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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 31 31
Rank change year-on-year -18 0 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,864 1,781 2,353
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.32% 6.07% 5.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.29% 42.28% 39.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,180 1,114 1,564
10th Percentile £325 £373 £313
25th Percentile £400 £453 £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 £489 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -9.12% +2.38% -3.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 55 110
10th Percentile £15.62 £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 £80.00 £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 4,744 4,212 6,020
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.99% 14.34% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,107 2,764 4,024
10th Percentile £180 £200 £181
25th Percentile £283 £318 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £452
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +5.20% -12.33%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £657 £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 352 157 403
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.60 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.54% +24.44% -15.09%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £59.75
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 17 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 17 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 17 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 1,595 £513 -6.82% 871
UK excluding London -11 1,081 £489 -9.12% 772
London -30 577 £550 -8.33% 212
Work from Home -23 476 £500 -6.89% 362
South East -3 311 £500 -5.84% 223
North of England -8 293 £500 -9.09% 145
Midlands -15 165 £485 -7.62% 84
Yorkshire -15 157 £485 -11.91% 46
West Midlands -9 151 £493 -9.59% 50
South West -19 144 £539 -10.21% 127
North West -11 128 £525 -4.55% 68
Scotland -19 81 £425 -9.09% 65
East of England -19 79 £450 -6.49% 118
Northern Ireland +3 15 £425 +30.77% 8
East Midlands -41 14 £430 -6.32% 34
North East -16 11 £550 +8.64% 32
Wales -11 8 £404 -26.59% 19

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 (4.99%) Confluence
2 45 (2.41%) nginx
3 40 (2.15%) Apache
4 39 (2.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.02%) Apache Spark
5 19 (1.02%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
7 14 (0.75%) WebLogic
8 12 (0.64%) SharePoint
8 12 (0.64%) TPMS
9 11 (0.59%) SAS
9 11 (0.59%) Tomcat
10 9 (0.48%) WebSphere
11 8 (0.43%) CICS
12 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
12 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.21%) JBoss
14 3 (0.16%) CMS
14 3 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 48 (2.58%) 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 1 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.054%) InDesign
6 1 (0.054%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.054%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.054%) Simulink
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
1 554 (29.72%) AWS
2 361 (19.37%) Azure
3 179 (9.60%) GitHub
4 134 (7.19%) OpenShift
5 126 (6.76%) GCP
6 104 (5.58%) AWS CloudFormation
7 97 (5.20%) Amazon EC2
7 97 (5.20%) Serverless
8 92 (4.94%) GitHub Actions
9 80 (4.29%) Amazon S3
10 75 (4.02%) Amazon EKS
11 67 (3.59%) 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 44 (2.36%) IaaS
17 35 (1.88%) Entra ID
18 33 (1.77%) SaaS
19 32 (1.72%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 205 (11.00%) Firewall
2 130 (6.97%) DNS
3 115 (6.17%) TCP/IP
4 63 (3.38%) Network Security
4 63 (3.38%) VPN
5 46 (2.47%) SAN
6 44 (2.36%) SSH
7 37 (1.98%) DHCP
8 34 (1.82%) WAN
9 33 (1.77%) VSAN
10 32 (1.72%) HTTP
11 27 (1.45%) SSL
12 26 (1.39%) SNMP
13 24 (1.29%) LAN
14 23 (1.23%) Ethernet
15 22 (1.18%) BGP
15 22 (1.18%) Wireless
16 18 (0.97%) Kerberos
16 18 (0.97%) VLAN
17 17 (0.91%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (7.35%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (4.77%) SQL Server
3 75 (4.02%) Amazon RDS
4 71 (3.81%) Relational Database
5 67 (3.59%) MongoDB
5 67 (3.59%) MySQL
6 57 (3.06%) Oracle Database
7 54 (2.90%) NoSQL
8 42 (2.25%) Elasticsearch
9 22 (1.18%) DB2
10 21 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
11 20 (1.07%) Big Data
12 19 (1.02%) KDB
13 18 (0.97%) Kdb+
14 17 (0.91%) Data Lake
15 15 (0.80%) Hadoop
16 13 (0.70%) DynamoDB
16 13 (0.70%) SAP HANA
17 12 (0.64%) Redis
18 11 (0.59%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 248 (13.30%) Jenkins
2 196 (10.52%) Git
3 192 (10.30%) GitLab
4 152 (8.15%) JIRA
5 44 (2.36%) JUnit
6 43 (2.31%) Bitbucket
7 35 (1.88%) Sonatype Nexus
8 33 (1.77%) Maven
9 31 (1.66%) Eclipse
10 24 (1.29%) Cucumber
11 21 (1.13%) Mockito
12 19 (1.02%) Artifactory
13 18 (0.97%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.86%) Visual Studio
15 15 (0.80%) Selenium
16 14 (0.75%) Burp Suite
16 14 (0.75%) JMeter
17 12 (0.64%) Liquibase
18 11 (0.59%) CircleCI
18 11 (0.59%) Metasploit
General
1 471 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 302 (16.20%) Finance
3 192 (10.30%) Public Sector
4 167 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
5 126 (6.76%) Banking
6 60 (3.22%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.47%) Military
8 37 (1.98%) 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%) Law
13 19 (1.02%) Legal
13 19 (1.02%) Telecoms
14 18 (0.97%) Retail
15 17 (0.91%) Aerospace
16 12 (0.64%) Manufacturing
17 10 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 237 (12.71%) Developer
2 223 (11.96%) Senior
3 170 (9.12%) DevOps Engineer
4 132 (7.08%) Software Engineer
5 124 (6.65%) Analyst
6 120 (6.44%) Architect
7 97 (5.20%) Linux Engineer
8 84 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 83 (4.45%) Java Developer
10 81 (4.35%) Lead
11 75 (4.02%) Administrator
12 72 (3.86%) Platform Engineer
13 69 (3.70%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 68 (3.65%) AWS Engineer
15 64 (3.43%) Site Engineer
15 64 (3.43%) Support Engineer
16 57 (3.06%) AWS DevOps
17 52 (2.79%) Security Engineer
18 45 (2.41%) Cloud Engineer
19 44 (2.36%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (6.60%) Kafka
2 111 (5.95%) REST
3 102 (5.47%) Elastic Stack
4 75 (4.02%) Middleware
5 72 (3.86%) Node.js
6 59 (3.17%) 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
11 40 (2.15%) XML
12 35 (1.88%) React
12 35 (1.88%) YAML
13 31 (1.66%) AngularJS
14 29 (1.56%) SOAP
15 26 (1.39%) .NET
16 21 (1.13%) CSS
16 21 (1.13%) OpenTelemetry
17 20 (1.07%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 118 (6.33%) Data Centre
2 112 (6.01%) Cloud Native
3 80 (4.29%) Linux Command Line
4 68 (3.65%) Distributed Systems
5 66 (3.54%) Management Information System
6 60 (3.22%) Public Cloud
7 56 (3.00%) PKI
8 52 (2.79%) Onboarding
9 46 (2.47%) Replication
10 43 (2.31%) Hybrid Cloud
11 41 (2.20%) Product Ownership
12 38 (2.04%) Security Operations Centre
13 37 (1.98%) Equities
14 33 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
14 33 (1.77%) Security Posture
15 31 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
16 29 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 27 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
17 27 (1.45%) Fixed Income
18 25 (1.34%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 687 (36.86%) Windows
2 328 (17.60%) Unix
3 254 (13.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 160 (8.58%) Windows Server
5 94 (5.04%) Ubuntu
6 44 (2.36%) CentOS
7 36 (1.93%) Android
8 35 (1.88%) AIX
9 29 (1.56%) Solaris
10 27 (1.45%) VMS
11 25 (1.34%) Windows Server 2016
12 22 (1.18%) Mac OS
13 21 (1.13%) Embedded Linux
14 18 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.75%) Kali Linux
15 14 (0.75%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.70%) Debian
17 12 (0.64%) Windows 10
18 11 (0.59%) Apple iOS
19 10 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 570 (30.58%) CI/CD
2 472 (25.32%) DevOps
3 417 (22.37%) Agile
4 341 (18.29%) Problem-Solving
5 306 (16.42%) Infrastructure as Code
6 292 (15.67%) Containerisation
7 221 (11.86%) Software Engineering
8 195 (10.46%) Observability
9 163 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
10 159 (8.53%) Cybersecurity
11 150 (8.05%) Computer Science
12 148 (7.94%) Microservices
13 147 (7.89%) Incident Response
14 143 (7.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 143 (7.67%) Test Automation
15 140 (7.51%) Migration
16 130 (6.97%) Platform Engineering
17 127 (6.81%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 126 (6.76%) High Availability
19 123 (6.60%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 674 (36.16%) Python
2 312 (16.74%) SQL
3 309 (16.58%) Bash
4 308 (16.52%) Java
5 267 (14.32%) PowerShell
6 182 (9.76%) Shell Script
7 153 (8.21%) C++
8 124 (6.65%) JavaScript
9 95 (5.10%) Perl
10 69 (3.70%) C#
11 55 (2.95%) Go
12 51 (2.74%) C
13 42 (2.25%) Ruby
14 32 (1.72%) TypeScript
15 31 (1.66%) PL/SQL
16 27 (1.45%) Rust
17 25 (1.34%) PHP
18 24 (1.29%) Ada
19 20 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
20 15 (0.80%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 717 (38.47%) Security Cleared
2 521 (27.95%) SC Cleared
3 188 (10.09%) Degree
4 175 (9.39%) DV Cleared
5 92 (4.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 88 (4.72%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.22%) AWS Certification
8 41 (2.20%) CompTIA Security+
9 40 (2.15%) CISSP
10 39 (2.09%) Cisco Certification
11 28 (1.50%) Master's Degree
12 27 (1.45%) RHCE
13 25 (1.34%) CCNA
14 24 (1.29%) Azure Certification
15 23 (1.23%) CCNP
16 21 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
16 21 (1.13%) Oracle Certification
17 18 (0.97%) CompTIA CySA+
18 17 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 17 (0.91%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.92%) NIST
2 53 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 47 (2.52%) QA
4 44 (2.36%) GDPR
5 31 (1.66%) SLA
6 23 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.13%) NCSC
7 21 (1.13%) PCI DSS
8 14 (0.75%) 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%) Disclosure Scotland
15 3 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 383 (20.55%) Docker
2 219 (11.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 155 (8.32%) Active Directory
4 86 (4.61%) vSphere
5 68 (3.65%) Virtual Machines
6 53 (2.84%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.63%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (1.72%) NFS
9 29 (1.56%) VMware NSX
10 28 (1.50%) GPFS
11 23 (1.23%) KVM
12 22 (1.18%) Firmware
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%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.32%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 478 (25.64%) Kubernetes
2 397 (21.30%) Terraform
3 376 (20.17%) Ansible
4 199 (10.68%) Grafana
5 167 (8.96%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.70%) Puppet
7 60 (3.22%) 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 30 (1.61%) 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 (0.97%) VxRail
19 17 (0.91%) Consul
19 17 (0.91%) Nessus
Vendors
1 297 (15.93%) VMware
2 283 (15.18%) Microsoft
3 230 (12.34%) Oracle
4 226 (12.12%) Red Hat
5 199 (10.68%) Splunk
6 100 (5.36%) Cisco
7 85 (4.56%) IBM
8 66 (3.54%) ServiceNow
9 50 (2.68%) Google
10 45 (2.41%) Dell
11 37 (1.98%) Palo Alto
12 32 (1.72%) CyberArk
13 30 (1.61%) SolarWinds
14 28 (1.50%) Citrix
15 27 (1.45%) Atlassian
15 27 (1.45%) HP
15 27 (1.45%) NetApp
15 27 (1.45%) NVIDIA
16 24 (1.29%) AppDynamics
17 22 (1.18%) Commvault