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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -19 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,918 1,763 2,288
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.19% 6.03% 5.20%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.01% 42.93% 38.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,209 1,141 1,514
10th Percentile £325 £375 £325
25th Percentile £401 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £546
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +0.69% -6.62%
75th Percentile £613 £648 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £537 £535
% change year-on-year -8.57% +0.37% -0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 54 105
10th Percentile £21.50 £41.85 £25.61
25th Percentile £41.94 £55.59 £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 £79.63 £70.50 £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 4,794 4,107 5,963
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.47% 14.05% 13.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,134 2,739 3,991
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £300 £325 £290
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 £657 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £448
% change year-on-year -5.56% +0.56% -5.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 173 408
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.52 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.47% +12.09% -24.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.14 £68.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.21 £24.42 £20.00
% change year-on-year +3.21% +22.10% -24.53%

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 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 9 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 9 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 -23 1,625 £518 -5.91% 832
UK excluding London -12 1,127 £491 -8.57% 721
London -41 570 £550 -8.33% 200
Work from Home -23 498 £500 -4.76% 308
South East -1 313 £500 -5.84% 206
North of England -9 294 £492 -10.55% 125
Midlands -10 171 £468 -10.95% 75
West Midlands 0 152 £468 -13.43% 41
Yorkshire -23 151 £465 -15.45% 41
South West -18 149 £550 -8.33% 144
North West -6 132 £525 +2.49% 58
East of England -10 94 £462 +1.26% 117
Scotland -17 90 £425 -9.57% 44
East Midlands -39 18 £525 +14.38% 34
Northern Ireland +9 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -16 13 £550 +4.76% 27
Wales -17 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 (5.06%) Confluence
2 46 (2.40%) nginx
3 44 (2.29%) Apache
4 37 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
5 17 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 17 (0.89%) SAS
6 16 (0.83%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.83%) WebLogic
7 15 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
9 12 (0.63%) SharePoint
10 11 (0.57%) TPMS
11 10 (0.52%) CICS
12 9 (0.47%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.31%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.16%) IIS
15 3 (0.16%) JBoss
15 3 (0.16%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 43 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.52%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.26%) Weka
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 3 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 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
3 3 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
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
1 562 (29.30%) AWS
2 382 (19.92%) Azure
3 176 (9.18%) GitHub
4 132 (6.88%) OpenShift
5 110 (5.74%) GCP
6 99 (5.16%) Amazon EC2
7 96 (5.01%) AWS CloudFormation
8 88 (4.59%) GitHub Actions
9 83 (4.33%) Serverless
10 81 (4.22%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.86%) Amazon EKS
12 67 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
13 63 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (2.87%) Amazon ECS
15 53 (2.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 48 (2.50%) IaaS
17 39 (2.03%) Entra ID
17 39 (2.03%) Microsoft 365
17 39 (2.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 36 (1.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 214 (11.16%) Firewall
2 141 (7.35%) DNS
3 108 (5.63%) TCP/IP
4 71 (3.70%) VPN
5 69 (3.60%) Network Security
6 54 (2.82%) SAN
7 47 (2.45%) SSH
8 44 (2.29%) DHCP
9 41 (2.14%) VSAN
10 38 (1.98%) WAN
11 36 (1.88%) HTTP
12 32 (1.67%) LAN
12 32 (1.67%) SNMP
13 31 (1.62%) SSL
14 24 (1.25%) Ethernet
15 23 (1.20%) BGP
15 23 (1.20%) Wireless
16 21 (1.09%) NAS
17 19 (0.99%) Kerberos
17 19 (0.99%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 131 (6.83%) PostgreSQL
2 103 (5.37%) SQL Server
3 71 (3.70%) MySQL
4 69 (3.60%) Amazon RDS
5 68 (3.55%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.39%) MongoDB
7 60 (3.13%) Oracle Database
8 41 (2.14%) Elasticsearch
9 33 (1.72%) NoSQL
10 23 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
11 19 (0.99%) Amazon Aurora
11 19 (0.99%) DynamoDB
11 19 (0.99%) KDB
12 18 (0.94%) Big Data
12 18 (0.94%) Kdb+
13 16 (0.83%) DB2
14 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
14 14 (0.73%) Hadoop
15 13 (0.68%) SAP HANA
16 12 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 221 (11.52%) Jenkins
2 193 (10.06%) Git
3 177 (9.23%) GitLab
4 156 (8.13%) JIRA
5 36 (1.88%) Bitbucket
5 36 (1.88%) JUnit
6 33 (1.72%) Sonatype Nexus
7 31 (1.62%) Maven
8 27 (1.41%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.30%) Mockito
10 21 (1.09%) Cucumber
11 20 (1.04%) SonarQube
12 19 (0.99%) Artifactory
13 16 (0.83%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.68%) JMeter
15 12 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.57%) Jaeger
16 11 (0.57%) Selenium
17 10 (0.52%) jMock
18 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 437 (22.78%) Social Skills
2 295 (15.38%) Finance
3 191 (9.96%) Public Sector
4 162 (8.45%) Analytical Skills
5 118 (6.15%) Banking
6 69 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.50%) Military
8 32 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.36%) Financial Institution
10 25 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.25%) Investment Banking
12 22 (1.15%) Front Office
13 21 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
14 20 (1.04%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.99%) Retail
16 18 (0.94%) Legal
16 18 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
17 17 (0.89%) Law
18 15 (0.78%) Manufacturing
19 11 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 236 (12.30%) Developer
2 235 (12.25%) Senior
3 166 (8.65%) DevOps Engineer
4 132 (6.88%) Software Engineer
5 124 (6.47%) Analyst
5 124 (6.47%) Linux Engineer
6 123 (6.41%) Architect
7 98 (5.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 89 (4.64%) Java Developer
9 87 (4.54%) Lead
10 82 (4.28%) Administrator
11 74 (3.86%) Platform Engineer
12 70 (3.65%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 65 (3.39%) Site Engineer
14 63 (3.28%) AWS Engineer
15 53 (2.76%) AWS DevOps
16 52 (2.71%) Consultant
17 51 (2.66%) Security Engineer
18 45 (2.35%) Support Engineer
19 43 (2.24%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (6.26%) Kafka
2 92 (4.80%) REST
3 81 (4.22%) Elastic Stack
4 69 (3.60%) Node.js
5 68 (3.55%) Middleware
6 55 (2.87%) Spring
7 52 (2.71%) LDAP
8 46 (2.40%) Spring Boot
9 40 (2.09%) Web Services
10 35 (1.82%) RESTful
11 33 (1.72%) XML
11 33 (1.72%) YAML
12 31 (1.62%) JSON
13 30 (1.56%) .NET
14 29 (1.51%) React
15 28 (1.46%) AngularJS
16 27 (1.41%) SOAP
17 22 (1.15%) ActiveMQ
18 21 (1.09%) Flash
19 19 (0.99%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 122 (6.36%) Data Centre
2 104 (5.42%) Cloud Native
3 82 (4.28%) Linux Command Line
4 68 (3.55%) Management Information System
5 59 (3.08%) Distributed Systems
6 57 (2.97%) PKI
7 54 (2.82%) Onboarding
7 54 (2.82%) Replication
8 51 (2.66%) Public Cloud
9 48 (2.50%) Hybrid Cloud
10 41 (2.14%) Product Ownership
11 36 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
12 33 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
12 33 (1.72%) Security Operations Centre
13 30 (1.56%) Security Posture
14 29 (1.51%) Equities
15 27 (1.41%) Enterprise Storage
16 26 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
17 24 (1.25%) Embedded Systems
18 23 (1.20%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 729 (38.01%) Windows
2 352 (18.35%) Unix
3 275 (14.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 175 (9.12%) Windows Server
5 87 (4.54%) Ubuntu
6 46 (2.40%) AIX
7 42 (2.19%) CentOS
8 38 (1.98%) Solaris
9 35 (1.82%) Android
10 34 (1.77%) VMS
11 30 (1.56%) Embedded Linux
12 23 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.09%) Mac OS
14 19 (0.99%) Windows Server 2019
15 18 (0.94%) Debian
16 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.68%) SUSE
17 11 (0.57%) Oracle Linux
18 10 (0.52%) Apple iOS
18 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 554 (28.88%) CI/CD
2 460 (23.98%) DevOps
3 401 (20.91%) Agile
4 347 (18.09%) Problem-Solving
5 287 (14.96%) Infrastructure as Code
6 281 (14.65%) Containerisation
7 209 (10.90%) Software Engineering
8 186 (9.70%) Observability
9 159 (8.29%) Migration
10 158 (8.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 151 (7.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 145 (7.56%) Microservices
13 144 (7.51%) Cybersecurity
14 143 (7.46%) Computer Science
15 140 (7.30%) Incident Response
16 139 (7.25%) Platform Engineering
17 135 (7.04%) Test Automation
18 132 (6.88%) SIEM
19 130 (6.78%) High Availability
20 124 (6.47%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 660 (34.41%) Python
2 317 (16.53%) SQL
3 294 (15.33%) Java
4 291 (15.17%) Bash
5 280 (14.60%) PowerShell
6 176 (9.18%) Shell Script
7 139 (7.25%) C++
8 106 (5.53%) JavaScript
9 88 (4.59%) Perl
10 66 (3.44%) C#
11 53 (2.76%) C
12 42 (2.19%) Ruby
13 41 (2.14%) PL/SQL
14 40 (2.09%) Go
15 31 (1.62%) TypeScript
16 26 (1.36%) PHP
17 24 (1.25%) Rust
18 20 (1.04%) MATLAB
19 18 (0.94%) Ada
19 18 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 748 (39.00%) Security Cleared
2 554 (28.88%) SC Cleared
3 197 (10.27%) DV Cleared
4 182 (9.49%) Degree
5 91 (4.74%) BPSS Clearance
6 79 (4.12%) Computer Science Degree
7 52 (2.71%) AWS Certification
8 45 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
9 42 (2.19%) CompTIA Security+
10 41 (2.14%) CISSP
11 28 (1.46%) CCNA
11 28 (1.46%) RHCE
12 25 (1.30%) CCNP
13 23 (1.20%) Azure Certification
14 21 (1.09%) Oracle Certification
15 19 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
16 18 (0.94%) OCP
17 17 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 14 (0.73%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (4.12%) NIST
2 64 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 50 (2.61%) QA
4 40 (2.09%) GDPR
5 36 (1.88%) SLA
6 23 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.09%) NCSC
7 21 (1.09%) PCI DSS
8 13 (0.68%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (0.57%) GLBA
10 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
13 6 (0.31%) GRC
14 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
14 5 (0.26%) HL7
14 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 371 (19.34%) Docker
2 243 (12.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 176 (9.18%) Active Directory
4 93 (4.85%) vSphere
5 70 (3.65%) Virtual Machines
6 67 (3.49%) Hyper-V
7 63 (3.28%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (2.24%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.98%) NFS
10 34 (1.77%) Firmware
11 28 (1.46%) GPFS
12 22 (1.15%) KVM
13 17 (0.89%) Oracle RAC
13 17 (0.89%) Postfix
14 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 11 (0.57%) Ceph
15 11 (0.57%) Lustre
16 7 (0.36%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.36%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 449 (23.41%) Kubernetes
2 391 (20.39%) Terraform
3 379 (19.76%) Ansible
4 178 (9.28%) Grafana
5 146 (7.61%) Prometheus
6 66 (3.44%) Puppet
7 57 (2.97%) Progress Chef
8 49 (2.55%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.03%) vRealize
10 34 (1.77%) Packer
11 32 (1.67%) Argo
12 30 (1.56%) Podman
13 29 (1.51%) Red Hat Satellite
14 25 (1.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 24 (1.25%) Kibana
16 22 (1.15%) VxRail
17 19 (0.99%) Nessus
17 19 (0.99%) SCCM
18 18 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
19 17 (0.89%) Consul
Vendors
1 330 (17.21%) VMware
2 280 (14.60%) Microsoft
3 256 (13.35%) Oracle
4 229 (11.94%) Red Hat
5 181 (9.44%) Splunk
6 114 (5.94%) Cisco
7 99 (5.16%) IBM
8 68 (3.55%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.76%) Dell
10 44 (2.29%) Google
11 42 (2.19%) CyberArk
12 41 (2.14%) Palo Alto
13 38 (1.98%) HP
14 36 (1.88%) SolarWinds
15 30 (1.56%) Citrix
16 29 (1.51%) Atlassian
16 29 (1.51%) NetApp
17 25 (1.30%) NVIDIA
18 24 (1.25%) AppDynamics
19 23 (1.20%) F5