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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,105 1,835 2,076
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.59% 5.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.40% 41.04% 39.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,314 1,096 1,222
10th Percentile £354 £338 £350
25th Percentile £433 £420 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £517 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.58% -3.81% -2.27%
75th Percentile £622 £625 £638
90th Percentile £721 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +3.66% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 77 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £39.34 £49.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £53.00 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,342 4,471 5,280
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.62% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,366 2,855 3,271
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £283 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £660 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £449
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.35% -0.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 301 253
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +3.38% -55.68% +41.29%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 -21 1,773 £525 +0.48% 3,416
UK excluding London -23 1,171 £510 +3.66% 1,984
London -32 727 £535 -6.96% 1,583
Work from Home -26 565 £510 -1.73% 1,534
South East -18 327 £525 +10.53% 549
North of England -25 273 £500 +5.15% 302
South West -1 172 £575 +4.55% 312
North West -18 136 £494 +23.19% 164
Scotland -16 134 £450 -10.00% 170
Midlands -44 127 £477 -4.60% 202
East of England -10 116 £483 -3.50% 348
Yorkshire -28 112 £521 +4.25% 83
West Midlands -41 108 £477 -4.60% 113
North East -11 33 £475 -11.63% 56
Wales +9 28 £465 +3.33% 60
East Midlands 0 17 £481 +14.52% 88
Northern Ireland -2 3 - - 66

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 65 (3.09%) Confluence
2 46 (2.19%) Apache
3 36 (1.71%) nginx
4 28 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.33%) WebLogic
5 24 (1.14%) Apache Spark
5 24 (1.14%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.05%) SharePoint
7 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
8 19 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 19 (0.90%) Tomcat
9 17 (0.81%) IIS
10 15 (0.71%) JBoss
11 12 (0.57%) SAS
12 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
13 7 (0.33%) CMS
14 6 (0.29%) MTS
14 6 (0.29%) WebLogic Portal
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.048%) Simulink
7 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 628 (29.83%) AWS
2 533 (25.32%) Azure
3 211 (10.02%) GCP
4 166 (7.89%) GitHub
5 111 (5.27%) Entra ID
6 110 (5.23%) OpenShift
7 101 (4.80%) GitHub Actions
8 97 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
9 96 (4.56%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.85%) Amazon EC2
11 72 (3.42%) Serverless
12 70 (3.33%) AWS CloudFormation
13 64 (3.04%) AWS Lambda
13 64 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
14 62 (2.95%) Amazon EKS
15 61 (2.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 55 (2.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 50 (2.38%) IaaS
18 46 (2.19%) Datadog
19 40 (1.90%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 224 (10.64%) DNS
2 211 (10.02%) Firewall
3 168 (7.98%) TCP/IP
4 130 (6.18%) DHCP
5 88 (4.18%) Network Security
6 84 (3.99%) VPN
7 77 (3.66%) SAN
8 55 (2.61%) SSL
9 47 (2.23%) HTTP
10 45 (2.14%) SSH
10 45 (2.14%) WAN
11 38 (1.81%) VLAN
12 31 (1.47%) BGP
12 31 (1.47%) LAN
13 28 (1.33%) Kerberos
13 28 (1.33%) VSAN
14 27 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
15 23 (1.09%) Wireless
16 22 (1.05%) 5G
16 22 (1.05%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (5.94%) PostgreSQL
2 118 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 102 (4.85%) Oracle Database
4 79 (3.75%) Relational Database
5 67 (3.18%) MySQL
6 57 (2.71%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.57%) MongoDB
8 49 (2.33%) NoSQL
9 37 (1.76%) Elasticsearch
10 36 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
11 29 (1.38%) Big Data
11 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 27 (1.28%) Amazon Aurora
13 24 (1.14%) Data Lake
14 21 (1.00%) Power BI
14 21 (1.00%) Redis
15 19 (0.90%) DynamoDB
15 19 (0.90%) Hadoop
16 18 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
17 16 (0.76%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 297 (14.11%) Git
2 262 (12.45%) Jenkins
3 234 (11.12%) GitLab
4 164 (7.79%) JIRA
5 43 (2.04%) Maven
6 36 (1.71%) SonarQube
7 34 (1.62%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.28%) Artifactory
8 27 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.14%) Selenium
10 20 (0.95%) Gradle
10 20 (0.95%) Mockito
11 19 (0.90%) JUnit
12 18 (0.86%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.81%) Cucumber
14 14 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 12 (0.57%) TeamCity
16 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 10 (0.48%) JMeter
18 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
General
1 459 (21.81%) Social Skills
2 349 (16.58%) Finance
3 245 (11.64%) Analytical Skills
4 179 (8.50%) Banking
5 166 (7.89%) Public Sector
6 85 (4.04%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (2.66%) Telecoms
8 48 (2.28%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.66%) Front Office
10 34 (1.62%) Military
11 28 (1.33%) Legal
12 24 (1.14%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 22 (1.05%) Law
14 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.81%) Retail
15 15 (0.71%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.48%) Aviation
16 10 (0.48%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 318 (15.11%) Senior
2 234 (11.12%) Linux Engineer
3 216 (10.26%) Developer
4 212 (10.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 190 (9.03%) DevOps Engineer
6 105 (4.99%) Platform Engineer
7 99 (4.70%) Architect
8 94 (4.47%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.90%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.85%) Support Engineer
11 80 (3.80%) Java Developer
12 77 (3.66%) Analyst
13 73 (3.47%) Consultant
14 69 (3.28%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 68 (3.23%) Lead
16 64 (3.04%) AWS Engineer
17 62 (2.95%) Administrator
18 59 (2.80%) Network Engineer
19 53 (2.52%) Automation Engineer
20 52 (2.47%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 525 (24.94%) Terraform
2 148 (7.03%) Kafka
3 136 (6.46%) REST
4 83 (3.94%) Middleware
5 76 (3.61%) Elastic Stack
6 66 (3.14%) .NET
7 62 (2.95%) Spring
8 60 (2.85%) RESTful
9 54 (2.57%) Spring Boot
9 54 (2.57%) Web Services
10 50 (2.38%) LDAP
11 46 (2.19%) JSON
12 42 (2.00%) XML
13 41 (1.95%) React
14 38 (1.81%) HTML
15 35 (1.66%) Flask
15 35 (1.66%) SOAP
16 32 (1.52%) Keycloak
17 31 (1.47%) Django
17 31 (1.47%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 163 (7.74%) Onboarding
2 147 (6.98%) Cloud Native
3 130 (6.18%) Data Centre
4 114 (5.42%) PKI
5 108 (5.13%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.47%) Replication
7 91 (4.32%) Distributed Systems
8 69 (3.28%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.18%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.09%) Public Cloud
11 58 (2.76%) Enterprise Software
12 50 (2.38%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.95%) Private Cloud
13 41 (1.95%) Product Ownership
14 40 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
15 39 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
15 39 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
15 39 (1.85%) Operational Technology
16 37 (1.76%) Enterprise Storage
17 33 (1.57%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 792 (37.62%) Windows
2 432 (20.52%) Unix
3 366 (17.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 249 (11.83%) Windows Server
5 110 (5.23%) Ubuntu
6 63 (2.99%) CentOS
7 54 (2.57%) Solaris
8 53 (2.52%) AIX
9 32 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.43%) Windows 10
11 28 (1.33%) VMS
12 27 (1.28%) SUSE
13 23 (1.09%) Rocky
14 18 (0.86%) Mac OS
15 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
16 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
17 12 (0.57%) Debian
18 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 674 (32.02%) CI/CD
2 584 (27.74%) DevOps
3 472 (22.42%) Infrastructure as Code
4 398 (18.91%) Agile
5 340 (16.15%) Problem-Solving
6 327 (15.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 314 (14.92%) Containerisation
8 274 (13.02%) Continuous Improvement
9 257 (12.21%) Observability
10 240 (11.40%) Platform Engineering
11 235 (11.16%) Migration
12 219 (10.40%) Root Cause Analysis
12 219 (10.40%) Software Engineering
13 194 (9.22%) High Availability
14 187 (8.88%) Configuration Management
15 183 (8.69%) Test Automation
16 179 (8.50%) ITIL
17 172 (8.17%) Cybersecurity
18 170 (8.08%) Runbook
18 170 (8.08%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 789 (37.48%) Python
2 464 (22.04%) Bash
3 415 (19.71%) PowerShell
4 382 (18.15%) SQL
5 266 (12.64%) Java
6 161 (7.65%) Shell Script
7 119 (5.65%) C++
8 86 (4.09%) JavaScript
9 85 (4.04%) Perl
10 75 (3.56%) C#
11 66 (3.14%) C
12 59 (2.80%) PL/SQL
13 58 (2.76%) Go
14 42 (2.00%) Bicep
15 34 (1.62%) Groovy
16 24 (1.14%) TypeScript
17 18 (0.86%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.76%) Korn
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 792 (37.62%) Security Cleared
2 554 (26.32%) SC Cleared
3 249 (11.83%) DV Cleared
4 186 (8.84%) Degree
5 74 (3.52%) AWS Certification
6 63 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
7 61 (2.90%) CISSP
8 57 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
9 56 (2.66%) Azure Certification
10 54 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
11 28 (1.33%) CISM
12 25 (1.19%) CCNP
12 25 (1.19%) RHCE
13 21 (1.00%) CCNA
14 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.86%) ISTQB
16 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (3.75%) QA
2 78 (3.71%) NIST
3 70 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 28 (1.33%) SLA
5 26 (1.24%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.09%) GDPR
7 19 (0.90%) GRC
8 18 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
9 17 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
10 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.71%) NCSC
12 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
14 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
15 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 6 (0.29%) MISRA
17 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
17 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
18 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 389 (18.48%) Docker
2 291 (13.82%) Active Directory
3 235 (11.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 82 (3.90%) Hyper-V
5 80 (3.80%) vSphere
6 67 (3.18%) Virtual Machines
7 66 (3.14%) VMware ESXi
8 47 (2.23%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.81%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (1.66%) Firmware
11 34 (1.62%) NFS
12 25 (1.19%) KVM
13 24 (1.14%) Virtual Servers
14 13 (0.62%) Ceph
15 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.57%) GPFS
15 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.48%) Postfix
17 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 8 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 501 (23.80%) Kubernetes
2 476 (22.61%) Ansible
3 202 (9.60%) Grafana
4 181 (8.60%) Prometheus
5 92 (4.37%) Puppet
6 62 (2.95%) Progress Chef
7 52 (2.47%) SCCM
8 48 (2.28%) Oracle RMAN
9 38 (1.81%) Data Guard
10 37 (1.76%) Microsoft Intune
11 36 (1.71%) Kibana
12 30 (1.43%) vCenter Server
13 27 (1.28%) Nagios
13 27 (1.28%) VxRail
14 26 (1.24%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.24%) Red Hat Satellite
15 25 (1.19%) Podman
16 24 (1.14%) Packer
17 21 (1.00%) Argo
17 21 (1.00%) Istio
Vendors
1 353 (16.77%) Microsoft
2 334 (15.87%) VMware
3 290 (13.78%) Oracle
4 221 (10.50%) Red Hat
5 175 (8.31%) Splunk
6 123 (5.84%) Cisco
7 116 (5.51%) ServiceNow
8 101 (4.80%) Google
9 90 (4.28%) IBM
10 84 (3.99%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.38%) NetApp
12 44 (2.09%) SolarWinds
13 42 (2.00%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.90%) F5
15 39 (1.85%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.76%) Dynatrace
17 36 (1.71%) SAP
18 35 (1.66%) Dell
19 30 (1.43%) Tenable
20 28 (1.33%) Veeam