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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 418 244 295
Rank change year-on-year -174 +51 -12
Contract jobs citing Open Source 258 361 291
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.09% 0.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.21% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 194 182
10th Percentile £431 £395 £350
25th Percentile £499 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £531 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -7.65% -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £696 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £489 £600
% change year-on-year +7.47% -18.58% +5.73%
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 45,145 29,940 33,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.42% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,873 18,766 21,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,760 1,664 1,872
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.63 £40.94
% change year-on-year +86.03% -42.28% +2.35%

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 3 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 3 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 -197 189 £550 - 410
London -130 108 £615 +2.50% 277
Work from Home -107 92 £550 - 195
UK excluding London -128 91 £525 +7.47% 167
North of England -85 20 £513 +5.82% 36
South West -25 19 £550 +34.15% 36
Midlands -43 16 £469 -6.20% 12
West Midlands -50 16 £469 -6.20% 11
Scotland -28 15 £675 +35.00% 12
Yorkshire -45 13 £510 -1.02% 13
East of England -7 12 £552 +38.00% 32
South East -83 10 £500 - 28
North West -62 7 £550 +11.79% 17

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 (6.98%) Confluence
2 9 (3.49%) Apache
3 8 (3.10%) SharePoint
4 6 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (2.33%) Apache Spark
4 6 (2.33%) SAS
5 2 (0.78%) Apache Superset
5 2 (0.78%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.39%) Appian
6 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.16%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 116 (44.96%) AWS
2 69 (26.74%) Azure
3 47 (18.22%) GCP
4 31 (12.02%) GitHub
5 29 (11.24%) Amazon S3
6 27 (10.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 23 (8.91%) Serverless
8 19 (7.36%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (5.81%) AWS Lambda
10 12 (4.65%) Amazon SQS
10 12 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (4.65%) Vertex AI
11 11 (4.26%) AWS KMS
11 11 (4.26%) Route 53
12 10 (3.88%) SaaS
13 9 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (3.49%) Google Gemini
14 8 (3.10%) Anthropic Claude
14 8 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
15 7 (2.71%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.71%) SNMP
2 5 (1.94%) Firewall
3 4 (1.55%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.16%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (1.16%) Network Security
4 3 (1.16%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (1.16%) WAN
5 2 (0.78%) 4G
5 2 (0.78%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.78%) DNS
5 2 (0.78%) HTTP
5 2 (0.78%) NaaS
5 2 (0.78%) SSH
5 2 (0.78%) SSL
5 2 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.39%) 5G
6 1 (0.39%) LTE
6 1 (0.39%) MQTT
6 1 (0.39%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (12.79%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (8.53%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (6.98%) DynamoDB
4 12 (4.65%) Apache Cassandra
4 12 (4.65%) MongoDB
5 11 (4.26%) Amazon Aurora
6 10 (3.88%) Big Data
6 10 (3.88%) BigQuery
6 10 (3.88%) Data Warehouse
7 9 (3.49%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (3.10%) Amazon Athena
8 8 (3.10%) Data Lake
9 7 (2.71%) Relational Database
10 6 (2.33%) Amazon QuickSight
11 5 (1.94%) Apache Iceberg
11 5 (1.94%) BusinessObjects
11 5 (1.94%) Flink
11 5 (1.94%) NoSQL
11 5 (1.94%) Pentaho
11 5 (1.94%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 58 (22.48%) Git
2 23 (8.91%) JUnit
3 22 (8.53%) Jenkins
4 21 (8.14%) GitLab
5 18 (6.98%) JIRA
5 18 (6.98%) SonarQube
6 14 (5.43%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (4.26%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (4.26%) DbUnit
7 11 (4.26%) jMock
7 11 (4.26%) Maven
7 11 (4.26%) Mockito
8 8 (3.10%) IntelliJ
9 6 (2.33%) PowerDesigner
10 5 (1.94%) CircleCI
10 5 (1.94%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.94%) Gradle
11 4 (1.55%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.55%) JMeter
11 4 (1.55%) MLflow
General
1 63 (24.42%) Social Skills
2 46 (17.83%) Finance
3 36 (13.95%) Public Sector
4 21 (8.14%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (7.75%) Banking
6 19 (7.36%) Legal
7 11 (4.26%) Law
8 6 (2.33%) Military
9 4 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.55%) Front Office
9 4 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.16%) Retail
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%) Public Speaking
11 2 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 59 (22.87%) Architect
2 52 (20.16%) Developer
3 37 (14.34%) Senior
4 30 (11.63%) Solutions Architect
5 25 (9.69%) AWS Architect
6 19 (7.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 18 (6.98%) AWS Solution Architect
7 18 (6.98%) Data Engineer
8 16 (6.20%) Senior Developer
8 16 (6.20%) Software Engineer
9 15 (5.81%) Analyst
9 15 (5.81%) Java Developer
10 12 (4.65%) Consultant
10 12 (4.65%) Cyber Threat Analyst
10 12 (4.65%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
10 12 (4.65%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 11 (4.26%) Senior Data Engineer
12 10 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (3.49%) Android Developer
13 9 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (20.16%) Kafka
2 39 (15.12%) REST
3 20 (7.75%) RESTful
3 20 (7.75%) Spring
3 20 (7.75%) Spring Boot
4 17 (6.59%) Node.js
5 15 (5.81%) Android Jetpack
5 15 (5.81%) Jetpack Compose
5 15 (5.81%) LangChain
5 15 (5.81%) React
5 15 (5.81%) SOAP
6 14 (5.43%) gRPC
7 12 (4.65%) AngularJS
7 12 (4.65%) Web Services
8 11 (4.26%) .NET
8 11 (4.26%) ActiveMQ
8 11 (4.26%) Hibernate
8 11 (4.26%) PowerMock
8 11 (4.26%) Spring Batch
8 11 (4.26%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 41 (15.89%) Cloud Native
2 40 (15.50%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (7.36%) AI Agents
4 15 (5.81%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.26%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (3.88%) Product Ownership
7 9 (3.49%) Mobile App
8 8 (3.10%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (3.10%) Management Information System
8 8 (3.10%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.33%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.94%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
10 5 (1.94%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.55%) Data Centre
11 4 (1.55%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.55%) LIMS
11 4 (1.55%) Linux Command Line
12 3 (1.16%) Legacy Code
12 3 (1.16%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 52 (20.16%) Linux
2 16 (6.20%) Android
3 10 (3.88%) Unix
4 8 (3.10%) Windows
5 7 (2.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
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 85 (32.95%) CI/CD
2 65 (25.19%) AI
3 61 (23.64%) Agile
4 59 (22.87%) DevOps
5 57 (22.09%) Software Engineering
6 48 (18.60%) Microservices
7 46 (17.83%) Stakeholder Management
8 42 (16.28%) Containerisation
8 42 (16.28%) LLM
9 40 (15.50%) Event-Driven
10 39 (15.12%) Infrastructure as Code
10 39 (15.12%) Observability
11 33 (12.79%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 31 (12.02%) Data Pipeline
13 29 (11.24%) Machine Learning
14 27 (10.47%) Problem-Solving
15 24 (9.30%) Performance Optimisation
16 23 (8.91%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 23 (8.91%) Roadmaps
16 23 (8.91%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 108 (41.86%) Python
2 57 (22.09%) Java
3 36 (13.95%) SQL
4 24 (9.30%) Go
5 18 (6.98%) Bash
6 17 (6.59%) Kotlin
7 14 (5.43%) JavaScript
8 12 (4.65%) TypeScript
9 10 (3.88%) C++
10 8 (3.10%) C#
11 4 (1.55%) MUMPS
11 4 (1.55%) Scala
11 4 (1.55%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.16%) C
12 3 (1.16%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.16%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.78%) Perl
13 2 (0.78%) Rust
14 1 (0.39%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.39%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 92 (35.66%) Security Cleared
2 65 (25.19%) SC Cleared
3 28 (10.85%) Degree
4 16 (6.20%) DV Cleared
5 15 (5.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.33%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.94%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.94%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.16%) CISM
9 3 (1.16%) CISSP
9 3 (1.16%) PhD
10 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.39%) CEH
11 1 (0.39%) GCIA
11 1 (0.39%) GIAC
11 1 (0.39%) ISEB
11 1 (0.39%) LFCS
11 1 (0.39%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.04%) QA
2 8 (3.10%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.94%) GDPR
3 5 (1.94%) NIST
4 4 (1.55%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.55%) WCAG
5 3 (1.16%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.16%) GRC
5 3 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.39%) NCSC
6 1 (0.39%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.39%) SOC 2
System Software
1 61 (23.64%) Docker
2 9 (3.49%) Postfix
3 4 (1.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.16%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.16%) Ceph
5 2 (0.78%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 54 (20.93%) Kubernetes
2 36 (13.95%) Terraform
3 33 (12.79%) Grafana
4 30 (11.63%) Prometheus
5 21 (8.14%) Ansible
6 6 (2.33%) Puppet
7 4 (1.55%) Salt
8 3 (1.16%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.78%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.78%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.78%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.78%) Istio
9 2 (0.78%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.39%) Argo
10 1 (0.39%) CASB
10 1 (0.39%) Cilium
10 1 (0.39%) MOM
10 1 (0.39%) QRadar
10 1 (0.39%) Rancher
10 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (9.69%) Google
2 23 (8.91%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.36%) Dynatrace
3 19 (7.36%) OpenAI
4 13 (5.04%) Splunk
5 12 (4.65%) Oracle
6 11 (4.26%) Atlassian
6 11 (4.26%) Jaspersoft
7 7 (2.71%) Checkmarx
8 6 (2.33%) Cribl.io
8 6 (2.33%) IBM
8 6 (2.33%) Informatica
8 6 (2.33%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.94%) Black Duck
9 5 (1.94%) Denodo
10 4 (1.55%) InterSystems
10 4 (1.55%) Red Hat
10 4 (1.55%) VMware
11 3 (1.16%) Databricks
11 3 (1.16%) Fortinet