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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 34 31
Rank change year-on-year -23 -3 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,002 1,815 2,209
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.77% 5.53% 5.56%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.34% 41.44% 39.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,246 1,150 1,427
10th Percentile £358 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £432 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -5.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £702 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 55 129
10th Percentile £34.08 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £60.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,089 4,380 5,524
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.58% 13.35% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,219 2,823 3,656
10th Percentile £193 £200 £193
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £465
% change year-on-year +1.11% -3.25% +3.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 347 256 362
10th Percentile £15.65 £15.50 £12.53
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -11.11% -36.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.70 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.50 £37.08
% change year-on-year +18.49% -39.32% +7.49%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 -27 1,694 £525 -0.66% 889
UK excluding London -14 1,208 £500 - 617
London -51 583 £550 -4.35% 363
Work from Home -32 541 £500 -3.85% 358
South East +1 347 £519 +1.22% 213
North of England -11 316 £500 - 123
South West -2 183 £550 -4.35% 87
North West -10 165 £489 +21.82% 69
Midlands -17 139 £471 -0.79% 65
Yorkshire -24 134 £500 -4.76% 29
West Midlands -28 118 £470 -1.57% 38
Scotland -25 106 £425 -15.00% 38
East of England -18 94 £483 -2.53% 82
Wales +6 29 £465 +64.60% 9
North East -25 24 £490 +2.62% 25
East Midlands -9 18 £513 +13.89% 27
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 15

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 82 (4.10%) Confluence
2 52 (2.60%) Apache
3 30 (1.50%) nginx
4 28 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.05%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
7 19 (0.95%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.90%) SAS
9 17 (0.85%) OpenStack
10 13 (0.65%) JBoss
11 10 (0.50%) CICS
12 9 (0.45%) IIS
12 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
12 9 (0.45%) SharePoint
12 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 21 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.15%) Houdini
5 3 (0.15%) NUKE
5 3 (0.15%) Simulink
6 2 (0.100%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.050%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.050%) InDesign
7 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.100%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.050%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.050%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 598 (29.87%) AWS
2 469 (23.43%) Azure
3 159 (7.94%) GitHub
4 154 (7.69%) GCP
5 101 (5.04%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
7 88 (4.40%) Amazon EC2
7 88 (4.40%) Amazon S3
8 87 (4.35%) Entra ID
9 78 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
10 63 (3.15%) Amazon EKS
11 59 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 57 (2.85%) Serverless
13 53 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
13 53 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
13 53 (2.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 50 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
15 46 (2.30%) IaaS
16 41 (2.05%) SaaS
17 39 (1.95%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 217 (10.84%) Firewall
2 191 (9.54%) DNS
3 121 (6.04%) TCP/IP
4 92 (4.60%) DHCP
5 81 (4.05%) VPN
6 74 (3.70%) Network Security
7 73 (3.65%) SAN
8 47 (2.35%) WAN
9 45 (2.25%) SSL
10 44 (2.20%) VSAN
11 37 (1.85%) LAN
11 37 (1.85%) SSH
12 34 (1.70%) HTTP
13 33 (1.65%) VLAN
14 32 (1.60%) SNMP
15 22 (1.10%) NAS
16 21 (1.05%) Ethernet
16 21 (1.05%) IPsec
17 18 (0.90%) Cisco Nexus
18 17 (0.85%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.34%) SQL Server
2 114 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
3 92 (4.60%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.45%) MySQL
5 67 (3.35%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.25%) MongoDB
7 53 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
9 38 (1.90%) Elasticsearch
10 31 (1.55%) NoSQL
11 30 (1.50%) RDBMS
12 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
13 24 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
14 21 (1.05%) Big Data
14 21 (1.05%) SAP HANA
15 19 (0.95%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.90%) Data Lake
17 17 (0.85%) DataStage
17 17 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
18 15 (0.75%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 218 (10.89%) Jenkins
2 202 (10.09%) Git
3 179 (8.94%) GitLab
4 143 (7.14%) JIRA
5 39 (1.95%) Maven
6 33 (1.65%) Mockito
7 32 (1.60%) SonarQube
8 27 (1.35%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.05%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
10 19 (0.95%) JUnit
11 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
13 13 (0.65%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 13 (0.65%) jMock
14 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
16 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
17 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
General
1 407 (20.33%) Social Skills
2 290 (14.49%) Finance
3 199 (9.94%) Public Sector
4 196 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
5 141 (7.04%) Banking
6 74 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.95%) Military
8 32 (1.60%) Front Office
9 29 (1.45%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.20%) Legal
12 23 (1.15%) Retail
13 20 (1.00%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.95%) Law
15 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.85%) Financial Institution
17 16 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 16 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
18 15 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
19 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 288 (14.39%) Senior
2 209 (10.44%) Linux Engineer
3 198 (9.89%) Developer
4 176 (8.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 171 (8.54%) DevOps Engineer
6 117 (5.84%) Software Engineer
7 100 (5.00%) Architect
8 86 (4.30%) Platform Engineer
9 84 (4.20%) Analyst
10 80 (4.00%) Java Developer
11 76 (3.80%) Lead
12 71 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
13 67 (3.35%) Consultant
14 63 (3.15%) AWS Engineer
14 63 (3.15%) Support Engineer
15 56 (2.80%) Senior Developer
15 56 (2.80%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 54 (2.70%) Administrator
17 51 (2.55%) Security Engineer
18 50 (2.50%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (5.29%) Kafka
2 101 (5.04%) REST
3 69 (3.45%) Middleware
4 68 (3.40%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.85%) Spring
6 49 (2.45%) .NET
6 49 (2.45%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.40%) Web Services
8 45 (2.25%) RESTful
9 42 (2.10%) LDAP
10 41 (2.05%) Node.js
11 34 (1.70%) ActiveMQ
12 31 (1.55%) JSON
13 28 (1.40%) SOAP
13 28 (1.40%) YAML
14 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
15 25 (1.25%) React
16 24 (1.20%) XML
17 21 (1.05%) FastAPI
17 21 (1.05%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 138 (6.89%) Data Centre
2 135 (6.74%) Cloud Native
3 123 (6.14%) Onboarding
4 103 (5.14%) Linux Command Line
5 94 (4.70%) PKI
6 90 (4.50%) Distributed Systems
7 79 (3.95%) Replication
8 67 (3.35%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.20%) Public Cloud
10 60 (3.00%) Management Information System
11 58 (2.90%) Security Posture
12 50 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.80%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.60%) Clustering
15 31 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
16 29 (1.45%) Embedded Systems
17 28 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
17 28 (1.40%) Operational Technology
18 27 (1.35%) Enterprise Storage
19 25 (1.25%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 764 (38.16%) Windows
2 424 (21.18%) Unix
3 339 (16.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 215 (10.74%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 71 (3.55%) AIX
7 60 (3.00%) Solaris
8 42 (2.10%) CentOS
9 30 (1.50%) Embedded Linux
10 27 (1.35%) VMS
11 24 (1.20%) SUSE
11 24 (1.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.90%) Oracle Linux
13 17 (0.85%) Android
13 17 (0.85%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.80%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.80%) Rocky
15 15 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
16 14 (0.70%) Debian
16 14 (0.70%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (28.17%) CI/CD
2 487 (24.33%) DevOps
3 362 (18.08%) Infrastructure as Code
4 356 (17.78%) Agile
5 287 (14.34%) Problem-Solving
6 267 (13.34%) Containerisation
7 252 (12.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 235 (11.74%) Migration
9 212 (10.59%) Continuous Improvement
10 201 (10.04%) Software Engineering
11 194 (9.69%) High Availability
12 192 (9.59%) Observability
13 182 (9.09%) Platform Engineering
14 177 (8.84%) Performance Tuning
15 176 (8.79%) Root Cause Analysis
16 164 (8.19%) ITIL
17 159 (7.94%) SIEM
18 143 (7.14%) AI
19 139 (6.94%) Configuration Management
20 138 (6.89%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 695 (34.72%) Python
2 360 (17.98%) Bash
3 359 (17.93%) PowerShell
4 340 (16.98%) SQL
5 248 (12.39%) Java
6 150 (7.49%) Shell Script
7 122 (6.09%) C++
8 90 (4.50%) JavaScript
9 69 (3.45%) C#
10 68 (3.40%) C
11 60 (3.00%) PL/SQL
12 58 (2.90%) Perl
13 50 (2.50%) Go
14 36 (1.80%) Bicep
15 22 (1.10%) Ada
16 21 (1.05%) Rust
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
16 21 (1.05%) TypeScript
17 17 (0.85%) Groovy
18 13 (0.65%) Scala
Qualifications
1 782 (39.06%) Security Cleared
2 582 (29.07%) SC Cleared
3 224 (11.19%) DV Cleared
4 176 (8.79%) Degree
5 78 (3.90%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 61 (3.05%) CISSP
8 60 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
9 50 (2.50%) Azure Certification
10 45 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
11 29 (1.45%) CCNP
12 27 (1.35%) CompTIA Security+
13 26 (1.30%) RHCE
14 24 (1.20%) CCNA
14 24 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.95%) CISM
16 18 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
19 12 (0.60%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.15%) NIST
2 78 (3.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (2.90%) QA
4 30 (1.50%) SLA
5 25 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.10%) GDPR
7 21 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
7 21 (1.05%) NCSC
8 20 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.70%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.60%) GRC
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
17 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 327 (16.33%) Docker
2 257 (12.84%) Active Directory
3 233 (11.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (4.35%) Virtual Machines
5 80 (4.00%) vSphere
6 75 (3.75%) Hyper-V
7 63 (3.15%) VMware ESXi
8 61 (3.05%) VMware NSX
9 45 (2.25%) NFS
10 39 (1.95%) Oracle RAC
11 34 (1.70%) Firmware
12 30 (1.50%) KVM
13 20 (1.00%) Postfix
14 13 (0.65%) Ceph
14 13 (0.65%) GPFS
15 10 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 449 (22.43%) Terraform
2 443 (22.13%) Ansible
3 421 (21.03%) Kubernetes
4 164 (8.19%) Grafana
5 141 (7.04%) Prometheus
6 79 (3.95%) Puppet
7 60 (3.00%) Progress Chef
8 51 (2.55%) Oracle RMAN
9 42 (2.10%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.90%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.55%) Nagios
12 28 (1.40%) Packer
12 28 (1.40%) SCCM
13 27 (1.35%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
15 24 (1.20%) Podman
16 23 (1.15%) Argo
16 23 (1.15%) VxRail
17 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
18 20 (1.00%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 325 (16.23%) VMware
2 301 (15.03%) Microsoft
3 299 (14.94%) Oracle
4 227 (11.34%) Red Hat
5 150 (7.49%) Splunk
6 130 (6.49%) Cisco
7 108 (5.39%) ServiceNow
8 103 (5.14%) IBM
9 79 (3.95%) CyberArk
10 73 (3.65%) Google
11 48 (2.40%) BeyondTrust
12 47 (2.35%) Palo Alto
12 47 (2.35%) SolarWinds
13 42 (2.10%) SAP
14 40 (2.00%) NetApp
15 39 (1.95%) F5
16 38 (1.90%) HP
17 32 (1.60%) Citrix
18 31 (1.55%) Dynatrace
19 30 (1.50%) Sybase