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

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -12 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,933 1,764 2,476
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.85% 5.75% 5.53%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.44% 40.13% 39.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,218 1,065 1,622
10th Percentile £318 £356 £324
25th Percentile £400 £440 £430
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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.95% - -4.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 53 123
10th Percentile £12.75 £42.00 £27.25
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.39 £48.31
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £67.88 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.50 £74.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% +7.26% -4.62%

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 4,780 4,396 6,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.98% 14.33% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,169 2,754 4,193
10th Percentile £177 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% +2.70% -10.63%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £404 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -4.97% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 149 385
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.91 £20.94 £16.92
Median hourly rate £23.25 £29.00 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -19.83% +14.85% -1.94%
75th Percentile £53.75 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.37 £69.00 £72.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £25.25
% change year-on-year -18.18% +8.91% -2.42%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -14 1,664 £510 -7.27% 753
UK excluding London -5 1,098 £478 -8.95% 644
London -20 628 £550 -8.33% 201
Work from Home -15 512 £488 -9.09% 336
South East -2 318 £475 -9.09% 193
North of England -4 291 £476 -13.45% 132
Midlands -5 181 £525 -0.47% 93
Yorkshire -1 173 £495 -13.91% 35
West Midlands -1 167 £525 -4.72% 65
South West -20 133 £550 -8.33% 93
North West -14 110 £467 -6.60% 78
Scotland -13 91 £425 -9.33% 71
East of England -11 84 £473 +5.00% 59
Northern Ireland +10 18 £400 +23.08% 5
East Midlands -26 14 £420 -8.50% 28
North East -16 13 £550 +16.83% 20
Wales -8 6 £571 +6.28% 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 84 (4.35%) Confluence
2 53 (2.74%) Apache
3 49 (2.53%) nginx
4 40 (2.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.19%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.98%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (0.98%) OpenStack
7 17 (0.88%) WebLogic
8 15 (0.78%) SharePoint
8 15 (0.78%) WebSphere
9 14 (0.72%) Skype for Business
10 13 (0.67%) JBoss
10 13 (0.67%) Mattermost
10 13 (0.67%) TPMS
11 11 (0.57%) Tomcat
12 10 (0.52%) SAS
13 7 (0.36%) IIS
13 7 (0.36%) iPlanet
13 7 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
14 6 (0.31%) CICS
Applications
1 54 (2.79%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.62%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.10%) Windchill
7 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
7 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.052%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) RMDS
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 586 (30.32%) AWS
2 372 (19.24%) Azure
3 190 (9.83%) GitHub
4 148 (7.66%) GCP
5 134 (6.93%) OpenShift
6 114 (5.90%) AWS CloudFormation
6 114 (5.90%) Serverless
7 96 (4.97%) Amazon EC2
8 94 (4.86%) GitHub Actions
9 79 (4.09%) Amazon S3
10 72 (3.72%) Amazon EKS
11 68 (3.52%) Amazon ECS
11 68 (3.52%) AWS Lambda
12 61 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
13 55 (2.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 49 (2.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 48 (2.48%) IaaS
16 40 (2.07%) Entra ID
16 40 (2.07%) SaaS
17 39 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 209 (10.81%) Firewall
2 154 (7.97%) DNS
3 130 (6.73%) TCP/IP
4 68 (3.52%) Network Security
5 63 (3.26%) VPN
6 48 (2.48%) SSH
7 45 (2.33%) DHCP
7 45 (2.33%) SSL
8 42 (2.17%) HTTP
9 35 (1.81%) SAN
10 32 (1.66%) VLAN
11 30 (1.55%) Wireless
12 28 (1.45%) WAN
13 24 (1.24%) BGP
13 24 (1.24%) Kerberos
14 23 (1.19%) VSAN
15 21 (1.09%) Skype
16 20 (1.03%) Ethernet
16 20 (1.03%) SNMP
16 20 (1.03%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (7.45%) PostgreSQL
2 94 (4.86%) SQL Server
3 91 (4.71%) Relational Database
4 83 (4.29%) Amazon RDS
5 79 (4.09%) MongoDB
6 74 (3.83%) NoSQL
7 71 (3.67%) MySQL
8 64 (3.31%) Oracle Database
9 53 (2.74%) Elasticsearch
10 28 (1.45%) DB2
11 24 (1.24%) Big Data
12 22 (1.14%) Hadoop
13 20 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
14 18 (0.93%) KDB
14 18 (0.93%) Kdb+
15 16 (0.83%) Data Lake
16 14 (0.72%) Apache Hive
17 13 (0.67%) Apache Cassandra
17 13 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 12 (0.62%) HBase
Development Applications
1 267 (13.81%) Jenkins
2 214 (11.07%) Git
3 203 (10.50%) GitLab
4 136 (7.04%) JIRA
5 51 (2.64%) JUnit
6 49 (2.53%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.17%) Bitbucket
8 31 (1.60%) Eclipse
9 30 (1.55%) Maven
10 27 (1.40%) Mockito
11 25 (1.29%) Cucumber
12 21 (1.09%) Liquibase
13 18 (0.93%) Burp Suite
14 17 (0.88%) Artifactory
15 16 (0.83%) Browser DevTools
15 16 (0.83%) JMeter
16 15 (0.78%) Android Studio
16 15 (0.78%) Metasploit
16 15 (0.78%) Xcode
17 14 (0.72%) Selenium
General
1 518 (26.80%) Social Skills
2 335 (17.33%) Finance
3 193 (9.98%) Public Sector
4 191 (9.88%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (7.24%) Banking
6 69 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.69%) Financial Institution
8 44 (2.28%) Military
9 36 (1.86%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
11 33 (1.71%) Front Office
12 23 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 22 (1.14%) Legal
14 18 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 17 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (0.72%) Law
17 13 (0.67%) Manufacturing
17 13 (0.67%) Retail
18 11 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 292 (15.11%) Developer
2 244 (12.62%) Senior
3 180 (9.31%) DevOps Engineer
4 135 (6.98%) Software Engineer
5 127 (6.57%) Analyst
6 112 (5.79%) Java Developer
7 106 (5.48%) Architect
8 96 (4.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 89 (4.60%) Support Engineer
10 85 (4.40%) Linux Engineer
11 84 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
12 81 (4.19%) Lead
13 78 (4.04%) Administrator
14 73 (3.78%) AWS Engineer
15 69 (3.57%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 66 (3.41%) Site Engineer
17 57 (2.95%) AWS DevOps
18 55 (2.85%) Senior Software Engineer
19 52 (2.69%) Senior Developer
20 51 (2.64%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (8.17%) Kafka
2 126 (6.52%) REST
3 121 (6.26%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.19%) Middleware
5 69 (3.57%) Spring
6 65 (3.36%) Node.js
7 55 (2.85%) RESTful
8 54 (2.79%) LDAP
9 53 (2.74%) React
10 49 (2.53%) JSON
11 47 (2.43%) XML
12 40 (2.07%) AngularJS
13 38 (1.97%) SOAP
13 38 (1.97%) Spring Boot
14 35 (1.81%) YAML
15 31 (1.60%) Web Services
16 28 (1.45%) CSS
17 26 (1.35%) OAuth
18 25 (1.29%) .NET
19 24 (1.24%) ActiveMQ
Miscellaneous
1 108 (5.59%) Cloud Native
2 106 (5.48%) Data Centre
3 89 (4.60%) Linux Command Line
4 70 (3.62%) Management Information System
5 66 (3.41%) Distributed Systems
6 57 (2.95%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.85%) PKI
8 53 (2.74%) Replication
9 50 (2.59%) Equities
10 49 (2.53%) Onboarding
11 39 (2.02%) Security Operations Centre
12 37 (1.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 36 (1.86%) Product Ownership
14 35 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 34 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
16 33 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
17 32 (1.66%) Data Structures
18 30 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
19 29 (1.50%) Fixed Income
20 28 (1.45%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 701 (36.26%) Windows
2 383 (19.81%) Unix
3 258 (13.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 148 (7.66%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.35%) Ubuntu
6 49 (2.53%) CentOS
7 39 (2.02%) Android
8 34 (1.76%) Solaris
9 30 (1.55%) Mac OS
10 29 (1.50%) Mac OS X
11 28 (1.45%) VMS
12 22 (1.14%) AIX
12 22 (1.14%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.98%) Windows 10
14 18 (0.93%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.72%) Kali Linux
15 14 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.62%) Debian
17 10 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
17 10 (0.52%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 591 (30.57%) CI/CD
2 487 (25.19%) DevOps
3 428 (22.14%) Agile
4 382 (19.76%) Problem-Solving
5 316 (16.35%) Infrastructure as Code
6 312 (16.14%) Containerisation
7 234 (12.11%) Software Engineering
8 195 (10.09%) Observability
9 182 (9.42%) Cybersecurity
10 170 (8.79%) Computer Science
11 165 (8.54%) Microservices
12 161 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
12 161 (8.33%) Test Automation
13 153 (7.92%) Incident Response
14 152 (7.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 138 (7.14%) Platform Engineering
16 128 (6.62%) High Availability
17 123 (6.36%) SIEM
17 123 (6.36%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 119 (6.16%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 736 (38.08%) Python
2 354 (18.31%) Java
3 339 (17.54%) SQL
4 329 (17.02%) Bash
5 269 (13.92%) PowerShell
6 206 (10.66%) Shell Script
7 169 (8.74%) C++
8 128 (6.62%) JavaScript
9 109 (5.64%) Perl
10 77 (3.98%) C#
11 70 (3.62%) Go
12 54 (2.79%) C
13 43 (2.22%) Ruby
14 31 (1.60%) Rust
14 31 (1.60%) TypeScript
15 28 (1.45%) PL/SQL
16 25 (1.29%) PHP
17 20 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
18 18 (0.93%) Ada
18 18 (0.93%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 685 (35.44%) Security Cleared
2 489 (25.30%) SC Cleared
3 212 (10.97%) Degree
4 171 (8.85%) DV Cleared
5 113 (5.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 89 (4.60%) BPSS Clearance
7 66 (3.41%) AWS Certification
8 37 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
8 37 (1.91%) CISSP
9 36 (1.86%) CompTIA Security+
10 34 (1.76%) Master's Degree
11 31 (1.60%) Azure Certification
12 28 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
13 27 (1.40%) RHCE
14 22 (1.14%) CCNA
15 21 (1.09%) CCNP
16 19 (0.98%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 19 (0.98%) OSCP
17 17 (0.88%) CEH
17 17 (0.88%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (3.57%) NIST
2 52 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (2.17%) GDPR
4 40 (2.07%) QA
5 30 (1.55%) SLA
6 21 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
7 19 (0.98%) Data Quality
8 18 (0.93%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.78%) NCSC
10 13 (0.67%) GLBA
11 10 (0.52%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 8 (0.41%) SOC 2
14 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
15 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 5 (0.26%) NIST 800
17 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
17 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 408 (21.11%) Docker
2 225 (11.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 177 (9.16%) Active Directory
4 75 (3.88%) vSphere
5 67 (3.47%) Virtual Machines
6 52 (2.69%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.53%) VMware ESXi
8 28 (1.45%) GPFS
8 28 (1.45%) NFS
9 25 (1.29%) VMware NSX
10 21 (1.09%) KVM
11 18 (0.93%) Firmware
12 15 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.72%) Oracle RAC
14 12 (0.62%) HDFS
14 12 (0.62%) Lustre
14 12 (0.62%) Postfix
14 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.41%) QEMU
16 7 (0.36%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 481 (24.88%) Kubernetes
2 408 (21.11%) Terraform
3 385 (19.92%) Ansible
4 209 (10.81%) Grafana
5 183 (9.47%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.83%) Puppet
7 63 (3.26%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.17%) vCenter Server
9 40 (2.07%) Red Hat Satellite
10 36 (1.86%) Packer
11 35 (1.81%) Argo
11 35 (1.81%) vRealize
12 33 (1.71%) Kibana
12 33 (1.71%) Podman
13 28 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
14 27 (1.40%) SCOM
15 25 (1.29%) SCCM
16 24 (1.24%) Nessus
17 18 (0.93%) ITRS Geneos
17 18 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 311 (16.09%) VMware
2 305 (15.78%) Microsoft
3 258 (13.35%) Oracle
4 244 (12.62%) Splunk
5 226 (11.69%) Red Hat
6 115 (5.95%) Cisco
7 84 (4.35%) IBM
8 75 (3.88%) ServiceNow
9 56 (2.90%) Google
10 45 (2.33%) Dell
11 36 (1.86%) CyberArk
12 34 (1.76%) AppDynamics
13 33 (1.71%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.45%) SolarWinds
15 25 (1.29%) CrowdStrike
15 25 (1.29%) NetApp
16 24 (1.24%) Citrix
17 23 (1.19%) NVIDIA
18 20 (1.03%) Databricks
18 20 (1.03%) HP