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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,106 1,813 2,131
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.58% 5.61%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.44% 41.34% 39.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,309 1,091 1,297
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.60% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 74 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £52.03 £53.73 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +10.80%
75th Percentile £69.88 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.38 £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 5,340 4,386 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.50% 14.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,355 2,799 3,431
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
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 £673 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 284 259
10th Percentile £14.17 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.86 £21.25
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -52.10% +14.43%
75th Percentile £66.63 £58.75 £69.22
90th Percentile £74.94 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +29.22% -55.68% +23.68%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 1,773 £525 - 2,239
UK excluding London -21 1,201 £508 +1.60% 1,291
London -32 692 £525 -8.70% 1,000
Work from Home -22 555 £500 -4.76% 872
South East -14 337 £525 +10.53% 373
North of England -20 288 £500 +5.26% 179
South West +2 185 £575 +4.55% 231
North West -13 144 £497 +23.63% 108
Scotland -14 133 £450 -10.00% 61
Midlands -47 122 £471 -5.75% 150
East of England -16 118 £483 -1.78% 229
Yorkshire -29 118 £518 +3.50% 37
West Midlands -44 105 £471 -5.75% 105
North East -9 34 £475 -11.63% 34
Wales +11 27 £465 +3.33% 25
East Midlands -11 14 £481 +14.52% 45
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 54

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 (3.04%) Confluence
2 44 (2.09%) Apache
3 32 (1.52%) nginx
4 26 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.19%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
6 24 (1.14%) SharePoint
7 21 (1.00%) Apache Spark
7 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
8 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 16 (0.76%) SAS
10 15 (0.71%) JBoss
11 14 (0.66%) Tomcat
12 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.47%) IIS
14 6 (0.28%) CMS
14 6 (0.28%) MTS
14 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) 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 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) 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 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle General Ledger
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
1 612 (29.06%) AWS
2 518 (24.60%) Azure
3 189 (8.97%) GCP
4 160 (7.60%) GitHub
5 111 (5.27%) OpenShift
6 108 (5.13%) Entra ID
7 100 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
8 93 (4.42%) Amazon S3
9 91 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
10 82 (3.89%) Amazon EC2
11 72 (3.42%) Serverless
12 66 (3.13%) AWS CloudFormation
13 65 (3.09%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
15 62 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
16 60 (2.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 54 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 50 (2.37%) IaaS
19 44 (2.09%) Datadog
19 44 (2.09%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 227 (10.78%) DNS
2 221 (10.49%) Firewall
3 163 (7.74%) TCP/IP
4 130 (6.17%) DHCP
5 88 (4.18%) VPN
6 87 (4.13%) Network Security
7 79 (3.75%) SAN
8 52 (2.47%) SSL
9 50 (2.37%) WAN
10 46 (2.18%) HTTP
11 43 (2.04%) SSH
12 41 (1.95%) VLAN
13 35 (1.66%) LAN
13 35 (1.66%) VSAN
14 28 (1.33%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.23%) BGP
16 24 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
16 24 (1.14%) Wireless
17 23 (1.09%) SNMP
18 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.70%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.22%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.89%) Oracle Database
4 73 (3.47%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.04%) MySQL
6 56 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
7 51 (2.42%) MongoDB
8 45 (2.14%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.66%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
11 28 (1.33%) RDBMS
12 26 (1.23%) Big Data
13 23 (1.09%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.00%) Power BI
15 20 (0.95%) Data Lake
16 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 11g
16 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 12c
17 18 (0.85%) Redis
18 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 277 (13.15%) Git
2 245 (11.63%) Jenkins
3 218 (10.35%) GitLab
4 155 (7.36%) JIRA
5 38 (1.80%) Maven
6 36 (1.71%) SonarQube
7 31 (1.47%) Bitbucket
8 24 (1.14%) Mockito
8 24 (1.14%) Selenium
8 24 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
9 23 (1.09%) Artifactory
10 20 (0.95%) JUnit
11 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
11 18 (0.85%) Gradle
12 16 (0.76%) Cucumber
13 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 9 (0.43%) JMeter
16 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 447 (21.23%) Social Skills
2 321 (15.24%) Finance
3 250 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (8.17%) Public Sector
5 166 (7.88%) Banking
6 91 (4.32%) Documentation Skills
7 51 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.80%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.61%) Military
10 33 (1.57%) Front Office
11 30 (1.42%) Legal
12 29 (1.38%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (1.00%) Law
15 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.81%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.47%) Aviation
18 9 (0.43%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 316 (15.00%) Senior
2 243 (11.54%) Linux Engineer
3 212 (10.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 195 (9.26%) Developer
5 182 (8.64%) DevOps Engineer
6 103 (4.89%) Architect
7 101 (4.80%) Platform Engineer
7 101 (4.80%) Software Engineer
8 81 (3.85%) Cloud Engineer
8 81 (3.85%) Support Engineer
9 76 (3.61%) Lead
10 75 (3.56%) Analyst
11 73 (3.47%) Consultant
12 72 (3.42%) Java Developer
13 68 (3.23%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 67 (3.18%) AWS Engineer
15 66 (3.13%) Administrator
16 59 (2.80%) Systems Engineer
17 58 (2.75%) Network Engineer
18 51 (2.42%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 503 (23.88%) Terraform
2 140 (6.65%) Kafka
3 124 (5.89%) REST
4 80 (3.80%) Middleware
5 72 (3.42%) Elastic Stack
6 68 (3.23%) .NET
7 58 (2.75%) Spring
8 55 (2.61%) RESTful
9 52 (2.47%) Spring Boot
10 47 (2.23%) Web Services
11 45 (2.14%) LDAP
12 38 (1.80%) JSON
13 36 (1.71%) XML
14 34 (1.61%) SOAP
15 33 (1.57%) HTML
16 30 (1.42%) Node.js
16 30 (1.42%) React
16 30 (1.42%) YAML
17 29 (1.38%) Flask
17 29 (1.38%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 154 (7.31%) Onboarding
2 136 (6.46%) Cloud Native
3 135 (6.41%) Data Centre
4 110 (5.22%) PKI
5 108 (5.13%) Linux Command Line
6 92 (4.37%) Replication
7 87 (4.13%) Distributed Systems
8 70 (3.32%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.18%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.09%) Public Cloud
11 49 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
12 48 (2.28%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
13 41 (1.95%) Private Cloud
14 40 (1.90%) Embedded Systems
14 40 (1.90%) Operational Technology
15 39 (1.85%) Clustering
16 36 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
16 36 (1.71%) Enterprise Storage
16 36 (1.71%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 798 (37.89%) Windows
2 438 (20.80%) Unix
3 373 (17.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 254 (12.06%) Windows Server
5 113 (5.37%) Ubuntu
6 63 (2.99%) CentOS
7 58 (2.75%) AIX
8 55 (2.61%) Solaris
9 38 (1.80%) Embedded Linux
10 31 (1.47%) VMS
11 30 (1.42%) SUSE
11 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
12 21 (1.00%) Rocky
13 19 (0.90%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
15 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.71%) Debian
16 15 (0.71%) Oracle Linux
17 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
18 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 644 (30.58%) CI/CD
2 554 (26.31%) DevOps
3 448 (21.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 387 (18.38%) Agile
5 335 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
6 325 (15.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 296 (14.06%) Containerisation
8 257 (12.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 244 (11.59%) Observability
10 235 (11.16%) Migration
10 235 (11.16%) Platform Engineering
11 212 (10.07%) Software Engineering
12 211 (10.02%) Root Cause Analysis
13 199 (9.45%) High Availability
14 180 (8.55%) Configuration Management
15 177 (8.40%) Test Automation
16 174 (8.26%) ITIL
17 170 (8.07%) Performance Tuning
18 162 (7.69%) Stakeholder Management
19 160 (7.60%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 758 (35.99%) Python
2 430 (20.42%) Bash
3 406 (19.28%) PowerShell
4 373 (17.71%) SQL
5 251 (11.92%) Java
6 151 (7.17%) Shell Script
7 122 (5.79%) C++
8 80 (3.80%) Perl
9 78 (3.70%) C#
9 78 (3.70%) JavaScript
10 73 (3.47%) C
11 64 (3.04%) PL/SQL
12 58 (2.75%) Go
13 40 (1.90%) Bicep
14 29 (1.38%) Groovy
15 22 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
16 19 (0.90%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
18 15 (0.71%) Ada
18 15 (0.71%) Korn
Qualifications
1 809 (38.41%) Security Cleared
2 573 (27.21%) SC Cleared
3 253 (12.01%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.64%) Degree
5 73 (3.47%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
6 60 (2.85%) CISSP
7 59 (2.80%) Azure Certification
8 58 (2.75%) Cisco Certification
9 57 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
10 27 (1.28%) CISM
11 24 (1.14%) CCNP
11 24 (1.14%) RHCE
12 21 (1.00%) CCNA
12 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.66%) NIST
2 74 (3.51%) QA
3 73 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.52%) SLA
5 23 (1.09%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.00%) GDPR
7 19 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.81%) GRC
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.71%) NCSC
11 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 10 (0.47%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 367 (17.43%) Docker
2 283 (13.44%) Active Directory
3 246 (11.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (4.23%) Hyper-V
5 86 (4.08%) vSphere
6 76 (3.61%) VMware ESXi
7 73 (3.47%) Virtual Machines
8 57 (2.71%) VMware NSX
9 43 (2.04%) Firmware
10 39 (1.85%) Oracle RAC
11 34 (1.61%) NFS
12 26 (1.23%) KVM
13 22 (1.04%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.66%) Ceph
14 14 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.66%) Postfix
15 13 (0.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.52%) GPFS
17 8 (0.38%) Squid
18 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 466 (22.13%) Ansible
1 466 (22.13%) Kubernetes
2 191 (9.07%) Grafana
3 172 (8.17%) Prometheus
4 87 (4.13%) Puppet
5 60 (2.85%) Progress Chef
6 52 (2.47%) Oracle RMAN
7 49 (2.33%) SCCM
8 40 (1.90%) Data Guard
9 38 (1.80%) vCenter Server
10 31 (1.47%) Kibana
11 30 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
11 30 (1.42%) Nagios
11 30 (1.42%) VxRail
12 29 (1.38%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.23%) NetBackup
13 26 (1.23%) Podman
14 24 (1.14%) Packer
15 21 (1.00%) Failover Clustering
16 20 (0.95%) Istio
Vendors
1 351 (16.67%) VMware
2 339 (16.10%) Microsoft
3 295 (14.01%) Oracle
4 226 (10.73%) Red Hat
5 171 (8.12%) Splunk
6 125 (5.94%) Cisco
7 112 (5.32%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.46%) IBM
9 89 (4.23%) Google
10 80 (3.80%) CyberArk
11 48 (2.28%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.18%) NetApp
13 45 (2.14%) BeyondTrust
14 41 (1.95%) Dell
14 41 (1.95%) F5
15 40 (1.90%) Palo Alto
16 36 (1.71%) SAP
17 34 (1.61%) Dynatrace
18 31 (1.47%) Tenable
19 30 (1.42%) HP