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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -19 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,888 1,757 2,189
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.08% 5.97% 5.04%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.26% 42.83% 37.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,192 1,122 1,441
10th Percentile £332 £375 £325
25th Percentile £401 £445 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.56%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £537 £538
% change year-on-year -8.75% -0.09% -0.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 52 104
10th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £25.50
25th Percentile £42.41 £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 £77.88 £68.68 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.25
% change year-on-year -2.87% +7.88% -7.31%

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 4,690 4,102 5,813
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.13% 13.93% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,058 2,729 3,920
10th Percentile £182 £200 £183
25th Percentile £310 £320 £292
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £592
90th Percentile £656 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £445
% change year-on-year -5.56% +1.12% -6.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 175 398
10th Percentile £15.55 £16.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.32 £18.13 £15.19
Median hourly rate £31.00 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.71% +12.09% -37.19%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £59.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £69.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.00 £24.18 £21.00
% change year-on-year +40.61% +15.14% -28.33%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -24 1,595 £515 -6.36% 760
UK excluding London -13 1,105 £490 -8.75% 676
London -41 557 £550 -8.33% 194
Work from Home -25 480 £500 -6.72% 283
South East -8 304 £500 -9.09% 220
North of England -10 291 £492 -10.55% 94
Midlands -5 164 £466 -6.82% 75
Yorkshire -22 153 £470 -14.55% 35
South West -17 150 £540 -10.00% 112
West Midlands -1 144 £467 -13.07% 33
North West -9 127 £500 - 33
East of England -10 94 £473 -1.82% 95
Scotland -22 86 £425 -9.09% 48
East Midlands -33 19 £494 +8.64% 41
Northern Ireland +11 15 £425 +30.77% 22
North East -14 13 £550 +4.76% 28
Wales -13 8 £404 -26.59% 25

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 99 (5.24%) Confluence
2 48 (2.54%) nginx
3 46 (2.44%) Apache
4 35 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.43%) Apache Spark
6 23 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.90%) SAS
7 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 16 (0.85%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.74%) OpenStack
10 12 (0.64%) SharePoint
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 11 (0.58%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.53%) TPMS
13 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.26%) JBoss
14 5 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
15 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 3 (0.16%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 37 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.53%) 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
1 556 (29.45%) AWS
2 375 (19.86%) Azure
3 166 (8.79%) GitHub
4 126 (6.67%) OpenShift
5 103 (5.46%) GCP
6 99 (5.24%) Amazon EC2
7 91 (4.82%) AWS CloudFormation
8 89 (4.71%) Amazon S3
9 84 (4.45%) GitHub Actions
10 78 (4.13%) Serverless
11 72 (3.81%) Amazon EKS
12 67 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
13 65 (3.44%) AWS Lambda
14 57 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 56 (2.97%) Amazon ECS
16 43 (2.28%) IaaS
17 42 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 40 (2.12%) Entra ID
18 40 (2.12%) Microsoft 365
19 36 (1.91%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 205 (10.86%) Firewall
2 132 (6.99%) DNS
3 104 (5.51%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.76%) VPN
5 69 (3.65%) Network Security
6 55 (2.91%) SAN
7 42 (2.22%) DHCP
7 42 (2.22%) WAN
8 41 (2.17%) VSAN
9 39 (2.07%) SSH
10 37 (1.96%) HTTP
11 35 (1.85%) LAN
12 30 (1.59%) SSL
13 28 (1.48%) SNMP
14 24 (1.27%) Ethernet
15 23 (1.22%) BGP
16 22 (1.17%) NAS
17 21 (1.11%) Wireless
18 20 (1.06%) VLAN
19 15 (0.79%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (7.26%) PostgreSQL
2 105 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 69 (3.65%) Amazon RDS
4 67 (3.55%) MongoDB
4 67 (3.55%) MySQL
5 62 (3.28%) Relational Database
6 59 (3.13%) Oracle Database
7 41 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
8 37 (1.96%) NoSQL
9 30 (1.59%) Amazon Aurora
10 26 (1.38%) Big Data
11 23 (1.22%) DynamoDB
12 21 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
13 20 (1.06%) KDB
14 19 (1.01%) Kdb+
15 17 (0.90%) Hadoop
16 16 (0.85%) SAP HANA
17 15 (0.79%) Data Lake
17 15 (0.79%) DB2
18 12 (0.64%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 210 (11.12%) Jenkins
2 184 (9.75%) Git
3 172 (9.11%) GitLab
4 154 (8.16%) JIRA
5 32 (1.69%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.64%) Maven
7 28 (1.48%) JUnit
7 28 (1.48%) Sonatype Nexus
8 25 (1.32%) Mockito
9 24 (1.27%) Eclipse
9 24 (1.27%) SonarQube
10 17 (0.90%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.85%) Cucumber
11 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
12 12 (0.64%) Jaeger
12 12 (0.64%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
13 11 (0.58%) jMock
14 10 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 417 (22.09%) Social Skills
2 282 (14.94%) Finance
3 195 (10.33%) Public Sector
4 161 (8.53%) Analytical Skills
5 109 (5.77%) Banking
6 69 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.54%) Military
8 27 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.38%) Financial Institution
10 21 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
10 21 (1.11%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.06%) Aerospace
12 19 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 18 (0.95%) Front Office
13 18 (0.95%) Legal
13 18 (0.95%) Retail
14 17 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (0.85%) Law
16 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 223 (11.81%) Senior
2 217 (11.49%) Developer
3 169 (8.95%) DevOps Engineer
4 132 (6.99%) Linux Engineer
4 132 (6.99%) Software Engineer
5 121 (6.41%) Analyst
6 119 (6.30%) Architect
7 98 (5.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 93 (4.93%) Lead
9 85 (4.50%) Java Developer
10 79 (4.18%) Administrator
11 70 (3.71%) Platform Engineer
12 67 (3.55%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 66 (3.50%) AWS Engineer
14 63 (3.34%) Site Engineer
15 53 (2.81%) Security Engineer
16 51 (2.70%) AWS DevOps
17 50 (2.65%) Consultant
18 42 (2.22%) Support Engineer
19 41 (2.17%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (5.93%) Kafka
2 87 (4.61%) REST
3 77 (4.08%) Elastic Stack
4 67 (3.55%) Middleware
5 61 (3.23%) Node.js
6 51 (2.70%) Spring
7 47 (2.49%) LDAP
7 47 (2.49%) Spring Boot
8 39 (2.07%) Web Services
9 33 (1.75%) RESTful
9 33 (1.75%) YAML
10 32 (1.69%) .NET
10 32 (1.69%) XML
11 27 (1.43%) JSON
12 26 (1.38%) AngularJS
13 24 (1.27%) ActiveMQ
13 24 (1.27%) SOAP
14 23 (1.22%) React
15 21 (1.11%) CSS
15 21 (1.11%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 125 (6.62%) Data Centre
2 104 (5.51%) Cloud Native
3 83 (4.40%) Linux Command Line
4 66 (3.50%) Management Information System
5 58 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
6 57 (3.02%) Onboarding
7 55 (2.91%) Replication
8 52 (2.75%) PKI
9 50 (2.65%) Public Cloud
10 49 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
11 46 (2.44%) Product Ownership
12 38 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
13 31 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
14 30 (1.59%) Security Posture
15 28 (1.48%) Enterprise Storage
16 27 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
17 25 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
18 24 (1.27%) Embedded Systems
18 24 (1.27%) Equities
19 23 (1.22%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 716 (37.92%) Windows
2 355 (18.80%) Unix
3 285 (15.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 182 (9.64%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.45%) Ubuntu
6 46 (2.44%) AIX
7 40 (2.12%) CentOS
8 36 (1.91%) Solaris
9 35 (1.85%) VMS
10 33 (1.75%) Android
11 30 (1.59%) Embedded Linux
12 25 (1.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.11%) Mac OS
14 20 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
15 19 (1.01%) Debian
16 14 (0.74%) SUSE
17 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
18 12 (0.64%) Oracle Linux
19 10 (0.53%) Apple iOS
19 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 531 (28.13%) CI/CD
2 446 (23.62%) DevOps
3 399 (21.13%) Agile
4 324 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
5 286 (15.15%) Infrastructure as Code
6 260 (13.77%) Containerisation
7 206 (10.91%) Software Engineering
8 179 (9.48%) Observability
9 166 (8.79%) Migration
10 156 (8.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 149 (7.89%) Continuous Improvement
12 143 (7.57%) Computer Science
13 139 (7.36%) Platform Engineering
14 137 (7.26%) Cybersecurity
14 137 (7.26%) SIEM
15 134 (7.10%) Incident Response
15 134 (7.10%) Microservices
16 132 (6.99%) High Availability
17 127 (6.73%) Test Automation
18 126 (6.67%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 646 (34.22%) Python
2 310 (16.42%) SQL
3 285 (15.10%) Java
4 275 (14.57%) Bash
5 270 (14.30%) PowerShell
6 166 (8.79%) Shell Script
7 126 (6.67%) C++
8 101 (5.35%) JavaScript
9 81 (4.29%) Perl
10 60 (3.18%) C#
11 52 (2.75%) C
12 40 (2.12%) Go
13 39 (2.07%) PL/SQL
14 37 (1.96%) Ruby
15 28 (1.48%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.27%) PHP
17 22 (1.17%) Rust
18 19 (1.01%) Ada
18 19 (1.01%) MATLAB
19 17 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 749 (39.67%) Security Cleared
2 552 (29.24%) SC Cleared
3 200 (10.59%) DV Cleared
4 183 (9.69%) Degree
5 93 (4.93%) BPSS Clearance
6 80 (4.24%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.70%) AWS Certification
8 49 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 43 (2.28%) CompTIA Security+
10 42 (2.22%) CISSP
11 34 (1.80%) RHCE
12 31 (1.64%) CCNA
13 27 (1.43%) Azure Certification
14 26 (1.38%) 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 (4.03%) NIST
2 66 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.54%) QA
4 38 (2.01%) SLA
5 36 (1.91%) GDPR
6 22 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.06%) NCSC
8 19 (1.01%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.64%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.64%) HIPAA
9 12 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.53%) GLBA
10 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
11 8 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
11 8 (0.42%) GRC
12 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 5 (0.26%) DICOM
13 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 349 (18.49%) Docker
2 236 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 175 (9.27%) Active Directory
4 83 (4.40%) vSphere
5 73 (3.87%) Virtual Machines
6 68 (3.60%) Hyper-V
7 65 (3.44%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (2.07%) NFS
8 39 (2.07%) VMware NSX
9 34 (1.80%) Firmware
10 28 (1.48%) GPFS
11 25 (1.32%) KVM
12 19 (1.01%) Postfix
13 17 (0.90%) Oracle RAC
14 15 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 12 (0.64%) 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
1 426 (22.56%) Kubernetes
2 389 (20.60%) Terraform
3 374 (19.81%) Ansible
4 186 (9.85%) Grafana
5 147 (7.79%) Prometheus
6 67 (3.55%) Puppet
7 51 (2.70%) Progress Chef
8 46 (2.44%) vCenter Server
9 40 (2.12%) vRealize
10 35 (1.85%) Packer
11 31 (1.64%) Kibana
12 29 (1.54%) Red Hat Satellite
13 28 (1.48%) Argo
14 27 (1.43%) Podman
15 26 (1.38%) Oracle RMAN
16 22 (1.17%) VxRail
17 20 (1.06%) SCCM
18 19 (1.01%) Nessus
19 17 (0.90%) Data Guard
19 17 (0.90%) Nagios
Vendors
1 320 (16.95%) VMware
2 277 (14.67%) Microsoft
3 252 (13.35%) Oracle
4 235 (12.45%) Red Hat
5 182 (9.64%) Splunk
6 117 (6.20%) Cisco
7 99 (5.24%) IBM
8 72 (3.81%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.75%) Dell
10 44 (2.33%) CyberArk
11 42 (2.22%) Palo Alto
12 39 (2.07%) Google
12 39 (2.07%) HP
13 37 (1.96%) SolarWinds
14 32 (1.69%) Atlassian
15 31 (1.64%) Citrix
16 28 (1.48%) NetApp
17 24 (1.27%) AppDynamics
17 24 (1.27%) Commvault
17 24 (1.27%) SAP