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 26 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 431 258 310
Rank change year-on-year -173 +52 -49
Contract jobs citing Open Source 258 346 288
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.06% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.17% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 177 177
10th Percentile £425 £370 £338
25th Percentile £475 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £617 £600 £663
90th Percentile £755 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £493 £599
% change year-on-year +6.60% -17.75% +8.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 10
10th Percentile £20.28 - £20.12
25th Percentile £31.07 £51.75 £20.40
Median hourly rate £49.17 £56.50 £21.68
Median % change year-on-year -12.97% +160.61% -60.14%
75th Percentile £67.15 £61.25 £27.96
90th Percentile £77.86 - £30.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.34 - £20.24

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 45,367 29,590 33,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.44% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,794 18,422 20,982
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,879 1,766 1,695
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £17.97 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.26% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +6.25%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 -193 182 £550 +4.76% 224
UK excluding London -101 96 £525 +6.60% 120
Work from Home -104 96 £514 -6.55% 106
London -145 96 £600 - 151
North of England -81 26 £495 +0.51% 16
South West -27 22 £550 +40.13% 31
Scotland -34 17 £663 +29.27% 22
Yorkshire -36 15 £500 -1.77% 4
East of England -15 12 £552 +38.00% 23
Midlands -50 11 £459 -8.20% 10
West Midlands -54 11 £459 -8.20% 9
South East -81 9 £550 +10.00% 15
North West -61 6 £550 +11.79% 8
North East -40 5 £425 -8.60% 4

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 17 (6.59%) Confluence
2 11 (4.26%) Apache
3 8 (3.10%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.10%) SharePoint
4 7 (2.71%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (2.33%) SAS
6 4 (1.55%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.39%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.16%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 118 (45.74%) AWS
2 69 (26.74%) Azure
3 54 (20.93%) GCP
4 35 (13.57%) GitHub
5 22 (8.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 22 (8.53%) Amazon S3
6 21 (8.14%) Serverless
7 18 (6.98%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (5.43%) Vertex AI
9 12 (4.65%) Amazon EC2
9 12 (4.65%) AWS Lambda
10 11 (4.26%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (4.26%) IaaS
11 9 (3.49%) Google Gemini
11 9 (3.49%) SaaS
12 8 (3.10%) Amazon Bedrock
12 8 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
13 7 (2.71%) Amazon SQS
13 7 (2.71%) Power Platform
14 6 (2.33%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.71%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.33%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.33%) SNMP
3 4 (1.55%) DNS
3 4 (1.55%) SSH
3 4 (1.55%) SSL
4 3 (1.16%) Firewall
4 3 (1.16%) WAN
5 2 (0.78%) 4G
5 2 (0.78%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.78%) HTTP
5 2 (0.78%) NaaS
5 2 (0.78%) Network Security
5 2 (0.78%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.39%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (10.08%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (6.20%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (5.43%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.65%) DynamoDB
5 9 (3.49%) Apache Cassandra
5 9 (3.49%) Big Data
5 9 (3.49%) BigQuery
5 9 (3.49%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (3.10%) Amazon Redshift
6 8 (3.10%) Data Lake
7 7 (2.71%) Amazon Athena
7 7 (2.71%) Relational Database
8 6 (2.33%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (1.94%) Amazon QuickSight
9 5 (1.94%) Apache Iceberg
9 5 (1.94%) Flink
9 5 (1.94%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.94%) Power BI
9 5 (1.94%) Spatial Data
9 5 (1.94%) Trino
Development Applications
1 53 (20.54%) Git
2 21 (8.14%) GitLab
2 21 (8.14%) Jenkins
3 18 (6.98%) JIRA
4 16 (6.20%) JUnit
5 13 (5.04%) SonarQube
5 13 (5.04%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (3.10%) IntelliJ
7 6 (2.33%) Bitbucket Server
7 6 (2.33%) Cucumber
7 6 (2.33%) DbUnit
7 6 (2.33%) jMock
7 6 (2.33%) Maven
7 6 (2.33%) Mockito
8 5 (1.94%) JMeter
9 4 (1.55%) PowerDesigner
9 4 (1.55%) Selenium
10 3 (1.16%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.16%) CircleCI
10 3 (1.16%) LoadRunner
General
1 66 (25.58%) Social Skills
2 43 (16.67%) Finance
3 35 (13.57%) Public Sector
4 18 (6.98%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (6.20%) Banking
5 16 (6.20%) Legal
6 10 (3.88%) Law
7 9 (3.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.94%) Military
9 4 (1.55%) Front Office
9 4 (1.55%) Retail
10 3 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.16%) Publishing
11 2 (0.78%) Billing
11 2 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.78%) Police
11 2 (0.78%) Polish Language
11 2 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.78%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 55 (21.32%) Architect
2 47 (18.22%) Developer
3 43 (16.67%) Senior
4 30 (11.63%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (10.08%) AWS Architect
6 19 (7.36%) AWS Solution Architect
7 18 (6.98%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 15 (5.81%) Analyst
8 15 (5.81%) Data Engineer
9 14 (5.43%) Senior Developer
9 14 (5.43%) Software Engineer
10 13 (5.04%) Consultant
11 12 (4.65%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 11 (4.26%) Cyber Threat Analyst
12 11 (4.26%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 11 (4.26%) Software Developer
13 10 (3.88%) Java Developer
14 9 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
14 9 (3.49%) Cloud Engineer
14 9 (3.49%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (18.60%) Kafka
2 43 (16.67%) Terraform
3 32 (12.40%) REST
4 15 (5.81%) React
4 15 (5.81%) Spring
4 15 (5.81%) Spring Boot
5 14 (5.43%) LangChain
5 14 (5.43%) RESTful
6 12 (4.65%) Node.js
7 11 (4.26%) gRPC
7 11 (4.26%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (3.88%) LangGraph
8 10 (3.88%) SOAP
9 9 (3.49%) Android Jetpack
9 9 (3.49%) Jetpack Compose
9 9 (3.49%) PyTorch
10 8 (3.10%) AngularJS
10 8 (3.10%) eBPF
10 8 (3.10%) GraphQL
10 8 (3.10%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 45 (17.44%) Cloud Native
2 27 (10.47%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (8.14%) AI Agents
4 18 (6.98%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.26%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (4.26%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (3.49%) Management Information System
6 9 (3.49%) Private Cloud
6 9 (3.49%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.71%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.71%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (2.33%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.94%) Blog
9 5 (1.94%) Legacy Applications
9 5 (1.94%) LIMS
9 5 (1.94%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
10 4 (1.55%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.55%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 51 (19.77%) Linux
2 14 (5.43%) Unix
3 11 (4.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.88%) Android
5 9 (3.49%) Windows
6 3 (1.16%) Debian
6 3 (1.16%) Rocky
6 3 (1.16%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.78%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (36.43%) CI/CD
2 65 (25.19%) Software Engineering
3 63 (24.42%) Agile
4 62 (24.03%) AI
5 61 (23.64%) DevOps
6 46 (17.83%) Observability
7 42 (16.28%) Event-Driven
7 42 (16.28%) Infrastructure as Code
8 41 (15.89%) Containerisation
9 40 (15.50%) Microservices
9 40 (15.50%) Stakeholder Management
10 35 (13.57%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 35 (13.57%) LLM
11 33 (12.79%) Test Automation
12 32 (12.40%) Data Pipeline
13 28 (10.85%) Machine Learning
14 26 (10.08%) Problem-Solving
15 25 (9.69%) Cybersecurity
16 23 (8.91%) Continuous Improvement
16 23 (8.91%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 106 (41.09%) Python
2 49 (18.99%) Java
3 33 (12.79%) SQL
4 22 (8.53%) Go
5 19 (7.36%) Bash
6 14 (5.43%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.04%) C++
8 12 (4.65%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.88%) Kotlin
10 9 (3.49%) Scala
11 8 (3.10%) Perl
12 7 (2.71%) C
13 5 (1.94%) MUMPS
14 4 (1.55%) C#
15 3 (1.16%) PL/SQL
15 3 (1.16%) PowerShell
15 3 (1.16%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.78%) Rust
17 1 (0.39%) Objective-C
17 1 (0.39%) Swift
Qualifications
1 95 (36.82%) Security Cleared
2 67 (25.97%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.75%) Degree
4 18 (6.98%) DV Cleared
5 12 (4.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.49%) CISSP
7 8 (3.10%) CISM
8 5 (1.94%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.55%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.16%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.78%) CEH
11 2 (0.78%) GIAC
11 2 (0.78%) GSEC
11 2 (0.78%) LFCS
11 2 (0.78%) OSCP
11 2 (0.78%) RHCE
11 2 (0.78%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.04%) QA
2 12 (4.65%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.33%) GDPR
4 5 (1.94%) WCAG
5 4 (1.55%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (1.16%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.16%) GRC
6 3 (1.16%) NIST
7 2 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.39%) NCSC
System Software
1 57 (22.09%) Docker
2 8 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.94%) Postfix
4 4 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.16%) Ceph
6 2 (0.78%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.78%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 2 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.39%) Squid
7 1 (0.39%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 58 (22.48%) Kubernetes
2 34 (13.18%) Grafana
3 29 (11.24%) Prometheus
4 25 (9.69%) Ansible
5 9 (3.49%) Puppet
6 7 (2.71%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.55%) Istio
7 4 (1.55%) Salt
8 2 (0.78%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.78%) Cilium
8 2 (0.78%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.78%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.78%) linkerd
8 2 (0.78%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.39%) Argo
9 1 (0.39%) Control-M
9 1 (0.39%) QRadar
9 1 (0.39%) Rancher
9 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.39%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 25 (9.69%) Google
2 22 (8.53%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.36%) Dynatrace
4 18 (6.98%) Splunk
5 17 (6.59%) OpenAI
6 12 (4.65%) Oracle
7 9 (3.49%) Red Hat
8 8 (3.10%) SaltStack
8 8 (3.10%) VMware
9 7 (2.71%) Checkmarx
9 7 (2.71%) Cribl.io
10 6 (2.33%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.33%) Informatica
10 6 (2.33%) Jaspersoft
11 5 (1.94%) Black Duck
11 5 (1.94%) Databricks
11 5 (1.94%) Denodo
11 5 (1.94%) InterSystems
11 5 (1.94%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.55%) IBM