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 31 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -19 +1 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,908 1,779 2,303
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.28% 6.12% 5.20%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.14% 42.93% 38.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,212 1,148 1,526
10th Percentile £325 £375 £324
25th Percentile £401 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £548
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +0.46% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £649
90th Percentile £700 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £537 £533
% change year-on-year -8.38% +0.75% -1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 50 107
10th Percentile £21.10 £44.55 £25.82
25th Percentile £41.25 £57.04 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.42 £69.00 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 4,753 4,144 5,987
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.67% 14.25% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,113 2,763 4,012
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £300 £325 £285
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £594
90th Percentile £656 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £424 £450 £438
% change year-on-year -5.69% +2.86% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 163 406
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.67 £12.86
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.20 £15.50
Median hourly rate £24.00 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.68% +12.09% -26.67%
75th Percentile £64.06 £62.88 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.30 £68.64 £67.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £24.66 £20.35
% change year-on-year -4.70% +21.16% -27.57%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 -21 1,626 £525 -4.55% 832
UK excluding London -10 1,118 £492 -8.38% 721
London -37 575 £550 -8.33% 200
Work from Home -27 484 £500 -6.54% 308
South East -1 319 £500 -8.00% 206
North of England -11 302 £500 -9.09% 125
Midlands -8 172 £475 -9.52% 75
Yorkshire -15 165 £478 -13.18% 41
West Midlands +1 155 £475 -12.04% 41
South West -21 145 £539 -10.21% 144
North West -12 128 £538 +2.38% 58
East of England -16 88 £454 -2.89% 117
Scotland -22 84 £413 -12.23% 44
East Midlands -44 17 £478 +4.03% 34
Northern Ireland +8 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -14 11 £550 +4.76% 27
Wales -15 8 £404 -26.59% 23

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 97 (5.08%) Confluence
2 46 (2.41%) nginx
3 42 (2.20%) Apache
4 38 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 17 (0.89%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 15 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
7 15 (0.79%) WebLogic
8 14 (0.73%) SAS
9 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
9 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
10 12 (0.63%) TPMS
11 10 (0.52%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.42%) CICS
13 6 (0.31%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.21%) JBoss
15 3 (0.16%) IBM HTTP Server
15 3 (0.16%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 45 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.26%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
7 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.052%) InDesign
7 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) Odoo
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 565 (29.61%) AWS
2 376 (19.71%) Azure
3 181 (9.49%) GitHub
4 137 (7.18%) OpenShift
5 125 (6.55%) GCP
6 101 (5.29%) Amazon EC2
6 101 (5.29%) AWS CloudFormation
7 99 (5.19%) Serverless
8 92 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
9 83 (4.35%) Amazon S3
10 73 (3.83%) Amazon EKS
11 66 (3.46%) AWS Lambda
12 64 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
13 59 (3.09%) Amazon ECS
14 57 (2.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 44 (2.31%) IaaS
16 43 (2.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 39 (2.04%) Entra ID
18 36 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
19 32 (1.68%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 208 (10.90%) Firewall
2 135 (7.08%) DNS
3 110 (5.77%) TCP/IP
4 70 (3.67%) VPN
5 66 (3.46%) Network Security
6 52 (2.73%) SAN
7 47 (2.46%) SSH
8 43 (2.25%) VSAN
9 37 (1.94%) WAN
10 36 (1.89%) DHCP
11 35 (1.83%) HTTP
12 33 (1.73%) SSL
13 32 (1.68%) LAN
14 31 (1.62%) SNMP
15 24 (1.26%) Ethernet
16 23 (1.21%) BGP
16 23 (1.21%) Wireless
17 21 (1.10%) Kerberos
18 20 (1.05%) NAS
19 19 (1.00%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (7.44%) PostgreSQL
2 94 (4.93%) SQL Server
3 75 (3.93%) Amazon RDS
4 70 (3.67%) Relational Database
5 68 (3.56%) MySQL
6 67 (3.51%) MongoDB
7 63 (3.30%) Oracle Database
8 48 (2.52%) NoSQL
9 38 (1.99%) Elasticsearch
10 24 (1.26%) Data Warehouse
11 19 (1.00%) KDB
12 18 (0.94%) DB2
12 18 (0.94%) Kdb+
13 17 (0.89%) Big Data
14 15 (0.79%) Amazon Aurora
14 15 (0.79%) DynamoDB
15 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
16 13 (0.68%) Hadoop
17 12 (0.63%) Sybase ASE
17 12 (0.63%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 247 (12.95%) Jenkins
2 197 (10.32%) Git
3 190 (9.96%) GitLab
4 156 (8.18%) JIRA
5 39 (2.04%) Bitbucket
5 39 (2.04%) JUnit
6 35 (1.83%) Sonatype Nexus
7 33 (1.73%) Maven
8 28 (1.47%) Eclipse
9 22 (1.15%) Mockito
10 21 (1.10%) Cucumber
11 20 (1.05%) Artifactory
12 19 (1.00%) SonarQube
13 16 (0.84%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.68%) JMeter
15 12 (0.63%) Selenium
16 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
16 11 (0.58%) Liquibase
17 10 (0.52%) Burp Suite
17 10 (0.52%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 460 (24.11%) Social Skills
2 303 (15.88%) Finance
3 190 (9.96%) Public Sector
4 157 (8.23%) Analytical Skills
5 127 (6.66%) Banking
6 62 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.41%) Military
8 38 (1.99%) Financial Institution
9 32 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
10 26 (1.36%) Front Office
10 26 (1.36%) Investment Banking
11 23 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
12 21 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 20 (1.05%) Aerospace
14 19 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
14 19 (1.00%) Retail
15 17 (0.89%) Law
15 17 (0.89%) Legal
16 14 (0.73%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 235 (12.32%) Senior
2 231 (12.11%) Developer
3 166 (8.70%) DevOps Engineer
4 134 (7.02%) Software Engineer
5 126 (6.60%) Architect
6 121 (6.34%) Analyst
7 117 (6.13%) Linux Engineer
8 91 (4.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 84 (4.40%) Lead
10 83 (4.35%) Administrator
10 83 (4.35%) Java Developer
11 74 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
12 70 (3.67%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 66 (3.46%) AWS Engineer
14 65 (3.41%) Site Engineer
15 52 (2.73%) AWS DevOps
16 51 (2.67%) Security Engineer
17 50 (2.62%) Support Engineer
18 47 (2.46%) Consultant
19 44 (2.31%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (6.24%) Kafka
2 111 (5.82%) REST
3 101 (5.29%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.67%) Node.js
5 68 (3.56%) Middleware
6 54 (2.83%) Spring
7 53 (2.78%) LDAP
8 46 (2.41%) RESTful
9 42 (2.20%) Spring Boot
10 39 (2.04%) Web Services
11 36 (1.89%) JSON
11 36 (1.89%) XML
12 34 (1.78%) YAML
13 32 (1.68%) React
14 29 (1.52%) AngularJS
15 27 (1.42%) SOAP
16 26 (1.36%) .NET
17 20 (1.05%) Flash
17 20 (1.05%) OpenTelemetry
18 19 (1.00%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 114 (5.97%) Data Centre
2 112 (5.87%) Cloud Native
3 81 (4.25%) Linux Command Line
4 71 (3.72%) Distributed Systems
5 67 (3.51%) Management Information System
6 65 (3.41%) Public Cloud
7 56 (2.94%) PKI
8 54 (2.83%) Onboarding
8 54 (2.83%) Replication
9 50 (2.62%) Hybrid Cloud
10 42 (2.20%) Product Ownership
11 35 (1.83%) Security Operations Centre
12 33 (1.73%) Equities
12 33 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
13 32 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
13 32 (1.68%) Security Posture
14 27 (1.42%) Fixed Income
15 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
15 26 (1.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 25 (1.31%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 705 (36.95%) Windows
2 334 (17.51%) Unix
3 280 (14.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 167 (8.75%) Windows Server
5 88 (4.61%) Ubuntu
6 43 (2.25%) CentOS
7 40 (2.10%) AIX
8 36 (1.89%) Android
9 33 (1.73%) Solaris
9 33 (1.73%) VMS
10 29 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
11 26 (1.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 21 (1.10%) Mac OS
12 21 (1.10%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.79%) Debian
14 11 (0.58%) Mac OS X
14 11 (0.58%) SUSE
14 11 (0.58%) Windows 10
15 10 (0.52%) Kali Linux
15 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 576 (30.19%) CI/CD
2 481 (25.21%) DevOps
3 420 (22.01%) Agile
4 340 (17.82%) Problem-Solving
5 307 (16.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 302 (15.83%) Containerisation
7 216 (11.32%) Software Engineering
8 193 (10.12%) Observability
9 156 (8.18%) Continuous Improvement
10 154 (8.07%) Computer Science
10 154 (8.07%) Cybersecurity
11 151 (7.91%) Migration
12 150 (7.86%) Microservices
13 149 (7.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 146 (7.65%) Incident Response
15 138 (7.23%) High Availability
15 138 (7.23%) Test Automation
16 136 (7.13%) Platform Engineering
17 127 (6.66%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 126 (6.60%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 676 (35.43%) Python
2 312 (16.35%) SQL
3 298 (15.62%) Bash
4 296 (15.51%) Java
5 278 (14.57%) PowerShell
6 183 (9.59%) Shell Script
7 143 (7.49%) C++
8 110 (5.77%) JavaScript
9 89 (4.66%) Perl
10 66 (3.46%) C#
11 53 (2.78%) Go
12 50 (2.62%) C
13 39 (2.04%) Ruby
14 38 (1.99%) PL/SQL
15 32 (1.68%) TypeScript
16 25 (1.31%) PHP
16 25 (1.31%) Rust
17 20 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
18 19 (1.00%) MATLAB
19 18 (0.94%) Ada
Qualifications
1 747 (39.15%) Security Cleared
2 550 (28.83%) SC Cleared
3 196 (10.27%) Degree
4 190 (9.96%) DV Cleared
5 95 (4.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 88 (4.61%) BPSS Clearance
7 53 (2.78%) AWS Certification
8 42 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
9 40 (2.10%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.04%) CISSP
11 27 (1.42%) Master's Degree
11 27 (1.42%) RHCE
12 26 (1.36%) CCNA
13 24 (1.26%) CCNP
14 23 (1.21%) Azure Certification
15 21 (1.10%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
16 18 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.94%) OCP
17 17 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (4.14%) NIST
2 58 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 50 (2.62%) QA
4 44 (2.31%) GDPR
5 35 (1.83%) SLA
6 26 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
7 22 (1.15%) NCSC
7 22 (1.15%) PCI DSS
8 13 (0.68%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.63%) GLBA
10 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 9 (0.47%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
14 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
14 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 4 (0.21%) GRC
16 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 390 (20.44%) Docker
2 237 (12.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 164 (8.60%) Active Directory
4 96 (5.03%) vSphere
5 71 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (3.25%) Hyper-V
7 58 (3.04%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (1.99%) VMware NSX
9 34 (1.78%) NFS
10 32 (1.68%) Firmware
11 27 (1.42%) GPFS
12 22 (1.15%) KVM
13 17 (0.89%) Oracle RAC
14 14 (0.73%) Postfix
14 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.58%) Ceph
15 11 (0.58%) Lustre
16 7 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.31%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 475 (24.90%) Kubernetes
2 398 (20.86%) Terraform
3 392 (20.55%) Ansible
4 197 (10.32%) Grafana
5 165 (8.65%) Prometheus
6 67 (3.51%) Puppet
7 60 (3.14%) Progress Chef
8 47 (2.46%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.04%) vRealize
10 37 (1.94%) Packer
11 35 (1.83%) Argo
12 33 (1.73%) Red Hat Satellite
13 32 (1.68%) Podman
14 25 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
15 22 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
16 21 (1.10%) Kibana
16 21 (1.10%) VxRail
17 20 (1.05%) SCCM
18 18 (0.94%) Nessus
19 17 (0.89%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 320 (16.77%) VMware
2 282 (14.78%) Microsoft
3 245 (12.84%) Oracle
4 234 (12.26%) Red Hat
5 197 (10.32%) Splunk
6 109 (5.71%) Cisco
7 94 (4.93%) IBM
8 68 (3.56%) ServiceNow
9 51 (2.67%) Dell
9 51 (2.67%) Google
10 42 (2.20%) Palo Alto
11 35 (1.83%) CyberArk
11 35 (1.83%) SolarWinds
12 34 (1.78%) HP
13 29 (1.52%) Citrix
14 28 (1.47%) Atlassian
14 28 (1.47%) NetApp
15 26 (1.36%) NVIDIA
16 25 (1.31%) AppDynamics
16 25 (1.31%) Sybase