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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,873 1,749 2,191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.93% 5.95% 5.10%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.16% 42.51% 38.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,167 1,105 1,442
10th Percentile £326 £375 £334
25th Percentile £403 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -5.98%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £638
90th Percentile £694 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -7.43% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 51 111
10th Percentile £33.36 £40.50 £35.00
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.19 £52.50
Median hourly rate £62.82 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.36% +4.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.71 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.24% +4.40% -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 4,664 4,114 5,735
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.99% 13.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,021 2,702 3,878
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £468
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.60% -7.43%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £653 £694 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £431 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -4.22% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 318 183 393
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.48 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +106.52% +4.55% -42.86%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.81 £60.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.25 £22.50
% change year-on-year +113.48% -1.11% -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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -25 1,563 £513 -6.82% 864
UK excluding London -14 1,125 £486 -7.43% 703
London -48 532 £550 -6.78% 227
Work from Home -26 483 £500 -4.76% 306
South East -5 315 £500 -9.09% 253
North of England -13 274 £475 -11.63% 117
Midlands -11 158 £525 +5.00% 81
South West -10 155 £550 -8.33% 117
Yorkshire -23 148 £460 -16.36% 36
West Midlands -2 139 £501 -6.80% 40
North West -25 116 £485 -3.00% 58
Scotland -18 97 £450 -4.20% 26
East of England -10 93 £475 -1.55% 101
Wales +2 24 £465 -20.65% 14
East Midlands -34 17 £528 +16.06% 41
Northern Ireland +10 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -19 10 £413 -21.43% 25

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 80 (4.27%) Confluence
2 47 (2.51%) Apache
3 30 (1.60%) nginx
4 26 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.17%) Apache Spark
6 21 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (1.01%) Tomcat
8 15 (0.80%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.75%) OpenStack
9 14 (0.75%) SAS
10 13 (0.69%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.59%) CICS
12 8 (0.43%) TPMS
13 7 (0.37%) JBoss
14 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.27%) SharePoint
16 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 22 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.37%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
6 2 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.11%) Weka
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
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%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
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
1 528 (28.19%) AWS
2 379 (20.23%) Azure
3 170 (9.08%) GitHub
4 125 (6.67%) OpenShift
5 105 (5.61%) GCP
6 96 (5.13%) GitHub Actions
7 88 (4.70%) Amazon EC2
8 82 (4.38%) Amazon S3
9 73 (3.90%) Amazon EKS
10 72 (3.84%) AWS CloudFormation
10 72 (3.84%) Serverless
11 69 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
12 61 (3.26%) AWS Lambda
13 57 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 49 (2.62%) Amazon ECS
15 44 (2.35%) IaaS
16 42 (2.24%) Microsoft 365
17 41 (2.19%) Entra ID
18 39 (2.08%) PaaS
19 38 (2.03%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 175 (9.34%) Firewall
2 129 (6.89%) DNS
3 101 (5.39%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.90%) VPN
5 61 (3.26%) Network Security
6 54 (2.88%) SAN
7 46 (2.46%) WAN
8 41 (2.19%) DHCP
9 39 (2.08%) LAN
10 36 (1.92%) VSAN
11 35 (1.87%) HTTP
11 35 (1.87%) SSH
12 30 (1.60%) SNMP
13 29 (1.55%) SSL
14 26 (1.39%) Ethernet
15 20 (1.07%) NAS
15 20 (1.07%) Wireless
16 18 (0.96%) BGP
16 18 (0.96%) Kerberos
17 15 (0.80%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (6.30%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 72 (3.84%) MySQL
4 66 (3.52%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.42%) Oracle Database
6 62 (3.31%) MongoDB
7 58 (3.10%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.30%) Elasticsearch
9 35 (1.87%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.55%) NoSQL
11 22 (1.17%) DynamoDB
12 21 (1.12%) Big Data
13 19 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
13 19 (1.01%) KDB
14 17 (0.91%) SAP HANA
15 16 (0.85%) DB2
15 16 (0.85%) Kdb+
16 13 (0.69%) Data Lake
17 12 (0.64%) Hadoop
18 11 (0.59%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 205 (10.95%) Jenkins
2 170 (9.08%) GitLab
3 169 (9.02%) Git
4 139 (7.42%) JIRA
5 31 (1.66%) Maven
6 27 (1.44%) Eclipse
7 25 (1.33%) SonarQube
8 24 (1.28%) JUnit
8 24 (1.28%) Mockito
9 23 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (1.17%) Bitbucket
11 18 (0.96%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.75%) Artifactory
12 14 (0.75%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
14 12 (0.64%) Cucumber
15 11 (0.59%) DbUnit
15 11 (0.59%) jMock
16 9 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 9 (0.48%) Selenium
General
1 390 (20.82%) Social Skills
2 260 (13.88%) Finance
3 186 (9.93%) Public Sector
4 146 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
5 105 (5.61%) Banking
6 73 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.62%) Military
8 25 (1.33%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
9 22 (1.17%) Aerospace
9 22 (1.17%) Front Office
9 22 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.07%) Retail
11 19 (1.01%) Investment Banking
11 19 (1.01%) Law
12 17 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (0.80%) Legal
14 14 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (0.75%) Manufacturing
15 11 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 230 (12.28%) Senior
2 206 (11.00%) Developer
3 173 (9.24%) DevOps Engineer
4 145 (7.74%) Linux Engineer
5 138 (7.37%) Software Engineer
6 117 (6.25%) Architect
7 105 (5.61%) Analyst
7 105 (5.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 96 (5.13%) Lead
9 78 (4.16%) Java Developer
10 77 (4.11%) Administrator
11 71 (3.79%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 64 (3.42%) AWS Engineer
13 62 (3.31%) Site Engineer
14 61 (3.26%) Platform Engineer
15 52 (2.78%) Consultant
15 52 (2.78%) Security Engineer
16 47 (2.51%) AWS DevOps
17 45 (2.40%) Embedded Engineer
18 44 (2.35%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (5.55%) Kafka
2 87 (4.64%) REST
3 77 (4.11%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.74%) Middleware
5 55 (2.94%) LDAP
5 55 (2.94%) Node.js
6 46 (2.46%) Spring
6 46 (2.46%) Spring Boot
7 45 (2.40%) Web Services
8 36 (1.92%) RESTful
9 34 (1.82%) .NET
10 32 (1.71%) YAML
11 31 (1.66%) XML
12 26 (1.39%) AngularJS
12 26 (1.39%) JSON
13 23 (1.23%) ActiveMQ
13 23 (1.23%) React
13 23 (1.23%) SOAP
14 22 (1.17%) CSS
15 21 (1.12%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 134 (7.15%) Data Centre
2 102 (5.45%) Cloud Native
3 76 (4.06%) Linux Command Line
4 73 (3.90%) Onboarding
5 68 (3.63%) Management Information System
6 65 (3.47%) Distributed Systems
7 58 (3.10%) PKI
8 55 (2.94%) Replication
9 49 (2.62%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (2.51%) Public Cloud
11 41 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.87%) Product Ownership
13 34 (1.82%) Security Posture
14 31 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
15 30 (1.60%) Enterprise Storage
16 29 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
17 28 (1.49%) Embedded Systems
18 24 (1.28%) Operational Technology
19 23 (1.23%) Clustering
19 23 (1.23%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 719 (38.39%) Windows
2 361 (19.27%) Unix
3 276 (14.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 171 (9.13%) Windows Server
5 86 (4.59%) Ubuntu
6 52 (2.78%) AIX
7 42 (2.24%) CentOS
8 38 (2.03%) Solaris
9 34 (1.82%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.66%) VMS
11 29 (1.55%) Android
12 23 (1.23%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.12%) Debian
13 21 (1.12%) Mac OS
13 21 (1.12%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.75%) SUSE
15 13 (0.69%) Mac OS X
16 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
16 10 (0.53%) Windows 10
16 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (28.88%) CI/CD
2 443 (23.65%) DevOps
3 368 (19.65%) Agile
4 303 (16.18%) Problem-Solving
5 281 (15.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 260 (13.88%) Containerisation
7 218 (11.64%) Software Engineering
8 179 (9.56%) Observability
9 167 (8.92%) Migration
10 159 (8.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 152 (8.12%) SIEM
12 145 (7.74%) High Availability
13 141 (7.53%) Performance Tuning
14 140 (7.47%) Continuous Improvement
15 139 (7.42%) Microservices
16 136 (7.26%) Computer Science
16 136 (7.26%) Incident Response
17 133 (7.10%) Platform Engineering
18 132 (7.05%) Root Cause Analysis
19 131 (6.99%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 634 (33.85%) Python
2 317 (16.92%) SQL
3 274 (14.63%) Java
4 262 (13.99%) PowerShell
5 259 (13.83%) Bash
6 161 (8.60%) Shell Script
7 128 (6.83%) C++
8 110 (5.87%) JavaScript
9 72 (3.84%) Perl
10 64 (3.42%) C#
11 57 (3.04%) C
12 49 (2.62%) Go
13 45 (2.40%) PL/SQL
14 32 (1.71%) Ruby
15 27 (1.44%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.28%) PHP
17 22 (1.17%) Rust
18 21 (1.12%) Ada
19 20 (1.07%) MATLAB
20 19 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 727 (38.81%) Security Cleared
2 531 (28.35%) SC Cleared
3 208 (11.11%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.50%) Degree
5 83 (4.43%) BPSS Clearance
6 79 (4.22%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.72%) AWS Certification
8 50 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
9 45 (2.40%) CISSP
10 42 (2.24%) CompTIA Security+
11 36 (1.92%) RHCE
12 28 (1.49%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.33%) CCNA
14 20 (1.07%) CCNP
15 19 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.96%) OCP
17 17 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 17 (0.91%) CompTIA CySA+
18 16 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
19 15 (0.80%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.43%) NIST
2 72 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (2.88%) QA
4 43 (2.30%) SLA
5 30 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials
5 30 (1.60%) GDPR
6 24 (1.28%) NCSC
7 18 (0.96%) PCI DSS
8 11 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
8 11 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
9 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
9 10 (0.53%) NIST 800
10 9 (0.48%) GRC
11 8 (0.43%) Accessibility
11 8 (0.43%) GLBA
12 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
13 5 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 5 (0.27%) DICOM
13 5 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 317 (16.92%) Docker
2 220 (11.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 181 (9.66%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.27%) Virtual Machines
5 71 (3.79%) Hyper-V
6 69 (3.68%) vSphere
7 62 (3.31%) VMware ESXi
8 44 (2.35%) NFS
9 39 (2.08%) Firmware
9 39 (2.08%) VMware NSX
10 27 (1.44%) KVM
11 25 (1.33%) GPFS
12 20 (1.07%) Postfix
13 18 (0.96%) Oracle RAC
14 15 (0.80%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.59%) Ceph
16 9 (0.48%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
17 8 (0.43%) Lustre
18 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 398 (21.25%) Kubernetes
2 376 (20.07%) Ansible
3 354 (18.90%) Terraform
4 175 (9.34%) Grafana
5 141 (7.53%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.79%) Puppet
7 47 (2.51%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.24%) vCenter Server
9 31 (1.66%) vRealize
10 30 (1.60%) Kibana
11 29 (1.55%) Oracle RMAN
12 28 (1.49%) Podman
13 25 (1.33%) Red Hat Satellite
14 24 (1.28%) Nagios
14 24 (1.28%) ZABBIX
15 23 (1.23%) Argo
16 21 (1.12%) Packer
17 20 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
17 20 (1.07%) Tivoli
18 18 (0.96%) Netcool
Vendors
1 297 (15.86%) VMware
2 260 (13.88%) Microsoft
3 253 (13.51%) Oracle
4 212 (11.32%) Red Hat
5 187 (9.98%) Splunk
6 106 (5.66%) Cisco
7 98 (5.23%) IBM
8 73 (3.90%) ServiceNow
9 46 (2.46%) CyberArk
10 45 (2.40%) Palo Alto
11 42 (2.24%) Dell
12 37 (1.98%) HP
13 33 (1.76%) Google
14 31 (1.66%) SolarWinds
15 30 (1.60%) NVIDIA
16 27 (1.44%) BeyondTrust
17 25 (1.33%) F5
17 25 (1.33%) NetApp
17 25 (1.33%) SAP
18 24 (1.28%) Atlassian