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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 32
Rank change year-on-year -20 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,882 1,786 2,331
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.33% 6.10% 5.26%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.58% 42.53% 38.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,197 1,122 1,552
10th Percentile £324 £374 £313
25th Percentile £400 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +1.85% -7.38%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -8.49% +0.95% -3.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 55 107
10th Percentile £15.44 £40.80 £25.82
25th Percentile £41.25 £55.81 £48.00
Median hourly rate £62.82 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.36% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.50 £73.50 £73.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.25 £60.50
% change year-on-year -4.21% +7.85% -6.92%

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 4,755 4,199 5,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.93% 14.35% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,120 2,761 4,003
10th Percentile £181 £200 £180
25th Percentile £290 £319 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £457
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.94% -11.26%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £591
90th Percentile £655 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £450 £431
% change year-on-year -7.89% +4.53% -9.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 160 402
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.48 £12.90
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.80 £27.75 £22.08
Median % change year-on-year -17.85% +25.71% -16.70%
75th Percentile £59.50 £64.06 £59.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.98 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year -8.76% +12.09% -15.38%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -20 1,604 £513 -6.82% 826
UK excluding London -9 1,090 £485 -8.49% 739
London -35 583 £550 -8.33% 192
Work from Home -24 487 £500 -4.76% 342
South East -2 315 £500 -4.76% 208
North of England -12 296 £492 -10.55% 138
Midlands -16 167 £480 -8.57% 80
Yorkshire -18 161 £478 -13.18% 42
West Midlands -14 152 £480 -11.11% 45
South West -22 140 £539 -10.21% 128
North West -10 127 £496 -5.52% 66
Scotland -19 85 £425 -9.09% 53
East of England -11 79 £450 -4.76% 115
Northern Ireland +5 15 £425 +30.77% 9
East Midlands -45 15 £478 +5.06% 35
North East -20 10 £550 +8.64% 31
Wales -13 8 £404 -26.59% 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 94 (4.99%) Confluence
2 45 (2.39%) nginx
3 42 (2.23%) Apache
4 40 (2.13%) Microsoft Exchange
5 18 (0.96%) Apache Spark
5 18 (0.96%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
7 14 (0.74%) WebLogic
8 12 (0.64%) SAS
8 12 (0.64%) SharePoint
8 12 (0.64%) Tomcat
8 12 (0.64%) TPMS
9 9 (0.48%) WebSphere
10 8 (0.43%) CICS
11 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.21%) JBoss
13 3 (0.16%) CMS
13 3 (0.16%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 48 (2.55%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Weka
5 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.11%) Simulink
8 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.053%) InDesign
8 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 10 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.053%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.053%) Odoo
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.053%) RMDS
5 1 (0.053%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 559 (29.70%) AWS
2 368 (19.55%) Azure
3 179 (9.51%) GitHub
4 135 (7.17%) OpenShift
5 128 (6.80%) GCP
6 104 (5.53%) AWS CloudFormation
7 98 (5.21%) Serverless
8 97 (5.15%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.84%) GitHub Actions
10 80 (4.25%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.93%) Amazon EKS
12 67 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
13 64 (3.40%) AWS Lambda
14 61 (3.24%) Amazon ECS
15 56 (2.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 46 (2.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 44 (2.34%) IaaS
18 35 (1.86%) Entra ID
18 35 (1.86%) Microsoft 365
19 33 (1.75%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 203 (10.79%) Firewall
2 131 (6.96%) DNS
3 111 (5.90%) TCP/IP
4 63 (3.35%) Network Security
4 63 (3.35%) VPN
5 48 (2.55%) SAN
6 47 (2.50%) SSH
7 35 (1.86%) DHCP
7 35 (1.86%) VSAN
8 34 (1.81%) WAN
9 32 (1.70%) HTTP
9 32 (1.70%) SSL
10 28 (1.49%) SNMP
11 25 (1.33%) LAN
12 23 (1.22%) BGP
12 23 (1.22%) Ethernet
13 22 (1.17%) Wireless
14 19 (1.01%) Kerberos
15 18 (0.96%) NAS
16 17 (0.90%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 139 (7.39%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 76 (4.04%) Amazon RDS
4 73 (3.88%) Relational Database
5 70 (3.72%) MongoDB
6 68 (3.61%) MySQL
7 59 (3.13%) Oracle Database
8 53 (2.82%) NoSQL
9 40 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
10 22 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
11 21 (1.12%) DB2
11 21 (1.12%) KDB
12 20 (1.06%) Kdb+
13 19 (1.01%) Big Data
14 16 (0.85%) Data Lake
15 14 (0.74%) Hadoop
15 14 (0.74%) SAP HANA
16 13 (0.69%) DynamoDB
17 12 (0.64%) Redis
17 12 (0.64%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 250 (13.28%) Jenkins
2 195 (10.36%) Git
3 192 (10.20%) GitLab
4 155 (8.24%) JIRA
5 42 (2.23%) Bitbucket
6 41 (2.18%) JUnit
7 35 (1.86%) Sonatype Nexus
8 33 (1.75%) Maven
9 31 (1.65%) Eclipse
10 22 (1.17%) Cucumber
11 20 (1.06%) Mockito
12 19 (1.01%) Artifactory
13 17 (0.90%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
15 14 (0.74%) Burp Suite
16 13 (0.69%) JMeter
16 13 (0.69%) Selenium
17 12 (0.64%) Liquibase
18 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
18 11 (0.58%) Metasploit
General
1 472 (25.08%) Social Skills
2 310 (16.47%) Finance
3 194 (10.31%) Public Sector
4 164 (8.71%) Analytical Skills
5 130 (6.91%) Banking
6 59 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.39%) Military
8 38 (2.02%) Financial Institution
9 33 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
10 31 (1.65%) Front Office
11 30 (1.59%) Investment Banking
12 24 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
13 21 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
14 20 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 19 (1.01%) Retail
16 18 (0.96%) Law
16 18 (0.96%) Legal
17 16 (0.85%) Aerospace
18 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
19 10 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 239 (12.70%) Developer
2 232 (12.33%) Senior
3 171 (9.09%) DevOps Engineer
4 133 (7.07%) Software Engineer
5 124 (6.59%) Analyst
6 123 (6.54%) Architect
7 101 (5.37%) Linux Engineer
8 84 (4.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 84 (4.46%) Java Developer
9 82 (4.36%) Lead
10 76 (4.04%) Administrator
11 74 (3.93%) Platform Engineer
12 68 (3.61%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 67 (3.56%) AWS Engineer
14 63 (3.35%) Site Engineer
15 57 (3.03%) Support Engineer
16 56 (2.98%) AWS DevOps
17 51 (2.71%) Security Engineer
18 45 (2.39%) Cloud Engineer
19 44 (2.34%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (6.48%) Kafka
2 113 (6.00%) REST
3 102 (5.42%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.83%) Node.js
5 69 (3.67%) Middleware
6 57 (3.03%) Spring
7 50 (2.66%) LDAP
8 47 (2.50%) RESTful
9 41 (2.18%) JSON
9 41 (2.18%) Spring Boot
10 40 (2.13%) Web Services
10 40 (2.13%) XML
11 36 (1.91%) React
12 34 (1.81%) YAML
13 31 (1.65%) AngularJS
14 28 (1.49%) SOAP
15 24 (1.28%) .NET
16 21 (1.12%) CSS
16 21 (1.12%) OpenTelemetry
17 20 (1.06%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 117 (6.22%) Data Centre
2 111 (5.90%) Cloud Native
3 79 (4.20%) Linux Command Line
4 69 (3.67%) Distributed Systems
5 66 (3.51%) Management Information System
6 63 (3.35%) Public Cloud
7 57 (3.03%) PKI
8 53 (2.82%) Onboarding
9 49 (2.60%) Replication
10 45 (2.39%) Hybrid Cloud
11 43 (2.28%) Product Ownership
12 37 (1.97%) Security Operations Centre
13 36 (1.91%) Equities
14 33 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
14 33 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
14 33 (1.75%) Security Posture
15 29 (1.54%) Fixed Income
15 29 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 26 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
17 25 (1.33%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 698 (37.09%) Windows
2 331 (17.59%) Unix
3 259 (13.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 160 (8.50%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.62%) Ubuntu
6 41 (2.18%) CentOS
7 37 (1.97%) AIX
8 36 (1.91%) Android
9 30 (1.59%) Solaris
10 27 (1.43%) VMS
11 26 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
12 21 (1.12%) Embedded Linux
12 21 (1.12%) Mac OS
13 19 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.74%) Debian
14 14 (0.74%) Kali Linux
15 12 (0.64%) Mac OS X
15 12 (0.64%) Windows 10
16 11 (0.58%) Apple iOS
17 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 574 (30.50%) CI/CD
2 482 (25.61%) DevOps
3 424 (22.53%) Agile
4 345 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
5 310 (16.47%) Infrastructure as Code
6 293 (15.57%) Containerisation
7 218 (11.58%) Software Engineering
8 196 (10.41%) Observability
9 164 (8.71%) Continuous Improvement
10 158 (8.40%) Cybersecurity
11 155 (8.24%) Computer Science
12 148 (7.86%) Incident Response
13 146 (7.76%) Microservices
14 144 (7.65%) Migration
15 143 (7.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 136 (7.23%) Test Automation
17 132 (7.01%) Platform Engineering
18 129 (6.85%) High Availability
19 126 (6.70%) Site Reliability Engineering
20 124 (6.59%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 683 (36.29%) Python
2 320 (17.00%) SQL
3 307 (16.31%) Bash
4 304 (16.15%) Java
5 273 (14.51%) PowerShell
6 182 (9.67%) Shell Script
7 148 (7.86%) C++
8 118 (6.27%) JavaScript
9 93 (4.94%) Perl
10 68 (3.61%) C#
11 56 (2.98%) Go
12 46 (2.44%) C
13 42 (2.23%) Ruby
14 33 (1.75%) PL/SQL
15 32 (1.70%) TypeScript
16 27 (1.43%) Rust
17 25 (1.33%) PHP
18 20 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
19 18 (0.96%) Ada
20 16 (0.85%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 729 (38.74%) Security Cleared
2 533 (28.32%) SC Cleared
3 192 (10.20%) Degree
4 180 (9.56%) DV Cleared
5 94 (4.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 87 (4.62%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.19%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
8 40 (2.13%) CompTIA Security+
9 39 (2.07%) CISSP
10 28 (1.49%) Master's Degree
11 26 (1.38%) RHCE
12 25 (1.33%) CCNA
13 24 (1.28%) Azure Certification
13 24 (1.28%) CCNP
14 21 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.12%) Oracle Certification
15 18 (0.96%) CompTIA CySA+
16 17 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 17 (0.90%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (3.93%) NIST
2 53 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.55%) QA
4 45 (2.39%) GDPR
5 32 (1.70%) SLA
6 24 (1.28%) Cyber Essentials
7 22 (1.17%) NCSC
8 21 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.69%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.64%) GLBA
11 9 (0.48%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 5 (0.27%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 4 (0.21%) GRC
16 3 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
16 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 382 (20.30%) Docker
2 225 (11.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 158 (8.40%) Active Directory
4 86 (4.57%) vSphere
5 69 (3.67%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (2.92%) Hyper-V
7 50 (2.66%) VMware ESXi
8 33 (1.75%) NFS
9 30 (1.59%) VMware NSX
10 28 (1.49%) GPFS
11 22 (1.17%) Firmware
12 21 (1.12%) KVM
13 15 (0.80%) Oracle RAC
14 13 (0.69%) Postfix
14 13 (0.69%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 12 (0.64%) Lustre
16 10 (0.53%) Ceph
17 8 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.32%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.32%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 480 (25.50%) Kubernetes
2 400 (21.25%) Terraform
3 382 (20.30%) Ansible
4 201 (10.68%) Grafana
5 169 (8.98%) Prometheus
6 66 (3.51%) Puppet
7 58 (3.08%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.23%) vCenter Server
9 38 (2.02%) Packer
10 36 (1.91%) vRealize
11 34 (1.81%) Argo
12 31 (1.65%) Red Hat Satellite
13 29 (1.54%) Podman
14 23 (1.22%) Kibana
15 22 (1.17%) SCCM
16 20 (1.06%) Oracle RMAN
17 19 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
18 18 (0.96%) VxRail
19 17 (0.90%) Consul
19 17 (0.90%) Nessus
Vendors
1 302 (16.05%) VMware
2 287 (15.25%) Microsoft
3 243 (12.91%) Oracle
4 224 (11.90%) Red Hat
5 203 (10.79%) Splunk
6 103 (5.47%) Cisco
7 88 (4.68%) IBM
8 67 (3.56%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.76%) Google
10 47 (2.50%) Dell
11 39 (2.07%) Palo Alto
12 33 (1.75%) CyberArk
13 32 (1.70%) SolarWinds
14 30 (1.59%) HP
15 28 (1.49%) Citrix
15 28 (1.49%) NetApp
16 27 (1.43%) Atlassian
16 27 (1.43%) NVIDIA
17 26 (1.38%) Sybase
18 24 (1.28%) AppDynamics