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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 363 225 293
Rank change year-on-year -138 +68 -38
Contract jobs citing Open Source 294 344 319
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 1.18% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.30% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 207 212
10th Percentile £400 £400 £356
25th Percentile £480 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £570
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -5.79% -5.00%
75th Percentile £650 £625 £675
90th Percentile £801 £806 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £478 £585
% change year-on-year +7.33% -18.38% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 13
10th Percentile - - £20.34
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 - - £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 41,843 26,418 36,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.98% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,135 16,804 23,539
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,505 1,141 2,540
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.78 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.03% -34.02% +8.91%

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 6 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 6 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 -146 227 £550 -2.22% 291
London -123 119 £600 - 186
UK excluding London -107 110 £513 +7.33% 122
Work from Home -90 105 £550 -4.35% 120
North of England -79 23 £500 +7.82% 24
West Midlands -48 20 £475 -5.00% 7
Midlands -53 20 £475 -5.00% 10
Scotland -23 19 £675 +28.57% 7
South West -12 18 £550 +11.68% 21
South East -64 18 £430 -14.10% 28
East of England -20 13 £550 +52.49% 19
North West -47 11 £415 -10.27% 17
Yorkshire -59 11 £506 - 6

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 (5.78%) Confluence
2 8 (2.72%) Apache
2 8 (2.72%) Appian
2 8 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.70%) SAS
4 4 (1.36%) nginx
4 4 (1.36%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.02%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.68%) Liferay
6 2 (0.68%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.34%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.34%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 144 (48.98%) AWS
2 83 (28.23%) Azure
3 45 (15.31%) GCP
4 41 (13.95%) GitHub
5 33 (11.22%) Amazon S3
6 26 (8.84%) Serverless
7 25 (8.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 22 (7.48%) Amazon EC2
9 20 (6.80%) Azure AI
10 19 (6.46%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (5.78%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (4.42%) Google Gemini
12 13 (4.42%) Route 53
13 12 (4.08%) Amazon SQS
13 12 (4.08%) Anthropic Claude
14 11 (3.74%) AWS KMS
14 11 (3.74%) Vertex AI
15 10 (3.40%) Azure Cognitive Services
16 9 (3.06%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.40%) Firewall
2 7 (2.38%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (2.04%) SNMP
4 5 (1.70%) DNS
4 5 (1.70%) WAN
5 3 (1.02%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.02%) Network Security
6 2 (0.68%) DHCP
6 2 (0.68%) NaaS
7 1 (0.34%) 5G
7 1 (0.34%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.34%) LTE
7 1 (0.34%) MQTT
7 1 (0.34%) NAS
7 1 (0.34%) NGFW
7 1 (0.34%) SAN
7 1 (0.34%) SSH
7 1 (0.34%) SSL
7 1 (0.34%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.34%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (14.97%) PostgreSQL
2 34 (11.56%) Apache Cassandra
3 20 (6.80%) Amazon RDS
4 18 (6.12%) DynamoDB
5 15 (5.10%) BigQuery
6 13 (4.42%) MongoDB
7 11 (3.74%) Amazon Aurora
7 11 (3.74%) Pinecone
7 11 (3.74%) SQL Server
8 9 (3.06%) Amazon Athena
8 9 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
9 8 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (2.72%) NoSQL
10 7 (2.38%) Amazon QuickSight
11 6 (2.04%) Data Lake
11 6 (2.04%) Metadata
11 6 (2.04%) Relational Database
12 5 (1.70%) Big Data
12 5 (1.70%) Power BI
12 5 (1.70%) Redis
Development Applications
1 60 (20.41%) Git
2 33 (11.22%) GitLab
3 26 (8.84%) JUnit
4 25 (8.50%) Jenkins
5 18 (6.12%) JIRA
5 18 (6.12%) SonarQube
6 14 (4.76%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (3.74%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (3.74%) DbUnit
7 11 (3.74%) jMock
7 11 (3.74%) Maven
7 11 (3.74%) MLflow
7 11 (3.74%) Mockito
8 8 (2.72%) CircleCI
8 8 (2.72%) Gradle
8 8 (2.72%) IntelliJ
9 5 (1.70%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.36%) PowerDesigner
11 2 (0.68%) JMeter
11 2 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
General
1 63 (21.43%) Social Skills
2 62 (21.09%) Finance
3 44 (14.97%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.48%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.14%) Banking
5 21 (7.14%) Legal
6 11 (3.74%) Law
7 8 (2.72%) Retail
8 6 (2.04%) Front Office
8 6 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (2.04%) Military
9 5 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.02%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.68%) Billing
11 2 (0.68%) Marketing
11 2 (0.68%) Police
11 2 (0.68%) Publishing
12 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 75 (25.51%) Developer
2 58 (19.73%) Architect
3 55 (18.71%) Senior
4 32 (10.88%) Senior Developer
5 31 (10.54%) Solutions Architect
6 27 (9.18%) Software Engineer
7 26 (8.84%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 23 (7.82%) AWS Architect
9 22 (7.48%) Data Engineer
10 16 (5.44%) AWS Solution Architect
10 16 (5.44%) Cloud Engineer
11 14 (4.76%) Consultant
11 14 (4.76%) Java Developer
12 12 (4.08%) Lead
12 12 (4.08%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (3.74%) Python Developer
14 10 (3.40%) Android Developer
14 10 (3.40%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (3.40%) Cloud Architect
14 10 (3.40%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (23.47%) Kafka
2 45 (15.31%) REST
3 35 (11.90%) gRPC
4 31 (10.54%) RESTful
5 26 (8.84%) React
6 25 (8.50%) Spring
6 25 (8.50%) Spring Boot
7 24 (8.16%) Node.js
8 22 (7.48%) AngularJS
8 22 (7.48%) Web Services
9 21 (7.14%) LangChain
10 16 (5.44%) .NET
10 16 (5.44%) Android Jetpack
10 16 (5.44%) Hugging Face
10 16 (5.44%) Jetpack Compose
10 16 (5.44%) PyTorch
10 16 (5.44%) TensorFlow
11 15 (5.10%) OpenTelemetry
12 12 (4.08%) Django
12 12 (4.08%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 56 (19.05%) Distributed Systems
2 47 (15.99%) Cloud Native
3 17 (5.78%) Product Ownership
4 15 (5.10%) AI Agents
5 10 (3.40%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (3.06%) Mobile App
7 8 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (2.72%) Low-Code
7 8 (2.72%) Virtual Team
8 7 (2.38%) Legacy Code
8 7 (2.38%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.04%) Data Centre
10 5 (1.70%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.70%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.02%) Clustering
11 3 (1.02%) Fixed Income
11 3 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 46 (15.65%) Linux
2 18 (6.12%) Android
3 6 (2.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.36%) Debian
4 4 (1.36%) Rocky
4 4 (1.36%) Ubuntu
4 4 (1.36%) Unix
4 4 (1.36%) Windows
5 3 (1.02%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.68%) VMS
6 2 (0.68%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (32.65%) CI/CD
2 82 (27.89%) AI
3 77 (26.19%) Microservices
4 74 (25.17%) Software Engineering
5 71 (24.15%) Agile
6 66 (22.45%) DevOps
7 61 (20.75%) Containerisation
8 56 (19.05%) LLM
9 50 (17.01%) Stakeholder Management
10 44 (14.97%) Infrastructure as Code
10 44 (14.97%) Machine Learning
11 42 (14.29%) Generative AI
12 41 (13.95%) Observability
13 39 (13.27%) Data Pipeline
14 36 (12.24%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
15 33 (11.22%) Problem-Solving
16 31 (10.54%) Event-Driven
17 27 (9.18%) Event-Driven Architecture
18 26 (8.84%) Continuous Integration
18 26 (8.84%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 125 (42.52%) Python
2 51 (17.35%) Java
3 46 (15.65%) Go
4 43 (14.63%) SQL
5 20 (6.80%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.46%) Bash
7 17 (5.78%) C#
7 17 (5.78%) Kotlin
7 17 (5.78%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.04%) PL/SQL
8 6 (2.04%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.70%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.02%) C++
10 3 (1.02%) Ruby
10 3 (1.02%) Scala
11 2 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.34%) Bicep
12 1 (0.34%) Groovy
12 1 (0.34%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.34%) Swift
Qualifications
1 85 (28.91%) Security Cleared
2 68 (23.13%) SC Cleared
3 28 (9.52%) Degree
4 13 (4.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (3.06%) DV Cleared
7 7 (2.38%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.70%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.02%) CISM
10 3 (1.02%) CISSP
10 3 (1.02%) Master's Degree
10 3 (1.02%) PhD
11 2 (0.68%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 1 (0.34%) CEH
12 1 (0.34%) GCIA
12 1 (0.34%) GIAC
12 1 (0.34%) ISEB
12 1 (0.34%) MPhil
12 1 (0.34%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.44%) QA
2 10 (3.40%) Accessibility
2 10 (3.40%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.36%) NIST
3 4 (1.36%) WCAG
4 3 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.68%) GRC
6 1 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.34%) GDPR
6 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.34%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 99 (33.67%) Docker
2 9 (3.06%) Active Directory
2 9 (3.06%) Postfix
3 5 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.36%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (1.02%) Ceph
6 2 (0.68%) Oracle Clusterware
6 2 (0.68%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.34%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.34%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.34%) KVM
7 1 (0.34%) Squid
7 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 92 (31.29%) Kubernetes
2 41 (13.95%) Terraform
3 33 (11.22%) Grafana
4 28 (9.52%) Prometheus
5 18 (6.12%) Ansible
6 10 (3.40%) Istio
7 6 (2.04%) Argo
8 4 (1.36%) Data Guard
8 4 (1.36%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (1.36%) Puppet
8 4 (1.36%) Salt
9 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.68%) Rancher
9 2 (0.68%) WMI
10 1 (0.34%) CASB
10 1 (0.34%) Control-M
10 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.34%) MOM
10 1 (0.34%) QRadar
Vendors
1 29 (9.86%) OpenAI
2 28 (9.52%) Google
3 23 (7.82%) Microsoft
4 18 (6.12%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.42%) Oracle
6 12 (4.08%) Splunk
7 11 (3.74%) Atlassian
7 11 (3.74%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (2.72%) Automation Anywhere
8 8 (2.72%) UiPath
9 7 (2.38%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.70%) Black Duck
10 5 (1.70%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.70%) Denodo
10 5 (1.70%) Informatica
11 4 (1.36%) Fortinet
11 4 (1.36%) IBM
11 4 (1.36%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.36%) VMware
12 3 (1.02%) Sonatype