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 2 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -19 +1 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,906 1,763 2,306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.26% 6.07% 5.22%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.11% 42.78% 38.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,217 1,134 1,530
10th Percentile £325 £375 £323
25th Percentile £401 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £548
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +0.46% -6.41%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £647
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £534 £533
% change year-on-year -7.78% +0.09% -1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 50 105
10th Percentile £21.40 £44.55 £25.61
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 £80.11 £69.00 £70.75
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 4,752 4,121 5,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.61% 14.18% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,116 2,745 4,014
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £300 £325 £284
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £460
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.26% -10.24%
75th Percentile £569 £600 £594
90th Percentile £655 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £438
% change year-on-year -5.56% +2.86% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 165 403
10th Percentile £15.22 £16.67 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.20 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.00 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% +12.09% -26.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.68 £68.52 £67.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.79 £24.66 £20.00
% change year-on-year -3.54% +23.30% -28.83%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 1,624 £520 -5.45% 832
UK excluding London -10 1,118 £492 -7.78% 721
London -39 570 £550 -8.33% 200
Work from Home -26 489 £500 -6.72% 308
South East -4 316 £500 -8.00% 206
North of England -13 300 £500 -9.09% 125
Midlands -8 173 £475 -9.52% 75
Yorkshire -15 162 £475 -13.64% 41
West Midlands 0 155 £475 -12.04% 41
South West -19 149 £538 -10.42% 144
North West -10 129 £538 +4.88% 58
East of England -12 89 £452 -3.32% 117
Scotland -23 83 £413 -12.23% 44
East Midlands -40 17 £478 +4.03% 34
Northern Ireland +9 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -15 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 (5.09%) Confluence
2 45 (2.36%) nginx
3 44 (2.31%) Apache
4 38 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 17 (0.89%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.84%) WebLogic
7 15 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
8 14 (0.73%) SAS
9 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
9 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
10 11 (0.58%) TPMS
11 9 (0.47%) 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%) IIS
15 3 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
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
1 559 (29.33%) AWS
2 373 (19.57%) Azure
3 181 (9.50%) GitHub
4 137 (7.19%) OpenShift
5 124 (6.51%) GCP
6 100 (5.25%) Amazon EC2
6 100 (5.25%) AWS CloudFormation
7 98 (5.14%) Serverless
8 94 (4.93%) GitHub Actions
9 83 (4.35%) Amazon S3
10 75 (3.93%) Amazon EKS
11 65 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
11 65 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
12 60 (3.15%) Amazon ECS
13 58 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 47 (2.47%) IaaS
15 43 (2.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 39 (2.05%) Entra ID
17 36 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
18 35 (1.84%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 214 (11.23%) Firewall
2 138 (7.24%) DNS
3 106 (5.56%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.73%) VPN
5 69 (3.62%) Network Security
6 52 (2.73%) SAN
7 46 (2.41%) SSH
8 41 (2.15%) VSAN
9 40 (2.10%) DHCP
10 37 (1.94%) WAN
11 35 (1.84%) HTTP
12 32 (1.68%) LAN
12 32 (1.68%) SNMP
12 32 (1.68%) SSL
13 24 (1.26%) Ethernet
14 23 (1.21%) BGP
14 23 (1.21%) Wireless
15 21 (1.10%) Kerberos
16 20 (1.05%) NAS
17 19 (1.00%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (7.50%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (4.98%) SQL Server
3 75 (3.93%) Amazon RDS
4 68 (3.57%) MySQL
5 67 (3.52%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.41%) MongoDB
7 62 (3.25%) Oracle Database
8 48 (2.52%) NoSQL
9 39 (2.05%) Elasticsearch
10 24 (1.26%) Data Warehouse
11 19 (1.00%) KDB
12 18 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
12 18 (0.94%) Kdb+
13 17 (0.89%) Big Data
13 17 (0.89%) DynamoDB
14 16 (0.84%) DB2
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
1 245 (12.85%) Jenkins
2 198 (10.39%) Git
3 190 (9.97%) GitLab
4 154 (8.08%) JIRA
5 38 (1.99%) Bitbucket
6 37 (1.94%) JUnit
7 34 (1.78%) Sonatype Nexus
8 33 (1.73%) Maven
9 28 (1.47%) Eclipse
10 23 (1.21%) Mockito
11 21 (1.10%) Cucumber
12 20 (1.05%) Artifactory
12 20 (1.05%) 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%) jMock
General
1 450 (23.61%) Social Skills
2 300 (15.74%) Finance
3 190 (9.97%) Public Sector
4 158 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
5 126 (6.61%) 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 23 (1.21%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 22 (1.15%) Front Office
11 22 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 20 (1.05%) Aerospace
13 19 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 19 (1.00%) Retail
14 18 (0.94%) Legal
15 17 (0.89%) Law
16 14 (0.73%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 235 (12.33%) Senior
2 230 (12.07%) Developer
3 166 (8.71%) DevOps Engineer
4 135 (7.08%) Software Engineer
5 127 (6.66%) Architect
6 120 (6.30%) Analyst
7 118 (6.19%) Linux Engineer
8 92 (4.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 84 (4.41%) Lead
10 81 (4.25%) Administrator
10 81 (4.25%) Java Developer
11 74 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
12 71 (3.73%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 66 (3.46%) AWS Engineer
13 66 (3.46%) Site Engineer
14 52 (2.73%) AWS DevOps
14 52 (2.73%) Consultant
15 51 (2.68%) Security Engineer
16 50 (2.62%) Support Engineer
17 43 (2.26%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (6.09%) Kafka
2 110 (5.77%) REST
3 100 (5.25%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.67%) Node.js
5 67 (3.52%) Middleware
6 53 (2.78%) LDAP
7 52 (2.73%) Spring
8 46 (2.41%) RESTful
9 42 (2.20%) Spring Boot
10 41 (2.15%) Web Services
11 34 (1.78%) XML
11 34 (1.78%) YAML
12 33 (1.73%) JSON
13 30 (1.57%) React
14 29 (1.52%) AngularJS
15 28 (1.47%) .NET
15 28 (1.47%) SOAP
16 21 (1.10%) SAML
17 20 (1.05%) ActiveMQ
17 20 (1.05%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 114 (5.98%) Data Centre
2 112 (5.88%) Cloud Native
3 81 (4.25%) Linux Command Line
4 73 (3.83%) Distributed Systems
5 67 (3.52%) Public Cloud
6 64 (3.36%) Management Information System
7 56 (2.94%) PKI
8 54 (2.83%) Onboarding
9 52 (2.73%) Replication
10 49 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
11 43 (2.26%) Product Ownership
12 34 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
13 33 (1.73%) Security Operations Centre
14 31 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.63%) Equities
15 29 (1.52%) Security Posture
16 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
16 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Storage
17 25 (1.31%) Fixed Income
18 23 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 710 (37.25%) Windows
2 330 (17.31%) Unix
3 279 (14.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 168 (8.81%) Windows Server
5 90 (4.72%) Ubuntu
6 43 (2.26%) CentOS
7 42 (2.20%) AIX
8 36 (1.89%) Android
9 34 (1.78%) VMS
10 33 (1.73%) Solaris
11 29 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
12 26 (1.36%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.10%) Mac OS
13 21 (1.10%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.89%) Debian
15 11 (0.58%) Mac OS X
15 11 (0.58%) SUSE
15 11 (0.58%) Windows 10
16 10 (0.52%) Kali Linux
16 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (29.96%) CI/CD
2 476 (24.97%) DevOps
3 414 (21.72%) Agile
4 339 (17.79%) Problem-Solving
5 303 (15.90%) Infrastructure as Code
6 298 (15.63%) Containerisation
7 216 (11.33%) Software Engineering
8 189 (9.92%) Observability
9 157 (8.24%) Migration
10 153 (8.03%) Computer Science
11 151 (7.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 150 (7.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 150 (7.87%) Cybersecurity
12 150 (7.87%) Microservices
13 140 (7.35%) High Availability
14 138 (7.24%) Incident Response
14 138 (7.24%) Test Automation
15 135 (7.08%) Platform Engineering
16 127 (6.66%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 122 (6.40%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 669 (35.10%) Python
2 311 (16.32%) SQL
3 295 (15.48%) Bash
4 293 (15.37%) Java
5 275 (14.43%) PowerShell
6 182 (9.55%) Shell Script
7 141 (7.40%) C++
8 110 (5.77%) JavaScript
9 89 (4.67%) Perl
10 66 (3.46%) C#
11 53 (2.78%) Go
12 51 (2.68%) C
13 42 (2.20%) Ruby
14 38 (1.99%) PL/SQL
15 32 (1.68%) TypeScript
16 25 (1.31%) PHP
17 24 (1.26%) Rust
18 20 (1.05%) MATLAB
19 18 (0.94%) Ada
19 18 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 750 (39.35%) Security Cleared
2 555 (29.12%) SC Cleared
3 194 (10.18%) Degree
4 192 (10.07%) DV Cleared
5 94 (4.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 90 (4.72%) BPSS Clearance
7 52 (2.73%) AWS Certification
8 42 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
9 40 (2.10%) CompTIA Security+
10 39 (2.05%) CISSP
11 26 (1.36%) CCNA
11 26 (1.36%) Master's Degree
11 26 (1.36%) RHCE
12 24 (1.26%) CCNP
13 23 (1.21%) Azure Certification
14 21 (1.10%) Oracle Certification
15 18 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
15 18 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.94%) OCP
16 17 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.93%) NIST
2 58 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 50 (2.62%) QA
4 43 (2.26%) GDPR
5 35 (1.84%) SLA
6 26 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
7 22 (1.15%) NCSC
8 21 (1.10%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.68%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.58%) GLBA
11 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.47%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
13 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
14 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.21%) DICOM
15 4 (0.21%) GRC
15 4 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 383 (20.09%) Docker
2 236 (12.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 165 (8.66%) Active Directory
4 94 (4.93%) vSphere
5 71 (3.73%) Virtual Machines
6 63 (3.31%) Hyper-V
7 59 (3.10%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (1.99%) VMware NSX
9 36 (1.89%) NFS
10 33 (1.73%) Firmware
11 27 (1.42%) GPFS
12 21 (1.10%) KVM
13 17 (0.89%) Oracle RAC
13 17 (0.89%) Postfix
14 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.58%) Ceph
15 11 (0.58%) Lustre
16 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 472 (24.76%) Kubernetes
2 402 (21.09%) Terraform
3 388 (20.36%) Ansible
4 197 (10.34%) Grafana
5 164 (8.60%) Prometheus
6 66 (3.46%) Puppet
7 59 (3.10%) Progress Chef
8 48 (2.52%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.05%) vRealize
10 36 (1.89%) Argo
10 36 (1.89%) Packer
11 31 (1.63%) Podman
11 31 (1.63%) Red Hat Satellite
12 25 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
13 22 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
14 21 (1.10%) Kibana
14 21 (1.10%) VxRail
15 20 (1.05%) SCCM
16 18 (0.94%) Nessus
17 17 (0.89%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 319 (16.74%) VMware
2 281 (14.74%) Microsoft
3 244 (12.80%) Oracle
4 232 (12.17%) Red Hat
5 196 (10.28%) Splunk
6 109 (5.72%) Cisco
7 95 (4.98%) IBM
8 69 (3.62%) ServiceNow
9 51 (2.68%) Dell
9 51 (2.68%) Google
10 42 (2.20%) Palo Alto
11 37 (1.94%) SolarWinds
12 36 (1.89%) HP
13 35 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 30 (1.57%) Citrix
15 29 (1.52%) Atlassian
15 29 (1.52%) NetApp
16 26 (1.36%) NVIDIA
17 24 (1.26%) AppDynamics
18 23 (1.21%) F5