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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 32 32
Rank change year-on-year -21 0 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,943 1,754 2,282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.78% 5.70% 5.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.56% 41.50% 38.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,204 1,126 1,476
10th Percentile £344 £372 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 45 143
10th Percentile £35.18 £45.18 £48.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £55.00 £57.50
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.13 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 4,912 4,226 5,864
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.56% 13.74% 13.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,128 2,743 3,860
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +0.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 217 435
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.47 £22.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.32% -12.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £42.16 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £66.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £18.87 £31.25
% change year-on-year +37.78% -39.62% -6.72%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -25 1,638 £513 -5.09% 923
UK excluding London -17 1,152 £500 - 731
London -51 572 £525 -8.70% 266
Work from Home -30 512 £500 - 353
South East -2 311 £518 -1.43% 220
North of England -15 308 £482 -7.36% 134
South West -5 170 £538 -6.52% 143
Midlands -7 150 £474 -4.77% 73
Yorkshire -22 150 £500 -4.76% 33
North West -18 141 £469 +16.67% 80
West Midlands -6 126 £469 -6.20% 34
East of England -16 93 £475 -2.31% 113
Scotland -29 92 £463 -3.04% 29
Wales +4 27 £465 +64.60% 18
East Midlands -7 21 £528 +16.06% 39
North East -18 21 £406 -14.92% 21
Northern Ireland 0 8 £425 +21.43% 15

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 83 (4.27%) Confluence
2 48 (2.47%) Apache
3 30 (1.54%) nginx
4 29 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
5 24 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.08%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.93%) Apache Spark
8 16 (0.82%) WebLogic
9 11 (0.57%) CICS
9 11 (0.57%) OpenStack
9 11 (0.57%) SAS
10 9 (0.46%) NetWeaver
10 9 (0.46%) WebSphere
11 8 (0.41%) IIS
12 6 (0.31%) JBoss
12 6 (0.31%) SharePoint
12 6 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
13 5 (0.26%) CloudStack
13 5 (0.26%) CMS
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.10%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.051%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.051%) Houdini
6 1 (0.051%) InDesign
6 1 (0.051%) NUKE
6 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.051%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.051%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
4 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.051%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.051%) Odoo
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.051%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.051%) Shopify
5 1 (0.051%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 570 (29.34%) AWS
2 406 (20.90%) Azure
3 154 (7.93%) GitHub
4 131 (6.74%) GCP
5 107 (5.51%) OpenShift
6 90 (4.63%) GitHub Actions
7 89 (4.58%) Amazon S3
8 86 (4.43%) Amazon EC2
9 70 (3.60%) Entra ID
10 65 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
11 62 (3.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 62 (3.19%) Amazon EKS
12 56 (2.88%) Serverless
13 52 (2.68%) AWS CloudFormation
14 48 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
15 47 (2.42%) IaaS
15 47 (2.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 44 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
17 43 (2.21%) SaaS
18 42 (2.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 179 (9.21%) Firewall
2 142 (7.31%) DNS
3 82 (4.22%) TCP/IP
4 75 (3.86%) VPN
5 73 (3.76%) Network Security
6 72 (3.71%) SAN
7 54 (2.78%) DHCP
8 49 (2.52%) WAN
9 38 (1.96%) SSL
10 36 (1.85%) LAN
11 34 (1.75%) SNMP
12 31 (1.60%) HTTP
12 31 (1.60%) SSH
12 31 (1.60%) VSAN
13 27 (1.39%) NAS
14 24 (1.24%) Ethernet
14 24 (1.24%) VLAN
15 20 (1.03%) IPsec
16 17 (0.87%) Intrusion Detection
16 17 (0.87%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (5.92%) SQL Server
2 111 (5.71%) PostgreSQL
3 78 (4.01%) Oracle Database
4 75 (3.86%) MySQL
5 67 (3.45%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.35%) MongoDB
7 55 (2.83%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (1.96%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.49%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.49%) NoSQL
11 22 (1.13%) RDBMS
12 21 (1.08%) Big Data
13 20 (1.03%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.98%) KDB
15 17 (0.87%) Sybase ASE
16 15 (0.77%) Db2
16 15 (0.77%) Kdb+
17 14 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
17 14 (0.72%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 213 (10.96%) Jenkins
2 192 (9.88%) GitLab
3 163 (8.39%) Git
4 146 (7.51%) JIRA
5 32 (1.65%) Maven
6 31 (1.60%) Mockito
6 31 (1.60%) SonarQube
7 21 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 21 (1.08%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.93%) Artifactory
9 17 (0.87%) JUnit
9 17 (0.87%) Sonatype Nexus
10 15 (0.77%) Visual Studio
11 14 (0.72%) DbUnit
11 14 (0.72%) Rational Rhapsody
12 13 (0.67%) jMock
13 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket Server
14 9 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 9 (0.46%) Jaeger
General
1 389 (20.02%) Social Skills
2 273 (14.05%) Finance
3 200 (10.29%) Public Sector
4 167 (8.59%) Analytical Skills
5 132 (6.79%) Banking
6 77 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (2.11%) Military
8 29 (1.49%) Front Office
9 27 (1.39%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.39%) Retail
10 24 (1.24%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.13%) Legal
12 21 (1.08%) Law
13 20 (1.03%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.93%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (0.87%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.62%) Police
Job Titles
1 249 (12.82%) Senior
2 200 (10.29%) Developer
3 191 (9.83%) Linux Engineer
4 185 (9.52%) DevOps Engineer
5 147 (7.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 122 (6.28%) Software Engineer
7 99 (5.10%) Analyst
8 96 (4.94%) Architect
9 85 (4.37%) Lead
10 75 (3.86%) Java Developer
11 67 (3.45%) AWS Engineer
11 67 (3.45%) Consultant
12 63 (3.24%) Platform Engineer
13 60 (3.09%) Administrator
13 60 (3.09%) Support Engineer
14 56 (2.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 53 (2.73%) Cloud Engineer
16 52 (2.68%) Security Engineer
17 49 (2.52%) Senior Developer
18 48 (2.47%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (4.99%) Kafka
2 88 (4.53%) REST
3 79 (4.07%) Middleware
4 69 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
5 51 (2.62%) LDAP
5 51 (2.62%) Spring
6 48 (2.47%) Spring Boot
7 45 (2.32%) Web Services
8 44 (2.26%) RESTful
9 43 (2.21%) Node.js
10 40 (2.06%) .NET
11 31 (1.60%) ActiveMQ
12 29 (1.49%) YAML
13 26 (1.34%) JSON
13 26 (1.34%) React
13 26 (1.34%) SOAP
14 25 (1.29%) AngularJS
15 21 (1.08%) Django
15 21 (1.08%) XML
16 20 (1.03%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 144 (7.41%) Data Centre
2 120 (6.18%) Cloud Native
3 93 (4.79%) Onboarding
4 86 (4.43%) Linux Command Line
5 76 (3.91%) PKI
6 73 (3.76%) Distributed Systems
7 67 (3.45%) Replication
8 64 (3.29%) Management Information System
9 54 (2.78%) Public Cloud
9 54 (2.78%) Security Posture
10 50 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
11 48 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
12 37 (1.90%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
14 28 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
14 28 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
15 27 (1.39%) Clustering
15 27 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
16 24 (1.24%) Operational Technology
17 23 (1.18%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 737 (37.93%) Windows
2 398 (20.48%) Unix
3 309 (15.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 189 (9.73%) Windows Server
5 106 (5.46%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.29%) AIX
7 51 (2.62%) Solaris
8 39 (2.01%) CentOS
9 29 (1.49%) VMS
10 28 (1.44%) Embedded Linux
11 24 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (1.18%) SUSE
13 20 (1.03%) Android
14 17 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.82%) Debian
15 16 (0.82%) Mac OS
16 15 (0.77%) Mac OS X
17 14 (0.72%) Oracle Linux
18 13 (0.67%) Windows 10
19 12 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 542 (27.90%) CI/CD
2 473 (24.34%) DevOps
3 358 (18.43%) Agile
4 307 (15.80%) Infrastructure as Code
5 291 (14.98%) Problem-Solving
6 255 (13.12%) Containerisation
7 210 (10.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 207 (10.65%) Migration
9 202 (10.40%) Software Engineering
10 175 (9.01%) High Availability
11 171 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
11 171 (8.80%) Observability
12 159 (8.18%) Performance Tuning
13 149 (7.67%) ITIL
14 146 (7.51%) Root Cause Analysis
15 143 (7.36%) SIEM
16 136 (7.00%) Platform Engineering
17 132 (6.79%) Test Automation
18 130 (6.69%) Microservices
19 129 (6.64%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 652 (33.56%) Python
2 318 (16.37%) SQL
3 306 (15.75%) Bash
4 292 (15.03%) PowerShell
5 240 (12.35%) Java
6 144 (7.41%) Shell Script
7 118 (6.07%) C++
8 88 (4.53%) JavaScript
9 62 (3.19%) C
10 60 (3.09%) C#
11 58 (2.99%) Perl
12 50 (2.57%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.52%) Go
14 22 (1.13%) Ada
15 21 (1.08%) Rust
16 20 (1.03%) TypeScript
17 19 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
18 17 (0.87%) Bicep
18 17 (0.87%) MATLAB
19 16 (0.82%) PHP
Qualifications
1 748 (38.50%) Security Cleared
2 555 (28.56%) SC Cleared
3 209 (10.76%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.16%) Degree
5 68 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (3.45%) AWS Certification
7 58 (2.99%) CISSP
8 55 (2.83%) Cisco Certification
9 53 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
10 41 (2.11%) Azure Certification
11 35 (1.80%) CompTIA Security+
12 32 (1.65%) RHCE
13 25 (1.29%) CCNA
14 24 (1.24%) CCNP
15 20 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
16 19 (0.98%) CISM
17 16 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.82%) GIAC
18 14 (0.72%) Oracle Certification
19 13 (0.67%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.58%) NIST
2 84 (4.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.93%) QA
4 40 (2.06%) SLA
5 23 (1.18%) NCSC
6 22 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
6 22 (1.13%) GDPR
7 17 (0.87%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.82%) Disclosure Scotland
9 12 (0.62%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.57%) GRC
11 10 (0.51%) Data Quality
11 10 (0.51%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.36%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.31%) ISO 20022
14 6 (0.31%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 4 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 328 (16.88%) Docker
2 227 (11.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 220 (11.32%) Active Directory
4 89 (4.58%) Virtual Machines
5 67 (3.45%) Hyper-V
5 67 (3.45%) vSphere
6 66 (3.40%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (2.62%) NFS
8 50 (2.57%) VMware NSX
9 35 (1.80%) Firmware
10 33 (1.70%) KVM
11 30 (1.54%) Oracle RAC
12 21 (1.08%) Postfix
13 19 (0.98%) GPFS
14 11 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.51%) Ceph
15 10 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.41%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.36%) Squid
17 7 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 407 (20.95%) Ansible
2 388 (19.97%) Kubernetes
3 385 (19.81%) Terraform
4 165 (8.49%) Grafana
5 144 (7.41%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.71%) Puppet
7 53 (2.73%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.21%) vCenter Server
9 41 (2.11%) Oracle RMAN
10 29 (1.49%) Red Hat Satellite
11 28 (1.44%) Nagios
11 28 (1.44%) Packer
12 27 (1.39%) Data Guard
13 26 (1.34%) ZABBIX
14 23 (1.18%) Podman
14 23 (1.18%) vRealize
15 22 (1.13%) Tivoli
16 21 (1.08%) Argo
16 21 (1.08%) Kibana
17 18 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 302 (15.54%) VMware
2 277 (14.26%) Oracle
3 262 (13.48%) Microsoft
4 224 (11.53%) Red Hat
5 157 (8.08%) Splunk
6 125 (6.43%) Cisco
7 106 (5.46%) IBM
8 91 (4.68%) ServiceNow
9 63 (3.24%) CyberArk
10 62 (3.19%) Google
11 49 (2.52%) Palo Alto
12 44 (2.26%) SolarWinds
13 41 (2.11%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.06%) SAP
15 38 (1.96%) F5
16 34 (1.75%) Citrix
17 33 (1.70%) HP
18 31 (1.60%) Sybase
19 30 (1.54%) Dell
20 29 (1.49%) NetApp