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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -13 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,901 1,767 2,449
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.68% 5.79% 5.50%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.03% 40.50% 39.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,208 1,077 1,611
10th Percentile £320 £356 £325
25th Percentile £401 £431 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £724 £750 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -8.10% -0.57% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 54 121
10th Percentile £12.50 £42.38 £26.25
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.42 £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 £68.61 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £73.88 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £61.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% +9.02% -6.15%

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 4,749 4,363 6,207
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.68% 14.29% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,145 2,757 4,159
10th Percentile £177 £200 £180
25th Percentile £268 £315 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £571 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £694 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £414 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.65% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 149 385
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.95 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £16.54
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.18
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +15.17% -5.59%
75th Percentile £53.75 £65.00 £61.99
90th Percentile £70.00 £69.00 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.75 £25.18
% change year-on-year -18.92% +10.21% -7.03%

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 23 February 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 23 February 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 23 February 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 -13 1,639 £519 -5.68% 704
UK excluding London -6 1,090 £483 -8.10% 621
London -27 608 £550 -8.33% 192
Work from Home -18 505 £500 -4.76% 308
South East +1 320 £483 -8.10% 182
North of England -4 293 £492 -10.55% 127
Midlands -11 177 £525 - 87
Yorkshire -6 166 £500 -13.04% 32
West Midlands -7 163 £525 -1.13% 62
South West -21 134 £550 -8.33% 82
North West -15 117 £475 -5.00% 72
Scotland -17 85 £425 -9.09% 70
East of England -12 79 £473 +5.00% 70
Northern Ireland +9 16 £413 +26.92% 5
East Midlands -34 14 £420 -7.59% 25
North East -19 13 £538 +10.26% 23
Wales -11 6 £543 +0.93% 10

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 86 (4.52%) Confluence
2 49 (2.58%) nginx
3 47 (2.47%) Apache
4 42 (2.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.00%) OpenStack
5 19 (1.00%) WebLogic
6 18 (0.95%) Apache Spark
7 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
8 14 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
9 13 (0.68%) TPMS
9 13 (0.68%) WebSphere
10 10 (0.53%) JBoss
10 10 (0.53%) SAS
11 9 (0.47%) Skype for Business
12 8 (0.42%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.32%) CICS
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.26%) CMS
14 5 (0.26%) iPlanet
Applications
1 52 (2.74%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.053%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
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%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.053%) ION MarketView
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%) RMDS
5 1 (0.053%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
5 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 591 (31.09%) AWS
2 368 (19.36%) Azure
3 185 (9.73%) GitHub
4 142 (7.47%) GCP
5 138 (7.26%) OpenShift
6 113 (5.94%) Serverless
7 112 (5.89%) AWS CloudFormation
8 97 (5.10%) Amazon EC2
9 92 (4.84%) GitHub Actions
10 81 (4.26%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.89%) Amazon EKS
12 69 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
13 66 (3.47%) Amazon ECS
14 62 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
15 58 (3.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 49 (2.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 45 (2.37%) IaaS
18 39 (2.05%) Entra ID
18 39 (2.05%) Microsoft 365
19 36 (1.89%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 206 (10.84%) Firewall
2 149 (7.84%) DNS
3 126 (6.63%) TCP/IP
4 65 (3.42%) Network Security
5 63 (3.31%) VPN
6 46 (2.42%) SSH
7 44 (2.31%) DHCP
8 42 (2.21%) SSL
9 38 (2.00%) HTTP
10 33 (1.74%) SAN
11 31 (1.63%) VLAN
12 28 (1.47%) WAN
12 28 (1.47%) Wireless
13 25 (1.32%) VSAN
14 23 (1.21%) BGP
15 22 (1.16%) Kerberos
16 20 (1.05%) SNMP
16 20 (1.05%) Wireshark
17 19 (1.00%) LAN
18 18 (0.95%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (7.52%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (5.00%) SQL Server
3 84 (4.42%) Amazon RDS
3 84 (4.42%) Relational Database
4 74 (3.89%) MongoDB
5 71 (3.73%) NoSQL
6 67 (3.52%) MySQL
7 63 (3.31%) Oracle Database
8 51 (2.68%) Elasticsearch
9 29 (1.53%) DB2
10 24 (1.26%) Big Data
11 20 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
12 17 (0.89%) Hadoop
12 17 (0.89%) KDB
12 17 (0.89%) Kdb+
13 15 (0.79%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 12 (0.63%) DynamoDB
15 12 (0.63%) GIS
15 12 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 266 (13.99%) Jenkins
2 210 (11.05%) Git
3 203 (10.68%) GitLab
4 136 (7.15%) JIRA
5 52 (2.74%) JUnit
6 48 (2.52%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.21%) Bitbucket
8 34 (1.79%) Maven
9 27 (1.42%) Eclipse
10 25 (1.32%) Cucumber
10 25 (1.32%) Mockito
11 22 (1.16%) Liquibase
12 18 (0.95%) Burp Suite
12 18 (0.95%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.89%) Artifactory
14 16 (0.84%) JMeter
15 15 (0.79%) Metasploit
16 14 (0.74%) Android Studio
16 14 (0.74%) Selenium
16 14 (0.74%) Xcode
General
1 509 (26.78%) Social Skills
2 327 (17.20%) Finance
3 196 (10.31%) Public Sector
4 184 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
5 136 (7.15%) Banking
6 67 (3.52%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.52%) Financial Institution
8 42 (2.21%) Military
9 34 (1.79%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
10 29 (1.53%) Front Office
11 24 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
12 21 (1.10%) Legal
13 19 (1.00%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.95%) Telecoms
15 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (0.74%) Law
16 14 (0.74%) Retail
17 13 (0.68%) Manufacturing
18 12 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 273 (14.36%) Developer
2 246 (12.94%) Senior
3 184 (9.68%) DevOps Engineer
4 136 (7.15%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.63%) Analyst
6 111 (5.84%) Java Developer
7 109 (5.73%) Architect
8 94 (4.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 87 (4.58%) Linux Engineer
10 85 (4.47%) Support Engineer
11 82 (4.31%) Platform Engineer
12 80 (4.21%) Lead
13 76 (4.00%) Administrator
14 72 (3.79%) AWS Engineer
15 70 (3.68%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 67 (3.52%) Site Engineer
17 56 (2.95%) AWS DevOps
18 55 (2.89%) Senior Software Engineer
19 51 (2.68%) Security Engineer
20 47 (2.47%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (7.89%) Kafka
2 123 (6.47%) REST
3 120 (6.31%) Elastic Stack
4 80 (4.21%) Middleware
5 69 (3.63%) Spring
6 65 (3.42%) Node.js
7 54 (2.84%) RESTful
8 53 (2.79%) LDAP
9 47 (2.47%) JSON
9 47 (2.47%) React
10 45 (2.37%) XML
11 42 (2.21%) Spring Boot
12 38 (2.00%) AngularJS
13 36 (1.89%) YAML
14 35 (1.84%) SOAP
15 33 (1.74%) Web Services
16 26 (1.37%) .NET
17 25 (1.32%) CSS
18 22 (1.16%) ActiveMQ
18 22 (1.16%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 117 (6.15%) Cloud Native
2 104 (5.47%) Data Centre
3 87 (4.58%) Linux Command Line
4 74 (3.89%) Management Information System
5 71 (3.73%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (3.26%) Public Cloud
7 54 (2.84%) PKI
8 51 (2.68%) Replication
9 47 (2.47%) Onboarding
10 45 (2.37%) Equities
11 38 (2.00%) Product Ownership
11 38 (2.00%) Security Operations Centre
12 35 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
13 34 (1.79%) Security Posture
14 32 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
14 32 (1.68%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 31 (1.63%) Data Structures
15 31 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
16 29 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
17 28 (1.47%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 690 (36.30%) Windows
2 371 (19.52%) Unix
3 257 (13.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 148 (7.79%) Windows Server
5 86 (4.52%) Ubuntu
6 48 (2.52%) CentOS
7 40 (2.10%) Android
8 35 (1.84%) Solaris
9 30 (1.58%) Mac OS
10 26 (1.37%) Mac OS X
10 26 (1.37%) VMS
11 25 (1.32%) AIX
12 23 (1.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (1.00%) Windows 10
14 18 (0.95%) Embedded Linux
15 16 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.74%) Kali Linux
17 13 (0.68%) Debian
18 11 (0.58%) Apple iOS
18 11 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 587 (30.88%) CI/CD
2 492 (25.88%) DevOps
3 428 (22.51%) Agile
4 374 (19.67%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (16.57%) Containerisation
6 314 (16.52%) Infrastructure as Code
7 229 (12.05%) Software Engineering
8 198 (10.42%) Observability
9 175 (9.21%) Cybersecurity
10 168 (8.84%) Computer Science
11 166 (8.73%) Microservices
12 165 (8.68%) Continuous Improvement
13 151 (7.94%) Incident Response
13 151 (7.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 148 (7.79%) Test Automation
15 136 (7.15%) Platform Engineering
16 128 (6.73%) High Availability
17 124 (6.52%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 120 (6.31%) SIEM
19 116 (6.10%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 705 (37.09%) Python
2 350 (18.41%) Java
3 331 (17.41%) SQL
4 325 (17.10%) Bash
5 263 (13.83%) PowerShell
6 191 (10.05%) Shell Script
7 159 (8.36%) C++
8 124 (6.52%) JavaScript
9 106 (5.58%) Perl
10 73 (3.84%) C#
11 70 (3.68%) Go
12 52 (2.74%) C
13 43 (2.26%) Ruby
14 32 (1.68%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.58%) Rust
16 29 (1.53%) PL/SQL
17 23 (1.21%) PHP
18 22 (1.16%) Ada
19 20 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
20 13 (0.68%) Korn
Qualifications
1 696 (36.61%) Security Cleared
2 498 (26.20%) SC Cleared
3 214 (11.26%) Degree
4 172 (9.05%) DV Cleared
5 111 (5.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 85 (4.47%) BPSS Clearance
7 68 (3.58%) AWS Certification
8 39 (2.05%) CISSP
9 38 (2.00%) CompTIA Security+
10 36 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.79%) Master's Degree
12 33 (1.74%) Azure Certification
13 30 (1.58%) Microsoft Certification
14 28 (1.47%) RHCE
15 22 (1.16%) CCNA
16 21 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 20 (1.05%) CCNP
18 19 (1.00%) OSCP
19 17 (0.89%) GPEN
20 16 (0.84%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.84%) NIST
2 52 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 46 (2.42%) GDPR
4 40 (2.10%) QA
5 29 (1.53%) SLA
6 23 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (0.89%) Data Quality
7 17 (0.89%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.84%) NCSC
9 13 (0.68%) GLBA
10 11 (0.58%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.32%) Accessibility
14 6 (0.32%) NIST 800
15 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
16 3 (0.16%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 411 (21.62%) Docker
2 220 (11.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 168 (8.84%) Active Directory
4 73 (3.84%) vSphere
5 69 (3.63%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (2.95%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.58%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (1.42%) GPFS
8 27 (1.42%) NFS
8 27 (1.42%) VMware NSX
9 22 (1.16%) KVM
10 17 (0.89%) Firmware
11 14 (0.74%) Oracle RAC
11 14 (0.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 13 (0.68%) Postfix
13 12 (0.63%) Lustre
14 10 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.37%) Ceph
15 7 (0.37%) HDFS
15 7 (0.37%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 492 (25.88%) Kubernetes
2 409 (21.51%) Terraform
3 384 (20.20%) Ansible
4 208 (10.94%) Grafana
5 179 (9.42%) Prometheus
6 68 (3.58%) Puppet
7 63 (3.31%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.37%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.05%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.95%) Packer
11 35 (1.84%) Argo
12 34 (1.79%) vRealize
13 33 (1.74%) Podman
14 31 (1.63%) Kibana
15 27 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
16 25 (1.32%) SCCM
17 24 (1.26%) Nessus
18 22 (1.16%) SCOM
19 18 (0.95%) ITRS Geneos
20 17 (0.89%) Nmap
Vendors
1 303 (15.94%) VMware
2 296 (15.57%) Microsoft
3 249 (13.10%) Oracle
4 237 (12.47%) Splunk
5 227 (11.94%) Red Hat
6 109 (5.73%) Cisco
7 87 (4.58%) IBM
8 74 (3.89%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.79%) Google
10 41 (2.16%) Dell
11 35 (1.84%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.79%) CyberArk
13 31 (1.63%) AppDynamics
14 27 (1.42%) SolarWinds
15 24 (1.26%) Citrix
16 23 (1.21%) CrowdStrike
16 23 (1.21%) NetApp
16 23 (1.21%) NVIDIA
17 22 (1.16%) Atlassian
18 19 (1.00%) Commvault