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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,888 1,701 2,179
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.91% 5.84% 5.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.53% 42.05% 38.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,174 1,077 1,440
10th Percentile £337 £375 £332
25th Percentile £408 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -2.27% -5.98%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -6.67% -2.33% -0.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 41 111
10th Percentile £32.41 £45.00 £36.75
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £53.75
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - +1.56%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.60 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -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 4,658 4,045 5,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 13.90% 13.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,988 2,657 3,850
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £467 £466
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% +0.11% -7.33%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £651 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -0.11% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 175 393
10th Percentile £15.62 £15.24 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £41.94 £22.00 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +90.64% -0.68% -43.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.83 £20.94 £22.50
% change year-on-year +99.74% -6.93% -25.00%

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 21 May 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 May 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 May 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 -23 1,572 £513 -6.82% 805
UK excluding London -13 1,137 £490 -6.67% 641
London -48 532 £550 -5.98% 232
Work from Home -29 472 £500 -4.76% 315
South East -1 323 £500 -9.09% 218
North of England -14 278 £480 -8.57% 108
South West -7 159 £543 -9.58% 120
Midlands -11 152 £500 - 56
Yorkshire -18 151 £463 -15.82% 32
West Midlands -7 132 £480 -8.57% 24
North West -19 113 £489 -2.30% 58
Scotland -20 95 £463 -1.07% 37
East of England -13 92 £475 +0.26% 89
Wales +8 28 £465 -20.65% 11
East Midlands -27 17 £528 +16.06% 32
Northern Ireland +6 15 £425 +30.77% 15
North East -21 14 £446 -15.00% 20

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 75 (3.97%) Confluence
2 49 (2.60%) Apache
3 30 (1.59%) nginx
4 26 (1.38%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.06%) Apache Spark
7 18 (0.95%) Tomcat
8 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.74%) SAS
10 12 (0.64%) OpenStack
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 11 (0.58%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.48%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.37%) JBoss
14 7 (0.37%) TPMS
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) SharePoint
17 4 (0.21%) CMS
17 4 (0.21%) IIS
Applications
1 20 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.21%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 526 (27.86%) AWS
2 380 (20.13%) Azure
3 167 (8.85%) GitHub
4 118 (6.25%) OpenShift
5 111 (5.88%) GCP
6 96 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
7 82 (4.34%) Amazon EC2
8 80 (4.24%) Amazon S3
9 72 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
10 67 (3.55%) Amazon EKS
11 65 (3.44%) Serverless
12 64 (3.39%) AWS CloudFormation
13 60 (3.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 54 (2.86%) AWS Lambda
15 45 (2.38%) IaaS
16 43 (2.28%) Entra ID
17 41 (2.17%) Amazon ECS
17 41 (2.17%) Microsoft 365
18 40 (2.12%) PaaS
19 37 (1.96%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 176 (9.32%) Firewall
2 131 (6.94%) DNS
3 92 (4.87%) TCP/IP
4 74 (3.92%) VPN
5 64 (3.39%) SAN
6 58 (3.07%) Network Security
7 49 (2.60%) WAN
8 43 (2.28%) DHCP
9 41 (2.17%) LAN
10 36 (1.91%) SNMP
10 36 (1.91%) VSAN
11 34 (1.80%) SSH
12 31 (1.64%) HTTP
13 29 (1.54%) SSL
14 25 (1.32%) NAS
15 22 (1.17%) Ethernet
16 19 (1.01%) BGP
16 19 (1.01%) VLAN
16 19 (1.01%) Wireless
17 18 (0.95%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 73 (3.87%) MySQL
4 67 (3.55%) Oracle Database
5 62 (3.28%) Relational Database
6 61 (3.23%) MongoDB
7 50 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
8 44 (2.33%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (2.01%) Amazon Aurora
10 27 (1.43%) NoSQL
11 25 (1.32%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.06%) SAP HANA
13 19 (1.01%) Big Data
13 19 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
13 19 (1.01%) KDB
14 16 (0.85%) DB2
14 16 (0.85%) Kdb+
15 12 (0.64%) Power BI
15 12 (0.64%) Sybase ASE
16 11 (0.58%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 201 (10.65%) Jenkins
2 172 (9.11%) Git
3 169 (8.95%) GitLab
4 134 (7.10%) JIRA
5 33 (1.75%) Maven
6 28 (1.48%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.38%) Mockito
8 23 (1.22%) Eclipse
9 22 (1.17%) JUnit
10 19 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
11 18 (0.95%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.79%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
14 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
14 13 (0.69%) jMock
14 13 (0.69%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
16 10 (0.53%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 377 (19.97%) Social Skills
2 252 (13.35%) Finance
3 199 (10.54%) Public Sector
4 145 (7.68%) Analytical Skills
5 108 (5.72%) Banking
6 72 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.28%) Military
8 25 (1.32%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.32%) Front Office
9 24 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.22%) Aerospace
11 21 (1.11%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.11%) Retail
12 20 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.01%) Law
14 17 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
15 15 (0.79%) Legal
15 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 239 (12.66%) Senior
2 200 (10.59%) Developer
3 177 (9.38%) DevOps Engineer
4 166 (8.79%) Linux Engineer
5 138 (7.31%) Software Engineer
6 122 (6.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 109 (5.77%) Architect
8 106 (5.61%) Analyst
9 96 (5.08%) Lead
10 80 (4.24%) Administrator
11 77 (4.08%) Java Developer
12 68 (3.60%) AWS Engineer
13 67 (3.55%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 59 (3.13%) Platform Engineer
15 57 (3.02%) Site Engineer
16 54 (2.86%) Consultant
17 51 (2.70%) Security Engineer
18 48 (2.54%) AWS DevOps
19 47 (2.49%) Embedded Engineer
20 46 (2.44%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (5.19%) Kafka
2 85 (4.50%) REST
3 79 (4.18%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.71%) Middleware
5 52 (2.75%) LDAP
6 49 (2.60%) Node.js
6 49 (2.60%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.54%) Spring
8 43 (2.28%) Web Services
9 41 (2.17%) RESTful
10 37 (1.96%) .NET
11 32 (1.69%) YAML
12 28 (1.48%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.43%) XML
14 26 (1.38%) SOAP
15 25 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
15 25 (1.32%) JSON
16 24 (1.27%) React
17 22 (1.17%) CSS
17 22 (1.17%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 149 (7.89%) Data Centre
2 103 (5.46%) Cloud Native
3 79 (4.18%) Linux Command Line
4 74 (3.92%) Onboarding
5 69 (3.65%) Distributed Systems
6 66 (3.50%) Management Information System
7 59 (3.13%) PKI
8 56 (2.97%) Replication
9 48 (2.54%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (2.49%) Public Cloud
11 44 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.85%) Security Posture
13 33 (1.75%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
15 31 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
15 31 (1.64%) Embedded Systems
16 30 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
17 26 (1.38%) Operational Technology
18 23 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
19 22 (1.17%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 715 (37.87%) Windows
2 372 (19.70%) Unix
3 274 (14.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 173 (9.16%) Windows Server
5 92 (4.87%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.70%) AIX
7 41 (2.17%) CentOS
8 39 (2.07%) Solaris
9 36 (1.91%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.54%) VMS
11 26 (1.38%) Android
12 23 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (1.17%) Debian
13 22 (1.17%) Windows Server 2019
14 20 (1.06%) Mac OS
15 13 (0.69%) SUSE
16 12 (0.64%) Mac OS X
17 11 (0.58%) Windows 10
18 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
18 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 527 (27.91%) CI/CD
2 443 (23.46%) DevOps
3 354 (18.75%) Agile
4 294 (15.57%) Problem-Solving
5 283 (14.99%) Infrastructure as Code
6 250 (13.24%) Containerisation
7 211 (11.18%) Software Engineering
8 182 (9.64%) Migration
8 182 (9.64%) Observability
9 179 (9.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 152 (8.05%) Performance Tuning
11 146 (7.73%) High Availability
12 141 (7.47%) SIEM
13 139 (7.36%) Continuous Improvement
13 139 (7.36%) Root Cause Analysis
14 135 (7.15%) Microservices
15 133 (7.04%) Computer Science
16 132 (6.99%) Incident Response
17 128 (6.78%) Platform Engineering
18 127 (6.73%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 621 (32.89%) Python
2 327 (17.32%) SQL
3 262 (13.88%) Bash
4 256 (13.56%) Java
5 255 (13.51%) PowerShell
6 158 (8.37%) Shell Script
7 125 (6.62%) C++
8 103 (5.46%) JavaScript
9 65 (3.44%) Perl
10 60 (3.18%) C#
11 57 (3.02%) C
12 46 (2.44%) Go
13 44 (2.33%) PL/SQL
14 28 (1.48%) Ruby
15 27 (1.43%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.27%) Rust
17 22 (1.17%) PHP
18 21 (1.11%) Ada
18 21 (1.11%) MATLAB
19 19 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 743 (39.35%) Security Cleared
2 542 (28.71%) SC Cleared
3 216 (11.44%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.43%) Degree
5 78 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 78 (4.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 53 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
7 45 (2.38%) AWS Certification
8 44 (2.33%) CISSP
9 42 (2.22%) CompTIA Security+
10 36 (1.91%) RHCE
11 32 (1.69%) Azure Certification
12 25 (1.32%) CCNA
13 23 (1.22%) CCNP
14 19 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
15 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.95%) OCP
16 17 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
17 15 (0.79%) CISM
17 15 (0.79%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (4.18%) NIST
2 69 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 51 (2.70%) QA
4 47 (2.49%) SLA
5 29 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
6 28 (1.48%) GDPR
7 24 (1.27%) NCSC
8 17 (0.90%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
10 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.48%) GRC
12 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.37%) GLBA
14 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 5 (0.26%) DICOM
15 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 315 (16.68%) Docker
2 221 (11.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 185 (9.80%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.24%) Virtual Machines
5 70 (3.71%) vSphere
6 67 (3.55%) Hyper-V
7 63 (3.34%) VMware ESXi
8 49 (2.60%) NFS
9 42 (2.22%) VMware NSX
10 40 (2.12%) Firmware
11 29 (1.54%) KVM
12 24 (1.27%) GPFS
13 19 (1.01%) Oracle RAC
14 18 (0.95%) Postfix
15 15 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 13 (0.69%) Ceph
17 9 (0.48%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
19 6 (0.32%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 389 (20.60%) Kubernetes
2 378 (20.02%) Ansible
3 351 (18.59%) Terraform
4 177 (9.38%) Grafana
5 144 (7.63%) Prometheus
6 73 (3.87%) Puppet
7 42 (2.22%) vCenter Server
8 40 (2.12%) Progress Chef
9 34 (1.80%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.59%) Podman
10 30 (1.59%) vRealize
11 29 (1.54%) Kibana
12 28 (1.48%) Red Hat Satellite
13 24 (1.27%) Nagios
13 24 (1.27%) ZABBIX
14 23 (1.22%) Packer
15 22 (1.17%) Data Guard
16 21 (1.11%) Argo
17 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
17 20 (1.06%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 308 (16.31%) VMware
2 257 (13.61%) Oracle
3 251 (13.29%) Microsoft
4 217 (11.49%) Red Hat
5 189 (10.01%) Splunk
6 118 (6.25%) Cisco
7 93 (4.93%) IBM
8 80 (4.24%) ServiceNow
9 50 (2.65%) Palo Alto
10 45 (2.38%) CyberArk
11 39 (2.07%) Dell
12 36 (1.91%) Google
13 35 (1.85%) SolarWinds
14 34 (1.80%) HP
15 33 (1.75%) F5
15 33 (1.75%) NVIDIA
16 31 (1.64%) Citrix
17 29 (1.54%) SAP
18 28 (1.48%) BeyondTrust
19 26 (1.38%) Atlassian