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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -18 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,902 1,752 2,206
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.03% 6.00% 5.06%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.46% 43.01% 37.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,203 1,108 1,450
10th Percentile £326 £374 £332
25th Percentile £402 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £643
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £537 £540
% change year-on-year -9.68% -0.56% +0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 53 106
10th Percentile £29.98 £40.50 £28.44
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.50
% change year-on-year -3.24% +7.85% -6.92%

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 4,701 4,073 5,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.96% 13.94% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,064 2,686 3,913
10th Percentile £185 £200 £183
25th Percentile £313 £319 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £468
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.50% -7.33%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £588
90th Percentile £663 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 177 397
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.13 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.22 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.61% +9.91% -44.02%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +106.52% +4.55% -29.60%

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 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 30 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 30 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 -22 1,596 £518 -5.91% 633
UK excluding London -15 1,125 £485 -9.68% 533
London -40 554 £550 -6.78% 172
Work from Home -26 489 £500 -4.76% 244
South East -5 311 £500 -9.09% 185
North of England -15 286 £475 -13.64% 75
South West -14 159 £550 -8.33% 83
Yorkshire -19 157 £460 -16.36% 24
Midlands -8 156 £501 +0.10% 58
West Midlands -2 136 £485 -9.68% 26
North West -18 119 £485 -4.88% 34
Scotland -19 94 £438 -6.42% 34
East of England -13 93 £473 -3.57% 86
East Midlands -28 18 £525 +15.51% 32
Wales -4 17 £465 -20.65% 15
Northern Ireland +12 15 £425 +30.77% 14
North East -20 10 £413 -21.43% 17

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 (5.21%) Confluence
2 49 (2.58%) Apache
3 48 (2.52%) nginx
4 29 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
5 26 (1.37%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.89%) Tomcat
8 16 (0.84%) WebLogic
9 15 (0.79%) SAS
10 14 (0.74%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.68%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.58%) CICS
13 10 (0.53%) TPMS
14 6 (0.32%) JBoss
14 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.32%) SharePoint
14 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
15 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 31 (1.63%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.21%) Weka
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 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
1 557 (29.28%) AWS
2 368 (19.35%) Azure
3 180 (9.46%) GitHub
4 124 (6.52%) OpenShift
5 107 (5.63%) GCP
6 97 (5.10%) Amazon EC2
7 94 (4.94%) GitHub Actions
8 93 (4.89%) AWS CloudFormation
9 90 (4.73%) Amazon S3
10 79 (4.15%) Serverless
11 76 (4.00%) Amazon EKS
12 67 (3.52%) AWS Lambda
12 67 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
13 60 (3.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 60 (3.15%) Amazon ECS
14 42 (2.21%) IaaS
15 41 (2.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 39 (2.05%) Microsoft 365
17 36 (1.89%) SaaS
18 35 (1.84%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 191 (10.04%) Firewall
2 130 (6.83%) DNS
3 100 (5.26%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.84%) VPN
5 66 (3.47%) Network Security
6 55 (2.89%) SAN
7 46 (2.42%) WAN
8 39 (2.05%) DHCP
9 38 (2.00%) LAN
9 38 (2.00%) SSH
10 37 (1.95%) HTTP
11 35 (1.84%) VSAN
12 32 (1.68%) SSL
13 29 (1.52%) SNMP
14 24 (1.26%) Ethernet
15 21 (1.10%) NAS
15 21 (1.10%) Wireless
16 17 (0.89%) BGP
16 17 (0.89%) Kerberos
17 15 (0.79%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (7.10%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 73 (3.84%) MySQL
4 69 (3.63%) Amazon RDS
5 67 (3.52%) Relational Database
6 66 (3.47%) MongoDB
7 64 (3.36%) Oracle Database
8 43 (2.26%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (2.00%) NoSQL
10 33 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
11 25 (1.31%) Big Data
12 24 (1.26%) DynamoDB
13 20 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
14 19 (1.00%) KDB
15 18 (0.95%) Kdb+
16 16 (0.84%) DB2
16 16 (0.84%) Hadoop
17 15 (0.79%) SAP HANA
18 14 (0.74%) Data Lake
19 11 (0.58%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 217 (11.41%) Jenkins
2 191 (10.04%) Git
3 172 (9.04%) GitLab
4 160 (8.41%) JIRA
5 34 (1.79%) Bitbucket
6 32 (1.68%) Maven
7 28 (1.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 27 (1.42%) JUnit
9 25 (1.31%) Mockito
9 25 (1.31%) SonarQube
10 24 (1.26%) Eclipse
11 16 (0.84%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.84%) Visual Studio
12 15 (0.79%) Cucumber
13 13 (0.68%) Jaeger
13 13 (0.68%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
14 11 (0.58%) jMock
15 10 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.47%) Selenium
General
1 416 (21.87%) Social Skills
2 278 (14.62%) Finance
3 195 (10.25%) Public Sector
4 151 (7.94%) Analytical Skills
5 109 (5.73%) Banking
6 71 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.47%) Military
8 26 (1.37%) Financial Institution
9 25 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.10%) Aerospace
10 21 (1.10%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (1.00%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.00%) Retail
13 18 (0.95%) Front Office
14 16 (0.84%) Law
15 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
16 13 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 13 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
17 12 (0.63%) Legal
Job Titles
1 226 (11.88%) Senior
2 221 (11.62%) Developer
3 175 (9.20%) DevOps Engineer
4 136 (7.15%) Linux Engineer
5 134 (7.05%) Software Engineer
6 118 (6.20%) Architect
7 108 (5.68%) Analyst
8 101 (5.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 94 (4.94%) Lead
10 87 (4.57%) Java Developer
11 80 (4.21%) Administrator
12 75 (3.94%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 69 (3.63%) Site Engineer
14 68 (3.58%) AWS Engineer
15 61 (3.21%) Platform Engineer
16 53 (2.79%) Security Engineer
17 52 (2.73%) AWS DevOps
18 50 (2.63%) Consultant
19 44 (2.31%) Embedded Engineer
19 44 (2.31%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (5.84%) Kafka
2 86 (4.52%) REST
3 78 (4.10%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.68%) Middleware
5 61 (3.21%) Node.js
6 51 (2.68%) Spring
7 49 (2.58%) LDAP
8 47 (2.47%) Spring Boot
9 41 (2.16%) Web Services
10 36 (1.89%) RESTful
11 35 (1.84%) .NET
12 31 (1.63%) XML
12 31 (1.63%) YAML
13 27 (1.42%) JSON
14 25 (1.31%) AngularJS
15 24 (1.26%) ActiveMQ
15 24 (1.26%) SOAP
16 22 (1.16%) React
17 21 (1.10%) CSS
18 20 (1.05%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 127 (6.68%) Data Centre
2 107 (5.63%) Cloud Native
3 74 (3.89%) Linux Command Line
4 67 (3.52%) Management Information System
5 66 (3.47%) Onboarding
6 62 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
7 56 (2.94%) PKI
8 54 (2.84%) Replication
9 49 (2.58%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (2.47%) Public Cloud
11 41 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.84%) Product Ownership
13 33 (1.74%) Security Posture
14 30 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
15 29 (1.52%) Enterprise Storage
15 29 (1.52%) Security Operations Centre
16 27 (1.42%) Embedded Systems
17 23 (1.21%) Clustering
18 21 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
18 21 (1.10%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 711 (37.38%) Windows
2 369 (19.40%) Unix
3 274 (14.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 172 (9.04%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.57%) Ubuntu
6 50 (2.63%) AIX
7 42 (2.21%) CentOS
8 39 (2.05%) Solaris
9 35 (1.84%) VMS
10 33 (1.74%) Embedded Linux
11 30 (1.58%) Android
12 25 (1.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.10%) Mac OS
14 20 (1.05%) Debian
14 20 (1.05%) Windows Server 2019
15 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
15 13 (0.68%) SUSE
16 12 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
17 10 (0.53%) Windows 10
18 9 (0.47%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 542 (28.50%) CI/CD
2 452 (23.76%) DevOps
3 394 (20.72%) Agile
4 314 (16.51%) Problem-Solving
5 292 (15.35%) Infrastructure as Code
6 262 (13.77%) Containerisation
7 214 (11.25%) Software Engineering
8 181 (9.52%) Observability
9 168 (8.83%) Migration
10 156 (8.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 142 (7.47%) Microservices
12 141 (7.41%) Continuous Improvement
13 140 (7.36%) Computer Science
13 140 (7.36%) SIEM
14 136 (7.15%) High Availability
15 135 (7.10%) Performance Tuning
16 133 (6.99%) Incident Response
17 131 (6.89%) Platform Engineering
17 131 (6.89%) Test Automation
18 129 (6.78%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 648 (34.07%) Python
2 319 (16.77%) SQL
3 286 (15.04%) Java
4 267 (14.04%) Bash
5 255 (13.41%) PowerShell
6 166 (8.73%) Shell Script
7 125 (6.57%) C++
8 106 (5.57%) JavaScript
9 74 (3.89%) Perl
10 62 (3.26%) C#
11 56 (2.94%) C
12 45 (2.37%) Go
13 41 (2.16%) PL/SQL
14 37 (1.95%) Ruby
15 28 (1.47%) TypeScript
16 27 (1.42%) PHP
17 21 (1.10%) Ada
17 21 (1.10%) Rust
18 19 (1.00%) MATLAB
19 18 (0.95%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 754 (39.64%) Security Cleared
2 557 (29.28%) SC Cleared
3 207 (10.88%) DV Cleared
4 175 (9.20%) Degree
5 91 (4.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 80 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.68%) AWS Certification
8 43 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
9 42 (2.21%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.05%) CISSP
11 34 (1.79%) RHCE
12 28 (1.47%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.31%) CCNA
14 21 (1.10%) Oracle Certification
15 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.95%) CCNP
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
18 15 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 14 (0.74%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.05%) NIST
2 66 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 55 (2.89%) QA
4 40 (2.10%) SLA
5 35 (1.84%) GDPR
6 25 (1.31%) Cyber Essentials
7 23 (1.21%) NCSC
8 20 (1.05%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.68%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
11 10 (0.53%) GLBA
11 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.47%) GRC
13 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
15 4 (0.21%) HL7
15 4 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 345 (18.14%) Docker
2 222 (11.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 172 (9.04%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.21%) Virtual Machines
5 70 (3.68%) Hyper-V
5 70 (3.68%) vSphere
6 61 (3.21%) VMware ESXi
7 40 (2.10%) NFS
8 38 (2.00%) Firmware
8 38 (2.00%) VMware NSX
9 26 (1.37%) GPFS
9 26 (1.37%) KVM
10 19 (1.00%) Oracle RAC
10 19 (1.00%) Postfix
11 17 (0.89%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 11 (0.58%) Ceph
13 10 (0.53%) Lustre
14 8 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
15 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 426 (22.40%) Kubernetes
2 389 (20.45%) Terraform
3 378 (19.87%) Ansible
4 183 (9.62%) Grafana
5 143 (7.52%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.89%) Puppet
7 51 (2.68%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.21%) vCenter Server
9 35 (1.84%) Packer
10 30 (1.58%) Kibana
10 30 (1.58%) vRealize
11 28 (1.47%) Oracle RMAN
11 28 (1.47%) Podman
12 27 (1.42%) Red Hat Satellite
13 22 (1.16%) Argo
14 20 (1.05%) Nagios
14 20 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
15 19 (1.00%) Data Guard
15 19 (1.00%) ZABBIX
16 18 (0.95%) SCCM
Vendors
1 299 (15.72%) VMware
2 269 (14.14%) Microsoft
3 258 (13.56%) Oracle
4 214 (11.25%) Red Hat
5 180 (9.46%) Splunk
6 103 (5.42%) Cisco
7 95 (4.99%) IBM
8 74 (3.89%) ServiceNow
9 46 (2.42%) Dell
10 44 (2.31%) CyberArk
11 43 (2.26%) Palo Alto
12 38 (2.00%) Google
13 33 (1.74%) Atlassian
13 33 (1.74%) HP
14 31 (1.63%) SolarWinds
15 26 (1.37%) NetApp
15 26 (1.37%) NVIDIA
16 24 (1.26%) BeyondTrust
17 23 (1.21%) F5
17 23 (1.21%) SAP