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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,053 1,811 2,223
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 5.53% 5.72%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.50% 41.20% 40.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,276 1,108 1,417
10th Percentile £350 £357 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.87%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £635
90th Percentile £714 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 62 117
10th Percentile £42.13 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.44 £63.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.57%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.85%

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 5,198 4,396 5,435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.43% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,291 2,795 3,559
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £586
90th Percentile £668 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 270 323
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.85
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.77% -16.42% -29.41%
75th Percentile £64.06 £57.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.69 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £24.33 £39.25
% change year-on-year +6.21% -38.01% +27.02%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,720 £525 - 667
UK excluding London -19 1,176 £500 - 580
London -40 660 £545 -5.22% 169
Work from Home -29 532 £500 -3.85% 284
South East -4 341 £518 +3.50% 187
North of England -24 279 £494 -1.20% 108
South West 0 191 £560 -2.70% 120
North West -25 141 £484 +21.00% 57
Scotland -14 128 £450 -10.00% 25
Yorkshire -26 120 £500 -4.76% 31
Midlands -47 117 £470 -5.05% 64
East of England -18 96 £479 -2.30% 88
West Midlands -43 95 £470 -6.00% 38
Wales +4 29 £465 +55.00% 4
North East -20 25 £471 -18.04% 20
East Midlands -12 19 £513 +13.89% 25
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 5

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 71 (3.46%) Confluence
2 50 (2.44%) Apache
3 30 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.36%) nginx
5 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.07%) OpenStack
6 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
7 19 (0.93%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.88%) SAS
9 16 (0.78%) Tomcat
9 16 (0.78%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.73%) JBoss
11 12 (0.58%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.44%) IIS
14 7 (0.34%) NetWeaver
15 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.24%) CICS
16 5 (0.24%) CMS
16 5 (0.24%) MTS
Applications
1 27 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 9 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
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
1 591 (28.79%) AWS
2 503 (24.50%) Azure
3 168 (8.18%) GCP
4 154 (7.50%) GitHub
5 100 (4.87%) Entra ID
6 99 (4.82%) OpenShift
7 93 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
8 87 (4.24%) Azure DevOps
9 86 (4.19%) Amazon S3
10 80 (3.90%) Amazon EC2
11 62 (3.02%) Serverless
12 60 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
13 58 (2.83%) Amazon EKS
14 55 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 55 (2.68%) AWS CloudFormation
14 55 (2.68%) AWS Lambda
15 51 (2.48%) IaaS
15 51 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 41 (2.00%) SaaS
17 37 (1.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 223 (10.86%) DNS
2 221 (10.76%) Firewall
3 133 (6.48%) TCP/IP
4 121 (5.89%) DHCP
5 88 (4.29%) VPN
6 77 (3.75%) Network Security
7 74 (3.60%) SAN
8 51 (2.48%) WAN
9 50 (2.44%) SSL
10 46 (2.24%) VSAN
11 45 (2.19%) SSH
12 41 (2.00%) HTTP
13 40 (1.95%) LAN
14 39 (1.90%) VLAN
15 30 (1.46%) SNMP
16 24 (1.17%) NAS
17 23 (1.12%) HTTPS
18 22 (1.07%) BGP
18 22 (1.07%) Kerberos
19 20 (0.97%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.85%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.36%) PostgreSQL
3 96 (4.68%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.26%) MySQL
5 64 (3.12%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.58%) MongoDB
7 50 (2.44%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (1.90%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
10 33 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
11 29 (1.41%) RDBMS
12 25 (1.22%) Big Data
13 19 (0.93%) DynamoDB
14 18 (0.88%) Data Lake
14 18 (0.88%) Power BI
14 18 (0.88%) SAP HANA
15 17 (0.83%) Oracle Database 12c
15 17 (0.83%) Redis
16 16 (0.78%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 229 (11.15%) Git
2 227 (11.06%) Jenkins
3 187 (9.11%) GitLab
4 155 (7.55%) JIRA
5 32 (1.56%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.51%) Maven
7 28 (1.36%) SonarQube
8 26 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
10 20 (0.97%) Mockito
10 20 (0.97%) Selenium
11 15 (0.73%) JUnit
12 13 (0.63%) Eclipse
13 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.54%) Gradle
15 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
16 9 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.44%) Cucumber
16 9 (0.44%) JMeter
16 9 (0.44%) LoadRunner
General
1 423 (20.60%) Social Skills
2 302 (14.71%) Finance
3 237 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.48%) Public Sector
5 156 (7.60%) Banking
6 81 (3.95%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (2.00%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.80%) Front Office
9 35 (1.70%) Investment Banking
10 28 (1.36%) Military
11 25 (1.22%) Legal
12 24 (1.17%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.02%) Retail
14 20 (0.97%) Law
15 19 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 18 (0.88%) Manufacturing
17 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
18 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
19 9 (0.44%) Aviation
19 9 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 295 (14.37%) Senior
2 234 (11.40%) Linux Engineer
3 194 (9.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 179 (8.72%) Developer
5 173 (8.43%) DevOps Engineer
6 105 (5.11%) Architect
6 105 (5.11%) Software Engineer
7 96 (4.68%) Platform Engineer
8 82 (3.99%) Consultant
9 78 (3.80%) Lead
10 76 (3.70%) Analyst
10 76 (3.70%) Support Engineer
11 73 (3.56%) Cloud Engineer
12 67 (3.26%) Java Developer
13 63 (3.07%) Administrator
13 63 (3.07%) AWS Engineer
14 57 (2.78%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 55 (2.68%) Network Engineer
16 54 (2.63%) Systems Engineer
17 51 (2.48%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 470 (22.89%) Terraform
2 122 (5.94%) Kafka
3 110 (5.36%) REST
4 74 (3.60%) Middleware
5 70 (3.41%) Elastic Stack
6 66 (3.21%) .NET
7 56 (2.73%) RESTful
8 48 (2.34%) Spring
9 41 (2.00%) Spring Boot
10 39 (1.90%) LDAP
11 38 (1.85%) Web Services
12 35 (1.70%) JSON
12 35 (1.70%) XML
13 30 (1.46%) YAML
14 29 (1.41%) HTML
14 29 (1.41%) SOAP
15 25 (1.22%) Node.js
16 24 (1.17%) ARM Templates
16 24 (1.17%) RabbitMQ
16 24 (1.17%) React
Miscellaneous
1 140 (6.82%) Onboarding
2 131 (6.38%) Data Centre
3 129 (6.28%) Cloud Native
4 104 (5.07%) PKI
5 101 (4.92%) Linux Command Line
6 90 (4.38%) Replication
7 82 (3.99%) Distributed Systems
8 67 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
9 63 (3.07%) Public Cloud
10 54 (2.63%) Management Information System
11 45 (2.19%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
13 41 (2.00%) Embedded Systems
14 40 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
15 36 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
16 35 (1.70%) Private Cloud
17 34 (1.66%) Clustering
17 34 (1.66%) Product Ownership
18 33 (1.61%) Enterprise Storage
19 32 (1.56%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 778 (37.90%) Windows
2 410 (19.97%) Unix
3 342 (16.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 234 (11.40%) Windows Server
5 116 (5.65%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.17%) AIX
7 53 (2.58%) Solaris
8 50 (2.44%) CentOS
9 41 (2.00%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.27%) SUSE
10 26 (1.27%) VMS
11 24 (1.17%) Windows 10
12 22 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.93%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.88%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.88%) Windows Server 2016
15 17 (0.83%) Rocky
16 16 (0.78%) Debian
17 12 (0.58%) Android
17 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 580 (28.25%) CI/CD
2 512 (24.94%) DevOps
3 403 (19.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 363 (17.68%) Agile
5 309 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
6 285 (13.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 257 (12.52%) Containerisation
8 238 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
8 238 (11.59%) Migration
9 211 (10.28%) Observability
10 207 (10.08%) Platform Engineering
11 205 (9.99%) High Availability
12 199 (9.69%) Software Engineering
13 196 (9.55%) Root Cause Analysis
14 181 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
15 169 (8.23%) ITIL
16 164 (7.99%) Test Automation
17 158 (7.70%) Configuration Management
18 147 (7.16%) AI
18 147 (7.16%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 725 (35.31%) Python
2 396 (19.29%) PowerShell
3 393 (19.14%) Bash
4 365 (17.78%) SQL
5 243 (11.84%) Java
6 148 (7.21%) Shell Script
7 131 (6.38%) C++
8 81 (3.95%) C
9 78 (3.80%) JavaScript
10 71 (3.46%) C#
11 66 (3.21%) Perl
12 61 (2.97%) PL/SQL
13 47 (2.29%) Go
14 42 (2.05%) Bicep
15 23 (1.12%) Groovy
16 22 (1.07%) Search Processing Language
17 20 (0.97%) Ada
18 16 (0.78%) Rust
18 16 (0.78%) TypeScript
19 13 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 796 (38.77%) Security Cleared
2 588 (28.64%) SC Cleared
3 238 (11.59%) DV Cleared
4 179 (8.72%) Degree
5 70 (3.41%) AWS Certification
6 58 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 58 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
7 56 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
8 54 (2.63%) Azure Certification
9 52 (2.53%) CISSP
10 23 (1.12%) CCNP
11 22 (1.07%) RHCE
12 20 (0.97%) CCNA
12 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.93%) CISM
14 18 (0.88%) CompTIA Security+
15 17 (0.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
17 15 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.56%) NIST
2 68 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 67 (3.26%) QA
4 32 (1.56%) SLA
5 26 (1.27%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.02%) NCSC
7 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
8 16 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.78%) GDPR
9 15 (0.73%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.54%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.49%) GRC
12 9 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.34%) ISO 15022
13 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
16 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 329 (16.03%) Docker
2 277 (13.49%) Active Directory
3 253 (12.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.43%) Hyper-V
5 90 (4.38%) vSphere
6 76 (3.70%) Virtual Machines
7 68 (3.31%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.07%) VMware NSX
9 42 (2.05%) Firmware
10 39 (1.90%) NFS
10 39 (1.90%) Oracle RAC
11 28 (1.36%) KVM
12 16 (0.78%) Ceph
12 16 (0.78%) Postfix
12 16 (0.78%) Virtual Servers
13 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
14 12 (0.58%) GPFS
15 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.49%) Squid
16 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 445 (21.68%) Ansible
2 421 (20.51%) Kubernetes
3 171 (8.33%) Grafana
4 151 (7.36%) Prometheus
5 88 (4.29%) Puppet
6 61 (2.97%) Progress Chef
7 49 (2.39%) Oracle RMAN
8 41 (2.00%) SCCM
9 40 (1.95%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.90%) Data Guard
11 32 (1.56%) Nagios
12 27 (1.32%) Kibana
12 27 (1.32%) Red Hat Satellite
12 27 (1.32%) ZABBIX
13 26 (1.27%) Microsoft Intune
13 26 (1.27%) Packer
14 25 (1.22%) NetBackup
14 25 (1.22%) VxRail
15 22 (1.07%) Podman
15 22 (1.07%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 355 (17.29%) VMware
2 328 (15.98%) Microsoft
3 309 (15.05%) Oracle
4 220 (10.72%) Red Hat
5 157 (7.65%) Splunk
6 125 (6.09%) Cisco
7 113 (5.50%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.68%) IBM
9 80 (3.90%) CyberArk
10 73 (3.56%) Google
11 50 (2.44%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
12 45 (2.19%) SAP
13 44 (2.14%) Palo Alto
14 41 (2.00%) NetApp
15 37 (1.80%) F5
16 36 (1.75%) HP
17 33 (1.61%) Citrix
17 33 (1.61%) Dell
18 31 (1.51%) Sybase