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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 32 32
Rank change year-on-year -17 0 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,886 1,772 2,300
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.30% 6.08% 5.20%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.73% 42.53% 38.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,198 1,129 1,527
10th Percentile £325 £373 £313
25th Percentile £400 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -5.98%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -6.67% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 53 107
10th Percentile £19.85 £40.65 £25.82
25th Percentile £41.25 £55.38 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.50 £70.55 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.50
% change year-on-year -3.24% +7.85% -6.92%

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 4,747 4,166 5,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.83% 14.30% 13.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,120 2,772 3,992
10th Percentile £181 £200 £180
25th Percentile £300 £320 £281
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £457
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.94% -11.26%
75th Percentile £564 £589 £594
90th Percentile £655 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £450 £432
% change year-on-year -7.78% +4.11% -9.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 157 410
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.60 £12.86
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.54% +27.27% -24.14%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £20.00
% change year-on-year -8.76% +23.30% -24.53%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -20 1,610 £518 -5.91% 820
UK excluding London -10 1,099 £490 -6.67% 713
London -36 580 £550 -6.78% 197
Work from Home -27 482 £500 -4.76% 301
South East -2 317 £500 -4.76% 212
North of England -10 299 £492 -10.55% 123
Midlands -14 170 £480 -8.57% 73
Yorkshire -19 163 £480 -12.73% 41
West Midlands -6 153 £480 -10.61% 39
South West -22 142 £539 -10.21% 143
North West -11 128 £496 -5.52% 58
Scotland -21 84 £425 -9.09% 42
East of England -15 79 £462 -2.22% 110
East Midlands -38 17 £478 +5.06% 34
Northern Ireland +5 15 £425 +30.77% 6
North East -22 10 £550 +4.76% 25
Wales -12 8 £404 -26.59% 23

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 97 (5.14%) Confluence
2 45 (2.39%) nginx
3 42 (2.23%) Apache
4 39 (2.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (0.95%) Apache Spark
5 18 (0.95%) OpenStack
6 15 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
7 14 (0.74%) SAS
7 14 (0.74%) WebLogic
8 12 (0.64%) SharePoint
8 12 (0.64%) Tomcat
8 12 (0.64%) TPMS
9 9 (0.48%) WebSphere
10 8 (0.42%) CICS
11 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.21%) JBoss
13 3 (0.16%) CMS
13 3 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 47 (2.49%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Weka
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.11%) Simulink
8 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.053%) InDesign
8 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 9 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.053%) Odoo
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.053%) RMDS
5 1 (0.053%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 562 (29.80%) AWS
2 371 (19.67%) Azure
3 179 (9.49%) GitHub
4 136 (7.21%) OpenShift
5 128 (6.79%) GCP
6 103 (5.46%) AWS CloudFormation
7 101 (5.36%) Amazon EC2
8 100 (5.30%) Serverless
9 92 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
10 82 (4.35%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.92%) Amazon EKS
12 68 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
13 66 (3.50%) AWS Lambda
14 60 (3.18%) Amazon ECS
15 56 (2.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 45 (2.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 44 (2.33%) IaaS
18 36 (1.91%) Microsoft 365
19 35 (1.86%) Entra ID
20 32 (1.70%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 203 (10.76%) Firewall
2 130 (6.89%) DNS
3 109 (5.78%) TCP/IP
4 63 (3.34%) Network Security
4 63 (3.34%) VPN
5 48 (2.55%) SAN
6 47 (2.49%) SSH
7 37 (1.96%) VSAN
8 35 (1.86%) WAN
9 34 (1.80%) DHCP
10 32 (1.70%) HTTP
10 32 (1.70%) SSL
11 29 (1.54%) SNMP
12 27 (1.43%) LAN
13 23 (1.22%) BGP
13 23 (1.22%) Ethernet
14 21 (1.11%) Wireless
15 20 (1.06%) Kerberos
16 18 (0.95%) NAS
17 15 (0.80%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 138 (7.32%) PostgreSQL
2 96 (5.09%) SQL Server
3 76 (4.03%) Amazon RDS
4 73 (3.87%) Relational Database
5 69 (3.66%) MongoDB
6 67 (3.55%) MySQL
7 60 (3.18%) Oracle Database
8 50 (2.65%) NoSQL
9 39 (2.07%) Elasticsearch
10 24 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
11 21 (1.11%) DB2
11 21 (1.11%) KDB
12 20 (1.06%) Kdb+
13 19 (1.01%) Big Data
14 15 (0.80%) Data Lake
14 15 (0.80%) Hadoop
15 13 (0.69%) DynamoDB
15 13 (0.69%) SAP HANA
16 12 (0.64%) Amazon Aurora
16 12 (0.64%) Redis
Development Applications
1 253 (13.41%) Jenkins
2 199 (10.55%) Git
3 190 (10.07%) GitLab
4 159 (8.43%) JIRA
5 44 (2.33%) Bitbucket
6 41 (2.17%) JUnit
7 37 (1.96%) Sonatype Nexus
8 33 (1.75%) Maven
9 30 (1.59%) Eclipse
10 22 (1.17%) Cucumber
11 21 (1.11%) Artifactory
12 20 (1.06%) Mockito
13 19 (1.01%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
15 13 (0.69%) JMeter
15 13 (0.69%) Selenium
16 12 (0.64%) Burp Suite
16 12 (0.64%) Liquibase
17 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
18 9 (0.48%) Browser DevTools
General
1 472 (25.03%) Social Skills
2 313 (16.60%) Finance
3 192 (10.18%) Public Sector
4 164 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
5 131 (6.95%) Banking
6 59 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.39%) Military
8 39 (2.07%) Financial Institution
9 33 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
10 31 (1.64%) Front Office
10 31 (1.64%) Investment Banking
11 24 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
12 21 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 20 (1.06%) Telecoms
14 19 (1.01%) Retail
15 18 (0.95%) Law
15 18 (0.95%) Legal
16 16 (0.85%) Aerospace
17 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 10 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 236 (12.51%) Senior
2 234 (12.41%) Developer
3 173 (9.17%) DevOps Engineer
4 132 (7.00%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.68%) Architect
6 124 (6.57%) Analyst
7 108 (5.73%) Linux Engineer
8 83 (4.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 83 (4.40%) Java Developer
9 81 (4.29%) Lead
10 78 (4.14%) Administrator
11 76 (4.03%) Platform Engineer
12 69 (3.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 66 (3.50%) AWS Engineer
14 64 (3.39%) Site Engineer
15 54 (2.86%) AWS DevOps
15 54 (2.86%) Support Engineer
16 51 (2.70%) Security Engineer
17 47 (2.49%) Cloud Engineer
18 45 (2.39%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (6.36%) Kafka
2 113 (5.99%) REST
3 104 (5.51%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.82%) Node.js
5 69 (3.66%) Middleware
6 56 (2.97%) Spring
7 50 (2.65%) LDAP
8 46 (2.44%) RESTful
9 41 (2.17%) Spring Boot
10 40 (2.12%) Web Services
11 39 (2.07%) JSON
11 39 (2.07%) XML
12 34 (1.80%) React
12 34 (1.80%) YAML
13 30 (1.59%) AngularJS
14 27 (1.43%) SOAP
15 24 (1.27%) .NET
16 21 (1.11%) OpenTelemetry
17 20 (1.06%) CSS
17 20 (1.06%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 116 (6.15%) Data Centre
2 113 (5.99%) Cloud Native
3 78 (4.14%) Linux Command Line
4 69 (3.66%) Distributed Systems
5 66 (3.50%) Management Information System
6 65 (3.45%) Public Cloud
7 57 (3.02%) PKI
8 51 (2.70%) Onboarding
9 49 (2.60%) Replication
10 45 (2.39%) Hybrid Cloud
11 42 (2.23%) Product Ownership
12 37 (1.96%) Security Operations Centre
13 36 (1.91%) Equities
14 33 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
14 33 (1.75%) Security Posture
15 32 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
16 29 (1.54%) Fixed Income
17 28 (1.48%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 25 (1.33%) Data Structures
18 25 (1.33%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 694 (36.80%) Windows
2 331 (17.55%) Unix
3 260 (13.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 159 (8.43%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.61%) Ubuntu
6 40 (2.12%) CentOS
7 38 (2.01%) AIX
8 34 (1.80%) Android
9 31 (1.64%) Solaris
10 27 (1.43%) VMS
10 27 (1.43%) Windows Server 2016
11 22 (1.17%) Embedded Linux
12 20 (1.06%) Mac OS
12 20 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.74%) Debian
14 12 (0.64%) Kali Linux
14 12 (0.64%) Mac OS X
14 12 (0.64%) Windows 10
15 10 (0.53%) Apple iOS
15 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 577 (30.59%) CI/CD
2 484 (25.66%) DevOps
3 426 (22.59%) Agile
4 346 (18.35%) Problem-Solving
5 311 (16.49%) Infrastructure as Code
6 297 (15.75%) Containerisation
7 218 (11.56%) Software Engineering
8 197 (10.45%) Observability
9 163 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
10 157 (8.32%) Cybersecurity
11 155 (8.22%) Computer Science
12 150 (7.95%) Microservices
13 149 (7.90%) Incident Response
14 145 (7.69%) Migration
15 141 (7.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 136 (7.21%) Platform Engineering
17 135 (7.16%) Test Automation
18 128 (6.79%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 127 (6.73%) High Availability
20 123 (6.52%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 679 (36.00%) Python
2 321 (17.02%) SQL
3 304 (16.12%) Bash
4 303 (16.07%) Java
5 274 (14.53%) PowerShell
6 180 (9.54%) Shell Script
7 148 (7.85%) C++
8 116 (6.15%) JavaScript
9 92 (4.88%) Perl
10 69 (3.66%) C#
11 54 (2.86%) Go
12 48 (2.55%) C
13 42 (2.23%) Ruby
14 33 (1.75%) PL/SQL
15 32 (1.70%) TypeScript
16 27 (1.43%) Rust
17 25 (1.33%) PHP
18 20 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
19 19 (1.01%) Ada
20 16 (0.85%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 733 (38.87%) Security Cleared
2 535 (28.37%) SC Cleared
3 192 (10.18%) Degree
4 184 (9.76%) DV Cleared
5 94 (4.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 86 (4.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (3.13%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.12%) CompTIA Security+
9 39 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
9 39 (2.07%) CISSP
10 28 (1.48%) Master's Degree
11 27 (1.43%) RHCE
12 24 (1.27%) CCNA
13 23 (1.22%) Azure Certification
13 23 (1.22%) CCNP
14 21 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
15 20 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.95%) CompTIA CySA+
17 17 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 17 (0.90%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (4.03%) NIST
2 54 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.55%) QA
4 44 (2.33%) GDPR
5 32 (1.70%) SLA
6 25 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
7 23 (1.22%) NCSC
8 21 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.74%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.64%) GLBA
11 9 (0.48%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 5 (0.27%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 4 (0.21%) GRC
16 3 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
16 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 388 (20.57%) Docker
2 226 (11.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 157 (8.32%) Active Directory
4 88 (4.67%) vSphere
5 68 (3.61%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (2.92%) Hyper-V
7 51 (2.70%) VMware ESXi
8 33 (1.75%) NFS
8 33 (1.75%) VMware NSX
9 28 (1.48%) GPFS
10 22 (1.17%) Firmware
11 21 (1.11%) KVM
12 15 (0.80%) Oracle RAC
13 14 (0.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 13 (0.69%) Postfix
15 12 (0.64%) Lustre
16 10 (0.53%) Ceph
17 8 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.32%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.32%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 482 (25.56%) Kubernetes
2 398 (21.10%) Terraform
3 387 (20.52%) Ansible
4 201 (10.66%) Grafana
5 169 (8.96%) Prometheus
6 68 (3.61%) Puppet
7 59 (3.13%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.28%) vCenter Server
9 38 (2.01%) Packer
10 36 (1.91%) vRealize
11 34 (1.80%) Argo
12 31 (1.64%) Red Hat Satellite
13 29 (1.54%) Podman
14 22 (1.17%) Kibana
15 21 (1.11%) SCCM
16 20 (1.06%) Oracle RMAN
17 19 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
18 18 (0.95%) VxRail
19 17 (0.90%) Consul
19 17 (0.90%) Nessus
Vendors
1 304 (16.12%) VMware
2 287 (15.22%) Microsoft
3 245 (12.99%) Oracle
4 228 (12.09%) Red Hat
5 202 (10.71%) Splunk
6 105 (5.57%) Cisco
7 89 (4.72%) IBM
8 67 (3.55%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.76%) Google
10 47 (2.49%) Dell
11 40 (2.12%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.80%) SolarWinds
13 32 (1.70%) CyberArk
13 32 (1.70%) HP
14 28 (1.48%) NetApp
15 27 (1.43%) Atlassian
15 27 (1.43%) Citrix
15 27 (1.43%) NVIDIA
15 27 (1.43%) Sybase
16 24 (1.27%) AppDynamics