Open Source Contracts

Open Source
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Open Source skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Open Source over the 6 months leading up to 6 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 226 297 258
Rank change year-on-year +71 -39 -26
Contract jobs citing Open Source 362 318 561
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.14% 0.73% 0.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.25% 0.86% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 206 351
10th Percentile £395 £359 £425
25th Percentile £446 £450 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £570 £600
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% -5.00% +4.35%
75th Percentile £605 £675 £700
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £599 £575
% change year-on-year -19.83% +4.13% +9.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 11 1
Median hourly rate - £21.86 £90.00
Median % change year-on-year - -75.71% +44.00%
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £20.24 -

All Process and 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 28,883 36,949 50,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.68% 85.32% 89.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,181 23,576 35,000
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +0.92%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,432 2,509 1,726
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £12.28
25th Percentile £17.42 £16.12 £16.85
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £38.18
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% -1.77% +46.83%
75th Percentile £53.75 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £75.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £38.12 £35.00
% change year-on-year -35.31% +8.91% +66.67%

Open Source
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Open Source as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Open Source.

Daily rate trend for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Open Source over the 6 months to 6 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Open Source.

Hourly rate trend for Open Source in the UK

Open Source
Top 16 Contract 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 July 2025. 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 +65 300 £550 -3.08% 694
London +87 183 £600 +20.00% 443
Work from Home +88 156 £575 +21.05% 421
UK excluding London +26 126 £480 -19.83% 293
Scotland +42 37 £500 -15.25% 27
North of England +4 32 £465 +12.73% 89
South East +22 23 £500 -6.98% 65
Midlands +26 17 £500 -8.09% 15
North West +6 17 £470 +17.50% 58
Yorkshire +3 10 £493 -17.83% 25
West Midlands +13 9 £500 -9.09% 9
East Midlands +8 8 £420 +16.67% 6
East of England +25 7 £361 -47.05% 63
Wales +10 7 £331 -66.88% 6
South West -8 6 £410 -36.92% 25
North East - 5 £465 - 6

Open Source
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 28 (7.73%) Apache Spark
2 23 (6.35%) Apache
3 19 (5.25%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (2.76%) OpenStack
5 8 (2.21%) Confluence
6 4 (1.10%) Camunda
7 3 (0.83%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.83%) Oracle Spatial
7 3 (0.83%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.55%) CMS
8 2 (0.55%) Drupal
8 2 (0.55%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.55%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.28%) Cloud Foundry
9 1 (0.28%) JBoss
9 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.28%) nginx
9 1 (0.28%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 4 (1.10%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.55%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (0.83%) Magento
2 3 (0.83%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 188 (51.93%) AWS
2 63 (17.40%) Azure
3 37 (10.22%) Serverless
4 36 (9.94%) AWS Lambda
5 33 (9.12%) Amazon S3
6 30 (8.29%) GCP
7 27 (7.46%) OpenShift
8 26 (7.18%) Amazon EKS
9 21 (5.80%) dbt
10 20 (5.52%) GitHub
11 19 (5.25%) Amazon ECS
12 18 (4.97%) AWS CloudFormation
13 11 (3.04%) Azure DevOps
14 10 (2.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 10 (2.76%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (2.76%) Amazon SQS
14 10 (2.76%) Entra ID
15 9 (2.49%) AWS KMS
16 8 (2.21%) Power Platform
16 8 (2.21%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.93%) HTTPS
2 6 (1.66%) DNS
3 5 (1.38%) TCP/IP
4 4 (1.10%) HTTP
5 3 (0.83%) Bluetooth
5 3 (0.83%) DHCP
5 3 (0.83%) VPN
5 3 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (0.83%) Wireless
6 2 (0.55%) Firewall
6 2 (0.55%) MQTT
6 2 (0.55%) Network Security
6 2 (0.55%) VSAN
7 1 (0.28%) 4G
7 1 (0.28%) 5G
7 1 (0.28%) InfiniBand
7 1 (0.28%) LTE
7 1 (0.28%) Multicast
7 1 (0.28%) NAS
7 1 (0.28%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (15.47%) Relational Database
2 52 (14.36%) Apache Cassandra
3 51 (14.09%) MongoDB
4 40 (11.05%) DB2
5 37 (10.22%) PostgreSQL
6 32 (8.84%) Amazon RDS
7 22 (6.08%) Big Data
8 18 (4.97%) NoSQL
9 16 (4.42%) Apache Iceberg
10 14 (3.87%) Amazon Athena
10 14 (3.87%) Apache Arrow
10 14 (3.87%) Apache Ignite
10 14 (3.87%) Dremio
10 14 (3.87%) Hadoop
11 13 (3.59%) DynamoDB
12 11 (3.04%) RDBMS
13 10 (2.76%) MySQL
14 9 (2.49%) Amazon Aurora
14 9 (2.49%) Data Lake
14 9 (2.49%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 58 (16.02%) JUnit
2 48 (13.26%) Jenkins
3 46 (12.71%) Git
4 23 (6.35%) SonarQube
5 22 (6.08%) Artifactory
6 20 (5.52%) Maven
7 16 (4.42%) Selenium
8 13 (3.59%) GitLab
9 11 (3.04%) JIRA
10 8 (2.21%) Bitbucket Server
10 8 (2.21%) DbUnit
10 8 (2.21%) jMock
10 8 (2.21%) Mockito
11 7 (1.93%) gulp
11 7 (1.93%) HP UFT
11 7 (1.93%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (1.66%) Cypress.io
13 5 (1.38%) Postman
13 5 (1.38%) REST Assured
14 4 (1.10%) TestComplete
General
1 106 (29.28%) Social Skills
2 88 (24.31%) Finance
3 77 (21.27%) Analytical Skills
4 50 (13.81%) Public Sector
5 45 (12.43%) Banking
6 39 (10.77%) Front Office
7 36 (9.94%) Investment Banking
8 13 (3.59%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.83%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.83%) French Language
10 3 (0.83%) Publishing
11 2 (0.55%) Digital Health
11 2 (0.55%) Games
11 2 (0.55%) Military
11 2 (0.55%) Retail
11 2 (0.55%) Spanish Language
12 1 (0.28%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.28%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 122 (33.70%) Developer
2 66 (18.23%) Architect
3 61 (16.85%) Senior
4 58 (16.02%) Java Developer
5 32 (8.84%) Lead
6 28 (7.73%) Investment Banking Java Developer
6 28 (7.73%) SQL Developer
7 26 (7.18%) AWS Architect
7 26 (7.18%) Data Engineer
7 26 (7.18%) Senior Developer
8 23 (6.35%) Python Engineer
9 20 (5.52%) AWS Engineer
10 18 (4.97%) AWS DevOps
11 17 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
11 17 (4.70%) Senior Java Developer
12 16 (4.42%) Platform Engineer
13 15 (4.14%) Analyst
13 15 (4.14%) Linux Developer
13 15 (4.14%) Senior Investment Banking Java Developer
13 15 (4.14%) Senior SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (40.33%) Kafka
2 67 (18.51%) Spring
3 53 (14.64%) gRPC
4 43 (11.88%) JMS
5 28 (7.73%) REST
6 27 (7.46%) AngularJS
6 27 (7.46%) React
7 25 (6.91%) Node.js
8 23 (6.35%) Spring Boot
9 22 (6.08%) Hibernate
10 21 (5.80%) PySpark
11 18 (4.97%) J2EE
12 16 (4.42%) RESTful
12 16 (4.42%) SOAP
13 14 (3.87%) PyTorch
13 14 (3.87%) TensorFlow
14 13 (3.59%) Web Services
15 12 (3.31%) OAuth
16 11 (3.04%) OpenID
16 11 (3.04%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 65 (17.96%) Distributed Systems
2 48 (13.26%) Data Structures
3 42 (11.60%) Equities
4 17 (4.70%) Cloud Native
5 10 (2.76%) Public Cloud
6 9 (2.49%) PKI
7 8 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (1.93%) Data Centre
8 7 (1.93%) NHS
8 7 (1.93%) Private Cloud
8 7 (1.93%) Taxonomies
8 7 (1.93%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.38%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.38%) Embedded Systems
10 4 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.10%) Derivative
10 4 (1.10%) Equity Derivative
10 4 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (1.10%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 90 (24.86%) Linux
2 23 (6.35%) Windows
3 12 (3.31%) Unix
4 7 (1.93%) Ubuntu
4 7 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.10%) Android
6 1 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
6 1 (0.28%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (33.70%) Agile
2 105 (29.01%) Software Engineering
3 94 (25.97%) Problem-Solving
4 81 (22.38%) Microservices
5 78 (21.55%) DevOps
6 63 (17.40%) CI/CD
7 57 (15.75%) Containerisation
8 49 (13.54%) Mentoring
9 44 (12.15%) SDLC
10 40 (11.05%) Performance Tuning
11 39 (10.77%) Database Tuning
11 39 (10.77%) Test Automation
12 38 (10.50%) Multithreading
13 33 (9.12%) High Availability
14 31 (8.56%) Stakeholder Management
15 30 (8.29%) Infrastructure as Code
16 29 (8.01%) Artificial Intelligence
17 25 (6.91%) Machine Learning
18 24 (6.63%) Data Engineering
19 23 (6.35%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 147 (40.61%) Python
2 131 (36.19%) Java
3 83 (22.93%) SQL
4 75 (20.72%) Go
5 50 (13.81%) JavaScript
6 45 (12.43%) Shell Script
7 25 (6.91%) TypeScript
8 18 (4.97%) C#
9 12 (3.31%) PowerShell
10 10 (2.76%) Bash
11 8 (2.21%) Scala
12 7 (1.93%) C++
13 5 (1.38%) Kotlin
13 5 (1.38%) PHP
14 4 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.83%) C
15 3 (0.83%) Magik
15 3 (0.83%) Perl
15 3 (0.83%) R
15 3 (0.83%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 66 (18.23%) Security Cleared
2 51 (14.09%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.63%) Degree
4 21 (5.80%) AWS Certification
5 20 (5.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 12 (3.31%) DV Cleared
7 10 (2.76%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.10%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (1.10%) PhD
9 3 (0.83%) CISSP
9 3 (0.83%) GCIH
10 2 (0.55%) CASP
10 2 (0.55%) CITP
10 2 (0.55%) CompTIA CySA+
10 2 (0.55%) GCIA
10 2 (0.55%) MCP
11 1 (0.28%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.28%) SANS
11 1 (0.28%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.49%) GDPR
2 5 (1.38%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.10%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.83%) Disclosure Scotland
4 3 (0.83%) NCSC
4 3 (0.83%) NIST
4 3 (0.83%) QA
5 2 (0.55%) HIPAA
5 2 (0.55%) HL7
5 2 (0.55%) NIST 800
5 2 (0.55%) WCAG
6 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 102 (28.18%) Docker
2 8 (2.21%) Postfix
3 7 (1.93%) vSphere
4 6 (1.66%) Active Directory
5 4 (1.10%) OpenAM
6 3 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.55%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.28%) Ceph
8 1 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 136 (37.57%) Kubernetes
2 59 (16.30%) Terraform
3 29 (8.01%) Ansible
4 19 (5.25%) Prometheus
5 17 (4.70%) Grafana
6 13 (3.59%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (1.38%) Puppet
8 4 (1.10%) Progress Chef
8 4 (1.10%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
9 2 (0.55%) Kibana
9 2 (0.55%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.55%) logstash
10 1 (0.28%) Argo
10 1 (0.28%) Nagios
10 1 (0.28%) Packer
10 1 (0.28%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.28%) yum
Vendors
1 40 (11.05%) Sybase
2 32 (8.84%) Microsoft
3 28 (7.73%) Google
4 16 (4.42%) Databricks
5 8 (2.21%) Atlassian
5 8 (2.21%) ForgeRock
5 8 (2.21%) Jaspersoft
6 7 (1.93%) Oracle
6 7 (1.93%) Ping Identity
7 6 (1.66%) Red Hat
8 5 (1.38%) Informatica
8 5 (1.38%) OpenAI
9 4 (1.10%) ArcSight
9 4 (1.10%) BiZZdesign
9 4 (1.10%) Bloomberg
9 4 (1.10%) Reuters
9 4 (1.10%) Sparx
9 4 (1.10%) VMware
10 3 (0.83%) Cloudera
10 3 (0.83%) ESRI