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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 409 253 296
Rank change year-on-year -156 +43 -30
Contract jobs citing Open Source 264 349 295
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.06% 0.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.58% 1.17% 0.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 134 184 185
10th Percentile £430 £388 £350
25th Percentile £487 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £531 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -7.65% -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £684 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £483 £600
% change year-on-year +8.70% -19.50% +5.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 11
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - £51.75 £20.68
Median hourly rate £85.00 £56.50 £21.86
Median % change year-on-year +50.44% +158.46% -75.71%
75th Percentile - £61.25 £27.96
90th Percentile - - £57.50
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 45,557 29,755 33,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.46% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,078 18,625 21,348
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £726 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,814 1,660 1,859
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £17.32 £18.22
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.10 £41.25
% change year-on-year +90.30% -44.00% +7.56%

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 8 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 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 8 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 -182 192 £550 - 488
London -140 107 £615 +2.50% 341
UK excluding London -117 96 £525 +8.70% 187
Work from Home -109 95 £550 - 229
South West -28 22 £550 +34.15% 31
North of England -91 21 £513 +4.91% 34
Scotland -32 16 £675 +35.00% 21
West Midlands -43 16 £469 -6.20% 13
Midlands -45 16 £469 -6.20% 15
Yorkshire -37 14 £502 -2.52% 11
East of England -8 12 £552 +38.00% 39
South East -70 10 £500 - 34
North West -55 7 £550 +11.79% 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 18 (6.82%) Confluence
2 11 (4.17%) Apache
3 8 (3.03%) SharePoint
4 7 (2.65%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.65%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.27%) SAS
6 3 (1.14%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.76%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.38%) Appian
8 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 120 (45.45%) AWS
2 73 (27.65%) Azure
3 49 (18.56%) GCP
4 34 (12.88%) GitHub
5 29 (10.98%) Amazon S3
6 27 (10.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 23 (8.71%) Serverless
8 19 (7.20%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (5.68%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (4.92%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (4.55%) Amazon SQS
11 12 (4.55%) Vertex AI
12 11 (4.17%) AWS KMS
12 11 (4.17%) Route 53
13 10 (3.79%) SaaS
14 9 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (3.41%) Google Gemini
15 8 (3.03%) Anthropic Claude
15 8 (3.03%) Azure Monitor
15 8 (3.03%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.65%) SNMP
2 5 (1.89%) Firewall
3 4 (1.52%) HTTPS
3 4 (1.52%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (1.14%) Network Security
4 3 (1.14%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (1.14%) WAN
5 2 (0.76%) 4G
5 2 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.76%) DNS
5 2 (0.76%) HTTP
5 2 (0.76%) NaaS
5 2 (0.76%) SSH
5 2 (0.76%) SSL
5 2 (0.76%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.38%) 5G
6 1 (0.38%) LTE
6 1 (0.38%) MQTT
6 1 (0.38%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (12.12%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (8.33%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (6.82%) DynamoDB
4 12 (4.55%) Apache Cassandra
5 11 (4.17%) Amazon Aurora
5 11 (4.17%) MongoDB
6 10 (3.79%) Big Data
6 10 (3.79%) BigQuery
6 10 (3.79%) Data Warehouse
7 9 (3.41%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (3.03%) Amazon Athena
8 8 (3.03%) Data Lake
9 7 (2.65%) Relational Database
10 6 (2.27%) Amazon QuickSight
11 5 (1.89%) Apache Iceberg
11 5 (1.89%) BusinessObjects
11 5 (1.89%) Flink
11 5 (1.89%) NoSQL
11 5 (1.89%) Pentaho
11 5 (1.89%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 61 (23.11%) Git
2 24 (9.09%) Jenkins
3 23 (8.71%) JUnit
4 22 (8.33%) GitLab
5 18 (6.82%) JIRA
5 18 (6.82%) SonarQube
6 14 (5.30%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (4.17%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (4.17%) DbUnit
7 11 (4.17%) jMock
7 11 (4.17%) Maven
7 11 (4.17%) Mockito
8 8 (3.03%) IntelliJ
9 6 (2.27%) PowerDesigner
10 5 (1.89%) CircleCI
10 5 (1.89%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.89%) Gradle
11 4 (1.52%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.52%) JMeter
12 3 (1.14%) Selenium
General
1 65 (24.62%) Social Skills
2 43 (16.29%) Finance
3 37 (14.02%) Public Sector
4 21 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (7.20%) Legal
6 18 (6.82%) Banking
7 11 (4.17%) Law
8 6 (2.27%) Military
9 4 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.52%) Front Office
9 4 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.14%) Retail
11 2 (0.76%) Billing
11 2 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.76%) Police
11 2 (0.76%) Polish Language
11 2 (0.76%) Public Speaking
11 2 (0.76%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 60 (22.73%) Architect
2 53 (20.08%) Developer
3 37 (14.02%) Senior
4 31 (11.74%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (9.85%) AWS Architect
6 19 (7.20%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 19 (7.20%) AWS Solution Architect
7 18 (6.82%) Data Engineer
8 17 (6.44%) Software Engineer
9 16 (6.06%) Senior Developer
10 15 (5.68%) Analyst
10 15 (5.68%) Java Developer
11 12 (4.55%) Consultant
11 12 (4.55%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 12 (4.55%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 12 (4.55%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 10 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
12 10 (3.79%) Senior Data Engineer
13 9 (3.41%) Android Developer
13 9 (3.41%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (19.70%) Kafka
2 40 (15.15%) REST
3 20 (7.58%) RESTful
3 20 (7.58%) Spring
3 20 (7.58%) Spring Boot
4 17 (6.44%) Node.js
5 15 (5.68%) Android Jetpack
5 15 (5.68%) Jetpack Compose
5 15 (5.68%) LangChain
5 15 (5.68%) React
5 15 (5.68%) SOAP
6 14 (5.30%) gRPC
7 12 (4.55%) AngularJS
7 12 (4.55%) Web Services
8 11 (4.17%) .NET
8 11 (4.17%) ActiveMQ
8 11 (4.17%) Bootstrap
8 11 (4.17%) Hibernate
8 11 (4.17%) JPA
8 11 (4.17%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 42 (15.91%) Cloud Native
2 39 (14.77%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (7.20%) AI Agents
4 16 (6.06%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (4.17%) Product Ownership
6 10 (3.79%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (3.41%) Mobile App
8 8 (3.03%) Management Information System
8 8 (3.03%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.27%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.27%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.89%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
10 5 (1.89%) Private Cloud
11 4 (1.52%) Data Centre
11 4 (1.52%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.52%) LIMS
11 4 (1.52%) Linux Command Line
12 3 (1.14%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 54 (20.45%) Linux
2 16 (6.06%) Android
3 12 (4.55%) Unix
4 10 (3.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (3.03%) Windows
6 4 (1.52%) Debian
6 4 (1.52%) Rocky
6 4 (1.52%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.76%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 89 (33.71%) CI/CD
2 65 (24.62%) AI
3 62 (23.48%) Agile
4 61 (23.11%) DevOps
5 60 (22.73%) Software Engineering
6 48 (18.18%) Microservices
7 47 (17.80%) Stakeholder Management
8 45 (17.05%) Containerisation
9 41 (15.53%) Event-Driven
10 40 (15.15%) Infrastructure as Code
10 40 (15.15%) LLM
10 40 (15.15%) Observability
11 34 (12.88%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 31 (11.74%) Data Pipeline
13 28 (10.61%) Machine Learning
14 27 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
15 24 (9.09%) Performance Optimisation
15 24 (9.09%) Test Automation
16 23 (8.71%) Continuous Integration
16 23 (8.71%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 108 (40.91%) Python
2 56 (21.21%) Java
3 36 (13.64%) SQL
4 25 (9.47%) Go
5 18 (6.82%) Bash
6 17 (6.44%) Kotlin
7 15 (5.68%) JavaScript
8 13 (4.92%) TypeScript
9 12 (4.55%) C++
10 8 (3.03%) C#
11 5 (1.89%) C
12 4 (1.52%) MUMPS
12 4 (1.52%) Perl
12 4 (1.52%) Scala
12 4 (1.52%) Shell Script
13 3 (1.14%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.14%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.76%) Rust
15 1 (0.38%) Bicep
15 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 94 (35.61%) Security Cleared
2 67 (25.38%) SC Cleared
3 26 (9.85%) Degree
4 16 (6.06%) Computer Science Degree
4 16 (6.06%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.27%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.89%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.52%) CISM
7 4 (1.52%) CISSP
8 3 (1.14%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.38%) CEH
10 1 (0.38%) GCIA
10 1 (0.38%) GIAC
10 1 (0.38%) LFCS
10 1 (0.38%) RHCE
10 1 (0.38%) RHCSA
10 1 (0.38%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.30%) QA
2 9 (3.41%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.89%) GDPR
4 4 (1.52%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.52%) NIST
4 4 (1.52%) WCAG
5 3 (1.14%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.14%) GRC
5 3 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.38%) NCSC
6 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 63 (23.86%) Docker
2 9 (3.41%) Postfix
3 4 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.14%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.14%) Ceph
5 2 (0.76%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 56 (21.21%) Kubernetes
2 37 (14.02%) Terraform
3 35 (13.26%) Grafana
4 31 (11.74%) Prometheus
5 21 (7.95%) Ansible
6 8 (3.03%) Puppet
7 5 (1.89%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.89%) Salt
8 2 (0.76%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.76%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.76%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.76%) Istio
8 2 (0.76%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.38%) Argo
9 1 (0.38%) CASB
9 1 (0.38%) Cilium
9 1 (0.38%) MOM
9 1 (0.38%) QRadar
9 1 (0.38%) Rancher
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 27 (10.23%) Google
2 25 (9.47%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.20%) Dynatrace
3 19 (7.20%) OpenAI
4 13 (4.92%) Splunk
5 12 (4.55%) Oracle
6 11 (4.17%) Atlassian
6 11 (4.17%) Jaspersoft
7 7 (2.65%) Checkmarx
8 6 (2.27%) Cribl.io
8 6 (2.27%) IBM
8 6 (2.27%) Informatica
8 6 (2.27%) Red Hat
8 6 (2.27%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.89%) Black Duck
9 5 (1.89%) Denodo
10 4 (1.52%) InterSystems
10 4 (1.52%) SaltStack
10 4 (1.52%) VMware
11 3 (1.14%) Fortinet