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 30 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 365 229 297
Rank change year-on-year -136 +68 -37
Contract jobs citing Open Source 300 329 317
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 1.14% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 1.25% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 205 211
10th Percentile £400 £400 £355
25th Percentile £475 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £570
Median % change year-on-year - -3.51% -5.00%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £475 £585
% change year-on-year +6.58% -18.80% -1.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 12
10th Percentile - - £20.23
25th Percentile - - £21.71
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £26.97
75th Percentile - - £61.35
90th Percentile - - £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £55.00

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 41,610 26,282 36,757
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.67% 91.03% 85.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,026 16,812 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,481 1,100 2,513
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.26% -23.38% -1.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -142 235 £550 -4.35% 194
London -111 123 £600 - 129
UK excluding London -92 111 £506 +6.58% 82
Work from Home -97 106 £550 -4.35% 72
North of England -79 26 £497 +6.94% 11
Midlands -57 20 £475 -5.00% 3
West Midlands -58 20 £475 -5.00% 1
Scotland -16 18 £675 +28.57% 4
South West -22 18 £550 +34.15% 16
South East -65 17 £430 -14.10% 30
North West -48 14 £450 -2.70% 11
East of England -25 13 £550 +52.49% 14
Yorkshire -60 11 £506 -

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 17 (5.67%) Confluence
2 8 (2.67%) Apache
2 8 (2.67%) Appian
2 8 (2.67%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.67%) SAS
4 4 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (1.33%) nginx
4 4 (1.33%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.67%) Liferay
6 2 (0.67%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.33%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.33%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 3 (1.00%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.67%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 151 (50.33%) AWS
2 83 (27.67%) Azure
3 44 (14.67%) GCP
4 41 (13.67%) GitHub
5 34 (11.33%) Amazon S3
6 28 (9.33%) Serverless
7 24 (8.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 21 (7.00%) Amazon EC2
9 20 (6.67%) Azure AI
10 18 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (5.33%) AWS Lambda
12 14 (4.67%) Google Gemini
13 13 (4.33%) Anthropic Claude
13 13 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (4.33%) Route 53
14 12 (4.00%) Amazon SQS
14 12 (4.00%) Vertex AI
15 11 (3.67%) AWS KMS
16 10 (3.33%) Azure Cognitive Services
17 9 (3.00%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.33%) Firewall
2 7 (2.33%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (2.00%) SNMP
4 5 (1.67%) DNS
4 5 (1.67%) WAN
5 3 (1.00%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.00%) Network Security
6 2 (0.67%) DHCP
6 2 (0.67%) NaaS
7 1 (0.33%) 5G
7 1 (0.33%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.33%) LTE
7 1 (0.33%) NAS
7 1 (0.33%) NGFW
7 1 (0.33%) SAN
7 1 (0.33%) SSH
7 1 (0.33%) SSL
7 1 (0.33%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.33%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (14.67%) PostgreSQL
2 38 (12.67%) Apache Cassandra
3 20 (6.67%) DynamoDB
4 19 (6.33%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (5.00%) BigQuery
6 13 (4.33%) MongoDB
7 12 (4.00%) Pinecone
8 11 (3.67%) Amazon Aurora
8 11 (3.67%) SQL Server
9 9 (3.00%) Amazon Athena
9 9 (3.00%) Amazon Redshift
9 9 (3.00%) NoSQL
10 8 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
11 7 (2.33%) Amazon QuickSight
12 6 (2.00%) Data Lake
12 6 (2.00%) Metadata
12 6 (2.00%) Redis
12 6 (2.00%) Relational Database
13 5 (1.67%) Big Data
13 5 (1.67%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 61 (20.33%) Git
2 32 (10.67%) GitLab
3 26 (8.67%) Jenkins
4 25 (8.33%) JUnit
5 20 (6.67%) JIRA
6 18 (6.00%) SonarQube
7 14 (4.67%) Sonatype Nexus
8 12 (4.00%) MLflow
9 11 (3.67%) Bitbucket Server
9 11 (3.67%) DbUnit
9 11 (3.67%) jMock
9 11 (3.67%) Maven
9 11 (3.67%) Mockito
10 8 (2.67%) IntelliJ
11 7 (2.33%) CircleCI
11 7 (2.33%) Gradle
12 5 (1.67%) Artifactory
13 4 (1.33%) PowerDesigner
14 3 (1.00%) Cucumber
15 2 (0.67%) Hudson
General
1 66 (22.00%) Social Skills
2 63 (21.00%) Finance
3 45 (15.00%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.33%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.00%) Banking
5 21 (7.00%) Legal
6 10 (3.33%) Law
7 8 (2.67%) Retail
8 6 (2.00%) Front Office
8 6 (2.00%) Military
9 5 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.00%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.67%) Billing
11 2 (0.67%) Marketing
11 2 (0.67%) Police
11 2 (0.67%) Publishing
12 1 (0.33%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.33%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 78 (26.00%) Developer
2 57 (19.00%) Architect
3 56 (18.67%) Senior
4 32 (10.67%) Senior Developer
5 30 (10.00%) Solutions Architect
6 29 (9.67%) Software Engineer
7 27 (9.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 22 (7.33%) AWS Architect
8 22 (7.33%) Data Engineer
9 16 (5.33%) Cloud Engineer
10 15 (5.00%) AWS Solution Architect
11 14 (4.67%) Consultant
11 14 (4.67%) Java Developer
12 12 (4.00%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (3.67%) Lead
13 11 (3.67%) Python Developer
14 10 (3.33%) Android Developer
14 10 (3.33%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 10 (3.33%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (3.33%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (24.00%) Kafka
2 44 (14.67%) REST
3 40 (13.33%) gRPC
4 32 (10.67%) RESTful
5 27 (9.00%) Node.js
5 27 (9.00%) React
5 27 (9.00%) Spring
5 27 (9.00%) Spring Boot
6 24 (8.00%) AngularJS
7 23 (7.67%) Web Services
8 22 (7.33%) LangChain
9 17 (5.67%) PyTorch
10 16 (5.33%) .NET
10 16 (5.33%) Hugging Face
10 16 (5.33%) TensorFlow
11 15 (5.00%) Android Jetpack
11 15 (5.00%) Jetpack Compose
11 15 (5.00%) OpenTelemetry
12 12 (4.00%) Django
12 12 (4.00%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 59 (19.67%) Distributed Systems
2 47 (15.67%) Cloud Native
3 20 (6.67%) Product Ownership
4 15 (5.00%) AI Agents
5 10 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (2.67%) Low-Code
6 8 (2.67%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.33%) Legacy Code
7 7 (2.33%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.33%) Virtual Team
8 6 (2.00%) Data Centre
9 5 (1.67%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.33%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.33%) Security Posture
10 4 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.00%) Clustering
11 3 (1.00%) Distributed Computing
11 3 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 46 (15.33%) Linux
2 17 (5.67%) Android
3 6 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.33%) Debian
4 4 (1.33%) Rocky
4 4 (1.33%) Ubuntu
4 4 (1.33%) Unix
4 4 (1.33%) Windows
5 3 (1.00%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.67%) VMS
6 2 (0.67%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (32.00%) CI/CD
2 83 (27.67%) Microservices
3 82 (27.33%) AI
4 80 (26.67%) Software Engineering
5 74 (24.67%) Agile
6 66 (22.00%) DevOps
7 61 (20.33%) Containerisation
8 58 (19.33%) LLM
9 50 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
10 45 (15.00%) Machine Learning
11 44 (14.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 43 (14.33%) Observability
13 42 (14.00%) Generative AI
14 40 (13.33%) Data Pipeline
15 37 (12.33%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 36 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
17 31 (10.33%) Event-Driven
18 28 (9.33%) Continuous Integration
18 28 (9.33%) TDD
19 27 (9.00%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 129 (43.00%) Python
2 55 (18.33%) Java
3 51 (17.00%) Go
4 44 (14.67%) SQL
5 20 (6.67%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.33%) Bash
7 18 (6.00%) TypeScript
8 17 (5.67%) C#
9 16 (5.33%) Kotlin
10 6 (2.00%) PL/SQL
10 6 (2.00%) PowerShell
10 6 (2.00%) Ruby
10 6 (2.00%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.00%) C++
11 3 (1.00%) Scala
12 2 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.33%) Bicep
13 1 (0.33%) Groovy
13 1 (0.33%) Objective-C
13 1 (0.33%) Swift
Qualifications
1 86 (28.67%) Security Cleared
2 68 (22.67%) SC Cleared
3 26 (8.67%) Degree
4 12 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (3.00%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.00%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.67%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.00%) CISM
8 3 (1.00%) CISSP
8 3 (1.00%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.00%) PhD
9 1 (0.33%) CEH
9 1 (0.33%) GCIA
9 1 (0.33%) GIAC
9 1 (0.33%) ISEB
9 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.33%) MPhil
9 1 (0.33%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.67%) QA
2 10 (3.33%) Accessibility
2 10 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.33%) NIST
3 4 (1.33%) WCAG
4 3 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.67%) GRC
6 1 (0.33%) GDPR
6 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.33%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
System Software
1 103 (34.33%) Docker
2 9 (3.00%) Active Directory
2 9 (3.00%) Postfix
3 5 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.33%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (1.00%) Ceph
6 2 (0.67%) ISA Server
6 2 (0.67%) Oracle Clusterware
6 2 (0.67%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.33%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.33%) KVM
7 1 (0.33%) Squid
7 1 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 97 (32.33%) Kubernetes
2 41 (13.67%) Terraform
3 34 (11.33%) Grafana
4 28 (9.33%) Prometheus
5 17 (5.67%) Ansible
6 10 (3.33%) Istio
7 6 (2.00%) Argo
8 4 (1.33%) Data Guard
8 4 (1.33%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (1.33%) Puppet
8 4 (1.33%) Salt
9 2 (0.67%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.67%) Rancher
9 2 (0.67%) WMI
10 1 (0.33%) CASB
10 1 (0.33%) Control-M
10 1 (0.33%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.33%) Knative
10 1 (0.33%) MOM
10 1 (0.33%) QRadar
Vendors
1 30 (10.00%) OpenAI
2 29 (9.67%) Google
3 22 (7.33%) Microsoft
4 18 (6.00%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.33%) Splunk
6 12 (4.00%) Oracle
7 11 (3.67%) Atlassian
7 11 (3.67%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (2.67%) Automation Anywhere
8 8 (2.67%) UiPath
9 7 (2.33%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.67%) Black Duck
10 5 (1.67%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.67%) Denodo
10 5 (1.67%) Informatica
11 4 (1.33%) Fortinet
11 4 (1.33%) IBM
11 4 (1.33%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.33%) VMware
12 3 (1.00%) Databricks