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

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 28
Rank change year-on-year -21 -7 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,085 1,863 2,102
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.82% 5.66% 5.57%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.40% 41.04% 39.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,308 1,131 1,238
10th Percentile £358 £335 £350
25th Percentile £437 £419 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +4.67% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 73 117
10th Percentile £43.39 £33.25 £50.25
25th Percentile £55.88 £53.00 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £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% +3.85%

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 5,292 4,540 5,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 13.79% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,337 2,909 3,280
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £472
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -4.56% -4.75%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £420 £445
% change year-on-year +7.14% -5.51% -1.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 309 250
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.31 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.82 £23.11
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% -54.55% +19.88%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.32 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £23.00 £57.38
% change year-on-year +12.04% -59.91% +33.04%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 1,759 £525 +0.99% 2,667
UK excluding London -27 1,154 £515 +4.67% 1,369
London -33 729 £535 -5.35% 1,327
Work from Home -26 557 £513 -0.63% 1,024
South East -14 330 £536 +12.93% 387
North of England -32 263 £500 +5.04% 198
South West -5 168 £575 +4.55% 218
Scotland -17 132 £468 -6.50% 95
North West -19 132 £500 +24.38% 107
Midlands -47 125 £477 -4.60% 159
East of England -11 112 £496 -0.75% 242
Yorkshire -37 107 £521 +4.25% 61
West Midlands -47 106 £476 -6.11% 91
North East -14 32 £480 -10.70% 31
Wales +9 30 £465 +3.33% 25
East Midlands -4 17 £481 +14.52% 68
Northern Ireland -3 3 - - 68

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 66 (3.17%) Confluence
2 44 (2.11%) Apache
3 41 (1.97%) nginx
4 28 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.34%) WebLogic
5 24 (1.15%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.06%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.06%) SharePoint
7 20 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
8 19 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 19 (0.91%) Tomcat
9 17 (0.82%) IIS
10 15 (0.72%) JBoss
11 13 (0.62%) SAS
12 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.29%) CMS
13 6 (0.29%) MTS
13 6 (0.29%) WebLogic Portal
14 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 29 (1.39%) 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%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.096%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 615 (29.50%) AWS
2 540 (25.90%) Azure
3 212 (10.17%) GCP
4 165 (7.91%) GitHub
5 115 (5.52%) Entra ID
6 113 (5.42%) OpenShift
7 104 (4.99%) GitHub Actions
8 96 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
9 95 (4.56%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.88%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.41%) Serverless
12 70 (3.36%) AWS CloudFormation
13 63 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (2.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 61 (2.93%) Amazon EKS
15 61 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
16 55 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 52 (2.49%) IaaS
18 46 (2.21%) Datadog
19 42 (2.01%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.94%) DNS
2 219 (10.50%) Firewall
3 173 (8.30%) TCP/IP
4 134 (6.43%) DHCP
5 94 (4.51%) VPN
6 93 (4.46%) Network Security
7 75 (3.60%) SAN
8 56 (2.69%) SSL
9 48 (2.30%) SSH
10 45 (2.16%) HTTP
10 45 (2.16%) WAN
11 39 (1.87%) VLAN
12 31 (1.49%) BGP
12 31 (1.49%) LAN
13 29 (1.39%) Kerberos
14 27 (1.29%) VSAN
14 27 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
15 23 (1.10%) Wireless
16 22 (1.06%) 5G
17 21 (1.01%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
2 108 (5.18%) SQL Server
3 104 (4.99%) Oracle Database
4 76 (3.65%) Relational Database
5 63 (3.02%) MySQL
6 60 (2.88%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.59%) MongoDB
8 50 (2.40%) NoSQL
9 38 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
10 35 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
11 28 (1.34%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.29%) Big Data
13 26 (1.25%) Amazon Aurora
14 24 (1.15%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.96%) Power BI
15 20 (0.96%) Redis
16 18 (0.86%) DynamoDB
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
17 17 (0.82%) Hadoop
18 16 (0.77%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 298 (14.29%) Git
2 270 (12.95%) Jenkins
3 237 (11.37%) GitLab
4 165 (7.91%) JIRA
5 44 (2.11%) Maven
6 36 (1.73%) SonarQube
7 35 (1.68%) Bitbucket
8 28 (1.34%) Artifactory
9 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
10 24 (1.15%) Selenium
11 21 (1.01%) Gradle
11 21 (1.01%) Mockito
12 20 (0.96%) JUnit
13 18 (0.86%) Cucumber
13 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
14 14 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 10 (0.48%) JMeter
16 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
17 9 (0.43%) Rational DOORS
General
1 467 (22.40%) Social Skills
2 346 (16.59%) Finance
3 242 (11.61%) Analytical Skills
4 177 (8.49%) Banking
5 156 (7.48%) Public Sector
6 77 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.59%) Telecoms
8 48 (2.30%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.68%) Front Office
10 34 (1.63%) Military
11 28 (1.34%) Legal
12 25 (1.20%) Aerospace
13 24 (1.15%) Law
14 21 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.82%) Retail
16 14 (0.67%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
18 11 (0.53%) Financial Institution
19 9 (0.43%) Police
Job Titles
1 323 (15.49%) Senior
2 232 (11.13%) Linux Engineer
3 218 (10.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 211 (10.12%) Developer
5 190 (9.11%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (5.08%) Platform Engineer
7 101 (4.84%) Architect
8 90 (4.32%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.93%) Support Engineer
10 81 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
11 75 (3.60%) Java Developer
12 73 (3.50%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 72 (3.45%) Analyst
13 72 (3.45%) Consultant
14 66 (3.17%) AWS Engineer
15 64 (3.07%) Administrator
15 64 (3.07%) Lead
16 58 (2.78%) Network Engineer
17 52 (2.49%) DBA
17 52 (2.49%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 531 (25.47%) Terraform
2 145 (6.95%) Kafka
3 141 (6.76%) REST
4 84 (4.03%) Middleware
5 72 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
6 69 (3.31%) .NET
7 58 (2.78%) RESTful
7 58 (2.78%) Spring
8 55 (2.64%) Web Services
9 51 (2.45%) LDAP
9 51 (2.45%) Spring Boot
10 45 (2.16%) JSON
11 43 (2.06%) React
12 41 (1.97%) XML
13 37 (1.77%) HTML
14 36 (1.73%) SOAP
15 34 (1.63%) Flask
16 32 (1.53%) ARM Templates
16 32 (1.53%) Keycloak
17 31 (1.49%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 166 (7.96%) Onboarding
2 147 (7.05%) Cloud Native
3 127 (6.09%) Data Centre
4 113 (5.42%) PKI
5 106 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.46%) Distributed Systems
7 92 (4.41%) Replication
8 74 (3.55%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.21%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.12%) Public Cloud
11 59 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
12 53 (2.54%) Security Posture
13 43 (2.06%) Product Ownership
14 42 (2.01%) Private Cloud
15 41 (1.97%) Operational Technology
16 40 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
17 37 (1.77%) Embedded Systems
17 37 (1.77%) Enterprise Storage
18 36 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
19 33 (1.58%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 791 (37.94%) Windows
2 416 (19.95%) Unix
3 363 (17.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 247 (11.85%) Windows Server
5 109 (5.23%) Ubuntu
6 63 (3.02%) CentOS
7 52 (2.49%) Solaris
8 50 (2.40%) AIX
9 31 (1.49%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.44%) Windows 10
11 28 (1.34%) VMS
12 26 (1.25%) SUSE
13 24 (1.15%) macOS
13 24 (1.15%) Rocky
14 16 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
16 13 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
17 11 (0.53%) Amazon Linux
17 11 (0.53%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 677 (32.47%) CI/CD
2 592 (28.39%) DevOps
3 478 (22.93%) Infrastructure as Code
4 400 (19.18%) Agile
5 335 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
6 334 (16.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 315 (15.11%) Containerisation
8 279 (13.38%) Continuous Improvement
9 263 (12.61%) Observability
10 249 (11.94%) Platform Engineering
11 235 (11.27%) Migration
12 217 (10.41%) Software Engineering
13 215 (10.31%) Root Cause Analysis
14 196 (9.40%) High Availability
15 192 (9.21%) Configuration Management
16 183 (8.78%) Test Automation
17 182 (8.73%) ITIL
17 182 (8.73%) Stakeholder Management
18 180 (8.63%) Cybersecurity
19 167 (8.01%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 780 (37.41%) Python
2 473 (22.69%) Bash
3 417 (20.00%) PowerShell
4 378 (18.13%) SQL
5 261 (12.52%) Java
6 159 (7.63%) Shell Script
7 119 (5.71%) C++
8 88 (4.22%) JavaScript
9 87 (4.17%) Perl
10 76 (3.65%) C#
11 64 (3.07%) C
12 58 (2.78%) PL/SQL
13 57 (2.73%) Go
14 47 (2.25%) Bicep
15 39 (1.87%) Groovy
16 24 (1.15%) TypeScript
17 18 (0.86%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.77%) Korn
18 16 (0.77%) Rust
19 14 (0.67%) Ada
Qualifications
1 791 (37.94%) Security Cleared
2 546 (26.19%) SC Cleared
3 257 (12.33%) DV Cleared
4 184 (8.82%) Degree
5 77 (3.69%) AWS Certification
6 63 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 60 (2.88%) CISSP
8 57 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
9 56 (2.69%) Azure Certification
10 53 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
11 29 (1.39%) CISM
12 25 (1.20%) CCNP
13 22 (1.06%) RHCE
14 21 (1.01%) CCNA
15 20 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.86%) ISTQB
17 17 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 15 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 15 (0.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 14 (0.67%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.65%) QA
2 69 (3.31%) NIST
3 59 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 28 (1.34%) SLA
5 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.10%) GDPR
7 17 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (0.82%) GRC
8 16 (0.77%) Disclosure Scotland
8 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.72%) NCSC
10 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
11 11 (0.53%) ISO 31000
12 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 7 (0.34%) MISRA
13 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
15 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA C
System Software
1 397 (19.04%) Docker
2 292 (14.00%) Active Directory
3 230 (11.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (3.84%) Hyper-V
5 77 (3.69%) vSphere
6 68 (3.26%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (3.07%) VMware ESXi
8 44 (2.11%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.82%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (1.63%) Firmware
11 32 (1.53%) NFS
12 26 (1.25%) Virtual Servers
13 25 (1.20%) KVM
14 13 (0.62%) Ceph
14 13 (0.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 12 (0.58%) Embedded Firmware
16 11 (0.53%) GPFS
17 10 (0.48%) Postfix
17 10 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
18 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 500 (23.98%) Kubernetes
2 475 (22.78%) Ansible
3 198 (9.50%) Grafana
4 175 (8.39%) Prometheus
5 93 (4.46%) Puppet
6 61 (2.93%) Progress Chef
7 58 (2.78%) SCCM
8 48 (2.30%) Oracle RMAN
9 43 (2.06%) Microsoft Intune
10 39 (1.87%) Data Guard
11 38 (1.82%) Kibana
12 29 (1.39%) vCenter Server
13 28 (1.34%) Nagios
14 26 (1.25%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.25%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.25%) VxRail
15 24 (1.15%) Packer
15 24 (1.15%) Podman
16 21 (1.01%) Istio
17 20 (0.96%) Argo
Vendors
1 361 (17.31%) Microsoft
2 323 (15.49%) VMware
3 282 (13.53%) Oracle
4 217 (10.41%) Red Hat
5 176 (8.44%) Splunk
6 124 (5.95%) ServiceNow
7 119 (5.71%) Cisco
8 104 (4.99%) Google
9 93 (4.46%) IBM
10 76 (3.65%) CyberArk
11 51 (2.45%) NetApp
12 45 (2.16%) SolarWinds
13 40 (1.92%) F5
14 39 (1.87%) Palo Alto
15 38 (1.82%) Dynatrace
16 35 (1.68%) Dell
17 33 (1.58%) BeyondTrust
17 33 (1.58%) SAP
18 29 (1.39%) Tenable
19 28 (1.34%) Veeam