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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,901 1,674 2,174
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.91% 5.85% 5.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.42% 42.24% 38.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,174 1,070 1,440
10th Percentile £337 £375 £340
25th Percentile £408 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.58% -1.64% -5.42%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -6.67% -2.78% +1.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 40 115
10th Percentile £33.04 £44.43 £35.70
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £53.75
Median hourly rate £60.33 £64.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.47% -0.77% +0.97%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.05 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £64.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.10% -0.77% -

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 4,703 3,963 5,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.68% 13.85% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,009 2,607 3,861
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £465 £468
Median % change year-on-year -1.61% -0.64% -6.40%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £651 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.50% -0.61% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 171 394
10th Percentile £15.67 £15.22 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £22.00 £22.40
Median % change year-on-year +70.45% -1.79% -44.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.25 £61.39
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.93 £20.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +84.64% -11.11% -28.00%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -22 1,589 £513 -6.82% 844
UK excluding London -15 1,148 £490 -6.67% 663
London -50 537 £550 -8.33% 250
Work from Home -27 476 £500 -4.76% 313
South East -4 324 £500 -9.09% 225
North of England -15 279 £478 -9.05% 116
South West -4 164 £540 -10.00% 121
Midlands -15 155 £500 +0.05% 56
Yorkshire -20 150 £470 -13.56% 28
West Midlands -11 134 £485 -8.66% 24
North West -19 115 £480 -4.10% 66
Scotland -21 97 £463 -1.49% 31
East of England -17 92 £475 +0.26% 89
Wales +6 28 £465 -20.65% 15
East Midlands -29 18 £528 +16.06% 32
Northern Ireland +7 14 £425 +30.77% 21
North East -23 14 £446 -18.12% 24

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 (4.21%) Confluence
2 50 (2.63%) Apache
3 30 (1.58%) nginx
4 27 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.05%) Apache Spark
7 18 (0.95%) Tomcat
8 17 (0.89%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.74%) SAS
10 12 (0.63%) OpenStack
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 11 (0.58%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.37%) JBoss
14 7 (0.37%) TPMS
15 6 (0.32%) SharePoint
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 4 (0.21%) CMS
16 4 (0.21%) IIS
Applications
1 23 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.21%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
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%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
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
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 528 (27.77%) AWS
2 380 (19.99%) Azure
3 167 (8.78%) GitHub
4 120 (6.31%) OpenShift
5 113 (5.94%) GCP
6 96 (5.05%) GitHub Actions
7 83 (4.37%) Amazon EC2
8 80 (4.21%) Amazon S3
9 70 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
10 67 (3.52%) Amazon EKS
11 64 (3.37%) AWS CloudFormation
11 64 (3.37%) Serverless
12 59 (3.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 54 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
14 46 (2.42%) IaaS
15 44 (2.31%) Entra ID
16 41 (2.16%) Amazon ECS
16 41 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
16 41 (2.16%) PaaS
17 37 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 178 (9.36%) Firewall
2 134 (7.05%) DNS
3 93 (4.89%) TCP/IP
4 75 (3.95%) VPN
5 63 (3.31%) SAN
6 60 (3.16%) Network Security
7 49 (2.58%) WAN
8 43 (2.26%) DHCP
9 41 (2.16%) LAN
10 36 (1.89%) SNMP
10 36 (1.89%) VSAN
11 34 (1.79%) SSH
12 31 (1.63%) HTTP
12 31 (1.63%) SSL
13 25 (1.32%) NAS
14 22 (1.16%) Ethernet
15 19 (1.00%) BGP
15 19 (1.00%) VLAN
15 19 (1.00%) Wireless
16 18 (0.95%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.89%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 73 (3.84%) MySQL
4 69 (3.63%) Oracle Database
5 62 (3.26%) MongoDB
5 62 (3.26%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
7 43 (2.26%) Elasticsearch
8 38 (2.00%) Amazon Aurora
9 27 (1.42%) NoSQL
10 25 (1.32%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.05%) SAP HANA
12 19 (1.00%) Big Data
12 19 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
12 19 (1.00%) KDB
13 17 (0.89%) DB2
14 16 (0.84%) Kdb+
15 13 (0.68%) Sybase ASE
16 12 (0.63%) Oracle Database 12c
16 12 (0.63%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 203 (10.68%) Jenkins
2 174 (9.15%) Git
3 169 (8.89%) GitLab
4 139 (7.31%) JIRA
5 33 (1.74%) Maven
6 28 (1.47%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.37%) Mockito
8 23 (1.21%) Eclipse
9 22 (1.16%) JUnit
10 19 (1.00%) Bitbucket
10 19 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
11 16 (0.84%) Artifactory
12 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.68%) Jaeger
13 13 (0.68%) jMock
13 13 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
15 10 (0.53%) Cucumber
16 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 381 (20.04%) Social Skills
2 256 (13.47%) Finance
3 202 (10.63%) Public Sector
4 150 (7.89%) Analytical Skills
5 111 (5.84%) Banking
6 73 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.26%) Military
8 25 (1.32%) Financial Institution
9 24 (1.26%) Front Office
9 24 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
11 22 (1.16%) Retail
12 21 (1.10%) Investment Banking
13 20 (1.05%) Law
13 20 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 16 (0.84%) Legal
16 15 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 242 (12.73%) Senior
2 198 (10.42%) Developer
3 178 (9.36%) DevOps Engineer
4 170 (8.94%) Linux Engineer
5 134 (7.05%) Software Engineer
6 123 (6.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 109 (5.73%) Analyst
7 109 (5.73%) Architect
8 95 (5.00%) Lead
9 79 (4.16%) Administrator
10 76 (4.00%) Java Developer
11 69 (3.63%) AWS Engineer
12 67 (3.52%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 58 (3.05%) Platform Engineer
14 57 (3.00%) Site Engineer
15 55 (2.89%) Consultant
16 51 (2.68%) Security Engineer
17 49 (2.58%) AWS DevOps
18 48 (2.52%) Support Engineer
19 47 (2.47%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (5.05%) Kafka
2 83 (4.37%) REST
3 78 (4.10%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.68%) Middleware
5 52 (2.74%) LDAP
6 49 (2.58%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.52%) Node.js
7 48 (2.52%) Spring
8 43 (2.26%) Web Services
9 41 (2.16%) RESTful
10 33 (1.74%) .NET
11 31 (1.63%) YAML
12 28 (1.47%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.42%) XML
14 26 (1.37%) SOAP
15 25 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
15 25 (1.32%) JSON
16 24 (1.26%) React
17 22 (1.16%) CSS
17 22 (1.16%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 151 (7.94%) Data Centre
2 102 (5.37%) Cloud Native
3 79 (4.16%) Linux Command Line
4 75 (3.95%) Onboarding
5 69 (3.63%) Distributed Systems
6 66 (3.47%) Management Information System
7 59 (3.10%) PKI
8 56 (2.95%) Replication
9 48 (2.52%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (2.47%) Public Cloud
11 45 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
12 35 (1.84%) Security Posture
13 34 (1.79%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.68%) Enterprise Storage
15 31 (1.63%) Embedded Systems
16 30 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
16 30 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
17 26 (1.37%) Operational Technology
18 23 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
18 23 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 717 (37.72%) Windows
2 375 (19.73%) Unix
3 280 (14.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 173 (9.10%) Windows Server
5 91 (4.79%) Ubuntu
6 52 (2.74%) AIX
7 42 (2.21%) Solaris
8 41 (2.16%) CentOS
9 36 (1.89%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.53%) VMS
11 26 (1.37%) Android
12 22 (1.16%) Debian
12 22 (1.16%) Windows Server 2016
12 22 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
13 20 (1.05%) Mac OS
14 14 (0.74%) SUSE
15 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
15 12 (0.63%) Windows 10
16 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
16 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 528 (27.77%) CI/CD
2 447 (23.51%) DevOps
3 355 (18.67%) Agile
4 298 (15.68%) Problem-Solving
5 282 (14.83%) Infrastructure as Code
6 247 (12.99%) Containerisation
7 208 (10.94%) Software Engineering
8 183 (9.63%) Migration
9 180 (9.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 180 (9.47%) Observability
10 154 (8.10%) Performance Tuning
11 148 (7.79%) High Availability
12 144 (7.57%) Continuous Improvement
12 144 (7.57%) Root Cause Analysis
13 143 (7.52%) SIEM
14 134 (7.05%) Computer Science
14 134 (7.05%) Incident Response
14 134 (7.05%) Microservices
15 128 (6.73%) Cybersecurity
15 128 (6.73%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 628 (33.04%) Python
2 327 (17.20%) SQL
3 266 (13.99%) Bash
4 260 (13.68%) PowerShell
5 253 (13.31%) Java
6 155 (8.15%) Shell Script
7 126 (6.63%) C++
8 102 (5.37%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.52%) Perl
10 57 (3.00%) C
11 56 (2.95%) C#
12 46 (2.42%) Go
13 45 (2.37%) PL/SQL
14 29 (1.53%) Ruby
15 26 (1.37%) TypeScript
16 24 (1.26%) Rust
17 21 (1.10%) Ada
17 21 (1.10%) MATLAB
18 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
19 17 (0.89%) PHP
Qualifications
1 748 (39.35%) Security Cleared
2 546 (28.72%) SC Cleared
3 219 (11.52%) DV Cleared
4 180 (9.47%) Degree
5 78 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 75 (3.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 54 (2.84%) Cisco Certification
8 46 (2.42%) CISSP
9 45 (2.37%) AWS Certification
10 44 (2.31%) CompTIA Security+
11 37 (1.95%) RHCE
12 32 (1.68%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.32%) CCNA
14 24 (1.26%) CCNP
15 19 (1.00%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.95%) OCP
17 17 (0.89%) CISM
17 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
18 15 (0.79%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (4.21%) NIST
2 70 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.79%) QA
4 48 (2.52%) SLA
5 29 (1.53%) Cyber Essentials
5 29 (1.53%) GDPR
6 24 (1.26%) NCSC
7 17 (0.89%) PCI DSS
8 11 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
8 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
9 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.47%) GRC
11 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
12 7 (0.37%) GLBA
13 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
14 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 311 (16.36%) Docker
2 222 (11.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 185 (9.73%) Active Directory
4 80 (4.21%) Virtual Machines
5 70 (3.68%) vSphere
6 68 (3.58%) Hyper-V
7 63 (3.31%) VMware ESXi
8 49 (2.58%) NFS
9 42 (2.21%) VMware NSX
10 40 (2.10%) Firmware
11 29 (1.53%) KVM
12 24 (1.26%) GPFS
13 20 (1.05%) Oracle RAC
14 19 (1.00%) Postfix
15 15 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 14 (0.74%) Ceph
17 9 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.37%) Squid
18 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 389 (20.46%) Kubernetes
2 383 (20.15%) Ansible
3 351 (18.46%) Terraform
4 176 (9.26%) Grafana
5 143 (7.52%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.89%) Puppet
7 42 (2.21%) vCenter Server
8 41 (2.16%) Progress Chef
9 35 (1.84%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.58%) Podman
10 30 (1.58%) vRealize
11 28 (1.47%) Kibana
11 28 (1.47%) Red Hat Satellite
12 25 (1.32%) Packer
13 24 (1.26%) Nagios
13 24 (1.26%) ZABBIX
14 23 (1.21%) Data Guard
15 21 (1.10%) Argo
16 20 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
16 20 (1.05%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 308 (16.20%) VMware
2 261 (13.73%) Oracle
3 253 (13.31%) Microsoft
4 220 (11.57%) Red Hat
5 188 (9.89%) Splunk
6 119 (6.26%) Cisco
7 95 (5.00%) IBM
8 81 (4.26%) ServiceNow
9 51 (2.68%) Palo Alto
10 46 (2.42%) CyberArk
11 39 (2.05%) Google
12 38 (2.00%) Dell
13 35 (1.84%) SolarWinds
14 34 (1.79%) F5
14 34 (1.79%) HP
15 33 (1.74%) NVIDIA
16 31 (1.63%) Citrix
17 29 (1.53%) BeyondTrust
17 29 (1.53%) SAP
18 26 (1.37%) Atlassian