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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -19 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,061 1,809 2,218
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.84% 5.53% 5.71%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.51% 41.18% 40.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,282 1,107 1,413
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.87%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £633
90th Percentile £713 £721 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 62 117
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.44 £63.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.57%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.85%

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 5,216 4,393 5,428
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.72% 13.43% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,305 2,796 3,553
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £585
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 356 270 323
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.85
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.77% -16.42% -29.41%
75th Percentile £63.75 £57.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.83 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £24.33 £39.25
% change year-on-year +6.06% -38.01% +27.02%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 1,725 £525 - 722
UK excluding London -20 1,179 £500 - 543
London -42 664 £545 -5.22% 240
Work from Home -28 533 £500 -3.85% 307
South East -6 339 £518 +3.50% 146
North of England -27 282 £497 -0.60% 101
South West 0 189 £555 -3.52% 125
North West -23 142 £485 +21.13% 56
Scotland -16 130 £450 -10.00% 27
Yorkshire -26 122 £500 -3.85% 26
Midlands -36 119 £470 -5.05% 61
West Midlands -49 97 £470 -6.00% 35
East of England -17 96 £475 -3.06% 93
Wales +4 29 £465 +55.00% 5
North East -22 25 £471 -18.04% 19
East Midlands -8 19 £513 +17.82% 25
Northern Ireland -7 2 - - 6

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 69 (3.35%) Confluence
2 50 (2.43%) Apache
3 30 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.36%) nginx
5 23 (1.12%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.97%) Apache Spark
8 19 (0.92%) SharePoint
9 18 (0.87%) SAS
10 16 (0.78%) Tomcat
10 16 (0.78%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.73%) JBoss
12 14 (0.68%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.44%) IIS
15 6 (0.29%) NetWeaver
15 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 28 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Bloomberg TOMS
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 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
1 593 (28.77%) AWS
2 507 (24.60%) Azure
3 168 (8.15%) GCP
4 155 (7.52%) GitHub
5 103 (5.00%) Entra ID
6 99 (4.80%) OpenShift
7 93 (4.51%) GitHub Actions
8 87 (4.22%) Amazon S3
8 87 (4.22%) Azure DevOps
9 81 (3.93%) Amazon EC2
10 62 (3.01%) Serverless
11 60 (2.91%) Microsoft 365
12 59 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
13 55 (2.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 55 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
13 55 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (2.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 51 (2.47%) IaaS
16 43 (2.09%) SaaS
17 37 (1.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 225 (10.92%) DNS
2 219 (10.63%) Firewall
3 134 (6.50%) TCP/IP
4 122 (5.92%) DHCP
5 88 (4.27%) VPN
6 78 (3.78%) SAN
7 77 (3.74%) Network Security
8 51 (2.47%) WAN
9 50 (2.43%) SSL
10 45 (2.18%) SSH
10 45 (2.18%) VSAN
11 42 (2.04%) HTTP
12 40 (1.94%) LAN
13 39 (1.89%) VLAN
14 30 (1.46%) SNMP
15 25 (1.21%) NAS
16 23 (1.12%) HTTPS
16 23 (1.12%) Kerberos
17 21 (1.02%) BGP
18 20 (0.97%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (5.77%) SQL Server
2 113 (5.48%) PostgreSQL
3 98 (4.75%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.35%) MySQL
5 66 (3.20%) Relational Database
6 55 (2.67%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
8 40 (1.94%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
10 33 (1.60%) Elasticsearch
11 30 (1.46%) RDBMS
12 29 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
13 25 (1.21%) Big Data
14 19 (0.92%) DynamoDB
15 18 (0.87%) Data Lake
15 18 (0.87%) Power BI
15 18 (0.87%) Redis
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Exadata
16 17 (0.82%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 233 (11.31%) Git
2 228 (11.06%) Jenkins
3 189 (9.17%) GitLab
4 153 (7.42%) JIRA
5 31 (1.50%) Bitbucket
5 31 (1.50%) Maven
6 28 (1.36%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
8 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
8 21 (1.02%) Selenium
9 20 (0.97%) Mockito
10 15 (0.73%) JUnit
11 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 10 (0.49%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.44%) LoadRunner
15 8 (0.39%) eggPlant
15 8 (0.39%) JMeter
General
1 426 (20.67%) Social Skills
2 304 (14.75%) Finance
3 240 (11.64%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.44%) Public Sector
5 159 (7.71%) Banking
6 82 (3.98%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (2.04%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.80%) Front Office
9 35 (1.70%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.31%) Military
11 25 (1.21%) Legal
12 24 (1.16%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.02%) Retail
14 19 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.92%) Law
15 18 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
17 10 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
18 9 (0.44%) Aviation
18 9 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 300 (14.56%) Senior
2 233 (11.31%) Linux Engineer
3 196 (9.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 182 (8.83%) Developer
5 174 (8.44%) DevOps Engineer
6 110 (5.34%) Architect
7 99 (4.80%) Software Engineer
8 96 (4.66%) Platform Engineer
9 84 (4.08%) Consultant
10 79 (3.83%) Lead
11 77 (3.74%) Analyst
11 77 (3.74%) Support Engineer
12 73 (3.54%) Cloud Engineer
13 67 (3.25%) Java Developer
14 64 (3.11%) AWS Engineer
15 63 (3.06%) Administrator
16 59 (2.86%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 55 (2.67%) Network Engineer
18 54 (2.62%) Systems Engineer
19 51 (2.47%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 472 (22.90%) Terraform
2 124 (6.02%) Kafka
3 112 (5.43%) REST
4 73 (3.54%) Middleware
5 71 (3.44%) Elastic Stack
6 66 (3.20%) .NET
7 56 (2.72%) RESTful
8 48 (2.33%) Spring
9 41 (1.99%) Spring Boot
10 39 (1.89%) LDAP
11 36 (1.75%) Web Services
12 35 (1.70%) JSON
12 35 (1.70%) XML
13 30 (1.46%) HTML
13 30 (1.46%) SOAP
13 30 (1.46%) YAML
14 25 (1.21%) RabbitMQ
15 24 (1.16%) ARM Templates
15 24 (1.16%) FastAPI
15 24 (1.16%) React
Miscellaneous
1 142 (6.89%) Onboarding
2 133 (6.45%) Data Centre
3 129 (6.26%) Cloud Native
4 104 (5.05%) PKI
5 101 (4.90%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.51%) Replication
7 84 (4.08%) Distributed Systems
8 67 (3.25%) Hybrid Cloud
8 67 (3.25%) Public Cloud
9 55 (2.67%) Management Information System
10 45 (2.18%) Security Posture
11 43 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
12 41 (1.99%) Embedded Systems
13 39 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
14 37 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
15 36 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
16 34 (1.65%) Clustering
16 34 (1.65%) Private Cloud
16 34 (1.65%) Product Ownership
17 32 (1.55%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 779 (37.80%) Windows
2 412 (19.99%) Unix
3 347 (16.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 236 (11.45%) Windows Server
5 115 (5.58%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.15%) AIX
7 52 (2.52%) Solaris
8 51 (2.47%) CentOS
9 40 (1.94%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.26%) SUSE
10 26 (1.26%) VMS
11 25 (1.21%) Windows 10
12 22 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
14 18 (0.87%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.87%) Rocky
14 18 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.78%) Debian
16 12 (0.58%) Android
16 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 581 (28.19%) CI/CD
2 514 (24.94%) DevOps
3 406 (19.70%) Infrastructure as Code
4 360 (17.47%) Agile
5 309 (14.99%) Problem-Solving
6 287 (13.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 260 (12.62%) Containerisation
8 240 (11.64%) Continuous Improvement
9 239 (11.60%) Migration
10 215 (10.43%) Observability
11 208 (10.09%) Platform Engineering
12 207 (10.04%) High Availability
13 200 (9.70%) Root Cause Analysis
14 196 (9.51%) Software Engineering
15 180 (8.73%) Performance Tuning
16 172 (8.35%) ITIL
17 165 (8.01%) Test Automation
18 158 (7.67%) Configuration Management
19 150 (7.28%) AI
20 147 (7.13%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 730 (35.42%) Python
2 399 (19.36%) PowerShell
3 397 (19.26%) Bash
4 367 (17.81%) SQL
5 243 (11.79%) Java
6 149 (7.23%) Shell Script
7 127 (6.16%) C++
8 79 (3.83%) C
9 76 (3.69%) JavaScript
10 69 (3.35%) C#
11 67 (3.25%) Perl
12 61 (2.96%) PL/SQL
13 47 (2.28%) Go
14 42 (2.04%) Bicep
15 24 (1.16%) Search Processing Language
16 23 (1.12%) Groovy
17 19 (0.92%) Ada
18 16 (0.78%) Rust
18 16 (0.78%) TypeScript
19 13 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 793 (38.48%) Security Cleared
2 582 (28.24%) SC Cleared
3 238 (11.55%) DV Cleared
4 179 (8.69%) Degree
5 70 (3.40%) AWS Certification
6 60 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 56 (2.72%) Cisco Certification
9 54 (2.62%) Azure Certification
10 53 (2.57%) CISSP
11 23 (1.12%) CCNP
12 22 (1.07%) RHCE
13 20 (0.97%) CCNA
13 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
14 19 (0.92%) CISM
15 18 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
16 17 (0.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 15 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (3.49%) NIST
2 68 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (3.30%) QA
3 32 (1.55%) SLA
4 26 (1.26%) Data Quality
5 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
5 20 (0.97%) NCSC
6 17 (0.82%) GDPR
7 16 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
8 15 (0.73%) ISO 20022
9 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
10 10 (0.49%) GRC
11 9 (0.44%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.34%) ISO 15022
12 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
15 4 (0.19%) JSP 440
System Software
1 331 (16.06%) Docker
2 277 (13.44%) Active Directory
3 255 (12.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.42%) Hyper-V
5 90 (4.37%) vSphere
6 77 (3.74%) Virtual Machines
7 69 (3.35%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.06%) VMware NSX
9 42 (2.04%) Firmware
10 40 (1.94%) Oracle RAC
11 39 (1.89%) NFS
12 28 (1.36%) KVM
13 16 (0.78%) Ceph
13 16 (0.78%) Postfix
13 16 (0.78%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.58%) GPFS
16 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.49%) Squid
18 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 448 (21.74%) Ansible
2 425 (20.62%) Kubernetes
3 173 (8.39%) Grafana
4 153 (7.42%) Prometheus
5 88 (4.27%) Puppet
6 61 (2.96%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.43%) Oracle RMAN
8 43 (2.09%) SCCM
9 41 (1.99%) vCenter Server
10 40 (1.94%) Data Guard
11 32 (1.55%) Nagios
12 27 (1.31%) Kibana
12 27 (1.31%) Microsoft Intune
12 27 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
12 27 (1.31%) ZABBIX
13 26 (1.26%) NetBackup
13 26 (1.26%) Packer
14 24 (1.16%) VxRail
15 22 (1.07%) Podman
15 22 (1.07%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 356 (17.27%) VMware
2 330 (16.01%) Microsoft
3 312 (15.14%) Oracle
4 221 (10.72%) Red Hat
5 160 (7.76%) Splunk
6 125 (6.07%) Cisco
7 114 (5.53%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.66%) IBM
9 80 (3.88%) CyberArk
10 73 (3.54%) Google
11 50 (2.43%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
13 44 (2.13%) NetApp
13 44 (2.13%) SAP
14 43 (2.09%) Palo Alto
15 38 (1.84%) F5
16 36 (1.75%) HP
17 34 (1.65%) Dell
18 33 (1.60%) Citrix
19 31 (1.50%) Dynatrace