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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,026 1,828 2,211
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.55% 5.65%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.39% 41.63% 40.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,249 1,145 1,435
10th Percentile £350 £360 £350
25th Percentile £425 £432 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £705 £723 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 56 121
10th Percentile £35.70 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.81 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +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 5,144 4,391 5,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 13.34% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,245 2,817 3,626
10th Percentile £190 £200 £200
25th Percentile £315 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £658 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £470
% change year-on-year +1.11% -4.26% +4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 256 336
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.50 £12.46
25th Percentile £17.68 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.85 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.88 £22.53 £40.00
% change year-on-year +23.75% -43.68% +36.52%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 1,712 £525 - 1,289
UK excluding London -16 1,220 £500 - 795
London -54 592 £550 -5.17% 580
Work from Home -27 550 £500 -4.76% 499
South East +1 352 £523 +1.95% 254
North of England -15 311 £500 - 157
South West -4 189 £550 -4.35% 123
North West -13 163 £500 +25.00% 96
Midlands -27 137 £474 -0.26% 71
Yorkshire -26 129 £500 -4.76% 31
West Midlands -28 116 £470 -5.05% 45
Scotland -24 110 £425 -15.00% 45
East of England -14 98 £475 -3.06% 134
Wales +10 29 £465 +64.60% 11
North East -19 26 £480 -16.52% 30
East Midlands -6 18 £513 +22.02% 26
Northern Ireland -2 2 - - 22

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 85 (4.20%) Confluence
2 49 (2.42%) Apache
3 31 (1.53%) nginx
4 28 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.99%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.94%) OpenStack
7 19 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.89%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.89%) SAS
9 12 (0.59%) JBoss
10 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.44%) IIS
11 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.44%) SharePoint
12 8 (0.39%) CICS
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) WordPress
Applications
1 20 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) 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 (0.099%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 602 (29.71%) AWS
2 483 (23.84%) Azure
3 158 (7.80%) GitHub
4 156 (7.70%) GCP
5 98 (4.84%) OpenShift
6 92 (4.54%) Entra ID
6 92 (4.54%) GitHub Actions
7 88 (4.34%) Amazon S3
8 87 (4.29%) Amazon EC2
9 82 (4.05%) Azure DevOps
10 62 (3.06%) Amazon EKS
11 60 (2.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 57 (2.81%) Serverless
13 54 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
13 54 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
14 53 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 51 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
16 47 (2.32%) IaaS
17 41 (2.02%) SaaS
18 39 (1.92%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 222 (10.96%) Firewall
2 209 (10.32%) DNS
3 130 (6.42%) TCP/IP
4 104 (5.13%) DHCP
5 81 (4.00%) VPN
6 75 (3.70%) Network Security
7 72 (3.55%) SAN
8 51 (2.52%) SSL
9 46 (2.27%) VSAN
9 46 (2.27%) WAN
10 42 (2.07%) SSH
11 40 (1.97%) HTTP
12 37 (1.83%) LAN
13 33 (1.63%) VLAN
14 32 (1.58%) SNMP
15 22 (1.09%) NAS
16 21 (1.04%) Ethernet
16 21 (1.04%) IPsec
17 19 (0.94%) HTTPS
18 18 (0.89%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (6.32%) SQL Server
2 116 (5.73%) PostgreSQL
3 92 (4.54%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.41%) MySQL
5 68 (3.36%) MongoDB
6 66 (3.26%) Relational Database
7 54 (2.67%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (1.92%) Amazon Aurora
9 37 (1.83%) Elasticsearch
10 36 (1.78%) NoSQL
11 31 (1.53%) RDBMS
12 29 (1.43%) DynamoDB
13 23 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
14 21 (1.04%) SAP HANA
15 20 (0.99%) Big Data
16 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.89%) Data Lake
18 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
19 16 (0.79%) Oracle Exadata
19 16 (0.79%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 219 (10.81%) Jenkins
2 211 (10.41%) Git
3 183 (9.03%) GitLab
4 144 (7.11%) JIRA
5 41 (2.02%) Maven
6 34 (1.68%) Mockito
7 32 (1.58%) SonarQube
8 28 (1.38%) Bitbucket
9 27 (1.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.04%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.04%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.94%) JUnit
12 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.69%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.69%) Selenium
14 13 (0.64%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 13 (0.64%) jMock
15 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
17 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 417 (20.58%) Social Skills
2 296 (14.61%) Finance
3 207 (10.22%) Analytical Skills
4 202 (9.97%) Public Sector
5 142 (7.01%) Banking
6 77 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.92%) Military
8 32 (1.58%) Front Office
9 30 (1.48%) Telecoms
10 27 (1.33%) Investment Banking
11 25 (1.23%) Legal
12 23 (1.14%) Retail
13 22 (1.09%) Aerospace
14 20 (0.99%) Law
15 19 (0.94%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 16 (0.79%) Financial Institution
17 16 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
18 13 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
19 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 294 (14.51%) Senior
2 215 (10.61%) Linux Engineer
3 199 (9.82%) Developer
4 185 (9.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 172 (8.49%) DevOps Engineer
6 117 (5.77%) Software Engineer
7 104 (5.13%) Architect
8 89 (4.39%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (4.10%) Analyst
10 79 (3.90%) Java Developer
11 75 (3.70%) Lead
12 72 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
13 68 (3.36%) Consultant
14 66 (3.26%) AWS Engineer
15 65 (3.21%) Support Engineer
16 56 (2.76%) Administrator
16 56 (2.76%) Senior Developer
17 53 (2.62%) Site Reliability Engineer
18 50 (2.47%) DBA
18 50 (2.47%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (5.38%) Kafka
2 108 (5.33%) REST
3 69 (3.41%) Elastic Stack
3 69 (3.41%) Middleware
4 55 (2.71%) Spring
5 53 (2.62%) .NET
6 49 (2.42%) RESTful
7 48 (2.37%) Spring Boot
8 46 (2.27%) Web Services
9 42 (2.07%) LDAP
10 41 (2.02%) Node.js
11 35 (1.73%) ActiveMQ
12 33 (1.63%) JSON
13 30 (1.48%) YAML
14 29 (1.43%) SOAP
15 27 (1.33%) XML
16 25 (1.23%) React
17 24 (1.18%) AngularJS
17 24 (1.18%) FastAPI
18 22 (1.09%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 133 (6.56%) Cloud Native
2 130 (6.42%) Data Centre
3 127 (6.27%) Onboarding
4 100 (4.94%) Linux Command Line
5 95 (4.69%) PKI
6 90 (4.44%) Distributed Systems
7 80 (3.95%) Replication
8 69 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.16%) Public Cloud
10 61 (3.01%) Management Information System
11 58 (2.86%) Security Posture
12 50 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
13 37 (1.83%) Product Ownership
14 34 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
15 32 (1.58%) Clustering
15 32 (1.58%) Embedded Systems
16 30 (1.48%) Operational Technology
17 28 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
18 27 (1.33%) Enterprise Storage
19 25 (1.23%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 775 (38.25%) Windows
2 425 (20.98%) Unix
3 342 (16.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 225 (11.11%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.48%) Ubuntu
6 71 (3.50%) AIX
7 59 (2.91%) Solaris
8 44 (2.17%) CentOS
9 33 (1.63%) Embedded Linux
10 25 (1.23%) SUSE
10 25 (1.23%) VMS
11 24 (1.18%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
13 18 (0.89%) Rocky
13 18 (0.89%) Windows 10
14 17 (0.84%) Android
15 16 (0.79%) Mac OS
16 15 (0.74%) Debian
17 14 (0.69%) Mac OS X
17 14 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 576 (28.43%) CI/CD
2 497 (24.53%) DevOps
3 372 (18.36%) Infrastructure as Code
4 365 (18.02%) Agile
5 300 (14.81%) Problem-Solving
6 272 (13.43%) Containerisation
7 266 (13.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 239 (11.80%) Migration
9 219 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
10 207 (10.22%) Software Engineering
11 201 (9.92%) High Availability
12 196 (9.67%) Observability
13 190 (9.38%) Platform Engineering
14 181 (8.93%) Root Cause Analysis
15 176 (8.69%) Performance Tuning
16 169 (8.34%) ITIL
17 159 (7.85%) SIEM
18 147 (7.26%) Test Automation
19 146 (7.21%) AI
20 140 (6.91%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 708 (34.95%) Python
2 379 (18.71%) Bash
2 379 (18.71%) PowerShell
3 349 (17.23%) SQL
4 247 (12.19%) Java
5 153 (7.55%) Shell Script
6 126 (6.22%) C++
7 90 (4.44%) JavaScript
8 72 (3.55%) C
9 70 (3.46%) C#
10 61 (3.01%) PL/SQL
11 59 (2.91%) Perl
12 47 (2.32%) Go
13 39 (1.92%) Bicep
14 22 (1.09%) Ada
15 21 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
16 20 (0.99%) Rust
17 19 (0.94%) TypeScript
18 18 (0.89%) Groovy
19 13 (0.64%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 795 (39.24%) Security Cleared
2 590 (29.12%) SC Cleared
3 227 (11.20%) DV Cleared
4 183 (9.03%) Degree
5 74 (3.65%) AWS Certification
6 68 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.96%) CISSP
8 59 (2.91%) Cisco Certification
9 51 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
10 49 (2.42%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.33%) CCNP
11 27 (1.33%) RHCE
12 26 (1.28%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
13 25 (1.23%) CCNA
14 19 (0.94%) CISM
15 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 17 (0.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 13 (0.64%) MCSE
16 13 (0.64%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.10%) NIST
2 78 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 60 (2.96%) QA
4 30 (1.48%) SLA
5 25 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.09%) NCSC
7 21 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.04%) GDPR
8 20 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.69%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.59%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.54%) GRC
11 11 (0.54%) ISO 20022
12 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 15022
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 335 (16.54%) Docker
2 268 (13.23%) Active Directory
3 240 (11.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (4.24%) Hyper-V
5 83 (4.10%) Virtual Machines
6 81 (4.00%) vSphere
7 63 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
7 63 (3.11%) VMware NSX
8 42 (2.07%) NFS
9 40 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (1.73%) Firmware
11 30 (1.48%) KVM
12 20 (0.99%) Postfix
13 15 (0.74%) Ceph
14 12 (0.59%) GPFS
15 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
16 9 (0.44%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
18 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 454 (22.41%) Terraform
2 448 (22.11%) Ansible
3 416 (20.53%) Kubernetes
4 166 (8.19%) Grafana
5 141 (6.96%) Prometheus
6 81 (4.00%) Puppet
7 61 (3.01%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.57%) Oracle RMAN
9 42 (2.07%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 34 (1.68%) SCCM
12 31 (1.53%) Nagios
13 30 (1.48%) Packer
14 27 (1.33%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.33%) ZABBIX
15 25 (1.23%) Podman
16 24 (1.18%) NetBackup
17 23 (1.14%) VxRail
18 22 (1.09%) Argo
18 22 (1.09%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 338 (16.68%) VMware
2 305 (15.05%) Microsoft
3 300 (14.81%) Oracle
4 226 (11.15%) Red Hat
5 158 (7.80%) Splunk
6 129 (6.37%) Cisco
7 110 (5.43%) ServiceNow
8 101 (4.99%) IBM
9 84 (4.15%) CyberArk
10 72 (3.55%) Google
11 51 (2.52%) SolarWinds
12 50 (2.47%) BeyondTrust
13 48 (2.37%) Palo Alto
14 43 (2.12%) SAP
15 42 (2.07%) F5
16 39 (1.92%) HP
16 39 (1.92%) NetApp
17 35 (1.73%) Citrix
18 31 (1.53%) Dynatrace
19 29 (1.43%) Atlassian