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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,084 1,853 2,189
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.62% 5.68%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.67% 41.62% 40.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,299 1,129 1,383
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.44%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £710 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 64 114
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% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.63 £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 5,254 4,452 5,403
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.51% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,327 2,832 3,524
10th Percentile £192 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £451 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.11% -5.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 271 306
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% -47.37% +52.00%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -24 1,742 £525 - 1,349
UK excluding London -20 1,187 £500 - 831
London -40 675 £539 -6.35% 636
Work from Home -29 546 £500 -3.66% 531
South East -8 337 £518 +3.50% 252
North of England -28 286 £493 -1.40% 154
South West +1 192 £562 -2.22% 144
North West -24 144 £485 +21.25% 86
Scotland -15 133 £450 -10.00% 40
Yorkshire -31 123 £500 -4.76% 43
Midlands -43 120 £471 -5.75% 85
West Midlands -43 99 £470 -6.00% 45
East of England -16 97 £475 -5.00% 149
Wales +3 28 £465 +3.33% 9
North East -18 26 £470 -18.26% 25
East Midlands -7 18 £500 +19.05% 39
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 19

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 69 (3.31%) Confluence
2 50 (2.40%) Apache
3 30 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.39%) nginx
5 23 (1.10%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.06%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.96%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.86%) SAS
9 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
9 16 (0.77%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.72%) JBoss
11 14 (0.67%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.38%) IIS
14 6 (0.29%) CMS
14 6 (0.29%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) MTS
Applications
1 28 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
4 3 (0.14%) Simulink
5 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 599 (28.74%) AWS
2 513 (24.62%) Azure
3 171 (8.21%) GCP
4 162 (7.77%) GitHub
5 104 (4.99%) OpenShift
6 102 (4.89%) Entra ID
7 98 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
9 89 (4.27%) Amazon S3
10 82 (3.93%) Amazon EC2
11 65 (3.12%) Serverless
12 61 (2.93%) Amazon EKS
12 61 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
13 57 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 55 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
16 53 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.45%) IaaS
18 43 (2.06%) SaaS
19 39 (1.87%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.94%) DNS
2 222 (10.65%) Firewall
3 141 (6.77%) TCP/IP
4 126 (6.05%) DHCP
5 89 (4.27%) VPN
6 84 (4.03%) SAN
7 77 (3.69%) Network Security
8 52 (2.50%) WAN
9 50 (2.40%) SSL
10 45 (2.16%) SSH
11 44 (2.11%) VSAN
12 40 (1.92%) HTTP
12 40 (1.92%) VLAN
13 39 (1.87%) LAN
14 30 (1.44%) SNMP
15 26 (1.25%) Kerberos
15 26 (1.25%) NAS
16 23 (1.10%) HTTPS
17 21 (1.01%) BGP
18 19 (0.91%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 99 (4.75%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.21%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.12%) MySQL
6 53 (2.54%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.02%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.73%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.63%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
12 30 (1.44%) RDBMS
13 26 (1.25%) Big Data
14 21 (1.01%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.96%) DynamoDB
16 19 (0.91%) Power BI
17 18 (0.86%) Redis
18 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
18 17 (0.82%) Oracle Exadata
18 17 (0.82%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 240 (11.52%) Git
2 238 (11.42%) Jenkins
3 198 (9.50%) GitLab
4 151 (7.25%) JIRA
5 32 (1.54%) Maven
6 31 (1.49%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.49%) SonarQube
7 27 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (1.06%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.01%) Mockito
9 21 (1.01%) Selenium
10 16 (0.77%) JUnit
11 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
15 8 (0.38%) Cucumber
15 8 (0.38%) JMeter
General
1 439 (21.07%) Social Skills
2 309 (14.83%) Finance
3 244 (11.71%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 162 (7.77%) Banking
6 83 (3.98%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (2.11%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.78%) Front Office
8 37 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.25%) Aerospace
9 26 (1.25%) Military
10 25 (1.20%) Legal
11 21 (1.01%) Retail
12 20 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 19 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 18 (0.86%) Law
15 14 (0.67%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.48%) Aviation
17 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 304 (14.59%) Senior
2 240 (11.52%) Linux Engineer
3 202 (9.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 182 (8.73%) Developer
5 180 (8.64%) DevOps Engineer
6 107 (5.13%) Architect
7 98 (4.70%) Platform Engineer
7 98 (4.70%) Software Engineer
8 86 (4.13%) Consultant
9 80 (3.84%) Lead
10 78 (3.74%) Support Engineer
11 75 (3.60%) Cloud Engineer
12 73 (3.50%) Analyst
13 69 (3.31%) Administrator
14 68 (3.26%) Java Developer
15 65 (3.12%) AWS Engineer
16 62 (2.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 57 (2.74%) Systems Engineer
18 54 (2.59%) Network Engineer
19 51 (2.45%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 490 (23.51%) Terraform
2 130 (6.24%) Kafka
3 116 (5.57%) REST
4 72 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.45%) Middleware
5 67 (3.21%) .NET
6 56 (2.69%) RESTful
7 49 (2.35%) Spring
8 43 (2.06%) Spring Boot
9 38 (1.82%) LDAP
10 36 (1.73%) JSON
10 36 (1.73%) Web Services
11 35 (1.68%) XML
12 31 (1.49%) YAML
13 30 (1.44%) HTML
13 30 (1.44%) SOAP
14 25 (1.20%) ARM Templates
14 25 (1.20%) RabbitMQ
14 25 (1.20%) React
15 24 (1.15%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 143 (6.86%) Onboarding
2 137 (6.57%) Cloud Native
3 131 (6.29%) Data Centre
4 107 (5.13%) PKI
5 105 (5.04%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.51%) Replication
7 84 (4.03%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.26%) Public Cloud
10 57 (2.74%) Management Information System
11 45 (2.16%) Security Posture
12 44 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
13 41 (1.97%) Enterprise Storage
14 40 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
15 39 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
16 36 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
16 36 (1.73%) Private Cloud
17 35 (1.68%) Clustering
18 34 (1.63%) Operational Technology
19 32 (1.54%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 784 (37.62%) Windows
2 418 (20.06%) Unix
3 357 (17.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 243 (11.66%) Windows Server
5 116 (5.57%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.12%) AIX
7 52 (2.50%) CentOS
7 52 (2.50%) Solaris
8 40 (1.92%) Embedded Linux
9 27 (1.30%) SUSE
9 27 (1.30%) VMS
10 25 (1.20%) Windows 10
11 23 (1.10%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.96%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.91%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.86%) Rocky
15 17 (0.82%) Mac OS
16 16 (0.77%) Debian
17 12 (0.58%) Android
17 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 601 (28.84%) CI/CD
2 529 (25.38%) DevOps
3 423 (20.30%) Infrastructure as Code
4 368 (17.66%) Agile
5 317 (15.21%) Problem-Solving
6 295 (14.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 267 (12.81%) Containerisation
8 244 (11.71%) Continuous Improvement
9 242 (11.61%) Migration
10 226 (10.84%) Observability
11 219 (10.51%) Platform Engineering
12 205 (9.84%) High Availability
13 203 (9.74%) Root Cause Analysis
14 196 (9.40%) Software Engineering
15 182 (8.73%) Performance Tuning
16 174 (8.35%) ITIL
17 164 (7.87%) Test Automation
18 162 (7.77%) Configuration Management
19 150 (7.20%) AI
20 149 (7.15%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 748 (35.89%) Python
2 410 (19.67%) Bash
3 408 (19.58%) PowerShell
4 374 (17.95%) SQL
5 242 (11.61%) Java
6 151 (7.25%) Shell Script
7 125 (6.00%) C++
8 79 (3.79%) C
9 73 (3.50%) JavaScript
10 72 (3.45%) Perl
11 69 (3.31%) C#
12 61 (2.93%) PL/SQL
13 51 (2.45%) Go
14 42 (2.02%) Bicep
15 25 (1.20%) Search Processing Language
16 24 (1.15%) Groovy
17 18 (0.86%) Ada
18 16 (0.77%) Rust
18 16 (0.77%) TypeScript
19 15 (0.72%) Korn
Qualifications
1 805 (38.63%) Security Cleared
2 594 (28.50%) SC Cleared
3 243 (11.66%) DV Cleared
4 181 (8.69%) Degree
5 71 (3.41%) AWS Certification
6 62 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 56 (2.69%) Cisco Certification
9 55 (2.64%) Azure Certification
10 54 (2.59%) CISSP
11 23 (1.10%) CCNP
12 22 (1.06%) RHCE
13 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
14 20 (0.96%) CCNA
14 20 (0.96%) CISM
15 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 17 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
17 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
18 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.50%) NIST
2 69 (3.31%) QA
3 68 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 32 (1.54%) SLA
5 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.01%) NCSC
7 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.82%) GDPR
9 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
10 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.48%) GRC
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
17 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 341 (16.36%) Docker
2 276 (13.24%) Active Directory
3 257 (12.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (4.41%) Hyper-V
5 88 (4.22%) vSphere
6 77 (3.69%) Virtual Machines
7 67 (3.21%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.02%) VMware NSX
9 42 (2.02%) Firmware
10 41 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
11 39 (1.87%) NFS
12 27 (1.30%) KVM
13 16 (0.77%) Ceph
13 16 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.72%) Postfix
15 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
16 12 (0.58%) GPFS
17 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 10 (0.48%) Squid
19 8 (0.38%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 461 (22.12%) Ansible
2 442 (21.21%) Kubernetes
3 184 (8.83%) Grafana
4 164 (7.87%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.32%) Puppet
6 63 (3.02%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.40%) Oracle RMAN
8 43 (2.06%) SCCM
9 41 (1.97%) vCenter Server
10 40 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 33 (1.58%) Nagios
12 28 (1.34%) Kibana
13 27 (1.30%) Microsoft Intune
13 27 (1.30%) NetBackup
13 27 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 26 (1.25%) Packer
15 23 (1.10%) VxRail
16 22 (1.06%) Istio
16 22 (1.06%) Podman
Vendors
1 359 (17.23%) VMware
2 333 (15.98%) Microsoft
3 311 (14.92%) Oracle
4 227 (10.89%) Red Hat
5 165 (7.92%) Splunk
6 124 (5.95%) Cisco
7 115 (5.52%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.61%) IBM
9 78 (3.74%) CyberArk
10 75 (3.60%) Google
11 51 (2.45%) SolarWinds
12 48 (2.30%) NetApp
13 45 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.11%) SAP
15 42 (2.02%) Palo Alto
16 38 (1.82%) F5
17 35 (1.68%) HP
18 34 (1.63%) Dell
19 33 (1.58%) Citrix
19 33 (1.58%) Dynatrace