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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 31 25
Rank change year-on-year -10 -6 -1
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,930 1,790 2,663
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.21% 5.55% 6.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.04% 39.68% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,201 1,061 1,799
10th Percentile £316 £350 £350
25th Percentile £405 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £657 £650
90th Percentile £714 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.57% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 97 59 116
10th Percentile £14.00 £44.50 £24.67
25th Percentile £41.25 £61.25 £48.32
Median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.06% +9.92% -6.92%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.56 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £62.25
% change year-on-year -5.06% +6.83% -4.23%

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 4,703 4,511 6,309
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.70% 13.99% 14.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,093 2,812 4,297
10th Percentile £175 £200 £180
25th Percentile £265 £317 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £600
90th Percentile £669 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £430
% change year-on-year -2.94% -1.16% -4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 172 311
10th Percentile £15.04 £16.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.94 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% +8.33% +20.00%
75th Percentile £62.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.59 £70.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £28.00 £26.09
% change year-on-year -10.18% +7.32% +15.96%

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 7 January 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 7 January 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 7 January 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 -11 1,642 £510 -7.27% 892
UK excluding London 0 1,119 £480 -8.57% 784
London -12 628 £553 -7.92% 214
Work from Home -13 527 £500 -4.76% 391
South East +6 299 £475 -5.00% 262
North of England +5 270 £490 -10.91% 142
Midlands +1 196 £520 -5.45% 98
West Midlands +4 180 £525 -4.55% 44
Yorkshire +11 170 £500 -20.00% 46
Scotland 0 133 £454 -7.35% 41
South West -19 123 £550 -5.66% 105
East of England -1 101 £475 +11.76% 122
North West -13 96 £473 -9.90% 73
East Midlands -24 16 £420 -2.89% 51
Northern Ireland +5 15 £400 +23.08% 13
North East -16 10 £550 +8.64% 24
Wales -8 5 £600 +11.63% 24

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 79 (4.09%) Confluence
2 62 (3.21%) Apache
3 43 (2.23%) nginx
4 37 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
5 33 (1.71%) Apache Spark
6 26 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (1.19%) OpenStack
8 21 (1.09%) WebSphere
9 20 (1.04%) WebLogic
10 17 (0.88%) JBoss
10 17 (0.88%) SharePoint
11 14 (0.73%) Mattermost
11 14 (0.73%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.67%) SAS
12 13 (0.67%) Tomcat
13 11 (0.57%) IIS
13 11 (0.57%) TPMS
13 11 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
15 5 (0.26%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 58 (3.01%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.52%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.10%) Simulink
8 2 (0.10%) Windchill
9 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.052%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) SAP IBP
4 3 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Finacle
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) RMDS
6 1 (0.052%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.052%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 575 (29.79%) AWS
2 385 (19.95%) Azure
3 182 (9.43%) GitHub
4 153 (7.93%) GCP
5 125 (6.48%) OpenShift
6 114 (5.91%) Serverless
7 109 (5.65%) AWS CloudFormation
8 105 (5.44%) Amazon EC2
9 91 (4.72%) GitHub Actions
10 86 (4.46%) Amazon S3
11 72 (3.73%) Amazon ECS
12 65 (3.37%) Amazon EKS
13 64 (3.32%) AWS Lambda
14 62 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
14 62 (3.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 59 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 51 (2.64%) SaaS
17 50 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
18 49 (2.54%) IaaS
19 34 (1.76%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 220 (11.40%) Firewall
2 164 (8.50%) DNS
3 144 (7.46%) TCP/IP
4 69 (3.58%) Network Security
5 62 (3.21%) SSH
6 58 (3.01%) SSL
7 52 (2.69%) HTTP
8 47 (2.44%) DHCP
9 42 (2.18%) VPN
10 31 (1.61%) SMTP
10 31 (1.61%) VLAN
11 30 (1.55%) SAN
12 29 (1.50%) Wireless
13 28 (1.45%) Kerberos
14 26 (1.35%) VSAN
15 24 (1.24%) Skype
16 22 (1.14%) WAN
17 20 (1.04%) Ethernet
17 20 (1.04%) LAN
18 18 (0.93%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 143 (7.41%) PostgreSQL
2 102 (5.28%) Relational Database
3 98 (5.08%) SQL Server
4 86 (4.46%) Amazon RDS
5 84 (4.35%) Oracle Database
6 82 (4.25%) NoSQL
7 78 (4.04%) MongoDB
8 68 (3.52%) MySQL
9 46 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
10 32 (1.66%) DB2
10 32 (1.66%) Hadoop
11 30 (1.55%) Big Data
12 23 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
13 16 (0.83%) Amazon Aurora
13 16 (0.83%) Apache Hive
13 16 (0.83%) Redis
14 14 (0.73%) Apache Cassandra
14 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
14 14 (0.73%) HBase
15 13 (0.67%) KDB
Development Applications
1 287 (14.87%) Jenkins
2 246 (12.75%) Git
3 192 (9.95%) GitLab
4 135 (6.99%) JIRA
5 62 (3.21%) JUnit
6 55 (2.85%) Sonatype Nexus
7 44 (2.28%) Bitbucket
8 42 (2.18%) Eclipse
9 29 (1.50%) Visual Studio
10 27 (1.40%) Liquibase
11 26 (1.35%) Artifactory
11 26 (1.35%) Maven
12 24 (1.24%) Cucumber
13 22 (1.14%) Mockito
14 21 (1.09%) Browser DevTools
14 21 (1.09%) Xcode
15 20 (1.04%) Android Studio
16 18 (0.93%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.83%) Burp Suite
17 16 (0.83%) CircleCI
General
1 590 (30.57%) Social Skills
2 373 (19.33%) Finance
3 207 (10.73%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (9.12%) Public Sector
5 165 (8.55%) Banking
6 69 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
7 54 (2.80%) Investment Banking
8 53 (2.75%) Financial Institution
9 48 (2.49%) Front Office
10 45 (2.33%) Military
11 43 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
12 24 (1.24%) Aerospace
13 23 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
14 19 (0.98%) Legal
15 18 (0.93%) Manufacturing
16 16 (0.83%) Telecoms
17 13 (0.67%) Law
18 12 (0.62%) Back Office
19 9 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 8 (0.41%) Games
Job Titles
1 296 (15.34%) Developer
2 236 (12.23%) Senior
3 174 (9.02%) DevOps Engineer
4 137 (7.10%) Software Engineer
5 116 (6.01%) Analyst
6 115 (5.96%) Java Developer
7 103 (5.34%) Architect
8 100 (5.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 97 (5.03%) Support Engineer
10 92 (4.77%) Platform Engineer
11 91 (4.72%) Linux Engineer
12 78 (4.04%) Administrator
13 72 (3.73%) AWS Engineer
14 63 (3.26%) Lead
15 61 (3.16%) Security Engineer
16 60 (3.11%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 59 (3.06%) Site Engineer
18 57 (2.95%) AWS DevOps
19 56 (2.90%) C++ Software Engineer
20 53 (2.75%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 162 (8.39%) Kafka
2 135 (6.99%) REST
3 131 (6.79%) Elastic Stack
4 80 (4.15%) Middleware
5 72 (3.73%) Node.js
6 71 (3.68%) Spring
7 67 (3.47%) RESTful
8 59 (3.06%) React
9 58 (3.01%) LDAP
10 53 (2.75%) AngularJS
11 50 (2.59%) JSON
12 46 (2.38%) XML
13 40 (2.07%) CSS
14 38 (1.97%) SOAP
15 36 (1.87%) YAML
16 33 (1.71%) OAuth
17 31 (1.61%) Web Services
18 30 (1.55%) .NET
18 30 (1.55%) FastAPI
19 29 (1.50%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 109 (5.65%) Cloud Native
2 93 (4.82%) Linux Command Line
3 80 (4.15%) Data Centre
4 75 (3.89%) Replication
5 69 (3.58%) Management Information System
6 67 (3.47%) Distributed Systems
7 61 (3.16%) Public Cloud
8 58 (3.01%) Equities
9 52 (2.69%) Data Structures
10 49 (2.54%) PKI
11 44 (2.28%) Onboarding
12 43 (2.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 38 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
14 35 (1.81%) Algorithms
15 31 (1.61%) Security Posture
16 30 (1.55%) Fixed Income
16 30 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
17 28 (1.45%) Product Ownership
18 27 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
18 27 (1.40%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 712 (36.89%) Windows
2 404 (20.93%) Unix
3 246 (12.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 143 (7.41%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.35%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.64%) CentOS
7 44 (2.28%) Android
8 38 (1.97%) VMS
9 34 (1.76%) Mac OS
10 30 (1.55%) Solaris
11 27 (1.40%) Mac OS X
12 23 (1.19%) Windows 10
13 20 (1.04%) AIX
14 19 (0.98%) Amazon Linux
14 19 (0.98%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.62%) Embedded Linux
16 12 (0.62%) Kali Linux
17 11 (0.57%) Debian
18 9 (0.47%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 583 (30.21%) CI/CD
2 504 (26.11%) DevOps
3 466 (24.15%) Agile
4 386 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
5 320 (16.58%) Containerisation
6 313 (16.22%) Infrastructure as Code
7 254 (13.16%) Software Engineering
8 191 (9.90%) Observability
9 175 (9.07%) Cybersecurity
10 173 (8.96%) Computer Science
11 163 (8.45%) Test Automation
12 155 (8.03%) Microservices
13 148 (7.67%) Incident Response
13 148 (7.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 141 (7.31%) Continuous Improvement
15 135 (6.99%) Platform Engineering
16 134 (6.94%) High Availability
17 133 (6.89%) Performance Tuning
18 129 (6.68%) Configuration Management
19 124 (6.42%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 801 (41.50%) Python
2 378 (19.59%) SQL
3 373 (19.33%) Java
4 334 (17.31%) Bash
5 291 (15.08%) PowerShell
6 217 (11.24%) Shell Script
7 200 (10.36%) C++
8 145 (7.51%) JavaScript
9 137 (7.10%) Perl
10 103 (5.34%) C#
11 81 (4.20%) Go
12 58 (3.01%) C
13 40 (2.07%) Ruby
14 37 (1.92%) Groovy
15 34 (1.76%) TypeScript
16 28 (1.45%) PL/SQL
17 26 (1.35%) Rust
18 20 (1.04%) PHP
19 19 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
20 14 (0.73%) Ada
Qualifications
1 604 (31.30%) Security Cleared
2 436 (22.59%) SC Cleared
3 219 (11.35%) Degree
4 137 (7.10%) DV Cleared
5 116 (6.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 78 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 67 (3.47%) AWS Certification
8 41 (2.12%) Master's Degree
9 39 (2.02%) CISSP
10 36 (1.87%) Azure Certification
11 32 (1.66%) Microsoft Certification
12 29 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
13 26 (1.35%) CompTIA Security+
14 23 (1.19%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 22 (1.14%) RHCE
16 19 (0.98%) OSCP
17 18 (0.93%) CCNP
18 16 (0.83%) CCNA
18 16 (0.83%) GPEN
19 15 (0.78%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (2.90%) NIST
2 43 (2.23%) QA
3 41 (2.12%) GDPR
4 36 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 24 (1.24%) SLA
6 21 (1.09%) Data Quality
7 17 (0.88%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.73%) NCSC
10 13 (0.67%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.57%) GLBA
12 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 9 (0.47%) SOC 2
14 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
15 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
15 4 (0.21%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.16%) SEPA
17 2 (0.10%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 405 (20.98%) Docker
2 198 (10.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 180 (9.33%) Active Directory
4 69 (3.58%) vSphere
5 55 (2.85%) Virtual Machines
6 39 (2.02%) Hyper-V
7 38 (1.97%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (1.30%) Oracle RAC
9 24 (1.24%) GPFS
9 24 (1.24%) NFS
10 21 (1.09%) KVM
11 20 (1.04%) Postfix
11 20 (1.04%) VMware NSX
12 17 (0.88%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.83%) DFS Replication
13 16 (0.83%) Dovecot
14 14 (0.73%) Firmware
14 14 (0.73%) HDFS
15 12 (0.62%) Lustre
15 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 468 (24.25%) Kubernetes
2 397 (20.57%) Terraform
3 383 (19.84%) Ansible
4 217 (11.24%) Grafana
5 186 (9.64%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.83%) Puppet
7 66 (3.42%) Progress Chef
8 39 (2.02%) Red Hat Satellite
9 37 (1.92%) Packer
10 35 (1.81%) Argo
10 35 (1.81%) vCenter Server
10 35 (1.81%) vRealize
11 33 (1.71%) Kibana
11 33 (1.71%) Podman
12 30 (1.55%) Nessus
13 29 (1.50%) SCCM
14 28 (1.45%) SCOM
15 27 (1.40%) Data Guard
16 23 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
17 22 (1.14%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 297 (15.39%) Microsoft
2 286 (14.82%) Oracle
3 281 (14.56%) VMware
4 256 (13.26%) Splunk
5 225 (11.66%) Red Hat
6 111 (5.75%) Cisco
7 82 (4.25%) ServiceNow
8 71 (3.68%) IBM
9 60 (3.11%) Google
10 52 (2.69%) AppDynamics
11 49 (2.54%) CyberArk
12 45 (2.33%) Dell
13 33 (1.71%) CrowdStrike
14 27 (1.40%) Palo Alto
14 27 (1.40%) SolarWinds
14 27 (1.40%) Sybase
15 25 (1.30%) Solace
16 24 (1.24%) NetApp
17 23 (1.19%) F5
18 22 (1.14%) Databricks