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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -22 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,115 1,865 2,137
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.66% 5.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.46% 41.80% 39.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,314 1,131 1,312
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 68 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £54.03 £54.08 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.57%
75th Percentile £69.63 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.13 £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 5,360 4,462 5,414
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.81% 13.55% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,377 2,854 3,463
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £579
90th Percentile £675 £672 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 398 274 274
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.50 £15.53
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.07
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £49.25
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -48.93% +5.48%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.44 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.78 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +29.22% -52.10% +14.43%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 1,777 £525 - 3,065
UK excluding London -21 1,207 £500 - 1,530
London -37 693 £535 -6.96% 1,605
Work from Home -24 563 £500 -4.76% 1,075
South East -15 337 £525 +8.81% 435
North of England -20 289 £500 +5.26% 212
South West +4 189 £575 +4.55% 271
North West -15 141 £497 +23.63% 125
Scotland -17 136 £450 -10.00% 90
Yorkshire -32 124 £508 +1.50% 48
Midlands -52 122 £470 -6.00% 162
East of England -12 116 £491 - 300
West Midlands -47 102 £470 -6.00% 109
North East -16 31 £470 -18.26% 39
Wales +6 27 £465 +3.33% 26
East Midlands -2 17 £491 +16.79% 53
Northern Ireland -6 2 - - 49

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 46 (2.17%) Apache
3 32 (1.51%) nginx
4 26 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
5 25 (1.18%) WebLogic
6 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
6 24 (1.13%) SharePoint
7 23 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
8 21 (0.99%) Apache Spark
9 18 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 18 (0.85%) SAS
10 15 (0.71%) JBoss
10 15 (0.71%) Tomcat
11 12 (0.57%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.43%) IIS
13 6 (0.28%) CMS
13 6 (0.28%) MTS
13 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
14 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
14 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
5 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.095%) Simulink
6 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
2 7 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.19%) Actimize
5 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
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%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.047%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
7 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 615 (29.08%) AWS
2 521 (24.63%) Azure
3 188 (8.89%) GCP
4 163 (7.71%) GitHub
5 109 (5.15%) OpenShift
6 106 (5.01%) Entra ID
7 101 (4.78%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.35%) Amazon S3
9 91 (4.30%) Azure DevOps
10 84 (3.97%) Amazon EC2
11 70 (3.31%) Serverless
12 66 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
13 64 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
14 62 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.88%) Amazon EKS
16 56 (2.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 53 (2.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 50 (2.36%) IaaS
19 44 (2.08%) Datadog
20 43 (2.03%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.78%) DNS
2 218 (10.31%) Firewall
3 160 (7.57%) TCP/IP
4 128 (6.05%) DHCP
5 86 (4.07%) VPN
6 83 (3.92%) Network Security
7 80 (3.78%) SAN
8 55 (2.60%) SSL
9 50 (2.36%) WAN
10 45 (2.13%) HTTP
10 45 (2.13%) SSH
11 40 (1.89%) VLAN
12 38 (1.80%) VSAN
13 35 (1.65%) LAN
14 27 (1.28%) Kerberos
15 25 (1.18%) BGP
15 25 (1.18%) SNMP
16 24 (1.13%) HTTPS
17 23 (1.09%) NAS
18 22 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (5.82%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.48%) SQL Server
3 102 (4.82%) Oracle Database
4 74 (3.50%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.07%) MySQL
6 57 (2.70%) Amazon RDS
7 55 (2.60%) MongoDB
8 45 (2.13%) NoSQL
9 35 (1.65%) Amazon Aurora
9 35 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.37%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.28%) Big Data
13 21 (0.99%) Power BI
14 20 (0.95%) Data Lake
14 20 (0.95%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 11g
15 19 (0.90%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.85%) Hadoop
16 18 (0.85%) Redis
Development Applications
1 274 (12.96%) Git
2 248 (11.73%) Jenkins
3 214 (10.12%) GitLab
4 158 (7.47%) JIRA
5 38 (1.80%) Maven
6 37 (1.75%) SonarQube
7 32 (1.51%) Bitbucket
8 28 (1.32%) Sonatype Nexus
9 26 (1.23%) Artifactory
10 21 (0.99%) Mockito
11 20 (0.95%) Selenium
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.80%) Gradle
13 17 (0.80%) JUnit
14 13 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
16 10 (0.47%) Rational Rhapsody
17 9 (0.43%) Cucumber
17 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 449 (21.23%) Social Skills
2 324 (15.32%) Finance
3 248 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.23%) Public Sector
5 169 (7.99%) Banking
6 89 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.36%) Telecoms
8 40 (1.89%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.65%) Front Office
10 34 (1.61%) Military
11 29 (1.37%) Aerospace
11 29 (1.37%) Legal
12 21 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 21 (0.99%) Law
13 18 (0.85%) Retail
14 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (0.76%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.47%) Aviation
16 10 (0.47%) Financial Institution
17 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 325 (15.37%) Senior
2 245 (11.58%) Linux Engineer
3 209 (9.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 196 (9.27%) Developer
5 188 (8.89%) DevOps Engineer
6 105 (4.96%) Architect
7 103 (4.87%) Software Engineer
8 102 (4.82%) Platform Engineer
9 82 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.83%) Support Engineer
11 80 (3.78%) Lead
12 77 (3.64%) Consultant
13 74 (3.50%) Analyst
14 73 (3.45%) Java Developer
15 68 (3.22%) Administrator
15 68 (3.22%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 66 (3.12%) AWS Engineer
17 59 (2.79%) Systems Engineer
18 56 (2.65%) Network Engineer
19 55 (2.60%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 502 (23.74%) Terraform
2 136 (6.43%) Kafka
3 123 (5.82%) REST
4 80 (3.78%) Middleware
5 76 (3.59%) Elastic Stack
6 68 (3.22%) .NET
7 55 (2.60%) Spring
8 54 (2.55%) RESTful
9 50 (2.36%) Spring Boot
10 45 (2.13%) Web Services
11 43 (2.03%) LDAP
12 38 (1.80%) JSON
13 36 (1.70%) XML
14 32 (1.51%) HTML
15 31 (1.47%) SOAP
16 30 (1.42%) YAML
17 29 (1.37%) Node.js
17 29 (1.37%) React
18 28 (1.32%) Django
18 28 (1.32%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 150 (7.09%) Onboarding
2 138 (6.52%) Cloud Native
3 133 (6.29%) Data Centre
4 109 (5.15%) Linux Command Line
4 109 (5.15%) PKI
5 95 (4.49%) Replication
6 86 (4.07%) Distributed Systems
7 73 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
8 67 (3.17%) Public Cloud
9 65 (3.07%) Management Information System
10 47 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 47 (2.22%) Security Posture
11 41 (1.94%) Private Cloud
12 40 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
13 39 (1.84%) Clustering
13 39 (1.84%) Embedded Systems
13 39 (1.84%) Product Ownership
14 38 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
15 37 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
15 37 (1.75%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 797 (37.68%) Windows
2 444 (20.99%) Unix
3 372 (17.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 250 (11.82%) Windows Server
5 112 (5.30%) Ubuntu
6 60 (2.84%) CentOS
7 58 (2.74%) AIX
8 54 (2.55%) Solaris
9 38 (1.80%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.42%) VMS
11 29 (1.37%) Windows 10
12 28 (1.32%) SUSE
13 23 (1.09%) Rocky
14 19 (0.90%) Mac OS
14 19 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
15 16 (0.76%) Debian
15 16 (0.76%) Oracle Linux
15 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
16 13 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 645 (30.50%) CI/CD
2 558 (26.38%) DevOps
3 446 (21.09%) Infrastructure as Code
4 391 (18.49%) Agile
5 334 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
6 316 (14.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 296 (14.00%) Containerisation
8 257 (12.15%) Continuous Improvement
9 242 (11.44%) Observability
10 232 (10.97%) Migration
10 232 (10.97%) Platform Engineering
11 215 (10.17%) Software Engineering
12 209 (9.88%) Root Cause Analysis
13 204 (9.65%) High Availability
14 175 (8.27%) Configuration Management
14 175 (8.27%) Performance Tuning
15 172 (8.13%) ITIL
16 170 (8.04%) Test Automation
17 157 (7.42%) AI
17 157 (7.42%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 763 (36.08%) Python
2 430 (20.33%) Bash
3 404 (19.10%) PowerShell
4 380 (17.97%) SQL
5 248 (11.73%) Java
6 150 (7.09%) Shell Script
7 123 (5.82%) C++
8 79 (3.74%) JavaScript
9 78 (3.69%) Perl
10 76 (3.59%) C#
11 74 (3.50%) C
12 66 (3.12%) PL/SQL
13 57 (2.70%) Go
14 42 (1.99%) Bicep
15 28 (1.32%) Groovy
16 21 (0.99%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.85%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.76%) Ada
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Korn
Qualifications
1 813 (38.44%) Security Cleared
2 582 (27.52%) SC Cleared
3 254 (12.01%) DV Cleared
4 186 (8.79%) Degree
5 73 (3.45%) AWS Certification
6 62 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
8 58 (2.74%) Azure Certification
8 58 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
8 58 (2.74%) CISSP
9 25 (1.18%) CCNP
9 25 (1.18%) CISM
9 25 (1.18%) RHCE
10 21 (0.99%) CCNA
10 21 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
11 19 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
15 14 (0.66%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.59%) NIST
2 73 (3.45%) QA
3 70 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 33 (1.56%) SLA
5 24 (1.13%) Data Quality
6 21 (0.99%) GDPR
7 19 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
8 18 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
9 17 (0.80%) NCSC
10 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.71%) GRC
12 11 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
13 9 (0.43%) ISO 31000
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.24%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 367 (17.35%) Docker
2 281 (13.29%) Active Directory
3 249 (11.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.30%) Hyper-V
5 85 (4.02%) vSphere
6 75 (3.55%) Virtual Machines
7 73 (3.45%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (2.79%) VMware NSX
9 41 (1.94%) Firmware
10 39 (1.84%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.65%) NFS
12 26 (1.23%) KVM
13 19 (0.90%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.80%) Ceph
15 14 (0.66%) Embedded Firmware
15 14 (0.66%) Postfix
16 13 (0.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.52%) GPFS
18 10 (0.47%) Squid
19 6 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 475 (22.46%) Ansible
2 466 (22.03%) Kubernetes
3 191 (9.03%) Grafana
4 171 (8.09%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.21%) Puppet
6 62 (2.93%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.46%) Oracle RMAN
8 48 (2.27%) SCCM
9 40 (1.89%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.84%) vCenter Server
11 31 (1.47%) Kibana
11 31 (1.47%) Nagios
12 30 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
13 28 (1.32%) Red Hat Satellite
14 27 (1.28%) VxRail
15 26 (1.23%) Packer
15 26 (1.23%) Podman
16 24 (1.13%) NetBackup
17 22 (1.04%) Istio
18 21 (0.99%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 354 (16.74%) VMware
2 343 (16.22%) Microsoft
3 306 (14.47%) Oracle
4 227 (10.73%) Red Hat
5 169 (7.99%) Splunk
6 125 (5.91%) Cisco
7 113 (5.34%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.54%) IBM
9 88 (4.16%) Google
10 79 (3.74%) CyberArk
11 49 (2.32%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.17%) NetApp
13 45 (2.13%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.89%) F5
14 40 (1.89%) Palo Alto
15 39 (1.84%) Dell
16 38 (1.80%) SAP
17 33 (1.56%) Dynatrace
18 29 (1.37%) Citrix
18 29 (1.37%) HP