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 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -23 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,085 1,846 2,131
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 5.64% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.15% 41.74% 39.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,297 1,128 1,325
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -3.36%
75th Percentile £613 £628 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 63 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.63 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,326 4,423 5,380
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.51% 14.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,366 2,826 3,480
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £305 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £452 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.76% -4.84% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £449 £450
% change year-on-year +0.33% -0.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 385 265 279
10th Percentile £14.47 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -48.21% +5.84%
75th Percentile £65.22 £58.75 £68.38
90th Percentile £74.54 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +4.69% -52.10% +20.00%

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 9 September 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 9 September 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 9 September 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 -26 1,739 £525 - 2,394
UK excluding London -22 1,187 £500 - 1,170
London -41 676 £540 -6.09% 1,410
Work from Home -29 554 £500 -4.31% 2,280
South East -12 330 £519 +7.51% 337
North of England -24 288 £500 +4.60% 177
South West +3 194 £575 - 191
North West -16 146 £497 +23.63% 100
Scotland -16 137 £450 -10.00% 79
Yorkshire -25 122 £515 +2.90% 41
Midlands -48 121 £470 -6.00% 96
West Midlands -48 100 £470 -6.00% 56
East of England -16 98 £475 -3.06% 249
Wales -1 27 £465 +3.33% 12
North East -25 27 £470 -18.26% 37
East Midlands -9 18 £500 +19.05% 39
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 50

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 65 (3.12%) Confluence
2 49 (2.35%) Apache
3 30 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
3 30 (1.44%) nginx
4 23 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 23 (1.10%) OpenStack
5 22 (1.06%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.01%) WebLogic
7 18 (0.86%) SAS
8 16 (0.77%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.67%) JBoss
10 13 (0.62%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.48%) IIS
12 6 (0.29%) CMS
12 6 (0.29%) MTS
13 5 (0.24%) NetWeaver
13 5 (0.24%) WebLogic Portal
13 5 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 28 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
4 3 (0.14%) Simulink
5 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.048%) Magento
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 607 (29.11%) AWS
2 520 (24.94%) Azure
3 181 (8.68%) GCP
4 163 (7.82%) GitHub
5 107 (5.13%) Entra ID
6 104 (4.99%) OpenShift
7 101 (4.84%) GitHub Actions
8 94 (4.51%) Amazon S3
9 92 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
10 84 (4.03%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.41%) Serverless
12 65 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
13 63 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (2.97%) AWS CloudFormation
15 60 (2.88%) Amazon EKS
16 56 (2.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 52 (2.49%) IaaS
17 52 (2.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 42 (2.01%) Datadog
19 41 (1.97%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.94%) DNS
2 221 (10.60%) Firewall
3 143 (6.86%) TCP/IP
4 127 (6.09%) DHCP
5 87 (4.17%) VPN
6 81 (3.88%) SAN
7 79 (3.79%) Network Security
8 50 (2.40%) SSL
9 49 (2.35%) WAN
10 44 (2.11%) SSH
11 41 (1.97%) VSAN
12 40 (1.92%) HTTP
12 40 (1.92%) VLAN
13 34 (1.63%) LAN
14 27 (1.29%) Kerberos
14 27 (1.29%) SNMP
15 25 (1.20%) NAS
16 23 (1.10%) HTTPS
17 21 (1.01%) BGP
18 19 (0.91%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 102 (4.89%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.21%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.12%) MySQL
6 55 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
7 52 (2.49%) MongoDB
8 43 (2.06%) NoSQL
9 37 (1.77%) Amazon Aurora
10 35 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
12 29 (1.39%) RDBMS
13 27 (1.29%) Big Data
14 21 (1.01%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.96%) DynamoDB
15 20 (0.96%) Oracle Database 12c
16 19 (0.91%) Power BI
17 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 11g
18 17 (0.82%) Hadoop
18 17 (0.82%) Redis
Development Applications
1 256 (12.28%) Git
2 236 (11.32%) Jenkins
3 200 (9.59%) GitLab
4 156 (7.48%) JIRA
5 32 (1.53%) Maven
6 31 (1.49%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.49%) SonarQube
7 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
8 20 (0.96%) Mockito
9 19 (0.91%) Selenium
10 18 (0.86%) Artifactory
11 16 (0.77%) JUnit
12 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
13 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
13 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 11 (0.53%) TeamCity
14 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.43%) JMeter
15 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
16 8 (0.38%) eggPlant
General
1 439 (21.06%) Social Skills
2 312 (14.96%) Finance
3 247 (11.85%) Analytical Skills
4 170 (8.15%) Public Sector
5 163 (7.82%) Banking
6 86 (4.12%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.25%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.82%) Front Office
9 37 (1.77%) Investment Banking
10 28 (1.34%) Legal
11 26 (1.25%) Aerospace
12 25 (1.20%) Military
13 21 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.91%) Retail
15 18 (0.86%) Law
15 18 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.58%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.48%) Aviation
17 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 312 (14.96%) Senior
2 238 (11.41%) Linux Engineer
3 204 (9.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 191 (9.16%) Developer
5 180 (8.63%) DevOps Engineer
6 108 (5.18%) Architect
7 100 (4.80%) Software Engineer
8 97 (4.65%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (3.98%) Consultant
10 82 (3.93%) Support Engineer
11 79 (3.79%) Lead
12 77 (3.69%) Cloud Engineer
13 74 (3.55%) Analyst
14 71 (3.41%) Administrator
15 68 (3.26%) Java Developer
16 64 (3.07%) AWS Engineer
16 64 (3.07%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 59 (2.83%) Systems Engineer
18 54 (2.59%) DBA
18 54 (2.59%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 491 (23.55%) Terraform
2 129 (6.19%) Kafka
3 115 (5.52%) REST
4 74 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
5 71 (3.41%) Middleware
6 67 (3.21%) .NET
7 53 (2.54%) RESTful
8 49 (2.35%) Spring
9 44 (2.11%) Spring Boot
10 38 (1.82%) LDAP
11 37 (1.77%) Web Services
12 36 (1.73%) JSON
13 34 (1.63%) XML
14 30 (1.44%) HTML
14 30 (1.44%) SOAP
14 30 (1.44%) YAML
15 27 (1.29%) ARM Templates
16 26 (1.25%) Django
16 26 (1.25%) React
17 25 (1.20%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 146 (7.00%) Onboarding
2 139 (6.67%) Cloud Native
3 134 (6.43%) Data Centre
4 106 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
4 106 (5.08%) PKI
5 94 (4.51%) Replication
6 83 (3.98%) Distributed Systems
7 72 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
8 67 (3.21%) Public Cloud
9 61 (2.93%) Management Information System
10 44 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 43 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
12 41 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
13 39 (1.87%) Clustering
13 39 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
14 38 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
14 38 (1.82%) Enterprise Storage
14 38 (1.82%) Private Cloud
15 36 (1.73%) Operational Technology
16 34 (1.63%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 783 (37.55%) Windows
2 435 (20.86%) Unix
3 361 (17.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 252 (12.09%) Windows Server
5 110 (5.28%) Ubuntu
6 60 (2.88%) AIX
7 55 (2.64%) CentOS
8 52 (2.49%) Solaris
9 39 (1.87%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.34%) SUSE
10 28 (1.34%) VMS
10 28 (1.34%) Windows 10
11 21 (1.01%) Rocky
11 21 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.86%) Oracle Linux
12 18 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.82%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.77%) Debian
15 12 (0.58%) Android
15 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 611 (29.30%) CI/CD
2 539 (25.85%) DevOps
3 430 (20.62%) Infrastructure as Code
4 373 (17.89%) Agile
5 324 (15.54%) Problem-Solving
6 302 (14.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 277 (13.29%) Containerisation
8 251 (12.04%) Continuous Improvement
9 231 (11.08%) Migration
9 231 (11.08%) Observability
10 219 (10.50%) Platform Engineering
11 204 (9.78%) High Availability
12 203 (9.74%) Software Engineering
13 201 (9.64%) Root Cause Analysis
14 176 (8.44%) Performance Tuning
15 175 (8.39%) ITIL
16 165 (7.91%) Configuration Management
17 162 (7.77%) Test Automation
18 152 (7.29%) AI
18 152 (7.29%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 751 (36.02%) Python
2 416 (19.95%) Bash
3 405 (19.42%) PowerShell
4 381 (18.27%) SQL
5 241 (11.56%) Java
6 154 (7.39%) Shell Script
7 120 (5.76%) C++
8 75 (3.60%) Perl
9 73 (3.50%) C
10 71 (3.41%) JavaScript
11 69 (3.31%) C#
12 65 (3.12%) PL/SQL
13 53 (2.54%) Go
14 44 (2.11%) Bicep
15 25 (1.20%) Groovy
16 23 (1.10%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.86%) Ada
18 17 (0.82%) TypeScript
19 16 (0.77%) Rust
20 14 (0.67%) Korn
Qualifications
1 801 (38.42%) Security Cleared
2 582 (27.91%) SC Cleared
3 251 (12.04%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.73%) Degree
5 70 (3.36%) AWS Certification
6 58 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
8 56 (2.69%) Azure Certification
8 56 (2.69%) CISSP
9 55 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (1.10%) CCNP
11 22 (1.06%) CISM
11 22 (1.06%) RHCE
12 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.86%) CCNA
13 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (0.82%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.50%) NIST
2 71 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 65 (3.12%) QA
4 33 (1.58%) SLA
5 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.01%) NCSC
7 20 (0.96%) GDPR
8 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.53%) GRC
10 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.48%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 31000
14 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 350 (16.79%) Docker
2 280 (13.43%) Active Directory
3 249 (11.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (4.32%) Hyper-V
5 85 (4.08%) vSphere
6 79 (3.79%) Virtual Machines
7 73 (3.50%) VMware ESXi
8 61 (2.93%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.92%) Firmware
10 39 (1.87%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.68%) NFS
12 27 (1.29%) KVM
13 17 (0.82%) Ceph
13 17 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.67%) Postfix
15 11 (0.53%) GPFS
15 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.48%) Squid
17 7 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 464 (22.25%) Ansible
2 451 (21.63%) Kubernetes
3 184 (8.82%) Grafana
4 164 (7.87%) Prometheus
5 86 (4.12%) Puppet
6 60 (2.88%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.49%) Oracle RMAN
8 46 (2.21%) SCCM
9 40 (1.92%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.87%) Data Guard
11 30 (1.44%) Nagios
12 29 (1.39%) Kibana
12 29 (1.39%) Microsoft Intune
13 27 (1.29%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.25%) Podman
15 25 (1.20%) Packer
16 24 (1.15%) NetBackup
17 23 (1.10%) VxRail
17 23 (1.10%) ZABBIX
18 20 (0.96%) Istio
Vendors
1 352 (16.88%) VMware
2 333 (15.97%) Microsoft
3 312 (14.96%) Oracle
4 227 (10.89%) Red Hat
5 166 (7.96%) Splunk
6 123 (5.90%) Cisco
7 112 (5.37%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.51%) IBM
9 82 (3.93%) Google
10 78 (3.74%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.30%) SolarWinds
12 47 (2.25%) NetApp
13 45 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
14 41 (1.97%) SAP
15 40 (1.92%) Palo Alto
16 38 (1.82%) F5
17 36 (1.73%) Dell
18 33 (1.58%) Dynatrace
19 32 (1.53%) Citrix
20 31 (1.49%) HP