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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,119 1,842 2,150
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.58% 5.60%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.45% 41.19% 39.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,321 1,109 1,293
10th Percentile £350 £348 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 73 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £53.55 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +9.15%
75th Percentile £69.31 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.38 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.35%

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 5,372 4,472 5,424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.55% 14.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,384 2,847 3,419
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £291 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £670 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 300 257
10th Percentile £14.47 £15.50 £16.15
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.87 £21.80
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -52.55% +15.52%
75th Percentile £66.00 £55.03 £69.69
90th Percentile £74.54 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £57.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -55.88% +24.23%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 1,784 £525 - 2,832
UK excluding London -22 1,198 £500 - 1,463
London -31 707 £525 -8.70% 1,418
Work from Home -24 566 £500 -4.76% 1,016
South East -17 331 £525 +10.53% 408
North of England -15 284 £500 +5.15% 208
South West +2 183 £575 +4.55% 276
North West -16 141 £493 +22.64% 124
Scotland -15 134 £450 -10.00% 85
Midlands -43 127 £474 -5.25% 161
East of England -15 120 £475 -1.55% 255
Yorkshire -25 117 £518 +3.50% 49
West Midlands -40 110 £474 -5.25% 107
North East -16 34 £480 -10.70% 36
Wales +9 27 £465 +3.33% 24
East Midlands -8 14 £481 +14.52% 54
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 65

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 64 (3.02%) Confluence
2 44 (2.08%) Apache
3 34 (1.60%) nginx
4 27 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.18%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
7 23 (1.09%) SharePoint
8 22 (1.04%) Apache Spark
9 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
10 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.76%) SAS
12 15 (0.71%) JBoss
13 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
14 11 (0.52%) IIS
14 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.28%) CMS
15 6 (0.28%) MTS
15 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.094%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 615 (29.02%) AWS
2 517 (24.40%) Azure
3 192 (9.06%) GCP
4 162 (7.65%) GitHub
5 111 (5.24%) OpenShift
6 108 (5.10%) Entra ID
7 101 (4.77%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.34%) Amazon S3
8 92 (4.34%) Azure DevOps
9 81 (3.82%) Amazon EC2
10 73 (3.45%) Serverless
11 67 (3.16%) AWS CloudFormation
12 66 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (3.02%) Microsoft 365
14 63 (2.97%) Amazon EKS
15 60 (2.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 54 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.36%) IaaS
18 44 (2.08%) Datadog
18 44 (2.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.76%) DNS
2 220 (10.38%) Firewall
3 166 (7.83%) TCP/IP
4 131 (6.18%) DHCP
5 89 (4.20%) Network Security
5 89 (4.20%) VPN
6 76 (3.59%) SAN
7 54 (2.55%) SSL
8 49 (2.31%) WAN
9 47 (2.22%) HTTP
10 44 (2.08%) SSH
11 39 (1.84%) VLAN
12 35 (1.65%) LAN
13 31 (1.46%) VSAN
14 29 (1.37%) BGP
15 27 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
16 26 (1.23%) Kerberos
17 25 (1.18%) Wireless
18 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
18 22 (1.04%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.19%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.86%) Oracle Database
4 73 (3.45%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.07%) MySQL
6 54 (2.55%) Amazon RDS
7 51 (2.41%) MongoDB
8 47 (2.22%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
10 33 (1.56%) Amazon Aurora
11 28 (1.32%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.27%) Big Data
13 23 (1.09%) DynamoDB
14 21 (0.99%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.99%) Power BI
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 11g
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 12c
15 19 (0.90%) Redis
16 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 280 (13.21%) Git
2 245 (11.56%) Jenkins
3 225 (10.62%) GitLab
4 157 (7.41%) JIRA
5 37 (1.75%) Maven
6 35 (1.65%) SonarQube
7 31 (1.46%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.13%) Artifactory
9 24 (1.13%) Selenium
10 23 (1.09%) Mockito
11 19 (0.90%) JUnit
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
12 18 (0.85%) Gradle
13 16 (0.76%) Cucumber
14 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.47%) JMeter
17 9 (0.42%) LoadRunner
General
1 454 (21.43%) Social Skills
2 334 (15.76%) Finance
3 251 (11.85%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.21%) Public Sector
5 170 (8.02%) Banking
6 91 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
7 55 (2.60%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.79%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.60%) Military
10 33 (1.56%) Front Office
11 30 (1.42%) Legal
12 28 (1.32%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (0.99%) Law
15 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.80%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.47%) Aviation
17 10 (0.47%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 320 (15.10%) Senior
2 241 (11.37%) Linux Engineer
3 215 (10.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 198 (9.34%) Developer
5 185 (8.73%) DevOps Engineer
6 102 (4.81%) Platform Engineer
7 101 (4.77%) Architect
7 101 (4.77%) Software Engineer
8 81 (3.82%) Cloud Engineer
8 81 (3.82%) Support Engineer
9 76 (3.59%) Lead
10 75 (3.54%) Analyst
10 75 (3.54%) Consultant
11 74 (3.49%) Java Developer
12 69 (3.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 67 (3.16%) AWS Engineer
14 65 (3.07%) Administrator
15 59 (2.78%) Network Engineer
16 57 (2.69%) Systems Engineer
17 54 (2.55%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 510 (24.07%) Terraform
2 142 (6.70%) Kafka
3 129 (6.09%) REST
4 83 (3.92%) Middleware
5 73 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
6 70 (3.30%) .NET
7 58 (2.74%) Spring
8 54 (2.55%) RESTful
9 52 (2.45%) Spring Boot
10 47 (2.22%) Web Services
11 45 (2.12%) LDAP
12 41 (1.93%) JSON
13 39 (1.84%) XML
14 34 (1.60%) HTML
14 34 (1.60%) React
14 34 (1.60%) SOAP
15 30 (1.42%) Django
15 30 (1.42%) Keycloak
15 30 (1.42%) Node.js
15 30 (1.42%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 160 (7.55%) Onboarding
2 141 (6.65%) Cloud Native
3 136 (6.42%) Data Centre
4 110 (5.19%) PKI
5 105 (4.96%) Linux Command Line
6 90 (4.25%) Distributed Systems
6 90 (4.25%) Replication
7 70 (3.30%) Hybrid Cloud
8 68 (3.21%) Management Information System
9 63 (2.97%) Public Cloud
10 48 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
10 48 (2.27%) Security Posture
11 42 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
11 42 (1.98%) Private Cloud
12 41 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
13 40 (1.89%) Operational Technology
14 37 (1.75%) Product Ownership
15 36 (1.70%) Enterprise Storage
16 35 (1.65%) Clustering
16 35 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 802 (37.85%) Windows
2 444 (20.95%) Unix
3 372 (17.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 253 (11.94%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.24%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.07%) CentOS
7 59 (2.78%) AIX
8 57 (2.69%) Solaris
9 35 (1.65%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.46%) Windows 10
11 29 (1.37%) VMS
12 28 (1.32%) SUSE
13 21 (0.99%) Rocky
14 20 (0.94%) Mac OS
15 17 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
16 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
17 14 (0.66%) Debian
17 14 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
18 10 (0.47%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 655 (30.91%) CI/CD
2 561 (26.47%) DevOps
3 457 (21.57%) Infrastructure as Code
4 388 (18.31%) Agile
5 341 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
6 330 (15.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 300 (14.16%) Containerisation
8 259 (12.22%) Continuous Improvement
9 251 (11.85%) Observability
10 239 (11.28%) Migration
11 233 (11.00%) Platform Engineering
12 216 (10.19%) Root Cause Analysis
13 214 (10.10%) Software Engineering
14 201 (9.49%) High Availability
15 183 (8.64%) Configuration Management
16 178 (8.40%) Test Automation
17 175 (8.26%) ITIL
18 169 (7.98%) Stakeholder Management
19 168 (7.93%) Performance Tuning
20 164 (7.74%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 771 (36.39%) Python
2 438 (20.67%) Bash
3 408 (19.25%) PowerShell
4 379 (17.89%) SQL
5 255 (12.03%) Java
6 154 (7.27%) Shell Script
7 120 (5.66%) C++
8 83 (3.92%) JavaScript
9 82 (3.87%) Perl
10 79 (3.73%) C#
11 71 (3.35%) C
12 64 (3.02%) PL/SQL
13 59 (2.78%) Go
14 41 (1.93%) Bicep
15 29 (1.37%) Groovy
16 21 (0.99%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (0.99%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.76%) Korn
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
18 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 805 (37.99%) Security Cleared
2 569 (26.85%) SC Cleared
3 252 (11.89%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.64%) Degree
5 73 (3.45%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.88%) Cisco Certification
6 61 (2.88%) CISSP
7 60 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 59 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
9 58 (2.74%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.27%) CCNP
10 27 (1.27%) CISM
11 25 (1.18%) RHCE
12 23 (1.09%) CCNA
13 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
15 17 (0.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
18 14 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.59%) QA
2 75 (3.54%) NIST
3 71 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.51%) SLA
5 23 (1.09%) Data Quality
6 21 (0.99%) GDPR
7 18 (0.85%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.80%) GRC
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.71%) NCSC
11 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 10 (0.47%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.42%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 6 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 5 (0.24%) MISRA
18 4 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27005
18 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 373 (17.60%) Docker
2 287 (13.54%) Active Directory
3 250 (11.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (4.11%) Hyper-V
5 83 (3.92%) vSphere
6 72 (3.40%) Virtual Machines
6 72 (3.40%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (2.50%) VMware NSX
8 41 (1.93%) Firmware
9 39 (1.84%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (1.65%) NFS
11 26 (1.23%) KVM
12 22 (1.04%) Virtual Servers
13 14 (0.66%) Ceph
13 14 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
14 13 (0.61%) Postfix
14 13 (0.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.52%) GPFS
16 8 (0.38%) Squid
17 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 474 (22.37%) Kubernetes
2 465 (21.94%) Ansible
3 192 (9.06%) Grafana
4 173 (8.16%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.20%) Puppet
6 60 (2.83%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.45%) Oracle RMAN
8 49 (2.31%) SCCM
9 40 (1.89%) Data Guard
10 34 (1.60%) vCenter Server
11 33 (1.56%) Kibana
12 32 (1.51%) Microsoft Intune
13 31 (1.46%) Nagios
14 29 (1.37%) VxRail
15 28 (1.32%) Red Hat Satellite
16 27 (1.27%) NetBackup
17 26 (1.23%) Podman
18 24 (1.13%) Packer
19 21 (0.99%) Istio
20 19 (0.90%) Argo
Vendors
1 351 (16.56%) VMware
2 344 (16.23%) Microsoft
3 293 (13.83%) Oracle
4 224 (10.57%) Red Hat
5 170 (8.02%) Splunk
6 128 (6.04%) Cisco
7 115 (5.43%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.53%) IBM
9 90 (4.25%) Google
10 83 (3.92%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.27%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
12 46 (2.17%) NetApp
13 41 (1.93%) F5
14 40 (1.89%) Palo Alto
15 39 (1.84%) Dell
16 36 (1.70%) Dynatrace
17 35 (1.65%) SAP
18 31 (1.46%) Tenable
19 29 (1.37%) HP