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 20 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 426 255 313
Rank change year-on-year -171 +58 -57
Contract jobs citing Open Source 262 355 261
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.08% 0.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.19% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 143 175 137
10th Percentile £413 £363 £335
25th Percentile £458 £430 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% +0.96% -13.33%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £755 £716 £718
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -1.50% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 14
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile £13.09 £51.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.67 £56.50 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year -22.71% +120.02% +20.85%
75th Percentile £78.25 £61.25 £27.72
90th Percentile £82.00 - £27.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.34 - £25.36

All Process & 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 46,068 29,787 33,025
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.40% 90.53% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,926 18,499 20,227
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,164 1,816 1,455
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.90
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.48 £44.05 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +1.18%

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 20 September 2026.

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 20 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Top 14 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 20 September 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 -200 185 £541 +3.10% 1,206
UK excluding London -124 105 £513 +4.21% 396
Work from Home -99 104 £514 -6.55% 456
London -154 91 £586 -2.29% 896
North of England -75 32 £475 -2.76% 73
South West -17 23 £550 +15.79% 42
Scotland -39 17 £524 +4.75% 58
Yorkshire -48 14 £497 -5.29% 19
South East -69 13 £405 -29.34% 71
East of England -16 12 £552 - 94
West Midlands -48 11 £450 -10.10% 23
Midlands -52 11 £450 -10.10% 28
North East -37 9 £425 -8.60% 15
North West -58 9 £675 +39.61% 39

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 13 (4.96%) Confluence
2 9 (3.44%) Apache
2 9 (3.44%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.67%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.67%) Apache Spark
4 6 (2.29%) SAS
5 4 (1.53%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.38%) CMS
6 1 (0.38%) Drupal
6 1 (0.38%) GeoServer
6 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.38%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.38%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.38%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 116 (44.27%) AWS
2 68 (25.95%) Azure
3 52 (19.85%) GCP
4 43 (16.41%) GitHub
5 25 (9.54%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (8.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 21 (8.02%) Amazon S3
7 17 (6.49%) Serverless
8 15 (5.73%) Amazon EKS
9 14 (5.34%) Vertex AI
10 13 (4.96%) IaaS
11 11 (4.20%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (4.20%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.44%) Anthropic Claude
12 9 (3.44%) Google Gemini
13 8 (3.05%) Amazon Bedrock
14 7 (2.67%) Amazon SQS
14 7 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
14 7 (2.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 7 (2.67%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.67%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.29%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.29%) SNMP
3 4 (1.53%) DNS
3 4 (1.53%) Network Security
4 3 (1.15%) Firewall
4 3 (1.15%) SSH
4 3 (1.15%) SSL
5 2 (0.76%) 4G
5 2 (0.76%) Asterisk PBX
5 2 (0.76%) Broadband
5 2 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.76%) HTTP
5 2 (0.76%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.76%) RTCP
5 2 (0.76%) RTP
5 2 (0.76%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.76%) VoIP
5 2 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.76%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (7.25%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (5.73%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (4.58%) DynamoDB
4 10 (3.82%) MongoDB
5 8 (3.05%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (3.05%) BigQuery
5 8 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (2.67%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (2.67%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.67%) Relational Database
7 6 (2.29%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (2.29%) Amazon QuickSight
7 6 (2.29%) Apache Iceberg
7 6 (2.29%) Big Data
7 6 (2.29%) Trino
8 5 (1.91%) BusinessObjects
8 5 (1.91%) Pentaho
8 5 (1.91%) Power BI
8 5 (1.91%) Redis
9 3 (1.15%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 55 (20.99%) Git
2 25 (9.54%) Jenkins
3 21 (8.02%) GitLab
4 14 (5.34%) JIRA
4 14 (5.34%) JUnit
5 12 (4.58%) SonarQube
6 8 (3.05%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (2.29%) Bitbucket Server
7 6 (2.29%) Cucumber
7 6 (2.29%) DbUnit
7 6 (2.29%) IntelliJ
7 6 (2.29%) JMeter
7 6 (2.29%) jMock
7 6 (2.29%) Maven
7 6 (2.29%) Mockito
8 4 (1.53%) CircleCI
8 4 (1.53%) Cypress.io
8 4 (1.53%) MLflow
9 3 (1.15%) Postman
9 3 (1.15%) ScalaTest
General
1 70 (26.72%) Social Skills
2 41 (15.65%) Public Sector
3 39 (14.89%) Finance
4 18 (6.87%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.34%) Banking
6 13 (4.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (4.58%) Legal
8 10 (3.82%) Law
9 6 (2.29%) Military
10 5 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.91%) Retail
11 4 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.15%) Front Office
12 3 (1.15%) Publishing
13 2 (0.76%) Police
13 2 (0.76%) Polish Language
13 2 (0.76%) Public Speaking
13 2 (0.76%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 54 (20.61%) Senior
2 48 (18.32%) Developer
3 43 (16.41%) Architect
4 24 (9.16%) AWS Architect
5 23 (8.78%) Solutions Architect
6 21 (8.02%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 17 (6.49%) AWS Solution Architect
8 15 (5.73%) Analyst
8 15 (5.73%) Senior Developer
8 15 (5.73%) Software Engineer
9 14 (5.34%) Software Developer
10 12 (4.58%) Consultant
10 12 (4.58%) Data Engineer
10 12 (4.58%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 11 (4.20%) Cloud Engineer
11 11 (4.20%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 11 (4.20%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 10 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 10 (3.82%) Platform Engineer
13 9 (3.44%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (18.70%) Terraform
2 38 (14.50%) Kafka
3 32 (12.21%) REST
4 16 (6.11%) LangChain
5 15 (5.73%) RESTful
6 14 (5.34%) Spring
6 14 (5.34%) Spring Boot
7 13 (4.96%) LangGraph
7 13 (4.96%) PyTorch
8 12 (4.58%) Node.js
8 12 (4.58%) React
9 11 (4.20%) SOAP
10 10 (3.82%) eBPF
10 10 (3.82%) OpenTelemetry
10 10 (3.82%) TensorFlow
11 8 (3.05%) Android Jetpack
11 8 (3.05%) AngularJS
11 8 (3.05%) Jetpack Compose
11 8 (3.05%) Play Framework
11 8 (3.05%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 46 (17.56%) Cloud Native
2 24 (9.16%) AI Agents
2 24 (9.16%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (7.63%) Cyber Threat
4 14 (5.34%) Private Cloud
5 10 (3.82%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (3.82%) Management Information System
6 9 (3.44%) Product Ownership
6 9 (3.44%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (3.05%) Blog
7 8 (3.05%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (3.05%) Mobile App
8 7 (2.67%) Data Structures
8 7 (2.67%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.29%) Legacy Applications
9 6 (2.29%) LIMS
9 6 (2.29%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.91%) Replication
10 5 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.91%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 59 (22.52%) Linux
2 18 (6.87%) Unix
3 12 (4.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.82%) Windows
5 9 (3.44%) Android
6 3 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.76%) Debian
7 2 (0.76%) Rocky
7 2 (0.76%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (42.37%) CI/CD
2 70 (26.72%) Agile
3 69 (26.34%) AI
4 67 (25.57%) Software Engineering
5 65 (24.81%) DevOps
6 54 (20.61%) Observability
7 53 (20.23%) Infrastructure as Code
8 46 (17.56%) Containerisation
9 44 (16.79%) Test Automation
10 42 (16.03%) Microservices
11 38 (14.50%) Event-Driven
12 36 (13.74%) LLM
13 35 (13.36%) Stakeholder Management
14 32 (12.21%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 32 (12.21%) Machine Learning
15 30 (11.45%) Cybersecurity
16 29 (11.07%) Data Pipeline
16 29 (11.07%) Platform Engineering
17 28 (10.69%) Continuous Integration
17 28 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 105 (40.08%) Python
2 47 (17.94%) Java
3 31 (11.83%) SQL
4 19 (7.25%) Bash
5 17 (6.49%) Go
6 14 (5.34%) JavaScript
6 14 (5.34%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.96%) C++
7 13 (4.96%) Perl
7 13 (4.96%) Scala
8 11 (4.20%) C
9 9 (3.44%) Kotlin
10 6 (2.29%) MUMPS
11 5 (1.91%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.15%) C#
13 2 (0.76%) Objective-C
13 2 (0.76%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.76%) Ruby
13 2 (0.76%) Rust
13 2 (0.76%) Swift
Qualifications
1 98 (37.40%) Security Cleared
2 72 (27.48%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.40%) Degree
4 17 (6.49%) DV Cleared
5 13 (4.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.44%) CISSP
7 8 (3.05%) CISM
8 6 (2.29%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.53%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.53%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.76%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.76%) GIAC
11 2 (0.76%) GSEC
11 2 (0.76%) LFCS
11 2 (0.76%) OSCP
11 2 (0.76%) RHCE
11 2 (0.76%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.11%) Accessibility
2 14 (5.34%) QA
3 7 (2.67%) GDPR
3 7 (2.67%) WCAG
4 4 (1.53%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.15%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.15%) NIST
6 2 (0.76%) GRC
6 2 (0.76%) NCSC
7 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.38%) PMO
System Software
1 61 (23.28%) Docker
2 11 (4.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.91%) Postfix
3 5 (1.91%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (1.15%) Ceph
4 3 (1.15%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.76%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.76%) Firmware
5 2 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 70 (26.72%) Kubernetes
2 38 (14.50%) Grafana
3 31 (11.83%) Ansible
4 29 (11.07%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.20%) Puppet
6 9 (3.44%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.53%) Cilium
7 4 (1.53%) Istio
7 4 (1.53%) Salt
8 2 (0.76%) Control-M
8 2 (0.76%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.76%) Kibana
8 2 (0.76%) linkerd
9 1 (0.38%) Argo
9 1 (0.38%) QRadar
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.38%) systemd
9 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 29 (11.07%) Google
2 22 (8.40%) Splunk
3 21 (8.02%) Microsoft
4 17 (6.49%) Dynatrace
5 16 (6.11%) OpenAI
6 13 (4.96%) SaltStack
7 12 (4.58%) Oracle
8 11 (4.20%) VMware
9 10 (3.82%) Red Hat
10 7 (2.67%) Cribl.io
10 7 (2.67%) Databricks
11 6 (2.29%) Atlassian
11 6 (2.29%) Checkmarx
11 6 (2.29%) Informatica
11 6 (2.29%) InterSystems
11 6 (2.29%) Jaspersoft
12 5 (1.91%) Denodo
13 4 (1.53%) Black Duck
13 4 (1.53%) Foundry
13 4 (1.53%) Mistral