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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,099 1,830 2,128
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.86% 5.64% 5.58%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.48% 41.75% 39.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,307 1,104 1,309
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 68 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.08 £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 £78.50 £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 5,316 4,383 5,402
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.50% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,350 2,798 3,476
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £580
90th Percentile £675 £675 £684
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £440 £450
% change year-on-year +2.27% -2.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 393 270 274
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.53
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.07
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £49.25
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -48.93% +3.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +29.22% -52.10% +14.43%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -24 1,763 £525 - 3,273
UK excluding London -22 1,196 £500 - 1,630
London -35 688 £535 -6.96% 1,773
Work from Home -29 557 £500 -3.85% 1,205
South East -14 336 £525 +8.81% 457
North of England -21 285 £500 +5.04% 234
South West -2 189 £575 +4.55% 270
North West -14 141 £497 +23.63% 141
Scotland -16 133 £450 -10.00% 102
Yorkshire -26 121 £515 +2.95% 52
Midlands -52 121 £470 -6.00% 171
East of England -14 112 £500 +1.78% 322
West Midlands -49 101 £470 -6.00% 114
North East -14 30 £475 -17.39% 42
Wales +7 28 £465 +3.33% 27
East Midlands -6 17 £491 +16.79% 56
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 65

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 (3.14%) Confluence
2 46 (2.19%) Apache
3 31 (1.48%) nginx
4 26 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
5 24 (1.14%) WebLogic
6 23 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
6 23 (1.10%) OpenStack
6 23 (1.10%) SharePoint
7 20 (0.95%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.81%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 17 (0.81%) SAS
9 15 (0.71%) JBoss
9 15 (0.71%) Tomcat
10 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.43%) IIS
12 6 (0.29%) CMS
12 6 (0.29%) MTS
13 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
13 5 (0.24%) WebLogic Portal
13 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.095%) Simulink
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 9 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
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%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 610 (29.06%) AWS
2 517 (24.63%) Azure
3 185 (8.81%) GCP
4 165 (7.86%) GitHub
5 110 (5.24%) OpenShift
6 106 (5.05%) Entra ID
7 103 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.38%) Amazon S3
9 90 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
10 83 (3.95%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.38%) Serverless
12 66 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
13 64 (3.05%) AWS CloudFormation
14 63 (3.00%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
16 56 (2.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 53 (2.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 50 (2.38%) IaaS
19 43 (2.05%) Datadog
19 43 (2.05%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 225 (10.72%) DNS
2 218 (10.39%) Firewall
3 153 (7.29%) TCP/IP
4 128 (6.10%) DHCP
5 87 (4.14%) VPN
6 82 (3.91%) Network Security
7 80 (3.81%) SAN
8 51 (2.43%) SSL
9 50 (2.38%) WAN
10 43 (2.05%) SSH
11 40 (1.91%) HTTP
11 40 (1.91%) VLAN
12 39 (1.86%) VSAN
13 33 (1.57%) LAN
14 27 (1.29%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.24%) SNMP
16 23 (1.10%) HTTPS
16 23 (1.10%) NAS
17 22 (1.05%) Wireless
18 21 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (5.81%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (5.48%) SQL Server
3 101 (4.81%) Oracle Database
4 73 (3.48%) Relational Database
5 64 (3.05%) MySQL
6 55 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.57%) MongoDB
8 44 (2.10%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.62%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.29%) Big Data
13 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
14 19 (0.91%) Data Lake
14 19 (0.91%) Power BI
15 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 11g
15 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.81%) Hadoop
16 17 (0.81%) Redis
Development Applications
1 271 (12.91%) Git
2 244 (11.62%) Jenkins
3 208 (9.91%) GitLab
4 156 (7.43%) JIRA
5 38 (1.81%) Maven
6 37 (1.76%) SonarQube
7 30 (1.43%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
9 25 (1.19%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.00%) Mockito
11 19 (0.91%) Selenium
12 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.81%) Gradle
13 17 (0.81%) JUnit
14 13 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 10 (0.48%) Rational Rhapsody
17 9 (0.43%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 448 (21.34%) Social Skills
2 316 (15.05%) Finance
3 245 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.29%) Public Sector
5 167 (7.96%) Banking
6 88 (4.19%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.33%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.76%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.67%) Front Office
10 34 (1.62%) Military
11 29 (1.38%) Legal
12 28 (1.33%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.91%) Law
15 18 (0.86%) Retail
16 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (0.76%) Manufacturing
18 10 (0.48%) Aviation
18 10 (0.48%) Financial Institution
19 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 323 (15.39%) Senior
2 243 (11.58%) Linux Engineer
3 209 (9.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 193 (9.19%) Developer
5 187 (8.91%) DevOps Engineer
6 104 (4.95%) Architect
7 103 (4.91%) Software Engineer
8 101 (4.81%) Platform Engineer
9 82 (3.91%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.86%) Support Engineer
11 80 (3.81%) Lead
12 78 (3.72%) Consultant
13 73 (3.48%) Analyst
14 72 (3.43%) Java Developer
15 68 (3.24%) Administrator
16 67 (3.19%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 66 (3.14%) AWS Engineer
18 60 (2.86%) Systems Engineer
19 54 (2.57%) DBA
20 53 (2.53%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 502 (23.92%) Terraform
2 135 (6.43%) Kafka
3 122 (5.81%) REST
4 77 (3.67%) Middleware
5 76 (3.62%) Elastic Stack
6 67 (3.19%) .NET
7 54 (2.57%) RESTful
7 54 (2.57%) Spring
8 50 (2.38%) Spring Boot
9 45 (2.14%) Web Services
10 43 (2.05%) LDAP
11 38 (1.81%) JSON
12 36 (1.72%) XML
13 31 (1.48%) HTML
13 31 (1.48%) SOAP
14 30 (1.43%) YAML
15 29 (1.38%) Node.js
16 28 (1.33%) Django
16 28 (1.33%) Keycloak
16 28 (1.33%) React
Miscellaneous
1 146 (6.96%) Onboarding
2 137 (6.53%) Cloud Native
3 132 (6.29%) Data Centre
4 111 (5.29%) PKI
5 107 (5.10%) Linux Command Line
6 95 (4.53%) Replication
7 87 (4.14%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.38%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.19%) Public Cloud
10 64 (3.05%) Management Information System
11 47 (2.24%) Security Posture
12 46 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
13 41 (1.95%) Private Cloud
14 40 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
15 39 (1.86%) Embedded Systems
15 39 (1.86%) Operational Technology
15 39 (1.86%) Product Ownership
16 38 (1.81%) Clustering
16 38 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
17 37 (1.76%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 788 (37.54%) Windows
2 439 (20.91%) Unix
3 364 (17.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 246 (11.72%) Windows Server
5 112 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 59 (2.81%) AIX
6 59 (2.81%) CentOS
7 54 (2.57%) Solaris
8 38 (1.81%) Embedded Linux
9 29 (1.38%) VMS
9 29 (1.38%) Windows 10
10 28 (1.33%) SUSE
11 23 (1.10%) Rocky
12 20 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.91%) Mac OS
14 17 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.76%) Debian
15 16 (0.76%) Oracle Linux
16 13 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 635 (30.25%) CI/CD
2 551 (26.25%) DevOps
3 442 (21.06%) Infrastructure as Code
4 387 (18.44%) Agile
5 331 (15.77%) Problem-Solving
6 315 (15.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 291 (13.86%) Containerisation
8 253 (12.05%) Continuous Improvement
9 240 (11.43%) Observability
10 229 (10.91%) Migration
10 229 (10.91%) Platform Engineering
11 213 (10.15%) Software Engineering
12 206 (9.81%) Root Cause Analysis
13 204 (9.72%) High Availability
14 173 (8.24%) Configuration Management
14 173 (8.24%) Performance Tuning
15 171 (8.15%) ITIL
16 169 (8.05%) Test Automation
17 155 (7.38%) AI
17 155 (7.38%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 761 (36.26%) Python
2 427 (20.34%) Bash
3 405 (19.29%) PowerShell
4 378 (18.01%) SQL
5 245 (11.67%) Java
6 149 (7.10%) Shell Script
7 124 (5.91%) C++
8 78 (3.72%) JavaScript
8 78 (3.72%) Perl
9 76 (3.62%) C#
10 74 (3.53%) C
11 65 (3.10%) PL/SQL
12 55 (2.62%) Go
13 43 (2.05%) Bicep
14 26 (1.24%) Groovy
15 21 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
16 18 (0.86%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.76%) Ada
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
18 15 (0.71%) Korn
Qualifications
1 808 (38.49%) Security Cleared
2 583 (27.78%) SC Cleared
3 250 (11.91%) DV Cleared
4 183 (8.72%) Degree
5 72 (3.43%) AWS Certification
6 62 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
8 57 (2.72%) Azure Certification
9 56 (2.67%) CISSP
10 55 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
11 25 (1.19%) RHCE
12 24 (1.14%) CISM
13 22 (1.05%) CCNP
14 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.86%) CCNA
15 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 17 (0.81%) ISTQB
17 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
19 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.57%) NIST
2 71 (3.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 69 (3.29%) QA
4 33 (1.57%) SLA
5 23 (1.10%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.00%) GDPR
7 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
7 19 (0.91%) NCSC
8 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
10 14 (0.67%) GRC
11 11 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.43%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 364 (17.34%) Docker
2 277 (13.20%) Active Directory
3 249 (11.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (4.29%) Hyper-V
5 81 (3.86%) vSphere
6 76 (3.62%) Virtual Machines
7 73 (3.48%) VMware ESXi
8 60 (2.86%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.95%) Firmware
10 39 (1.86%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.67%) NFS
12 26 (1.24%) KVM
13 19 (0.91%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.81%) Ceph
15 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.67%) Postfix
16 13 (0.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.52%) GPFS
18 10 (0.48%) Squid
19 6 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 471 (22.44%) Ansible
2 462 (22.01%) Kubernetes
3 190 (9.05%) Grafana
4 170 (8.10%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.24%) Puppet
6 62 (2.95%) Progress Chef
7 51 (2.43%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.29%) SCCM
9 40 (1.91%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.86%) vCenter Server
11 30 (1.43%) Kibana
11 30 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
12 28 (1.33%) Nagios
12 28 (1.33%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.29%) VxRail
14 26 (1.24%) Packer
14 26 (1.24%) Podman
15 24 (1.14%) NetBackup
16 22 (1.05%) Istio
16 22 (1.05%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 352 (16.77%) VMware
2 344 (16.39%) Microsoft
3 306 (14.58%) Oracle
4 228 (10.86%) Red Hat
5 169 (8.05%) Splunk
6 123 (5.86%) Cisco
7 113 (5.38%) ServiceNow
8 93 (4.43%) IBM
9 86 (4.10%) Google
10 79 (3.76%) CyberArk
11 46 (2.19%) NetApp
11 46 (2.19%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.14%) BeyondTrust
13 40 (1.91%) F5
13 40 (1.91%) Palo Alto
14 39 (1.86%) Dell
15 38 (1.81%) SAP
16 32 (1.52%) Dynatrace
17 30 (1.43%) HP
18 29 (1.38%) Citrix