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 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 418 255 314
Rank change year-on-year -163 +59 -50
Contract jobs citing Open Source 259 347 268
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.06% 0.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.17% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 142 172 143
10th Percentile £413 £364 £350
25th Percentile £458 £434 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -0.24% +0.96% -13.33%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £624
90th Percentile £755 £714 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.65% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 14
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile £13.09 £51.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.67 £56.50 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year -22.71% +120.02% +20.85%
75th Percentile £78.25 £61.25 £27.72
90th Percentile £82.00 - £27.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.34 - £25.36

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 45,698 29,594 32,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.53% 85.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,784 18,388 20,318
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £726 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,048 1,782 1,485
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £66.95 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.22% -47.67% +7.50%

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 14 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Open Source over the 6 months to 14 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

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 14 September 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 -196 184 £550 +2.37% 1,331
UK excluding London -112 103 £513 +2.65% 466
Work from Home -101 100 £500 -9.09% 1,917
London -154 93 £599 -0.21% 975
North of England -81 32 £475 -2.76% 94
South West -27 24 £550 +15.79% 45
Scotland -38 17 £524 +4.75% 78
Yorkshire -34 14 £497 -5.29% 25
East of England -20 11 £552 - 96
West Midlands -42 11 £450 -10.10% 24
Midlands -44 11 £450 -10.10% 34
South East -64 11 £405 -29.34% 85
North West -62 10 £638 +31.85% 53
North East -35 8 £425 -8.60% 16

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 14 (5.41%) Confluence
2 10 (3.86%) Apache
3 9 (3.47%) SharePoint
4 7 (2.70%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (2.32%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.32%) SAS
6 4 (1.54%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.39%) CMS
7 1 (0.39%) Drupal
7 1 (0.39%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.39%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.39%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.77%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.39%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 114 (44.02%) AWS
2 66 (25.48%) Azure
3 51 (19.69%) GCP
4 44 (16.99%) GitHub
5 25 (9.65%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (8.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 21 (8.11%) Amazon S3
7 18 (6.95%) Serverless
8 14 (5.41%) Amazon EKS
8 14 (5.41%) Vertex AI
9 13 (5.02%) IaaS
10 11 (4.25%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (4.25%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (3.47%) Google Gemini
12 8 (3.09%) Amazon Bedrock
12 8 (3.09%) Anthropic Claude
13 7 (2.70%) Amazon SQS
13 7 (2.70%) Azure Monitor
13 7 (2.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 7 (2.70%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.70%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.32%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.32%) SNMP
3 5 (1.93%) DNS
4 4 (1.54%) Network Security
4 4 (1.54%) SSH
4 4 (1.54%) SSL
5 3 (1.16%) Firewall
6 2 (0.77%) 4G
6 2 (0.77%) Broadband
6 2 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.77%) HTTP
6 2 (0.77%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.77%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (0.39%) Asterisk PBX
7 1 (0.39%) Internet
7 1 (0.39%) MQTT
7 1 (0.39%) VoIP
7 1 (0.39%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.49%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (5.79%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (5.02%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.63%) DynamoDB
5 8 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (3.09%) BigQuery
5 8 (3.09%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (2.70%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (2.70%) Amazon QuickSight
6 7 (2.70%) Big Data
6 7 (2.70%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.70%) Relational Database
7 6 (2.32%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (2.32%) Apache Iceberg
7 6 (2.32%) Trino
8 5 (1.93%) BusinessObjects
8 5 (1.93%) Pentaho
8 5 (1.93%) Power BI
8 5 (1.93%) Redis
9 3 (1.16%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 56 (21.62%) Git
2 25 (9.65%) Jenkins
3 22 (8.49%) GitLab
4 15 (5.79%) JIRA
5 14 (5.41%) JUnit
6 12 (4.63%) SonarQube
7 8 (3.09%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (2.32%) Bitbucket Server
8 6 (2.32%) Cucumber
8 6 (2.32%) DbUnit
8 6 (2.32%) IntelliJ
8 6 (2.32%) JMeter
8 6 (2.32%) jMock
8 6 (2.32%) Maven
8 6 (2.32%) Mockito
9 4 (1.54%) Cypress.io
10 3 (1.16%) MLflow
10 3 (1.16%) Postman
10 3 (1.16%) ScalaTest
10 3 (1.16%) Selenium
General
1 69 (26.64%) Social Skills
2 40 (15.44%) Finance
3 39 (15.06%) Public Sector
4 17 (6.56%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (5.79%) Banking
6 12 (4.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (4.25%) Legal
8 10 (3.86%) Law
9 6 (2.32%) Military
9 6 (2.32%) Retail
10 5 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.16%) Front Office
12 3 (1.16%) Publishing
13 2 (0.77%) Police
13 2 (0.77%) Polish Language
13 2 (0.77%) Public Speaking
14 1 (0.39%) Games
14 1 (0.39%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 53 (20.46%) Senior
2 48 (18.53%) Developer
3 43 (16.60%) Architect
4 23 (8.88%) Solutions Architect
5 22 (8.49%) AWS Architect
6 18 (6.95%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 16 (6.18%) AWS Solution Architect
7 16 (6.18%) Senior Developer
8 15 (5.79%) Analyst
8 15 (5.79%) Software Engineer
9 13 (5.02%) Software Developer
10 12 (4.63%) Consultant
10 12 (4.63%) Data Engineer
10 12 (4.63%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 11 (4.25%) Cloud Engineer
11 11 (4.25%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 11 (4.25%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 10 (3.86%) Platform Engineer
13 9 (3.47%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (20.08%) Terraform
2 38 (14.67%) Kafka
3 31 (11.97%) REST
4 14 (5.41%) RESTful
4 14 (5.41%) Spring
4 14 (5.41%) Spring Boot
5 13 (5.02%) LangChain
5 13 (5.02%) React
6 12 (4.63%) Node.js
6 12 (4.63%) PyTorch
7 11 (4.25%) LangGraph
7 11 (4.25%) SOAP
8 10 (3.86%) eBPF
8 10 (3.86%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (3.86%) TensorFlow
9 8 (3.09%) Android Jetpack
9 8 (3.09%) AngularJS
9 8 (3.09%) Jetpack Compose
9 8 (3.09%) Play Framework
9 8 (3.09%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 46 (17.76%) Cloud Native
2 24 (9.27%) Distributed Systems
3 22 (8.49%) AI Agents
4 20 (7.72%) Cyber Threat
5 13 (5.02%) Private Cloud
6 11 (4.25%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (4.25%) Product Ownership
7 10 (3.86%) Management Information System
8 9 (3.47%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (3.47%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (3.09%) Blog
10 7 (2.70%) Data Structures
10 7 (2.70%) Mobile App
10 7 (2.70%) Security Posture
11 6 (2.32%) Legacy Applications
11 6 (2.32%) LIMS
11 6 (2.32%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.93%) Distributed Architecture
12 5 (1.93%) Replication
12 5 (1.93%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 62 (23.94%) Linux
2 19 (7.34%) Unix
3 13 (5.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.86%) Windows
5 9 (3.47%) Android
6 3 (1.16%) Debian
6 3 (1.16%) Rocky
6 3 (1.16%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.77%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (42.08%) CI/CD
2 72 (27.80%) Agile
3 66 (25.48%) Software Engineering
4 63 (24.32%) AI
5 62 (23.94%) DevOps
6 52 (20.08%) Infrastructure as Code
6 52 (20.08%) Observability
7 44 (16.99%) Containerisation
8 42 (16.22%) Test Automation
9 40 (15.44%) Microservices
10 36 (13.90%) Event-Driven
11 34 (13.13%) LLM
11 34 (13.13%) Stakeholder Management
12 30 (11.58%) Cybersecurity
12 30 (11.58%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 29 (11.20%) Platform Engineering
13 29 (11.20%) Problem-Solving
14 28 (10.81%) Data Pipeline
14 28 (10.81%) Machine Learning
15 27 (10.42%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 105 (40.54%) Python
2 46 (17.76%) Java
3 32 (12.36%) SQL
4 21 (8.11%) Bash
5 18 (6.95%) Go
6 15 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 14 (5.41%) TypeScript
8 13 (5.02%) C++
9 12 (4.63%) Perl
9 12 (4.63%) Scala
10 11 (4.25%) C
11 9 (3.47%) Kotlin
12 6 (2.32%) MUMPS
12 6 (2.32%) Shell Script
13 3 (1.16%) C#
13 3 (1.16%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.77%) Rust
15 1 (0.39%) Bicep
15 1 (0.39%) Objective-C
15 1 (0.39%) Swift
Qualifications
1 99 (38.22%) Security Cleared
2 72 (27.80%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.11%) Degree
4 18 (6.95%) DV Cleared
5 12 (4.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.47%) CISSP
7 8 (3.09%) CISM
8 5 (1.93%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.16%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.16%) 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%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.77%) GIAC
11 2 (0.77%) GSEC
11 2 (0.77%) LFCS
11 2 (0.77%) OSCP
11 2 (0.77%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.18%) Accessibility
2 13 (5.02%) QA
3 7 (2.70%) GDPR
3 7 (2.70%) WCAG
4 4 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.16%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.16%) GRC
6 2 (0.77%) NIST
7 1 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.39%) NCSC
System Software
1 59 (22.78%) Docker
2 11 (4.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.93%) Postfix
4 4 (1.54%) Ceph
4 4 (1.54%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.54%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.77%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.77%) Firmware
5 2 (0.77%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 67 (25.87%) Kubernetes
2 37 (14.29%) Grafana
3 32 (12.36%) Ansible
4 28 (10.81%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.25%) Puppet
6 9 (3.47%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.54%) Cilium
7 4 (1.54%) Istio
7 4 (1.54%) Salt
8 2 (0.77%) Control-M
8 2 (0.77%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.77%) Kibana
8 2 (0.77%) linkerd
9 1 (0.39%) Argo
9 1 (0.39%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.39%) QRadar
9 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.39%) systemd
9 1 (0.39%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 28 (10.81%) Google
2 21 (8.11%) Splunk
3 20 (7.72%) Microsoft
4 16 (6.18%) Dynatrace
5 15 (5.79%) OpenAI
6 12 (4.63%) Oracle
6 12 (4.63%) SaltStack
7 11 (4.25%) VMware
8 10 (3.86%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.70%) Cribl.io
10 6 (2.32%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.32%) Checkmarx
10 6 (2.32%) Databricks
10 6 (2.32%) Informatica
10 6 (2.32%) InterSystems
10 6 (2.32%) Jaspersoft
11 5 (1.93%) Denodo
12 4 (1.54%) Black Duck
12 4 (1.54%) IBM
13 3 (1.16%) Mistral