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 1 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 279 320 246
Rank change year-on-year +41 -74 -4
Contract jobs citing Open Source 344 252 455
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.96% 0.70% 1.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.08% 0.80% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 151 277
10th Percentile £321 £325 £250
25th Percentile £413 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -2.22% -4.01%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £655
90th Percentile £750 £800 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 7 11
10th Percentile - £23.26 -
25th Percentile £15.25 £25.43 £19.99
Median hourly rate £36.00 £26.00 £21.25
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +22.35% -61.36%
75th Percentile £61.88 £26.75 £22.52
90th Percentile £63.00 £54.20 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.50 £25.93 -
% change year-on-year -40.22% - -

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 31,830 31,370 40,452
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.08% 87.18% 88.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,997 18,966 27,094
10th Percentile £300 £310 £310
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.59% -3.00%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,072 1,117 1,558
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.22 £14.33
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.24 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -23.99% +24.04%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £43.90
% change year-on-year -30.37% -25.97% +36.12%

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 1 December 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 1 December 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 1 December 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 +35 295 £525 -4.55% 381
London +37 149 £575 - 110
UK excluding London +2 129 £500 - 306
Work from Home +27 120 £469 -10.67% 429
North of England -11 46 £450 -23.40% 22
South East +3 29 £600 +30.43% 178
Yorkshire -25 24 £525 -13.19% 11
Scotland +14 23 £556 +11.20% 1
North West -2 20 £430 -14.00% 11
South West +6 12 £350 -41.91% 30
Midlands -25 12 £430 -28.33% 21
West Midlands -16 11 £435 -27.50% 3
East of England -26 4 £553 +52.55% 48
Wales -6 3 £403 - 13
North East -6 3 - -
East Midlands - 1 £420 - 18

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 (4.36%) Apache
2 11 (3.20%) JBoss
3 9 (2.62%) Apache Spark
3 9 (2.62%) WebLogic
4 7 (2.03%) Confluence
5 5 (1.45%) Appian
6 3 (0.87%) Ethereum
6 3 (0.87%) Hyperledger
6 3 (0.87%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.58%) Camunda
7 2 (0.58%) Cloud Foundry
7 2 (0.58%) CMS
7 2 (0.58%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.29%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.29%) Drupal
8 1 (0.29%) Mattermost
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Coherence
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Magento
1 1 (0.29%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 162 (47.09%) AWS
2 59 (17.15%) Azure
3 27 (7.85%) GCP
4 24 (6.98%) GitHub
5 16 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
6 14 (4.07%) Amazon S3
7 13 (3.78%) CloudFront
8 12 (3.49%) Cloud Computing
9 10 (2.91%) Amazon Bedrock
10 9 (2.62%) Azure AKS
11 8 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (2.33%) OpenShift
11 8 (2.33%) Serverless
12 7 (2.03%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (1.74%) Amazon SageMaker
13 6 (1.74%) SaaS
13 6 (1.74%) Vertex AI
14 5 (1.45%) Azure AI
14 5 (1.45%) Tricentis Tosca
15 4 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.07%) Firewall
2 5 (1.45%) Internet
3 4 (1.16%) DHCP
4 3 (0.87%) Ethernet
4 3 (0.87%) SSH
5 2 (0.58%) DNS
5 2 (0.58%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.58%) VLAN
6 1 (0.29%) InfiniBand
6 1 (0.29%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.29%) Network Security
6 1 (0.29%) NGFW
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%) SSL
6 1 (0.29%) STUN
6 1 (0.29%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (16.86%) Apache Cassandra
2 43 (12.50%) MongoDB
3 40 (11.63%) PostgreSQL
3 40 (11.63%) Relational Database
4 29 (8.43%) DB2
5 20 (5.81%) NoSQL
6 13 (3.78%) Redis
7 9 (2.62%) RDBMS
8 8 (2.33%) SQL Server
9 6 (1.74%) Couchbase
9 6 (1.74%) Pinecone
10 5 (1.45%) Metadata
11 4 (1.16%) Apache Hive
11 4 (1.16%) Hadoop
11 4 (1.16%) Impala
11 4 (1.16%) Weaviate
12 3 (0.87%) BigQuery
12 3 (0.87%) GIS
12 3 (0.87%) MySQL
12 3 (0.87%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 42 (12.21%) JUnit
2 33 (9.59%) Git
3 24 (6.98%) Jenkins
4 20 (5.81%) GitLab
5 16 (4.65%) Selenium
6 10 (2.91%) Eclipse
6 10 (2.91%) IntelliJ
7 9 (2.62%) JIRA
7 9 (2.62%) SonarQube
8 7 (2.03%) Cucumber
8 7 (2.03%) MLflow
8 7 (2.03%) Mocha
9 5 (1.45%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.87%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.87%) ESLint
10 3 (0.87%) Gradle
10 3 (0.87%) Hardhat
10 3 (0.87%) KGDB
11 2 (0.58%) Subversion
11 2 (0.58%) TeamCity
General
1 90 (26.16%) Social Skills
2 71 (20.64%) Finance
3 53 (15.41%) Analytical Skills
4 46 (13.37%) Banking
5 34 (9.88%) Investment Banking
6 27 (7.85%) Public Sector
7 26 (7.56%) Front Office
8 11 (3.20%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (3.20%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.03%) Marketing
9 7 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.45%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.45%) Publishing
12 4 (1.16%) Legal
12 4 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.58%) Electronics
13 2 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.58%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 132 (38.37%) Developer
2 92 (26.74%) Senior
3 52 (15.12%) Senior Developer
4 34 (9.88%) Java Developer
5 32 (9.30%) Platform Engineer
6 31 (9.01%) Architect
7 28 (8.14%) Investment Banking Java Developer
7 28 (8.14%) Software Engineer
7 28 (8.14%) SQL Developer
8 17 (4.94%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 16 (4.65%) Senior Java Developer
10 14 (4.07%) Linux Developer
10 14 (4.07%) Senior Investment Banking Java Developer
10 14 (4.07%) Senior SQL Developer
10 14 (4.07%) Sybase Developer
11 13 (3.78%) Android Developer
11 13 (3.78%) Lead
12 12 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
13 10 (2.91%) Senior Platform Engineer
14 9 (2.62%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (36.05%) Kafka
2 74 (21.51%) gRPC
3 43 (12.50%) Spring
4 33 (9.59%) REST
5 31 (9.01%) React
6 29 (8.43%) JMS
7 27 (7.85%) HTML
8 19 (5.52%) PyTorch
9 17 (4.94%) CSS
9 17 (4.94%) LangChain
10 16 (4.65%) JSON
10 16 (4.65%) Node.js
10 16 (4.65%) TensorFlow
11 15 (4.36%) HTML5
11 15 (4.36%) Hugging Face
11 15 (4.36%) XML
12 14 (4.07%) Android SDK
13 12 (3.49%) J2EE
14 11 (3.20%) Android Jetpack
14 11 (3.20%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 68 (19.77%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (10.47%) Equities
3 30 (8.72%) Data Structures
4 14 (4.07%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.49%) Distributed Computing
6 10 (2.91%) PKI
7 9 (2.62%) Fat Client
7 9 (2.62%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.62%) Private Cloud
7 9 (2.62%) Thin Client
8 8 (2.33%) Fixed Income
8 8 (2.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 7 (2.03%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (2.03%) Mobile App
9 7 (2.03%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.74%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.74%) Blog
11 5 (1.45%) Hedge funds
11 5 (1.45%) Market Risk
11 5 (1.45%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 64 (18.60%) Linux
2 25 (7.27%) Windows
3 21 (6.10%) Android
4 17 (4.94%) Unix
5 9 (2.62%) Windows 7
6 6 (1.74%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.45%) Windows Server
8 4 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.87%) CentOS
10 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.29%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (34.30%) Software Engineering
2 94 (27.33%) Problem-Solving
3 91 (26.45%) Agile
4 84 (24.42%) Microservices
5 80 (23.26%) CI/CD
6 61 (17.73%) AI
7 54 (15.70%) DevOps
8 46 (13.37%) Infrastructure as Code
8 46 (13.37%) Machine Learning
9 44 (12.79%) Performance Tuning
10 36 (10.47%) Observability
11 35 (10.17%) LLM
12 33 (9.59%) Clean Code
12 33 (9.59%) Containerisation
13 32 (9.30%) Platform Engineering
14 29 (8.43%) Mentoring
14 29 (8.43%) SDLC
14 29 (8.43%) Test Automation
15 28 (8.14%) Database Tuning
15 28 (8.14%) Multithreading
Programming Languages
1 175 (50.87%) Python
2 98 (28.49%) Java
3 83 (24.13%) Go
4 78 (22.67%) SQL
5 37 (10.76%) JavaScript
6 28 (8.14%) Shell Script
7 27 (7.85%) TypeScript
8 21 (6.10%) C#
9 16 (4.65%) Kotlin
9 16 (4.65%) PowerShell
10 15 (4.36%) Bash
10 15 (4.36%) Scala
11 9 (2.62%) C++
12 7 (2.03%) PHP
12 7 (2.03%) Ruby
13 5 (1.45%) C
14 4 (1.16%) Delphi
14 4 (1.16%) Perl
14 4 (1.16%) Solidity
15 3 (0.87%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 56 (16.28%) Security Cleared
2 30 (8.72%) SC Cleared
3 27 (7.85%) Degree
4 19 (5.52%) DV Cleared
5 14 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.20%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.45%) PhD
9 3 (0.87%) OSCP
10 2 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.58%) CISSP
10 2 (0.58%) GPEN
10 2 (0.58%) GWAPT
10 2 (0.58%) MCP
11 1 (0.29%) CCIP
11 1 (0.29%) CCNA
11 1 (0.29%) CCNP
11 1 (0.29%) CEH
11 1 (0.29%) GCIH
11 1 (0.29%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.78%) Accessibility
2 9 (2.62%) WCAG
3 8 (2.33%) NIST
3 8 (2.33%) QA
4 7 (2.03%) GDPR
5 6 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 4 (1.16%) NCSC
8 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.58%) GPG for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence
8 2 (0.58%) HIPAA
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%) HL7
9 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 116 (33.72%) Docker
2 11 (3.20%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.16%) QEMU
5 2 (0.58%) Ceph
5 2 (0.58%) HDFS
5 2 (0.58%) KVM
5 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.58%) vSphere
6 1 (0.29%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 1 (0.29%) Firmware
6 1 (0.29%) iptables
6 1 (0.29%) ISA Server
6 1 (0.29%) Lustre
6 1 (0.29%) NFS
6 1 (0.29%) Postfix
6 1 (0.29%) Samba
6 1 (0.29%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 117 (34.01%) Kubernetes
2 37 (10.76%) Terraform
3 34 (9.88%) Grafana
4 32 (9.30%) Prometheus
5 22 (6.40%) Ansible
6 12 (3.49%) Puppet
7 9 (2.62%) WMI
8 3 (0.87%) Argo
8 3 (0.87%) Kibana
9 2 (0.58%) HAProxy
9 2 (0.58%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.29%) Knative
10 1 (0.29%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.29%) logstash
10 1 (0.29%) Nessus
10 1 (0.29%) QRadar
10 1 (0.29%) SCOM
10 1 (0.29%) SELinux
10 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 37 (10.76%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.14%) Sybase
3 22 (6.40%) Google
4 14 (4.07%) VMware
5 11 (3.20%) Red Hat
6 10 (2.91%) Splunk
7 9 (2.62%) webMethods
8 8 (2.33%) OpenAI
9 7 (2.03%) Atlassian
9 7 (2.03%) Cisco
10 5 (1.45%) Foundry
10 5 (1.45%) Oracle
10 5 (1.45%) SAP
10 5 (1.45%) Veracode
11 3 (0.87%) Computacenter
11 3 (0.87%) Xamarin
12 2 (0.58%) Cloudera
12 2 (0.58%) Databricks
12 2 (0.58%) Dynatrace
12 2 (0.58%) NVIDIA