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 2 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 356 231 292
Rank change year-on-year -125 +61 -34
Contract jobs citing Open Source 296 333 318
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 1.15% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 1.26% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 205 210
10th Percentile £400 £400 £355
25th Percentile £480 £449 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £570
Median % change year-on-year - -3.51% -5.00%
75th Percentile £650 £625 £675
90th Percentile £801 £813 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £475 £585
% change year-on-year +7.89% -18.80% +0.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 13
10th Percentile - - £20.34
25th Percentile - - £21.25
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £26.97
75th Percentile - - £57.50
90th Percentile - - £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £55.00

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 41,283 26,327 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.64% 90.98% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,781 16,819 23,635
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,472 1,115 2,532
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.99 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.84% -23.32% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 2 June 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
Top 13 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 2 June 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 -145 232 £550 -3.17% 276
London -115 120 £600 - 190
UK excluding London -97 111 £513 +7.89% 100
Work from Home -78 105 £550 -4.35% 116
North of England -80 25 £500 +7.53% 12
West Midlands -50 20 £475 -5.00% 3
Midlands -54 20 £475 -5.00% 6
South West -16 19 £550 +11.68% 16
Scotland -16 18 £675 +28.57% 6
South East -62 17 £430 -14.10% 32
East of England -28 13 £550 +52.49% 19
North West -43 13 £450 -2.70% 11
Yorkshire -57 11 £506 - 1

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 (5.74%) Confluence
2 8 (2.70%) Apache
2 8 (2.70%) Appian
2 8 (2.70%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.69%) SAS
4 4 (1.35%) nginx
4 4 (1.35%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.01%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.68%) Liferay
6 2 (0.68%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.34%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.34%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 3 (1.01%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 148 (50.00%) AWS
2 81 (27.36%) Azure
3 44 (14.86%) GCP
4 40 (13.51%) GitHub
5 33 (11.15%) Amazon S3
6 26 (8.78%) Serverless
7 24 (8.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 21 (7.09%) Amazon EC2
9 20 (6.76%) Azure AI
10 18 (6.08%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (5.41%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (4.39%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (4.39%) Google Gemini
12 13 (4.39%) Route 53
13 12 (4.05%) Amazon SQS
13 12 (4.05%) Anthropic Claude
14 11 (3.72%) AWS KMS
14 11 (3.72%) Vertex AI
15 10 (3.38%) Azure Cognitive Services
16 9 (3.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.38%) Firewall
2 7 (2.36%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (2.03%) SNMP
4 5 (1.69%) DNS
4 5 (1.69%) WAN
5 3 (1.01%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.01%) Network Security
6 2 (0.68%) DHCP
6 2 (0.68%) NaaS
7 1 (0.34%) 5G
7 1 (0.34%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.34%) LTE
7 1 (0.34%) NAS
7 1 (0.34%) NGFW
7 1 (0.34%) SAN
7 1 (0.34%) SSH
7 1 (0.34%) SSL
7 1 (0.34%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.34%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (14.86%) PostgreSQL
2 38 (12.84%) Apache Cassandra
3 19 (6.42%) Amazon RDS
3 19 (6.42%) DynamoDB
4 15 (5.07%) BigQuery
5 13 (4.39%) MongoDB
6 11 (3.72%) Amazon Aurora
6 11 (3.72%) Pinecone
6 11 (3.72%) SQL Server
7 9 (3.04%) Amazon Athena
7 9 (3.04%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (2.70%) NoSQL
9 7 (2.36%) Amazon QuickSight
10 6 (2.03%) Data Lake
10 6 (2.03%) Metadata
10 6 (2.03%) Relational Database
11 5 (1.69%) Pentaho
11 5 (1.69%) Power BI
11 5 (1.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 60 (20.27%) Git
2 32 (10.81%) GitLab
3 25 (8.45%) JUnit
4 24 (8.11%) Jenkins
5 18 (6.08%) JIRA
5 18 (6.08%) SonarQube
6 14 (4.73%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (3.72%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (3.72%) DbUnit
7 11 (3.72%) jMock
7 11 (3.72%) Maven
7 11 (3.72%) MLflow
7 11 (3.72%) Mockito
8 8 (2.70%) IntelliJ
9 7 (2.36%) CircleCI
9 7 (2.36%) Gradle
10 5 (1.69%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.35%) PowerDesigner
12 2 (0.68%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.68%) JMeter
General
1 63 (21.28%) Social Skills
2 62 (20.95%) Finance
3 45 (15.20%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.43%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.09%) Banking
5 21 (7.09%) Legal
6 10 (3.38%) Law
7 8 (2.70%) Retail
8 6 (2.03%) Front Office
8 6 (2.03%) Military
9 5 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.01%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.68%) Billing
11 2 (0.68%) Marketing
11 2 (0.68%) Police
11 2 (0.68%) Publishing
12 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 78 (26.35%) Developer
2 57 (19.26%) Architect
3 56 (18.92%) Senior
4 33 (11.15%) Senior Developer
5 30 (10.14%) Solutions Architect
6 29 (9.80%) Software Engineer
7 26 (8.78%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 22 (7.43%) AWS Architect
8 22 (7.43%) Data Engineer
9 16 (5.41%) Cloud Engineer
10 15 (5.07%) AWS Solution Architect
11 14 (4.73%) Consultant
11 14 (4.73%) Java Developer
12 12 (4.05%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (3.72%) Android Developer
13 11 (3.72%) Lead
13 11 (3.72%) Python Developer
14 10 (3.38%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 10 (3.38%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (3.38%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (24.32%) Kafka
2 44 (14.86%) REST
3 40 (13.51%) gRPC
4 31 (10.47%) RESTful
5 26 (8.78%) Spring
5 26 (8.78%) Spring Boot
6 25 (8.45%) Node.js
6 25 (8.45%) React
7 23 (7.77%) AngularJS
7 23 (7.77%) Web Services
8 21 (7.09%) LangChain
9 16 (5.41%) .NET
9 16 (5.41%) Android Jetpack
9 16 (5.41%) Hugging Face
9 16 (5.41%) Jetpack Compose
9 16 (5.41%) PyTorch
9 16 (5.41%) TensorFlow
10 15 (5.07%) OpenTelemetry
11 12 (4.05%) Django
11 12 (4.05%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 59 (19.93%) Distributed Systems
2 46 (15.54%) Cloud Native
3 18 (6.08%) Product Ownership
4 15 (5.07%) AI Agents
5 10 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.70%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (2.70%) Low-Code
6 8 (2.70%) Mobile App
6 8 (2.70%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.36%) Legacy Code
7 7 (2.36%) Virtual Team
8 6 (2.03%) Data Centre
9 5 (1.69%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.35%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.35%) Security Posture
10 4 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.01%) Clustering
11 3 (1.01%) Distributed Computing
11 3 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 45 (15.20%) Linux
2 18 (6.08%) Android
3 6 (2.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.35%) Debian
4 4 (1.35%) Rocky
4 4 (1.35%) Ubuntu
4 4 (1.35%) Unix
4 4 (1.35%) Windows
5 3 (1.01%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.68%) VMS
6 2 (0.68%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (32.09%) CI/CD
2 81 (27.36%) AI
2 81 (27.36%) Microservices
3 80 (27.03%) Software Engineering
4 70 (23.65%) Agile
5 65 (21.96%) DevOps
6 60 (20.27%) Containerisation
7 56 (18.92%) LLM
8 50 (16.89%) Stakeholder Management
9 43 (14.53%) Infrastructure as Code
9 43 (14.53%) Machine Learning
10 41 (13.85%) Generative AI
10 41 (13.85%) Observability
11 39 (13.18%) Data Pipeline
12 36 (12.16%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
13 34 (11.49%) Problem-Solving
14 30 (10.14%) Event-Driven
15 26 (8.78%) Continuous Integration
15 26 (8.78%) Event-Driven Architecture
15 26 (8.78%) Prompt Engineering
Programming Languages
1 125 (42.23%) Python
2 53 (17.91%) Java
3 51 (17.23%) Go
4 43 (14.53%) SQL
5 20 (6.76%) JavaScript
6 18 (6.08%) Bash
7 17 (5.74%) C#
7 17 (5.74%) Kotlin
7 17 (5.74%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.03%) PL/SQL
8 6 (2.03%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.69%) PowerShell
10 4 (1.35%) Ruby
11 3 (1.01%) C++
11 3 (1.01%) Scala
12 2 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.34%) Bicep
13 1 (0.34%) Groovy
13 1 (0.34%) Objective-C
13 1 (0.34%) Swift
Qualifications
1 86 (29.05%) Security Cleared
2 68 (22.97%) SC Cleared
3 26 (8.78%) Degree
4 12 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (4.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (3.04%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.03%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.01%) CISM
8 3 (1.01%) CISSP
8 3 (1.01%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.01%) PhD
9 1 (0.34%) CEH
9 1 (0.34%) GCIA
9 1 (0.34%) GIAC
9 1 (0.34%) ISEB
9 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.34%) MPhil
9 1 (0.34%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.07%) QA
2 10 (3.38%) Accessibility
2 10 (3.38%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.35%) NIST
3 4 (1.35%) WCAG
4 3 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.68%) GRC
6 1 (0.34%) GDPR
6 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.34%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 102 (34.46%) Docker
2 9 (3.04%) Active Directory
2 9 (3.04%) Postfix
3 5 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.35%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (1.01%) Ceph
6 2 (0.68%) ISA Server
6 2 (0.68%) Oracle Clusterware
6 2 (0.68%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.34%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.34%) KVM
7 1 (0.34%) Squid
7 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 95 (32.09%) Kubernetes
2 41 (13.85%) Terraform
3 34 (11.49%) Grafana
4 28 (9.46%) Prometheus
5 17 (5.74%) Ansible
6 10 (3.38%) Istio
7 6 (2.03%) Argo
8 4 (1.35%) Data Guard
8 4 (1.35%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (1.35%) Puppet
8 4 (1.35%) Salt
9 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.68%) Rancher
9 2 (0.68%) WMI
10 1 (0.34%) CASB
10 1 (0.34%) Control-M
10 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.34%) MOM
10 1 (0.34%) QRadar
Vendors
1 29 (9.80%) Google
1 29 (9.80%) OpenAI
2 22 (7.43%) Microsoft
3 18 (6.08%) Dynatrace
4 13 (4.39%) Splunk
5 12 (4.05%) Oracle
6 11 (3.72%) Atlassian
6 11 (3.72%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (2.70%) Automation Anywhere
7 8 (2.70%) UiPath
8 7 (2.36%) Checkmarx
9 5 (1.69%) Black Duck
9 5 (1.69%) Cribl.io
9 5 (1.69%) Denodo
9 5 (1.69%) Informatica
10 4 (1.35%) Fortinet
10 4 (1.35%) IBM
10 4 (1.35%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.35%) VMware
11 3 (1.01%) Sonatype