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 17 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 273 317 244
Rank change year-on-year +44 -73 +6
Contract jobs citing Open Source 350 254 474
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.00% 0.70% 1.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.11% 0.81% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 141 294
10th Percentile £350 £320 £252
25th Percentile £413 £450 £429
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -6.52% -2.54%
75th Percentile £638 £645 £661
90th Percentile £749 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 11 11
10th Percentile - £20.12 -
25th Percentile £15.25 £20.68 £19.99
Median hourly rate £15.50 £21.86 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year -29.09% +2.87% -59.72%
75th Percentile £38.50 £26.25 £22.52
90th Percentile £52.15 £26.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.50 £22.80 -
% change year-on-year -32.01% - -

All Process and 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 31,532 31,312 41,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.80% 86.28% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,731 18,831 28,017
10th Percentile £299 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,089 1,101 1,605
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.16% +25.24%
75th Percentile £44.77 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.05 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.93 £43.95
% change year-on-year -33.30% -22.80% +48.98%

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 17 November 2025.

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 17 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Top 16 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 17 November 2025. 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 +26 299 £525 -2.33% 582
London +34 155 £575 +4.55% 241
UK excluding London +5 131 £500 - 362
Work from Home +36 118 £475 -5.00% 463
North of England -11 42 £493 -16.09% 36
South East +4 29 £600 +29.03% 193
Scotland +13 27 £525 +5.00% 9
Yorkshire -22 23 £525 -13.19% 14
North West -9 17 £423 -15.50% 20
Midlands -17 15 £440 -26.67% 20
West Midlands -17 14 £470 -21.67% 7
South West +7 11 £350 -41.91% 31
East of England -25 4 £553 +72.81% 60
Wales -3 3 £403 - 14
North East -6 3 - - 2
East Midlands - 1 £420 - 13

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 14 (4.00%) Apache
1 14 (4.00%) Apache Spark
2 9 (2.57%) JBoss
2 9 (2.57%) WebLogic
3 8 (2.29%) Confluence
4 5 (1.43%) Appian
5 4 (1.14%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.86%) Ethereum
6 3 (0.86%) Hyperledger
7 2 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.57%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.57%) Camunda
7 2 (0.57%) Cloud Foundry
7 2 (0.57%) CMS
7 2 (0.57%) Drupal
7 2 (0.57%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.29%) GeoServer
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Coherence
8 1 (0.29%) Smallworld
Applications
1 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Magento
1 1 (0.29%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 162 (46.29%) AWS
2 62 (17.71%) Azure
3 32 (9.14%) GCP
4 21 (6.00%) GitHub
5 15 (4.29%) Amazon S3
5 15 (4.29%) GitHub Actions
6 12 (3.43%) Cloud Computing
7 11 (3.14%) CloudFront
8 9 (2.57%) Amazon Bedrock
8 9 (2.57%) Azure AKS
9 8 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (2.29%) OpenShift
10 7 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
10 7 (2.00%) Azure Sentinel
10 7 (2.00%) SaaS
11 6 (1.71%) Amazon SQS
12 5 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (1.43%) Azure AI
12 5 (1.43%) Tricentis Tosca
12 5 (1.43%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.43%) Firewall
2 6 (1.71%) Internet
3 3 (0.86%) Ethernet
3 3 (0.86%) SSH
4 2 (0.57%) DHCP
4 2 (0.57%) DNS
4 2 (0.57%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.29%) HTTP
5 1 (0.29%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.29%) NAS
5 1 (0.29%) Network Security
5 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.29%) RTP
5 1 (0.29%) SAN
5 1 (0.29%) SMTP
5 1 (0.29%) Software-Defined Networking
5 1 (0.29%) SSL
5 1 (0.29%) STUN
5 1 (0.29%) VLAN
5 1 (0.29%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (16.86%) Apache Cassandra
2 46 (13.14%) MongoDB
3 43 (12.29%) Relational Database
4 38 (10.86%) PostgreSQL
5 31 (8.86%) DB2
6 20 (5.71%) NoSQL
7 12 (3.43%) Redis
8 10 (2.86%) RDBMS
9 6 (1.71%) Couchbase
10 5 (1.43%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.43%) Metadata
11 4 (1.14%) Amazon Aurora
11 4 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (1.14%) Apache Hive
11 4 (1.14%) Data Lake
11 4 (1.14%) Hadoop
11 4 (1.14%) Impala
11 4 (1.14%) Pinecone
11 4 (1.14%) SQL Server
12 3 (0.86%) GIS
Development Applications
1 47 (13.43%) JUnit
2 39 (11.14%) Git
3 28 (8.00%) Jenkins
4 20 (5.71%) GitLab
5 16 (4.57%) Selenium
6 11 (3.14%) SonarQube
7 10 (2.86%) Eclipse
7 10 (2.86%) IntelliJ
8 9 (2.57%) JIRA
9 7 (2.00%) Cucumber
9 7 (2.00%) MLflow
9 7 (2.00%) Mocha
10 5 (1.43%) Maven
10 5 (1.43%) Mockito
10 5 (1.43%) Robot Framework
11 4 (1.14%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (1.14%) DbUnit
11 4 (1.14%) jMock
12 3 (0.86%) ESLint
12 3 (0.86%) Hardhat
General
1 91 (26.00%) Social Skills
2 71 (20.29%) Finance
3 56 (16.00%) Analytical Skills
4 50 (14.29%) Banking
5 37 (10.57%) Investment Banking
6 29 (8.29%) Public Sector
7 27 (7.71%) Front Office
8 12 (3.43%) Telecoms
9 11 (3.14%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (2.00%) Marketing
10 7 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (1.43%) Financial Institution
13 4 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (1.14%) Publishing
14 3 (0.86%) Legal
15 2 (0.57%) Electronics
15 2 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 2 (0.57%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 137 (39.14%) Developer
2 93 (26.57%) Senior
3 52 (14.86%) Senior Developer
4 39 (11.14%) Java Developer
5 35 (10.00%) Architect
6 30 (8.57%) Investment Banking Java Developer
6 30 (8.57%) Platform Engineer
6 30 (8.57%) SQL Developer
7 23 (6.57%) Software Engineer
8 18 (5.14%) Senior Java Developer
9 17 (4.86%) Lead
10 15 (4.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 15 (4.29%) Linux Developer
10 15 (4.29%) Senior Investment Banking Java Developer
10 15 (4.29%) Senior SQL Developer
10 15 (4.29%) Sybase Developer
11 12 (3.43%) Android Developer
11 12 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (2.86%) Analyst
12 10 (2.86%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (37.14%) Kafka
2 73 (20.86%) gRPC
3 46 (13.14%) Spring
4 37 (10.57%) REST
5 33 (9.43%) React
6 31 (8.86%) JMS
7 25 (7.14%) HTML
8 18 (5.14%) PyTorch
9 16 (4.57%) JSON
9 16 (4.57%) TensorFlow
10 15 (4.29%) Android SDK
10 15 (4.29%) CSS
10 15 (4.29%) Node.js
10 15 (4.29%) XML
11 14 (4.00%) Hibernate
11 14 (4.00%) Hugging Face
11 14 (4.00%) LangChain
12 13 (3.71%) HTML5
12 13 (3.71%) RESTful
12 13 (3.71%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 70 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
2 38 (10.86%) Equities
3 33 (9.43%) Data Structures
4 16 (4.57%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.43%) Distributed Computing
6 9 (2.57%) PKI
6 9 (2.57%) Private Cloud
7 8 (2.29%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (2.29%) Fat Client
7 8 (2.29%) Fixed Income
7 8 (2.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 8 (2.29%) Onboarding
7 8 (2.29%) Thin Client
8 7 (2.00%) Mobile App
8 7 (2.00%) Public Cloud
8 7 (2.00%) Virtual Team
9 6 (1.71%) Data Centre
10 5 (1.43%) Blockchain
10 5 (1.43%) Hedge funds
10 5 (1.43%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 69 (19.71%) Linux
2 23 (6.57%) Windows
3 22 (6.29%) Android
4 18 (5.14%) Unix
5 8 (2.29%) Windows 7
6 6 (1.71%) Apple iOS
7 4 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.86%) CentOS
8 3 (0.86%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
9 1 (0.29%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (32.86%) Software Engineering
2 98 (28.00%) Agile
3 97 (27.71%) Problem-Solving
4 87 (24.86%) Microservices
5 82 (23.43%) CI/CD
6 62 (17.71%) DevOps
7 58 (16.57%) AI
8 47 (13.43%) Machine Learning
9 45 (12.86%) Infrastructure as Code
10 43 (12.29%) Performance Tuning
11 36 (10.29%) Mentoring
12 34 (9.71%) Containerisation
13 32 (9.14%) Clean Code
13 32 (9.14%) Observability
14 30 (8.57%) Database Tuning
14 30 (8.57%) LLM
14 30 (8.57%) Multithreading
14 30 (8.57%) Platform Engineering
14 30 (8.57%) SDLC
15 29 (8.29%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 173 (49.43%) Python
2 96 (27.43%) Java
3 80 (22.86%) Go
4 77 (22.00%) SQL
5 38 (10.86%) JavaScript
6 30 (8.57%) Shell Script
7 26 (7.43%) TypeScript
8 19 (5.43%) Scala
9 17 (4.86%) Kotlin
10 15 (4.29%) Bash
10 15 (4.29%) C#
10 15 (4.29%) PowerShell
11 8 (2.29%) C++
12 6 (1.71%) Ruby
13 5 (1.43%) C
14 4 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
14 4 (1.14%) Solidity
15 3 (0.86%) F#
15 3 (0.86%) Perl
15 3 (0.86%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 56 (16.00%) Security Cleared
2 32 (9.14%) SC Cleared
3 28 (8.00%) Degree
4 21 (6.00%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (2.86%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (1.71%) PhD
8 4 (1.14%) CISSP
9 3 (0.86%) GCIH
9 3 (0.86%) OSCP
10 2 (0.57%) CASP
10 2 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.57%) CompTIA CySA+
10 2 (0.57%) GCIA
10 2 (0.57%) GPEN
10 2 (0.57%) GWAPT
10 2 (0.57%) MCP
11 1 (0.29%) CCNP
11 1 (0.29%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.71%) Accessibility
2 9 (2.57%) WCAG
3 8 (2.29%) GDPR
3 8 (2.29%) NIST
4 7 (2.00%) QA
5 6 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.43%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 4 (1.14%) NCSC
8 3 (0.86%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.86%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.57%) GPG for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence
9 2 (0.57%) HL7
9 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 17025
9 2 (0.57%) ISO17020
10 1 (0.29%) GxP
10 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.29%) SLA
System Software
1 115 (32.86%) Docker
2 10 (2.86%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.29%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.14%) Postfix
4 4 (1.14%) QEMU
5 3 (0.86%) vSphere
6 2 (0.57%) HDFS
6 2 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.29%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.29%) Ceph
7 1 (0.29%) Firmware
7 1 (0.29%) KVM
7 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 123 (35.14%) Kubernetes
2 35 (10.00%) Terraform
3 34 (9.71%) Grafana
4 33 (9.43%) Prometheus
5 24 (6.86%) Ansible
6 12 (3.43%) Puppet
7 8 (2.29%) WMI
8 3 (0.86%) Argo
8 3 (0.86%) Kibana
9 2 (0.57%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.57%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.29%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.29%) logstash
10 1 (0.29%) Nessus
10 1 (0.29%) Packer
10 1 (0.29%) QRadar
10 1 (0.29%) SCOM
10 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.29%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.29%) yum
Vendors
1 35 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 30 (8.57%) Sybase
3 24 (6.86%) Google
4 13 (3.71%) VMware
5 10 (2.86%) Atlassian
6 9 (2.57%) Red Hat
6 9 (2.57%) Splunk
6 9 (2.57%) webMethods
7 7 (2.00%) Cisco
8 6 (1.71%) OpenAI
8 6 (1.71%) Oracle
9 5 (1.43%) Foundry
9 5 (1.43%) Veracode
10 4 (1.14%) Databricks
10 4 (1.14%) Jaspersoft
10 4 (1.14%) SAP
11 3 (0.86%) ArcSight
11 3 (0.86%) Cloudera
11 3 (0.86%) Computacenter
11 3 (0.86%) ESRI