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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -22 -6 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,083 1,871 2,098
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.82% 5.64% 5.52%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.44% 41.19% 39.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,305 1,126 1,236
10th Percentile £357 £338 £350
25th Percentile £435 £419 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £538
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -4.19% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £645
90th Percentile £720 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +4.17% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 74 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £37.91 £49.50
25th Percentile £54.65 £53.14 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £69.88 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.25 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.35%

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 5,282 4,542 5,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.69% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,333 2,906 3,308
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £281 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £448
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.03% -0.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 305 251
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.80
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -54.27% +25.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £57.25
% change year-on-year +3.08% -56.33% +41.97%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -23 1,761 £525 +0.96% 3,151
UK excluding London -25 1,153 £513 +4.17% 1,525
London -32 728 £535 -6.96% 1,658
Work from Home -25 557 £513 -1.35% 1,156
South East -16 326 £536 +12.93% 425
North of England -31 268 £500 +5.26% 227
South West +1 171 £575 +4.55% 247
North West -18 135 £493 +23.25% 127
Scotland -18 130 £459 -8.25% 113
Midlands -46 125 £477 -4.60% 153
East of England -10 111 £483 -3.50% 290
Yorkshire -35 109 £521 +4.25% 65
West Midlands -45 106 £476 -6.85% 89
North East -15 32 £480 -10.70% 36
Wales +13 28 £465 +3.33% 25
East Midlands -10 17 £481 +14.52% 64
Northern Ireland -2 3 - - 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 (3.17%) 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 23 (1.10%) Apache Spark
7 22 (1.06%) SharePoint
8 20 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
9 19 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 19 (0.91%) Tomcat
10 17 (0.82%) IIS
11 15 (0.72%) JBoss
12 13 (0.62%) SAS
13 11 (0.53%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.29%) CMS
14 6 (0.29%) MTS
14 6 (0.29%) WebLogic Portal
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 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%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.096%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
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 Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 615 (29.52%) AWS
2 536 (25.73%) Azure
3 211 (10.13%) GCP
4 163 (7.83%) GitHub
5 114 (5.47%) Entra ID
6 109 (5.23%) OpenShift
7 102 (4.90%) GitHub Actions
8 95 (4.56%) Amazon S3
8 95 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
9 81 (3.89%) Amazon EC2
10 71 (3.41%) AWS CloudFormation
10 71 (3.41%) Serverless
11 63 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
12 62 (2.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 62 (2.98%) Amazon EKS
13 61 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
14 55 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 51 (2.45%) IaaS
16 46 (2.21%) Datadog
17 42 (2.02%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 229 (10.99%) DNS
2 220 (10.56%) Firewall
3 173 (8.31%) TCP/IP
4 134 (6.43%) DHCP
5 94 (4.51%) VPN
6 93 (4.46%) Network Security
7 74 (3.55%) SAN
8 56 (2.69%) SSL
9 47 (2.26%) SSH
10 46 (2.21%) HTTP
11 45 (2.16%) WAN
12 39 (1.87%) VLAN
13 31 (1.49%) BGP
13 31 (1.49%) LAN
14 28 (1.34%) Kerberos
15 27 (1.30%) VSAN
15 27 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
16 23 (1.10%) Wireless
17 22 (1.06%) 5G
17 22 (1.06%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (6.00%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.33%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.94%) Oracle Database
4 75 (3.60%) Relational Database
5 63 (3.02%) MySQL
6 60 (2.88%) Amazon RDS
7 53 (2.54%) MongoDB
8 50 (2.40%) NoSQL
9 37 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
10 35 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
11 28 (1.34%) Big Data
11 28 (1.34%) RDBMS
12 26 (1.25%) Amazon Aurora
13 24 (1.15%) Data Lake
14 20 (0.96%) Power BI
14 20 (0.96%) Redis
15 18 (0.86%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.86%) Hadoop
15 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
16 16 (0.77%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 295 (14.16%) Git
2 266 (12.77%) Jenkins
3 235 (11.28%) GitLab
4 165 (7.92%) JIRA
5 43 (2.06%) Maven
6 35 (1.68%) Bitbucket
6 35 (1.68%) SonarQube
7 28 (1.34%) Artifactory
8 27 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.15%) Selenium
10 20 (0.96%) Gradle
10 20 (0.96%) Mockito
11 19 (0.91%) JUnit
12 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.82%) Cucumber
14 14 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.53%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.48%) JMeter
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 464 (22.28%) Social Skills
2 345 (16.56%) Finance
3 244 (11.71%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (8.45%) Banking
5 158 (7.59%) Public Sector
6 80 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.59%) Telecoms
8 47 (2.26%) Investment Banking
9 34 (1.63%) Front Office
10 33 (1.58%) 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 10 (0.48%) Police
Job Titles
1 319 (15.31%) Senior
2 230 (11.04%) Linux Engineer
3 214 (10.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 208 (9.99%) Developer
5 190 (9.12%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (5.09%) Platform Engineer
7 100 (4.80%) Architect
8 92 (4.42%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.94%) Support Engineer
10 81 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
11 74 (3.55%) Java Developer
12 73 (3.50%) Consultant
13 72 (3.46%) Analyst
14 71 (3.41%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 65 (3.12%) AWS Engineer
15 65 (3.12%) Lead
16 64 (3.07%) Administrator
17 58 (2.78%) Network Engineer
18 52 (2.50%) Automation Engineer
18 52 (2.50%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 527 (25.30%) Terraform
2 144 (6.91%) Kafka
3 140 (6.72%) REST
4 83 (3.98%) Middleware
5 73 (3.50%) Elastic Stack
6 70 (3.36%) .NET
7 58 (2.78%) Spring
8 57 (2.74%) RESTful
9 54 (2.59%) Web Services
10 51 (2.45%) LDAP
10 51 (2.45%) Spring Boot
11 45 (2.16%) JSON
12 43 (2.06%) React
13 41 (1.97%) XML
14 38 (1.82%) HTML
15 35 (1.68%) SOAP
16 34 (1.63%) Flask
17 32 (1.54%) ARM Templates
18 31 (1.49%) Django
18 31 (1.49%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 167 (8.02%) Onboarding
2 146 (7.01%) Cloud Native
3 127 (6.10%) Data Centre
4 113 (5.42%) PKI
5 106 (5.09%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.46%) Replication
7 92 (4.42%) Distributed Systems
8 74 (3.55%) Hybrid Cloud
9 66 (3.17%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.12%) Public Cloud
11 58 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
12 53 (2.54%) Security Posture
13 42 (2.02%) Private Cloud
14 41 (1.97%) Product Ownership
15 39 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
15 39 (1.87%) Operational Technology
16 38 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
17 36 (1.73%) Enterprise Storage
17 36 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
18 33 (1.58%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 794 (38.12%) Windows
2 419 (20.12%) Unix
3 359 (17.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 251 (12.05%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.14%) Ubuntu
6 62 (2.98%) CentOS
7 52 (2.50%) Solaris
8 51 (2.45%) AIX
9 31 (1.49%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.44%) Windows 10
11 28 (1.34%) VMS
12 26 (1.25%) SUSE
13 23 (1.10%) Rocky
14 18 (0.86%) Mac OS
15 16 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
17 12 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
18 11 (0.53%) Amazon Linux
18 11 (0.53%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 673 (32.31%) CI/CD
2 590 (28.32%) DevOps
3 475 (22.80%) Infrastructure as Code
4 397 (19.06%) Agile
5 334 (16.03%) Problem-Solving
6 330 (15.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 311 (14.93%) Containerisation
8 275 (13.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 261 (12.53%) Observability
10 246 (11.81%) Platform Engineering
11 235 (11.28%) Migration
12 219 (10.51%) Software Engineering
13 216 (10.37%) Root Cause Analysis
14 196 (9.41%) High Availability
15 190 (9.12%) Configuration Management
16 182 (8.74%) ITIL
17 180 (8.64%) Cybersecurity
17 180 (8.64%) Stakeholder Management
17 180 (8.64%) Test Automation
18 166 (7.97%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 778 (37.35%) Python
2 468 (22.47%) Bash
3 419 (20.12%) PowerShell
4 377 (18.10%) SQL
5 260 (12.48%) Java
6 159 (7.63%) Shell Script
7 119 (5.71%) C++
8 88 (4.22%) JavaScript
9 86 (4.13%) Perl
10 77 (3.70%) C#
11 65 (3.12%) C
12 58 (2.78%) PL/SQL
13 57 (2.74%) Go
14 47 (2.26%) 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 15 (0.72%) Ada
Qualifications
1 788 (37.83%) Security Cleared
2 547 (26.26%) SC Cleared
3 252 (12.10%) DV Cleared
4 186 (8.93%) Degree
5 77 (3.70%) AWS Certification
6 63 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 60 (2.88%) CISSP
8 57 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
9 56 (2.69%) Azure Certification
10 54 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 29 (1.39%) CISM
12 25 (1.20%) CCNP
13 23 (1.10%) 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 72 (3.46%) NIST
3 63 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 27 (1.30%) 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%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.34%) MISRA
13 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
14 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA C
System Software
1 390 (18.72%) Docker
2 295 (14.16%) Active Directory
3 232 (11.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 81 (3.89%) Hyper-V
5 77 (3.70%) 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 (1.54%) NFS
12 26 (1.25%) Virtual Servers
13 25 (1.20%) KVM
14 13 (0.62%) Ceph
15 12 (0.58%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.58%) Slurm Workload Manager
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
1 496 (23.81%) Kubernetes
2 474 (22.76%) Ansible
3 199 (9.55%) Grafana
4 176 (8.45%) Prometheus
5 93 (4.46%) Puppet
6 63 (3.02%) 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
10 39 (1.87%) Kibana
11 29 (1.39%) vCenter Server
12 28 (1.34%) Nagios
13 26 (1.25%) NetBackup
13 26 (1.25%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.25%) VxRail
14 24 (1.15%) Packer
14 24 (1.15%) Podman
15 21 (1.01%) Istio
16 20 (0.96%) Argo
Vendors
1 358 (17.19%) Microsoft
2 325 (15.60%) VMware
3 283 (13.59%) Oracle
4 216 (10.37%) Red Hat
5 176 (8.45%) Splunk
6 123 (5.90%) ServiceNow
7 119 (5.71%) Cisco
8 102 (4.90%) Google
9 90 (4.32%) IBM
10 79 (3.79%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.40%) NetApp
12 45 (2.16%) SolarWinds
13 40 (1.92%) F5
14 39 (1.87%) Palo Alto
15 38 (1.82%) Dynatrace
16 36 (1.73%) BeyondTrust
17 35 (1.68%) Dell
17 35 (1.68%) SAP
18 29 (1.39%) Tenable
19 28 (1.34%) Veeam