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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,901 1,707 2,165
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.96% 5.86% 5.09%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.55% 42.13% 38.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,181 1,082 1,422
10th Percentile £335 £375 £325
25th Percentile £406 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £539 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% -2.05% -5.98%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £694 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -6.67% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 43 109
10th Percentile £33.68 £41.40 £36.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.68 - -
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 4,688 4,052 5,658
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.76% 13.91% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,021 2,663 3,818
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £467 £470
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% -0.74% -6.09%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £656 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £444 £445 £450
% change year-on-year -0.22% -1.11% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 177 390
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.24 £12.73
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.31
Median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.11% +2.27% -42.86%
75th Percentile £67.25 £57.50 £60.56
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.10 £21.59 £22.50
% change year-on-year +108.90% -4.04% -23.21%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -24 1,584 £513 -6.82% 827
UK excluding London -13 1,142 £490 -6.67% 663
London -49 538 £550 -4.35% 236
Work from Home -28 482 £500 -4.76% 478
South East -5 321 £500 -9.09% 232
North of England -13 281 £475 -9.52% 111
South West -11 160 £546 -8.96% 121
Midlands -11 157 £525 +5.00% 64
Yorkshire -18 149 £463 -15.91% 35
West Midlands -5 138 £513 -4.52% 28
North West -17 119 £484 -3.20% 57
Scotland -20 95 £488 +4.28% 36
East of England -17 91 £475 -1.55% 90
Wales +5 27 £465 -20.65% 15
East Midlands -26 17 £528 +16.06% 36
Northern Ireland +10 15 £425 +30.77% 6
North East -20 13 £480 -8.57% 21

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 78 (4.10%) Confluence
2 49 (2.58%) Apache
3 29 (1.53%) nginx
4 27 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
5 21 (1.10%) Apache Spark
6 20 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (1.00%) Tomcat
8 17 (0.89%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.74%) OpenStack
9 14 (0.74%) SAS
10 13 (0.68%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
12 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.42%) TPMS
14 7 (0.37%) JBoss
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) SharePoint
17 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 21 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.53%) 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 (0.63%) 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
Cloud Services
1 534 (28.09%) AWS
2 382 (20.09%) Azure
3 170 (8.94%) GitHub
4 123 (6.47%) OpenShift
5 110 (5.79%) GCP
6 96 (5.05%) GitHub Actions
7 84 (4.42%) Amazon EC2
8 82 (4.31%) Amazon S3
9 71 (3.73%) Amazon EKS
10 70 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
11 69 (3.63%) AWS CloudFormation
11 69 (3.63%) Serverless
12 58 (3.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 58 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
13 46 (2.42%) Amazon ECS
13 46 (2.42%) IaaS
14 43 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
15 42 (2.21%) Entra ID
16 40 (2.10%) PaaS
17 38 (2.00%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 177 (9.31%) Firewall
2 133 (7.00%) DNS
3 98 (5.16%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.84%) VPN
5 62 (3.26%) SAN
6 60 (3.16%) Network Security
7 48 (2.52%) WAN
8 45 (2.37%) DHCP
9 41 (2.16%) LAN
10 37 (1.95%) VSAN
11 36 (1.89%) SNMP
12 35 (1.84%) SSH
13 32 (1.68%) HTTP
14 29 (1.53%) SSL
15 24 (1.26%) NAS
16 23 (1.21%) Ethernet
17 19 (1.00%) Wireless
18 18 (0.95%) BGP
18 18 (0.95%) Kerberos
19 16 (0.84%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (6.05%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 73 (3.84%) MySQL
4 66 (3.47%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.47%) Relational Database
5 63 (3.31%) MongoDB
6 53 (2.79%) Amazon RDS
7 43 (2.26%) Elasticsearch
8 35 (1.84%) Amazon Aurora
9 28 (1.47%) NoSQL
10 22 (1.16%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.05%) Big Data
11 20 (1.05%) SAP HANA
12 19 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
12 19 (1.00%) KDB
13 16 (0.84%) DB2
13 16 (0.84%) Kdb+
14 12 (0.63%) Data Lake
14 12 (0.63%) Sybase ASE
15 11 (0.58%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 204 (10.73%) Jenkins
2 172 (9.05%) GitLab
3 169 (8.89%) Git
4 137 (7.21%) JIRA
5 31 (1.63%) Maven
6 25 (1.32%) SonarQube
7 24 (1.26%) Eclipse
7 24 (1.26%) Mockito
8 20 (1.05%) JUnit
9 19 (1.00%) Bitbucket
9 19 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
10 15 (0.79%) Artifactory
11 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
11 14 (0.74%) Visual Studio
12 13 (0.68%) Jaeger
13 11 (0.58%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.58%) DbUnit
13 11 (0.58%) jMock
14 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.47%) Selenium
General
1 392 (20.62%) Social Skills
2 258 (13.57%) Finance
3 192 (10.10%) Public Sector
4 146 (7.68%) Analytical Skills
5 109 (5.73%) Banking
6 77 (4.05%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.42%) Military
8 26 (1.37%) Financial Institution
9 25 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.21%) Front Office
11 21 (1.10%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.10%) Retail
12 20 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (0.95%) Law
14 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 15 (0.79%) Legal
15 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 236 (12.41%) Senior
2 203 (10.68%) Developer
3 176 (9.26%) DevOps Engineer
4 155 (8.15%) Linux Engineer
5 137 (7.21%) Software Engineer
6 117 (6.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 113 (5.94%) Architect
8 107 (5.63%) Analyst
9 98 (5.16%) Lead
10 80 (4.21%) Administrator
11 76 (4.00%) Java Developer
12 70 (3.68%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 64 (3.37%) AWS Engineer
14 61 (3.21%) Platform Engineer
15 60 (3.16%) Site Engineer
16 52 (2.74%) Consultant
16 52 (2.74%) Security Engineer
17 47 (2.47%) AWS DevOps
18 46 (2.42%) Support Engineer
19 45 (2.37%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (5.31%) Kafka
2 85 (4.47%) REST
3 80 (4.21%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.79%) Middleware
5 53 (2.79%) LDAP
6 51 (2.68%) Node.js
7 46 (2.42%) Spring Boot
8 45 (2.37%) Spring
9 43 (2.26%) Web Services
10 37 (1.95%) RESTful
11 36 (1.89%) .NET
12 33 (1.74%) YAML
13 29 (1.53%) XML
14 27 (1.42%) JSON
15 26 (1.37%) AngularJS
16 24 (1.26%) React
17 23 (1.21%) ActiveMQ
17 23 (1.21%) Flash
18 22 (1.16%) CSS
19 21 (1.10%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 144 (7.57%) Data Centre
2 106 (5.58%) Cloud Native
3 80 (4.21%) Linux Command Line
4 71 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.58%) Distributed Systems
5 68 (3.58%) Management Information System
6 64 (3.37%) PKI
7 57 (3.00%) Replication
8 51 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
9 48 (2.52%) Public Cloud
10 43 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
11 35 (1.84%) Product Ownership
12 34 (1.79%) Security Posture
13 32 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.63%) Enterprise Storage
15 30 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
16 29 (1.53%) Embedded Systems
17 25 (1.32%) Operational Technology
18 23 (1.21%) Clustering
18 23 (1.21%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 725 (38.14%) Windows
2 373 (19.62%) Unix
3 276 (14.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 174 (9.15%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.58%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.68%) AIX
7 40 (2.10%) CentOS
8 38 (2.00%) Solaris
9 34 (1.79%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.63%) VMS
11 29 (1.53%) Android
12 23 (1.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
14 21 (1.10%) Debian
14 21 (1.10%) Mac OS
15 14 (0.74%) SUSE
16 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
17 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
17 10 (0.53%) Windows 10
17 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (28.46%) CI/CD
2 447 (23.51%) DevOps
3 358 (18.83%) Agile
4 310 (16.31%) Problem-Solving
5 288 (15.15%) Infrastructure as Code
6 261 (13.73%) Containerisation
7 216 (11.36%) Software Engineering
8 184 (9.68%) Observability
9 178 (9.36%) Migration
10 175 (9.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 153 (8.05%) High Availability
12 148 (7.79%) Performance Tuning
12 148 (7.79%) SIEM
13 142 (7.47%) Continuous Improvement
14 137 (7.21%) Microservices
14 137 (7.21%) Root Cause Analysis
15 136 (7.15%) Incident Response
16 135 (7.10%) Computer Science
17 134 (7.05%) Platform Engineering
18 133 (7.00%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 633 (33.30%) Python
2 331 (17.41%) SQL
3 267 (14.05%) Bash
3 267 (14.05%) Java
4 260 (13.68%) PowerShell
5 160 (8.42%) Shell Script
6 124 (6.52%) C++
7 107 (5.63%) JavaScript
8 68 (3.58%) Perl
9 61 (3.21%) C#
10 56 (2.95%) C
11 49 (2.58%) Go
12 45 (2.37%) PL/SQL
13 30 (1.58%) Ruby
14 27 (1.42%) TypeScript
15 24 (1.26%) PHP
16 23 (1.21%) Rust
17 21 (1.10%) Ada
17 21 (1.10%) MATLAB
18 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 742 (39.03%) Security Cleared
2 541 (28.46%) SC Cleared
3 216 (11.36%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.36%) Degree
5 80 (4.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 79 (4.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 53 (2.79%) Cisco Certification
8 51 (2.68%) AWS Certification
9 45 (2.37%) CISSP
10 42 (2.21%) CompTIA Security+
11 36 (1.89%) RHCE
12 30 (1.58%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.32%) CCNA
14 23 (1.21%) CCNP
15 19 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 19 (1.00%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
18 15 (0.79%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (4.31%) NIST
2 71 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (2.84%) QA
4 47 (2.47%) SLA
5 31 (1.63%) GDPR
6 30 (1.58%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (1.26%) NCSC
8 18 (0.95%) 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 (0.47%) GRC
11 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
12 8 (0.42%) GLBA
13 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
14 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 320 (16.83%) Docker
2 222 (11.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 188 (9.89%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.21%) Virtual Machines
5 71 (3.73%) Hyper-V
5 71 (3.73%) vSphere
6 65 (3.42%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (2.58%) NFS
8 42 (2.21%) VMware NSX
9 38 (2.00%) Firmware
10 26 (1.37%) GPFS
10 26 (1.37%) KVM
11 19 (1.00%) Oracle RAC
12 17 (0.89%) Postfix
13 15 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.58%) Ceph
15 9 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
16 7 (0.37%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 405 (21.30%) Kubernetes
2 386 (20.31%) Ansible
3 360 (18.94%) Terraform
4 180 (9.47%) Grafana
5 145 (7.63%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.79%) Puppet
7 44 (2.31%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.26%) vCenter Server
9 33 (1.74%) Oracle RMAN
10 31 (1.63%) vRealize
11 30 (1.58%) Kibana
11 30 (1.58%) Podman
12 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
13 24 (1.26%) Nagios
13 24 (1.26%) ZABBIX
14 23 (1.21%) Argo
15 22 (1.16%) Data Guard
15 22 (1.16%) Packer
16 20 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
16 20 (1.05%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 306 (16.10%) VMware
2 262 (13.78%) Microsoft
3 259 (13.62%) Oracle
4 218 (11.47%) Red Hat
5 190 (9.99%) Splunk
6 117 (6.15%) Cisco
7 95 (5.00%) IBM
8 82 (4.31%) ServiceNow
9 50 (2.63%) Palo Alto
10 45 (2.37%) CyberArk
11 40 (2.10%) Dell
12 35 (1.84%) Google
12 35 (1.84%) HP
12 35 (1.84%) SolarWinds
13 32 (1.68%) NVIDIA
14 31 (1.63%) F5
15 29 (1.53%) SAP
16 28 (1.47%) BeyondTrust
17 27 (1.42%) Citrix
18 25 (1.32%) NetApp