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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 426 247 323
Rank change year-on-year -179 +76 -75
Contract jobs citing Open Source 271 359 247
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 1.09% 0.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.59% 1.21% 0.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 144 166 127
10th Percentile £413 £361 £319
25th Percentile £456 £426 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £522 £501
Median % change year-on-year +0.57% +4.15% -12.84%
75th Percentile £623 £613 £622
90th Percentile £755 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +4.50% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 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 £76.75 £61.25 £27.72
90th Percentile £80.80 - £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 46,176 29,707 32,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.53% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,450 19,527
10th Percentile £325 £297 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,315 1,863 1,324
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +53.08% -38.77% -3.91%
75th Percentile £65.41 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.40 £65.00 £74.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +73.52% -47.49% -

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 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 -208 188 £550 +4.76% 1,591
UK excluding London -121 114 £523 +4.50% 824
Work from Home -91 105 £500 - 932
London -164 89 £588 +3.43% 944
North of England -76 36 £495 +0.51% 168
South West -18 24 £550 -4.35% 99
Scotland -36 21 £524 -0.24% 132
Yorkshire -39 15 £500 -4.76% 54
East of England -14 14 £561 +1.45% 153
South East -70 13 £405 -28.41% 134
North East -27 11 £425 - 34
North West -58 10 £675 +43.62% 80
Midlands -44 9 £450 -10.10% 81
West Midlands -48 9 £450 -10.10% 45

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 12 (4.43%) Confluence
2 10 (3.69%) SharePoint
3 9 (3.32%) Apache
4 8 (2.95%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (2.95%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.21%) SAS
6 5 (1.85%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.37%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.37%) CMS
7 1 (0.37%) Drupal
7 1 (0.37%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.37%) IIS
7 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.37%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.37%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.74%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.37%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 116 (42.80%) AWS
2 74 (27.31%) Azure
3 53 (19.56%) GCP
4 44 (16.24%) GitHub
5 25 (9.23%) GitHub Actions
6 19 (7.01%) Amazon S3
7 18 (6.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 17 (6.27%) Serverless
9 15 (5.54%) Amazon EKS
10 14 (5.17%) Vertex AI
11 13 (4.80%) IaaS
12 11 (4.06%) Anthropic Claude
13 10 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
13 10 (3.69%) Google Gemini
14 9 (3.32%) Amazon Bedrock
14 9 (3.32%) Amazon EC2
15 7 (2.58%) Azure Monitor
15 7 (2.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 7 (2.58%) Power Platform
16 6 (2.21%) LangSmith
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.58%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.21%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.21%) SNMP
3 4 (1.48%) DNS
3 4 (1.48%) Network Security
4 3 (1.11%) SSH
4 3 (1.11%) SSL
5 2 (0.74%) Asterisk PBX
5 2 (0.74%) Broadband
5 2 (0.74%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.74%) Firewall
5 2 (0.74%) HTTP
5 2 (0.74%) Internet
5 2 (0.74%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.74%) RTCP
5 2 (0.74%) RTP
5 2 (0.74%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.74%) VoIP
5 2 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.74%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.90%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (4.80%) Amazon RDS
3 10 (3.69%) DynamoDB
4 9 (3.32%) MongoDB
5 8 (2.95%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (2.95%) BigQuery
5 8 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.95%) Relational Database
5 8 (2.95%) Trino
6 7 (2.58%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (2.58%) Apache Iceberg
6 7 (2.58%) Big Data
6 7 (2.58%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.85%) BusinessObjects
7 5 (1.85%) Pentaho
7 5 (1.85%) Power BI
7 5 (1.85%) Redis
8 4 (1.48%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (1.48%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (1.11%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 50 (18.45%) Git
2 26 (9.59%) Jenkins
3 21 (7.75%) GitLab
4 13 (4.80%) JIRA
5 10 (3.69%) JUnit
6 8 (2.95%) JMeter
6 8 (2.95%) SonarQube
7 7 (2.58%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (2.21%) Cucumber
8 6 (2.21%) Cypress.io
9 5 (1.85%) Postman
10 4 (1.48%) Bitbucket Server
10 4 (1.48%) CircleCI
10 4 (1.48%) DbUnit
10 4 (1.48%) IntelliJ
10 4 (1.48%) jMock
10 4 (1.48%) Maven
10 4 (1.48%) MLflow
10 4 (1.48%) Mockito
11 3 (1.11%) Selenium
General
1 76 (28.04%) Social Skills
2 41 (15.13%) Finance
2 41 (15.13%) Public Sector
3 15 (5.54%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (5.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 14 (5.17%) Banking
5 13 (4.80%) Legal
6 10 (3.69%) Law
7 7 (2.58%) Telecoms
8 6 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (2.21%) Military
8 6 (2.21%) Retail
9 5 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.11%) Front Office
10 3 (1.11%) Publishing
11 2 (0.74%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (0.74%) Police
11 2 (0.74%) Polish Language
11 2 (0.74%) Public Speaking
12 1 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 56 (20.66%) Senior
2 51 (18.82%) Developer
3 39 (14.39%) Architect
4 23 (8.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 22 (8.12%) AWS Architect
5 22 (8.12%) Solutions Architect
6 19 (7.01%) Software Developer
7 18 (6.64%) Software Engineer
8 16 (5.90%) AWS Solution Architect
9 14 (5.17%) Analyst
10 13 (4.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.80%) Senior Developer
10 13 (4.80%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 12 (4.43%) Consultant
11 12 (4.43%) Data Engineer
11 12 (4.43%) Platform Engineer
12 11 (4.06%) Cyber Threat Analyst
12 11 (4.06%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 11 (4.06%) Lead
13 10 (3.69%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (18.82%) Terraform
2 33 (12.18%) Kafka
3 30 (11.07%) REST
4 18 (6.64%) LangChain
5 14 (5.17%) PyTorch
6 13 (4.80%) LangGraph
6 13 (4.80%) React
6 13 (4.80%) RESTful
7 11 (4.06%) Spring
7 11 (4.06%) Spring Boot
7 11 (4.06%) TensorFlow
8 10 (3.69%) eBPF
8 10 (3.69%) Playwright
9 9 (3.32%) LlamaIndex
9 9 (3.32%) SOAP
10 8 (2.95%) Android Jetpack
10 8 (2.95%) Jetpack Compose
10 8 (2.95%) Node.js
10 8 (2.95%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (2.95%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 45 (16.61%) Cloud Native
2 25 (9.23%) AI Agents
3 23 (8.49%) Distributed Systems
4 21 (7.75%) Cyber Threat
5 17 (6.27%) Private Cloud
6 12 (4.43%) Management Information System
7 11 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (3.32%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (2.95%) Blog
9 8 (2.95%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (2.95%) Mobile App
9 8 (2.95%) Product Ownership
9 8 (2.95%) Security Posture
10 7 (2.58%) Data Structures
10 7 (2.58%) Virtual Team
11 6 (2.21%) Legacy Applications
11 6 (2.21%) LIMS
11 6 (2.21%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.85%) Onboarding
12 5 (1.85%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 61 (22.51%) Linux
2 16 (5.90%) Unix
3 12 (4.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (4.06%) Windows
5 9 (3.32%) Android
6 3 (1.11%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.74%) Debian
7 2 (0.74%) Rocky
7 2 (0.74%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
8 1 (0.37%) CentOS
8 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.37%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (43.17%) CI/CD
2 75 (27.68%) AI
3 74 (27.31%) Software Engineering
4 68 (25.09%) Agile
5 65 (23.99%) DevOps
6 57 (21.03%) Observability
7 56 (20.66%) Infrastructure as Code
8 50 (18.45%) Test Automation
9 46 (16.97%) Containerisation
10 39 (14.39%) LLM
10 39 (14.39%) Microservices
11 36 (13.28%) Event-Driven
12 35 (12.92%) Machine Learning
13 34 (12.55%) Stakeholder Management
14 33 (12.18%) Platform Engineering
15 32 (11.81%) Cybersecurity
16 31 (11.44%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 30 (11.07%) Continuous Integration
17 30 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
18 29 (10.70%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 105 (38.75%) Python
2 46 (16.97%) Java
3 30 (11.07%) SQL
4 20 (7.38%) Bash
5 16 (5.90%) Perl
6 15 (5.54%) Go
6 15 (5.54%) JavaScript
6 15 (5.54%) TypeScript
7 14 (5.17%) C++
8 12 (4.43%) Scala
9 11 (4.06%) C
10 9 (3.32%) Kotlin
11 6 (2.21%) MUMPS
12 4 (1.48%) C#
12 4 (1.48%) Shell Script
13 3 (1.11%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.74%) Bicep
14 2 (0.74%) Objective-C
14 2 (0.74%) Ruby
14 2 (0.74%) Rust
Qualifications
1 95 (35.06%) Security Cleared
2 71 (26.20%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.12%) Degree
4 18 (6.64%) DV Cleared
5 14 (5.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.32%) CISSP
7 8 (2.95%) AWS Certification
7 8 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.95%) CISM
8 6 (2.21%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.85%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.74%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.74%) CEH
10 2 (0.74%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.74%) GIAC
10 2 (0.74%) GSEC
10 2 (0.74%) LFCS
10 2 (0.74%) OSCP
10 2 (0.74%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (6.27%) Accessibility
2 12 (4.43%) QA
3 7 (2.58%) GDPR
3 7 (2.58%) WCAG
4 4 (1.48%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.48%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.48%) NCSC
5 3 (1.11%) GRC
5 3 (1.11%) NIST
6 2 (0.74%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.74%) PMO
7 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 59 (21.77%) Docker
2 13 (4.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.58%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (1.11%) Ceph
4 3 (1.11%) Firmware
4 3 (1.11%) Hyper-V
4 3 (1.11%) Postfix
5 2 (0.74%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.74%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 73 (26.94%) Kubernetes
2 35 (12.92%) Grafana
3 34 (12.55%) Ansible
4 26 (9.59%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.06%) Puppet
6 9 (3.32%) Progress Chef
7 4 (1.48%) Cilium
7 4 (1.48%) Istio
7 4 (1.48%) Salt
8 2 (0.74%) Control-M
8 2 (0.74%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.74%) Kibana
8 2 (0.74%) linkerd
8 2 (0.74%) systemd
9 1 (0.37%) Argo
9 1 (0.37%) QRadar
9 1 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.37%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 29 (10.70%) Google
2 22 (8.12%) Microsoft
2 22 (8.12%) Splunk
3 18 (6.64%) OpenAI
4 17 (6.27%) Dynatrace
5 16 (5.90%) SaltStack
6 14 (5.17%) VMware
7 12 (4.43%) Oracle
8 10 (3.69%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.58%) Cribl.io
9 7 (2.58%) Databricks
10 6 (2.21%) Informatica
10 6 (2.21%) InterSystems
11 5 (1.85%) Denodo
12 4 (1.48%) Atlassian
12 4 (1.48%) Black Duck
12 4 (1.48%) Checkmarx
12 4 (1.48%) Foundry
12 4 (1.48%) Jaspersoft
12 4 (1.48%) Mistral