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 11 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 286 299 260
Rank change year-on-year +13 -39 -17
Contract jobs citing Open Source 346 234 404
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.95% 0.74% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.08% 0.83% 1.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 151 251
10th Percentile £321 £325 £262
25th Percentile £409 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £570
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -3.51% -5.00%
75th Percentile £644 £675 £650
90th Percentile £772 £838 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £561
% change year-on-year -10.00% -10.91% +6.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 6 14
10th Percentile - £25.43 -
25th Percentile £15.25 £25.63 £19.99
Median hourly rate £36.00 £26.25 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year +37.14% +23.53% -59.72%
75th Percentile £61.88 £26.88 £22.52
90th Percentile £63.00 £61.00 £68.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.50 £26.50 £71.93
% change year-on-year -41.51% -63.16% +294.14%

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 31,966 28,176 37,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.65% 87.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,158 17,120 25,014
10th Percentile £304 £306 £305
25th Percentile £406 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £744 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,974 895 1,590
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.50 £18.35
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.59 £75.00 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.41 £43.90
% change year-on-year -21.64% -30.74% +59.64%

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 11 January 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 +27 298 £528 -4.09% 356
London +19 151 £600 -4.00% 90
UK excluding London -12 121 £450 -10.00% 312
Work from Home +6 115 £478 -20.29% 154
North of England -9 44 £435 -21.30% 50
South East +10 29 £565 +22.83% 110
North West -7 22 £423 -8.65% 22
Yorkshire -34 20 £525 -10.64% 21
Scotland +5 18 £575 +10.58% 7
South West -12 13 £350 -42.15% 42
West Midlands -23 12 £435 -20.91% 12
Midlands -33 12 £435 -20.91% 41
East of England -27 4 £553 +50.99% 51
North East -7 3 - - 7
Wales -2 1 - - 11

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 15 (4.34%) Apache
2 11 (3.18%) JBoss
2 11 (3.18%) WebLogic
3 9 (2.60%) Apache Spark
3 9 (2.60%) Appian
4 7 (2.02%) Confluence
5 4 (1.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 4 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.87%) Ethereum
6 3 (0.87%) Hyperledger
7 2 (0.58%) Liferay
7 2 (0.58%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.58%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.29%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
8 1 (0.29%) CMS
8 1 (0.29%) GeoServer
8 1 (0.29%) nginx
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Coherence
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.58%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.29%) Magento
2 1 (0.29%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 161 (46.53%) AWS
2 65 (18.79%) Azure
3 32 (9.25%) GitHub
4 30 (8.67%) GCP
5 22 (6.36%) GitHub Actions
6 16 (4.62%) Serverless
7 15 (4.34%) Amazon S3
8 14 (4.05%) CloudFront
9 12 (3.47%) Cloud Computing
10 11 (3.18%) Amazon Bedrock
10 11 (3.18%) Azure AI
11 9 (2.60%) Amazon SageMaker
11 9 (2.60%) Google Gemini
11 9 (2.60%) Vertex AI
12 8 (2.31%) Anthropic Claude
13 7 (2.02%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (1.73%) OpenShift
15 5 (1.45%) Azure Data Factory
15 5 (1.45%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.05%) Firewall
2 5 (1.45%) Internet
3 4 (1.16%) DHCP
4 3 (0.87%) Ethernet
4 3 (0.87%) SSH
4 3 (0.87%) VLAN
5 2 (0.58%) DNS
5 2 (0.58%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.29%) HTTP
6 1 (0.29%) InfiniBand
6 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.29%) Kerberos
6 1 (0.29%) LAN
6 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.29%) RTP
6 1 (0.29%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.29%) Spanning Tree
6 1 (0.29%) STUN
6 1 (0.29%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (18.79%) Apache Cassandra
2 32 (9.25%) PostgreSQL
3 31 (8.96%) MongoDB
4 26 (7.51%) Relational Database
5 22 (6.36%) NoSQL
6 19 (5.49%) DB2
7 15 (4.34%) Redis
8 12 (3.47%) SQL Server
9 11 (3.18%) Pinecone
10 10 (2.89%) BigQuery
11 6 (1.73%) Couchbase
11 6 (1.73%) Metadata
12 5 (1.45%) DynamoDB
12 5 (1.45%) RDBMS
12 5 (1.45%) Weaviate
13 4 (1.16%) Apache Hive
13 4 (1.16%) Hadoop
13 4 (1.16%) Impala
14 3 (0.87%) Data Hub
14 3 (0.87%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 35 (10.12%) Git
2 33 (9.54%) JUnit
3 26 (7.51%) Jenkins
4 23 (6.65%) GitLab
5 15 (4.34%) Selenium
6 12 (3.47%) MLflow
7 11 (3.18%) JIRA
8 9 (2.60%) Cucumber
8 9 (2.60%) Eclipse
8 9 (2.60%) IntelliJ
9 8 (2.31%) SonarQube
10 7 (2.02%) Mocha
11 5 (1.45%) Gradle
11 5 (1.45%) Robot Framework
12 4 (1.16%) CircleCI
13 3 (0.87%) Cypress.io
13 3 (0.87%) Hudson
13 3 (0.87%) Jasmine
13 3 (0.87%) KGDB
13 3 (0.87%) Subversion
General
1 82 (23.70%) Social Skills
2 63 (18.21%) Finance
3 43 (12.43%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (10.69%) Banking
5 34 (9.83%) Public Sector
6 25 (7.23%) Investment Banking
7 19 (5.49%) Front Office
8 11 (3.18%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (2.60%) Telecoms
10 8 (2.31%) Marketing
11 7 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
12 6 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.73%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.73%) Legal
13 5 (1.45%) Retail
14 4 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (1.16%) Publishing
15 3 (0.87%) Electronics
15 3 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 129 (37.28%) Developer
2 94 (27.17%) Senior
3 57 (16.47%) Senior Developer
4 35 (10.12%) Software Engineer
5 34 (9.83%) Architect
6 24 (6.94%) Platform Engineer
7 21 (6.07%) Java Developer
8 18 (5.20%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 18 (5.20%) Investment Banking Java Developer
8 18 (5.20%) SQL Developer
9 16 (4.62%) Android Developer
10 13 (3.76%) Solutions Architect
11 11 (3.18%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 11 (3.18%) Lead
12 10 (2.89%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 10 (2.89%) Senior Java Developer
12 10 (2.89%) Senior Platform Engineer
12 10 (2.89%) Software Developer
13 9 (2.60%) Python Developer
13 9 (2.60%) Sybase Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (32.66%) Kafka
2 77 (22.25%) gRPC
3 38 (10.98%) Spring
4 36 (10.40%) REST
5 33 (9.54%) React
6 29 (8.38%) HTML
7 24 (6.94%) Node.js
8 23 (6.65%) LangChain
9 20 (5.78%) CSS
10 18 (5.20%) HTML5
10 18 (5.20%) JMS
10 18 (5.20%) PyTorch
11 16 (4.62%) .NET
11 16 (4.62%) JSON
12 15 (4.34%) RESTful
13 14 (4.05%) Android SDK
13 14 (4.05%) Hugging Face
13 14 (4.05%) TensorFlow
13 14 (4.05%) XML
14 13 (3.76%) Jetpack Compose
Miscellaneous
1 64 (18.50%) Distributed Systems
2 25 (7.23%) Equities
3 20 (5.78%) Data Structures
4 19 (5.49%) Cloud Native
5 13 (3.76%) Product Ownership
6 12 (3.47%) Distributed Computing
6 12 (3.47%) PKI
7 11 (3.18%) Fat Client
7 11 (3.18%) Thin Client
8 9 (2.60%) AI Agents
9 7 (2.02%) Fixed Income
9 7 (2.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 7 (2.02%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.73%) Cyber Threat
10 6 (1.73%) Derivative
10 6 (1.73%) Hedge funds
10 6 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (1.73%) Mobile App
10 6 (1.73%) Private Cloud
10 6 (1.73%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 53 (15.32%) Linux
2 27 (7.80%) Windows
3 23 (6.65%) Android
4 17 (4.91%) Unix
5 11 (3.18%) Windows 7
6 6 (1.73%) Apple iOS
6 6 (1.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (1.45%) Windows Server
8 3 (0.87%) CentOS
9 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
9 1 (0.29%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (36.42%) Software Engineering
2 100 (28.90%) Microservices
3 84 (24.28%) CI/CD
3 84 (24.28%) Problem-Solving
4 83 (23.99%) Agile
5 73 (21.10%) AI
6 53 (15.32%) DevOps
7 51 (14.74%) Machine Learning
8 47 (13.58%) Infrastructure as Code
9 43 (12.43%) LLM
10 42 (12.14%) Containerisation
11 38 (10.98%) Observability
12 37 (10.69%) Generative AI
13 36 (10.40%) Clean Code
13 36 (10.40%) Performance Tuning
14 33 (9.54%) Test Automation
15 29 (8.38%) Data Pipeline
16 28 (8.09%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 26 (7.51%) SDLC
18 25 (7.23%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 163 (47.11%) Python
2 88 (25.43%) Go
3 84 (24.28%) Java
4 71 (20.52%) SQL
5 34 (9.83%) JavaScript
6 27 (7.80%) TypeScript
7 22 (6.36%) C#
8 18 (5.20%) Kotlin
8 18 (5.20%) Shell Script
9 14 (4.05%) Bash
9 14 (4.05%) Scala
10 13 (3.76%) PowerShell
11 12 (3.47%) Ruby
12 5 (1.45%) C++
12 5 (1.45%) PHP
13 4 (1.16%) C
13 4 (1.16%) Delphi
13 4 (1.16%) Perl
13 4 (1.16%) PL/SQL
13 4 (1.16%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 60 (17.34%) Security Cleared
2 33 (9.54%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.38%) Degree
4 19 (5.49%) DV Cleared
5 16 (4.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.18%) Master's Degree
8 6 (1.73%) PhD
9 4 (1.16%) MCP
10 3 (0.87%) OSCP
11 2 (0.58%) GPEN
11 2 (0.58%) GWAPT
12 1 (0.29%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.29%) CCIP
12 1 (0.29%) CEH
12 1 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.29%) CISSP
12 1 (0.29%) GIAC
12 1 (0.29%) GXPN
12 1 (0.29%) OSCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.91%) Accessibility
2 12 (3.47%) QA
3 10 (2.89%) WCAG
4 8 (2.31%) NIST
5 6 (1.73%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.73%) GDPR
5 6 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.87%) NCSC
8 2 (0.58%) GPG for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence
8 2 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 17025
8 2 (0.58%) ISO17020
8 2 (0.58%) SLA
9 1 (0.29%) GxP
9 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 129 (37.28%) Docker
2 14 (4.05%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.16%) QEMU
5 3 (0.87%) Ceph
5 3 (0.87%) ISA Server
5 3 (0.87%) KVM
6 2 (0.58%) HDFS
6 2 (0.58%) Oracle Clusterware
6 2 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.29%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.29%) Firmware
7 1 (0.29%) iptables
7 1 (0.29%) Lustre
7 1 (0.29%) NFS
7 1 (0.29%) Samba
7 1 (0.29%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 120 (34.68%) Kubernetes
2 36 (10.40%) Terraform
3 29 (8.38%) Prometheus
4 28 (8.09%) Grafana
5 17 (4.91%) Ansible
6 11 (3.18%) Puppet
6 11 (3.18%) WMI
7 7 (2.02%) Argo
7 7 (2.02%) Istio
8 3 (0.87%) HAProxy
9 2 (0.58%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.58%) Kibana
9 2 (0.58%) Knative
9 2 (0.58%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.58%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.29%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.29%) Nessus
10 1 (0.29%) QRadar
10 1 (0.29%) SCOM
10 1 (0.29%) SELinux
Vendors
1 33 (9.54%) Microsoft
2 27 (7.80%) Google
3 18 (5.20%) Sybase
4 16 (4.62%) OpenAI
4 16 (4.62%) VMware
5 10 (2.89%) Red Hat
5 10 (2.89%) Splunk
6 9 (2.60%) Oracle
6 9 (2.60%) webMethods
7 6 (1.73%) Atlassian
7 6 (1.73%) Cisco
7 6 (1.73%) SAP
8 5 (1.45%) Databricks
8 5 (1.45%) UiPath
8 5 (1.45%) Veracode
9 4 (1.16%) Adobe
9 4 (1.16%) Automation Anywhere
9 4 (1.16%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.16%) Foundry
10 3 (0.87%) Computacenter