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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 31 30
Rank change year-on-year -10 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,964 1,788 2,553
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.08% 5.68% 5.75%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.93% 39.91% 40.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,232 1,065 1,718
10th Percentile £316 £356 £325
25th Percentile £400 £453 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £656 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.95% - -3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 61 117
10th Percentile £13.00 £42.50 £23.11
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.39 £51.25
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £61.84
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +5.11% -4.86%
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 £62.50
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.00% -3.85%

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 4,798 4,480 6,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.41% 14.24% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,181 2,787 4,272
10th Percentile £175 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £319 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £475 £472
Median % change year-on-year -7.37% +0.74% -8.45%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £694 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.29% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 160 368
10th Percentile £14.60 £16.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.98 £21.00 £17.16
Median hourly rate £24.00 £33.25 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -27.82% +31.68% -1.06%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £62.61
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £30.78 £25.06
% change year-on-year -26.66% +22.84% +5.17%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 1,684 £506 -8.17% 853
UK excluding London -2 1,113 £478 -8.95% 776
London -12 655 £550 -8.33% 216
Work from Home -14 514 £492 -6.29% 316
South East -2 303 £475 -9.31% 260
North of England -1 273 £480 -12.73% 136
Midlands -6 196 £517 -6.17% 97
West Midlands -3 176 £525 -4.72% 50
Yorkshire -2 168 £500 -13.61% 41
South West -19 136 £550 -8.33% 116
Scotland -8 112 £450 -7.02% 86
North West -23 98 £453 -17.64% 75
East of England -7 92 £462 +7.44% 78
East Midlands -22 20 £420 -6.67% 46
Northern Ireland +11 19 £400 +23.08% 5
North East -14 13 £550 +8.64% 21
Wales -8 5 £600 +11.63% 13

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 84 (4.28%) Confluence
2 57 (2.90%) Apache
3 48 (2.44%) nginx
4 39 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.37%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.12%) OpenStack
7 21 (1.07%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (1.07%) WebSphere
8 17 (0.87%) SharePoint
9 16 (0.81%) JBoss
9 16 (0.81%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.71%) Mattermost
10 14 (0.71%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.66%) Tomcat
11 13 (0.66%) TPMS
12 12 (0.61%) SAS
13 11 (0.56%) IIS
13 11 (0.56%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.51%) iPlanet
15 5 (0.25%) CMS
Applications
1 60 (3.05%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.20%) 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%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) Teamcenter
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%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.051%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 588 (29.94%) AWS
2 374 (19.04%) Azure
3 188 (9.57%) GitHub
4 145 (7.38%) GCP
5 139 (7.08%) OpenShift
6 116 (5.91%) AWS CloudFormation
7 111 (5.65%) Serverless
8 97 (4.94%) Amazon EC2
9 93 (4.74%) GitHub Actions
10 80 (4.07%) Amazon S3
11 71 (3.62%) Amazon ECS
12 66 (3.36%) Amazon EKS
13 65 (3.31%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
15 58 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 54 (2.75%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.55%) IaaS
18 48 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
19 44 (2.24%) SaaS
20 38 (1.93%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 211 (10.74%) Firewall
2 146 (7.43%) DNS
3 137 (6.98%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.62%) Network Security
5 55 (2.80%) SSH
6 52 (2.65%) VPN
7 48 (2.44%) HTTP
8 46 (2.34%) DHCP
8 46 (2.34%) SSL
9 35 (1.78%) SAN
10 30 (1.53%) VLAN
11 28 (1.43%) Kerberos
12 26 (1.32%) VSAN
12 26 (1.32%) WAN
12 26 (1.32%) Wireless
13 24 (1.22%) Skype
14 23 (1.17%) SMTP
15 21 (1.07%) Ethernet
16 20 (1.02%) LAN
17 19 (0.97%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (6.92%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (5.09%) Relational Database
3 93 (4.74%) SQL Server
4 82 (4.18%) Amazon RDS
5 76 (3.87%) Oracle Database
6 75 (3.82%) NoSQL
7 73 (3.72%) MySQL
8 72 (3.67%) MongoDB
9 51 (2.60%) Elasticsearch
10 28 (1.43%) Big Data
10 28 (1.43%) DB2
11 26 (1.32%) Hadoop
12 20 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
13 18 (0.92%) KDB
13 18 (0.92%) Kdb+
14 16 (0.81%) Apache Hive
15 14 (0.71%) Apache Cassandra
15 14 (0.71%) GIS
15 14 (0.71%) HBase
15 14 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 270 (13.75%) Jenkins
2 223 (11.35%) Git
3 196 (9.98%) GitLab
4 136 (6.92%) JIRA
5 57 (2.90%) JUnit
6 51 (2.60%) Sonatype Nexus
7 45 (2.29%) Bitbucket
8 34 (1.73%) Eclipse
9 26 (1.32%) Maven
10 25 (1.27%) Cucumber
11 21 (1.07%) Mockito
12 20 (1.02%) Liquibase
13 19 (0.97%) Burp Suite
14 18 (0.92%) Artifactory
14 18 (0.92%) Visual Studio
15 17 (0.87%) Browser DevTools
16 16 (0.81%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.81%) JMeter
16 16 (0.81%) Metasploit
16 16 (0.81%) Xcode
General
1 540 (27.49%) Social Skills
2 345 (17.57%) Finance
3 210 (10.69%) Analytical Skills
4 184 (9.37%) Public Sector
5 150 (7.64%) Banking
6 72 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.65%) Financial Institution
8 47 (2.39%) Investment Banking
9 45 (2.29%) Military
10 42 (2.14%) Front Office
11 41 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
12 23 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 19 (0.97%) Aerospace
13 19 (0.97%) Legal
14 18 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 14 (0.71%) Manufacturing
16 13 (0.66%) Law
17 12 (0.61%) Back Office
17 12 (0.61%) Retail
18 10 (0.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 297 (15.12%) Developer
2 239 (12.17%) Senior
3 180 (9.16%) DevOps Engineer
4 136 (6.92%) Software Engineer
5 124 (6.31%) Analyst
6 108 (5.50%) Architect
6 108 (5.50%) Java Developer
7 102 (5.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 94 (4.79%) Linux Engineer
9 92 (4.68%) Support Engineer
10 87 (4.43%) Platform Engineer
11 80 (4.07%) Administrator
12 78 (3.97%) AWS Engineer
13 77 (3.92%) Lead
14 66 (3.36%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 65 (3.31%) AWS DevOps
16 64 (3.26%) Site Engineer
17 62 (3.16%) Security Engineer
18 56 (2.85%) Senior Software Engineer
19 54 (2.75%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (8.04%) Kafka
2 126 (6.42%) REST
3 123 (6.26%) Elastic Stack
4 84 (4.28%) Middleware
5 68 (3.46%) Node.js
5 68 (3.46%) Spring
6 61 (3.11%) RESTful
7 59 (3.00%) LDAP
8 52 (2.65%) React
9 48 (2.44%) JSON
10 46 (2.34%) XML
11 37 (1.88%) AngularJS
11 37 (1.88%) YAML
12 34 (1.73%) SOAP
13 32 (1.63%) Spring Boot
14 30 (1.53%) OAuth
15 28 (1.43%) CSS
16 27 (1.37%) SAML
16 27 (1.37%) Web Services
17 26 (1.32%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 102 (5.19%) Cloud Native
2 94 (4.79%) Data Centre
3 93 (4.74%) Linux Command Line
4 70 (3.56%) Management Information System
5 69 (3.51%) Replication
6 60 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
7 57 (2.90%) Public Cloud
8 56 (2.85%) Equities
9 54 (2.75%) PKI
10 44 (2.24%) Onboarding
11 41 (2.09%) Data Structures
11 41 (2.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 39 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
13 37 (1.88%) Security Operations Centre
14 34 (1.73%) Product Ownership
15 30 (1.53%) Algorithms
15 30 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
16 29 (1.48%) Fixed Income
16 29 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
17 27 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 730 (37.17%) Windows
2 389 (19.81%) Unix
3 247 (12.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 139 (7.08%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.33%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.60%) CentOS
7 42 (2.14%) Android
8 35 (1.78%) Mac OS
9 31 (1.58%) Solaris
9 31 (1.58%) VMS
10 27 (1.37%) Mac OS X
11 24 (1.22%) Windows 10
12 22 (1.12%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (1.02%) AIX
14 18 (0.92%) Embedded Linux
14 18 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.76%) Amazon Linux
15 15 (0.76%) Kali Linux
16 12 (0.61%) Apple iOS
16 12 (0.61%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 598 (30.45%) CI/CD
2 497 (25.31%) DevOps
3 444 (22.61%) Agile
4 380 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
5 317 (16.14%) Infrastructure as Code
6 309 (15.73%) Containerisation
7 245 (12.47%) Software Engineering
8 196 (9.98%) Observability
9 185 (9.42%) Cybersecurity
10 173 (8.81%) Computer Science
11 165 (8.40%) Test Automation
12 155 (7.89%) Continuous Improvement
13 153 (7.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 153 (7.79%) Microservices
14 150 (7.64%) Incident Response
15 138 (7.03%) Platform Engineering
16 133 (6.77%) High Availability
17 128 (6.52%) Performance Tuning
17 128 (6.52%) SIEM
18 126 (6.42%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 767 (39.05%) Python
2 377 (19.20%) SQL
3 372 (18.94%) Java
4 338 (17.21%) Bash
5 289 (14.71%) PowerShell
6 219 (11.15%) Shell Script
7 187 (9.52%) C++
8 131 (6.67%) JavaScript
9 118 (6.01%) Perl
10 86 (4.38%) C#
11 74 (3.77%) Go
12 61 (3.11%) C
13 42 (2.14%) Ruby
14 30 (1.53%) TypeScript
15 29 (1.48%) Rust
16 28 (1.43%) Groovy
16 28 (1.43%) PL/SQL
17 24 (1.22%) PHP
18 21 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
19 16 (0.81%) Ada
Qualifications
1 656 (33.40%) Security Cleared
2 472 (24.03%) SC Cleared
3 220 (11.20%) Degree
4 162 (8.25%) DV Cleared
5 118 (6.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 81 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 63 (3.21%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.83%) Master's Degree
9 35 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
10 31 (1.58%) Azure Certification
11 30 (1.53%) CISSP
11 30 (1.53%) CompTIA Security+
12 27 (1.37%) RHCE
13 25 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.07%) CCNA
15 20 (1.02%) OSCP
16 19 (0.97%) CCNP
17 17 (0.87%) CompTIA CySA+
17 17 (0.87%) GPEN
18 16 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (3.05%) NIST
2 43 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (2.14%) GDPR
4 41 (2.09%) QA
5 33 (1.68%) SLA
6 19 (0.97%) Data Quality
6 19 (0.97%) PCI DSS
7 18 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.87%) NCSC
9 13 (0.66%) GLBA
10 11 (0.56%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.41%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
15 4 (0.20%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.15%) SEPA
17 2 (0.10%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 412 (20.98%) Docker
2 217 (11.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 174 (8.86%) Active Directory
4 72 (3.67%) vSphere
5 58 (2.95%) Virtual Machines
6 50 (2.55%) VMware ESXi
7 46 (2.34%) Hyper-V
8 28 (1.43%) GPFS
9 27 (1.37%) NFS
10 24 (1.22%) VMware NSX
11 22 (1.12%) KVM
12 20 (1.02%) Firmware
13 17 (0.87%) Oracle RAC
14 15 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 14 (0.71%) HDFS
16 13 (0.66%) Postfix
17 12 (0.61%) DFS Replication
17 12 (0.61%) Lustre
17 12 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
18 10 (0.51%) Squid
Systems Management
1 474 (24.13%) Kubernetes
2 398 (20.26%) Terraform
3 385 (19.60%) Ansible
4 216 (11.00%) Grafana
5 187 (9.52%) Prometheus
6 77 (3.92%) Puppet
7 68 (3.46%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.09%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.93%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.88%) vRealize
11 35 (1.78%) Argo
11 35 (1.78%) Packer
12 34 (1.73%) Kibana
13 32 (1.63%) Podman
14 30 (1.53%) SCCM
15 28 (1.43%) SCOM
16 27 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
17 24 (1.22%) Nessus
18 20 (1.02%) ITRS Geneos
19 18 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 308 (15.68%) Microsoft
2 299 (15.22%) VMware
3 277 (14.10%) Oracle
4 244 (12.42%) Splunk
5 216 (11.00%) Red Hat
6 116 (5.91%) Cisco
7 80 (4.07%) IBM
8 77 (3.92%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.70%) Google
10 48 (2.44%) Dell
11 43 (2.19%) AppDynamics
12 40 (2.04%) CyberArk
13 29 (1.48%) NetApp
13 29 (1.48%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.37%) SolarWinds
15 26 (1.32%) CrowdStrike
16 23 (1.17%) Solace
16 23 (1.17%) Sybase
17 22 (1.12%) Citrix
18 21 (1.07%) Commvault