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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 422 251 300
Rank change year-on-year -171 +49 -46
Contract jobs citing Open Source 257 346 290
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.06% 0.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.17% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 176 179
10th Percentile £425 £369 £344
25th Percentile £475 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £617 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £493 £600
% change year-on-year +6.49% -17.83% +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 45,365 29,616 33,160
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.47% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,789 18,444 20,998
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% -3.67%
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 2,884 1,758 1,700
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.99 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +6.25%

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 25 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 25 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 -201 181 £550 +3.58% 130
London -142 96 £600 - 73
Work from Home -104 95 £514 -6.55% 61
UK excluding London -113 95 £525 +6.49% 101
North of England -73 26 £497 +1.07% 11
South West -26 21 £550 +40.13% 32
Scotland -29 17 £663 +29.27% 13
Yorkshire -35 15 £500 -4.76% 3
East of England -12 12 £552 +38.00% 11
West Midlands -42 11 £459 -8.20% 7
Midlands -61 11 £459 -8.20% 8
South East -76 9 £550 +10.00% 25
North West -50 6 £565 +14.84% 7
North East -38 5 £425 -8.60% 1

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 (7.00%) Confluence
2 11 (4.28%) Apache
3 8 (3.11%) Apache Spark
4 7 (2.72%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.72%) SharePoint
5 6 (2.33%) SAS
6 4 (1.56%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.39%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.17%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 118 (45.91%) AWS
2 69 (26.85%) Azure
3 54 (21.01%) GCP
4 35 (13.62%) GitHub
5 22 (8.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 22 (8.56%) Amazon S3
6 21 (8.17%) Serverless
7 18 (7.00%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (5.45%) Vertex AI
9 12 (4.67%) Amazon EC2
9 12 (4.67%) AWS Lambda
10 11 (4.28%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (4.28%) IaaS
11 9 (3.50%) Google Gemini
11 9 (3.50%) SaaS
12 8 (3.11%) Amazon Bedrock
12 8 (3.11%) Azure Monitor
13 7 (2.72%) Amazon SQS
13 7 (2.72%) Power Platform
14 6 (2.33%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.11%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.33%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.33%) SNMP
3 4 (1.56%) DNS
3 4 (1.56%) Firewall
3 4 (1.56%) SSH
3 4 (1.56%) SSL
4 3 (1.17%) Network Security
4 3 (1.17%) WAN
5 2 (0.78%) 4G
5 2 (0.78%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.78%) HTTP
5 2 (0.78%) NaaS
5 2 (0.78%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.39%) MQTT
6 1 (0.39%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (10.12%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (6.23%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (5.45%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.67%) DynamoDB
5 9 (3.50%) Apache Cassandra
5 9 (3.50%) Big Data
5 9 (3.50%) BigQuery
5 9 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
6 8 (3.11%) Data Lake
7 7 (2.72%) Amazon Athena
7 7 (2.72%) Relational Database
8 6 (2.33%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (1.95%) Amazon QuickSight
9 5 (1.95%) Apache Iceberg
9 5 (1.95%) Flink
9 5 (1.95%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.95%) Power BI
9 5 (1.95%) Spatial Data
9 5 (1.95%) Trino
Development Applications
1 53 (20.62%) Git
2 21 (8.17%) GitLab
2 21 (8.17%) Jenkins
3 19 (7.39%) JIRA
4 16 (6.23%) JUnit
5 13 (5.06%) SonarQube
5 13 (5.06%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (3.11%) IntelliJ
7 6 (2.33%) Bitbucket Server
7 6 (2.33%) Cucumber
7 6 (2.33%) DbUnit
7 6 (2.33%) jMock
7 6 (2.33%) Maven
7 6 (2.33%) Mockito
8 5 (1.95%) JMeter
9 4 (1.56%) PowerDesigner
9 4 (1.56%) Selenium
10 3 (1.17%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.17%) CircleCI
10 3 (1.17%) LoadRunner
General
1 65 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 43 (16.73%) Finance
3 35 (13.62%) Public Sector
4 18 (7.00%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (6.61%) Banking
6 16 (6.23%) Legal
7 10 (3.89%) Law
8 9 (3.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.95%) Military
10 4 (1.56%) Front Office
11 3 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.17%) Publishing
11 3 (1.17%) Retail
12 2 (0.78%) Billing
12 2 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.78%) Police
12 2 (0.78%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.78%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 55 (21.40%) Architect
2 46 (17.90%) Developer
3 43 (16.73%) Senior
4 29 (11.28%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (10.12%) AWS Architect
6 18 (7.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 18 (7.00%) AWS Solution Architect
7 15 (5.84%) Analyst
7 15 (5.84%) Data Engineer
8 14 (5.45%) Senior Developer
8 14 (5.45%) Software Engineer
9 13 (5.06%) Consultant
10 12 (4.67%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 11 (4.28%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 11 (4.28%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 10 (3.89%) Java Developer
12 10 (3.89%) Software Developer
13 9 (3.50%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (3.50%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (18.68%) Kafka
2 43 (16.73%) Terraform
3 32 (12.45%) REST
4 15 (5.84%) React
4 15 (5.84%) Spring
4 15 (5.84%) Spring Boot
5 14 (5.45%) LangChain
5 14 (5.45%) RESTful
6 12 (4.67%) Node.js
7 11 (4.28%) gRPC
7 11 (4.28%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (3.89%) LangGraph
8 10 (3.89%) SOAP
9 9 (3.50%) Android Jetpack
9 9 (3.50%) Jetpack Compose
9 9 (3.50%) PyTorch
10 8 (3.11%) AngularJS
10 8 (3.11%) eBPF
10 8 (3.11%) GraphQL
10 8 (3.11%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 46 (17.90%) Cloud Native
2 27 (10.51%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (8.17%) AI Agents
4 18 (7.00%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.28%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (4.28%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (3.89%) Product Ownership
7 9 (3.50%) Management Information System
7 9 (3.50%) Private Cloud
8 7 (2.72%) Mobile App
8 7 (2.72%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.33%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.95%) Blog
10 5 (1.95%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (1.95%) LIMS
10 5 (1.95%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.95%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.95%) Security Posture
11 4 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.56%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 51 (19.84%) Linux
2 14 (5.45%) Unix
3 11 (4.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.89%) Android
5 9 (3.50%) Windows
6 3 (1.17%) Debian
6 3 (1.17%) Rocky
6 3 (1.17%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.78%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (36.96%) CI/CD
2 64 (24.90%) Agile
2 64 (24.90%) Software Engineering
3 63 (24.51%) AI
4 61 (23.74%) DevOps
5 46 (17.90%) Observability
6 43 (16.73%) Infrastructure as Code
7 42 (16.34%) Event-Driven
8 41 (15.95%) Containerisation
8 41 (15.95%) Stakeholder Management
9 40 (15.56%) Microservices
10 35 (13.62%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 35 (13.62%) LLM
11 33 (12.84%) Test Automation
12 32 (12.45%) Data Pipeline
13 28 (10.89%) Machine Learning
14 26 (10.12%) Cybersecurity
14 26 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
15 23 (8.95%) CRM
15 23 (8.95%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 106 (41.25%) Python
2 49 (19.07%) Java
3 33 (12.84%) SQL
4 22 (8.56%) Go
5 19 (7.39%) Bash
6 14 (5.45%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.06%) C++
8 12 (4.67%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.89%) Kotlin
10 9 (3.50%) Scala
11 8 (3.11%) Perl
12 7 (2.72%) C
13 5 (1.95%) MUMPS
14 4 (1.56%) C#
15 3 (1.17%) PL/SQL
15 3 (1.17%) PowerShell
15 3 (1.17%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.78%) Rust
17 1 (0.39%) Bicep
17 1 (0.39%) Swift
Qualifications
1 95 (36.96%) Security Cleared
2 67 (26.07%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.78%) Degree
4 18 (7.00%) DV Cleared
5 12 (4.67%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.50%) CISSP
7 8 (3.11%) CISM
8 5 (1.95%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.56%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.17%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.17%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.78%) CEH
11 2 (0.78%) GIAC
11 2 (0.78%) GSEC
11 2 (0.78%) LFCS
11 2 (0.78%) OSCP
11 2 (0.78%) RHCE
11 2 (0.78%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.06%) QA
2 12 (4.67%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.33%) GDPR
4 5 (1.95%) WCAG
5 4 (1.56%) Disclosure Scotland
5 4 (1.56%) NIST
6 3 (1.17%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.17%) GRC
6 3 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 1 (0.39%) NCSC
7 1 (0.39%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.39%) SOC 2
System Software
1 57 (22.18%) Docker
2 8 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.95%) Postfix
4 4 (1.56%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.17%) Ceph
6 2 (0.78%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.78%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 2 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.39%) Squid
7 1 (0.39%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 58 (22.57%) Kubernetes
2 34 (13.23%) Grafana
3 29 (11.28%) Prometheus
4 25 (9.73%) Ansible
5 9 (3.50%) Puppet
6 7 (2.72%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.56%) Istio
7 4 (1.56%) Salt
8 2 (0.78%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.78%) Cilium
8 2 (0.78%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.78%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.78%) linkerd
8 2 (0.78%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.39%) CASB
9 1 (0.39%) Control-M
9 1 (0.39%) QRadar
9 1 (0.39%) Rancher
9 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.39%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 25 (9.73%) Google
2 22 (8.56%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.39%) Dynatrace
4 18 (7.00%) Splunk
5 17 (6.61%) OpenAI
6 12 (4.67%) Oracle
7 9 (3.50%) Red Hat
8 8 (3.11%) SaltStack
8 8 (3.11%) VMware
9 7 (2.72%) Checkmarx
9 7 (2.72%) Cribl.io
10 6 (2.33%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.33%) Informatica
10 6 (2.33%) Jaspersoft
11 5 (1.95%) Black Duck
11 5 (1.95%) Databricks
11 5 (1.95%) Denodo
11 5 (1.95%) InterSystems
11 5 (1.95%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.56%) IBM