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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 232 303
Rank change year-on-year -135 +71 -44
Contract jobs citing Open Source 288 343 320
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 1.15% 0.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 1.27% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 201 213
10th Percentile £412 £395 £358
25th Percentile £485 £449 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £570
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -7.89% -5.00%
75th Percentile £644 £600 £675
90th Percentile £750 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £475 £585
% change year-on-year +6.58% -18.80% +1.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 14
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - - £21.25
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £26.97
75th Percentile - - £57.50
90th Percentile - - £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £37.62

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 42,754 27,087 37,306
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,630 17,192 23,755
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -3.79% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,570 1,249 2,608
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.87 £16.02
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -29.51% +6.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 June 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 18 June 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 -161 217 £550 - 242
London -107 115 £599 -0.21% 153
UK excluding London -110 107 £506 +6.58% 118
Work from Home -86 106 £550 -4.35% 88
North of England -77 23 £500 +7.82% 18
Scotland -24 20 £675 +31.71% 6
South West -12 18 £538 +9.14% 19
West Midlands -42 18 £472 -5.60% 5
Midlands -52 18 £472 -5.60% 6
South East -62 16 £459 -8.20% 32
East of England -21 13 £550 +52.49% 23
North West -42 11 £415 -10.27% 11
Yorkshire -57 11 £506 - 5

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 18 (6.25%) Confluence
2 8 (2.78%) Apache
2 8 (2.78%) Appian
2 8 (2.78%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.74%) SAS
4 3 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.04%) nginx
4 3 (1.04%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.69%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.35%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.35%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 3 (1.04%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 143 (49.65%) AWS
2 86 (29.86%) Azure
3 44 (15.28%) GCP
4 37 (12.85%) GitHub
5 32 (11.11%) Amazon S3
6 25 (8.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 25 (8.68%) Serverless
7 22 (7.64%) Amazon EC2
8 20 (6.94%) Azure AI
9 17 (5.90%) AWS Lambda
10 15 (5.21%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (4.86%) Anthropic Claude
12 13 (4.51%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (4.51%) Route 53
13 12 (4.17%) Amazon SQS
13 12 (4.17%) Vertex AI
14 11 (3.82%) AWS KMS
15 10 (3.47%) Amazon Bedrock
15 10 (3.47%) Azure Cognitive Services
15 10 (3.47%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.13%) Firewall
2 7 (2.43%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (2.08%) SNMP
4 5 (1.74%) DNS
4 5 (1.74%) WAN
5 3 (1.04%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.04%) Network Security
6 2 (0.69%) DHCP
6 2 (0.69%) NaaS
7 1 (0.35%) 5G
7 1 (0.35%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.35%) LTE
7 1 (0.35%) MQTT
7 1 (0.35%) NAS
7 1 (0.35%) NGFW
7 1 (0.35%) SAN
7 1 (0.35%) SSH
7 1 (0.35%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (15.63%) PostgreSQL
2 30 (10.42%) Apache Cassandra
3 20 (6.94%) Amazon RDS
4 17 (5.90%) DynamoDB
5 14 (4.86%) MongoDB
6 11 (3.82%) Amazon Aurora
6 11 (3.82%) BigQuery
6 11 (3.82%) Pinecone
6 11 (3.82%) SQL Server
7 9 (3.13%) Amazon Athena
7 9 (3.13%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (2.78%) NoSQL
8 8 (2.78%) Relational Database
9 7 (2.43%) Amazon QuickSight
10 6 (2.08%) Big Data
10 6 (2.08%) Data Lake
10 6 (2.08%) Metadata
11 5 (1.74%) Apache Iceberg
11 5 (1.74%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 60 (20.83%) Git
2 29 (10.07%) GitLab
3 25 (8.68%) JUnit
4 21 (7.29%) Jenkins
5 19 (6.60%) JIRA
6 18 (6.25%) SonarQube
7 14 (4.86%) Sonatype Nexus
8 11 (3.82%) Bitbucket Server
8 11 (3.82%) DbUnit
8 11 (3.82%) jMock
8 11 (3.82%) Maven
8 11 (3.82%) MLflow
8 11 (3.82%) Mockito
9 8 (2.78%) IntelliJ
10 7 (2.43%) CircleCI
10 7 (2.43%) Gradle
11 5 (1.74%) Artifactory
11 5 (1.74%) PowerDesigner
12 2 (0.69%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.69%) JMeter
General
1 66 (22.92%) Social Skills
2 61 (21.18%) Finance
3 46 (15.97%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.64%) Legal
5 21 (7.29%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.29%) Banking
6 11 (3.82%) Law
7 7 (2.43%) Military
8 6 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.74%) Front Office
10 4 (1.39%) Retail
11 3 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.04%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.69%) Billing
12 2 (0.69%) Marketing
12 2 (0.69%) Police
12 2 (0.69%) Publishing
13 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 72 (25.00%) Developer
2 59 (20.49%) Architect
3 50 (17.36%) Senior
4 31 (10.76%) Solutions Architect
5 29 (10.07%) Senior Developer
6 28 (9.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 27 (9.38%) Software Engineer
8 25 (8.68%) AWS Architect
9 22 (7.64%) Data Engineer
10 17 (5.90%) AWS Solution Architect
11 14 (4.86%) Consultant
11 14 (4.86%) Java Developer
12 12 (4.17%) Cloud Engineer
12 12 (4.17%) Lead
12 12 (4.17%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (3.82%) Android Developer
13 11 (3.82%) Python Developer
14 10 (3.47%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 10 (3.47%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (3.47%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (23.26%) Kafka
2 46 (15.97%) REST
3 31 (10.76%) gRPC
3 31 (10.76%) RESTful
4 24 (8.33%) React
5 22 (7.64%) Web Services
6 20 (6.94%) Node.js
6 20 (6.94%) Spring
6 20 (6.94%) Spring Boot
7 17 (5.90%) AngularJS
7 17 (5.90%) LangChain
8 16 (5.56%) .NET
8 16 (5.56%) Android Jetpack
8 16 (5.56%) Hugging Face
8 16 (5.56%) Jetpack Compose
8 16 (5.56%) PyTorch
8 16 (5.56%) TensorFlow
9 13 (4.51%) SOAP
10 12 (4.17%) Django
11 11 (3.82%) JPA
Miscellaneous
1 53 (18.40%) Distributed Systems
2 44 (15.28%) Cloud Native
3 17 (5.90%) AI Agents
4 15 (5.21%) Product Ownership
5 10 (3.47%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (3.13%) Mobile App
7 8 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.78%) Low-Code
8 7 (2.43%) Virtual Team
9 6 (2.08%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.08%) Legacy Code
9 6 (2.08%) Management Information System
9 6 (2.08%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.74%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.74%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.04%) Clustering
11 3 (1.04%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 2 (0.69%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 46 (15.97%) Linux
2 18 (6.25%) Android
3 5 (1.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.39%) Debian
4 4 (1.39%) Rocky
4 4 (1.39%) Ubuntu
4 4 (1.39%) Unix
5 3 (1.04%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.04%) Windows
6 1 (0.35%) VMS
6 1 (0.35%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (32.99%) CI/CD
2 81 (28.13%) AI
3 72 (25.00%) Software Engineering
4 71 (24.65%) Agile
5 70 (24.31%) Microservices
6 64 (22.22%) DevOps
7 61 (21.18%) LLM
8 57 (19.79%) Containerisation
9 51 (17.71%) Stakeholder Management
10 44 (15.28%) Machine Learning
11 43 (14.93%) Infrastructure as Code
12 38 (13.19%) Data Pipeline
12 38 (13.19%) Generative AI
13 37 (12.85%) Observability
13 37 (12.85%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
14 34 (11.81%) Event-Driven
15 31 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
16 28 (9.72%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 28 (9.72%) Prompt Engineering
17 26 (9.03%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 129 (44.79%) Python
2 53 (18.40%) Java
3 42 (14.58%) SQL
4 41 (14.24%) Go
5 22 (7.64%) JavaScript
6 18 (6.25%) Bash
6 18 (6.25%) TypeScript
7 17 (5.90%) Kotlin
8 16 (5.56%) C#
9 6 (2.08%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.74%) C++
10 5 (1.74%) PowerShell
11 4 (1.39%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.04%) Ruby
12 3 (1.04%) Scala
13 2 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.35%) Bicep
14 1 (0.35%) Groovy
14 1 (0.35%) Rust
14 1 (0.35%) Swift
Qualifications
1 85 (29.51%) Security Cleared
2 68 (23.61%) SC Cleared
3 29 (10.07%) Degree
4 14 (4.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (2.78%) DV Cleared
7 7 (2.43%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.74%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.04%) CISM
10 3 (1.04%) CISSP
11 2 (0.69%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.69%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.69%) PhD
12 1 (0.35%) CEH
12 1 (0.35%) GCIA
12 1 (0.35%) GIAC
12 1 (0.35%) ISEB
12 1 (0.35%) MPhil
12 1 (0.35%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.21%) QA
2 12 (4.17%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.47%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.08%) WCAG
5 4 (1.39%) NIST
6 3 (1.04%) GRC
6 3 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.69%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.35%) GDPR
8 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 1 (0.35%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 93 (32.29%) Docker
2 9 (3.13%) Postfix
3 7 (2.43%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.69%) Ceph
5 2 (0.69%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.69%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.35%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.35%) Squid
6 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 84 (29.17%) Kubernetes
2 40 (13.89%) Terraform
3 33 (11.46%) Grafana
4 28 (9.72%) Prometheus
5 17 (5.90%) Ansible
6 6 (2.08%) Istio
7 4 (1.39%) Puppet
7 4 (1.39%) Salt
8 2 (0.69%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.69%) Argo
8 2 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.69%) Rancher
9 1 (0.35%) CASB
9 1 (0.35%) Control-M
9 1 (0.35%) MOM
9 1 (0.35%) QRadar
9 1 (0.35%) WMI
Vendors
1 32 (11.11%) OpenAI
2 27 (9.38%) Google
3 23 (7.99%) Microsoft
4 18 (6.25%) Dynatrace
5 12 (4.17%) Oracle
6 11 (3.82%) Atlassian
6 11 (3.82%) Jaspersoft
6 11 (3.82%) Splunk
7 8 (2.78%) Automation Anywhere
7 8 (2.78%) UiPath
8 7 (2.43%) Checkmarx
9 5 (1.74%) Black Duck
9 5 (1.74%) Cribl.io
9 5 (1.74%) Denodo
9 5 (1.74%) IBM
9 5 (1.74%) Informatica
9 5 (1.74%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.39%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.04%) Confluent
11 3 (1.04%) Sonatype