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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -19 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,866 1,792 2,354
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.31% 6.11% 5.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.44% 42.54% 39.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,185 1,128 1,565
10th Percentile £320 £375 £313
25th Percentile £400 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +1.85% -7.69%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £750 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £537 £525
% change year-on-year -9.35% +2.33% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 55 110
10th Percentile £15.50 £40.80 £26.14
25th Percentile £41.25 £55.81 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.50 £75.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.50
% change year-on-year -3.24% +7.85% -6.92%

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 4,731 4,213 6,024
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.93% 14.37% 13.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,099 2,774 4,024
10th Percentile £180 £200 £181
25th Percentile £290 £320 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £456
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +4.17% -11.46%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £658 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £450 £430
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.65% -9.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 349 157 404
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.40 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.79 £27.50 £22.40
Median % change year-on-year -17.15% +22.77% -15.44%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £59.63
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £22.50
% change year-on-year -8.76% +9.60% -13.46%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -19 1,597 £513 -6.82% 823
UK excluding London -10 1,081 £487 -9.35% 727
London -32 580 £550 -8.33% 203
Work from Home -25 479 £500 -6.89% 357
South East 0 310 £500 -4.76% 211
North of England -10 293 £500 -9.09% 132
Midlands -18 167 £475 -9.52% 80
Yorkshire -18 158 £482 -12.36% 41
West Midlands -8 152 £475 -12.84% 49
South West -21 143 £539 -10.21% 122
North West -15 127 £525 -2.33% 63
Scotland -21 81 £425 -9.04% 62
East of England -13 79 £450 -4.76% 111
Northern Ireland +7 15 £425 +30.77% 7
East Midlands -47 15 £478 +5.06% 31
North East -16 11 £550 +8.64% 29
Wales -10 8 £404 -26.59% 18

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 93 (4.98%) Confluence
2 45 (2.41%) nginx
3 41 (2.20%) Apache
4 39 (2.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.02%) Apache Spark
6 18 (0.96%) OpenStack
7 16 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 14 (0.75%) WebLogic
9 12 (0.64%) SharePoint
9 12 (0.64%) Tomcat
9 12 (0.64%) TPMS
10 11 (0.59%) SAS
11 9 (0.48%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.43%) CICS
13 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.21%) JBoss
15 3 (0.16%) CMS
15 3 (0.16%) IIS
Applications
1 48 (2.57%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.59%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.11%) Simulink
7 1 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.054%) InDesign
7 1 (0.054%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.054%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 9 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.054%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.054%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.054%) Odoo
5 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.054%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.054%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.054%) RMDS
5 1 (0.054%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.054%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 553 (29.64%) AWS
2 361 (19.35%) Azure
3 177 (9.49%) GitHub
4 134 (7.18%) OpenShift
5 124 (6.65%) GCP
6 103 (5.52%) AWS CloudFormation
7 97 (5.20%) Amazon EC2
7 97 (5.20%) Serverless
8 90 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
9 80 (4.29%) Amazon S3
10 74 (3.97%) Amazon EKS
11 66 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
12 64 (3.43%) AWS Lambda
13 61 (3.27%) Amazon ECS
14 56 (3.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 46 (2.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 43 (2.30%) IaaS
17 35 (1.88%) Entra ID
18 33 (1.77%) SaaS
19 32 (1.71%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 204 (10.93%) Firewall
2 128 (6.86%) DNS
3 111 (5.95%) TCP/IP
4 63 (3.38%) Network Security
4 63 (3.38%) VPN
5 46 (2.47%) SAN
6 44 (2.36%) SSH
7 35 (1.88%) DHCP
7 35 (1.88%) WAN
8 34 (1.82%) VSAN
9 32 (1.71%) HTTP
10 29 (1.55%) SSL
11 27 (1.45%) SNMP
12 25 (1.34%) LAN
13 23 (1.23%) Ethernet
14 22 (1.18%) BGP
14 22 (1.18%) Wireless
15 18 (0.96%) Kerberos
16 17 (0.91%) NAS
16 17 (0.91%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (7.34%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.77%) SQL Server
3 76 (4.07%) Amazon RDS
4 72 (3.86%) Relational Database
5 69 (3.70%) MySQL
6 67 (3.59%) MongoDB
7 58 (3.11%) Oracle Database
8 54 (2.89%) NoSQL
9 42 (2.25%) Elasticsearch
10 22 (1.18%) DB2
11 21 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
12 20 (1.07%) Big Data
12 20 (1.07%) KDB
13 19 (1.02%) Kdb+
14 16 (0.86%) Data Lake
15 15 (0.80%) Hadoop
16 13 (0.70%) DynamoDB
16 13 (0.70%) SAP HANA
17 12 (0.64%) Redis
17 12 (0.64%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 246 (13.18%) Jenkins
2 194 (10.40%) Git
3 190 (10.18%) GitLab
4 153 (8.20%) JIRA
5 43 (2.30%) JUnit
6 42 (2.25%) Bitbucket
7 33 (1.77%) Sonatype Nexus
8 31 (1.66%) Eclipse
8 31 (1.66%) Maven
9 24 (1.29%) Cucumber
10 21 (1.13%) Mockito
11 18 (0.96%) Artifactory
12 17 (0.91%) SonarQube
13 16 (0.86%) Visual Studio
14 14 (0.75%) Burp Suite
14 14 (0.75%) JMeter
14 14 (0.75%) Selenium
15 12 (0.64%) Liquibase
16 11 (0.59%) Jaeger
16 11 (0.59%) Metasploit
General
1 472 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 306 (16.40%) Finance
3 191 (10.24%) Public Sector
4 164 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
5 127 (6.81%) Banking
6 59 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.41%) Military
8 38 (2.04%) Financial Institution
9 33 (1.77%) Presentation Skills
10 28 (1.50%) Front Office
10 28 (1.50%) Investment Banking
11 24 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
12 21 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.02%) Retail
13 19 (1.02%) Telecoms
14 18 (0.96%) Law
14 18 (0.96%) Legal
15 17 (0.91%) Aerospace
16 13 (0.70%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 238 (12.75%) Developer
2 223 (11.95%) Senior
3 167 (8.95%) DevOps Engineer
4 133 (7.13%) Software Engineer
5 123 (6.59%) Analyst
6 120 (6.43%) Architect
7 96 (5.14%) Linux Engineer
8 84 (4.50%) Lead
9 83 (4.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 83 (4.45%) Java Developer
10 76 (4.07%) Administrator
11 72 (3.86%) Platform Engineer
12 69 (3.70%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 67 (3.59%) AWS Engineer
14 64 (3.43%) Site Engineer
15 61 (3.27%) Support Engineer
16 56 (3.00%) AWS DevOps
17 52 (2.79%) Security Engineer
18 45 (2.41%) Cloud Engineer
19 43 (2.30%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (6.59%) Kafka
2 111 (5.95%) REST
3 102 (5.47%) Elastic Stack
4 73 (3.91%) Middleware
5 72 (3.86%) Node.js
6 59 (3.16%) Spring
7 50 (2.68%) LDAP
8 47 (2.52%) RESTful
9 42 (2.25%) JSON
10 41 (2.20%) Spring Boot
10 41 (2.20%) Web Services
10 41 (2.20%) XML
11 36 (1.93%) React
12 34 (1.82%) YAML
13 31 (1.66%) AngularJS
14 29 (1.55%) SOAP
15 26 (1.39%) .NET
16 22 (1.18%) CSS
17 21 (1.13%) OpenTelemetry
18 20 (1.07%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 119 (6.38%) Data Centre
2 111 (5.95%) Cloud Native
3 79 (4.23%) Linux Command Line
4 68 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
5 66 (3.54%) Management Information System
6 60 (3.22%) Public Cloud
7 56 (3.00%) PKI
8 53 (2.84%) Onboarding
9 47 (2.52%) Replication
10 43 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
11 41 (2.20%) Product Ownership
12 37 (1.98%) Security Operations Centre
13 36 (1.93%) Equities
14 33 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
14 33 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
14 33 (1.77%) Security Posture
15 29 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 27 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
17 26 (1.39%) Fixed Income
18 25 (1.34%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 691 (37.03%) Windows
2 329 (17.63%) Unix
3 255 (13.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 160 (8.57%) Windows Server
5 90 (4.82%) Ubuntu
6 42 (2.25%) CentOS
7 36 (1.93%) AIX
7 36 (1.93%) Android
8 30 (1.61%) Solaris
9 27 (1.45%) VMS
10 25 (1.34%) Windows Server 2016
11 22 (1.18%) Mac OS
12 21 (1.13%) Embedded Linux
13 18 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.75%) Debian
14 14 (0.75%) Kali Linux
14 14 (0.75%) Mac OS X
15 12 (0.64%) Windows 10
16 11 (0.59%) Apple iOS
17 10 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 568 (30.44%) CI/CD
2 470 (25.19%) DevOps
3 420 (22.51%) Agile
4 342 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
5 303 (16.24%) Infrastructure as Code
6 290 (15.54%) Containerisation
7 220 (11.79%) Software Engineering
8 195 (10.45%) Observability
9 162 (8.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 158 (8.47%) Cybersecurity
11 151 (8.09%) Computer Science
12 148 (7.93%) Microservices
13 146 (7.82%) Incident Response
14 142 (7.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 142 (7.61%) Test Automation
15 140 (7.50%) Migration
16 130 (6.97%) Platform Engineering
17 128 (6.86%) High Availability
18 127 (6.81%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 123 (6.59%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 671 (35.96%) Python
2 315 (16.88%) SQL
3 308 (16.51%) Java
4 305 (16.35%) Bash
5 269 (14.42%) PowerShell
6 179 (9.59%) Shell Script
7 151 (8.09%) C++
8 123 (6.59%) JavaScript
9 93 (4.98%) Perl
10 69 (3.70%) C#
11 56 (3.00%) Go
12 49 (2.63%) C
13 42 (2.25%) Ruby
14 33 (1.77%) PL/SQL
15 32 (1.71%) TypeScript
16 27 (1.45%) Rust
17 25 (1.34%) PHP
18 21 (1.13%) Ada
19 20 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
20 16 (0.86%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 720 (38.59%) Security Cleared
2 526 (28.19%) SC Cleared
3 189 (10.13%) Degree
4 174 (9.32%) DV Cleared
5 93 (4.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 89 (4.77%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.22%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
8 40 (2.14%) CompTIA Security+
9 39 (2.09%) CISSP
10 28 (1.50%) Master's Degree
11 25 (1.34%) CCNA
11 25 (1.34%) RHCE
12 24 (1.29%) Azure Certification
12 24 (1.29%) CCNP
13 21 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 21 (1.13%) Oracle Certification
14 18 (0.96%) CompTIA CySA+
15 17 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 17 (0.91%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.91%) NIST
2 53 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 47 (2.52%) QA
4 45 (2.41%) GDPR
5 32 (1.71%) SLA
6 23 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.13%) NCSC
7 21 (1.13%) PCI DSS
8 13 (0.70%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.64%) GLBA
10 9 (0.48%) HIPAA
11 8 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 7 (0.38%) Accessibility
12 7 (0.38%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.27%) SOC 2
14 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 4 (0.21%) GRC
15 3 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
15 3 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 381 (20.42%) Docker
2 220 (11.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 156 (8.36%) Active Directory
4 86 (4.61%) vSphere
5 70 (3.75%) Virtual Machines
6 52 (2.79%) Hyper-V
7 50 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
8 33 (1.77%) NFS
9 29 (1.55%) VMware NSX
10 28 (1.50%) GPFS
11 22 (1.18%) Firmware
12 21 (1.13%) KVM
13 15 (0.80%) Oracle RAC
14 13 (0.70%) Postfix
14 13 (0.70%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 12 (0.64%) Lustre
16 8 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.38%) Ceph
18 6 (0.32%) HDFS
18 6 (0.32%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 476 (25.51%) Kubernetes
2 395 (21.17%) Terraform
3 373 (19.99%) Ansible
4 199 (10.66%) Grafana
5 166 (8.90%) Prometheus
6 66 (3.54%) Puppet
7 58 (3.11%) Progress Chef
8 42 (2.25%) vCenter Server
9 37 (1.98%) Packer
10 36 (1.93%) vRealize
11 33 (1.77%) Argo
12 31 (1.66%) Red Hat Satellite
13 29 (1.55%) Podman
14 24 (1.29%) Kibana
15 23 (1.23%) SCCM
16 20 (1.07%) Oracle RMAN
17 19 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
18 18 (0.96%) VxRail
19 17 (0.91%) Consul
19 17 (0.91%) Nessus
Vendors
1 298 (15.97%) VMware
2 286 (15.33%) Microsoft
3 235 (12.59%) Oracle
4 222 (11.90%) Red Hat
5 200 (10.72%) Splunk
6 101 (5.41%) Cisco
7 87 (4.66%) IBM
8 66 (3.54%) ServiceNow
9 52 (2.79%) Google
10 46 (2.47%) Dell
11 38 (2.04%) Palo Alto
12 32 (1.71%) CyberArk
13 31 (1.66%) SolarWinds
14 28 (1.50%) Citrix
14 28 (1.50%) HP
14 28 (1.50%) NetApp
15 27 (1.45%) Atlassian
15 27 (1.45%) NVIDIA
16 24 (1.29%) AppDynamics
17 22 (1.18%) Commvault