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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -20 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,953 1,791 2,296
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.79% 5.73% 5.28%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.44% 41.74% 38.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 1,149 1,482
10th Percentile £350 £370 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
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 103 46 141
10th Percentile £34.65 £46.16 £48.00
25th Percentile £50.63 £54.44 £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 £71.32 - -
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 4,952 4,291 5,921
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.61% 13.72% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,168 2,777 3,890
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.11% -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 334 222 434
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.63 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £22.53 £24.68
Median % change year-on-year +15.40% -8.70% -41.94%
75th Percentile £63.75 £41.00 £64.69
90th Percentile £70.00 £65.98 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.89 £19.27 £31.00
% change year-on-year +34.33% -37.84% -7.46%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 1,643 £513 -4.65% 923
UK excluding London -18 1,159 £500 - 726
London -51 574 £528 -8.26% 268
Work from Home -33 517 £500 -3.85% 356
South East -5 318 £515 -1.90% 225
North of England -18 307 £480 -4.00% 133
South West -4 168 £538 -6.52% 144
Midlands -8 147 £475 -4.04% 69
Yorkshire -23 146 £500 -4.76% 31
North West -23 144 £475 +18.16% 84
West Midlands -13 124 £471 -5.85% 33
Scotland -23 97 £488 +0.93% 33
East of England -14 94 £475 -2.31% 109
Wales 0 28 £465 +64.60% 10
North East -23 21 £406 -14.92% 18
East Midlands -10 20 £528 +16.06% 36
Northern Ireland 0 7 £425 +21.43% 16

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 81 (4.15%) Confluence
2 48 (2.46%) Apache
3 30 (1.54%) nginx
4 29 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
5 25 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.08%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.92%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.87%) WebLogic
9 12 (0.61%) OpenStack
10 11 (0.56%) CICS
11 10 (0.51%) SAS
12 9 (0.46%) NetWeaver
12 9 (0.46%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.41%) IIS
13 8 (0.41%) JBoss
14 6 (0.31%) SharePoint
14 6 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.26%) CloudStack
15 5 (0.26%) CMS
16 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 20 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 1 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.051%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Houdini
5 1 (0.051%) InDesign
5 1 (0.051%) NUKE
5 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.051%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.051%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.56%) 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
1 577 (29.54%) AWS
2 408 (20.89%) Azure
3 154 (7.89%) GitHub
4 135 (6.91%) GCP
5 111 (5.68%) OpenShift
6 90 (4.61%) GitHub Actions
7 89 (4.56%) Amazon S3
8 87 (4.45%) Amazon EC2
9 70 (3.58%) Entra ID
10 64 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
11 62 (3.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 61 (3.12%) Amazon EKS
13 58 (2.97%) Serverless
14 52 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
15 48 (2.46%) AWS Lambda
16 47 (2.41%) IaaS
16 47 (2.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 45 (2.30%) Microsoft 365
18 43 (2.20%) SaaS
19 42 (2.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 177 (9.06%) Firewall
2 145 (7.42%) DNS
3 79 (4.05%) TCP/IP
4 76 (3.89%) VPN
5 75 (3.84%) Network Security
6 73 (3.74%) SAN
7 55 (2.82%) DHCP
8 49 (2.51%) WAN
9 38 (1.95%) SSL
10 36 (1.84%) LAN
11 34 (1.74%) SNMP
12 31 (1.59%) HTTP
12 31 (1.59%) SSH
12 31 (1.59%) VSAN
13 27 (1.38%) NAS
14 25 (1.28%) VLAN
15 24 (1.23%) Ethernet
16 21 (1.08%) IPsec
17 17 (0.87%) Intrusion Detection
17 17 (0.87%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (5.89%) SQL Server
2 113 (5.79%) PostgreSQL
3 81 (4.15%) Oracle Database
4 76 (3.89%) MySQL
5 68 (3.48%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.33%) MongoDB
7 55 (2.82%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.10%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.48%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.48%) NoSQL
11 23 (1.18%) RDBMS
12 21 (1.08%) Big Data
13 20 (1.02%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.97%) KDB
15 17 (0.87%) Sybase ASE
16 15 (0.77%) Db2
16 15 (0.77%) Kdb+
16 15 (0.77%) Oracle Database 12c
17 14 (0.72%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 214 (10.96%) Jenkins
2 193 (9.88%) GitLab
3 164 (8.40%) Git
4 146 (7.48%) JIRA
5 32 (1.64%) Maven
6 31 (1.59%) Mockito
6 31 (1.59%) SonarQube
7 21 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 21 (1.08%) Eclipse
8 19 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
9 18 (0.92%) Artifactory
10 17 (0.87%) JUnit
11 15 (0.77%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.72%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.72%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.67%) jMock
14 11 (0.56%) Bitbucket Server
15 9 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 9 (0.46%) Cucumber
16 8 (0.41%) TeamCity
General
1 392 (20.07%) Social Skills
2 273 (13.98%) Finance
3 201 (10.29%) Public Sector
4 170 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
5 133 (6.81%) Banking
6 77 (3.94%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (2.00%) Military
8 29 (1.48%) Front Office
9 27 (1.38%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.38%) Retail
10 25 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.13%) Legal
12 21 (1.08%) Law
13 19 (0.97%) Financial Institution
13 19 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.87%) Aerospace
15 17 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 11 (0.56%) Police
Job Titles
1 249 (12.75%) Senior
2 201 (10.29%) Developer
3 193 (9.88%) Linux Engineer
4 188 (9.63%) DevOps Engineer
5 149 (7.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 121 (6.20%) Software Engineer
7 97 (4.97%) Analyst
7 97 (4.97%) Architect
8 83 (4.25%) Lead
9 75 (3.84%) Java Developer
10 67 (3.43%) Consultant
11 66 (3.38%) AWS Engineer
12 65 (3.33%) Platform Engineer
13 61 (3.12%) Support Engineer
14 58 (2.97%) Administrator
15 57 (2.92%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 54 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
17 52 (2.66%) Security Engineer
18 49 (2.51%) DBA
18 49 (2.51%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (4.86%) Kafka
2 89 (4.56%) REST
3 78 (3.99%) Middleware
4 71 (3.64%) Elastic Stack
5 52 (2.66%) Spring
6 51 (2.61%) LDAP
7 47 (2.41%) Spring Boot
8 45 (2.30%) Web Services
9 44 (2.25%) RESTful
10 43 (2.20%) Node.js
11 40 (2.05%) .NET
12 31 (1.59%) ActiveMQ
13 27 (1.38%) YAML
14 26 (1.33%) AngularJS
14 26 (1.33%) JSON
14 26 (1.33%) React
14 26 (1.33%) SOAP
15 22 (1.13%) XML
16 21 (1.08%) Django
17 20 (1.02%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 141 (7.22%) Data Centre
2 124 (6.35%) Cloud Native
3 96 (4.92%) Onboarding
4 85 (4.35%) Linux Command Line
5 76 (3.89%) PKI
6 73 (3.74%) Distributed Systems
7 66 (3.38%) Replication
8 64 (3.28%) Management Information System
9 54 (2.76%) Public Cloud
9 54 (2.76%) Security Posture
10 51 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
11 50 (2.56%) Hybrid Cloud
12 37 (1.89%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
13 29 (1.48%) Embedded Systems
14 28 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
14 28 (1.43%) Enterprise Storage
15 27 (1.38%) Clustering
16 25 (1.28%) Operational Technology
17 23 (1.18%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 740 (37.89%) Windows
2 404 (20.69%) Unix
3 313 (16.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 190 (9.73%) Windows Server
5 101 (5.17%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.33%) AIX
7 55 (2.82%) Solaris
8 40 (2.05%) CentOS
9 29 (1.48%) VMS
10 27 (1.38%) Embedded Linux
11 24 (1.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (1.18%) SUSE
13 19 (0.97%) Android
14 16 (0.82%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.77%) Debian
15 15 (0.77%) Mac OS X
16 14 (0.72%) Oracle Linux
17 13 (0.67%) Windows 10
18 12 (0.61%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 544 (27.85%) CI/CD
2 472 (24.17%) DevOps
3 355 (18.18%) Agile
4 314 (16.08%) Infrastructure as Code
5 291 (14.90%) Problem-Solving
6 257 (13.16%) Containerisation
7 215 (11.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 212 (10.86%) Migration
9 201 (10.29%) Software Engineering
10 177 (9.06%) High Availability
11 173 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
11 173 (8.86%) Observability
12 159 (8.14%) Performance Tuning
13 153 (7.83%) ITIL
14 152 (7.78%) Root Cause Analysis
15 144 (7.37%) SIEM
16 140 (7.17%) Platform Engineering
17 130 (6.66%) Configuration Management
17 130 (6.66%) Test Automation
18 129 (6.61%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 653 (33.44%) Python
2 322 (16.49%) SQL
3 311 (15.92%) Bash
4 295 (15.10%) PowerShell
5 243 (12.44%) Java
6 145 (7.42%) Shell Script
7 116 (5.94%) C++
8 90 (4.61%) JavaScript
9 63 (3.23%) C
10 60 (3.07%) C#
11 55 (2.82%) Perl
12 52 (2.66%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.51%) Go
14 22 (1.13%) Ada
15 21 (1.08%) TypeScript
16 20 (1.02%) Rust
17 19 (0.97%) Search Processing Language
18 17 (0.87%) Bicep
18 17 (0.87%) MATLAB
19 16 (0.82%) PHP
Qualifications
1 757 (38.76%) Security Cleared
2 565 (28.93%) SC Cleared
3 211 (10.80%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.11%) Degree
5 67 (3.43%) AWS Certification
5 67 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
6 57 (2.92%) CISSP
7 56 (2.87%) Cisco Certification
8 53 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
9 42 (2.15%) Azure Certification
10 34 (1.74%) CompTIA Security+
11 29 (1.48%) RHCE
12 26 (1.33%) CCNA
13 24 (1.23%) CCNP
14 20 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.92%) CISM
16 16 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.82%) GIAC
17 15 (0.77%) Oracle Certification
18 13 (0.67%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (4.51%) NIST
2 83 (4.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.92%) QA
4 43 (2.20%) SLA
5 23 (1.18%) GDPR
5 23 (1.18%) NCSC
6 22 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
7 18 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
7 18 (0.92%) PCI DSS
8 12 (0.61%) HIPAA
9 11 (0.56%) Data Quality
9 11 (0.56%) GRC
10 10 (0.51%) SOC 2
11 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.36%) NIST 800
13 6 (0.31%) ISO 20022
13 6 (0.31%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 4 (0.20%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 329 (16.85%) Docker
2 227 (11.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 222 (11.37%) Active Directory
4 91 (4.66%) Virtual Machines
5 67 (3.43%) Hyper-V
5 67 (3.43%) VMware ESXi
6 66 (3.38%) vSphere
7 50 (2.56%) VMware NSX
8 49 (2.51%) NFS
9 35 (1.79%) Firmware
10 33 (1.69%) KVM
10 33 (1.69%) Oracle RAC
11 21 (1.08%) Postfix
12 17 (0.87%) GPFS
13 11 (0.56%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.51%) Ceph
14 10 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.41%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.36%) Squid
16 7 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 408 (20.89%) Ansible
2 392 (20.07%) Terraform
3 391 (20.02%) Kubernetes
4 165 (8.45%) Grafana
5 143 (7.32%) Prometheus
6 70 (3.58%) Puppet
7 53 (2.71%) Progress Chef
8 44 (2.25%) Oracle RMAN
8 44 (2.25%) vCenter Server
9 30 (1.54%) Data Guard
10 29 (1.48%) Red Hat Satellite
11 28 (1.43%) Nagios
11 28 (1.43%) Packer
12 26 (1.33%) ZABBIX
13 22 (1.13%) Podman
13 22 (1.13%) Tivoli
13 22 (1.13%) vRealize
14 21 (1.08%) Argo
14 21 (1.08%) Kibana
15 19 (0.97%) SCCM
Vendors
1 302 (15.46%) VMware
2 277 (14.18%) Oracle
3 266 (13.62%) Microsoft
4 221 (11.32%) Red Hat
5 159 (8.14%) Splunk
6 125 (6.40%) Cisco
7 106 (5.43%) IBM
8 89 (4.56%) ServiceNow
9 65 (3.33%) Google
10 64 (3.28%) CyberArk
11 49 (2.51%) Palo Alto
12 45 (2.30%) SolarWinds
13 41 (2.10%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.05%) SAP
15 38 (1.95%) F5
16 35 (1.79%) Citrix
17 33 (1.69%) HP
18 32 (1.64%) NetApp
19 31 (1.59%) Sybase
20 29 (1.48%) Dynatrace