Open Source Contract Job Trends

Open Source
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Open Source skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 276 310 248
Rank change year-on-year +34 -62 -10
Contract jobs citing Open Source 342 252 447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.94% 0.71% 0.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.06% 0.81% 1.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 152 271
10th Percentile £344 £325 £250
25th Percentile £413 £450 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -4.44%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £650
90th Percentile £750 £836 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -0.70% -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 7 11
10th Percentile - £23.26 -
25th Percentile £15.25 £25.43 £19.99
Median hourly rate £36.00 £26.00 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +22.35% -61.36%
75th Percentile £61.88 £26.75 £22.52
90th Percentile £63.00 £54.20 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.50 £25.93 -
% change year-on-year -40.22% - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Open Source falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,247 31,236 40,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.88% 87.47% 88.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,285 18,990 26,947
10th Percentile £300 £308 £310
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 1,084 1,559
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.19 £18.94
Median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%

Open Source
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Open Source relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Open Source job vacancy trend in the UK

Open Source
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Open Source.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Open Source

Open Source
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Open Source over the 6 months to 8 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Open Source.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Open Source

Open Source
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Open Source over the 6 months to 8 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Open Source within the UK over the 6 months to 8 December 2025. 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 +29 294 £525 -4.55% 351
London +18 148 £588 +2.17% 123
UK excluding London +4 127 £497 -0.70% 269
Work from Home +23 117 £469 -14.73% 351
North of England -8 48 £450 -23.40% 51
South East -6 27 £600 +30.43% 86
Yorkshire -27 24 £525 -13.19% 17
Scotland +14 22 £556 +11.20% 8
North West +4 22 £450 -10.00% 32
South West -8 13 £350 -41.91% 33
Midlands -25 11 £430 -28.42% 39
West Midlands -20 10 £430 -28.33% 19
East of England -25 4 £553 +52.55% 46
North East -2 3 - - 2
Wales -2 2 £305 - 5
East Midlands - 1 £420 - 18

Open Source
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 15 (4.39%) Apache
2 11 (3.22%) JBoss
3 9 (2.63%) Apache Spark
3 9 (2.63%) WebLogic
4 7 (2.05%) Confluence
5 5 (1.46%) Appian
6 3 (0.88%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.88%) Ethereum
6 3 (0.88%) Hyperledger
7 2 (0.58%) Camunda
7 2 (0.58%) Cloud Foundry
7 2 (0.58%) CMS
7 2 (0.58%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.29%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.29%) Drupal
8 1 (0.29%) GeoServer
8 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Coherence
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Magento
1 1 (0.29%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 163 (47.66%) AWS
2 60 (17.54%) Azure
3 26 (7.60%) GCP
4 25 (7.31%) GitHub
5 16 (4.68%) GitHub Actions
6 15 (4.39%) Amazon S3
7 14 (4.09%) CloudFront
8 12 (3.51%) Cloud Computing
9 11 (3.22%) Serverless
10 10 (2.92%) Amazon Bedrock
11 9 (2.63%) Azure AKS
12 8 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (2.34%) OpenShift
13 7 (2.05%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (2.05%) Amazon SageMaker
13 7 (2.05%) Vertex AI
14 6 (1.75%) SaaS
15 5 (1.46%) Azure AI
15 5 (1.46%) Tricentis Tosca
16 4 (1.17%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.51%) Firewall
2 5 (1.46%) Internet
3 4 (1.17%) DHCP
4 3 (0.88%) Ethernet
4 3 (0.88%) SSH
5 2 (0.58%) DNS
5 2 (0.58%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.58%) VLAN
6 1 (0.29%) HTTP
6 1 (0.29%) InfiniBand
6 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.29%) Kerberos
6 1 (0.29%) LAN
6 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.29%) SMTP
6 1 (0.29%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.29%) Spanning Tree
6 1 (0.29%) STUN
6 1 (0.29%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (17.54%) Apache Cassandra
2 40 (11.70%) MongoDB
3 38 (11.11%) PostgreSQL
3 38 (11.11%) Relational Database
4 27 (7.89%) DB2
5 21 (6.14%) NoSQL
6 13 (3.80%) Redis
7 9 (2.63%) RDBMS
8 8 (2.34%) SQL Server
9 7 (2.05%) Pinecone
10 6 (1.75%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.46%) Metadata
11 5 (1.46%) Weaviate
12 4 (1.17%) Apache Hive
12 4 (1.17%) DynamoDB
12 4 (1.17%) Hadoop
12 4 (1.17%) Impala
13 3 (0.88%) BigQuery
13 3 (0.88%) GIS
13 3 (0.88%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 39 (11.40%) JUnit
2 33 (9.65%) Git
3 24 (7.02%) Jenkins
4 19 (5.56%) GitLab
5 16 (4.68%) Selenium
6 11 (3.22%) JIRA
7 10 (2.92%) Eclipse
7 10 (2.92%) IntelliJ
8 9 (2.63%) Cucumber
9 8 (2.34%) MLflow
9 8 (2.34%) SonarQube
10 7 (2.05%) Mocha
11 5 (1.46%) Robot Framework
12 4 (1.17%) Subversion
13 3 (0.88%) Cypress.io
13 3 (0.88%) ESLint
13 3 (0.88%) Gradle
13 3 (0.88%) Hardhat
13 3 (0.88%) Hudson
13 3 (0.88%) KGDB
General
1 87 (25.44%) Social Skills
2 71 (20.76%) Finance
3 51 (14.91%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (13.16%) Banking
5 32 (9.36%) Investment Banking
6 27 (7.89%) Public Sector
7 25 (7.31%) Front Office
8 11 (3.22%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (2.63%) Telecoms
10 7 (2.05%) Marketing
10 7 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (1.46%) Financial Institution
12 5 (1.46%) Publishing
13 4 (1.17%) Legal
13 4 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.58%) Electronics
14 2 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.58%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 131 (38.30%) Developer
2 93 (27.19%) Senior
3 53 (15.50%) Senior Developer
4 31 (9.06%) Java Developer
4 31 (9.06%) Platform Engineer
5 30 (8.77%) Architect
5 30 (8.77%) Software Engineer
6 26 (7.60%) Investment Banking Java Developer
6 26 (7.60%) SQL Developer
7 18 (5.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 15 (4.39%) Senior Java Developer
9 14 (4.09%) Android Developer
10 13 (3.80%) Lead
10 13 (3.80%) Linux Developer
10 13 (3.80%) Senior Investment Banking Java Developer
10 13 (3.80%) Senior SQL Developer
10 13 (3.80%) Sybase Developer
11 12 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
12 11 (3.22%) Senior Platform Engineer
13 9 (2.63%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (36.26%) Kafka
2 76 (22.22%) gRPC
3 42 (12.28%) Spring
4 33 (9.65%) React
5 32 (9.36%) REST
6 29 (8.48%) HTML
7 27 (7.89%) JMS
8 20 (5.85%) PyTorch
9 19 (5.56%) CSS
10 18 (5.26%) LangChain
10 18 (5.26%) Node.js
11 17 (4.97%) HTML5
12 16 (4.68%) JSON
12 16 (4.68%) TensorFlow
13 15 (4.39%) Hugging Face
13 15 (4.39%) XML
14 14 (4.09%) Android SDK
15 12 (3.51%) J2EE
15 12 (3.51%) Jest
16 10 (2.92%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 66 (19.30%) Distributed Systems
2 34 (9.94%) Equities
3 28 (8.19%) Data Structures
4 14 (4.09%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.51%) Distributed Computing
6 10 (2.92%) Onboarding
6 10 (2.92%) PKI
7 9 (2.63%) Fat Client
7 9 (2.63%) Private Cloud
7 9 (2.63%) Thin Client
8 8 (2.34%) Fixed Income
8 8 (2.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 8 (2.34%) Product Ownership
9 7 (2.05%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (2.05%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.75%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.75%) Blog
10 6 (1.75%) Mobile App
11 5 (1.46%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.46%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 58 (16.96%) Linux
2 25 (7.31%) Windows
3 20 (5.85%) Android
4 17 (4.97%) Unix
5 9 (2.63%) Windows 7
6 6 (1.75%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.46%) Windows Server
8 4 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.88%) CentOS
10 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.29%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (35.09%) Software Engineering
2 95 (27.78%) Problem-Solving
3 91 (26.61%) Agile
4 88 (25.73%) Microservices
5 78 (22.81%) CI/CD
6 62 (18.13%) AI
7 51 (14.91%) DevOps
8 48 (14.04%) Machine Learning
9 47 (13.74%) Infrastructure as Code
10 43 (12.57%) Performance Tuning
11 37 (10.82%) LLM
11 37 (10.82%) Observability
12 33 (9.65%) Clean Code
13 32 (9.36%) Containerisation
14 31 (9.06%) Platform Engineering
15 30 (8.77%) Test Automation
16 29 (8.48%) Generative AI
17 27 (7.89%) Mentoring
17 27 (7.89%) SDLC
18 26 (7.60%) Multithreading
Programming Languages
1 174 (50.88%) Python
2 98 (28.65%) Java
3 86 (25.15%) Go
4 76 (22.22%) SQL
5 36 (10.53%) JavaScript
6 28 (8.19%) TypeScript
7 26 (7.60%) Shell Script
8 21 (6.14%) C#
9 17 (4.97%) PowerShell
10 15 (4.39%) Kotlin
10 15 (4.39%) Scala
11 13 (3.80%) Bash
12 10 (2.92%) Ruby
13 9 (2.63%) C++
14 7 (2.05%) PHP
15 5 (1.46%) C
16 4 (1.17%) Delphi
16 4 (1.17%) Perl
16 4 (1.17%) Solidity
17 3 (0.88%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 55 (16.08%) Security Cleared
2 28 (8.19%) SC Cleared
3 27 (7.89%) Degree
4 18 (5.26%) DV Cleared
5 14 (4.09%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.22%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.46%) PhD
9 3 (0.88%) OSCP
10 2 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.58%) GPEN
10 2 (0.58%) GWAPT
10 2 (0.58%) MCP
11 1 (0.29%) CCIP
11 1 (0.29%) CCNA
11 1 (0.29%) CCNP
11 1 (0.29%) CEH
11 1 (0.29%) CISSP
11 1 (0.29%) GIAC
11 1 (0.29%) OSCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.80%) Accessibility
2 10 (2.92%) QA
3 9 (2.63%) WCAG
4 8 (2.34%) NIST
5 7 (2.05%) GDPR
6 6 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 4 (1.17%) NCSC
9 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.58%) GPG for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence
9 2 (0.58%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 17025
9 2 (0.58%) ISO17020
9 2 (0.58%) SLA
10 1 (0.29%) GxP
10 1 (0.29%) HL7
10 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 116 (33.92%) Docker
2 11 (3.22%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.34%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.17%) QEMU
5 2 (0.58%) Ceph
5 2 (0.58%) HDFS
5 2 (0.58%) ISA Server
5 2 (0.58%) KVM
5 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.29%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 1 (0.29%) Firmware
6 1 (0.29%) iptables
6 1 (0.29%) Lustre
6 1 (0.29%) NFS
6 1 (0.29%) Samba
6 1 (0.29%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 115 (33.63%) Kubernetes
2 36 (10.53%) Terraform
3 33 (9.65%) Grafana
4 30 (8.77%) Prometheus
5 20 (5.85%) Ansible
6 12 (3.51%) Puppet
7 9 (2.63%) WMI
8 2 (0.58%) Argo
8 2 (0.58%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.58%) Kibana
8 2 (0.58%) Knative
8 2 (0.58%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.29%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.29%) Nessus
9 1 (0.29%) QRadar
9 1 (0.29%) SCOM
9 1 (0.29%) SELinux
9 1 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 37 (10.82%) Microsoft
2 26 (7.60%) Sybase
3 23 (6.73%) Google
4 14 (4.09%) VMware
5 11 (3.22%) Red Hat
5 11 (3.22%) Splunk
6 9 (2.63%) OpenAI
6 9 (2.63%) webMethods
7 7 (2.05%) Cisco
8 6 (1.75%) Atlassian
9 5 (1.46%) Foundry
9 5 (1.46%) Oracle
9 5 (1.46%) SAP
9 5 (1.46%) Veracode
10 4 (1.17%) Databricks
11 3 (0.88%) Adobe
11 3 (0.88%) Computacenter
11 3 (0.88%) Xamarin
12 2 (0.58%) ESRI
12 2 (0.58%) NVIDIA