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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 417 250 296
Rank change year-on-year -167 +46 -32
Contract jobs citing Open Source 259 344 298
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 139 178 189
10th Percentile £425 £371 £350
25th Percentile £475 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £573
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.30% -4.58%
75th Percentile £623 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £666 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £497 £600
% change year-on-year +3.52% -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 45,331 29,700 33,127
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.46% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,838 18,524 21,130
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 2,836 1,729 1,767
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.33 £18.14
Median hourly rate £41.63 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.54% -38.57% -0.24%
75th Percentile £67.99 £49.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +83.17% -43.53% +17.65%

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 20 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 20 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 -202 188 £550 +2.42% 665
London -140 102 £600 - 481
Work from Home -100 97 £514 -6.55% 294
UK excluding London -135 92 £514 +3.52% 255
North of England -64 26 £497 +1.07% 49
South West -24 20 £550 +34.15% 31
Yorkshire -37 15 £500 -4.76% 9
Scotland -35 13 £800 +56.10% 35
West Midlands -49 13 £459 -8.20% 20
Midlands -53 13 £459 -8.20% 25
East of England -10 12 £552 +38.00% 56
South East -68 9 £550 +2.33% 39
North West -47 7 £550 +11.79% 26
North East -38 4 £425 -8.60% 14

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 (6.56%) Confluence
2 11 (4.25%) Apache
3 8 (3.09%) Apache Spark
4 7 (2.70%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.70%) SharePoint
5 6 (2.32%) SAS
6 4 (1.54%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.39%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.16%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 119 (45.95%) AWS
2 69 (26.64%) Azure
3 52 (20.08%) GCP
4 33 (12.74%) GitHub
5 25 (9.65%) Amazon S3
6 24 (9.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (8.49%) Serverless
8 16 (6.18%) GitHub Actions
9 15 (5.79%) Amazon EC2
10 14 (5.41%) Vertex AI
11 13 (5.02%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (3.86%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (3.86%) IaaS
12 10 (3.86%) SaaS
13 9 (3.47%) Amazon SQS
13 9 (3.47%) Google Gemini
14 8 (3.09%) Amazon Bedrock
14 8 (3.09%) AWS KMS
14 8 (3.09%) Azure Monitor
14 8 (3.09%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.09%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.32%) SNMP
3 5 (1.93%) Firewall
4 4 (1.54%) HTTPS
5 3 (1.16%) Network Security
5 3 (1.16%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (1.16%) WAN
6 2 (0.77%) 4G
6 2 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.77%) DNS
6 2 (0.77%) HTTP
6 2 (0.77%) NaaS
6 2 (0.77%) SSH
6 2 (0.77%) SSL
6 2 (0.77%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.39%) MQTT
7 1 (0.39%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (11.20%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (6.95%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (5.41%) DynamoDB
3 14 (5.41%) MongoDB
4 11 (4.25%) Big Data
5 10 (3.86%) Apache Cassandra
6 9 (3.47%) Amazon Redshift
6 9 (3.47%) BigQuery
6 9 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (3.09%) Amazon Athena
7 8 (3.09%) Amazon Aurora
7 8 (3.09%) Data Lake
8 7 (2.70%) Relational Database
9 6 (2.32%) Amazon QuickSight
10 5 (1.93%) Apache Iceberg
10 5 (1.93%) BusinessObjects
10 5 (1.93%) Flink
10 5 (1.93%) Power BI
10 5 (1.93%) Spatial Data
10 5 (1.93%) Trino
Development Applications
1 57 (22.01%) Git
2 22 (8.49%) Jenkins
3 21 (8.11%) GitLab
4 18 (6.95%) JIRA
4 18 (6.95%) JUnit
5 15 (5.79%) SonarQube
6 13 (5.02%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (3.09%) Bitbucket Server
7 8 (3.09%) DbUnit
7 8 (3.09%) IntelliJ
7 8 (3.09%) jMock
7 8 (3.09%) Maven
7 8 (3.09%) Mockito
8 6 (2.32%) Cucumber
8 6 (2.32%) PowerDesigner
9 5 (1.93%) JMeter
10 4 (1.54%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.54%) Selenium
11 3 (1.16%) CircleCI
11 3 (1.16%) LoadRunner
General
1 67 (25.87%) Social Skills
2 43 (16.60%) Finance
3 37 (14.29%) Public Sector
4 21 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (6.56%) Banking
6 16 (6.18%) Legal
7 10 (3.86%) Law
8 8 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (2.32%) Military
10 4 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.54%) Front Office
11 3 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.16%) Publishing
11 3 (1.16%) Retail
12 2 (0.77%) Billing
12 2 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.77%) Police
12 2 (0.77%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.77%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 57 (22.01%) Architect
2 47 (18.15%) Developer
3 40 (15.44%) Senior
4 31 (11.97%) Solutions Architect
5 25 (9.65%) AWS Architect
6 18 (6.95%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 18 (6.95%) AWS Solution Architect
7 16 (6.18%) Analyst
7 16 (6.18%) Data Engineer
8 15 (5.79%) Software Engineer
9 14 (5.41%) Senior Developer
10 13 (5.02%) Consultant
10 13 (5.02%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 12 (4.63%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 12 (4.63%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 12 (4.63%) Java Developer
12 10 (3.86%) AWS Engineer
12 10 (3.86%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (3.47%) Platform Engineer
13 9 (3.47%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (18.53%) Kafka
2 41 (15.83%) Terraform
3 34 (13.13%) REST
4 17 (6.56%) Spring
4 17 (6.56%) Spring Boot
5 15 (5.79%) LangChain
5 15 (5.79%) React
5 15 (5.79%) RESTful
6 13 (5.02%) Node.js
7 12 (4.63%) gRPC
7 12 (4.63%) SOAP
8 11 (4.25%) OpenTelemetry
9 10 (3.86%) AngularJS
9 10 (3.86%) LangGraph
10 9 (3.47%) Android Jetpack
10 9 (3.47%) Jetpack Compose
10 9 (3.47%) PyTorch
11 8 (3.09%) Bootstrap
11 8 (3.09%) GraphQL
11 8 (3.09%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 46 (17.76%) Cloud Native
2 30 (11.58%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (8.11%) AI Agents
4 19 (7.34%) Cyber Threat
5 12 (4.63%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (4.25%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (3.47%) Product Ownership
8 8 (3.09%) Management Information System
9 7 (2.70%) Mobile App
9 7 (2.70%) Private Cloud
9 7 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (2.32%) Data Structures
11 5 (1.93%) Legacy Applications
11 5 (1.93%) LIMS
11 5 (1.93%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.93%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (1.93%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.54%) Blog
12 4 (1.54%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 4 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 49 (18.92%) Linux
2 14 (5.41%) Unix
3 11 (4.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.86%) Android
5 9 (3.47%) Windows
6 3 (1.16%) Debian
6 3 (1.16%) Rocky
6 3 (1.16%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.77%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.39%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (35.91%) CI/CD
2 65 (25.10%) Software Engineering
3 63 (24.32%) Agile
3 63 (24.32%) AI
4 60 (23.17%) DevOps
5 45 (17.37%) Stakeholder Management
6 44 (16.99%) Observability
7 43 (16.60%) Containerisation
8 42 (16.22%) Microservices
9 41 (15.83%) Event-Driven
9 41 (15.83%) Infrastructure as Code
10 37 (14.29%) LLM
11 34 (13.13%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 32 (12.36%) Data Pipeline
13 30 (11.58%) Test Automation
14 27 (10.42%) Machine Learning
14 27 (10.42%) Problem-Solving
15 26 (10.04%) Cybersecurity
16 22 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
16 22 (8.49%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 103 (39.77%) Python
2 51 (19.69%) Java
3 35 (13.51%) SQL
4 22 (8.49%) Go
5 18 (6.95%) Bash
6 14 (5.41%) TypeScript
7 13 (5.02%) C++
8 12 (4.63%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.86%) Kotlin
10 8 (3.09%) Scala
11 7 (2.70%) C
12 6 (2.32%) Perl
13 5 (1.93%) MUMPS
14 4 (1.54%) C#
15 3 (1.16%) PL/SQL
15 3 (1.16%) PowerShell
15 3 (1.16%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.77%) Rust
17 1 (0.39%) Objective-C
17 1 (0.39%) Swift
Qualifications
1 95 (36.68%) Security Cleared
2 66 (25.48%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.11%) Degree
4 17 (6.56%) DV Cleared
5 12 (4.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.47%) CISSP
7 8 (3.09%) CISM
8 6 (2.32%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.93%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (1.16%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.77%) CEH
12 2 (0.77%) GIAC
12 2 (0.77%) GSEC
12 2 (0.77%) OSCP
13 1 (0.39%) GCIA
13 1 (0.39%) RHCE
13 1 (0.39%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.02%) QA
2 11 (4.25%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.32%) GDPR
4 4 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.54%) NIST
4 4 (1.54%) WCAG
5 3 (1.16%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.16%) GRC
5 3 (1.16%) 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 59 (22.78%) Docker
2 7 (2.70%) Postfix
3 4 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.16%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.77%) Ceph
5 2 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.77%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 57 (22.01%) Kubernetes
2 35 (13.51%) Grafana
3 30 (11.58%) Prometheus
4 21 (8.11%) Ansible
5 10 (3.86%) Puppet
6 7 (2.70%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.93%) Salt
8 4 (1.54%) Istio
9 2 (0.77%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.77%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.77%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.77%) linkerd
9 2 (0.77%) 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 (9.27%) Google
2 23 (8.88%) Microsoft
3 19 (7.34%) Dynatrace
4 17 (6.56%) OpenAI
4 17 (6.56%) Splunk
5 12 (4.63%) Oracle
6 8 (3.09%) Atlassian
6 8 (3.09%) Jaspersoft
6 8 (3.09%) Red Hat
7 7 (2.70%) Checkmarx
7 7 (2.70%) Cribl.io
8 6 (2.32%) IBM
8 6 (2.32%) Informatica
8 6 (2.32%) SaltStack
9 5 (1.93%) Black Duck
9 5 (1.93%) Databricks
9 5 (1.93%) Denodo
9 5 (1.93%) InterSystems
9 5 (1.93%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.54%) VMware