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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,061 1,803 2,240
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.49% 5.78%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.60% 41.19% 41.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,285 1,114 1,445
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.66%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £711 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 59 119
10th Percentile £42.76 £41.25 £51.00
25th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £63.13
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 £78.13 £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 5,205 4,377 5,414
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.73% 13.33% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,302 2,793 3,578
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £315 £308 £332
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.61% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £470
% change year-on-year - -4.26% +4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 263 329
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.51 £12.41
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.45 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -9.09% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.85 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £24.00 £38.25
% change year-on-year +16.67% -37.25% +39.09%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 August 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 1,742 £525 - 1,708
UK excluding London -15 1,199 £500 - 903
London -39 650 £550 -4.35% 935
Work from Home -29 537 £500 -3.85% 582
South East -5 350 £518 +3.50% 280
North of England -21 291 £500 - 157
South West +1 192 £550 -4.35% 153
North West -12 146 £497 +24.25% 90
Yorkshire -27 125 £500 -4.76% 34
Midlands -37 122 £470 -1.57% 80
Scotland -22 117 £425 -15.00% 61
East of England -9 103 £479 -2.30% 170
West Midlands -39 100 £470 -6.00% 42
Wales +6 29 £465 +64.60% 7
North East -15 27 £490 -14.78% 34
East Midlands -13 19 £513 +22.02% 37
Northern Ireland -2 2 - - 15

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 73 (3.54%) Confluence
2 51 (2.47%) Apache
3 30 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.36%) nginx
5 23 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.02%) OpenStack
7 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
8 18 (0.87%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) Tomcat
9 17 (0.82%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.73%) JBoss
11 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
12 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
12 9 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
14 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 28 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 604 (29.31%) AWS
2 511 (24.79%) Azure
3 169 (8.20%) GCP
4 157 (7.62%) GitHub
5 105 (5.09%) OpenShift
6 98 (4.75%) Entra ID
7 94 (4.56%) GitHub Actions
8 90 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
9 85 (4.12%) Amazon S3
10 79 (3.83%) Amazon EC2
11 62 (3.01%) Serverless
12 59 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
12 59 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
13 55 (2.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 55 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
13 55 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (2.47%) IaaS
15 50 (2.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 39 (1.89%) SaaS
17 37 (1.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 223 (10.82%) Firewall
2 217 (10.53%) DNS
3 137 (6.65%) TCP/IP
4 120 (5.82%) DHCP
5 87 (4.22%) VPN
6 79 (3.83%) SAN
7 77 (3.74%) Network Security
8 50 (2.43%) WAN
9 48 (2.33%) SSL
10 47 (2.28%) VSAN
11 40 (1.94%) LAN
12 39 (1.89%) SSH
13 38 (1.84%) HTTP
13 38 (1.84%) VLAN
14 30 (1.46%) SNMP
15 24 (1.16%) NAS
16 22 (1.07%) Kerberos
17 20 (0.97%) BGP
17 20 (0.97%) HTTPS
17 20 (0.97%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.07%) SQL Server
2 114 (5.53%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.61%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.35%) MySQL
5 65 (3.15%) Relational Database
6 55 (2.67%) MongoDB
7 49 (2.38%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (1.89%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.70%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
11 30 (1.46%) RDBMS
12 28 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
13 25 (1.21%) Big Data
14 21 (1.02%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.02%) SAP HANA
15 18 (0.87%) Data Lake
15 18 (0.87%) Power BI
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.82%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.78%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 233 (11.31%) Jenkins
2 227 (11.01%) Git
3 189 (9.17%) GitLab
4 150 (7.28%) JIRA
5 35 (1.70%) Maven
6 33 (1.60%) Bitbucket
7 31 (1.50%) SonarQube
8 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
9 23 (1.12%) Mockito
10 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.02%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.92%) Selenium
12 17 (0.82%) JUnit
13 15 (0.73%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.53%) Gradle
16 10 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
17 9 (0.44%) JMeter
17 9 (0.44%) LoadRunner
General
1 428 (20.77%) Social Skills
2 306 (14.85%) Finance
3 238 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
4 180 (8.73%) Public Sector
5 158 (7.67%) Banking
6 78 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.89%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.80%) Front Office
9 35 (1.70%) Investment Banking
10 33 (1.60%) Military
11 25 (1.21%) Legal
12 24 (1.16%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.07%) Law
13 22 (1.07%) Retail
14 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
17 15 (0.73%) Financial Institution
18 11 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
19 9 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 295 (14.31%) Senior
2 227 (11.01%) Linux Engineer
3 193 (9.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 183 (8.88%) Developer
5 173 (8.39%) DevOps Engineer
6 111 (5.39%) Software Engineer
7 104 (5.05%) Architect
8 95 (4.61%) Platform Engineer
9 79 (3.83%) Consultant
9 79 (3.83%) Lead
10 77 (3.74%) Analyst
11 76 (3.69%) Support Engineer
12 75 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
13 70 (3.40%) Java Developer
14 63 (3.06%) AWS Engineer
15 59 (2.86%) Administrator
16 54 (2.62%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 53 (2.57%) Network Engineer
18 52 (2.52%) Site Reliability Engineer
18 52 (2.52%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 478 (23.19%) Terraform
2 120 (5.82%) Kafka
3 112 (5.43%) REST
4 73 (3.54%) Middleware
5 70 (3.40%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.25%) .NET
7 57 (2.77%) RESTful
8 52 (2.52%) Spring
9 47 (2.28%) Web Services
10 42 (2.04%) Spring Boot
11 37 (1.80%) LDAP
12 35 (1.70%) XML
13 33 (1.60%) JSON
14 32 (1.55%) Node.js
14 32 (1.55%) YAML
15 31 (1.50%) SOAP
16 28 (1.36%) HTML
17 24 (1.16%) ActiveMQ
17 24 (1.16%) ARM Templates
17 24 (1.16%) React
Miscellaneous
1 136 (6.60%) Cloud Native
1 136 (6.60%) Onboarding
2 133 (6.45%) Data Centre
3 104 (5.05%) PKI
4 102 (4.95%) Linux Command Line
5 86 (4.17%) Replication
6 85 (4.12%) Distributed Systems
7 74 (3.59%) Hybrid Cloud
8 61 (2.96%) Public Cloud
9 59 (2.86%) Management Information System
10 50 (2.43%) Security Posture
11 44 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
12 40 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
13 39 (1.89%) Embedded Systems
14 36 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
15 34 (1.65%) Clustering
15 34 (1.65%) Product Ownership
16 33 (1.60%) Enterprise Storage
16 33 (1.60%) Private Cloud
17 32 (1.55%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 789 (38.28%) Windows
2 413 (20.04%) Unix
3 351 (17.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 233 (11.31%) Windows Server
5 113 (5.48%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.11%) AIX
7 54 (2.62%) Solaris
8 51 (2.47%) CentOS
9 39 (1.89%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.26%) SUSE
10 26 (1.26%) VMS
11 24 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (1.12%) Windows 10
13 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.87%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
15 17 (0.82%) Rocky
16 15 (0.73%) Debian
17 13 (0.63%) Android
18 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 595 (28.87%) CI/CD
2 518 (25.13%) DevOps
3 405 (19.65%) Infrastructure as Code
4 368 (17.86%) Agile
5 309 (14.99%) Problem-Solving
6 283 (13.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 266 (12.91%) Containerisation
8 244 (11.84%) Migration
9 236 (11.45%) Continuous Improvement
10 213 (10.33%) Observability
11 208 (10.09%) High Availability
12 207 (10.04%) Platform Engineering
13 206 (10.00%) Software Engineering
14 195 (9.46%) Root Cause Analysis
15 177 (8.59%) Performance Tuning
16 170 (8.25%) ITIL
17 164 (7.96%) Test Automation
18 156 (7.57%) Configuration Management
19 152 (7.38%) SIEM
20 147 (7.13%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 732 (35.52%) Python
2 404 (19.60%) Bash
3 402 (19.51%) PowerShell
4 365 (17.71%) SQL
5 249 (12.08%) Java
6 149 (7.23%) Shell Script
7 136 (6.60%) C++
8 87 (4.22%) JavaScript
9 78 (3.78%) C
10 77 (3.74%) C#
11 62 (3.01%) Perl
12 60 (2.91%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.38%) Go
14 42 (2.04%) Bicep
15 21 (1.02%) Search Processing Language
16 20 (0.97%) Ada
16 20 (0.97%) Groovy
17 17 (0.82%) Rust
17 17 (0.82%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.63%) Korn
Qualifications
1 801 (38.86%) Security Cleared
2 594 (28.82%) SC Cleared
3 235 (11.40%) DV Cleared
4 179 (8.69%) Degree
5 71 (3.44%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
8 55 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
9 54 (2.62%) Azure Certification
9 54 (2.62%) CISSP
10 27 (1.31%) RHCE
11 24 (1.16%) CCNP
12 21 (1.02%) CCNA
13 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
14 19 (0.92%) CISM
15 18 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
15 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
17 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.64%) NIST
2 68 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 66 (3.20%) QA
4 31 (1.50%) SLA
5 25 (1.21%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.07%) GDPR
6 22 (1.07%) NCSC
7 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.63%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.58%) GRC
12 11 (0.53%) HIPAA
13 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.24%) ISO 15022
16 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 336 (16.30%) Docker
2 276 (13.39%) Active Directory
3 254 (12.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (4.46%) vSphere
5 87 (4.22%) Hyper-V
6 77 (3.74%) Virtual Machines
7 67 (3.25%) VMware ESXi
8 64 (3.11%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.99%) NFS
10 40 (1.94%) Firmware
10 40 (1.94%) Oracle RAC
11 27 (1.31%) KVM
12 16 (0.78%) Postfix
13 15 (0.73%) Ceph
14 14 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.58%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.58%) GPFS
16 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 451 (21.88%) Ansible
2 435 (21.11%) Kubernetes
3 171 (8.30%) Grafana
4 150 (7.28%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.37%) Puppet
6 66 (3.20%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.43%) Oracle RMAN
8 41 (1.99%) SCCM
9 39 (1.89%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.84%) Data Guard
11 32 (1.55%) Nagios
12 29 (1.41%) Packer
13 27 (1.31%) Kibana
13 27 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.31%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
14 25 (1.21%) NetBackup
14 25 (1.21%) VxRail
15 23 (1.12%) Podman
16 22 (1.07%) Istio
Vendors
1 354 (17.18%) VMware
2 333 (16.16%) Microsoft
3 307 (14.90%) Oracle
4 229 (11.11%) Red Hat
5 151 (7.33%) Splunk
6 127 (6.16%) Cisco
7 110 (5.34%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.66%) IBM
9 81 (3.93%) CyberArk
10 76 (3.69%) Google
11 50 (2.43%) SolarWinds
12 49 (2.38%) SAP
13 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
13 45 (2.18%) Palo Alto
14 43 (2.09%) NetApp
15 38 (1.84%) F5
15 38 (1.84%) HP
16 35 (1.70%) Dell
16 35 (1.70%) Dynatrace
17 33 (1.60%) Citrix