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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 431 251 314
Rank change year-on-year -180 +63 -63
Contract jobs citing Open Source 263 353 262
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.07% 0.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.18% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 143 174 138
10th Percentile £413 £363 £339
25th Percentile £458 £430 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £523
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% +0.48% -12.92%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £755 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +4.06% -1.50% -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 45,960 29,830 33,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.53% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,897 18,534 20,247
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £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 £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,123 1,812 1,459
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.23 £14.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.69% -47.67% +1.18%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -182 185 £541 +0.79% 1,297
Work from Home -98 104 £514 -6.55% 483
UK excluding London -128 104 £513 +4.06% 454
London -145 93 £598 -0.42% 942
North of England -74 31 £475 -2.76% 82
South West -17 23 £550 +15.79% 47
Scotland -38 18 £524 +4.75% 64
Yorkshire -40 14 £497 -5.29% 24
South East -70 13 £405 -29.34% 96
East of England -19 11 £552 - 98
West Midlands -44 11 £450 -10.10% 26
Midlands -47 11 £450 -10.10% 35
North West -60 9 £675 +39.61% 44
North East -42 8 £425 -8.60% 14

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 (5.32%) Confluence
2 9 (3.42%) Apache
2 9 (3.42%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.66%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.66%) Apache Spark
4 6 (2.28%) SAS
5 4 (1.52%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.38%) CMS
6 1 (0.38%) Drupal
6 1 (0.38%) GeoServer
6 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.38%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.38%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.38%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 116 (44.11%) AWS
2 67 (25.48%) Azure
3 51 (19.39%) GCP
4 44 (16.73%) GitHub
5 26 (9.89%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (7.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 21 (7.98%) Amazon S3
7 18 (6.84%) Serverless
8 15 (5.70%) Amazon EKS
9 14 (5.32%) Vertex AI
10 13 (4.94%) IaaS
11 11 (4.18%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (4.18%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.42%) Anthropic Claude
12 9 (3.42%) Google Gemini
13 8 (3.04%) Amazon Bedrock
14 7 (2.66%) Amazon SQS
14 7 (2.66%) Azure Monitor
14 7 (2.66%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 7 (2.66%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.66%) HTTPS
1 7 (2.66%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.28%) SNMP
3 5 (1.90%) DNS
4 4 (1.52%) Network Security
4 4 (1.52%) SSH
4 4 (1.52%) SSL
5 3 (1.14%) Firewall
6 2 (0.76%) 4G
6 2 (0.76%) Broadband
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%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (0.38%) Asterisk PBX
7 1 (0.38%) Internet
7 1 (0.38%) MQTT
7 1 (0.38%) VoIP
7 1 (0.38%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (7.60%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (5.70%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (4.56%) DynamoDB
4 11 (4.18%) MongoDB
5 8 (3.04%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (3.04%) BigQuery
5 8 (3.04%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (2.66%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (2.66%) Amazon QuickSight
6 7 (2.66%) Big Data
6 7 (2.66%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.66%) Relational Database
7 6 (2.28%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (2.28%) Apache Iceberg
7 6 (2.28%) Trino
8 5 (1.90%) BusinessObjects
8 5 (1.90%) Pentaho
8 5 (1.90%) Power BI
8 5 (1.90%) Redis
9 3 (1.14%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 56 (21.29%) Git
2 25 (9.51%) Jenkins
3 21 (7.98%) GitLab
4 15 (5.70%) JIRA
5 14 (5.32%) JUnit
6 12 (4.56%) SonarQube
7 8 (3.04%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (2.28%) Bitbucket Server
8 6 (2.28%) Cucumber
8 6 (2.28%) DbUnit
8 6 (2.28%) IntelliJ
8 6 (2.28%) JMeter
8 6 (2.28%) jMock
8 6 (2.28%) Maven
8 6 (2.28%) Mockito
9 4 (1.52%) CircleCI
9 4 (1.52%) Cypress.io
9 4 (1.52%) MLflow
10 3 (1.14%) Postman
10 3 (1.14%) ScalaTest
General
1 70 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 41 (15.59%) Public Sector
3 40 (15.21%) Finance
4 18 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.32%) Banking
6 12 (4.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 12 (4.56%) Legal
7 10 (3.80%) Law
8 6 (2.28%) Military
9 5 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.90%) Retail
10 4 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.14%) Front Office
11 3 (1.14%) Publishing
12 2 (0.76%) Police
12 2 (0.76%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.76%) Public Speaking
13 1 (0.38%) Games
13 1 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 56 (21.29%) Senior
2 48 (18.25%) Developer
3 44 (16.73%) Architect
4 24 (9.13%) AWS Architect
5 23 (8.75%) Solutions Architect
6 20 (7.60%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 17 (6.46%) AWS Solution Architect
8 16 (6.08%) Senior Developer
9 15 (5.70%) Analyst
10 14 (5.32%) Software Engineer
11 13 (4.94%) Software Developer
12 12 (4.56%) Consultant
12 12 (4.56%) Data Engineer
12 12 (4.56%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
13 11 (4.18%) Cloud Engineer
13 11 (4.18%) Cyber Threat Analyst
13 11 (4.18%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
14 10 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 10 (3.80%) Platform Engineer
15 9 (3.42%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (19.01%) Terraform
2 38 (14.45%) Kafka
3 32 (12.17%) REST
4 15 (5.70%) LangChain
4 15 (5.70%) RESTful
5 14 (5.32%) Spring
5 14 (5.32%) Spring Boot
6 13 (4.94%) LangGraph
6 13 (4.94%) PyTorch
7 12 (4.56%) Node.js
7 12 (4.56%) React
8 11 (4.18%) SOAP
9 10 (3.80%) eBPF
9 10 (3.80%) OpenTelemetry
9 10 (3.80%) TensorFlow
10 8 (3.04%) Android Jetpack
10 8 (3.04%) AngularJS
10 8 (3.04%) Jetpack Compose
10 8 (3.04%) Play Framework
10 8 (3.04%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 45 (17.11%) Cloud Native
2 24 (9.13%) AI Agents
2 24 (9.13%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (7.60%) Cyber Threat
4 14 (5.32%) Private Cloud
5 10 (3.80%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (3.80%) Management Information System
5 10 (3.80%) Product Ownership
6 9 (3.42%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (3.04%) Blog
7 8 (3.04%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (3.04%) Mobile App
8 7 (2.66%) Data Structures
8 7 (2.66%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.28%) Legacy Applications
9 6 (2.28%) LIMS
9 6 (2.28%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.90%) Replication
10 5 (1.90%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.90%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 61 (23.19%) Linux
2 19 (7.22%) Unix
3 12 (4.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.80%) Windows
5 9 (3.42%) Android
6 3 (1.14%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.76%) Debian
7 2 (0.76%) Rocky
7 2 (0.76%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (42.21%) CI/CD
2 71 (27.00%) Agile
3 67 (25.48%) AI
4 66 (25.10%) Software Engineering
5 64 (24.33%) DevOps
6 53 (20.15%) Infrastructure as Code
6 53 (20.15%) Observability
7 45 (17.11%) Containerisation
8 44 (16.73%) Test Automation
9 42 (15.97%) Microservices
10 38 (14.45%) Event-Driven
11 36 (13.69%) Stakeholder Management
12 35 (13.31%) LLM
13 32 (12.17%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 31 (11.79%) Cybersecurity
14 31 (11.79%) Machine Learning
15 29 (11.03%) Data Pipeline
15 29 (11.03%) Platform Engineering
16 28 (10.65%) Continuous Integration
16 28 (10.65%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 106 (40.30%) Python
2 46 (17.49%) Java
3 32 (12.17%) SQL
4 20 (7.60%) Bash
5 17 (6.46%) Go
6 14 (5.32%) JavaScript
6 14 (5.32%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.94%) C++
7 13 (4.94%) Perl
7 13 (4.94%) Scala
8 11 (4.18%) C
9 9 (3.42%) Kotlin
10 6 (2.28%) MUMPS
10 6 (2.28%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.14%) C#
12 2 (0.76%) Objective-C
12 2 (0.76%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.76%) Ruby
12 2 (0.76%) Rust
12 2 (0.76%) Swift
Qualifications
1 100 (38.02%) Security Cleared
2 73 (27.76%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.37%) Degree
4 18 (6.84%) DV Cleared
5 13 (4.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.42%) CISSP
7 8 (3.04%) CISM
8 5 (1.90%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (1.52%) Master's Degree
10 3 (1.14%) Azure Certification
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 (6.08%) Accessibility
2 14 (5.32%) QA
3 7 (2.66%) GDPR
3 7 (2.66%) WCAG
4 4 (1.52%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.14%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.14%) NIST
6 2 (0.76%) GRC
7 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.38%) NCSC
7 1 (0.38%) PMO
System Software
1 61 (23.19%) Docker
2 12 (4.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.90%) Postfix
3 5 (1.90%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (1.52%) Ceph
4 4 (1.52%) Hyper-V
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%) Squid
Systems Management
1 69 (26.24%) Kubernetes
2 38 (14.45%) Grafana
3 32 (12.17%) Ansible
4 29 (11.03%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.18%) Puppet
6 9 (3.42%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.52%) Cilium
7 4 (1.52%) Istio
7 4 (1.52%) 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%) QRadar
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.38%) systemd
9 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 28 (10.65%) Google
2 22 (8.37%) Splunk
3 21 (7.98%) Microsoft
4 17 (6.46%) Dynatrace
5 16 (6.08%) OpenAI
6 13 (4.94%) SaltStack
7 12 (4.56%) VMware
8 11 (4.18%) Oracle
9 10 (3.80%) Red Hat
10 7 (2.66%) Cribl.io
10 7 (2.66%) Databricks
11 6 (2.28%) Atlassian
11 6 (2.28%) Checkmarx
11 6 (2.28%) Informatica
11 6 (2.28%) InterSystems
11 6 (2.28%) Jaspersoft
12 5 (1.90%) Denodo
13 4 (1.52%) Foundry
13 4 (1.52%) IBM
13 4 (1.52%) Mistral