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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -23 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,028 1,840 2,218
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.55% 5.72%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.32% 41.79% 40.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,260 1,148 1,446
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -5.20%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £705 £721 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 57 121
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.02
% change year-on-year - -3.01% +4.11%

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 5,158 4,403 5,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.67% 13.28% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,254 2,816 3,612
10th Percentile £192 £200 £200
25th Percentile £319 £313 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £461 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.87% -2.89% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £662 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £474
% change year-on-year +1.11% -5.06% +5.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 359 260 334
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.44
25th Percentile £17.55 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.77 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.38% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.10 £67.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.33 £22.56 £45.00
% change year-on-year +16.71% -49.87% +53.58%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 10 August 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 1,711 £525 - 2,325
UK excluding London -14 1,211 £500 - 1,116
London -53 600 £550 -5.17% 1,357
Work from Home -28 544 £500 -4.76% 781
South East 0 348 £523 +2.70% 331
North of England -13 306 £500 - 191
South West -1 189 £550 -4.35% 170
North West -9 159 £500 +25.00% 116
Midlands -25 133 £473 -0.53% 89
Yorkshire -26 128 £500 -4.76% 37
West Midlands -28 112 £470 -3.59% 54
Scotland -24 110 £425 -15.00% 88
East of England -8 101 £479 -2.30% 220
Wales +5 29 £465 +64.60% 15
North East -20 26 £480 -16.52% 39
East Midlands -7 18 £513 +22.02% 35
Northern Ireland 0 2 - - 35

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 80 (3.94%) Confluence
2 51 (2.51%) Apache
3 29 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
3 29 (1.43%) nginx
4 24 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 20 (0.99%) OpenStack
5 20 (0.99%) WebLogic
6 19 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.94%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.89%) SAS
8 14 (0.69%) JBoss
9 11 (0.54%) SharePoint
9 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
10 9 (0.44%) IIS
10 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
12 5 (0.25%) CICS
12 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
12 5 (0.25%) CMS
13 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 20 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.099%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 601 (29.64%) AWS
2 490 (24.16%) Azure
3 155 (7.64%) GitHub
4 154 (7.59%) GCP
5 101 (4.98%) OpenShift
6 92 (4.54%) GitHub Actions
7 91 (4.49%) Entra ID
8 87 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
9 86 (4.24%) Amazon S3
10 83 (4.09%) Amazon EC2
11 61 (3.01%) Amazon EKS
12 60 (2.96%) Serverless
13 57 (2.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 55 (2.71%) Microsoft 365
15 54 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
16 53 (2.61%) AWS Lambda
17 52 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 51 (2.51%) IaaS
19 40 (1.97%) SaaS
20 39 (1.92%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 223 (11.00%) Firewall
2 213 (10.50%) DNS
3 135 (6.66%) TCP/IP
4 109 (5.37%) DHCP
5 83 (4.09%) VPN
6 73 (3.60%) Network Security
6 73 (3.60%) SAN
7 50 (2.47%) SSL
8 48 (2.37%) WAN
9 47 (2.32%) VSAN
10 40 (1.97%) HTTP
11 39 (1.92%) LAN
12 38 (1.87%) SSH
13 34 (1.68%) VLAN
14 32 (1.58%) SNMP
15 22 (1.08%) NAS
16 21 (1.04%) Ethernet
16 21 (1.04%) IPsec
17 19 (0.94%) HTTPS
18 18 (0.89%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (6.07%) SQL Server
2 109 (5.37%) PostgreSQL
3 93 (4.59%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.35%) MySQL
5 65 (3.21%) MongoDB
6 64 (3.16%) Relational Database
7 51 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
8 37 (1.82%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.73%) Elasticsearch
9 35 (1.73%) NoSQL
10 30 (1.48%) RDBMS
11 26 (1.28%) Data Warehouse
11 26 (1.28%) DynamoDB
12 24 (1.18%) Big Data
13 21 (1.04%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
15 18 (0.89%) Data Lake
16 17 (0.84%) Power BI
16 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.79%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 217 (10.70%) Jenkins
2 213 (10.50%) Git
3 183 (9.02%) GitLab
4 142 (7.00%) JIRA
5 40 (1.97%) Maven
6 31 (1.53%) Mockito
6 31 (1.53%) SonarQube
7 29 (1.43%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.04%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.04%) Eclipse
10 16 (0.79%) JUnit
10 16 (0.79%) Selenium
11 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
12 13 (0.64%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 12 (0.59%) DbUnit
13 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
14 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
14 11 (0.54%) Gradle
14 11 (0.54%) jMock
General
1 414 (20.41%) Social Skills
2 292 (14.40%) Finance
3 219 (10.80%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (9.71%) Public Sector
5 143 (7.05%) Banking
6 76 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (1.78%) Military
8 33 (1.63%) Front Office
9 32 (1.58%) Telecoms
10 28 (1.38%) Investment Banking
11 26 (1.28%) Legal
12 23 (1.13%) Aerospace
12 23 (1.13%) Retail
13 20 (0.99%) Law
13 20 (0.99%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
16 15 (0.74%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
18 9 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 297 (14.64%) Senior
2 219 (10.80%) Linux Engineer
3 196 (9.66%) Developer
4 185 (9.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 172 (8.48%) DevOps Engineer
6 116 (5.72%) Software Engineer
7 103 (5.08%) Architect
8 89 (4.39%) Platform Engineer
9 81 (3.99%) Analyst
10 80 (3.94%) Lead
11 76 (3.75%) Java Developer
12 72 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
13 71 (3.50%) Consultant
14 66 (3.25%) Support Engineer
15 65 (3.21%) AWS Engineer
16 59 (2.91%) Administrator
17 56 (2.76%) Senior Developer
18 53 (2.61%) Site Reliability Engineer
19 51 (2.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 51 (2.51%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (5.67%) Kafka
2 107 (5.28%) REST
3 69 (3.40%) Middleware
4 68 (3.35%) Elastic Stack
5 54 (2.66%) .NET
5 54 (2.66%) Spring
6 51 (2.51%) RESTful
7 45 (2.22%) Spring Boot
8 44 (2.17%) Web Services
9 42 (2.07%) LDAP
10 39 (1.92%) Node.js
11 36 (1.78%) JSON
12 32 (1.58%) ActiveMQ
12 32 (1.58%) YAML
13 30 (1.48%) XML
14 27 (1.33%) SOAP
15 22 (1.08%) RabbitMQ
15 22 (1.08%) React
16 21 (1.04%) ARM Templates
16 21 (1.04%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 132 (6.51%) Cloud Native
2 128 (6.31%) Data Centre
3 124 (6.11%) Onboarding
4 103 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
5 95 (4.68%) PKI
6 87 (4.29%) Distributed Systems
7 80 (3.94%) Replication
8 70 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.16%) Public Cloud
10 58 (2.86%) Management Information System
11 57 (2.81%) Security Posture
12 48 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
13 35 (1.73%) Embedded Systems
14 34 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
14 34 (1.68%) Product Ownership
15 33 (1.63%) Clustering
16 32 (1.58%) Operational Technology
17 30 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
18 27 (1.33%) Private Cloud
19 26 (1.28%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 772 (38.07%) Windows
2 424 (20.91%) Unix
3 343 (16.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 224 (11.05%) Windows Server
5 110 (5.42%) Ubuntu
6 68 (3.35%) AIX
7 56 (2.76%) Solaris
8 44 (2.17%) CentOS
9 35 (1.73%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.28%) SUSE
11 25 (1.23%) VMS
11 25 (1.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
13 18 (0.89%) Rocky
13 18 (0.89%) Windows 10
14 17 (0.84%) Mac OS
15 16 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.74%) Debian
17 14 (0.69%) Android
17 14 (0.69%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 581 (28.65%) CI/CD
2 505 (24.90%) DevOps
3 380 (18.74%) Infrastructure as Code
4 370 (18.24%) Agile
5 306 (15.09%) Problem-Solving
6 269 (13.26%) Containerisation
7 266 (13.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 243 (11.98%) Migration
9 219 (10.80%) Continuous Improvement
10 207 (10.21%) Software Engineering
11 202 (9.96%) High Availability
11 202 (9.96%) Observability
12 195 (9.62%) Platform Engineering
13 186 (9.17%) Root Cause Analysis
14 176 (8.68%) Performance Tuning
15 172 (8.48%) ITIL
16 158 (7.79%) SIEM
17 156 (7.69%) Test Automation
18 146 (7.20%) AI
19 144 (7.10%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 703 (34.66%) Python
2 384 (18.93%) Bash
3 383 (18.89%) PowerShell
4 356 (17.55%) SQL
5 249 (12.28%) Java
6 152 (7.50%) Shell Script
7 131 (6.46%) C++
8 89 (4.39%) JavaScript
9 75 (3.70%) C
10 73 (3.60%) C#
11 61 (3.01%) PL/SQL
12 58 (2.86%) Perl
13 46 (2.27%) Go
14 39 (1.92%) Bicep
15 21 (1.04%) Ada
15 21 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
16 19 (0.94%) Rust
17 18 (0.89%) Groovy
17 18 (0.89%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.64%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 793 (39.10%) Security Cleared
2 597 (29.44%) SC Cleared
3 222 (10.95%) DV Cleared
4 173 (8.53%) Degree
5 70 (3.45%) AWS Certification
6 65 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.86%) CISSP
8 57 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
9 51 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
10 47 (2.32%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.33%) RHCE
12 26 (1.28%) CCNP
12 26 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
13 25 (1.23%) CompTIA Security+
14 23 (1.13%) CCNA
15 18 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 17 (0.84%) CISM
17 16 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.64%) RHCSA
18 13 (0.64%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (3.94%) NIST
2 74 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 61 (3.01%) QA
4 30 (1.48%) SLA
5 25 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 24 (1.18%) NCSC
7 22 (1.08%) GDPR
8 20 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
8 20 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.69%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.64%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.59%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.54%) GRC
13 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
14 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 15022
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.30%) JSP 440
15 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 331 (16.32%) Docker
2 265 (13.07%) Active Directory
3 244 (12.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (4.29%) Hyper-V
5 82 (4.04%) vSphere
6 81 (3.99%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (3.16%) VMware NSX
8 61 (3.01%) VMware ESXi
9 42 (2.07%) NFS
10 40 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
11 36 (1.78%) Firmware
12 29 (1.43%) KVM
13 18 (0.89%) Postfix
14 15 (0.74%) Ceph
15 12 (0.59%) GPFS
15 12 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
16 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
18 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 461 (22.73%) Terraform
2 446 (21.99%) Ansible
3 418 (20.61%) Kubernetes
4 167 (8.23%) Grafana
5 143 (7.05%) Prometheus
6 84 (4.14%) Puppet
7 62 (3.06%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.56%) Oracle RMAN
9 40 (1.97%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 36 (1.78%) SCCM
12 31 (1.53%) Nagios
13 30 (1.48%) Packer
14 27 (1.33%) ZABBIX
15 26 (1.28%) Red Hat Satellite
16 25 (1.23%) Podman
17 24 (1.18%) NetBackup
17 24 (1.18%) VxRail
18 23 (1.13%) Kibana
19 22 (1.08%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 338 (16.67%) VMware
2 314 (15.48%) Microsoft
3 300 (14.79%) Oracle
4 224 (11.05%) Red Hat
5 156 (7.69%) Splunk
6 130 (6.41%) Cisco
7 113 (5.57%) ServiceNow
8 98 (4.83%) IBM
9 81 (3.99%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.50%) Google
11 51 (2.51%) SolarWinds
12 50 (2.47%) Palo Alto
13 45 (2.22%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.17%) SAP
15 42 (2.07%) F5
16 39 (1.92%) HP
16 39 (1.92%) NetApp
17 33 (1.63%) Citrix
18 31 (1.53%) Dynatrace
19 29 (1.43%) Dell