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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,089 1,805 2,114
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.84% 5.50% 5.54%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.23% 40.74% 39.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,304 1,082 1,256
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £425 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -2.44% -3.09%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £494 £525
% change year-on-year +1.32% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 75 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £53.90 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +9.15%
75th Percentile £69.31 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.35%

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 5,325 4,431 5,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.50% 14.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,357 2,828 3,368
10th Percentile £190 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £276 £325
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 £662 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 296 256
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.13
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.66
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +14.43%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £69.77
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.68% +29.70%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 1,760 £525 - 2,341
UK excluding London -18 1,177 £500 +1.32% 1,337
London -31 702 £525 -8.70% 1,021
Work from Home -21 562 £500 -4.76% 939
South East -13 328 £525 +10.53% 351
North of England -20 281 £500 +5.26% 204
South West -1 176 £575 +4.55% 251
North West -23 138 £492 +22.69% 120
Scotland -18 129 £450 -10.00% 79
Midlands -41 125 £475 -5.00% 152
East of England -7 118 £483 -1.78% 228
Yorkshire -27 117 £518 +3.50% 47
West Midlands -44 108 £475 -5.00% 96
North East -11 34 £480 -10.70% 38
Wales +8 27 £465 +3.33% 25
East Midlands -10 14 £481 +14.52% 56
Northern Ireland -5 3 - - 69

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 63 (3.02%) Confluence
2 44 (2.11%) Apache
3 33 (1.58%) nginx
4 27 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
5 24 (1.15%) OpenStack
5 24 (1.15%) WebLogic
6 22 (1.05%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.05%) SharePoint
7 20 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
8 18 (0.86%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 16 (0.77%) SAS
10 15 (0.72%) JBoss
11 13 (0.62%) Tomcat
12 11 (0.53%) IIS
12 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
13 7 (0.34%) CMS
14 6 (0.29%) MTS
14 6 (0.29%) WebLogic Portal
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.048%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.048%) Magento
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 618 (29.58%) AWS
2 517 (24.75%) Azure
3 196 (9.38%) GCP
4 163 (7.80%) GitHub
5 112 (5.36%) OpenShift
6 107 (5.12%) Entra ID
7 103 (4.93%) GitHub Actions
8 94 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
9 93 (4.45%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.88%) Amazon EC2
11 73 (3.49%) Serverless
12 68 (3.26%) AWS CloudFormation
13 65 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (3.02%) Amazon EKS
15 62 (2.97%) Microsoft 365
16 60 (2.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 54 (2.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 51 (2.44%) IaaS
19 45 (2.15%) SaaS
20 44 (2.11%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 226 (10.82%) DNS
2 214 (10.24%) Firewall
3 162 (7.75%) TCP/IP
4 130 (6.22%) DHCP
5 86 (4.12%) Network Security
6 84 (4.02%) VPN
7 76 (3.64%) SAN
8 53 (2.54%) SSL
9 46 (2.20%) HTTP
10 45 (2.15%) WAN
11 44 (2.11%) SSH
12 36 (1.72%) VLAN
13 30 (1.44%) LAN
14 28 (1.34%) BGP
14 28 (1.34%) VSAN
15 26 (1.24%) Kerberos
16 25 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
17 23 (1.10%) Wireless
18 22 (1.05%) HTTPS
19 21 (1.01%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.74%) PostgreSQL
2 113 (5.41%) SQL Server
3 100 (4.79%) Oracle Database
4 74 (3.54%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.11%) MySQL
6 54 (2.58%) Amazon RDS
7 51 (2.44%) MongoDB
8 48 (2.30%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.63%) Elasticsearch
11 32 (1.53%) Amazon Aurora
12 29 (1.39%) RDBMS
13 27 (1.29%) Big Data
14 22 (1.05%) DynamoDB
15 21 (1.01%) Data Lake
16 20 (0.96%) Power BI
16 20 (0.96%) Redis
17 18 (0.86%) Hadoop
17 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
18 17 (0.81%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 283 (13.55%) Git
2 250 (11.97%) Jenkins
3 228 (10.91%) GitLab
4 156 (7.47%) JIRA
5 37 (1.77%) Maven
6 35 (1.68%) SonarQube
7 32 (1.53%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.15%) Artifactory
9 24 (1.15%) Selenium
10 22 (1.05%) Mockito
11 19 (0.91%) JUnit
12 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
12 18 (0.86%) Gradle
13 16 (0.77%) Cucumber
14 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.53%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.48%) JMeter
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 454 (21.73%) Social Skills
2 337 (16.13%) Finance
3 249 (11.92%) Analytical Skills
4 171 (8.19%) Banking
5 169 (8.09%) Public Sector
6 91 (4.36%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.58%) Telecoms
8 39 (1.87%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.63%) Front Office
10 33 (1.58%) Military
11 30 (1.44%) Legal
12 26 (1.24%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 21 (1.01%) Law
15 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.81%) Retail
16 14 (0.67%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.48%) Aviation
17 10 (0.48%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 318 (15.22%) Senior
2 236 (11.30%) Linux Engineer
3 213 (10.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 199 (9.53%) Developer
5 186 (8.90%) DevOps Engineer
6 104 (4.98%) Platform Engineer
7 100 (4.79%) Architect
8 95 (4.55%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.93%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.88%) Support Engineer
11 75 (3.59%) Analyst
12 73 (3.49%) Java Developer
13 72 (3.45%) Consultant
14 71 (3.40%) Lead
15 68 (3.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 67 (3.21%) AWS Engineer
17 63 (3.02%) Administrator
18 56 (2.68%) Network Engineer
18 56 (2.68%) Systems Engineer
19 53 (2.54%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 514 (24.61%) Terraform
2 142 (6.80%) Kafka
3 127 (6.08%) REST
4 83 (3.97%) Middleware
5 75 (3.59%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.21%) .NET
7 58 (2.78%) Spring
8 57 (2.73%) RESTful
9 52 (2.49%) Spring Boot
10 49 (2.35%) Web Services
11 45 (2.15%) LDAP
12 42 (2.01%) JSON
13 40 (1.91%) XML
14 36 (1.72%) HTML
14 36 (1.72%) React
15 35 (1.68%) SOAP
16 31 (1.48%) Flask
17 30 (1.44%) Keycloak
17 30 (1.44%) Node.js
17 30 (1.44%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 159 (7.61%) Onboarding
2 144 (6.89%) Cloud Native
3 136 (6.51%) Data Centre
4 110 (5.27%) PKI
5 102 (4.88%) Linux Command Line
6 90 (4.31%) Distributed Systems
7 89 (4.26%) Replication
8 70 (3.35%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.26%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.11%) Public Cloud
11 48 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
11 48 (2.30%) Security Posture
12 42 (2.01%) Private Cloud
13 41 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
14 40 (1.91%) Operational Technology
15 38 (1.82%) Product Ownership
16 37 (1.77%) Embedded Systems
16 37 (1.77%) Enterprise Storage
17 35 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
18 34 (1.63%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 786 (37.63%) Windows
2 438 (20.97%) Unix
3 364 (17.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 249 (11.92%) Windows Server
5 109 (5.22%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.11%) CentOS
7 57 (2.73%) AIX
8 56 (2.68%) Solaris
9 31 (1.48%) Embedded Linux
9 31 (1.48%) Windows 10
10 27 (1.29%) VMS
11 26 (1.24%) SUSE
12 22 (1.05%) Rocky
13 18 (0.86%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.72%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.67%) Debian
16 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
17 13 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
18 11 (0.53%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 655 (31.35%) CI/CD
2 563 (26.95%) DevOps
3 461 (22.07%) Infrastructure as Code
4 389 (18.62%) Agile
5 341 (16.32%) Problem-Solving
6 330 (15.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 300 (14.36%) Containerisation
8 265 (12.69%) Continuous Improvement
9 253 (12.11%) Observability
10 236 (11.30%) Platform Engineering
11 234 (11.20%) Migration
12 216 (10.34%) Root Cause Analysis
13 210 (10.05%) Software Engineering
14 192 (9.19%) High Availability
15 183 (8.76%) Configuration Management
16 175 (8.38%) Test Automation
17 172 (8.23%) ITIL
18 168 (8.04%) Stakeholder Management
19 166 (7.95%) Performance Tuning
20 165 (7.90%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 765 (36.62%) Python
2 441 (21.11%) Bash
3 403 (19.29%) PowerShell
4 376 (18.00%) SQL
5 254 (12.16%) Java
6 155 (7.42%) Shell Script
7 118 (5.65%) C++
8 85 (4.07%) JavaScript
9 83 (3.97%) Perl
10 76 (3.64%) C#
11 68 (3.26%) C
12 60 (2.87%) Go
12 60 (2.87%) PL/SQL
13 42 (2.01%) Bicep
14 29 (1.39%) Groovy
15 22 (1.05%) TypeScript
16 20 (0.96%) Search Processing Language
17 16 (0.77%) Korn
17 16 (0.77%) Rust
18 15 (0.72%) Ada
Qualifications
1 787 (37.67%) Security Cleared
2 552 (26.42%) SC Cleared
3 249 (11.92%) DV Cleared
4 181 (8.66%) Degree
5 74 (3.54%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.87%) CISSP
7 59 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
8 58 (2.78%) Cisco Certification
9 56 (2.68%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.29%) CISM
11 25 (1.20%) CCNP
11 25 (1.20%) RHCE
12 22 (1.05%) CCNA
13 20 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.86%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (0.72%) CompTIA Security+
17 14 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.49%) NIST
1 73 (3.49%) QA
2 68 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (1.48%) SLA
4 23 (1.10%) Data Quality
5 21 (1.01%) GDPR
6 17 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
6 17 (0.81%) GRC
7 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
8 15 (0.72%) NCSC
9 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
10 10 (0.48%) ISO 31000
11 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA
14 5 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 4 (0.19%) ISO 9001
15 4 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 372 (17.81%) Docker
2 285 (13.64%) Active Directory
3 243 (11.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (4.02%) Hyper-V
5 80 (3.83%) vSphere
6 68 (3.26%) Virtual Machines
6 68 (3.26%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (2.44%) VMware NSX
8 38 (1.82%) Oracle RAC
9 35 (1.68%) Firmware
9 35 (1.68%) NFS
10 26 (1.24%) KVM
11 23 (1.10%) Virtual Servers
12 13 (0.62%) Ceph
12 13 (0.62%) Postfix
13 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
13 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.53%) GPFS
15 8 (0.38%) Squid
15 8 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 476 (22.79%) Kubernetes
2 463 (22.16%) Ansible
3 196 (9.38%) Grafana
4 177 (8.47%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.31%) Puppet
6 59 (2.82%) Progress Chef
7 48 (2.30%) Oracle RMAN
7 48 (2.30%) SCCM
8 38 (1.82%) Data Guard
9 33 (1.58%) Kibana
10 32 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
10 32 (1.53%) vCenter Server
11 29 (1.39%) Nagios
12 28 (1.34%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.29%) NetBackup
13 27 (1.29%) VxRail
14 25 (1.20%) Podman
15 24 (1.15%) Packer
16 22 (1.05%) Istio
17 20 (0.96%) Argo
Vendors
1 344 (16.47%) Microsoft
2 342 (16.37%) VMware
3 289 (13.83%) Oracle
4 223 (10.67%) Red Hat
5 172 (8.23%) Splunk
6 123 (5.89%) Cisco
7 114 (5.46%) ServiceNow
8 93 (4.45%) IBM
9 92 (4.40%) Google
10 82 (3.93%) CyberArk
11 47 (2.25%) NetApp
12 46 (2.20%) SolarWinds
13 44 (2.11%) BeyondTrust
14 39 (1.87%) F5
15 38 (1.82%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.77%) Dynatrace
17 36 (1.72%) Dell
18 35 (1.68%) SAP
19 31 (1.48%) Tenable
20 28 (1.34%) Citrix