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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -21 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,971 1,819 2,307
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.79% 5.72% 5.33%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.29% 41.77% 38.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,226 1,164 1,485
10th Percentile £350 £369 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 48 142
10th Percentile £34.65 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £53.94 £58.13
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.32 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,017 4,355 5,922
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.68% 13.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,208 2,818 3,879
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £693
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £461
% change year-on-year - -2.44% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 226 433
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.53 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £22.78 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.14% -8.88% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £43.35 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £65.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £19.07 £35.58
% change year-on-year +35.13% -46.41% +18.61%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 -25 1,661 £513 -4.65% 920
UK excluding London -15 1,172 £500 - 833
London -54 579 £538 -6.52% 225
Work from Home -34 518 £500 -3.15% 624
South East -2 327 £515 -1.90% 232
North of England -16 309 £480 -5.86% 170
South West -4 168 £538 -6.52% 141
Midlands -10 152 £476 +0.21% 79
North West -18 147 £475 +18.16% 100
Yorkshire -19 145 £500 -4.76% 46
West Midlands -12 129 £475 -5.00% 33
Scotland -29 97 £488 +0.72% 52
East of England -20 92 £475 -2.31% 117
Wales +1 28 £465 +64.60% 26
North East -22 22 £406 -14.92% 25
East Midlands -11 20 £528 +16.06% 46
Northern Ireland +1 6 - - 33

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 82 (4.16%) Confluence
2 49 (2.49%) Apache
3 31 (1.57%) nginx
4 29 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
5 25 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.07%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.91%) Apache Spark
7 18 (0.91%) WebLogic
8 12 (0.61%) OpenStack
9 11 (0.56%) CICS
9 11 (0.56%) SAS
10 9 (0.46%) NetWeaver
10 9 (0.46%) WebSphere
11 8 (0.41%) IIS
11 8 (0.41%) JBoss
12 6 (0.30%) SharePoint
12 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
13 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
13 5 (0.25%) CMS
14 4 (0.20%) WordPress
Applications
1 22 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 1 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.051%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Houdini
5 1 (0.051%) InDesign
5 1 (0.051%) NUKE
5 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.051%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.051%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
4 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.051%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.051%) Odoo
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.051%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.051%) Shopify
5 1 (0.051%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 584 (29.63%) AWS
2 415 (21.06%) Azure
3 157 (7.97%) GitHub
4 138 (7.00%) GCP
5 115 (5.83%) OpenShift
6 92 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
7 90 (4.57%) Amazon S3
8 87 (4.41%) Amazon EC2
9 72 (3.65%) Entra ID
10 67 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
11 62 (3.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 61 (3.09%) Amazon EKS
13 59 (2.99%) Serverless
14 52 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
15 49 (2.49%) AWS Lambda
16 48 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
17 47 (2.38%) IaaS
17 47 (2.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 43 (2.18%) SaaS
19 42 (2.13%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 180 (9.13%) Firewall
2 152 (7.71%) DNS
3 83 (4.21%) TCP/IP
4 78 (3.96%) VPN
5 75 (3.81%) Network Security
6 73 (3.70%) SAN
7 56 (2.84%) DHCP
8 49 (2.49%) WAN
9 37 (1.88%) SSL
10 36 (1.83%) LAN
11 33 (1.67%) SNMP
12 31 (1.57%) HTTP
12 31 (1.57%) VSAN
13 30 (1.52%) SSH
14 27 (1.37%) NAS
15 25 (1.27%) VLAN
16 24 (1.22%) Ethernet
17 21 (1.07%) IPsec
18 19 (0.96%) BGP
18 19 (0.96%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.89%) SQL Server
2 114 (5.78%) PostgreSQL
3 85 (4.31%) Oracle Database
4 76 (3.86%) MySQL
5 71 (3.60%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.30%) MongoDB
7 56 (2.84%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (1.93%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.47%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.47%) NoSQL
11 26 (1.32%) RDBMS
12 21 (1.07%) Big Data
13 20 (1.01%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.96%) KDB
15 17 (0.86%) Sybase ASE
16 16 (0.81%) Oracle Database 12c
17 15 (0.76%) DataStage
17 15 (0.76%) Db2
17 15 (0.76%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 216 (10.96%) Jenkins
2 196 (9.94%) GitLab
3 166 (8.42%) Git
4 150 (7.61%) JIRA
5 32 (1.62%) Maven
6 31 (1.57%) Mockito
6 31 (1.57%) SonarQube
7 22 (1.12%) Bitbucket
8 21 (1.07%) Eclipse
9 19 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
10 18 (0.91%) Artifactory
11 17 (0.86%) JUnit
12 15 (0.76%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.71%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.71%) Rational Rhapsody
14 13 (0.66%) jMock
15 11 (0.56%) Bitbucket Server
16 10 (0.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 9 (0.46%) Cucumber
18 8 (0.41%) TeamCity
General
1 398 (20.19%) Social Skills
2 276 (14.00%) Finance
3 202 (10.25%) Public Sector
4 170 (8.63%) Analytical Skills
5 134 (6.80%) Banking
6 75 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.93%) Military
8 29 (1.47%) Front Office
9 28 (1.42%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.32%) Retail
10 26 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.22%) Legal
12 21 (1.07%) Law
13 19 (0.96%) Financial Institution
13 19 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 17 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (0.81%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.56%) Police
Job Titles
1 252 (12.79%) Senior
2 205 (10.40%) Developer
3 192 (9.74%) Linux Engineer
4 190 (9.64%) DevOps Engineer
5 150 (7.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 120 (6.09%) Software Engineer
7 101 (5.12%) Architect
8 96 (4.87%) Analyst
9 83 (4.21%) Lead
10 77 (3.91%) Java Developer
11 67 (3.40%) Platform Engineer
12 66 (3.35%) AWS Engineer
12 66 (3.35%) Consultant
13 62 (3.15%) Support Engineer
14 59 (2.99%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 56 (2.84%) Administrator
16 55 (2.79%) Cloud Engineer
17 52 (2.64%) Security Engineer
18 51 (2.59%) Site Engineer
19 50 (2.54%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (4.92%) Kafka
2 90 (4.57%) REST
3 76 (3.86%) Middleware
4 75 (3.81%) Elastic Stack
5 54 (2.74%) Spring
6 49 (2.49%) LDAP
6 49 (2.49%) Spring Boot
7 45 (2.28%) RESTful
7 45 (2.28%) Web Services
8 43 (2.18%) Node.js
9 41 (2.08%) .NET
10 31 (1.57%) ActiveMQ
11 27 (1.37%) React
11 27 (1.37%) YAML
12 26 (1.32%) AngularJS
12 26 (1.32%) JSON
12 26 (1.32%) SOAP
13 22 (1.12%) XML
14 21 (1.07%) Django
15 20 (1.01%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 136 (6.90%) Data Centre
2 126 (6.39%) Cloud Native
3 98 (4.97%) Onboarding
4 87 (4.41%) Linux Command Line
5 75 (3.81%) Distributed Systems
5 75 (3.81%) PKI
6 67 (3.40%) Replication
7 61 (3.09%) Management Information System
8 57 (2.89%) Public Cloud
9 55 (2.79%) Security Posture
10 52 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
11 49 (2.49%) Hybrid Cloud
12 37 (1.88%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
14 28 (1.42%) Embedded Systems
14 28 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
15 27 (1.37%) Clustering
15 27 (1.37%) Enterprise Storage
15 27 (1.37%) Operational Technology
16 24 (1.22%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 744 (37.75%) Windows
2 408 (20.70%) Unix
3 319 (16.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 193 (9.79%) Windows Server
5 102 (5.18%) Ubuntu
6 68 (3.45%) AIX
7 57 (2.89%) Solaris
8 40 (2.03%) CentOS
9 29 (1.47%) VMS
10 26 (1.32%) Embedded Linux
11 24 (1.22%) SUSE
11 24 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.96%) Android
13 16 (0.81%) Mac OS
13 16 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
14 15 (0.76%) Debian
14 15 (0.76%) Mac OS X
14 15 (0.76%) Oracle Linux
15 14 (0.71%) Windows 10
16 13 (0.66%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 554 (28.11%) CI/CD
2 477 (24.20%) DevOps
3 357 (18.11%) Agile
4 321 (16.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 296 (15.02%) Problem-Solving
6 264 (13.39%) Containerisation
7 216 (10.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 215 (10.91%) Migration
9 203 (10.30%) Software Engineering
10 180 (9.13%) High Availability
10 180 (9.13%) Observability
11 175 (8.88%) Continuous Improvement
12 163 (8.27%) Performance Tuning
13 157 (7.97%) Root Cause Analysis
14 156 (7.91%) ITIL
15 145 (7.36%) SIEM
16 141 (7.15%) Platform Engineering
17 134 (6.80%) Microservices
18 131 (6.65%) Configuration Management
18 131 (6.65%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 660 (33.49%) Python
2 328 (16.64%) SQL
3 314 (15.93%) Bash
4 299 (15.17%) PowerShell
5 245 (12.43%) Java
6 143 (7.26%) Shell Script
7 116 (5.89%) C++
8 90 (4.57%) JavaScript
9 66 (3.35%) C
10 61 (3.09%) C#
11 55 (2.79%) Perl
12 54 (2.74%) PL/SQL
13 51 (2.59%) Go
14 23 (1.17%) Ada
15 22 (1.12%) TypeScript
16 20 (1.01%) Rust
16 20 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
17 17 (0.86%) Bicep
18 16 (0.81%) PHP
19 15 (0.76%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 770 (39.07%) Security Cleared
2 576 (29.22%) SC Cleared
3 214 (10.86%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.03%) Degree
5 68 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (3.40%) AWS Certification
7 57 (2.89%) CISSP
8 56 (2.84%) Cisco Certification
9 53 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
10 42 (2.13%) Azure Certification
11 34 (1.73%) CompTIA Security+
12 29 (1.47%) RHCE
13 26 (1.32%) CCNA
14 24 (1.22%) CCNP
15 20 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.91%) CISM
17 16 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.81%) GIAC
17 16 (0.81%) Oracle Certification
18 13 (0.66%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (4.41%) NIST
2 84 (4.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.89%) QA
4 41 (2.08%) SLA
5 25 (1.27%) NCSC
6 22 (1.12%) Cyber Essentials
6 22 (1.12%) GDPR
7 18 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.86%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.66%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.61%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.56%) GRC
12 10 (0.51%) SOC 2
13 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 4 (0.20%) DICOM
17 4 (0.20%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 334 (16.95%) Docker
2 226 (11.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 224 (11.36%) Active Directory
4 93 (4.72%) Virtual Machines
5 71 (3.60%) VMware ESXi
6 68 (3.45%) vSphere
7 66 (3.35%) Hyper-V
8 51 (2.59%) VMware NSX
9 49 (2.49%) NFS
10 36 (1.83%) Firmware
10 36 (1.83%) Oracle RAC
11 32 (1.62%) KVM
12 21 (1.07%) Postfix
13 17 (0.86%) GPFS
14 11 (0.56%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.51%) Ceph
15 10 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.41%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.36%) Embedded Firmware
17 7 (0.36%) Squid
Systems Management
1 411 (20.85%) Ansible
2 400 (20.29%) Kubernetes
3 398 (20.19%) Terraform
4 171 (8.68%) Grafana
5 149 (7.56%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.65%) Puppet
7 55 (2.79%) Progress Chef
8 47 (2.38%) Oracle RMAN
8 47 (2.38%) vCenter Server
9 33 (1.67%) Data Guard
10 29 (1.47%) Packer
11 28 (1.42%) Nagios
12 27 (1.37%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.32%) ZABBIX
14 22 (1.12%) Tivoli
14 22 (1.12%) vRealize
15 21 (1.07%) Argo
15 21 (1.07%) Kibana
16 20 (1.01%) Podman
17 19 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 302 (15.32%) VMware
2 282 (14.31%) Oracle
3 269 (13.65%) Microsoft
4 220 (11.16%) Red Hat
5 163 (8.27%) Splunk
6 125 (6.34%) Cisco
7 108 (5.48%) IBM
8 91 (4.62%) ServiceNow
9 66 (3.35%) Google
10 64 (3.25%) CyberArk
11 49 (2.49%) Palo Alto
12 44 (2.23%) SolarWinds
13 41 (2.08%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.03%) SAP
15 38 (1.93%) F5
16 35 (1.78%) Citrix
16 35 (1.78%) HP
17 33 (1.67%) NetApp
18 32 (1.62%) Sybase
19 29 (1.47%) Dynatrace