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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 422 253 288
Rank change year-on-year -169 +35 -21
Contract jobs citing Open Source 264 343 297
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.04% 0.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.58% 1.15% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 140 176 188
10th Percentile £425 £369 £352
25th Percentile £475 £424 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £522 £575
Median % change year-on-year +5.36% -9.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £623 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £669 £733
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £492 £600
% change year-on-year +4.47% -18.00% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 10
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - £51.75 £20.40
Median hourly rate £85.00 £56.50 £21.68
Median % change year-on-year +50.44% +160.61% -60.14%
75th Percentile - £61.25 £27.96
90th Percentile - - £30.91
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 45,374 29,740 33,103
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.47% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,514 21,188
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
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 2,851 1,725 1,782
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £18.17
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% +0.86%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +19.72%

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 18 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 14 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 18 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 -202 192 £550 +2.42% 668
London -138 103 £600 - 476
Work from Home -84 99 £507 -7.82% 312
UK excluding London -120 95 £514 +4.47% 265
North of England -86 26 £497 +1.07% 53
South West -25 22 £550 +34.15% 34
Yorkshire -40 15 £500 -2.96% 10
West Midlands -39 14 £464 -7.20% 21
Midlands -48 14 £464 -7.20% 24
Scotland -33 13 £800 +60.00% 37
East of England -14 12 £552 +38.00% 61
South East -85 9 £550 +10.00% 37
North West -58 7 £550 +11.79% 27
North East -39 4 £425 -8.60% 16

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 17 (6.44%) Confluence
2 12 (4.55%) Apache
3 8 (3.03%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (3.03%) Apache Spark
4 7 (2.65%) SharePoint
5 6 (2.27%) SAS
6 4 (1.52%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.38%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 122 (46.21%) AWS
2 71 (26.89%) Azure
3 52 (19.70%) GCP
4 34 (12.88%) GitHub
5 26 (9.85%) Amazon S3
6 25 (9.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (8.33%) Serverless
8 16 (6.06%) Amazon EC2
8 16 (6.06%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (4.92%) Vertex AI
10 10 (3.79%) Amazon EKS
10 10 (3.79%) Amazon SQS
10 10 (3.79%) IaaS
10 10 (3.79%) SaaS
11 9 (3.41%) AWS KMS
11 9 (3.41%) Google Gemini
11 9 (3.41%) Route 53
12 8 (3.03%) Azure Monitor
13 7 (2.65%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.03%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.27%) SNMP
3 5 (1.89%) Firewall
4 4 (1.52%) HTTPS
5 3 (1.14%) Network Security
5 3 (1.14%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (1.14%) WAN
6 2 (0.76%) 4G
6 2 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.76%) DNS
6 2 (0.76%) HTTP
6 2 (0.76%) NaaS
6 2 (0.76%) SSH
6 2 (0.76%) SSL
6 2 (0.76%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.38%) MQTT
7 1 (0.38%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (11.36%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (7.20%) Amazon RDS
3 15 (5.68%) DynamoDB
4 14 (5.30%) MongoDB
5 11 (4.17%) Big Data
6 10 (3.79%) Apache Cassandra
6 10 (3.79%) BigQuery
6 10 (3.79%) Data Warehouse
7 9 (3.41%) Amazon Aurora
7 9 (3.41%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (3.03%) Amazon Athena
8 8 (3.03%) Data Lake
9 7 (2.65%) Relational Database
10 6 (2.27%) Amazon QuickSight
11 5 (1.89%) BusinessObjects
11 5 (1.89%) Flink
11 5 (1.89%) NoSQL
11 5 (1.89%) Pentaho
11 5 (1.89%) Power BI
11 5 (1.89%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 59 (22.35%) Git
2 23 (8.71%) Jenkins
3 22 (8.33%) GitLab
4 19 (7.20%) JUnit
5 18 (6.82%) JIRA
6 16 (6.06%) SonarQube
7 13 (4.92%) Sonatype Nexus
8 9 (3.41%) Bitbucket Server
8 9 (3.41%) DbUnit
8 9 (3.41%) jMock
8 9 (3.41%) Maven
8 9 (3.41%) Mockito
9 8 (3.03%) IntelliJ
10 6 (2.27%) Cucumber
10 6 (2.27%) PowerDesigner
11 5 (1.89%) JMeter
12 4 (1.52%) Artifactory
12 4 (1.52%) Selenium
13 3 (1.14%) CircleCI
13 3 (1.14%) LoadRunner
General
1 67 (25.38%) Social Skills
2 45 (17.05%) Finance
3 38 (14.39%) Public Sector
4 21 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (6.82%) Banking
6 16 (6.06%) Legal
7 10 (3.79%) Law
8 8 (3.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (2.27%) Military
10 4 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.52%) Front Office
11 3 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.14%) Publishing
11 3 (1.14%) Retail
12 2 (0.76%) Billing
12 2 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.76%) Police
12 2 (0.76%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.76%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 58 (21.97%) Architect
2 49 (18.56%) Developer
3 40 (15.15%) Senior
4 32 (12.12%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (9.85%) AWS Architect
6 19 (7.20%) AWS Solution Architect
7 18 (6.82%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 17 (6.44%) Data Engineer
9 16 (6.06%) Analyst
9 16 (6.06%) Software Engineer
10 14 (5.30%) Senior Developer
11 13 (4.92%) Java Developer
11 13 (4.92%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 12 (4.55%) Consultant
12 12 (4.55%) Cyber Threat Analyst
12 12 (4.55%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
13 10 (3.79%) AWS Engineer
13 10 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
14 9 (3.41%) Platform Engineer
14 9 (3.41%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (18.56%) Kafka
2 35 (13.26%) REST
3 18 (6.82%) Spring
3 18 (6.82%) Spring Boot
4 16 (6.06%) RESTful
5 15 (5.68%) LangChain
5 15 (5.68%) React
6 14 (5.30%) Node.js
7 13 (4.92%) SOAP
8 12 (4.55%) gRPC
9 11 (4.17%) AngularJS
9 11 (4.17%) OpenTelemetry
10 10 (3.79%) Android Jetpack
10 10 (3.79%) Jetpack Compose
11 9 (3.41%) ActiveMQ
11 9 (3.41%) Bootstrap
11 9 (3.41%) Hibernate
11 9 (3.41%) JPA
11 9 (3.41%) PyTorch
11 9 (3.41%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 45 (17.05%) Cloud Native
2 31 (11.74%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (7.58%) AI Agents
4 19 (7.20%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.17%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (3.79%) Product Ownership
7 8 (3.03%) Management Information System
8 7 (2.65%) Mobile App
8 7 (2.65%) Private Cloud
8 7 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.27%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.89%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (1.89%) LIMS
10 5 (1.89%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.89%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.89%) Security Posture
11 4 (1.52%) Blog
11 4 (1.52%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 4 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 51 (19.32%) Linux
2 14 (5.30%) Unix
3 12 (4.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (4.17%) Android
5 9 (3.41%) Windows
6 4 (1.52%) Debian
6 4 (1.52%) Rocky
6 4 (1.52%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.76%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (35.61%) CI/CD
2 65 (24.62%) Agile
2 65 (24.62%) Software Engineering
3 63 (23.86%) AI
4 61 (23.11%) DevOps
5 45 (17.05%) Stakeholder Management
6 44 (16.67%) Containerisation
6 44 (16.67%) Observability
7 43 (16.29%) Microservices
8 42 (15.91%) Event-Driven
9 41 (15.53%) Infrastructure as Code
10 37 (14.02%) LLM
11 35 (13.26%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 32 (12.12%) Data Pipeline
13 30 (11.36%) Test Automation
14 27 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
15 26 (9.85%) Cybersecurity
15 26 (9.85%) Machine Learning
16 23 (8.71%) Performance Optimisation
16 23 (8.71%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 104 (39.39%) Python
2 53 (20.08%) Java
3 37 (14.02%) SQL
4 23 (8.71%) Go
5 18 (6.82%) Bash
6 14 (5.30%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.92%) C++
7 13 (4.92%) JavaScript
8 11 (4.17%) Kotlin
9 8 (3.03%) Scala
10 7 (2.65%) C
11 6 (2.27%) Perl
12 5 (1.89%) MUMPS
13 4 (1.52%) C#
14 3 (1.14%) PL/SQL
14 3 (1.14%) PowerShell
14 3 (1.14%) Shell Script
15 2 (0.76%) Rust
16 1 (0.38%) Objective-C
16 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 97 (36.74%) Security Cleared
2 68 (25.76%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.33%) Degree
4 17 (6.44%) DV Cleared
5 13 (4.92%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.41%) CISSP
7 8 (3.03%) CISM
8 6 (2.27%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.89%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (1.14%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.76%) CEH
12 2 (0.76%) GIAC
12 2 (0.76%) GSEC
12 2 (0.76%) OSCP
13 1 (0.38%) GCIA
13 1 (0.38%) RHCE
13 1 (0.38%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.92%) QA
2 11 (4.17%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.27%) GDPR
4 4 (1.52%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.52%) NIST
4 4 (1.52%) WCAG
5 3 (1.14%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.14%) GRC
5 3 (1.14%) 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 60 (22.73%) Docker
2 8 (3.03%) Postfix
3 4 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.14%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.76%) Ceph
5 2 (0.76%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 57 (21.59%) Kubernetes
2 41 (15.53%) Terraform
3 36 (13.64%) Grafana
4 30 (11.36%) Prometheus
5 21 (7.95%) Ansible
6 10 (3.79%) Puppet
7 7 (2.65%) Progress Chef
8 5 (1.89%) Salt
9 4 (1.52%) Istio
10 2 (0.76%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.76%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.76%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.76%) linkerd
10 2 (0.76%) Oracle RMAN
11 1 (0.38%) Argo
11 1 (0.38%) CASB
11 1 (0.38%) Cilium
11 1 (0.38%) QRadar
11 1 (0.38%) Rancher
11 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (9.09%) Google
2 23 (8.71%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.20%) Dynatrace
4 17 (6.44%) Splunk
5 16 (6.06%) OpenAI
6 12 (4.55%) Oracle
7 9 (3.41%) Atlassian
7 9 (3.41%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (3.03%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.65%) Checkmarx
9 7 (2.65%) Cribl.io
10 6 (2.27%) IBM
10 6 (2.27%) Informatica
10 6 (2.27%) SaltStack
11 5 (1.89%) Black Duck
11 5 (1.89%) Denodo
11 5 (1.89%) InterSystems
11 5 (1.89%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.52%) Databricks
12 4 (1.52%) VMware