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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 421 248 302
Rank change year-on-year -173 +54 -34
Contract jobs citing Open Source 262 357 299
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.09% 0.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.58% 1.20% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 131 196 187
10th Percentile £431 £395 £355
25th Percentile £497 £448 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £485 £600
% change year-on-year +8.25% -19.17% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 11
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile - - £20.68
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £21.86
75th Percentile - - £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 45,107 29,668 33,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.46% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,893 18,635 21,816
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £736 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,744 1,629 1,969
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.66 £17.35 £17.72
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £40.33
% change year-on-year +83.17% -40.48% +0.81%

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 31 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 31 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 -202 191 £550 - 323
London -127 108 £608 +1.25% 230
Work from Home -96 94 £550 - 136
UK excluding London -114 93 £525 +8.25% 123
North of England -86 20 £513 +5.82% 27
South West -28 19 £550 +34.15% 23
Scotland -30 16 £675 +35.00% 10
Midlands -50 16 £469 -6.20% 8
West Midlands -53 16 £469 -6.20% 7
Yorkshire -51 13 £510 -1.02% 10
East of England -11 12 £552 +38.00% 21
South East -77 11 £500 - 28
North West -64 7 £550 +11.79% 10

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 (6.87%) Confluence
2 9 (3.44%) Apache
3 8 (3.05%) SharePoint
4 6 (2.29%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (2.29%) Apache Spark
4 6 (2.29%) SAS
5 2 (0.76%) Apache Superset
5 2 (0.76%) Appian
5 2 (0.76%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 119 (45.42%) AWS
2 70 (26.72%) Azure
3 47 (17.94%) GCP
4 31 (11.83%) GitHub
5 29 (11.07%) Amazon S3
6 27 (10.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 23 (8.78%) Serverless
8 19 (7.25%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
10 12 (4.58%) Amazon SQS
10 12 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (4.58%) Vertex AI
11 11 (4.20%) AWS KMS
11 11 (4.20%) Route 53
12 10 (3.82%) SaaS
13 9 (3.44%) Anthropic Claude
13 9 (3.44%) Azure AI
13 9 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (3.44%) Google Gemini
14 8 (3.05%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.67%) SNMP
2 5 (1.91%) Firewall
3 3 (1.15%) HTTPS
3 3 (1.15%) Intrusion Detection
3 3 (1.15%) Network Security
3 3 (1.15%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (1.15%) WAN
4 2 (0.76%) 4G
4 2 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
4 2 (0.76%) HTTP
4 2 (0.76%) NaaS
4 2 (0.76%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.38%) 5G
5 1 (0.38%) DNS
5 1 (0.38%) LTE
5 1 (0.38%) MQTT
5 1 (0.38%) NGFW
5 1 (0.38%) SSH
5 1 (0.38%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (12.98%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (8.40%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (6.87%) DynamoDB
4 14 (5.34%) Apache Cassandra
5 12 (4.58%) MongoDB
6 11 (4.20%) Amazon Aurora
7 10 (3.82%) Big Data
7 10 (3.82%) BigQuery
7 10 (3.82%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (3.44%) Amazon Redshift
9 8 (3.05%) Amazon Athena
9 8 (3.05%) Data Lake
10 7 (2.67%) Relational Database
11 6 (2.29%) Amazon QuickSight
12 5 (1.91%) Apache Iceberg
12 5 (1.91%) Flink
12 5 (1.91%) NoSQL
12 5 (1.91%) Pentaho
12 5 (1.91%) Pinecone
12 5 (1.91%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 59 (22.52%) Git
2 23 (8.78%) JUnit
3 22 (8.40%) Jenkins
4 21 (8.02%) GitLab
5 18 (6.87%) JIRA
5 18 (6.87%) SonarQube
6 14 (5.34%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (4.20%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (4.20%) DbUnit
7 11 (4.20%) jMock
7 11 (4.20%) Maven
7 11 (4.20%) Mockito
8 8 (3.05%) IntelliJ
9 6 (2.29%) PowerDesigner
10 5 (1.91%) CircleCI
10 5 (1.91%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.91%) Gradle
10 5 (1.91%) MLflow
11 4 (1.53%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.53%) JMeter
General
1 64 (24.43%) Social Skills
2 47 (17.94%) Finance
3 36 (13.74%) Public Sector
4 21 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (7.63%) Banking
6 19 (7.25%) Legal
7 11 (4.20%) Law
8 6 (2.29%) Military
9 4 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.53%) Front Office
9 4 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.15%) 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 (22.90%) Architect
2 54 (20.61%) Developer
3 37 (14.12%) Senior
4 31 (11.83%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (9.92%) AWS Architect
6 20 (7.63%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 19 (7.25%) AWS Solution Architect
7 19 (7.25%) Data Engineer
8 17 (6.49%) Senior Developer
8 17 (6.49%) Software Engineer
9 15 (5.73%) Java Developer
10 14 (5.34%) Analyst
11 12 (4.58%) Consultant
12 11 (4.20%) Cyber Threat Analyst
12 11 (4.20%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 11 (4.20%) Senior Data Engineer
12 11 (4.20%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
13 10 (3.82%) Cloud Engineer
14 9 (3.44%) Android Developer
14 9 (3.44%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (20.99%) Kafka
2 41 (15.65%) REST
3 21 (8.02%) RESTful
4 20 (7.63%) Spring
4 20 (7.63%) Spring Boot
5 18 (6.87%) Node.js
6 16 (6.11%) gRPC
6 16 (6.11%) React
7 15 (5.73%) Android Jetpack
7 15 (5.73%) Jetpack Compose
7 15 (5.73%) LangChain
7 15 (5.73%) SOAP
8 13 (4.96%) AngularJS
8 13 (4.96%) Web Services
9 12 (4.58%) PyTorch
10 11 (4.20%) Bootstrap
10 11 (4.20%) OpenTelemetry
10 11 (4.20%) PowerMock
10 11 (4.20%) Spring Batch
10 11 (4.20%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 42 (16.03%) Distributed Systems
2 41 (15.65%) Cloud Native
3 19 (7.25%) AI Agents
4 14 (5.34%) Cyber Threat
5 11 (4.20%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (4.20%) Product Ownership
6 9 (3.44%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (3.44%) Mobile App
7 8 (3.05%) Management Information System
7 8 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.29%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.91%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.91%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.53%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.53%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.53%) LIMS
10 4 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (1.15%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 3 (1.15%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 51 (19.47%) Linux
2 16 (6.11%) Android
3 10 (3.82%) Unix
4 8 (3.05%) Windows
5 7 (2.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (1.15%) Debian
6 3 (1.15%) Rocky
6 3 (1.15%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.76%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (32.82%) CI/CD
2 67 (25.57%) AI
3 60 (22.90%) Agile
4 59 (22.52%) Software Engineering
5 58 (22.14%) DevOps
6 50 (19.08%) Microservices
7 47 (17.94%) Stakeholder Management
8 44 (16.79%) LLM
9 42 (16.03%) Containerisation
10 41 (15.65%) Event-Driven
11 39 (14.89%) Infrastructure as Code
11 39 (14.89%) Observability
12 34 (12.98%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 33 (12.60%) Data Pipeline
14 31 (11.83%) Machine Learning
15 27 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
16 24 (9.16%) Performance Optimisation
16 24 (9.16%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 24 (9.16%) Test Automation
17 23 (8.78%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 111 (42.37%) Python
2 57 (21.76%) Java
3 38 (14.50%) SQL
4 27 (10.31%) Go
5 18 (6.87%) Bash
6 17 (6.49%) Kotlin
7 14 (5.34%) JavaScript
8 12 (4.58%) TypeScript
9 10 (3.82%) C++
10 8 (3.05%) C#
11 4 (1.53%) MUMPS
11 4 (1.53%) Scala
11 4 (1.53%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.15%) C
12 3 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.15%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.76%) Perl
13 2 (0.76%) Rust
14 1 (0.38%) Bicep
14 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 92 (35.11%) Security Cleared
2 66 (25.19%) SC Cleared
3 29 (11.07%) Degree
4 16 (6.11%) DV Cleared
5 15 (5.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.29%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.29%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.91%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.15%) CISM
9 3 (1.15%) CISSP
9 3 (1.15%) PhD
10 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.38%) CEH
11 1 (0.38%) GCIA
11 1 (0.38%) GIAC
11 1 (0.38%) ISEB
11 1 (0.38%) MPhil
11 1 (0.38%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.34%) QA
2 8 (3.05%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.91%) GDPR
3 5 (1.91%) NIST
4 4 (1.53%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.53%) Disclosure Scotland
4 4 (1.53%) WCAG
5 3 (1.15%) GRC
5 3 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.38%) NCSC
6 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 65 (24.81%) Docker
2 9 (3.44%) Postfix
3 3 (1.15%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.76%) Ceph
4 2 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 1 (0.38%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 58 (22.14%) Kubernetes
2 36 (13.74%) Terraform
3 33 (12.60%) Grafana
4 30 (11.45%) Prometheus
5 20 (7.63%) Ansible
6 6 (2.29%) Puppet
7 4 (1.53%) Salt
8 3 (1.15%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.76%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.76%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.76%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.76%) Istio
9 2 (0.76%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.76%) Rancher
10 1 (0.38%) Argo
10 1 (0.38%) CASB
10 1 (0.38%) Cilium
10 1 (0.38%) MOM
10 1 (0.38%) QRadar
10 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (9.54%) Google
2 23 (8.78%) Microsoft
3 21 (8.02%) OpenAI
4 19 (7.25%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.96%) Splunk
6 12 (4.58%) Oracle
7 11 (4.20%) Atlassian
7 11 (4.20%) Jaspersoft
8 7 (2.67%) Checkmarx
9 6 (2.29%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.29%) IBM
9 6 (2.29%) Informatica
9 6 (2.29%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.91%) Black Duck
10 5 (1.91%) Denodo
11 4 (1.53%) InterSystems
12 3 (1.15%) Databricks
12 3 (1.15%) Fortinet
12 3 (1.15%) Red Hat
12 3 (1.15%) VMware