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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,126 1,838 2,133
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.58% 5.60%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.55% 41.21% 39.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,324 1,105 1,284
10th Percentile £350 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £614 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 74 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £52.81 £53.73 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £69.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.25 £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 5,375 4,460 5,380
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.53% 14.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,381 2,838 3,393
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £670 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.77% -4.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 298 257
10th Percentile £14.31 £15.50 £16.15
25th Percentile £17.38 £18.87 £21.80
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -52.55% +15.52%
75th Percentile £65.61 £55.64 £69.69
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £57.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -55.88% +30.28%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -21 1,791 £525 - 2,871
UK excluding London -22 1,206 £505 +0.95% 1,558
London -29 708 £525 -8.70% 1,391
Work from Home -30 563 £500 -4.76% 1,076
South East -18 335 £525 +10.53% 438
North of England -17 288 £500 +5.26% 224
South West +3 183 £575 +4.55% 288
North West -14 143 £497 +23.63% 140
Scotland -15 136 £450 -10.00% 97
Midlands -43 127 £475 -5.00% 164
East of England -12 119 £475 -1.55% 258
Yorkshire -27 118 £518 +3.50% 49
West Midlands -38 110 £475 -5.00% 113
North East -16 35 £480 -10.70% 36
Wales +10 27 £465 +3.33% 24
East Midlands -15 14 £481 +14.52% 51
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 81

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 64 (3.01%) Confluence
2 44 (2.07%) Apache
3 33 (1.55%) nginx
4 27 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.18%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
6 24 (1.13%) SharePoint
7 22 (1.03%) Apache Spark
8 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
9 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 16 (0.75%) SAS
11 15 (0.71%) JBoss
12 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
13 12 (0.56%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.52%) IIS
15 6 (0.28%) CMS
15 6 (0.28%) MTS
15 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.094%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 618 (29.07%) AWS
2 524 (24.65%) Azure
3 191 (8.98%) GCP
4 161 (7.57%) GitHub
5 111 (5.22%) Entra ID
5 111 (5.22%) OpenShift
6 101 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
7 93 (4.37%) Amazon S3
8 92 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
9 81 (3.81%) Amazon EC2
10 72 (3.39%) Serverless
11 67 (3.15%) AWS CloudFormation
12 65 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
14 63 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
15 61 (2.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 54 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.35%) IaaS
18 44 (2.07%) Datadog
18 44 (2.07%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.72%) DNS
2 221 (10.40%) Firewall
3 164 (7.71%) TCP/IP
4 131 (6.16%) DHCP
5 90 (4.23%) VPN
6 88 (4.14%) Network Security
7 79 (3.72%) SAN
8 53 (2.49%) SSL
9 49 (2.30%) WAN
10 46 (2.16%) HTTP
11 44 (2.07%) SSH
12 41 (1.93%) VLAN
13 34 (1.60%) LAN
13 34 (1.60%) VSAN
14 27 (1.27%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.22%) BGP
16 25 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
16 25 (1.18%) Wireless
17 22 (1.03%) HTTPS
17 22 (1.03%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.17%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.84%) Oracle Database
4 72 (3.39%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.06%) MySQL
6 55 (2.59%) Amazon RDS
7 52 (2.45%) MongoDB
8 47 (2.21%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
10 34 (1.60%) Amazon Aurora
11 28 (1.32%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.27%) Big Data
13 23 (1.08%) DynamoDB
14 21 (0.99%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.99%) Power BI
15 19 (0.89%) Oracle Database 11g
15 19 (0.89%) Oracle Database 12c
15 19 (0.89%) Redis
16 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 278 (13.08%) Git
2 246 (11.57%) Jenkins
3 223 (10.49%) GitLab
4 156 (7.34%) JIRA
5 38 (1.79%) Maven
6 36 (1.69%) SonarQube
7 31 (1.46%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.13%) Artifactory
9 24 (1.13%) Mockito
9 24 (1.13%) Selenium
10 20 (0.94%) JUnit
11 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
11 18 (0.85%) Gradle
12 16 (0.75%) Cucumber
13 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 9 (0.42%) LoadRunner
16 9 (0.42%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 456 (21.45%) Social Skills
2 333 (15.66%) Finance
3 251 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.18%) Public Sector
5 171 (8.04%) Banking
6 91 (4.28%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.45%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.79%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.60%) Front Office
9 34 (1.60%) Military
10 30 (1.41%) Legal
11 29 (1.36%) Aerospace
12 22 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 21 (0.99%) Law
14 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.80%) Retail
15 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.47%) Aviation
16 10 (0.47%) Financial Institution
17 9 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 325 (15.29%) Senior
2 244 (11.48%) Linux Engineer
3 216 (10.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 199 (9.36%) Developer
5 184 (8.65%) DevOps Engineer
6 103 (4.84%) Architect
7 102 (4.80%) Platform Engineer
7 102 (4.80%) Software Engineer
8 81 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
8 81 (3.81%) Support Engineer
9 76 (3.57%) Java Developer
9 76 (3.57%) Lead
10 75 (3.53%) Analyst
11 74 (3.48%) Consultant
12 70 (3.29%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 67 (3.15%) AWS Engineer
14 66 (3.10%) Administrator
15 59 (2.78%) Systems Engineer
16 58 (2.73%) Network Engineer
17 55 (2.59%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 508 (23.89%) Terraform
2 143 (6.73%) Kafka
3 128 (6.02%) REST
4 83 (3.90%) Middleware
5 73 (3.43%) Elastic Stack
6 69 (3.25%) .NET
7 59 (2.78%) Spring
8 54 (2.54%) RESTful
9 53 (2.49%) Spring Boot
10 47 (2.21%) Web Services
11 46 (2.16%) LDAP
12 39 (1.83%) JSON
13 37 (1.74%) XML
14 34 (1.60%) SOAP
15 33 (1.55%) HTML
16 32 (1.51%) React
17 30 (1.41%) Keycloak
17 30 (1.41%) Node.js
17 30 (1.41%) YAML
18 29 (1.36%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 160 (7.53%) Onboarding
2 139 (6.54%) Cloud Native
3 136 (6.40%) Data Centre
4 111 (5.22%) PKI
5 107 (5.03%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.37%) Replication
7 90 (4.23%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.20%) Management Information System
10 64 (3.01%) Public Cloud
11 50 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
12 48 (2.26%) Security Posture
13 42 (1.98%) Private Cloud
14 41 (1.93%) Embedded Systems
14 41 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.88%) Operational Technology
16 38 (1.79%) Clustering
17 37 (1.74%) Product Ownership
18 36 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
18 36 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 806 (37.91%) Windows
2 445 (20.93%) Unix
3 375 (17.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 255 (11.99%) Windows Server
5 114 (5.36%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.01%) CentOS
7 59 (2.78%) AIX
8 58 (2.73%) Solaris
9 38 (1.79%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.46%) VMS
10 31 (1.46%) Windows 10
11 30 (1.41%) SUSE
12 21 (0.99%) Rocky
13 19 (0.89%) Mac OS
14 17 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.71%) Debian
15 15 (0.71%) Oracle Linux
15 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (0.56%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 652 (30.67%) CI/CD
2 560 (26.34%) DevOps
3 453 (21.31%) Infrastructure as Code
4 390 (18.34%) Agile
5 340 (15.99%) Problem-Solving
6 330 (15.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 298 (14.02%) Containerisation
8 257 (12.09%) Continuous Improvement
9 247 (11.62%) Observability
10 243 (11.43%) Migration
11 234 (11.01%) Platform Engineering
12 216 (10.16%) Root Cause Analysis
13 215 (10.11%) Software Engineering
14 203 (9.55%) High Availability
15 184 (8.65%) Configuration Management
16 178 (8.37%) Test Automation
17 177 (8.33%) ITIL
18 171 (8.04%) Performance Tuning
19 170 (8.00%) Stakeholder Management
20 164 (7.71%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 770 (36.22%) Python
2 437 (20.56%) Bash
3 411 (19.33%) PowerShell
4 377 (17.73%) SQL
5 256 (12.04%) Java
6 152 (7.15%) Shell Script
7 122 (5.74%) C++
8 83 (3.90%) Perl
9 80 (3.76%) JavaScript
10 78 (3.67%) C#
11 73 (3.43%) C
12 64 (3.01%) PL/SQL
13 58 (2.73%) Go
14 41 (1.93%) Bicep
15 29 (1.36%) Groovy
16 21 (0.99%) Search Processing Language
17 19 (0.89%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.75%) Korn
18 16 (0.75%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 807 (37.96%) Security Cleared
2 572 (26.90%) SC Cleared
3 251 (11.81%) DV Cleared
4 184 (8.65%) Degree
5 73 (3.43%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.87%) CISSP
7 60 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 59 (2.78%) Azure Certification
8 59 (2.78%) Cisco Certification
9 58 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
10 27 (1.27%) CISM
11 25 (1.18%) CCNP
11 25 (1.18%) RHCE
12 21 (0.99%) CCNA
12 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.62%) NIST
2 75 (3.53%) QA
3 73 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.51%) SLA
5 23 (1.08%) Data Quality
6 21 (0.99%) GDPR
7 19 (0.89%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.80%) GRC
9 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.71%) NCSC
11 12 (0.56%) PCI DSS
12 10 (0.47%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.42%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
17 4 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 369 (17.36%) Docker
2 286 (13.45%) Active Directory
3 249 (11.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (4.19%) Hyper-V
5 85 (4.00%) vSphere
6 76 (3.57%) VMware ESXi
7 75 (3.53%) Virtual Machines
8 56 (2.63%) VMware NSX
9 44 (2.07%) Firmware
10 39 (1.83%) Oracle RAC
11 36 (1.69%) NFS
12 26 (1.22%) KVM
13 22 (1.03%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.71%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.66%) Ceph
15 14 (0.66%) Postfix
16 13 (0.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.52%) GPFS
18 8 (0.38%) Squid
19 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 471 (22.15%) Kubernetes
2 469 (22.06%) Ansible
3 192 (9.03%) Grafana
4 173 (8.14%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.19%) Puppet
6 60 (2.82%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.45%) Oracle RMAN
8 49 (2.30%) SCCM
9 40 (1.88%) Data Guard
10 38 (1.79%) vCenter Server
11 32 (1.51%) Kibana
11 32 (1.51%) Microsoft Intune
12 30 (1.41%) VxRail
13 29 (1.36%) Nagios
14 28 (1.32%) Red Hat Satellite
15 27 (1.27%) NetBackup
16 26 (1.22%) Podman
17 24 (1.13%) Packer
18 21 (0.99%) Failover Clustering
18 21 (0.99%) Istio
Vendors
1 354 (16.65%) VMware
2 343 (16.13%) Microsoft
3 296 (13.92%) Oracle
4 225 (10.58%) Red Hat
5 170 (8.00%) Splunk
6 125 (5.88%) Cisco
7 114 (5.36%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.52%) IBM
9 89 (4.19%) Google
10 84 (3.95%) CyberArk
11 46 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
11 46 (2.16%) NetApp
11 46 (2.16%) SolarWinds
12 41 (1.93%) Dell
12 41 (1.93%) F5
13 40 (1.88%) Palo Alto
14 35 (1.65%) Dynatrace
14 35 (1.65%) SAP
15 31 (1.46%) Citrix
15 31 (1.46%) Tenable