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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 420 256 314
Rank change year-on-year -164 +58 -54
Contract jobs citing Open Source 262 351 268
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.06% 0.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.18% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 144 173 145
10th Percentile £413 £363 £350
25th Percentile £458 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -12.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £630
90th Percentile £755 £695 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £493 £511
% change year-on-year +4.11% -3.45% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 14
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile £13.09 £51.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £74.00 £56.50 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +30.97% +120.02% +20.85%
75th Percentile £79.00 £61.25 £27.72
90th Percentile £82.60 - £27.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.67 - £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 46,152 29,871 33,024
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.49% 85.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,085 18,553 20,430
10th Percentile £325 £300 £311
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 £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 3,056 1,793 1,507
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.70
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% +1.92%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.78 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.58 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.32% -47.50% +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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -207 186 £550 +2.42% 729
UK excluding London -119 103 £513 +4.11% 242
Work from Home -100 100 £500 -9.09% 1,606
London -145 95 £599 -0.21% 555
North of England -82 31 £475 -1.55% 43
South West -23 24 £550 +15.79% 29
Scotland -41 17 £524 +4.75% 53
Yorkshire -45 14 £497 -5.29% 15
East of England -10 12 £552 - 43
West Midlands -44 12 £459 -8.20% 9
Midlands -46 12 £459 -8.20% 11
South East -69 10 £405 -29.34% 51
North West -59 9 £638 +35.64% 20
North East -41 8 £425 -8.60% 8

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 15 (5.73%) Confluence
2 11 (4.20%) Apache
3 9 (3.44%) SharePoint
4 7 (2.67%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.67%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.29%) SAS
6 4 (1.53%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.38%) CMS
7 1 (0.38%) Drupal
7 1 (0.38%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.38%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.38%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.38%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 118 (45.04%) AWS
2 68 (25.95%) Azure
3 53 (20.23%) GCP
4 45 (17.18%) GitHub
5 25 (9.54%) GitHub Actions
6 22 (8.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 22 (8.40%) Amazon S3
7 20 (7.63%) Serverless
8 14 (5.34%) Amazon EKS
8 14 (5.34%) Vertex AI
9 13 (4.96%) IaaS
10 12 (4.58%) Amazon EC2
10 12 (4.58%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (3.44%) Google Gemini
12 8 (3.05%) Amazon Bedrock
12 8 (3.05%) Anthropic Claude
12 8 (3.05%) SaaS
13 7 (2.67%) Amazon SQS
13 7 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
13 7 (2.67%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.67%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.29%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.29%) SNMP
3 5 (1.91%) DNS
4 4 (1.53%) Network Security
4 4 (1.53%) SSH
4 4 (1.53%) SSL
5 3 (1.15%) Firewall
6 2 (0.76%) 4G
6 2 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.76%) HTTP
6 2 (0.76%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.76%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.76%) WAN
7 1 (0.38%) Broadband
7 1 (0.38%) Internet
7 1 (0.38%) MQTT
7 1 (0.38%) RTCP
7 1 (0.38%) RTP
7 1 (0.38%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (8.78%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (6.11%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (5.34%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.58%) DynamoDB
5 9 (3.44%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (3.05%) Amazon Redshift
6 8 (3.05%) Big Data
6 8 (3.05%) BigQuery
6 8 (3.05%) Data Lake
7 7 (2.67%) Amazon Athena
7 7 (2.67%) Amazon QuickSight
7 7 (2.67%) Relational Database
8 6 (2.29%) Amazon Aurora
8 6 (2.29%) Apache Iceberg
8 6 (2.29%) Trino
9 5 (1.91%) BusinessObjects
9 5 (1.91%) Pentaho
9 5 (1.91%) Power BI
9 5 (1.91%) Redis
10 4 (1.53%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 57 (21.76%) Git
2 25 (9.54%) Jenkins
3 22 (8.40%) GitLab
4 16 (6.11%) JIRA
5 15 (5.73%) JUnit
6 13 (4.96%) SonarQube
7 9 (3.44%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (2.67%) IntelliJ
9 6 (2.29%) Bitbucket Server
9 6 (2.29%) Cucumber
9 6 (2.29%) DbUnit
9 6 (2.29%) JMeter
9 6 (2.29%) jMock
9 6 (2.29%) Maven
9 6 (2.29%) Mockito
10 4 (1.53%) Cypress.io
11 3 (1.15%) LoadRunner
11 3 (1.15%) Postman
11 3 (1.15%) PowerDesigner
11 3 (1.15%) Selenium
General
1 69 (26.34%) Social Skills
2 42 (16.03%) Finance
3 39 (14.89%) Public Sector
4 18 (6.87%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (5.73%) Banking
6 12 (4.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 12 (4.58%) Legal
7 10 (3.82%) Law
8 6 (2.29%) Military
9 5 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.91%) Retail
10 4 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.15%) Front Office
11 3 (1.15%) Publishing
12 2 (0.76%) Police
12 2 (0.76%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.76%) Public Speaking
12 2 (0.76%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 51 (19.47%) Senior
2 48 (18.32%) Developer
3 46 (17.56%) Architect
4 26 (9.92%) Solutions Architect
5 23 (8.78%) AWS Architect
6 18 (6.87%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 17 (6.49%) AWS Solution Architect
8 16 (6.11%) Senior Developer
9 15 (5.73%) Analyst
9 15 (5.73%) Software Engineer
10 13 (4.96%) Consultant
10 13 (4.96%) Software Developer
11 12 (4.58%) Data Engineer
11 12 (4.58%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 11 (4.20%) Cloud Engineer
12 11 (4.20%) Cyber Threat Analyst
12 11 (4.20%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
13 10 (3.82%) AWS Engineer
13 10 (3.82%) Platform Engineer
14 9 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (20.23%) Terraform
2 41 (15.65%) Kafka
3 33 (12.60%) REST
4 15 (5.73%) Spring
4 15 (5.73%) Spring Boot
5 14 (5.34%) RESTful
6 13 (4.96%) LangChain
6 13 (4.96%) Node.js
6 13 (4.96%) React
7 12 (4.58%) PyTorch
8 11 (4.20%) LangGraph
8 11 (4.20%) SOAP
9 10 (3.82%) eBPF
9 10 (3.82%) OpenTelemetry
9 10 (3.82%) TensorFlow
10 8 (3.05%) Android Jetpack
10 8 (3.05%) AngularJS
10 8 (3.05%) Jetpack Compose
10 8 (3.05%) Play Framework
10 8 (3.05%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 48 (18.32%) Cloud Native
2 25 (9.54%) Distributed Systems
3 22 (8.40%) AI Agents
4 20 (7.63%) Cyber Threat
5 13 (4.96%) Private Cloud
6 11 (4.20%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (4.20%) Product Ownership
7 9 (3.44%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (3.44%) Management Information System
8 8 (3.05%) Blog
8 8 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.67%) Data Structures
9 7 (2.67%) Mobile App
9 7 (2.67%) Security Posture
10 6 (2.29%) Legacy Applications
10 6 (2.29%) LIMS
10 6 (2.29%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.91%) Distributed Architecture
11 5 (1.91%) Replication
11 5 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 61 (23.28%) Linux
2 19 (7.25%) Unix
3 13 (4.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.82%) Windows
5 9 (3.44%) Android
6 3 (1.15%) Debian
6 3 (1.15%) Rocky
6 3 (1.15%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.76%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 110 (41.98%) CI/CD
2 73 (27.86%) Agile
3 66 (25.19%) Software Engineering
4 65 (24.81%) DevOps
5 64 (24.43%) AI
6 53 (20.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 52 (19.85%) Observability
8 44 (16.79%) Containerisation
9 43 (16.41%) Test Automation
10 40 (15.27%) Microservices
11 39 (14.89%) Event-Driven
12 35 (13.36%) Stakeholder Management
13 34 (12.98%) LLM
14 33 (12.60%) Event-Driven Architecture
15 30 (11.45%) Cybersecurity
16 29 (11.07%) Data Pipeline
16 29 (11.07%) Platform Engineering
16 29 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
17 28 (10.69%) Machine Learning
18 27 (10.31%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 108 (41.22%) Python
2 49 (18.70%) Java
3 33 (12.60%) SQL
4 21 (8.02%) Bash
5 19 (7.25%) Go
6 15 (5.73%) JavaScript
7 14 (5.34%) C++
7 14 (5.34%) TypeScript
8 13 (4.96%) Scala
9 12 (4.58%) Perl
10 10 (3.82%) C
11 9 (3.44%) Kotlin
12 6 (2.29%) MUMPS
12 6 (2.29%) Shell Script
13 3 (1.15%) C#
13 3 (1.15%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.76%) Rust
15 1 (0.38%) Bicep
15 1 (0.38%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 99 (37.79%) Security Cleared
2 72 (27.48%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.02%) Degree
4 18 (6.87%) DV Cleared
5 12 (4.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.44%) CISSP
7 8 (3.05%) CISM
8 5 (1.91%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.15%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.15%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.76%) CEH
11 2 (0.76%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.76%) GIAC
11 2 (0.76%) GSEC
11 2 (0.76%) LFCS
11 2 (0.76%) OSCP
11 2 (0.76%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.11%) Accessibility
2 13 (4.96%) QA
3 7 (2.67%) GDPR
3 7 (2.67%) WCAG
4 4 (1.53%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.15%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.15%) GRC
5 3 (1.15%) NIST
6 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.38%) NCSC
System Software
1 60 (22.90%) Docker
2 11 (4.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.91%) Postfix
4 4 (1.53%) Ceph
4 4 (1.53%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.53%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.76%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.76%) Firmware
5 2 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 67 (25.57%) Kubernetes
2 39 (14.89%) Grafana
3 32 (12.21%) Ansible
4 30 (11.45%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.20%) Puppet
6 9 (3.44%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.53%) Cilium
7 4 (1.53%) Istio
7 4 (1.53%) Salt
8 2 (0.76%) Control-M
8 2 (0.76%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.76%) Kibana
8 2 (0.76%) linkerd
9 1 (0.38%) Argo
9 1 (0.38%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.38%) QRadar
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.38%) systemd
9 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 28 (10.69%) Google
2 21 (8.02%) Splunk
3 19 (7.25%) Microsoft
4 17 (6.49%) Dynatrace
5 15 (5.73%) OpenAI
6 12 (4.58%) Oracle
6 12 (4.58%) SaltStack
7 11 (4.20%) VMware
8 10 (3.82%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.67%) Checkmarx
9 7 (2.67%) Cribl.io
10 6 (2.29%) Atlassian
10 6 (2.29%) Databricks
10 6 (2.29%) Informatica
10 6 (2.29%) InterSystems
10 6 (2.29%) Jaspersoft
11 5 (1.91%) Denodo
12 4 (1.53%) Black Duck
12 4 (1.53%) IBM
13 3 (1.15%) Confluent