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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,060 1,832 2,225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.84% 5.55% 5.73%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.57% 41.25% 40.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,277 1,124 1,419
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.87%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £636
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £527
% change year-on-year - -5.03% +0.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 63 117
10th Percentile £43.60 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.75 £54.63 £63.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +11.48%
75th Percentile £69.06 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.63 £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 5,206 4,441 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.46% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,292 2,828 3,561
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £307 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £455
% change year-on-year +0.67% -1.76% +1.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 272 323
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.63 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.69% -16.42% -27.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.60 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £24.33 £39.25
% change year-on-year +9.58% -38.01% +33.96%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 1,730 £525 - 657
UK excluding London -17 1,191 £500 - 566
London -39 654 £545 -5.22% 165
Work from Home -31 536 £500 -3.75% 277
South East -5 342 £518 +3.50% 189
North of England -25 283 £500 - 104
South West -2 193 £551 -4.13% 113
North West -19 144 £489 +22.13% 55
Scotland -15 125 £450 -10.00% 22
Yorkshire -25 121 £500 -4.76% 29
Midlands -35 120 £470 -5.05% 65
East of England -13 104 £479 -2.30% 84
West Midlands -40 98 £470 -6.10% 39
Wales +4 29 £465 +55.00% 4
North East -20 25 £471 -18.04% 20
East Midlands -6 19 £513 +13.89% 25
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 5

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 50 (2.43%) Apache
3 30 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
4 26 (1.26%) nginx
5 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
6 21 (1.02%) OpenStack
7 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
8 18 (0.87%) SharePoint
9 16 (0.78%) Tomcat
9 16 (0.78%) 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 9 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
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
1 593 (28.79%) AWS
2 503 (24.42%) Azure
3 168 (8.16%) GCP
4 155 (7.52%) GitHub
5 100 (4.85%) OpenShift
6 99 (4.81%) Entra ID
7 93 (4.51%) GitHub Actions
8 87 (4.22%) Azure DevOps
9 85 (4.13%) Amazon S3
10 79 (3.83%) Amazon EC2
11 62 (3.01%) Serverless
12 58 (2.82%) Amazon EKS
12 58 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
13 55 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
13 55 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (2.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 51 (2.48%) IaaS
16 50 (2.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 41 (1.99%) SaaS
18 37 (1.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 220 (10.68%) DNS
1 220 (10.68%) Firewall
2 138 (6.70%) TCP/IP
3 121 (5.87%) DHCP
4 88 (4.27%) VPN
5 77 (3.74%) Network Security
6 74 (3.59%) SAN
7 51 (2.48%) WAN
8 50 (2.43%) SSL
9 46 (2.23%) VSAN
10 42 (2.04%) SSH
11 40 (1.94%) LAN
12 39 (1.89%) VLAN
13 37 (1.80%) HTTP
14 30 (1.46%) SNMP
15 24 (1.17%) NAS
16 22 (1.07%) BGP
16 22 (1.07%) HTTPS
16 22 (1.07%) Kerberos
17 20 (0.97%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (5.92%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.34%) PostgreSQL
3 96 (4.66%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.20%) MySQL
5 64 (3.11%) Relational Database
6 54 (2.62%) MongoDB
7 49 (2.38%) Amazon RDS
8 38 (1.84%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.70%) Amazon Aurora
10 33 (1.60%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
11 29 (1.41%) RDBMS
12 25 (1.21%) Big Data
13 21 (1.02%) SAP HANA
14 20 (0.97%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.87%) Data Lake
15 18 (0.87%) Power BI
16 17 (0.83%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.83%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.78%) Redis
Development Applications
1 227 (11.02%) Git
1 227 (11.02%) Jenkins
2 186 (9.03%) GitLab
3 154 (7.48%) JIRA
4 33 (1.60%) Bitbucket
5 32 (1.55%) Maven
6 29 (1.41%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (1.07%) Mockito
9 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
10 20 (0.97%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.92%) Selenium
12 16 (0.78%) 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
1 426 (20.68%) Social Skills
2 300 (14.56%) Finance
3 237 (11.50%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (8.54%) Public Sector
5 154 (7.48%) Banking
6 81 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (1.94%) Telecoms
8 36 (1.75%) Front Office
9 34 (1.65%) Investment Banking
10 33 (1.60%) Military
11 25 (1.21%) Legal
12 24 (1.17%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.07%) Law
14 21 (1.02%) Retail
15 19 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 19 (0.92%) Manufacturing
16 15 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
17 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.44%) Aviation
18 9 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 293 (14.22%) Senior
2 235 (11.41%) Linux Engineer
3 192 (9.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 181 (8.79%) Developer
5 170 (8.25%) DevOps Engineer
6 113 (5.49%) Software Engineer
7 105 (5.10%) Architect
8 94 (4.56%) Platform Engineer
9 81 (3.93%) Consultant
10 78 (3.79%) Lead
11 76 (3.69%) Analyst
11 76 (3.69%) Support Engineer
12 74 (3.59%) Cloud Engineer
13 69 (3.35%) Java Developer
14 61 (2.96%) Administrator
14 61 (2.96%) AWS Engineer
15 55 (2.67%) Network Engineer
15 55 (2.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 54 (2.62%) Systems Engineer
17 50 (2.43%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 470 (22.82%) Terraform
2 122 (5.92%) Kafka
3 110 (5.34%) REST
4 73 (3.54%) Middleware
5 68 (3.30%) Elastic Stack
6 65 (3.16%) .NET
7 56 (2.72%) RESTful
8 49 (2.38%) Spring
9 45 (2.18%) Web Services
10 41 (1.99%) Spring Boot
11 38 (1.84%) LDAP
12 34 (1.65%) XML
13 33 (1.60%) JSON
14 31 (1.50%) Node.js
15 30 (1.46%) SOAP
15 30 (1.46%) YAML
16 28 (1.36%) HTML
17 24 (1.17%) ARM Templates
17 24 (1.17%) React
18 23 (1.12%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 138 (6.70%) Onboarding
2 132 (6.41%) Data Centre
3 131 (6.36%) Cloud Native
4 104 (5.05%) PKI
5 101 (4.90%) Linux Command Line
6 89 (4.32%) Replication
7 82 (3.98%) Distributed Systems
8 68 (3.30%) Hybrid Cloud
9 62 (3.01%) Public Cloud
10 54 (2.62%) Management Information System
11 47 (2.28%) Security Posture
12 43 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
13 41 (1.99%) Embedded Systems
14 40 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
15 36 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
16 34 (1.65%) Clustering
16 34 (1.65%) Private Cloud
16 34 (1.65%) Product Ownership
17 33 (1.60%) Enterprise Storage
18 32 (1.55%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 789 (38.30%) Windows
2 411 (19.95%) Unix
3 342 (16.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 233 (11.31%) Windows Server
5 114 (5.53%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.16%) AIX
7 53 (2.57%) Solaris
8 49 (2.38%) CentOS
9 41 (1.99%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.26%) SUSE
11 25 (1.21%) VMS
12 23 (1.12%) Windows 10
13 22 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
14 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
15 18 (0.87%) Mac OS
15 18 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.83%) Rocky
17 16 (0.78%) Debian
18 12 (0.58%) Android
18 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 584 (28.35%) CI/CD
2 507 (24.61%) DevOps
3 399 (19.37%) Infrastructure as Code
4 373 (18.11%) Agile
5 311 (15.10%) Problem-Solving
6 283 (13.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 257 (12.48%) Containerisation
8 239 (11.60%) Migration
9 236 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
10 209 (10.15%) Observability
11 208 (10.10%) Software Engineering
12 206 (10.00%) High Availability
12 206 (10.00%) Platform Engineering
13 194 (9.42%) Root Cause Analysis
14 178 (8.64%) Performance Tuning
15 170 (8.25%) ITIL
16 162 (7.86%) Test Automation
17 157 (7.62%) Configuration Management
18 149 (7.23%) SIEM
19 147 (7.14%) AI
Programming Languages
1 727 (35.29%) Python
2 398 (19.32%) PowerShell
3 394 (19.13%) Bash
4 361 (17.52%) SQL
5 246 (11.94%) Java
6 147 (7.14%) Shell Script
7 137 (6.65%) C++
8 85 (4.13%) JavaScript
9 80 (3.88%) C
10 77 (3.74%) C#
11 65 (3.16%) Perl
12 59 (2.86%) PL/SQL
13 47 (2.28%) Go
14 42 (2.04%) Bicep
15 21 (1.02%) Groovy
15 21 (1.02%) Search Processing Language
16 20 (0.97%) Ada
17 17 (0.83%) Rust
17 17 (0.83%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 801 (38.88%) Security Cleared
2 592 (28.74%) SC Cleared
3 237 (11.50%) DV Cleared
4 179 (8.69%) Degree
5 71 (3.45%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.82%) Cisco Certification
8 57 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
9 53 (2.57%) Azure Certification
10 52 (2.52%) CISSP
11 24 (1.17%) CCNP
12 23 (1.12%) RHCE
13 21 (1.02%) CCNA
14 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.92%) CISM
16 18 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
16 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 16 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.54%) NIST
2 68 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 66 (3.20%) QA
4 32 (1.55%) SLA
5 26 (1.26%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.02%) NCSC
7 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.83%) GDPR
9 16 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
10 13 (0.63%) ISO 20022
11 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
12 10 (0.49%) GRC
13 9 (0.44%) 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%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
17 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 329 (15.97%) Docker
2 275 (13.35%) Active Directory
3 253 (12.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.42%) Hyper-V
5 90 (4.37%) vSphere
6 75 (3.64%) Virtual Machines
7 67 (3.25%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.06%) VMware NSX
9 43 (2.09%) Firmware
10 39 (1.89%) NFS
10 39 (1.89%) Oracle RAC
11 28 (1.36%) KVM
12 16 (0.78%) Ceph
13 15 (0.73%) Postfix
14 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
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
1 445 (21.60%) Ansible
2 423 (20.53%) Kubernetes
3 170 (8.25%) Grafana
4 149 (7.23%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.32%) Puppet
6 64 (3.11%) Progress Chef
7 49 (2.38%) Oracle RMAN
8 41 (1.99%) SCCM
9 40 (1.94%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.84%) Data Guard
11 32 (1.55%) Nagios
12 27 (1.31%) Kibana
12 27 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
12 27 (1.31%) ZABBIX
13 26 (1.26%) Microsoft Intune
13 26 (1.26%) Packer
14 25 (1.21%) NetBackup
14 25 (1.21%) VxRail
15 22 (1.07%) Podman
15 22 (1.07%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 355 (17.23%) VMware
2 337 (16.36%) Microsoft
3 308 (14.95%) Oracle
4 221 (10.73%) Red Hat
5 154 (7.48%) Splunk
6 125 (6.07%) Cisco
7 111 (5.39%) ServiceNow
8 94 (4.56%) IBM
9 80 (3.88%) CyberArk
10 74 (3.59%) Google
11 50 (2.43%) SolarWinds
12 48 (2.33%) SAP
13 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.14%) Palo Alto
15 41 (1.99%) NetApp
16 37 (1.80%) F5
17 36 (1.75%) HP
18 33 (1.60%) Citrix
18 33 (1.60%) Dell
19 32 (1.55%) Sybase