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 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 419 255 295
Rank change year-on-year -164 +40 -28
Contract jobs citing Open Source 257 345 298
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 1.05% 0.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.57% 1.16% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 178 187
10th Percentile £425 £371 £350
25th Percentile £475 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £617 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £666 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £497 £600
% change year-on-year +4.63% -17.25% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 10
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - £51.75 £20.40
Median hourly rate £85.00 £56.50 £21.68
Median % change year-on-year +50.44% +160.61% -60.14%
75th Percentile - £61.25 £27.96
90th Percentile - - £30.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £20.24

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 45,356 29,667 33,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 90.51% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,834 18,495 21,131
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
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 2,855 1,741 1,763
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.33 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -1.22%
75th Percentile £67.94 £49.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +83.17% -42.17% +12.54%

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 21 August 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 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 21 August 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 -196 185 £550 +2.42% 116
London -146 100 £600 - 54
Work from Home -106 98 £514 -6.55% 51
UK excluding London -120 93 £520 +4.63% 80
North of England -84 26 £497 +1.07% 17
South West -33 21 £550 +34.15% 17
Yorkshire -38 15 £500 -4.76% 5
Scotland -38 14 £800 +56.10% 7
East of England -5 12 £552 +38.00% 11
Midlands -47 12 £459 -8.20% 8
West Midlands -47 12 £459 -8.20% 6
South East -76 9 £550 +2.33% 21
North West -53 7 £550 +11.79% 5
North East -36 4 £425 -8.60% 7

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 (6.61%) Confluence
2 11 (4.28%) Apache
3 8 (3.11%) Apache Spark
4 7 (2.72%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.72%) SharePoint
5 6 (2.33%) SAS
6 4 (1.56%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.39%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.17%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 119 (46.30%) AWS
2 69 (26.85%) Azure
3 53 (20.62%) GCP
4 33 (12.84%) GitHub
5 24 (9.34%) Amazon S3
6 23 (8.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (8.56%) Serverless
8 16 (6.23%) GitHub Actions
9 14 (5.45%) Amazon EC2
9 14 (5.45%) Vertex AI
10 13 (5.06%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (3.89%) Amazon EKS
11 10 (3.89%) IaaS
12 9 (3.50%) Google Gemini
12 9 (3.50%) SaaS
13 8 (3.11%) Amazon Bedrock
13 8 (3.11%) Amazon SQS
13 8 (3.11%) Azure Monitor
14 7 (2.72%) Power Platform
14 7 (2.72%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.11%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.33%) SNMP
3 5 (1.95%) Firewall
3 5 (1.95%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.17%) DNS
4 3 (1.17%) Network Security
4 3 (1.17%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (1.17%) SSH
4 3 (1.17%) SSL
4 3 (1.17%) WAN
5 2 (0.78%) 4G
5 2 (0.78%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.78%) HTTP
5 2 (0.78%) NaaS
5 2 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.39%) MQTT
6 1 (0.39%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (10.89%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (6.61%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (5.45%) MongoDB
4 13 (5.06%) DynamoDB
5 10 (3.89%) Apache Cassandra
6 9 (3.50%) Amazon Redshift
6 9 (3.50%) Big Data
6 9 (3.50%) BigQuery
6 9 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (3.11%) Amazon Athena
7 8 (3.11%) Data Lake
8 7 (2.72%) Amazon Aurora
8 7 (2.72%) Relational Database
9 6 (2.33%) Amazon QuickSight
10 5 (1.95%) Apache Iceberg
10 5 (1.95%) BusinessObjects
10 5 (1.95%) Flink
10 5 (1.95%) Power BI
10 5 (1.95%) Spatial Data
10 5 (1.95%) Trino
Development Applications
1 56 (21.79%) Git
2 21 (8.17%) GitLab
2 21 (8.17%) Jenkins
3 18 (7.00%) JIRA
4 17 (6.61%) JUnit
5 14 (5.45%) SonarQube
6 13 (5.06%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (3.11%) IntelliJ
8 7 (2.72%) Bitbucket Server
8 7 (2.72%) DbUnit
8 7 (2.72%) jMock
8 7 (2.72%) Maven
8 7 (2.72%) Mockito
9 6 (2.33%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.95%) JMeter
11 4 (1.56%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.56%) PowerDesigner
11 4 (1.56%) Selenium
12 3 (1.17%) CircleCI
12 3 (1.17%) LoadRunner
General
1 66 (25.68%) Social Skills
2 43 (16.73%) Finance
3 36 (14.01%) Public Sector
4 20 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (6.61%) Banking
6 16 (6.23%) Legal
7 10 (3.89%) Law
8 8 (3.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.95%) Military
10 4 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.56%) Front Office
11 3 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.17%) Publishing
11 3 (1.17%) Retail
12 2 (0.78%) Billing
12 2 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.78%) Police
12 2 (0.78%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.78%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 54 (21.01%) Architect
2 47 (18.29%) Developer
3 41 (15.95%) Senior
4 29 (11.28%) Solutions Architect
5 25 (9.73%) AWS Architect
6 18 (7.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 18 (7.00%) AWS Solution Architect
7 16 (6.23%) Analyst
7 16 (6.23%) Data Engineer
8 15 (5.84%) Software Engineer
9 14 (5.45%) Senior Developer
10 13 (5.06%) Consultant
10 13 (5.06%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 12 (4.67%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 12 (4.67%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 11 (4.28%) Java Developer
13 10 (3.89%) AWS Engineer
13 10 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
14 9 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
14 9 (3.50%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (18.68%) Kafka
2 41 (15.95%) Terraform
3 33 (12.84%) REST
4 16 (6.23%) Spring
4 16 (6.23%) Spring Boot
5 15 (5.84%) LangChain
5 15 (5.84%) React
6 14 (5.45%) RESTful
7 12 (4.67%) gRPC
7 12 (4.67%) Node.js
8 11 (4.28%) OpenTelemetry
8 11 (4.28%) SOAP
9 10 (3.89%) LangGraph
10 9 (3.50%) Android Jetpack
10 9 (3.50%) AngularJS
10 9 (3.50%) Jetpack Compose
10 9 (3.50%) PyTorch
11 8 (3.11%) GraphQL
11 8 (3.11%) TensorFlow
12 7 (2.72%) Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 46 (17.90%) Cloud Native
2 29 (11.28%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (8.17%) AI Agents
4 19 (7.39%) Cyber Threat
5 12 (4.67%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (4.28%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (3.50%) Product Ownership
8 8 (3.11%) Management Information System
9 7 (2.72%) Mobile App
9 7 (2.72%) Private Cloud
9 7 (2.72%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (2.33%) Data Structures
11 5 (1.95%) Legacy Applications
11 5 (1.95%) LIMS
11 5 (1.95%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.95%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (1.95%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.56%) Blog
12 4 (1.56%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 4 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 49 (19.07%) Linux
2 14 (5.45%) Unix
3 11 (4.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.89%) Android
5 9 (3.50%) Windows
6 3 (1.17%) Debian
6 3 (1.17%) Rocky
6 3 (1.17%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.78%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (35.80%) CI/CD
2 66 (25.68%) Software Engineering
3 63 (24.51%) Agile
3 63 (24.51%) AI
4 60 (23.35%) DevOps
5 44 (17.12%) Observability
6 43 (16.73%) Containerisation
7 42 (16.34%) Stakeholder Management
8 41 (15.95%) Event-Driven
8 41 (15.95%) Infrastructure as Code
8 41 (15.95%) Microservices
9 37 (14.40%) LLM
10 34 (13.23%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 32 (12.45%) Data Pipeline
12 30 (11.67%) Test Automation
13 27 (10.51%) Machine Learning
13 27 (10.51%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (10.12%) Cybersecurity
15 22 (8.56%) Continuous Improvement
15 22 (8.56%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 103 (40.08%) Python
2 50 (19.46%) Java
3 34 (13.23%) SQL
4 22 (8.56%) Go
5 18 (7.00%) Bash
6 14 (5.45%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.06%) C++
8 12 (4.67%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.89%) Kotlin
10 8 (3.11%) Scala
11 7 (2.72%) C
12 6 (2.33%) Perl
13 5 (1.95%) MUMPS
14 4 (1.56%) C#
15 3 (1.17%) PL/SQL
15 3 (1.17%) PowerShell
15 3 (1.17%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.78%) Rust
17 1 (0.39%) Objective-C
17 1 (0.39%) Swift
Qualifications
1 94 (36.58%) Security Cleared
2 65 (25.29%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.17%) Degree
4 17 (6.61%) DV Cleared
5 12 (4.67%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.50%) CISSP
7 8 (3.11%) CISM
8 5 (1.95%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.56%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.17%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.78%) CEH
11 2 (0.78%) GIAC
11 2 (0.78%) GSEC
11 2 (0.78%) LFCS
11 2 (0.78%) OSCP
11 2 (0.78%) RHCE
11 2 (0.78%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.06%) QA
2 11 (4.28%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.33%) GDPR
4 4 (1.56%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.56%) NIST
4 4 (1.56%) WCAG
5 3 (1.17%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.17%) GRC
5 3 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.39%) NCSC
6 1 (0.39%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.39%) SOC 2
System Software
1 58 (22.57%) Docker
2 6 (2.33%) Postfix
3 5 (1.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.17%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.17%) Ceph
4 3 (1.17%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 57 (22.18%) Kubernetes
2 34 (13.23%) Grafana
3 30 (11.67%) Prometheus
4 22 (8.56%) Ansible
5 10 (3.89%) Puppet
6 7 (2.72%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.95%) Salt
8 4 (1.56%) Istio
9 2 (0.78%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.78%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.78%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.78%) linkerd
9 2 (0.78%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.39%) Argo
10 1 (0.39%) CASB
10 1 (0.39%) Cilium
10 1 (0.39%) Control-M
10 1 (0.39%) QRadar
10 1 (0.39%) Rancher
10 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (9.34%) Google
2 23 (8.95%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.39%) Dynatrace
4 17 (6.61%) OpenAI
4 17 (6.61%) Splunk
5 12 (4.67%) Oracle
6 9 (3.50%) Red Hat
7 7 (2.72%) Atlassian
7 7 (2.72%) Checkmarx
7 7 (2.72%) Cribl.io
7 7 (2.72%) Jaspersoft
8 6 (2.33%) Informatica
8 6 (2.33%) SaltStack
9 5 (1.95%) Black Duck
9 5 (1.95%) Databricks
9 5 (1.95%) Denodo
9 5 (1.95%) InterSystems
9 5 (1.95%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.95%) VMware
10 4 (1.56%) IBM