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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 413 252 306
Rank change year-on-year -161 +54 -39
Contract jobs citing Open Source 260 341 284
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.04% 0.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.14% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 176 181
10th Percentile £429 £375 £350
25th Percentile £487 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £663 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £669 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £544 £489 £600
% change year-on-year +11.31% -18.58% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 11
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - £51.75 £20.68
Median hourly rate £85.00 £56.50 £21.86
Median % change year-on-year +50.44% +158.46% -75.71%
75th Percentile - £61.25 £27.96
90th Percentile - - £57.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £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 45,250 29,801 33,299
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.48% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,843 18,616 21,279
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £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 2,819 1,703 1,838
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.31 £18.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -39.40% -1.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.38 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +13.33%

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 13 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
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 13 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 -167 189 £550 +2.42% 575
London -139 107 £600 - 400
Work from Home -91 94 £550 - 290
UK excluding London -124 93 £544 +11.31% 215
South West -22 22 £550 +34.15% 34
North of England -74 21 £513 +4.17% 40
Scotland -29 16 £675 +35.00% 23
West Midlands -35 15 £464 -7.20% 16
Midlands -49 15 £464 -7.20% 17
Yorkshire -37 14 £502 -2.52% 9
East of England -11 12 £552 +38.00% 42
South East -72 8 £550 +10.00% 41
North West -55 7 £550 +11.79% 20

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 (6.92%) Confluence
2 11 (4.23%) Apache
3 8 (3.08%) SharePoint
4 7 (2.69%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.69%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.31%) SAS
6 3 (1.15%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.38%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 115 (44.23%) AWS
2 70 (26.92%) Azure
3 50 (19.23%) GCP
4 29 (11.15%) GitHub
5 27 (10.38%) Amazon S3
6 26 (10.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (8.46%) Serverless
8 17 (6.54%) Amazon EC2
9 13 (5.00%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (5.00%) Vertex AI
10 11 (4.23%) Amazon SQS
10 11 (4.23%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (3.85%) AWS KMS
11 10 (3.85%) IaaS
11 10 (3.85%) Route 53
11 10 (3.85%) SaaS
12 9 (3.46%) Google Gemini
13 8 (3.08%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (3.08%) Azure Monitor
14 7 (2.69%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.31%) SNMP
2 5 (1.92%) Firewall
2 5 (1.92%) Intrusion Detection
3 4 (1.54%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.15%) Network Security
4 3 (1.15%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (1.15%) WAN
5 2 (0.77%) 4G
5 2 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.77%) DNS
5 2 (0.77%) HTTP
5 2 (0.77%) NaaS
5 2 (0.77%) SSH
5 2 (0.77%) SSL
5 2 (0.77%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.38%) MQTT
6 1 (0.38%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (11.92%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (7.69%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (6.15%) DynamoDB
4 11 (4.23%) Apache Cassandra
4 11 (4.23%) MongoDB
5 10 (3.85%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (3.85%) Big Data
5 10 (3.85%) BigQuery
5 10 (3.85%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (3.46%) Amazon Redshift
7 8 (3.08%) Amazon Athena
7 8 (3.08%) Data Lake
8 7 (2.69%) Relational Database
9 6 (2.31%) Amazon QuickSight
10 5 (1.92%) Apache Iceberg
10 5 (1.92%) BusinessObjects
10 5 (1.92%) Flink
10 5 (1.92%) NoSQL
10 5 (1.92%) Pentaho
10 5 (1.92%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 61 (23.46%) Git
2 24 (9.23%) Jenkins
3 21 (8.08%) GitLab
4 20 (7.69%) JUnit
5 18 (6.92%) JIRA
6 17 (6.54%) SonarQube
7 14 (5.38%) Sonatype Nexus
8 10 (3.85%) Bitbucket Server
8 10 (3.85%) DbUnit
8 10 (3.85%) jMock
8 10 (3.85%) Maven
8 10 (3.85%) Mockito
9 8 (3.08%) IntelliJ
10 6 (2.31%) PowerDesigner
11 5 (1.92%) Cucumber
12 4 (1.54%) Artifactory
12 4 (1.54%) JMeter
13 3 (1.15%) CircleCI
13 3 (1.15%) Selenium
14 2 (0.77%) Claude Code
General
1 66 (25.38%) Social Skills
2 42 (16.15%) Finance
3 36 (13.85%) Public Sector
4 22 (8.46%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (7.31%) Legal
6 18 (6.92%) Banking
7 11 (4.23%) Law
8 6 (2.31%) Military
9 4 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.54%) Front Office
9 4 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.15%) Retail
11 2 (0.77%) Billing
11 2 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.77%) Police
11 2 (0.77%) Polish Language
11 2 (0.77%) Public Speaking
11 2 (0.77%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 59 (22.69%) Architect
2 48 (18.46%) Developer
3 39 (15.00%) Senior
4 30 (11.54%) Solutions Architect
5 25 (9.62%) AWS Architect
6 18 (6.92%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 18 (6.92%) AWS Solution Architect
6 18 (6.92%) Data Engineer
7 16 (6.15%) Analyst
7 16 (6.15%) Software Engineer
8 15 (5.77%) Senior Developer
9 14 (5.38%) Java Developer
10 13 (5.00%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 12 (4.62%) Consultant
11 12 (4.62%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 12 (4.62%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 10 (3.85%) AWS Engineer
12 10 (3.85%) Cloud Engineer
12 10 (3.85%) Senior Data Engineer
13 8 (3.08%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (19.23%) Kafka
2 36 (13.85%) REST
3 19 (7.31%) Spring
3 19 (7.31%) Spring Boot
4 18 (6.92%) RESTful
5 15 (5.77%) LangChain
5 15 (5.77%) Node.js
5 15 (5.77%) React
6 14 (5.38%) SOAP
7 13 (5.00%) gRPC
8 11 (4.23%) Android Jetpack
8 11 (4.23%) AngularJS
8 11 (4.23%) Jetpack Compose
8 11 (4.23%) OpenTelemetry
9 10 (3.85%) .NET
9 10 (3.85%) ActiveMQ
9 10 (3.85%) Bootstrap
9 10 (3.85%) Hibernate
9 10 (3.85%) JPA
9 10 (3.85%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 43 (16.54%) Cloud Native
2 35 (13.46%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (7.69%) AI Agents
4 17 (6.54%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.23%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (4.23%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (3.85%) Product Ownership
7 8 (3.08%) Management Information System
7 8 (3.08%) Mobile App
8 7 (2.69%) Private Cloud
8 7 (2.69%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.31%) Data Structures
9 6 (2.31%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.92%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (1.92%) LIMS
10 5 (1.92%) Linux Command Line
11 4 (1.54%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 4 (1.54%) Data Centre
11 4 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.54%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 53 (20.38%) Linux
2 14 (5.38%) Unix
3 12 (4.62%) Android
3 12 (4.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (3.46%) Windows
5 4 (1.54%) Debian
5 4 (1.54%) Rocky
5 4 (1.54%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.77%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (33.85%) CI/CD
2 64 (24.62%) AI
2 64 (24.62%) Software Engineering
3 62 (23.85%) Agile
4 61 (23.46%) DevOps
5 45 (17.31%) Microservices
5 45 (17.31%) Stakeholder Management
6 44 (16.92%) Containerisation
7 41 (15.77%) Event-Driven
7 41 (15.77%) Infrastructure as Code
8 40 (15.38%) Observability
9 38 (14.62%) LLM
10 34 (13.08%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 32 (12.31%) Data Pipeline
12 28 (10.77%) Machine Learning
12 28 (10.77%) Problem-Solving
13 27 (10.38%) Test Automation
14 24 (9.23%) Performance Optimisation
15 23 (8.85%) Continuous Improvement
15 23 (8.85%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 106 (40.77%) Python
2 54 (20.77%) Java
3 37 (14.23%) SQL
4 24 (9.23%) Go
5 17 (6.54%) Bash
6 13 (5.00%) C++
6 13 (5.00%) JavaScript
6 13 (5.00%) TypeScript
7 12 (4.62%) Kotlin
8 7 (2.69%) C
8 7 (2.69%) C#
9 6 (2.31%) Perl
10 5 (1.92%) MUMPS
11 4 (1.54%) Scala
12 3 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.15%) PowerShell
12 3 (1.15%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.77%) Rust
14 1 (0.38%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 92 (35.38%) Security Cleared
2 63 (24.23%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.85%) Degree
4 17 (6.54%) DV Cleared
5 13 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.31%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.31%) CISSP
7 5 (1.92%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.92%) CISM
8 4 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.15%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.77%) CEH
10 2 (0.77%) GIAC
11 1 (0.38%) GCIA
11 1 (0.38%) GSEC
11 1 (0.38%) OSCP
11 1 (0.38%) RHCE
11 1 (0.38%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.00%) QA
2 9 (3.46%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.31%) GDPR
4 4 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.54%) NIST
4 4 (1.54%) WCAG
5 3 (1.15%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.15%) GRC
5 3 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.38%) NCSC
6 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 61 (23.46%) Docker
2 8 (3.08%) Postfix
3 4 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.15%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.77%) Ceph
5 2 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.77%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 53 (20.38%) Kubernetes
2 37 (14.23%) Terraform
3 33 (12.69%) Grafana
4 30 (11.54%) Prometheus
5 21 (8.08%) Ansible
6 10 (3.85%) Puppet
7 7 (2.69%) Progress Chef
8 5 (1.92%) Salt
9 3 (1.15%) Istio
10 2 (0.77%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.77%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.77%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.77%) Oracle RMAN
11 1 (0.38%) Argo
11 1 (0.38%) CASB
11 1 (0.38%) Control-M
11 1 (0.38%) linkerd
11 1 (0.38%) QRadar
11 1 (0.38%) Rancher
11 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (9.62%) Google
1 25 (9.62%) Microsoft
2 19 (7.31%) Dynatrace
3 17 (6.54%) OpenAI
4 13 (5.00%) Splunk
5 12 (4.62%) Oracle
6 10 (3.85%) Atlassian
6 10 (3.85%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (3.08%) Red Hat
8 7 (2.69%) Checkmarx
8 7 (2.69%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.31%) IBM
9 6 (2.31%) Informatica
9 6 (2.31%) SaltStack
10 5 (1.92%) Black Duck
10 5 (1.92%) Denodo
10 5 (1.92%) InterSystems
10 5 (1.92%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.54%) Databricks
11 4 (1.54%) VMware