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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 294 272
Rank change year-on-year +9 -22 -36
Contract jobs citing Open Source 368 254 380
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.90% 0.83% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.04% 0.92% 0.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 170 229
10th Percentile £350 £385 £350
25th Percentile £413 £456 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £563 £570
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -1.32% -3.39%
75th Percentile £650 £738 £675
90th Percentile £780 £838 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £570
% change year-on-year -10.00% -12.28% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 6 14
10th Percentile - £25.43 -
25th Percentile £15.25 £25.63 £19.99
Median hourly rate £15.50 £26.25 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year -40.95% +23.53% -67.31%
75th Percentile £39.75 £26.88 £48.75
90th Percentile £54.15 £61.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.50 £26.50 £71.93
% change year-on-year -41.51% -63.16% -

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 35,362 27,619 38,854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.73% 89.84% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,416 17,059 25,415
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.34% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 859 2,186
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £32.81 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.46% -6.26% -
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.30 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -

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 22 February 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 22 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Top 15 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 22 February 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 +3 308 £550 -4.35% 150
London -18 151 £625 -3.85% 61
UK excluding London -24 140 £450 -10.00% 105
Work from Home +15 134 £500 -20.00% 93
North of England -29 45 £428 -7.57% 31
South East -13 31 £488 -2.50% 21
North West -10 23 £409 -11.62% 12
Scotland -1 21 £663 +33.17% 6
South West -9 20 £440 -29.60% 15
Yorkshire -44 19 £500 -6.19% 13
Midlands -47 16 £440 +1.97% 8
West Midlands -51 16 £440 +1.97% 6
East of England -30 6 £552 +71.97% 18
North East -20 3 - - 6
Wales -7 1 - - 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 18 (4.89%) Apache
2 11 (2.99%) Appian
2 11 (2.99%) JBoss
2 11 (2.99%) WebLogic
3 9 (2.45%) Apache Spark
4 8 (2.17%) Confluence
5 5 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.36%) OpenStack
6 4 (1.09%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (1.09%) nginx
7 3 (0.82%) Ethereum
7 3 (0.82%) Hyperledger
8 2 (0.54%) Liferay
8 2 (0.54%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.27%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
9 1 (0.27%) GeoServer
9 1 (0.27%) Oracle Coherence
9 1 (0.27%) Oracle Spatial
9 1 (0.27%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.27%) Magento
2 1 (0.27%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 166 (45.11%) AWS
2 83 (22.55%) Azure
3 42 (11.41%) GitHub
4 26 (7.07%) GCP
5 24 (6.52%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (5.71%) Azure AI
7 20 (5.43%) Amazon S3
8 18 (4.89%) Serverless
9 14 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (3.53%) Amazon Bedrock
10 13 (3.53%) Anthropic Claude
10 13 (3.53%) Cloud Computing
11 12 (3.26%) CloudFront
12 11 (2.99%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (2.72%) Amazon SageMaker
13 10 (2.72%) Google Gemini
14 9 (2.45%) Azure Cognitive Services
14 9 (2.45%) Azure Data Factory
14 9 (2.45%) Vertex AI
15 8 (2.17%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 15 (4.08%) Firewall
2 6 (1.63%) DHCP
2 6 (1.63%) DNS
3 5 (1.36%) Internet
4 4 (1.09%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (0.82%) VLAN
5 3 (0.82%) WAN
6 2 (0.54%) Ethernet
6 2 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.27%) InfiniBand
7 1 (0.27%) iSCSI
7 1 (0.27%) LTE
7 1 (0.27%) NAS
7 1 (0.27%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.27%) RTP
7 1 (0.27%) SAN
7 1 (0.27%) Software-Defined Networking
7 1 (0.27%) Spanning Tree
7 1 (0.27%) SSH
7 1 (0.27%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (17.12%) Apache Cassandra
2 42 (11.41%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (6.79%) MongoDB
4 21 (5.71%) NoSQL
5 18 (4.89%) Relational Database
6 17 (4.62%) SQL Server
7 14 (3.80%) Pinecone
8 13 (3.53%) Redis
9 12 (3.26%) BigQuery
10 11 (2.99%) DB2
11 10 (2.72%) DynamoDB
12 9 (2.45%) Metadata
13 6 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
13 6 (1.63%) Couchbase
13 6 (1.63%) Weaviate
14 5 (1.36%) Big Data
15 4 (1.09%) Amazon Aurora
15 4 (1.09%) Data Hub
15 4 (1.09%) GIS
15 4 (1.09%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 47 (12.77%) Git
2 30 (8.15%) GitLab
2 30 (8.15%) JUnit
3 26 (7.07%) Jenkins
4 14 (3.80%) MLflow
5 13 (3.53%) JIRA
5 13 (3.53%) Selenium
6 9 (2.45%) Eclipse
6 9 (2.45%) IntelliJ
7 8 (2.17%) Gradle
7 8 (2.17%) SonarQube
8 7 (1.90%) CircleCI
8 7 (1.90%) Cucumber
9 6 (1.63%) Mocha
10 5 (1.36%) Maven
10 5 (1.36%) Mockito
11 4 (1.09%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (1.09%) Cypress.io
11 4 (1.09%) DbUnit
11 4 (1.09%) jMock
General
1 80 (21.74%) Social Skills
2 64 (17.39%) Finance
3 49 (13.32%) Public Sector
4 39 (10.60%) Analytical Skills
5 33 (8.97%) Banking
6 17 (4.62%) Investment Banking
7 15 (4.08%) Front Office
8 12 (3.26%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (2.45%) Legal
9 9 (2.45%) Marketing
10 8 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (1.90%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.63%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.63%) Publishing
12 6 (1.63%) Retail
13 5 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
14 4 (1.09%) Military
14 4 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
15 3 (0.82%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 131 (35.60%) Developer
2 89 (24.18%) Senior
3 56 (15.22%) Senior Developer
4 47 (12.77%) Architect
5 38 (10.33%) Software Engineer
6 26 (7.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 22 (5.98%) Solutions Architect
8 19 (5.16%) Android Developer
9 17 (4.62%) Java Developer
10 14 (3.80%) Lead
10 14 (3.80%) Platform Engineer
11 13 (3.53%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 11 (2.99%) Data Scientist
12 11 (2.99%) Python Developer
13 10 (2.72%) Automation Engineer
13 10 (2.72%) AWS Architect
13 10 (2.72%) Investment Banking Java Developer
13 10 (2.72%) Senior Platform Engineer
13 10 (2.72%) SQL Developer
14 9 (2.45%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (27.99%) Kafka
2 69 (18.75%) gRPC
3 51 (13.86%) REST
4 36 (9.78%) React
5 35 (9.51%) Spring
6 29 (7.88%) Node.js
7 28 (7.61%) HTML
8 27 (7.34%) RESTful
9 25 (6.79%) LangChain
10 21 (5.71%) PyTorch
10 21 (5.71%) Web Services
11 20 (5.43%) .NET
11 20 (5.43%) AngularJS
12 19 (5.16%) Android Jetpack
12 19 (5.16%) CSS
12 19 (5.16%) Jetpack Compose
13 18 (4.89%) HTML5
14 17 (4.62%) Android SDK
14 17 (4.62%) Hugging Face
14 17 (4.62%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 69 (18.75%) Distributed Systems
2 23 (6.25%) Cloud Native
3 17 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.35%) Equities
5 12 (3.26%) Distributed Computing
6 11 (2.99%) Data Structures
6 11 (2.99%) PKI
7 10 (2.72%) AI Agents
7 10 (2.72%) Fat Client
7 10 (2.72%) Legacy Code
7 10 (2.72%) Thin Client
8 9 (2.45%) Mobile App
8 9 (2.45%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.45%) Virtual Team
9 8 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.17%) Low-Code
10 7 (1.90%) Data Centre
10 7 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
11 6 (1.63%) Blog
11 6 (1.63%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 55 (14.95%) Linux
2 29 (7.88%) Android
3 23 (6.25%) Windows
4 17 (4.62%) Unix
5 10 (2.72%) Windows 7
6 8 (2.17%) Apple iOS
6 8 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.82%) CentOS
7 3 (0.82%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.82%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.54%) Debian
8 2 (0.54%) Rocky
8 2 (0.54%) VMS
9 1 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (32.61%) Software Engineering
2 105 (28.53%) Microservices
3 89 (24.18%) CI/CD
4 88 (23.91%) Agile
4 88 (23.91%) AI
5 72 (19.57%) Problem-Solving
6 60 (16.30%) LLM
7 59 (16.03%) DevOps
8 58 (15.76%) Machine Learning
9 52 (14.13%) Containerisation
10 49 (13.32%) Generative AI
11 46 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
12 37 (10.05%) Data Pipeline
12 37 (10.05%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
13 36 (9.78%) Test Automation
14 34 (9.24%) Computer Science
14 34 (9.24%) Continuous Integration
14 34 (9.24%) Performance Tuning
15 33 (8.97%) Clean Code
16 29 (7.88%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 158 (42.93%) Python
2 84 (22.83%) Go
3 81 (22.01%) Java
4 63 (17.12%) SQL
5 36 (9.78%) JavaScript
6 32 (8.70%) TypeScript
7 26 (7.07%) C#
8 25 (6.79%) Kotlin
9 14 (3.80%) Scala
10 13 (3.53%) Bash
10 13 (3.53%) Ruby
10 13 (3.53%) Shell Script
11 10 (2.72%) PowerShell
12 4 (1.09%) Delphi
12 4 (1.09%) PHP
12 4 (1.09%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.09%) Solidity
13 3 (0.82%) C++
13 3 (0.82%) Perl
13 3 (0.82%) Swift
Qualifications
1 78 (21.20%) Security Cleared
2 48 (13.04%) SC Cleared
3 41 (11.14%) Degree
4 22 (5.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (5.16%) DV Cleared
6 14 (3.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (3.53%) Master's Degree
8 8 (2.17%) PhD
9 4 (1.09%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.82%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.54%) GPEN
11 2 (0.54%) GWAPT
11 2 (0.54%) OSCP
12 1 (0.27%) CCIP
12 1 (0.27%) CCSAS
12 1 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.27%) GXPN
12 1 (0.27%) MPhil
12 1 (0.27%) OSCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (5.16%) Accessibility
2 12 (3.26%) QA
3 10 (2.72%) Data Quality
3 10 (2.72%) WCAG
4 9 (2.45%) NIST
5 7 (1.90%) GDPR
6 5 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 5 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.82%) NCSC
8 2 (0.54%) GPG for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence
8 2 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 17025
8 2 (0.54%) ISO17020
8 2 (0.54%) SLA
9 1 (0.27%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 132 (35.87%) Docker
2 16 (4.35%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.09%) Ceph
5 3 (0.82%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.82%) KVM
5 3 (0.82%) Postfix
5 3 (0.82%) QEMU
6 2 (0.54%) Oracle Clusterware
6 2 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.27%) Firmware
7 1 (0.27%) iptables
7 1 (0.27%) Lustre
7 1 (0.27%) NFS
7 1 (0.27%) Samba
7 1 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 124 (33.70%) Kubernetes
2 35 (9.51%) Terraform
3 24 (6.52%) Grafana
4 23 (6.25%) Prometheus
5 13 (3.53%) Ansible
6 12 (3.26%) Puppet
7 10 (2.72%) WMI
8 8 (2.17%) Istio
9 7 (1.90%) Argo
10 3 (0.82%) HAProxy
11 2 (0.54%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.54%) Knative
11 2 (0.54%) Oracle RMAN
12 1 (0.27%) MOM
12 1 (0.27%) Rancher
12 1 (0.27%) Salt
12 1 (0.27%) SELinux
Vendors
1 34 (9.24%) Microsoft
2 29 (7.88%) Google
3 23 (6.25%) OpenAI
4 13 (3.53%) VMware
5 10 (2.72%) Atlassian
5 10 (2.72%) Oracle
5 10 (2.72%) Sybase
6 9 (2.45%) UiPath
6 9 (2.45%) webMethods
7 8 (2.17%) Automation Anywhere
7 8 (2.17%) Splunk
8 7 (1.90%) Red Hat
9 6 (1.63%) SAP
10 5 (1.36%) Databricks
10 5 (1.36%) Foundry
11 4 (1.09%) Adobe
11 4 (1.09%) Cisco
11 4 (1.09%) Jaspersoft
11 4 (1.09%) Xamarin
12 3 (0.82%) Computacenter