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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -21 +1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,018 1,821 2,253
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 5.58% 5.45%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.65% 41.48% 39.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,251 1,155 1,455
10th Percentile £350 £364 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -1.87% -6.96%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 52 136
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.81 £57.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.63 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,090 4,390 5,725
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 13.45% 13.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,236 2,825 3,772
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £316 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 246 399
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £52.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £21.28 £31.25
% change year-on-year +25.28% -31.90% +4.17%

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 22 July 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 22 July 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 22 July 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 -23 1,701 £520 -3.17% 805
UK excluding London -17 1,214 £500 - 642
London -47 585 £550 -4.35% 281
Work from Home -29 544 £500 - 377
South East +1 344 £518 -0.62% 203
North of England -9 324 £489 -2.30% 115
South West -6 178 £538 -6.52% 95
North West -10 166 £485 +17.17% 69
Midlands -13 145 £475 - 66
Yorkshire -18 142 £500 -4.76% 23
West Midlands -18 122 £471 -0.79% 40
Scotland -32 104 £450 -7.02% 34
East of England -18 93 £475 -3.06% 81
Wales +5 29 £465 +64.60% 12
North East -20 22 £480 +0.52% 24
East Midlands -7 20 £513 +12.76% 26
Northern Ireland +1 5 - - 48

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 82 (4.06%) Confluence
2 52 (2.58%) Apache
3 34 (1.68%) nginx
4 29 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.09%) Tomcat
7 20 (0.99%) WebLogic
8 19 (0.94%) Apache Spark
9 18 (0.89%) SAS
10 16 (0.79%) OpenStack
11 11 (0.55%) CICS
12 10 (0.50%) JBoss
12 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
13 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
13 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.40%) IIS
15 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.25%) CMS
17 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 20 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.099%) Houdini
5 2 (0.099%) NUKE
6 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.050%) InDesign
6 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.099%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.050%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 600 (29.73%) AWS
2 453 (22.45%) Azure
3 158 (7.83%) GitHub
4 148 (7.33%) GCP
5 107 (5.30%) OpenShift
6 93 (4.61%) GitHub Actions
7 91 (4.51%) Amazon S3
8 90 (4.46%) Amazon EC2
9 87 (4.31%) Entra ID
10 73 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
11 63 (3.12%) Amazon EKS
12 61 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 61 (3.02%) Serverless
13 55 (2.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 54 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
15 53 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
16 52 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
17 45 (2.23%) IaaS
18 40 (1.98%) PaaS
18 40 (1.98%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 203 (10.06%) Firewall
2 182 (9.02%) DNS
3 115 (5.70%) TCP/IP
4 84 (4.16%) VPN
5 83 (4.11%) DHCP
6 77 (3.82%) Network Security
7 74 (3.67%) SAN
8 47 (2.33%) WAN
9 41 (2.03%) SSL
10 38 (1.88%) VSAN
11 36 (1.78%) LAN
12 35 (1.73%) SSH
13 34 (1.68%) HTTP
14 31 (1.54%) SNMP
14 31 (1.54%) VLAN
15 25 (1.24%) NAS
16 23 (1.14%) Ethernet
17 22 (1.09%) IPsec
18 19 (0.94%) BGP
19 18 (0.89%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.19%) SQL Server
2 119 (5.90%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.71%) Oracle Database
4 70 (3.47%) MySQL
5 68 (3.37%) MongoDB
5 68 (3.37%) Relational Database
6 57 (2.82%) Amazon RDS
7 42 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
8 39 (1.93%) Amazon Aurora
9 30 (1.49%) NoSQL
9 30 (1.49%) RDBMS
10 29 (1.44%) DynamoDB
11 24 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
12 22 (1.09%) Big Data
13 21 (1.04%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
15 18 (0.89%) KDB
15 18 (0.89%) Sybase ASE
16 17 (0.84%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.84%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 216 (10.70%) Jenkins
2 195 (9.66%) Git
3 187 (9.27%) GitLab
4 144 (7.14%) JIRA
5 36 (1.78%) Maven
6 33 (1.64%) Mockito
7 32 (1.59%) SonarQube
8 25 (1.24%) Bitbucket
8 25 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.04%) Eclipse
10 20 (0.99%) Artifactory
11 19 (0.94%) JUnit
12 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.69%) DbUnit
14 13 (0.64%) jMock
15 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
17 9 (0.45%) TeamCity
18 8 (0.40%) Selenium
General
1 402 (19.92%) Social Skills
2 290 (14.37%) Finance
3 205 (10.16%) Public Sector
4 187 (9.27%) Analytical Skills
5 139 (6.89%) Banking
6 73 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.93%) Military
8 31 (1.54%) Front Office
9 26 (1.29%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 25 (1.24%) Legal
11 24 (1.19%) Retail
12 21 (1.04%) Law
13 20 (0.99%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.89%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.89%) Manufacturing
16 15 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 289 (14.32%) Senior
2 210 (10.41%) Developer
3 201 (9.96%) Linux Engineer
4 180 (8.92%) DevOps Engineer
5 166 (8.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 121 (6.00%) Software Engineer
7 102 (5.05%) Architect
8 90 (4.46%) Analyst
9 83 (4.11%) Java Developer
10 80 (3.96%) Lead
10 80 (3.96%) Platform Engineer
11 67 (3.32%) Cloud Engineer
12 66 (3.27%) Consultant
13 65 (3.22%) AWS Engineer
14 60 (2.97%) Support Engineer
15 57 (2.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 55 (2.73%) Administrator
16 55 (2.73%) Senior Developer
17 53 (2.63%) DBA
18 52 (2.58%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (5.25%) Kafka
2 93 (4.61%) REST
3 72 (3.57%) Middleware
4 68 (3.37%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.82%) Spring
6 50 (2.48%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.38%) Web Services
8 45 (2.23%) .NET
8 45 (2.23%) RESTful
9 44 (2.18%) LDAP
10 40 (1.98%) Node.js
11 34 (1.68%) ActiveMQ
12 29 (1.44%) JSON
13 27 (1.34%) SOAP
14 26 (1.29%) AngularJS
14 26 (1.29%) React
14 26 (1.29%) YAML
15 23 (1.14%) XML
16 20 (0.99%) Keycloak
17 19 (0.94%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 137 (6.79%) Data Centre
2 134 (6.64%) Cloud Native
3 115 (5.70%) Onboarding
4 103 (5.10%) Linux Command Line
5 89 (4.41%) Distributed Systems
6 88 (4.36%) PKI
7 76 (3.77%) Replication
8 63 (3.12%) Public Cloud
9 62 (3.07%) Hybrid Cloud
10 61 (3.02%) Management Information System
11 58 (2.87%) Security Posture
12 55 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.78%) Product Ownership
14 31 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
15 29 (1.44%) Enterprise Storage
16 28 (1.39%) Clustering
16 28 (1.39%) Embedded Systems
16 28 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
17 27 (1.34%) Operational Technology
18 25 (1.24%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 759 (37.61%) Windows
2 430 (21.31%) Unix
3 334 (16.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 205 (10.16%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.30%) Ubuntu
6 74 (3.67%) AIX
7 63 (3.12%) Solaris
8 41 (2.03%) CentOS
9 33 (1.64%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.39%) VMS
11 25 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (1.19%) SUSE
13 17 (0.84%) Android
13 17 (0.84%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.79%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.79%) Oracle Linux
14 16 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.74%) Mac OS X
15 15 (0.74%) Rocky
16 14 (0.69%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 574 (28.44%) CI/CD
2 491 (24.33%) DevOps
3 361 (17.89%) Agile
4 355 (17.59%) Infrastructure as Code
5 295 (14.62%) Problem-Solving
6 271 (13.43%) Containerisation
7 243 (12.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 232 (11.50%) Migration
9 207 (10.26%) Software Engineering
10 196 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
11 190 (9.42%) High Availability
12 189 (9.37%) Observability
13 178 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
14 175 (8.67%) Root Cause Analysis
15 169 (8.37%) Platform Engineering
16 165 (8.18%) ITIL
17 153 (7.58%) SIEM
18 140 (6.94%) AI
19 139 (6.89%) Test Automation
20 132 (6.54%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 696 (34.49%) Python
2 352 (17.44%) Bash
3 346 (17.15%) SQL
4 341 (16.90%) PowerShell
5 256 (12.69%) Java
6 155 (7.68%) Shell Script
7 124 (6.14%) C++
8 86 (4.26%) JavaScript
9 68 (3.37%) C
10 65 (3.22%) C#
10 65 (3.22%) PL/SQL
11 54 (2.68%) Perl
12 52 (2.58%) Go
13 33 (1.64%) Bicep
14 24 (1.19%) Ada
15 21 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (1.04%) TypeScript
16 20 (0.99%) Rust
17 16 (0.79%) Groovy
18 14 (0.69%) PHP
Qualifications
1 787 (39.00%) Security Cleared
2 581 (28.79%) SC Cleared
3 229 (11.35%) DV Cleared
4 181 (8.97%) Degree
5 76 (3.77%) AWS Certification
6 66 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
7 60 (2.97%) CISSP
8 49 (2.43%) Azure Certification
9 48 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
10 32 (1.59%) CompTIA Security+
11 27 (1.34%) CCNP
11 27 (1.34%) RHCE
12 25 (1.24%) CCNA
13 22 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.89%) CISM
15 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.69%) GIAC
16 14 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 13 (0.64%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.11%) NIST
2 79 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.82%) QA
4 33 (1.64%) SLA
5 24 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.14%) NCSC
7 21 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.04%) GDPR
8 20 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
9 15 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.59%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.55%) GRC
12 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
13 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.40%) ISO 20022
15 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
17 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
18 4 (0.20%) Accessibility
System Software
1 334 (16.55%) Docker
2 249 (12.34%) Active Directory
3 234 (11.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.66%) Virtual Machines
5 75 (3.72%) Hyper-V
6 73 (3.62%) vSphere
7 66 (3.27%) VMware ESXi
8 55 (2.73%) VMware NSX
9 46 (2.28%) NFS
10 40 (1.98%) Oracle RAC
11 34 (1.68%) Firmware
11 34 (1.68%) KVM
12 20 (0.99%) Postfix
13 14 (0.69%) GPFS
14 13 (0.64%) Ceph
15 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.35%) Squid
17 7 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 438 (21.70%) Terraform
2 433 (21.46%) Ansible
3 415 (20.56%) Kubernetes
4 171 (8.47%) Grafana
5 148 (7.33%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.52%) Puppet
7 56 (2.78%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.58%) Oracle RMAN
9 46 (2.28%) vCenter Server
10 37 (1.83%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.54%) Nagios
12 27 (1.34%) Packer
13 26 (1.29%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.24%) Red Hat Satellite
15 24 (1.19%) SCCM
16 23 (1.14%) Podman
17 22 (1.09%) Tivoli
18 21 (1.04%) Argo
18 21 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
19 20 (0.99%) Netcool
Vendors
1 321 (15.91%) VMware
2 300 (14.87%) Microsoft
3 299 (14.82%) Oracle
4 227 (11.25%) Red Hat
5 154 (7.63%) Splunk
6 129 (6.39%) Cisco
7 108 (5.35%) IBM
8 99 (4.91%) ServiceNow
9 74 (3.67%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.52%) Google
11 47 (2.33%) Palo Alto
11 47 (2.33%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.28%) BeyondTrust
13 42 (2.08%) SAP
14 40 (1.98%) F5
14 40 (1.98%) NetApp
15 38 (1.88%) HP
16 33 (1.64%) Citrix
17 31 (1.54%) Sybase
18 29 (1.44%) Dynatrace