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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,114 1,837 2,087
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.56% 5.52%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.24% 41.00% 39.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,323 1,100 1,236
10th Percentile £350 £335 £350
25th Percentile £425 £419 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.49% -3.09%
75th Percentile £616 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +2.59% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 76 112
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £49.00
25th Percentile £54.68 £53.41 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.57%
75th Percentile £69.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £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 5,387 4,480 5,321
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.81% 13.55% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,401 2,858 3,320
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% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £663 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 297 254
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.08
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £69.45
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.20
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.25% +39.93%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -21 1,783 £525 - 3,157
UK excluding London -20 1,186 £505 +2.59% 1,650
London -28 718 £525 -8.70% 1,585
Work from Home -21 571 £500 -3.85% 1,147
South East -15 328 £525 +10.53% 483
North of England -20 281 £500 +5.26% 231
South West +1 178 £575 +4.55% 294
North West -21 139 £493 +27.23% 136
Scotland -16 132 £450 -10.00% 103
Midlands -44 132 £474 -5.25% 170
Yorkshire -27 116 £518 +3.50% 60
East of England -10 115 £479 -4.25% 297
West Midlands -34 113 £475 -5.00% 103
North East -10 34 £480 -10.70% 36
Wales +8 27 £465 +3.33% 29
East Midlands -8 16 £472 +12.32% 67
Northern Ireland -1 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 (3.12%) Confluence
2 48 (2.27%) Apache
3 33 (1.56%) nginx
4 29 (1.37%) WebLogic
5 27 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
6 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
7 22 (1.04%) Apache Spark
7 22 (1.04%) SharePoint
8 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
9 19 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 18 (0.85%) Tomcat
11 16 (0.76%) IIS
11 16 (0.76%) SAS
12 15 (0.71%) JBoss
13 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.33%) CMS
15 6 (0.28%) MTS
15 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 5 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.047%) Magento
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.047%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 630 (29.80%) AWS
2 530 (25.07%) Azure
3 206 (9.74%) GCP
4 164 (7.76%) GitHub
5 112 (5.30%) OpenShift
6 108 (5.11%) Entra ID
7 103 (4.87%) GitHub Actions
8 95 (4.49%) Amazon S3
8 95 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
9 82 (3.88%) Amazon EC2
10 73 (3.45%) Serverless
11 69 (3.26%) AWS CloudFormation
12 65 (3.07%) Amazon EKS
12 65 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
14 62 (2.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 56 (2.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 51 (2.41%) IaaS
17 46 (2.18%) Datadog
17 46 (2.18%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.79%) DNS
2 218 (10.31%) Firewall
3 164 (7.76%) TCP/IP
4 133 (6.29%) DHCP
5 89 (4.21%) Network Security
6 85 (4.02%) VPN
7 77 (3.64%) SAN
8 54 (2.55%) SSL
9 46 (2.18%) HTTP
10 45 (2.13%) SSH
10 45 (2.13%) WAN
11 38 (1.80%) VLAN
12 31 (1.47%) LAN
13 29 (1.37%) BGP
14 28 (1.32%) VSAN
15 27 (1.28%) Kerberos
16 25 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
17 23 (1.09%) Wireless
18 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
19 21 (0.99%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (5.87%) PostgreSQL
2 117 (5.53%) SQL Server
3 100 (4.73%) Oracle Database
4 76 (3.60%) Relational Database
5 69 (3.26%) MySQL
6 57 (2.70%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.55%) MongoDB
8 49 (2.32%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
9 35 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
10 31 (1.47%) Amazon Aurora
11 29 (1.37%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.28%) Big Data
13 22 (1.04%) DynamoDB
14 21 (0.99%) Data Lake
14 21 (0.99%) Redis
15 20 (0.95%) Power BI
16 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
16 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 12c
17 16 (0.76%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 288 (13.62%) Git
2 255 (12.06%) Jenkins
3 234 (11.07%) GitLab
4 159 (7.52%) JIRA
5 42 (1.99%) Maven
6 36 (1.70%) SonarQube
7 33 (1.56%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 25 (1.18%) Artifactory
10 24 (1.14%) Selenium
11 22 (1.04%) Mockito
12 19 (0.90%) JUnit
13 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 18 (0.85%) Gradle
14 16 (0.76%) Cucumber
15 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
16 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
17 10 (0.47%) JMeter
18 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 463 (21.90%) Social Skills
2 346 (16.37%) Finance
3 251 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (8.28%) Banking
5 171 (8.09%) Public Sector
6 88 (4.16%) Documentation Skills
7 55 (2.60%) Telecoms
8 45 (2.13%) Investment Banking
9 33 (1.56%) Front Office
9 33 (1.56%) Military
10 29 (1.37%) Legal
11 25 (1.18%) Aerospace
12 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 21 (0.99%) Law
14 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.80%) Retail
15 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.47%) Aviation
16 10 (0.47%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 325 (15.37%) Senior
2 236 (11.16%) Linux Engineer
3 212 (10.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 211 (9.98%) Developer
5 188 (8.89%) DevOps Engineer
6 105 (4.97%) Platform Engineer
7 102 (4.82%) Architect
8 96 (4.54%) Software Engineer
9 81 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
9 81 (3.83%) Support Engineer
10 79 (3.74%) Java Developer
11 77 (3.64%) Analyst
11 77 (3.64%) Consultant
12 71 (3.36%) Lead
13 69 (3.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 66 (3.12%) AWS Engineer
15 61 (2.89%) Administrator
16 57 (2.70%) Network Engineer
16 57 (2.70%) Senior Developer
17 56 (2.65%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 521 (24.65%) Terraform
2 148 (7.00%) Kafka
3 131 (6.20%) REST
4 86 (4.07%) Middleware
5 78 (3.69%) Elastic Stack
6 68 (3.22%) .NET
7 61 (2.89%) Spring
8 59 (2.79%) RESTful
9 55 (2.60%) Web Services
10 54 (2.55%) Spring Boot
11 48 (2.27%) LDAP
12 43 (2.03%) JSON
13 41 (1.94%) XML
14 40 (1.89%) React
15 38 (1.80%) HTML
16 36 (1.70%) SOAP
17 33 (1.56%) Flask
18 32 (1.51%) Keycloak
19 30 (1.42%) Django
19 30 (1.42%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 161 (7.62%) Onboarding
2 150 (7.10%) Cloud Native
3 136 (6.43%) Data Centre
4 113 (5.35%) PKI
5 108 (5.11%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.45%) Distributed Systems
7 91 (4.30%) Replication
8 70 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.17%) Public Cloud
10 66 (3.12%) Management Information System
11 52 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
12 48 (2.27%) Security Posture
13 42 (1.99%) Private Cloud
14 41 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
14 41 (1.94%) Product Ownership
15 40 (1.89%) Operational Technology
16 39 (1.84%) Embedded Systems
17 38 (1.80%) Enterprise Storage
18 36 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
19 34 (1.61%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 796 (37.65%) Windows
2 445 (21.05%) Unix
3 363 (17.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 250 (11.83%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.25%) Ubuntu
6 63 (2.98%) CentOS
7 57 (2.70%) AIX
8 56 (2.65%) Solaris
9 32 (1.51%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
11 27 (1.28%) SUSE
11 27 (1.28%) VMS
12 22 (1.04%) Rocky
13 18 (0.85%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.66%) Debian
15 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
16 13 (0.61%) Oracle Linux
17 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 670 (31.69%) CI/CD
2 573 (27.11%) DevOps
3 469 (22.19%) Infrastructure as Code
4 396 (18.73%) Agile
5 341 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
6 329 (15.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 313 (14.81%) Containerisation
8 274 (12.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 256 (12.11%) Observability
10 240 (11.35%) Platform Engineering
11 237 (11.21%) Migration
12 221 (10.45%) Root Cause Analysis
13 218 (10.31%) Software Engineering
14 196 (9.27%) High Availability
15 187 (8.85%) Configuration Management
16 181 (8.56%) Test Automation
17 179 (8.47%) ITIL
18 170 (8.04%) Stakeholder Management
19 169 (7.99%) Runbook
20 168 (7.95%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 779 (36.85%) Python
2 458 (21.67%) Bash
3 409 (19.35%) PowerShell
4 384 (18.16%) SQL
5 264 (12.49%) Java
6 158 (7.47%) Shell Script
7 120 (5.68%) C++
8 87 (4.12%) JavaScript
9 85 (4.02%) Perl
10 77 (3.64%) C#
11 70 (3.31%) C
12 62 (2.93%) Go
13 59 (2.79%) PL/SQL
14 42 (1.99%) Bicep
15 31 (1.47%) Groovy
16 23 (1.09%) TypeScript
17 20 (0.95%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.76%) Korn
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 795 (37.61%) Security Cleared
2 557 (26.35%) SC Cleared
3 250 (11.83%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.61%) Degree
5 73 (3.45%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.89%) CISSP
7 60 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
8 59 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
9 58 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
10 56 (2.65%) Azure Certification
11 28 (1.32%) CISM
12 25 (1.18%) CCNP
12 25 (1.18%) RHCE
13 21 (0.99%) CCNA
14 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
16 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.60%) NIST
1 76 (3.60%) QA
2 70 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (1.37%) SLA
4 24 (1.14%) Data Quality
5 22 (1.04%) GDPR
6 18 (0.85%) GRC
7 17 (0.80%) Disclosure Scotland
8 16 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.71%) NCSC
10 12 (0.57%) PCI DSS
11 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
12 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.28%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
16 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
16 5 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 383 (18.12%) Docker
2 288 (13.62%) Active Directory
3 242 (11.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (3.97%) Hyper-V
5 80 (3.78%) vSphere
6 68 (3.22%) VMware ESXi
7 67 (3.17%) Virtual Machines
8 50 (2.37%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.80%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (1.70%) NFS
11 35 (1.66%) Firmware
12 25 (1.18%) KVM
13 24 (1.14%) Virtual Servers
14 13 (0.61%) Ceph
14 13 (0.61%) Postfix
15 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.57%) GPFS
15 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 8 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 494 (23.37%) Kubernetes
2 472 (22.33%) Ansible
3 205 (9.70%) Grafana
4 184 (8.70%) Prometheus
5 93 (4.40%) Puppet
6 61 (2.89%) Progress Chef
7 51 (2.41%) SCCM
8 48 (2.27%) Oracle RMAN
9 38 (1.80%) Data Guard
10 36 (1.70%) Microsoft Intune
11 35 (1.66%) Kibana
12 32 (1.51%) vCenter Server
13 29 (1.37%) Nagios
14 27 (1.28%) VxRail
15 26 (1.23%) NetBackup
15 26 (1.23%) Red Hat Satellite
16 24 (1.14%) Packer
16 24 (1.14%) Podman
17 22 (1.04%) Istio
18 21 (0.99%) Argo
Vendors
1 349 (16.51%) Microsoft
2 342 (16.18%) VMware
3 293 (13.86%) Oracle
4 218 (10.31%) Red Hat
5 175 (8.28%) Splunk
6 124 (5.87%) Cisco
7 116 (5.49%) ServiceNow
8 97 (4.59%) Google
9 94 (4.45%) IBM
10 83 (3.93%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.37%) NetApp
12 45 (2.13%) SolarWinds
13 44 (2.08%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.89%) F5
15 39 (1.84%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.75%) Dynatrace
17 36 (1.70%) Dell
17 36 (1.70%) SAP
18 31 (1.47%) Tenable
19 28 (1.32%) Citrix