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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -19 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,908 1,743 2,286
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.17% 5.96% 5.20%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.11% 42.72% 38.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,201 1,125 1,509
10th Percentile £325 £375 £325
25th Percentile £401 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £548
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +0.46% -6.44%
75th Percentile £613 £640 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £537 £538
% change year-on-year -8.75% -0.09% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 51 105
10th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £25.61
25th Percentile £41.94 £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 £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.25 £71.25 £70.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 4,757 4,080 5,976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.39% 13.96% 13.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,112 2,723 4,002
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £304 £320 £293
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £573 £600 £594
90th Percentile £660 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 172 411
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.51 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £26.47 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.34% +12.09% -26.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £24.18 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.53% +20.90% -24.53%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -23 1,616 £518 -5.91% 832
UK excluding London -11 1,124 £490 -8.75% 721
London -38 563 £550 -8.33% 200
Work from Home -22 497 £500 -4.76% 308
South East -4 312 £500 -9.09% 206
North of England -10 294 £486 -11.64% 125
Midlands -10 169 £467 -8.85% 75
South West -17 151 £539 -7.91% 144
Yorkshire -18 151 £464 -15.64% 41
West Midlands -4 150 £467 -13.49% 41
North West -4 132 £503 -1.85% 58
East of England -8 93 £454 -0.49% 117
Scotland -18 89 £425 -9.33% 44
East Midlands -43 18 £525 +16.67% 34
Northern Ireland +8 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -16 13 £550 +4.76% 27
Wales -13 8 £404 -26.59% 23

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 97 (5.08%) Confluence
2 45 (2.36%) nginx
3 44 (2.31%) Apache
4 37 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 17 (0.89%) SAS
7 16 (0.84%) OpenStack
7 16 (0.84%) WebLogic
8 15 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
10 12 (0.63%) SharePoint
11 10 (0.52%) CICS
11 10 (0.52%) TPMS
12 9 (0.47%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.31%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.16%) IIS
15 3 (0.16%) JBoss
15 3 (0.16%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 41 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.52%) 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 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 3 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
3 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.052%) Odoo
4 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
4 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 557 (29.19%) AWS
2 379 (19.86%) Azure
3 171 (8.96%) GitHub
4 128 (6.71%) OpenShift
5 111 (5.82%) GCP
6 99 (5.19%) Amazon EC2
7 96 (5.03%) AWS CloudFormation
8 86 (4.51%) GitHub Actions
9 81 (4.25%) Serverless
10 80 (4.19%) Amazon S3
11 75 (3.93%) Amazon EKS
12 67 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
13 62 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (2.83%) Amazon ECS
15 53 (2.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 48 (2.52%) IaaS
17 39 (2.04%) Entra ID
17 39 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
17 39 (2.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 36 (1.89%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 213 (11.16%) Firewall
2 139 (7.29%) DNS
3 107 (5.61%) TCP/IP
4 69 (3.62%) Network Security
4 69 (3.62%) VPN
5 53 (2.78%) SAN
6 46 (2.41%) SSH
7 42 (2.20%) DHCP
8 41 (2.15%) VSAN
9 37 (1.94%) HTTP
9 37 (1.94%) WAN
10 32 (1.68%) LAN
11 31 (1.62%) SNMP
12 30 (1.57%) SSL
13 24 (1.26%) Ethernet
14 23 (1.21%) BGP
14 23 (1.21%) Wireless
15 20 (1.05%) NAS
16 19 (1.00%) VLAN
17 18 (0.94%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (6.76%) PostgreSQL
2 106 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 71 (3.72%) MySQL
4 68 (3.56%) Amazon RDS
4 68 (3.56%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.41%) MongoDB
6 58 (3.04%) Oracle Database
7 40 (2.10%) Elasticsearch
8 34 (1.78%) NoSQL
9 23 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
10 19 (1.00%) Amazon Aurora
10 19 (1.00%) Big Data
10 19 (1.00%) DynamoDB
10 19 (1.00%) KDB
11 18 (0.94%) Kdb+
12 16 (0.84%) DB2
13 15 (0.79%) Hadoop
13 15 (0.79%) SAP HANA
14 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
15 12 (0.63%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 218 (11.43%) Jenkins
2 193 (10.12%) Git
3 173 (9.07%) GitLab
4 156 (8.18%) JIRA
5 36 (1.89%) Bitbucket
6 32 (1.68%) JUnit
7 31 (1.62%) Maven
7 31 (1.62%) Sonatype Nexus
8 27 (1.42%) Eclipse
9 24 (1.26%) Mockito
10 20 (1.05%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.94%) Cucumber
12 17 (0.89%) Artifactory
13 16 (0.84%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
15 11 (0.58%) JMeter
15 11 (0.58%) Selenium
16 10 (0.52%) jMock
17 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 430 (22.54%) Social Skills
2 292 (15.30%) Finance
3 193 (10.12%) Public Sector
4 160 (8.39%) Analytical Skills
5 117 (6.13%) Banking
6 71 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.52%) Military
8 32 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.36%) Financial Institution
10 24 (1.26%) Investment Banking
10 24 (1.26%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.10%) Front Office
11 21 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (1.05%) Aerospace
13 19 (1.00%) Retail
14 18 (0.94%) Legal
14 18 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
15 17 (0.89%) Law
16 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 234 (12.26%) Senior
2 233 (12.21%) Developer
3 164 (8.60%) DevOps Engineer
4 134 (7.02%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.60%) Linux Engineer
6 123 (6.45%) Analyst
7 122 (6.39%) Architect
8 97 (5.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 88 (4.61%) Java Developer
10 86 (4.51%) Lead
11 82 (4.30%) Administrator
12 74 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
13 69 (3.62%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 64 (3.35%) Site Engineer
15 63 (3.30%) AWS Engineer
16 52 (2.73%) Consultant
17 51 (2.67%) AWS DevOps
18 50 (2.62%) Security Engineer
19 44 (2.31%) Support Engineer
20 43 (2.25%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (6.13%) Kafka
2 92 (4.82%) REST
3 77 (4.04%) Elastic Stack
4 69 (3.62%) Node.js
5 66 (3.46%) Middleware
6 52 (2.73%) LDAP
6 52 (2.73%) Spring
7 45 (2.36%) Spring Boot
8 40 (2.10%) Web Services
9 33 (1.73%) RESTful
9 33 (1.73%) XML
9 33 (1.73%) YAML
10 31 (1.62%) .NET
10 31 (1.62%) JSON
11 29 (1.52%) React
12 28 (1.47%) AngularJS
13 25 (1.31%) SOAP
14 22 (1.15%) ActiveMQ
15 21 (1.10%) Flash
16 19 (1.00%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 122 (6.39%) Data Centre
2 104 (5.45%) Cloud Native
3 81 (4.25%) Linux Command Line
4 67 (3.51%) Management Information System
5 59 (3.09%) Distributed Systems
6 57 (2.99%) Onboarding
7 56 (2.94%) PKI
8 54 (2.83%) Replication
9 51 (2.67%) Public Cloud
10 47 (2.46%) Hybrid Cloud
11 41 (2.15%) Product Ownership
12 36 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
13 32 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
13 32 (1.68%) Security Operations Centre
14 30 (1.57%) Security Posture
15 28 (1.47%) Equities
16 27 (1.42%) Enterprise Storage
17 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
18 25 (1.31%) Embedded Systems
19 24 (1.26%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 725 (38.00%) Windows
2 354 (18.55%) Unix
3 275 (14.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 176 (9.22%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.56%) Ubuntu
6 47 (2.46%) AIX
7 42 (2.20%) CentOS
8 37 (1.94%) Solaris
9 35 (1.83%) Android
10 34 (1.78%) VMS
11 30 (1.57%) Embedded Linux
12 23 (1.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (1.15%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.94%) Debian
14 18 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
15 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
15 13 (0.68%) SUSE
16 11 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
17 10 (0.52%) Apple iOS
18 9 (0.47%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 549 (28.77%) CI/CD
2 455 (23.85%) DevOps
3 399 (20.91%) Agile
4 341 (17.87%) Problem-Solving
5 286 (14.99%) Infrastructure as Code
6 277 (14.52%) Containerisation
7 212 (11.11%) Software Engineering
8 182 (9.54%) Observability
9 158 (8.28%) Migration
10 157 (8.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 149 (7.81%) Continuous Improvement
12 144 (7.55%) Microservices
13 143 (7.49%) Cybersecurity
14 142 (7.44%) Computer Science
15 139 (7.29%) Platform Engineering
16 138 (7.23%) Incident Response
17 134 (7.02%) SIEM
18 132 (6.92%) Test Automation
19 131 (6.87%) High Availability
20 123 (6.45%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 659 (34.54%) Python
2 316 (16.56%) SQL
3 289 (15.15%) Bash
3 289 (15.15%) Java
4 280 (14.68%) PowerShell
5 174 (9.12%) Shell Script
6 138 (7.23%) C++
7 106 (5.56%) JavaScript
8 87 (4.56%) Perl
9 67 (3.51%) C#
10 53 (2.78%) C
11 42 (2.20%) Ruby
12 40 (2.10%) Go
12 40 (2.10%) PL/SQL
13 31 (1.62%) TypeScript
14 26 (1.36%) PHP
15 24 (1.26%) Rust
16 20 (1.05%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.00%) Ada
18 18 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 750 (39.31%) Security Cleared
2 555 (29.09%) SC Cleared
3 197 (10.32%) DV Cleared
4 184 (9.64%) Degree
5 92 (4.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 78 (4.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.67%) AWS Certification
8 45 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
9 42 (2.20%) CompTIA Security+
10 41 (2.15%) CISSP
11 29 (1.52%) RHCE
12 28 (1.47%) CCNA
13 25 (1.31%) CCNP
14 23 (1.21%) Azure Certification
15 21 (1.10%) Oracle Certification
16 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
17 18 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
17 18 (0.94%) OCP
18 16 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 14 (0.73%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (4.25%) NIST
2 68 (3.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 50 (2.62%) QA
4 39 (2.04%) GDPR
5 36 (1.89%) SLA
6 23 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.05%) NCSC
7 20 (1.05%) PCI DSS
8 13 (0.68%) Data Quality
8 13 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.52%) GLBA
11 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
13 6 (0.31%) GRC
14 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
14 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 368 (19.29%) Docker
2 241 (12.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 177 (9.28%) Active Directory
4 92 (4.82%) vSphere
5 71 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
6 66 (3.46%) Hyper-V
7 63 (3.30%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (2.25%) VMware NSX
9 39 (2.04%) NFS
10 34 (1.78%) Firmware
11 28 (1.47%) GPFS
12 23 (1.21%) KVM
13 17 (0.89%) Oracle RAC
13 17 (0.89%) Postfix
14 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.58%) Ceph
15 11 (0.58%) Lustre
16 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 443 (23.22%) Kubernetes
2 387 (20.28%) Terraform
3 375 (19.65%) Ansible
4 177 (9.28%) Grafana
5 144 (7.55%) Prometheus
6 64 (3.35%) Puppet
7 54 (2.83%) Progress Chef
8 49 (2.57%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.04%) vRealize
10 34 (1.78%) Packer
11 32 (1.68%) Argo
12 30 (1.57%) Podman
13 29 (1.52%) Red Hat Satellite
14 25 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
15 23 (1.21%) Kibana
16 22 (1.15%) VxRail
17 19 (1.00%) Nessus
17 19 (1.00%) SCCM
18 17 (0.89%) Data Guard
18 17 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 325 (17.03%) VMware
2 278 (14.57%) Microsoft
3 257 (13.47%) Oracle
4 231 (12.11%) Red Hat
5 178 (9.33%) Splunk
6 114 (5.97%) Cisco
7 98 (5.14%) IBM
8 68 (3.56%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.78%) Dell
10 46 (2.41%) CyberArk
11 43 (2.25%) Google
12 41 (2.15%) Palo Alto
13 38 (1.99%) HP
14 36 (1.89%) SolarWinds
15 30 (1.57%) Citrix
16 29 (1.52%) Atlassian
17 28 (1.47%) NetApp
18 25 (1.31%) BeyondTrust
18 25 (1.31%) NVIDIA
19 24 (1.26%) AppDynamics