) SCOM
16 26 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
17 23 (1.18%) Nessus
18 21 (1.08%) Data Guard
19 20 (1.03%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 298 (15.31%) Microsoft
2 290 (14.89%) VMware
3 287 (14.74%) Oracle
4 251 (12.89%) Splunk
5 215 (11.04%) Red Hat
6 123 (6.32%) Cisco
7 77 (3.95%) IBM
7 77 (3.95%) ServiceNow
8 51 (2.62%) AppDynamics
8 51 (2.62%) Google
9 48 (2.47%) Dell
10 41 (2.11%) CyberArk
11 30 (1.54%) Palo Alto
12 29 (1.49%) CrowdStrike
13 28 (1.44%) NetApp
14 27 (1.39%) SolarWinds
15 24 (1.23%) Commvault
15 24 (1.23%) Sybase
16 23 (1.18%) Solace
17 22 (1.13%) Dynatrace