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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 382 229 303
Rank change year-on-year -153 +74 -43
Contract jobs citing Open Source 279 356 317
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 1.14% 0.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.64% 1.25% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 201 210
10th Percentile £425 £395 £362
25th Percentile £500 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £570
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -7.89% -5.00%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £716 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £473 £591
% change year-on-year +8.78% -20.08% +2.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 12
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - - £20.97
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £24.42
75th Percentile - - £35.34
90th Percentile - - £71.36
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 43,799 28,390 37,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.78% 85.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,227 17,909 23,638
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,638 1,396 2,532
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.21 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.45%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.26% -35.31% +8.91%

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 3 July 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 13 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 3 July 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 -175 207 £550 - 280
London -130 110 £600 - 165
Work from Home -90 107 £550 -4.35% 160
UK excluding London -120 104 £514 +8.78% 158
North of England -80 21 £500 +7.53% 35
South West -12 20 £550 +34.15% 25
Scotland -23 18 £675 +35.00% 13
West Midlands -53 18 £472 -5.60% 11
Midlands -60 18 £472 -5.60% 11
East of England -15 14 £550 +52.49% 21
South East -68 14 £500 - 32
Yorkshire -49 12 £500 +4.44% 13
North West -50 8 £450 -3.23% 17

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 (6.09%) Confluence
2 8 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.51%) Apache
4 6 (2.15%) SAS
5 5 (1.79%) Appian
6 3 (1.08%) nginx
6 3 (1.08%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.72%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.36%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.36%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.08%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 137 (49.10%) AWS
2 80 (28.67%) Azure
3 45 (16.13%) GCP
4 33 (11.83%) GitHub
5 32 (11.47%) Amazon S3
6 26 (9.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 24 (8.60%) Serverless
8 21 (7.53%) Amazon EC2
9 17 (6.09%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (4.66%) Azure AI
10 13 (4.66%) Route 53
11 12 (4.30%) Amazon SQS
11 12 (4.30%) Anthropic Claude
11 12 (4.30%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (3.94%) AWS KMS
12 11 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (3.58%) SaaS
13 10 (3.58%) Vertex AI
14 8 (2.87%) Amazon Bedrock
14 8 (2.87%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.23%) Firewall
2 7 (2.51%) Reverse Proxy
2 7 (2.51%) SNMP
3 5 (1.79%) DNS
3 5 (1.79%) WAN
4 3 (1.08%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (1.08%) Network Security
5 2 (0.72%) DHCP
5 2 (0.72%) NaaS
6 1 (0.36%) 4G
6 1 (0.36%) 5G
6 1 (0.36%) Cisco IOS
6 1 (0.36%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.36%) LTE
6 1 (0.36%) MQTT
6 1 (0.36%) NAS
6 1 (0.36%) NGFW
6 1 (0.36%) SAN
6 1 (0.36%) SSH
6 1 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (15.05%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (7.89%) Apache Cassandra
3 21 (7.53%) Amazon RDS
4 17 (6.09%) DynamoDB
5 14 (5.02%) MongoDB
6 11 (3.94%) Amazon Aurora
7 9 (3.23%) Amazon Athena
7 9 (3.23%) Amazon Redshift
7 9 (3.23%) BigQuery
7 9 (3.23%) Relational Database
8 8 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (2.87%) Pinecone
9 7 (2.51%) Amazon QuickSight
9 7 (2.51%) SQL Server
10 6 (2.15%) Big Data
10 6 (2.15%) Data Lake
11 5 (1.79%) Apache Iceberg
11 5 (1.79%) NoSQL
11 5 (1.79%) Power BI
11 5 (1.79%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 59 (21.15%) Git
2 28 (10.04%) GitLab
3 23 (8.24%) JUnit
4 22 (7.89%) Jenkins
5 18 (6.45%) JIRA
5 18 (6.45%) SonarQube
6 14 (5.02%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (3.94%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (3.94%) DbUnit
7 11 (3.94%) jMock
7 11 (3.94%) Maven
7 11 (3.94%) Mockito
8 8 (2.87%) IntelliJ
8 8 (2.87%) MLflow
9 5 (1.79%) Artifactory
9 5 (1.79%) CircleCI
9 5 (1.79%) Gradle
9 5 (1.79%) PowerDesigner
10 2 (0.72%) Flyway
10 2 (0.72%) Liquibase
General
1 67 (24.01%) Social Skills
2 56 (20.07%) Finance
3 41 (14.70%) Public Sector
4 23 (8.24%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (7.17%) Banking
5 20 (7.17%) Legal
6 11 (3.94%) Law
7 7 (2.51%) Military
8 6 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.79%) Front Office
10 3 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.08%) Retail
11 2 (0.72%) Billing
11 2 (0.72%) Police
11 2 (0.72%) Publishing
11 2 (0.72%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.36%) Automotive
12 1 (0.36%) Games
Job Titles
1 64 (22.94%) Developer
2 60 (21.51%) Architect
3 44 (15.77%) Senior
4 32 (11.47%) Solutions Architect
5 27 (9.68%) AWS Architect
6 25 (8.96%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 24 (8.60%) Software Engineer
8 23 (8.24%) Senior Developer
9 22 (7.89%) Data Engineer
10 19 (6.81%) AWS Solution Architect
11 15 (5.38%) Consultant
12 14 (5.02%) Java Developer
13 12 (4.30%) Cloud Engineer
13 12 (4.30%) Senior Data Engineer
14 11 (3.94%) AWS Engineer
15 10 (3.58%) Cloud Architect
15 10 (3.58%) Lead
16 9 (3.23%) Analyst
16 9 (3.23%) Android Developer
16 9 (3.23%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (22.22%) Kafka
2 40 (14.34%) REST
3 25 (8.96%) RESTful
4 23 (8.24%) gRPC
5 21 (7.53%) React
6 19 (6.81%) Spring
6 19 (6.81%) Spring Boot
7 18 (6.45%) Node.js
8 17 (6.09%) Web Services
9 16 (5.73%) AngularJS
10 15 (5.38%) LangChain
11 14 (5.02%) Android Jetpack
11 14 (5.02%) Hugging Face
11 14 (5.02%) Jetpack Compose
11 14 (5.02%) PyTorch
11 14 (5.02%) SOAP
11 14 (5.02%) TensorFlow
12 12 (4.30%) .NET
13 11 (3.94%) ActiveMQ
13 11 (3.94%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 47 (16.85%) Distributed Systems
2 43 (15.41%) Cloud Native
3 15 (5.38%) AI Agents
4 11 (3.94%) Product Ownership
5 9 (3.23%) Cyber Threat
5 9 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (3.23%) Mobile App
6 8 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.87%) Management Information System
6 8 (2.87%) Self-Motivation
7 6 (2.15%) Data Centre
7 6 (2.15%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.15%) Security Posture
8 5 (1.79%) Low-Code
8 5 (1.79%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.43%) Legacy Code
10 3 (1.08%) Clustering
10 3 (1.08%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 2 (0.72%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 49 (17.56%) Linux
2 17 (6.09%) Android
3 5 (1.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (1.79%) Unix
3 5 (1.79%) Windows
4 4 (1.43%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.43%) Debian
4 4 (1.43%) Rocky
4 4 (1.43%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.36%) VMS
5 1 (0.36%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 89 (31.90%) CI/CD
2 73 (26.16%) AI
3 69 (24.73%) Agile
4 66 (23.66%) DevOps
5 65 (23.30%) Software Engineering
6 61 (21.86%) Microservices
7 54 (19.35%) LLM
8 49 (17.56%) Containerisation
8 49 (17.56%) Stakeholder Management
9 42 (15.05%) Infrastructure as Code
10 38 (13.62%) Machine Learning
10 38 (13.62%) Observability
11 37 (13.26%) Event-Driven
12 35 (12.54%) Data Pipeline
13 30 (10.75%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 30 (10.75%) Generative AI
13 30 (10.75%) Problem-Solving
13 30 (10.75%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
14 24 (8.60%) Continuous Integration
14 24 (8.60%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 123 (44.09%) Python
2 53 (19.00%) Java
3 38 (13.62%) SQL
4 34 (12.19%) Go
5 21 (7.53%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.81%) Bash
7 18 (6.45%) TypeScript
8 16 (5.73%) Kotlin
9 12 (4.30%) C#
10 6 (2.15%) C++
10 6 (2.15%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.79%) PowerShell
12 3 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.08%) Scala
13 2 (0.72%) Ruby
14 1 (0.36%) C
14 1 (0.36%) Groovy
14 1 (0.36%) MUMPS
14 1 (0.36%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.36%) Rust
Qualifications
1 90 (32.26%) Security Cleared
2 69 (24.73%) SC Cleared
3 29 (10.39%) Degree
4 13 (4.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 8 (2.87%) AWS Certification
7 7 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.79%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.08%) CISM
10 3 (1.08%) CISSP
11 2 (0.72%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.72%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.72%) PhD
12 1 (0.36%) GCIA
12 1 (0.36%) GIAC
12 1 (0.36%) ISEB
12 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.36%) MPhil
12 1 (0.36%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.02%) QA
2 9 (3.23%) Accessibility
3 7 (2.51%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.79%) NIST
4 5 (1.79%) WCAG
5 3 (1.08%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.08%) GDPR
5 3 (1.08%) GRC
5 3 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.36%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
System Software
1 79 (28.32%) Docker
2 9 (3.23%) Postfix
3 7 (2.51%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.72%) Ceph
5 2 (0.72%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.72%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.36%) Squid
Systems Management
1 71 (25.45%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.98%) Terraform
3 34 (12.19%) Grafana
4 28 (10.04%) Prometheus
5 20 (7.17%) Ansible
6 5 (1.79%) Puppet
7 4 (1.43%) Salt
8 3 (1.08%) Istio
9 2 (0.72%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.72%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.72%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.72%) Rancher
10 1 (0.36%) Argo
10 1 (0.36%) CASB
10 1 (0.36%) Docker Swarm
10 1 (0.36%) MOM
10 1 (0.36%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.36%) QRadar
10 1 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.36%) WMI
Vendors
1 27 (9.68%) OpenAI
2 26 (9.32%) Microsoft
3 25 (8.96%) Google
4 18 (6.45%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.66%) Splunk
6 11 (3.94%) Atlassian
6 11 (3.94%) Jaspersoft
6 11 (3.94%) Oracle
7 7 (2.51%) Checkmarx
8 6 (2.15%) Cribl.io
9 5 (1.79%) Automation Anywhere
9 5 (1.79%) Black Duck
9 5 (1.79%) Denodo
9 5 (1.79%) IBM
9 5 (1.79%) Informatica
9 5 (1.79%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.79%) UiPath
10 4 (1.43%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.08%) Confluent
11 3 (1.08%) VMware