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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 32 30
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,949 1,742 2,563
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.12% 5.60% 5.77%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.00% 39.67% 40.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 1,035 1,729
10th Percentile £316 £356 £325
25th Percentile £400 £454 £442
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -5.58%
75th Percentile £619 £663 £650
90th Percentile £724 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.14% - -3.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 60 117
10th Percentile £13.00 £44.75 £23.11
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.47 £50.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +6.56% -6.15%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.32 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £62.25
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.42% -4.23%

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 4,754 4,391 6,320
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.49% 14.12% 14.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,146 2,725 4,275
10th Percentile £173 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £318 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.77%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -4.71% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 159 366
10th Percentile £14.60 £16.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.02 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.00 £34.00 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -26.47% +29.52% +2.10%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.20 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £31.08 £25.25
% change year-on-year -24.39% +23.09% +5.12%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 -8 1,664 £509 -9.51% 951
UK excluding London -2 1,102 £482 -8.14% 893
London -10 653 £550 -8.33% 198
Work from Home -16 512 £492 -8.55% 435
South East 0 303 £475 -9.31% 321
North of England 0 264 £487 -13.04% 147
Midlands -6 192 £511 -7.26% 102
West Midlands -2 173 £525 -4.72% 49
Yorkshire +5 162 £500 -14.16% 50
South West -16 135 £550 -8.33% 122
Scotland -4 118 £450 -8.16% 83
North West -22 95 £453 -17.64% 73
East of England -11 89 £470 +9.30% 105
Northern Ireland +8 19 £400 +23.08% 10
East Midlands -21 19 £420 -6.67% 52
North East -16 13 £550 +8.64% 24
Wales -10 5 £600 +11.63% 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 81 (4.16%) Confluence
2 57 (2.92%) Apache
3 47 (2.41%) nginx
4 36 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.39%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.13%) OpenStack
7 21 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (1.08%) WebSphere
8 16 (0.82%) JBoss
8 16 (0.82%) SharePoint
8 16 (0.82%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.72%) Mattermost
9 14 (0.72%) Skype for Business
10 13 (0.67%) SAS
10 13 (0.67%) Tomcat
10 13 (0.67%) TPMS
11 11 (0.56%) IIS
11 11 (0.56%) WebSphere Application Server
12 10 (0.51%) iPlanet
13 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 59 (3.03%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.051%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.051%) Finacle
6 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.051%) RMDS
6 1 (0.051%) Shopify
6 1 (0.051%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 587 (30.12%) AWS
2 376 (19.29%) Azure
3 189 (9.70%) GitHub
4 146 (7.49%) GCP
5 135 (6.93%) OpenShift
6 116 (5.95%) AWS CloudFormation
7 112 (5.75%) Serverless
8 100 (5.13%) Amazon EC2
9 93 (4.77%) GitHub Actions
10 83 (4.26%) Amazon S3
11 71 (3.64%) Amazon ECS
12 69 (3.54%) Amazon EKS
13 64 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
14 59 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 57 (2.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 51 (2.62%) IaaS
17 49 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
18 45 (2.31%) SaaS
19 38 (1.95%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 210 (10.77%) Firewall
2 147 (7.54%) DNS
3 138 (7.08%) TCP/IP
4 68 (3.49%) Network Security
5 55 (2.82%) SSH
6 49 (2.51%) VPN
7 48 (2.46%) DHCP
7 48 (2.46%) HTTP
7 48 (2.46%) SSL
8 34 (1.74%) SAN
9 31 (1.59%) VLAN
10 27 (1.39%) Kerberos
11 26 (1.33%) VSAN
11 26 (1.33%) WAN
11 26 (1.33%) Wireless
12 24 (1.23%) Skype
13 23 (1.18%) SMTP
14 20 (1.03%) Ethernet
14 20 (1.03%) LAN
15 19 (0.97%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (6.93%) PostgreSQL
2 99 (5.08%) Relational Database
3 93 (4.77%) SQL Server
4 78 (4.00%) Amazon RDS
5 77 (3.95%) NoSQL
5 77 (3.95%) Oracle Database
6 74 (3.80%) MongoDB
7 71 (3.64%) MySQL
8 51 (2.62%) Elasticsearch
9 28 (1.44%) Big Data
10 27 (1.39%) DB2
11 26 (1.33%) Hadoop
12 20 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
13 17 (0.87%) KDB
13 17 (0.87%) Kdb+
14 16 (0.82%) Apache Hive
15 14 (0.72%) Apache Cassandra
15 14 (0.72%) HBase
15 14 (0.72%) Redis
16 13 (0.67%) GIS
Development Applications
1 267 (13.70%) Jenkins
2 228 (11.70%) Git
3 192 (9.85%) GitLab
4 134 (6.88%) JIRA
5 57 (2.92%) JUnit
6 52 (2.67%) Sonatype Nexus
7 46 (2.36%) Bitbucket
8 34 (1.74%) Eclipse
9 26 (1.33%) Maven
10 25 (1.28%) Cucumber
11 22 (1.13%) Liquibase
12 21 (1.08%) Mockito
13 19 (0.97%) Burp Suite
13 19 (0.97%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.92%) Artifactory
15 17 (0.87%) Browser DevTools
16 16 (0.82%) Android Studio
16 16 (0.82%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.82%) JMeter
16 16 (0.82%) Xcode
General
1 538 (27.60%) Social Skills
2 353 (18.11%) Finance
3 209 (10.72%) Analytical Skills
4 182 (9.34%) Public Sector
5 153 (7.85%) Banking
6 71 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.77%) Financial Institution
8 50 (2.57%) Investment Banking
9 44 (2.26%) Military
10 41 (2.10%) Front Office
10 41 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
11 23 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
12 19 (0.97%) Aerospace
12 19 (0.97%) Legal
12 19 (0.97%) Telecoms
13 15 (0.77%) Manufacturing
14 13 (0.67%) Law
15 12 (0.62%) Back Office
16 11 (0.56%) Retail
17 9 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 296 (15.19%) Developer
2 233 (11.95%) Senior
3 179 (9.18%) DevOps Engineer
4 137 (7.03%) Software Engineer
5 122 (6.26%) Analyst
6 107 (5.49%) Java Developer
7 105 (5.39%) Architect
8 101 (5.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 94 (4.82%) Linux Engineer
10 92 (4.72%) Support Engineer
11 85 (4.36%) Platform Engineer
12 76 (3.90%) AWS Engineer
12 76 (3.90%) Lead
13 75 (3.85%) Administrator
14 69 (3.54%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 67 (3.44%) Site Engineer
16 63 (3.23%) AWS DevOps
16 63 (3.23%) Security Engineer
17 56 (2.87%) Senior Software Engineer
18 53 (2.72%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (8.00%) Kafka
2 129 (6.62%) REST
3 125 (6.41%) Elastic Stack
4 83 (4.26%) Middleware
5 68 (3.49%) Spring
6 67 (3.44%) Node.js
7 64 (3.28%) RESTful
8 56 (2.87%) LDAP
9 51 (2.62%) React
10 49 (2.51%) JSON
11 46 (2.36%) XML
12 38 (1.95%) AngularJS
13 37 (1.90%) YAML
14 35 (1.80%) SOAP
15 31 (1.59%) OAuth
15 31 (1.59%) Spring Boot
16 29 (1.49%) CSS
17 27 (1.39%) SAML
17 27 (1.39%) Web Services
18 26 (1.33%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 104 (5.34%) Cloud Native
2 93 (4.77%) Linux Command Line
3 90 (4.62%) Data Centre
4 71 (3.64%) Management Information System
5 70 (3.59%) Replication
6 59 (3.03%) Public Cloud
7 58 (2.98%) Distributed Systems
8 56 (2.87%) Equities
9 49 (2.51%) PKI
10 45 (2.31%) Onboarding
11 41 (2.10%) Data Structures
12 40 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 38 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
14 35 (1.80%) Security Operations Centre
15 33 (1.69%) Product Ownership
16 30 (1.54%) Algorithms
17 29 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
18 28 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
19 27 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
19 27 (1.39%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 719 (36.89%) Windows
2 396 (20.32%) Unix
3 249 (12.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 141 (7.23%) Windows Server
5 83 (4.26%) Ubuntu
6 52 (2.67%) CentOS
7 42 (2.15%) Android
8 35 (1.80%) Mac OS
9 31 (1.59%) Solaris
9 31 (1.59%) VMS
10 26 (1.33%) Mac OS X
11 23 (1.18%) Windows 10
12 21 (1.08%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.97%) AIX
14 18 (0.92%) Embedded Linux
15 17 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.77%) Amazon Linux
16 15 (0.77%) Kali Linux
17 12 (0.62%) Apple iOS
17 12 (0.62%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 594 (30.48%) CI/CD
2 495 (25.40%) DevOps
3 447 (22.93%) Agile
4 372 (19.09%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (16.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 306 (15.70%) Containerisation
7 248 (12.72%) Software Engineering
8 197 (10.11%) Observability
9 184 (9.44%) Cybersecurity
10 171 (8.77%) Computer Science
11 162 (8.31%) Test Automation
12 152 (7.80%) Continuous Improvement
13 151 (7.75%) Microservices
14 149 (7.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 147 (7.54%) Incident Response
16 134 (6.88%) Platform Engineering
17 132 (6.77%) High Availability
18 128 (6.57%) SIEM
19 125 (6.41%) Configuration Management
19 125 (6.41%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 772 (39.61%) Python
2 378 (19.39%) SQL
3 373 (19.14%) Java
4 340 (17.44%) Bash
5 286 (14.67%) PowerShell
6 219 (11.24%) Shell Script
7 187 (9.59%) C++
8 134 (6.88%) JavaScript
9 129 (6.62%) Perl
10 87 (4.46%) C#
11 74 (3.80%) Go
12 61 (3.13%) C
13 42 (2.15%) Ruby
14 31 (1.59%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.54%) PL/SQL
16 29 (1.49%) Rust
17 28 (1.44%) Groovy
18 22 (1.13%) PHP
19 19 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
20 16 (0.82%) Ada
Qualifications
1 641 (32.89%) Security Cleared
2 461 (23.65%) SC Cleared
3 219 (11.24%) Degree
4 155 (7.95%) DV Cleared
5 116 (5.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 81 (4.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 61 (3.13%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.85%) Master's Degree
9 34 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
10 31 (1.59%) Azure Certification
11 30 (1.54%) CISSP
12 27 (1.39%) CompTIA Security+
13 26 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
13 26 (1.33%) RHCE
14 20 (1.03%) CCNA
14 20 (1.03%) OSCP
15 19 (0.97%) CCNP
16 17 (0.87%) GPEN
17 16 (0.82%) CEH
17 16 (0.82%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (2.98%) NIST
2 43 (2.21%) GDPR
3 42 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (2.15%) QA
4 34 (1.74%) SLA
5 19 (0.97%) Data Quality
5 19 (0.97%) PCI DSS
6 17 (0.87%) NCSC
7 16 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
8 13 (0.67%) GLBA
9 11 (0.56%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.41%) SOC 2
12 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.15%) SEPA
16 2 (0.10%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 411 (21.09%) Docker
2 207 (10.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 172 (8.83%) Active Directory
4 72 (3.69%) vSphere
5 54 (2.77%) Virtual Machines
6 48 (2.46%) VMware ESXi
7 42 (2.15%) Hyper-V
8 28 (1.44%) GPFS
9 27 (1.39%) NFS
10 24 (1.23%) VMware NSX
11 22 (1.13%) KVM
12 19 (0.97%) Oracle RAC
13 17 (0.87%) Firmware
14 16 (0.82%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 14 (0.72%) HDFS
16 13 (0.67%) Postfix
17 12 (0.62%) DFS Replication
17 12 (0.62%) Lustre
17 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
18 10 (0.51%) Squid
Systems Management
1 471 (24.17%) Kubernetes
2 398 (20.42%) Terraform
3 387 (19.86%) Ansible
4 218 (11.19%) Grafana
5 189 (9.70%) Prometheus
6 77 (3.95%) Puppet
7 67 (3.44%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.21%) Red Hat Satellite
9 38 (1.95%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.95%) vRealize
10 36 (1.85%) Packer
11 35 (1.80%) Argo
12 34 (1.74%) Kibana
13 32 (1.64%) Podman
14 30 (1.54%) SCCM
15 28 (1.44%) SCOM
16 27 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
17 24 (1.23%) Nessus
18 20 (1.03%) Data Guard
18 20 (1.03%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 297 (15.24%) Microsoft
2 290 (14.88%) VMware
3 282 (14.47%) Oracle
4 245 (12.57%) Splunk
5 215 (11.03%) Red Hat
6 114 (5.85%) Cisco
7 78 (4.00%) IBM
8 76 (3.90%) ServiceNow
9 51 (2.62%) Google
10 48 (2.46%) Dell
11 43 (2.21%) AppDynamics
12 42 (2.15%) CyberArk
13 29 (1.49%) CrowdStrike
13 29 (1.49%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.44%) NetApp
15 27 (1.39%) SolarWinds
16 24 (1.23%) Commvault
16 24 (1.23%) Sybase
17 23 (1.18%) Solace
18 22 (1.13%) Citrix