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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 435 256 306
Rank change year-on-year -179 +50 -39
Contract jobs citing Open Source 260 349 292
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.06% 0.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.17% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 179 181
10th Percentile £424 £373 £350
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 £611 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £678 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £497 £600
% change year-on-year +3.52% -17.25% +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 45,360 29,849 33,165
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.48% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,797 18,603 21,010
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 2,875 1,763 1,706
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.27 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +7.39%

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 24 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 24 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 -198 185 £550 +2.42% 121
London -145 99 £600 - 63
Work from Home -104 98 £514 -6.55% 65
UK excluding London -121 96 £514 +3.52% 80
North of England -72 27 £495 +0.51% 14
South West -26 21 £550 +40.13% 21
Scotland -36 16 £800 +56.10% 6
Yorkshire -34 15 £500 -4.76% 5
East of England -15 12 £552 +38.00% 9
West Midlands -42 12 £459 -8.20% 6
Midlands -44 12 £459 -8.20% 8
South East -78 9 £550 +2.33% 23
North West -56 7 £550 +11.79% 6
North East -38 5 £425 -8.60% 3

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 (6.92%) Confluence
2 11 (4.23%) Apache
3 8 (3.08%) Apache Spark
4 7 (2.69%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.69%) SharePoint
5 6 (2.31%) SAS
6 4 (1.54%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.38%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 120 (46.15%) AWS
2 69 (26.54%) Azure
3 54 (20.77%) GCP
4 35 (13.46%) GitHub
5 23 (8.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 23 (8.85%) Amazon S3
6 21 (8.08%) Serverless
7 18 (6.92%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (5.38%) Vertex AI
9 13 (5.00%) Amazon EC2
10 12 (4.62%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (4.23%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (3.85%) IaaS
13 9 (3.46%) Google Gemini
13 9 (3.46%) SaaS
14 8 (3.08%) Amazon Bedrock
14 8 (3.08%) Amazon SQS
14 8 (3.08%) Azure Monitor
15 7 (2.69%) Power Platform
15 7 (2.69%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.08%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.31%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.31%) SNMP
3 4 (1.54%) DNS
3 4 (1.54%) Firewall
3 4 (1.54%) SSH
3 4 (1.54%) SSL
4 3 (1.15%) Network Security
4 3 (1.15%) WAN
5 2 (0.77%) 4G
5 2 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.77%) HTTP
5 2 (0.77%) NaaS
5 2 (0.77%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.77%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.38%) MQTT
6 1 (0.38%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (10.77%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (6.54%) Amazon RDS
3 15 (5.77%) MongoDB
4 13 (5.00%) DynamoDB
5 10 (3.85%) Apache Cassandra
6 9 (3.46%) Big Data
6 9 (3.46%) BigQuery
6 9 (3.46%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (3.08%) Amazon Redshift
7 8 (3.08%) Data Lake
8 7 (2.69%) Amazon Athena
8 7 (2.69%) Amazon Aurora
8 7 (2.69%) Relational Database
9 5 (1.92%) Amazon QuickSight
9 5 (1.92%) BusinessObjects
9 5 (1.92%) Flink
9 5 (1.92%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.92%) Pentaho
9 5 (1.92%) Power BI
9 5 (1.92%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 55 (21.15%) Git
2 22 (8.46%) Jenkins
3 21 (8.08%) GitLab
4 19 (7.31%) JIRA
5 17 (6.54%) JUnit
6 14 (5.38%) SonarQube
7 13 (5.00%) Sonatype Nexus
8 8 (3.08%) IntelliJ
9 7 (2.69%) Bitbucket Server
9 7 (2.69%) DbUnit
9 7 (2.69%) jMock
9 7 (2.69%) Maven
9 7 (2.69%) Mockito
10 6 (2.31%) Cucumber
11 5 (1.92%) JMeter
12 4 (1.54%) PowerDesigner
12 4 (1.54%) Selenium
13 3 (1.15%) Artifactory
13 3 (1.15%) CircleCI
13 3 (1.15%) LoadRunner
General
1 64 (24.62%) Social Skills
2 44 (16.92%) Finance
3 36 (13.85%) Public Sector
4 19 (7.31%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (6.54%) Banking
6 16 (6.15%) Legal
7 10 (3.85%) Law
8 9 (3.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.92%) Military
10 4 (1.54%) Front Office
11 3 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.15%) Publishing
11 3 (1.15%) Retail
12 2 (0.77%) Billing
12 2 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.77%) Police
12 2 (0.77%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.77%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 55 (21.15%) Architect
2 48 (18.46%) Developer
3 43 (16.54%) Senior
4 29 (11.15%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (10.00%) AWS Architect
6 18 (6.92%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 18 (6.92%) AWS Solution Architect
7 16 (6.15%) Data Engineer
8 15 (5.77%) Analyst
8 15 (5.77%) Senior Developer
8 15 (5.77%) Software Engineer
9 13 (5.00%) Consultant
10 12 (4.62%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 11 (4.23%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 11 (4.23%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 11 (4.23%) Java Developer
12 10 (3.85%) Software Developer
13 9 (3.46%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (3.46%) Cloud Architect
13 9 (3.46%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (19.23%) Kafka
2 43 (16.54%) Terraform
3 33 (12.69%) REST
4 16 (6.15%) Spring
4 16 (6.15%) Spring Boot
5 15 (5.77%) LangChain
5 15 (5.77%) React
5 15 (5.77%) RESTful
6 12 (4.62%) gRPC
6 12 (4.62%) Node.js
7 11 (4.23%) OpenTelemetry
7 11 (4.23%) SOAP
8 10 (3.85%) LangGraph
9 9 (3.46%) Android Jetpack
9 9 (3.46%) AngularJS
9 9 (3.46%) Jetpack Compose
9 9 (3.46%) PyTorch
10 8 (3.08%) eBPF
10 8 (3.08%) GraphQL
10 8 (3.08%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 46 (17.69%) Cloud Native
2 30 (11.54%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (8.08%) AI Agents
4 18 (6.92%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.23%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (4.23%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (3.85%) Product Ownership
7 9 (3.46%) Management Information System
8 8 (3.08%) Private Cloud
9 7 (2.69%) Mobile App
9 7 (2.69%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (2.31%) Data Structures
11 5 (1.92%) Blog
11 5 (1.92%) Legacy Applications
11 5 (1.92%) LIMS
11 5 (1.92%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.92%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (1.92%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (1.54%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 52 (20.00%) Linux
2 14 (5.38%) Unix
3 11 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.85%) Android
5 9 (3.46%) Windows
6 3 (1.15%) Debian
6 3 (1.15%) Rocky
6 3 (1.15%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.77%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (36.15%) CI/CD
2 66 (25.38%) Software Engineering
3 65 (25.00%) Agile
4 64 (24.62%) AI
5 61 (23.46%) DevOps
6 46 (17.69%) Observability
7 43 (16.54%) Stakeholder Management
8 42 (16.15%) Containerisation
8 42 (16.15%) Event-Driven
8 42 (16.15%) Infrastructure as Code
8 42 (16.15%) Microservices
9 37 (14.23%) LLM
10 35 (13.46%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 32 (12.31%) Data Pipeline
11 32 (12.31%) Test Automation
12 28 (10.77%) Machine Learning
13 27 (10.38%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (10.00%) Cybersecurity
15 23 (8.85%) CRM
16 22 (8.46%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 105 (40.38%) Python
2 50 (19.23%) Java
3 34 (13.08%) SQL
4 23 (8.85%) Go
5 19 (7.31%) Bash
6 14 (5.38%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.00%) C++
8 12 (4.62%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.85%) Kotlin
10 9 (3.46%) Scala
11 7 (2.69%) C
11 7 (2.69%) Perl
12 5 (1.92%) MUMPS
13 4 (1.54%) C#
14 3 (1.15%) PL/SQL
14 3 (1.15%) PowerShell
14 3 (1.15%) Shell Script
15 2 (0.77%) Rust
16 1 (0.38%) Bicep
16 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 96 (36.92%) Security Cleared
2 67 (25.77%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.08%) Degree
4 18 (6.92%) DV Cleared
5 12 (4.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.46%) CISSP
7 8 (3.08%) CISM
8 5 (1.92%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.54%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.15%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.77%) CEH
11 2 (0.77%) GIAC
11 2 (0.77%) GSEC
11 2 (0.77%) LFCS
11 2 (0.77%) OSCP
11 2 (0.77%) RHCE
11 2 (0.77%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.00%) QA
2 12 (4.62%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.31%) GDPR
4 5 (1.92%) WCAG
5 4 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
5 4 (1.54%) NIST
6 3 (1.15%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.15%) GRC
6 3 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
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 59 (22.69%) Docker
2 7 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.31%) Postfix
4 4 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.15%) Ceph
6 2 (0.77%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.77%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.38%) Squid
7 1 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 59 (22.69%) Kubernetes
2 35 (13.46%) Grafana
3 30 (11.54%) Prometheus
4 24 (9.23%) Ansible
5 9 (3.46%) Puppet
6 7 (2.69%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.54%) Istio
7 4 (1.54%) Salt
8 2 (0.77%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.77%) Cilium
8 2 (0.77%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.77%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.77%) linkerd
8 2 (0.77%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.38%) CASB
9 1 (0.38%) Control-M
9 1 (0.38%) QRadar
9 1 (0.38%) Rancher
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 25 (9.62%) Google
2 22 (8.46%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.31%) Dynatrace
4 18 (6.92%) Splunk
5 17 (6.54%) OpenAI
6 12 (4.62%) Oracle
7 9 (3.46%) Red Hat
8 7 (2.69%) Atlassian
8 7 (2.69%) Checkmarx
8 7 (2.69%) Cribl.io
8 7 (2.69%) Jaspersoft
8 7 (2.69%) SaltStack
8 7 (2.69%) VMware
9 6 (2.31%) Informatica
10 5 (1.92%) Black Duck
10 5 (1.92%) Databricks
10 5 (1.92%) Denodo
10 5 (1.92%) InterSystems
10 5 (1.92%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.54%) IBM