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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 428 251 322
Rank change year-on-year -177 +71 -61
Contract jobs citing Open Source 264 358 258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.09% 0.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.20% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 176 136
10th Percentile £413 £355 £331
25th Percentile £458 £427 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.70%
75th Percentile £623 £600 £625
90th Percentile £755 £716 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £492 £500
% change year-on-year +4.47% -1.60% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 14
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile £13.09 £51.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £13.34 £56.50 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year -76.39% +120.02% +20.85%
75th Percentile £77.50 £61.25 £27.72
90th Percentile £81.40 - £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 46,342 29,835 32,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.50% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,074 18,533 19,873
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 £626 £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 3,192 1,836 1,405
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.31 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.32 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -206 187 £550 +4.76% 1,170
UK excluding London -113 110 £514 +4.47% 429
Work from Home -100 104 £514 -4.28% 477
London -156 90 £600 - 832
North of England -73 34 £475 -1.55% 87
South West -21 23 £550 -4.35% 53
Scotland -38 19 £524 +4.75% 62
Yorkshire -35 15 £497 -5.29% 25
East of England -18 13 £552 - 99
South East -73 13 £405 -26.45% 75
West Midlands -44 11 £450 -10.10% 19
Midlands -47 11 £450 -10.10% 26
North West -63 10 £675 +43.62% 48
North East -39 9 £425 -8.60% 14

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 12 (4.55%) Confluence
2 10 (3.79%) Apache
3 9 (3.41%) SharePoint
4 8 (3.03%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (3.03%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.27%) SAS
6 5 (1.89%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.38%) CMS
7 1 (0.38%) Drupal
7 1 (0.38%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.38%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.38%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.38%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 115 (43.56%) AWS
2 69 (26.14%) Azure
3 52 (19.70%) GCP
4 42 (15.91%) GitHub
5 25 (9.47%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (7.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 21 (7.95%) Amazon S3
7 17 (6.44%) Serverless
8 15 (5.68%) Amazon EKS
9 14 (5.30%) Vertex AI
10 13 (4.92%) IaaS
11 11 (4.17%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.41%) Anthropic Claude
12 9 (3.41%) Google Gemini
13 8 (3.03%) Amazon Bedrock
14 7 (2.65%) Amazon SQS
14 7 (2.65%) Azure Monitor
14 7 (2.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 7 (2.65%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.65%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.27%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.27%) SNMP
3 4 (1.52%) DNS
3 4 (1.52%) Network Security
4 3 (1.14%) Firewall
4 3 (1.14%) SSH
4 3 (1.14%) SSL
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%) Internet
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 (7.20%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (5.68%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (4.55%) DynamoDB
4 10 (3.79%) MongoDB
5 8 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (3.03%) BigQuery
5 8 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (3.03%) Relational Database
5 8 (3.03%) Trino
6 7 (2.65%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (2.65%) Apache Iceberg
6 7 (2.65%) Big Data
6 7 (2.65%) Data Lake
7 6 (2.27%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (2.27%) Amazon QuickSight
8 5 (1.89%) BusinessObjects
8 5 (1.89%) Pentaho
8 5 (1.89%) Power BI
8 5 (1.89%) Redis
9 3 (1.14%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 54 (20.45%) Git
2 25 (9.47%) Jenkins
3 21 (7.95%) GitLab
4 13 (4.92%) JIRA
4 13 (4.92%) JUnit
5 11 (4.17%) SonarQube
6 7 (2.65%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (2.27%) Bitbucket Server
7 6 (2.27%) Cucumber
7 6 (2.27%) DbUnit
7 6 (2.27%) JMeter
7 6 (2.27%) jMock
7 6 (2.27%) Maven
7 6 (2.27%) Mockito
8 5 (1.89%) IntelliJ
9 4 (1.52%) CircleCI
9 4 (1.52%) Cypress.io
9 4 (1.52%) MLflow
10 3 (1.14%) Postman
10 3 (1.14%) ScalaTest
General
1 74 (28.03%) Social Skills
2 42 (15.91%) Public Sector
3 38 (14.39%) Finance
4 18 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.30%) Banking
6 13 (4.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (4.55%) Legal
8 10 (3.79%) Law
9 6 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (2.27%) Military
9 6 (2.27%) Retail
10 4 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (1.52%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.14%) Front Office
11 3 (1.14%) Publishing
12 2 (0.76%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.76%) Police
12 2 (0.76%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.76%) Public Speaking
13 1 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 56 (21.21%) Senior
2 50 (18.94%) Developer
3 40 (15.15%) Architect
4 22 (8.33%) AWS Architect
4 22 (8.33%) Solutions Architect
5 21 (7.95%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 16 (6.06%) AWS Solution Architect
6 16 (6.06%) Software Developer
6 16 (6.06%) Software Engineer
7 15 (5.68%) Analyst
7 15 (5.68%) Senior Developer
8 13 (4.92%) Data Engineer
9 12 (4.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 12 (4.55%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
10 11 (4.17%) Consultant
10 11 (4.17%) Cyber Threat Analyst
10 11 (4.17%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
10 11 (4.17%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
12 9 (3.41%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (18.94%) Terraform
2 35 (13.26%) Kafka
3 32 (12.12%) REST
4 16 (6.06%) LangChain
5 15 (5.68%) RESTful
6 13 (4.92%) LangGraph
6 13 (4.92%) PyTorch
6 13 (4.92%) React
6 13 (4.92%) Spring
6 13 (4.92%) Spring Boot
7 11 (4.17%) SOAP
8 10 (3.79%) eBPF
8 10 (3.79%) Node.js
8 10 (3.79%) TensorFlow
9 9 (3.41%) AngularJS
9 9 (3.41%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (3.03%) Android Jetpack
10 8 (3.03%) Jetpack Compose
10 8 (3.03%) Play Framework
10 8 (3.03%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 44 (16.67%) Cloud Native
2 24 (9.09%) AI Agents
2 24 (9.09%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (7.58%) Cyber Threat
4 16 (6.06%) Private Cloud
5 10 (3.79%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (3.79%) Management Information System
6 9 (3.41%) Product Ownership
6 9 (3.41%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (3.03%) Blog
7 8 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (3.03%) Mobile App
8 7 (2.65%) Data Structures
8 7 (2.65%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.27%) Legacy Applications
9 6 (2.27%) LIMS
9 6 (2.27%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.89%) Replication
10 5 (1.89%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.89%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 62 (23.48%) Linux
2 18 (6.82%) Unix
3 12 (4.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.79%) Windows
5 9 (3.41%) Android
6 3 (1.14%) 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
1 113 (42.80%) CI/CD
2 70 (26.52%) AI
3 69 (26.14%) Software Engineering
4 68 (25.76%) Agile
5 64 (24.24%) DevOps
6 55 (20.83%) Infrastructure as Code
7 54 (20.45%) Observability
8 47 (17.80%) Containerisation
9 46 (17.42%) Test Automation
10 42 (15.91%) Microservices
11 36 (13.64%) Event-Driven
11 36 (13.64%) LLM
12 34 (12.88%) Stakeholder Management
13 32 (12.12%) Machine Learning
14 31 (11.74%) Cybersecurity
14 31 (11.74%) Event-Driven Architecture
15 30 (11.36%) Data Pipeline
15 30 (11.36%) Platform Engineering
15 30 (11.36%) Problem-Solving
16 28 (10.61%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 106 (40.15%) Python
2 48 (18.18%) Java
3 32 (12.12%) SQL
4 19 (7.20%) Bash
5 16 (6.06%) Go
6 15 (5.68%) Perl
6 15 (5.68%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.92%) C++
7 13 (4.92%) JavaScript
7 13 (4.92%) Scala
8 11 (4.17%) C
9 9 (3.41%) Kotlin
10 6 (2.27%) MUMPS
11 5 (1.89%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.14%) 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 96 (36.36%) Security Cleared
2 71 (26.89%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.33%) Degree
4 18 (6.82%) DV Cleared
5 13 (4.92%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.41%) CISSP
7 8 (3.03%) CISM
8 6 (2.27%) AWS Certification
8 6 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (1.52%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.52%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.76%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.76%) GIAC
10 2 (0.76%) GSEC
10 2 (0.76%) LFCS
10 2 (0.76%) OSCP
10 2 (0.76%) RHCE
10 2 (0.76%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.06%) Accessibility
2 12 (4.55%) QA
3 7 (2.65%) GDPR
3 7 (2.65%) WCAG
4 4 (1.52%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.14%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.14%) GRC
5 3 (1.14%) NIST
6 2 (0.76%) NCSC
6 2 (0.76%) PMO
7 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 62 (23.48%) Docker
2 13 (4.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.65%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (1.89%) Postfix
5 3 (1.14%) Ceph
5 3 (1.14%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.76%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.76%) Firmware
6 2 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 2 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 71 (26.89%) Kubernetes
2 38 (14.39%) Grafana
3 34 (12.88%) Ansible
4 29 (10.98%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.17%) Puppet
6 9 (3.41%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.52%) Cilium
7 4 (1.52%) Istio
7 4 (1.52%) Salt
8 2 (0.76%) Control-M
8 2 (0.76%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.76%) Kibana
8 2 (0.76%) linkerd
8 2 (0.76%) systemd
9 1 (0.38%) Argo
9 1 (0.38%) QRadar
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 28 (10.61%) Google
2 22 (8.33%) Microsoft
2 22 (8.33%) Splunk
3 17 (6.44%) Dynatrace
4 16 (6.06%) OpenAI
5 15 (5.68%) SaltStack
6 13 (4.92%) VMware
7 12 (4.55%) Oracle
8 10 (3.79%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.65%) Cribl.io
9 7 (2.65%) Databricks
10 6 (2.27%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.27%) Informatica
10 6 (2.27%) InterSystems
10 6 (2.27%) Jaspersoft
11 5 (1.89%) Checkmarx
11 5 (1.89%) Denodo
12 4 (1.52%) Black Duck
12 4 (1.52%) Foundry
12 4 (1.52%) Mistral