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 12 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 371 231 303
Rank change year-on-year -140 +72 -35
Contract jobs citing Open Source 294 343 324
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 1.17% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.69% 1.28% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 205 215
10th Percentile £410 £400 £363
25th Percentile £485 £449 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £570
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -7.89% -5.00%
75th Percentile £650 £613 £675
90th Percentile £775 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £590
% change year-on-year +5.26% -19.49% +2.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 13
10th Percentile - - £20.34
25th Percentile - - £21.25
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £26.97
75th Percentile - - £57.50
90th Percentile - - £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £55.00

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 42,365 26,787 37,171
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.77% 91.01% 85.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,429 17,005 23,768
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,540 1,187 2,585
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.21 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.56% -25.45% +4.20%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +15.02%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 -156 224 £550 - 111
London -120 119 £600 - 55
UK excluding London -98 108 £500 +5.26% 77
Work from Home -92 107 £550 -4.35% 59
North of England -78 22 £500 +7.82% 15
Scotland -21 20 £675 +28.57% 2
West Midlands -49 19 £472 -5.60% 2
Midlands -61 19 £472 -5.60% 3
South West -11 18 £538 +9.14% 14
South East -77 17 £430 -14.10% 26
East of England -16 13 £550 +52.49% 13
Yorkshire -48 11 £506 - 5
North West -38 10 £415 -10.27% 9

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 (5.78%) Confluence
2 8 (2.72%) Apache
2 8 (2.72%) Appian
2 8 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.70%) SAS
4 4 (1.36%) nginx
5 3 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.02%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.68%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.34%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.34%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.34%) Liferay
7 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 143 (48.64%) AWS
2 85 (28.91%) Azure
3 48 (16.33%) GCP
4 42 (14.29%) GitHub
5 32 (10.88%) Amazon S3
6 25 (8.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 25 (8.50%) Serverless
7 22 (7.48%) Amazon EC2
8 20 (6.80%) Azure AI
8 20 (6.80%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (5.78%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (4.76%) Anthropic Claude
11 13 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (4.42%) Google Gemini
11 13 (4.42%) Route 53
12 12 (4.08%) Amazon SQS
12 12 (4.08%) Vertex AI
13 11 (3.74%) AWS KMS
14 10 (3.40%) Azure Cognitive Services
15 9 (3.06%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.06%) Firewall
2 7 (2.38%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (2.04%) SNMP
4 5 (1.70%) DNS
4 5 (1.70%) WAN
5 3 (1.02%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.02%) Network Security
6 2 (0.68%) DHCP
6 2 (0.68%) NaaS
7 1 (0.34%) 5G
7 1 (0.34%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.34%) LTE
7 1 (0.34%) MQTT
7 1 (0.34%) NAS
7 1 (0.34%) NGFW
7 1 (0.34%) SAN
7 1 (0.34%) SSH
7 1 (0.34%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (15.65%) PostgreSQL
2 32 (10.88%) Apache Cassandra
3 20 (6.80%) Amazon RDS
4 17 (5.78%) DynamoDB
5 15 (5.10%) BigQuery
6 14 (4.76%) MongoDB
7 11 (3.74%) Amazon Aurora
7 11 (3.74%) Pinecone
7 11 (3.74%) SQL Server
8 9 (3.06%) Amazon Athena
8 9 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
9 8 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (2.72%) NoSQL
9 8 (2.72%) Relational Database
10 7 (2.38%) Amazon QuickSight
11 6 (2.04%) Data Lake
11 6 (2.04%) Metadata
12 5 (1.70%) Apache Iceberg
12 5 (1.70%) Pentaho
12 5 (1.70%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 60 (20.41%) Git
2 33 (11.22%) GitLab
3 26 (8.84%) JUnit
4 25 (8.50%) Jenkins
5 18 (6.12%) JIRA
5 18 (6.12%) SonarQube
6 14 (4.76%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (3.74%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (3.74%) DbUnit
7 11 (3.74%) jMock
7 11 (3.74%) Maven
7 11 (3.74%) MLflow
7 11 (3.74%) Mockito
8 8 (2.72%) CircleCI
8 8 (2.72%) Gradle
8 8 (2.72%) IntelliJ
9 5 (1.70%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.36%) PowerDesigner
11 2 (0.68%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.68%) JMeter
General
1 66 (22.45%) Social Skills
2 60 (20.41%) Finance
3 45 (15.31%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.48%) Legal
5 21 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
6 20 (6.80%) Banking
7 11 (3.74%) Law
8 8 (2.72%) Retail
9 6 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (2.04%) Military
10 5 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.70%) Front Office
11 3 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.02%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.68%) Billing
12 2 (0.68%) Marketing
12 2 (0.68%) Police
12 2 (0.68%) Publishing
13 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 73 (24.83%) Developer
2 58 (19.73%) Architect
3 54 (18.37%) Senior
4 31 (10.54%) Senior Developer
5 30 (10.20%) Solutions Architect
6 28 (9.52%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 28 (9.52%) Software Engineer
7 24 (8.16%) AWS Architect
8 22 (7.48%) Data Engineer
9 16 (5.44%) AWS Solution Architect
9 16 (5.44%) Cloud Engineer
10 14 (4.76%) Consultant
10 14 (4.76%) Java Developer
11 13 (4.42%) Lead
12 12 (4.08%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (3.74%) Android Developer
13 11 (3.74%) Python Developer
14 10 (3.40%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 10 (3.40%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (3.40%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (23.13%) Kafka
2 46 (15.65%) REST
3 33 (11.22%) gRPC
4 31 (10.54%) RESTful
5 28 (9.52%) React
6 24 (8.16%) Spring
6 24 (8.16%) Spring Boot
7 23 (7.82%) Node.js
8 22 (7.48%) Web Services
9 21 (7.14%) AngularJS
10 20 (6.80%) LangChain
11 17 (5.78%) Android Jetpack
11 17 (5.78%) Jetpack Compose
12 16 (5.44%) .NET
12 16 (5.44%) Hugging Face
12 16 (5.44%) PyTorch
12 16 (5.44%) TensorFlow
13 15 (5.10%) OpenTelemetry
14 13 (4.42%) SOAP
15 12 (4.08%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 55 (18.71%) Distributed Systems
2 48 (16.33%) Cloud Native
3 17 (5.78%) AI Agents
4 16 (5.44%) Product Ownership
5 10 (3.40%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (3.06%) Mobile App
7 8 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.72%) Low-Code
7 8 (2.72%) Virtual Team
8 7 (2.38%) Legacy Code
9 6 (2.04%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.04%) Management Information System
9 6 (2.04%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.70%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.70%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.02%) Clustering
11 3 (1.02%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 2 (0.68%) MISP
Operating Systems
1 46 (15.65%) Linux
2 19 (6.46%) Android
3 4 (1.36%) Debian
3 4 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (1.36%) Rocky
3 4 (1.36%) Ubuntu
3 4 (1.36%) Unix
4 3 (1.02%) Apple iOS
4 3 (1.02%) Windows
5 1 (0.34%) VMS
5 1 (0.34%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (33.67%) CI/CD
2 85 (28.91%) AI
3 76 (25.85%) Software Engineering
4 75 (25.51%) Microservices
5 70 (23.81%) Agile
6 68 (23.13%) DevOps
7 61 (20.75%) Containerisation
8 60 (20.41%) LLM
9 50 (17.01%) Stakeholder Management
10 47 (15.99%) Infrastructure as Code
11 43 (14.63%) Machine Learning
12 41 (13.95%) Generative AI
12 41 (13.95%) Observability
13 38 (12.93%) Data Pipeline
14 36 (12.24%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
15 33 (11.22%) Event-Driven
16 32 (10.88%) Problem-Solving
17 27 (9.18%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 27 (9.18%) Prompt Engineering
18 26 (8.84%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 129 (43.88%) Python
2 53 (18.03%) Java
3 43 (14.63%) Go
3 43 (14.63%) SQL
4 21 (7.14%) JavaScript
5 18 (6.12%) Bash
5 18 (6.12%) Kotlin
5 18 (6.12%) TypeScript
6 16 (5.44%) C#
7 6 (2.04%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.70%) C++
8 5 (1.70%) PL/SQL
8 5 (1.70%) PowerShell
9 4 (1.36%) Ruby
10 3 (1.02%) Scala
11 2 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.34%) Bicep
12 1 (0.34%) Groovy
12 1 (0.34%) Rust
12 1 (0.34%) Swift
Qualifications
1 84 (28.57%) Security Cleared
2 68 (23.13%) SC Cleared
3 30 (10.20%) Degree
4 15 (5.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (4.42%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (2.72%) DV Cleared
7 7 (2.38%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.70%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.02%) CISM
10 3 (1.02%) CISSP
11 2 (0.68%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.68%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.68%) PhD
12 1 (0.34%) CEH
12 1 (0.34%) GCIA
12 1 (0.34%) GIAC
12 1 (0.34%) ISEB
12 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.34%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.44%) QA
2 12 (4.08%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.40%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.04%) WCAG
5 4 (1.36%) NIST
6 3 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.68%) GRC
8 1 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.34%) GDPR
8 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 1 (0.34%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 99 (33.67%) Docker
2 9 (3.06%) Postfix
3 7 (2.38%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.02%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.68%) Ceph
6 2 (0.68%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.34%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle Clusterware
7 1 (0.34%) Squid
7 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 91 (30.95%) Kubernetes
2 44 (14.97%) Terraform
3 33 (11.22%) Grafana
4 28 (9.52%) Prometheus
5 17 (5.78%) Ansible
6 10 (3.40%) Istio
7 6 (2.04%) Argo
8 4 (1.36%) Puppet
8 4 (1.36%) Salt
9 3 (1.02%) Data Guard
9 3 (1.02%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.68%) Rancher
11 1 (0.34%) CASB
11 1 (0.34%) Control-M
11 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
11 1 (0.34%) MOM
11 1 (0.34%) QRadar
11 1 (0.34%) WMI
Vendors
1 31 (10.54%) Google
1 31 (10.54%) OpenAI
2 24 (8.16%) Microsoft
3 18 (6.12%) Dynatrace
4 13 (4.42%) Oracle
5 11 (3.74%) Atlassian
5 11 (3.74%) Jaspersoft
5 11 (3.74%) Splunk
6 8 (2.72%) Automation Anywhere
6 8 (2.72%) UiPath
7 7 (2.38%) Checkmarx
8 5 (1.70%) Black Duck
8 5 (1.70%) Cribl.io
8 5 (1.70%) Denodo
8 5 (1.70%) Informatica
8 5 (1.70%) ServiceNow
9 4 (1.36%) Fortinet
9 4 (1.36%) IBM
10 3 (1.02%) Sonatype
10 3 (1.02%) VMware