Open Source Contracts

Open Source
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Open Source skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Open Source over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 256 281 263
Rank change year-on-year +25 -18 -58
Contract jobs citing Open Source 298 347 614
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.02% 0.80% 1.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.12% 0.92% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 224 402
10th Percentile £400 £366 £438
25th Percentile £456 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £572 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -0.61% -4.17% +4.35%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £838 £759 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £595 £550
% change year-on-year -20.59% +8.18% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 7 6
10th Percentile - - £34.25
25th Percentile - £25.99 £55.69
Median hourly rate £95.00 £55.00 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.73% -26.67% +36.36%
75th Percentile - £72.90 -
90th Percentile - £75.24 £82.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £71.93 -

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 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

Open Source
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Open Source as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Open Source.

Daily rate trend for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Open Source over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Open Source.

Hourly rate trend for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Top 16 Contract 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 May 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 +22 250 £600 +5.26% 691
London +82 168 £600 +18.52% 430
Work from Home +78 141 £600 +15.38% 456
UK excluding London -23 92 £473 -20.59% 347
Scotland +33 28 £498 -12.72% 23
North of England +5 23 £465 +3.33% 88
Midlands +20 15 £432 -36.07% 22
North West +9 15 £464 +15.94% 66
South East +20 13 £500 -13.04% 109
East of England +21 8 £400 +33.33% 54
West Midlands +12 8 £432 -21.55% 14
East Midlands +11 7 £413 -38.81% 3
Wales - 5 £331 - 11
Yorkshire -2 4 - - 15
North East - 4 £465 - 7
South West -20 3 £625 +4.17% 47

Open Source
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 36 (12.08%) Apache
1 36 (12.08%) Apache Spark
2 33 (11.07%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (2.68%) OpenStack
4 5 (1.68%) Confluence
5 3 (1.01%) Camunda
6 2 (0.67%) CMS
6 2 (0.67%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.34%) Drupal
7 1 (0.34%) IIS
7 1 (0.34%) JBoss
7 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.34%) nginx
7 1 (0.34%) SAS
7 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.34%) WebSphere
Applications
1 4 (1.34%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (1.01%) Magento
2 3 (1.01%) Sage 200
3 2 (0.67%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 157 (52.68%) AWS
2 55 (18.46%) Serverless
3 53 (17.79%) AWS Lambda
4 46 (15.44%) Azure
5 43 (14.43%) OpenShift
6 39 (13.09%) dbt
7 35 (11.74%) Amazon ECS
8 28 (9.40%) Amazon S3
9 24 (8.05%) AWS CloudFormation
10 23 (7.72%) GCP
11 22 (7.38%) GitHub
12 21 (7.05%) Amazon EKS
13 10 (3.36%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (3.02%) Amazon SQS
14 9 (3.02%) Power Platform
15 8 (2.68%) Entra ID
16 7 (2.35%) Kong
17 6 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 5 (1.68%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.35%) HTTPS
2 5 (1.68%) DNS
2 5 (1.68%) HTTP
3 3 (1.01%) DHCP
3 3 (1.01%) TCP/IP
3 3 (1.01%) VPN
4 2 (0.67%) Bluetooth
4 2 (0.67%) VSAN
4 2 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.67%) Wireless
5 1 (0.34%) 3G
5 1 (0.34%) 3GPP
5 1 (0.34%) 4G
5 1 (0.34%) 5G
5 1 (0.34%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.34%) LTE
5 1 (0.34%) MQTT
5 1 (0.34%) Multicast
5 1 (0.34%) Network Security
5 1 (0.34%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (15.10%) Relational Database
2 41 (13.76%) MongoDB
3 36 (12.08%) Apache Cassandra
4 33 (11.07%) Amazon RDS
5 31 (10.40%) DB2
6 30 (10.07%) Apache Iceberg
7 28 (9.40%) Amazon Athena
7 28 (9.40%) Apache Arrow
7 28 (9.40%) Apache Ignite
7 28 (9.40%) Dremio
8 25 (8.39%) PostgreSQL
9 20 (6.71%) Big Data
10 17 (5.70%) NoSQL
11 15 (5.03%) Hadoop
12 11 (3.69%) MySQL
13 7 (2.35%) Amazon Redshift
13 7 (2.35%) DynamoDB
13 7 (2.35%) SQL Server
14 6 (2.01%) RDBMS
14 6 (2.01%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 49 (16.44%) Jenkins
2 43 (14.43%) JUnit
3 40 (13.42%) Artifactory
4 38 (12.75%) Git
5 19 (6.38%) SonarQube
6 18 (6.04%) Selenium
7 14 (4.70%) Maven
8 13 (4.36%) JIRA
9 10 (3.36%) GitLab
10 8 (2.68%) Postman
10 8 (2.68%) REST Assured
11 7 (2.35%) gulp
11 7 (2.35%) HP UFT
11 7 (2.35%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (1.34%) Cypress.io
12 4 (1.34%) DbUnit
12 4 (1.34%) IntelliJ
12 4 (1.34%) jMock
12 4 (1.34%) Mockito
12 4 (1.34%) TestComplete
General
1 101 (33.89%) Finance
2 83 (27.85%) Social Skills
3 64 (21.48%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (16.11%) Front Office
5 36 (12.08%) Public Sector
6 33 (11.07%) Banking
7 26 (8.72%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.68%) Telecoms
9 5 (1.68%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.01%) French Language
10 3 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.67%) Digital Health
11 2 (0.67%) Games
11 2 (0.67%) Marketing
11 2 (0.67%) Military
11 2 (0.67%) Retail
12 1 (0.34%) Billing
12 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 89 (29.87%) Developer
2 51 (17.11%) Senior
3 46 (15.44%) Architect
4 44 (14.77%) Java Developer
5 42 (14.09%) Data Engineer
6 41 (13.76%) AWS Engineer
7 37 (12.42%) Python Engineer
8 36 (12.08%) DevOps Engineer
9 33 (11.07%) AWS DevOps
9 33 (11.07%) AWS DevOps Engineer
10 25 (8.39%) Lead
11 19 (6.38%) AWS Architect
12 18 (6.04%) Investment Banking Java Developer
12 18 (6.04%) SQL Developer
13 17 (5.70%) Senior Developer
14 11 (3.69%) Linux Developer
14 11 (3.69%) Senior Investment Banking Java Developer
14 11 (3.69%) Senior Java Developer
14 11 (3.69%) Senior SQL Developer
15 10 (3.36%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (40.60%) Kafka
2 53 (17.79%) Spring
3 36 (12.08%) J2EE
4 34 (11.41%) JMS
4 34 (11.41%) PySpark
5 32 (10.74%) gRPC
6 24 (8.05%) REST
7 21 (7.05%) AngularJS
7 21 (7.05%) Node.js
8 18 (6.04%) Hibernate
9 16 (5.37%) Spring Boot
10 15 (5.03%) React
11 12 (4.03%) .NET
11 12 (4.03%) CSS
11 12 (4.03%) HTML
11 12 (4.03%) SOAP
12 11 (3.69%) OAuth
13 10 (3.36%) OpenID
14 9 (3.02%) Express.js
15 8 (2.68%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 40 (13.42%) Distributed Systems
2 38 (12.75%) Data Structures
3 30 (10.07%) Equities
4 10 (3.36%) Cloud Native
5 9 (3.02%) Public Cloud
6 8 (2.68%) PKI
7 7 (2.35%) Private Cloud
7 7 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.35%) Taxonomies
8 5 (1.68%) NHS
8 5 (1.68%) Tandem
9 4 (1.34%) Derivative
9 4 (1.34%) Embedded Systems
10 3 (1.01%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.01%) Equity Derivative
10 3 (1.01%) Mainframe
10 3 (1.01%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.01%) Replication
10 3 (1.01%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 71 (23.83%) Linux
2 14 (4.70%) Windows
3 8 (2.68%) Windows Server
4 7 (2.35%) Ubuntu
4 7 (2.35%) Unix
5 3 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.34%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.34%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (37.58%) Agile
2 96 (32.21%) Software Engineering
3 79 (26.51%) Problem-Solving
4 72 (24.16%) DevOps
5 67 (22.48%) CI/CD
6 54 (18.12%) Microservices
7 46 (15.44%) Containerisation
8 40 (13.42%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 38 (12.75%) Test Automation
10 36 (12.08%) SDLC
11 34 (11.41%) Data Engineering
11 34 (11.41%) Performance Tuning
12 33 (11.07%) Asset Management
12 33 (11.07%) Mentoring
13 30 (10.07%) Database Tuning
14 29 (9.73%) Multithreading
15 28 (9.40%) High Availability
15 28 (9.40%) Stakeholder Management
16 22 (7.38%) Infrastructure as Code
17 18 (6.04%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 129 (43.29%) Python
2 121 (40.60%) Java
3 75 (25.17%) Go
4 68 (22.82%) SQL
5 42 (14.09%) JavaScript
6 39 (13.09%) Shell Script
7 15 (5.03%) TypeScript
8 14 (4.70%) C#
9 8 (2.68%) PowerShell
10 6 (2.01%) SPARQL
11 5 (1.68%) Bash
12 4 (1.34%) R
12 4 (1.34%) Scala
13 3 (1.01%) Perl
13 3 (1.01%) PHP
13 3 (1.01%) Ruby
14 2 (0.67%) C
14 2 (0.67%) C++
14 2 (0.67%) Rust
15 1 (0.34%) Elixir
Qualifications
1 47 (15.77%) Security Cleared
2 33 (11.07%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.71%) AWS Certification
3 20 (6.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 17 (5.70%) Degree
5 7 (2.35%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.01%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.67%) CITP
7 2 (0.67%) PhD
8 1 (0.34%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.34%) CISA
8 1 (0.34%) CISM
8 1 (0.34%) CISSP
8 1 (0.34%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.34%) CRISC
8 1 (0.34%) ISEB
8 1 (0.34%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.35%) GDPR
2 4 (1.34%) Data Quality
2 4 (1.34%) Disclosure Scotland
2 4 (1.34%) NIST
2 4 (1.34%) WCAG
3 3 (1.01%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.67%) NCSC
4 2 (0.67%) NIST 800
4 2 (0.67%) QA
5 1 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.34%) COBIT
5 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 87 (29.19%) Docker
2 5 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.34%) OpenAM
3 4 (1.34%) Postfix
4 2 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.67%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.67%) vSphere
5 1 (0.34%) Ceph
5 1 (0.34%) Gluster
5 1 (0.34%) GlusterFS
Systems Management
1 113 (37.92%) Kubernetes
2 71 (23.83%) Terraform
3 20 (6.71%) Ansible
4 11 (3.69%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (2.35%) Puppet
6 6 (2.01%) Grafana
6 6 (2.01%) Prometheus
7 4 (1.34%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.34%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
8 1 (0.34%) Kibana
8 1 (0.34%) logstash
8 1 (0.34%) Nagios
Vendors
1 32 (10.74%) Sybase
2 26 (8.72%) Microsoft
3 18 (6.04%) Google
4 15 (5.03%) Databricks
5 8 (2.68%) ForgeRock
6 7 (2.35%) Ping Identity
7 6 (2.01%) Red Hat
8 5 (1.68%) Informatica
9 4 (1.34%) Atlassian
9 4 (1.34%) BiZZdesign
9 4 (1.34%) Bloomberg
9 4 (1.34%) Jaspersoft
9 4 (1.34%) Oracle
9 4 (1.34%) Reuters
9 4 (1.34%) Sparx
10 3 (1.01%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (1.01%) VMware
11 2 (0.67%) Cisco
11 2 (0.67%) Dell
11 2 (0.67%) Sun