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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 412 240 306
Rank change year-on-year -172 +66 -38
Contract jobs citing Open Source 262 354 287
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.07% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.58% 1.18% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 187 182
10th Percentile £431 £375 £350
25th Percentile £497 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £668 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £680 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £531 £483 £600
% change year-on-year +9.99% -19.50% +5.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 11
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - £51.75 £20.68
Median hourly rate £85.00 £56.50 £21.86
Median % change year-on-year +50.44% +158.46% -75.71%
75th Percentile - £61.25 £27.96
90th Percentile - - £57.50
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 45,268 29,990 33,185
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.46% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,764 21,291
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,826 1,696 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.89 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +13.33%

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 10 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 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 10 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 -190 189 £550 +2.37% 498
London -152 106 £608 +1.25% 349
Work from Home -92 95 £550 - 247
UK excluding London -117 95 £531 +9.99% 190
South West -26 22 £550 +34.15% 31
North of England -72 21 £513 +4.91% 32
Scotland -33 16 £675 +35.00% 23
West Midlands -41 16 £469 -6.20% 13
Midlands -44 16 £469 -6.20% 15
Yorkshire -38 14 £502 -2.52% 9
East of England -9 12 £552 +38.00% 39
South East -80 9 £550 +10.00% 37
North West -52 7 £550 +11.79% 17

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 18 (6.87%) Confluence
2 11 (4.20%) Apache
3 8 (3.05%) SharePoint
4 7 (2.67%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.67%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.29%) SAS
6 3 (1.15%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.76%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 119 (45.42%) AWS
2 73 (27.86%) Azure
3 50 (19.08%) GCP
4 33 (12.60%) GitHub
5 29 (11.07%) Amazon S3
6 27 (10.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 24 (9.16%) Serverless
8 19 (7.25%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (4.96%) Vertex AI
11 12 (4.58%) Amazon SQS
11 12 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (4.20%) AWS KMS
12 11 (4.20%) Route 53
13 10 (3.82%) SaaS
14 9 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (3.44%) Google Gemini
15 8 (3.05%) Amazon Bedrock
15 8 (3.05%) Azure Monitor
15 8 (3.05%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.67%) SNMP
2 5 (1.91%) Firewall
3 4 (1.53%) HTTPS
3 4 (1.53%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (1.15%) Network Security
4 3 (1.15%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (1.15%) WAN
5 2 (0.76%) 4G
5 2 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.76%) DNS
5 2 (0.76%) HTTP
5 2 (0.76%) NaaS
5 2 (0.76%) SSH
5 2 (0.76%) SSL
5 2 (0.76%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.38%) 5G
6 1 (0.38%) LTE
6 1 (0.38%) MQTT
6 1 (0.38%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (12.21%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (8.40%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (6.87%) DynamoDB
4 11 (4.20%) Amazon Aurora
4 11 (4.20%) MongoDB
5 10 (3.82%) Apache Cassandra
5 10 (3.82%) Big Data
5 10 (3.82%) BigQuery
5 10 (3.82%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (3.44%) Amazon Redshift
7 8 (3.05%) Amazon Athena
7 8 (3.05%) Data Lake
8 7 (2.67%) Relational Database
9 6 (2.29%) Amazon QuickSight
10 5 (1.91%) Apache Iceberg
10 5 (1.91%) BusinessObjects
10 5 (1.91%) Flink
10 5 (1.91%) NoSQL
10 5 (1.91%) Pentaho
10 5 (1.91%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 61 (23.28%) Git
2 24 (9.16%) Jenkins
3 22 (8.40%) GitLab
3 22 (8.40%) JUnit
4 18 (6.87%) JIRA
4 18 (6.87%) SonarQube
5 14 (5.34%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (4.20%) Bitbucket Server
6 11 (4.20%) DbUnit
6 11 (4.20%) jMock
6 11 (4.20%) Maven
6 11 (4.20%) Mockito
7 8 (3.05%) IntelliJ
8 6 (2.29%) PowerDesigner
9 5 (1.91%) Cucumber
10 4 (1.53%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.53%) CircleCI
10 4 (1.53%) Gradle
10 4 (1.53%) JMeter
11 3 (1.15%) Selenium
General
1 64 (24.43%) Social Skills
2 42 (16.03%) Finance
3 37 (14.12%) Public Sector
4 21 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (7.25%) Legal
6 17 (6.49%) Banking
7 11 (4.20%) Law
8 6 (2.29%) Military
9 4 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.53%) Front Office
9 4 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.15%) Retail
11 2 (0.76%) Billing
11 2 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.76%) Police
11 2 (0.76%) Polish Language
11 2 (0.76%) Public Speaking
11 2 (0.76%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 60 (22.90%) Architect
2 52 (19.85%) Developer
3 36 (13.74%) Senior
4 31 (11.83%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (9.92%) AWS Architect
6 19 (7.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 19 (7.25%) AWS Solution Architect
7 18 (6.87%) Data Engineer
8 16 (6.11%) Software Engineer
9 15 (5.73%) Analyst
9 15 (5.73%) Java Developer
9 15 (5.73%) Senior Developer
10 12 (4.58%) Consultant
10 12 (4.58%) Cyber Threat Analyst
10 12 (4.58%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
10 12 (4.58%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 10 (3.82%) AWS Engineer
11 10 (3.82%) Cloud Engineer
11 10 (3.82%) Senior Data Engineer
12 9 (3.44%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (19.08%) Kafka
2 38 (14.50%) REST
3 20 (7.63%) Spring
3 20 (7.63%) Spring Boot
4 19 (7.25%) RESTful
5 17 (6.49%) Node.js
6 15 (5.73%) LangChain
6 15 (5.73%) React
6 15 (5.73%) SOAP
7 13 (4.96%) Android Jetpack
7 13 (4.96%) Jetpack Compose
8 12 (4.58%) AngularJS
8 12 (4.58%) gRPC
9 11 (4.20%) ActiveMQ
9 11 (4.20%) Hibernate
9 11 (4.20%) JPA
9 11 (4.20%) PowerMock
9 11 (4.20%) Spring Batch
9 11 (4.20%) Spring Integration
9 11 (4.20%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 42 (16.03%) Cloud Native
2 37 (14.12%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (7.63%) AI Agents
4 16 (6.11%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.20%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (4.20%) Product Ownership
6 10 (3.82%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (3.44%) Mobile App
8 8 (3.05%) Management Information System
8 8 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.29%) Data Structures
9 6 (2.29%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.91%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (1.91%) LIMS
10 5 (1.91%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.91%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.91%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.53%) Data Centre
11 4 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (1.15%) Cyber Kill Chain
Operating Systems
1 55 (20.99%) Linux
2 14 (5.34%) Android
3 13 (4.96%) Unix
4 10 (3.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (3.44%) Windows
6 4 (1.53%) Debian
6 4 (1.53%) Rocky
6 4 (1.53%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.76%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (33.59%) CI/CD
2 65 (24.81%) AI
3 62 (23.66%) Agile
4 61 (23.28%) DevOps
5 60 (22.90%) Software Engineering
6 46 (17.56%) Microservices
6 46 (17.56%) Stakeholder Management
7 45 (17.18%) Containerisation
8 42 (16.03%) Event-Driven
9 41 (15.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 41 (15.65%) Observability
10 39 (14.89%) LLM
11 35 (13.36%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 31 (11.83%) Data Pipeline
13 28 (10.69%) Machine Learning
14 27 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
15 24 (9.16%) Performance Optimisation
16 23 (8.78%) CRM
16 23 (8.78%) Roadmaps
16 23 (8.78%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 107 (40.84%) Python
2 55 (20.99%) Java
3 36 (13.74%) SQL
4 23 (8.78%) Go
5 18 (6.87%) Bash
6 15 (5.73%) JavaScript
6 15 (5.73%) Kotlin
7 13 (4.96%) TypeScript
8 12 (4.58%) C++
9 8 (3.05%) C#
10 5 (1.91%) C
10 5 (1.91%) MUMPS
11 4 (1.53%) Perl
11 4 (1.53%) Scala
11 4 (1.53%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.15%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.76%) Rust
14 1 (0.38%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 94 (35.88%) Security Cleared
2 67 (25.57%) SC Cleared
3 25 (9.54%) Degree
4 16 (6.11%) DV Cleared
5 15 (5.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.29%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.91%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (1.53%) CISM
8 4 (1.53%) CISSP
9 3 (1.15%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.38%) CEH
11 1 (0.38%) GCIA
11 1 (0.38%) GIAC
11 1 (0.38%) ISEB
11 1 (0.38%) LFCS
11 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.38%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.34%) QA
2 9 (3.44%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.29%) GDPR
4 4 (1.53%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.53%) NIST
4 4 (1.53%) WCAG
5 3 (1.15%) GRC
5 3 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.76%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 1 (0.38%) NCSC
7 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 61 (23.28%) Docker
2 9 (3.44%) Postfix
3 4 (1.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.15%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.15%) 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 53 (20.23%) Kubernetes
2 38 (14.50%) Terraform
3 35 (13.36%) Grafana
4 31 (11.83%) Prometheus
5 21 (8.02%) Ansible
6 8 (3.05%) Puppet
7 5 (1.91%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.91%) Salt
8 2 (0.76%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.76%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.76%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.76%) Istio
8 2 (0.76%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.38%) Argo
9 1 (0.38%) CASB
9 1 (0.38%) Cilium
9 1 (0.38%) Control-M
9 1 (0.38%) MOM
9 1 (0.38%) Rancher
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 26 (9.92%) Google
2 25 (9.54%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.25%) Dynatrace
4 18 (6.87%) OpenAI
5 13 (4.96%) Splunk
6 12 (4.58%) Oracle
7 11 (4.20%) Atlassian
7 11 (4.20%) Jaspersoft
8 7 (2.67%) Checkmarx
9 6 (2.29%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.29%) IBM
9 6 (2.29%) Informatica
9 6 (2.29%) Red Hat
9 6 (2.29%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.91%) Black Duck
10 5 (1.91%) Denodo
10 5 (1.91%) InterSystems
11 4 (1.53%) SaltStack
11 4 (1.53%) VMware
12 3 (1.15%) Fortinet