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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 366 227 297
Rank change year-on-year -139 +70 -45
Contract jobs citing Open Source 283 347 325
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 1.16% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.66% 1.28% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 202 218
10th Percentile £425 £396 £361
25th Percentile £499 £447 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £570
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -7.89% -5.00%
75th Percentile £645 £600 £675
90th Percentile £749 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £473 £585
% change year-on-year +8.62% -19.23% +1.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 14
10th Percentile - - £20.12
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 - - £37.62

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 42,883 27,154 37,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.85% 91.05% 85.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,719 17,238 23,736
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,572 1,254 2,607
10th Percentile £14.70 £14.20 £12.70
25th Percentile £20.07 £17.79 £16.04
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.40 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.07% -32.27% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.46% -34.22% +17.29%

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 19 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 19 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 -160 212 £550 +1.20% 154
London -128 112 £599 -0.21% 81
UK excluding London -119 106 £513 +8.62% 92
Work from Home -83 105 £550 -4.35% 79
Scotland -22 21 £675 +31.71% 2
North of England -76 21 £513 +10.51% 25
South West -11 18 £538 +9.14% 15
West Midlands -51 18 £472 -5.60% 5
Midlands -56 18 £472 -5.60% 5
South East -71 16 £459 -8.20% 23
East of England -22 13 £550 +52.49% 15
Yorkshire -55 11 £506 - 8
North West -44 9 £488 +5.41% 15

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 (6.36%) Confluence
2 8 (2.83%) Apache
2 8 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.47%) Appian
4 5 (1.77%) SAS
5 3 (1.06%) nginx
5 3 (1.06%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.71%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.35%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.35%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 3 (1.06%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 141 (49.82%) AWS
2 84 (29.68%) Azure
3 43 (15.19%) GCP
4 35 (12.37%) GitHub
5 32 (11.31%) Amazon S3
6 25 (8.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 25 (8.83%) Serverless
7 22 (7.77%) Amazon EC2
8 19 (6.71%) Azure AI
9 17 (6.01%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (4.95%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (4.59%) Anthropic Claude
11 13 (4.59%) Route 53
12 12 (4.24%) Amazon SQS
12 12 (4.24%) Azure DevOps
12 12 (4.24%) Vertex AI
13 11 (3.89%) AWS KMS
14 10 (3.53%) Amazon Bedrock
14 10 (3.53%) Azure Cognitive Services
15 9 (3.18%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.18%) Firewall
2 7 (2.47%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (2.12%) SNMP
4 5 (1.77%) DNS
4 5 (1.77%) WAN
5 3 (1.06%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.06%) Network Security
6 2 (0.71%) DHCP
6 2 (0.71%) NaaS
7 1 (0.35%) 5G
7 1 (0.35%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.35%) LTE
7 1 (0.35%) MQTT
7 1 (0.35%) NAS
7 1 (0.35%) NGFW
7 1 (0.35%) SAN
7 1 (0.35%) SSH
7 1 (0.35%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (15.55%) PostgreSQL
2 30 (10.60%) Apache Cassandra
3 20 (7.07%) Amazon RDS
4 17 (6.01%) DynamoDB
5 14 (4.95%) MongoDB
6 11 (3.89%) Amazon Aurora
7 10 (3.53%) BigQuery
7 10 (3.53%) Pinecone
8 9 (3.18%) Amazon Athena
8 9 (3.18%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (3.18%) SQL Server
9 8 (2.83%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (2.83%) NoSQL
9 8 (2.83%) Relational Database
10 7 (2.47%) Amazon QuickSight
11 6 (2.12%) Big Data
11 6 (2.12%) Data Lake
11 6 (2.12%) Metadata
12 5 (1.77%) Apache Iceberg
12 5 (1.77%) Redis
Development Applications
1 60 (21.20%) Git
2 28 (9.89%) GitLab
3 25 (8.83%) JUnit
4 20 (7.07%) Jenkins
5 19 (6.71%) JIRA
6 18 (6.36%) SonarQube
7 14 (4.95%) Sonatype Nexus
8 11 (3.89%) Bitbucket Server
8 11 (3.89%) DbUnit
8 11 (3.89%) jMock
8 11 (3.89%) Maven
8 11 (3.89%) Mockito
9 10 (3.53%) MLflow
10 8 (2.83%) IntelliJ
11 7 (2.47%) CircleCI
11 7 (2.47%) Gradle
12 5 (1.77%) Artifactory
12 5 (1.77%) PowerDesigner
13 2 (0.71%) JMeter
13 2 (0.71%) Liquibase
General
1 66 (23.32%) Social Skills
2 60 (21.20%) Finance
3 45 (15.90%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.77%) Legal
5 21 (7.42%) Banking
6 20 (7.07%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (3.89%) Law
8 7 (2.47%) Military
9 6 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.77%) Front Office
11 3 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.06%) Retail
11 3 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.71%) Billing
12 2 (0.71%) Marketing
12 2 (0.71%) Police
12 2 (0.71%) Publishing
13 1 (0.35%) Automotive
13 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 71 (25.09%) Developer
2 59 (20.85%) Architect
3 47 (16.61%) Senior
4 31 (10.95%) Solutions Architect
5 28 (9.89%) Senior Developer
6 27 (9.54%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 27 (9.54%) Software Engineer
7 25 (8.83%) AWS Architect
8 22 (7.77%) Data Engineer
9 17 (6.01%) AWS Solution Architect
10 14 (4.95%) Consultant
10 14 (4.95%) Java Developer
11 12 (4.24%) Senior Data Engineer
12 11 (3.89%) Android Developer
12 11 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
12 11 (3.89%) Lead
12 11 (3.89%) Python Developer
13 10 (3.53%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
13 10 (3.53%) AWS Engineer
13 10 (3.53%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (23.67%) Kafka
2 44 (15.55%) REST
3 31 (10.95%) gRPC
4 30 (10.60%) RESTful
5 23 (8.13%) React
6 21 (7.42%) Web Services
7 19 (6.71%) Node.js
7 19 (6.71%) Spring
7 19 (6.71%) Spring Boot
8 16 (5.65%) Android Jetpack
8 16 (5.65%) AngularJS
8 16 (5.65%) Jetpack Compose
9 15 (5.30%) .NET
9 15 (5.30%) Hugging Face
9 15 (5.30%) PyTorch
9 15 (5.30%) TensorFlow
10 14 (4.95%) LangChain
11 13 (4.59%) SOAP
12 11 (3.89%) ActiveMQ
12 11 (3.89%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 53 (18.73%) Distributed Systems
2 41 (14.49%) Cloud Native
3 17 (6.01%) AI Agents
4 15 (5.30%) Product Ownership
5 9 (3.18%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (3.18%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (3.18%) Mobile App
6 8 (2.83%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.47%) Low-Code
7 7 (2.47%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.47%) Virtual Team
8 6 (2.12%) Data Centre
8 6 (2.12%) Legacy Code
8 6 (2.12%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.77%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (1.77%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.06%) Clustering
10 3 (1.06%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 2 (0.71%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 46 (16.25%) Linux
2 18 (6.36%) Android
3 5 (1.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.41%) Debian
4 4 (1.41%) Rocky
4 4 (1.41%) Ubuntu
4 4 (1.41%) Unix
5 3 (1.06%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.06%) Windows
6 1 (0.35%) VMS
6 1 (0.35%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 91 (32.16%) CI/CD
2 77 (27.21%) AI
3 71 (25.09%) Software Engineering
4 69 (24.38%) Agile
4 69 (24.38%) Microservices
5 63 (22.26%) DevOps
6 58 (20.49%) LLM
7 53 (18.73%) Containerisation
8 48 (16.96%) Stakeholder Management
9 43 (15.19%) Machine Learning
10 41 (14.49%) Infrastructure as Code
11 37 (13.07%) Data Pipeline
12 35 (12.37%) Observability
13 34 (12.01%) Generative AI
13 34 (12.01%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
14 33 (11.66%) Event-Driven
15 31 (10.95%) Problem-Solving
16 27 (9.54%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 25 (8.83%) Continuous Integration
17 25 (8.83%) Prompt Engineering
Programming Languages
1 127 (44.88%) Python
2 52 (18.37%) Java
3 41 (14.49%) Go
4 40 (14.13%) SQL
5 22 (7.77%) JavaScript
6 18 (6.36%) Bash
6 18 (6.36%) TypeScript
7 17 (6.01%) Kotlin
8 16 (5.65%) C#
9 6 (2.12%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.77%) C++
10 5 (1.77%) PowerShell
11 3 (1.06%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.06%) Ruby
11 3 (1.06%) Scala
12 2 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.35%) Bicep
13 1 (0.35%) Groovy
13 1 (0.35%) Objective-C
13 1 (0.35%) Rust
Qualifications
1 85 (30.04%) Security Cleared
2 68 (24.03%) SC Cleared
3 30 (10.60%) Degree
4 14 (4.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (2.83%) DV Cleared
7 7 (2.47%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.77%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.06%) CISM
10 3 (1.06%) CISSP
11 2 (0.71%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.71%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.71%) PhD
12 1 (0.35%) CEH
12 1 (0.35%) GCIA
12 1 (0.35%) GIAC
12 1 (0.35%) ISEB
12 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.35%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.30%) QA
2 11 (3.89%) Accessibility
3 9 (3.18%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.12%) WCAG
5 4 (1.41%) NIST
6 3 (1.06%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (1.06%) GRC
6 3 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.35%) GDPR
7 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 1 (0.35%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 90 (31.80%) Docker
2 9 (3.18%) Postfix
3 7 (2.47%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.71%) Ceph
5 2 (0.71%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.71%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.35%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.35%) Squid
6 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 80 (28.27%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.78%) Terraform
3 32 (11.31%) Grafana
4 27 (9.54%) Prometheus
5 17 (6.01%) Ansible
6 5 (1.77%) Istio
7 4 (1.41%) Puppet
7 4 (1.41%) Salt
8 2 (0.71%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.71%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.71%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.71%) Rancher
9 1 (0.35%) Argo
9 1 (0.35%) CASB
9 1 (0.35%) Control-M
9 1 (0.35%) MOM
9 1 (0.35%) QRadar
9 1 (0.35%) WMI
Vendors
1 31 (10.95%) OpenAI
2 26 (9.19%) Google
3 24 (8.48%) Microsoft
4 18 (6.36%) Dynatrace
5 12 (4.24%) Oracle
6 11 (3.89%) Atlassian
6 11 (3.89%) Jaspersoft
6 11 (3.89%) Splunk
7 7 (2.47%) Automation Anywhere
7 7 (2.47%) Checkmarx
7 7 (2.47%) UiPath
8 5 (1.77%) Black Duck
8 5 (1.77%) Cribl.io
8 5 (1.77%) Denodo
8 5 (1.77%) IBM
8 5 (1.77%) Informatica
8 5 (1.77%) ServiceNow
9 4 (1.41%) Fortinet
10 3 (1.06%) Confluent
10 3 (1.06%) Sonatype