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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 410 246 298
Rank change year-on-year -164 +52 -30
Contract jobs citing Open Source 265 358 304
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 1.09% 0.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.59% 1.20% 0.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 195 191
10th Percentile £431 £395 £356
25th Percentile £500 £436 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £659 £600 £675
90th Percentile £755 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £484 £600
% change year-on-year +7.33% -19.33% +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 44,856 29,798 34,328
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.42% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,798 18,719 22,071
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,670 1,616 2,026
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.56
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.33 £17.55
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.38 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.38 £68.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.82 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.59% -40.46% -

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 27 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 27 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 -190 193 £550 - 287
London -129 105 £608 +1.25% 202
UK excluding London -118 100 £520 +7.33% 115
Work from Home -97 98 £550 - 114
North of England -84 24 £511 +5.96% 24
South West -27 19 £550 +34.15% 20
Scotland -23 18 £738 +47.50% 9
West Midlands -43 16 £469 -6.20% 6
Midlands -50 16 £469 -6.20% 7
Yorkshire -45 14 £505 +2.43% 8
East of England -11 12 £552 +38.00% 21
South East -84 12 £500 - 28
North West -56 9 £525 +6.71% 11

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 (6.79%) Confluence
2 10 (3.77%) Apache
3 8 (3.02%) SharePoint
4 6 (2.26%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (2.26%) Apache Spark
4 6 (2.26%) SAS
5 3 (1.13%) Apache Superset
5 3 (1.13%) nginx
5 3 (1.13%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.75%) Appian
7 1 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 123 (46.42%) AWS
2 74 (27.92%) Azure
3 50 (18.87%) GCP
4 29 (10.94%) Amazon S3
4 29 (10.94%) GitHub
5 27 (10.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 23 (8.68%) Serverless
7 19 (7.17%) Amazon EC2
8 15 (5.66%) AWS Lambda
9 12 (4.53%) Amazon SQS
9 12 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (4.53%) Vertex AI
10 11 (4.15%) AWS KMS
10 11 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
10 11 (4.15%) Route 53
11 10 (3.77%) Azure AI
11 10 (3.77%) SaaS
12 9 (3.40%) Anthropic Claude
12 9 (3.40%) Google Gemini
13 8 (3.02%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.64%) SNMP
2 6 (2.26%) Reverse Proxy
3 5 (1.89%) Firewall
4 3 (1.13%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (1.13%) Network Security
4 3 (1.13%) WAN
5 2 (0.75%) 4G
5 2 (0.75%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.75%) DNS
5 2 (0.75%) HTTPS
5 2 (0.75%) NaaS
6 1 (0.38%) 5G
6 1 (0.38%) DHCP
6 1 (0.38%) HTTP
6 1 (0.38%) LTE
6 1 (0.38%) MQTT
6 1 (0.38%) NGFW
6 1 (0.38%) SSH
6 1 (0.38%) SSL
6 1 (0.38%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (13.96%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (8.30%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (6.79%) DynamoDB
4 14 (5.28%) Apache Cassandra
5 13 (4.91%) MongoDB
6 11 (4.15%) Amazon Aurora
7 10 (3.77%) BigQuery
7 10 (3.77%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (3.40%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (3.40%) Big Data
9 8 (3.02%) Amazon Athena
9 8 (3.02%) Data Lake
9 8 (3.02%) Relational Database
10 6 (2.26%) Amazon QuickSight
11 5 (1.89%) Apache Iceberg
11 5 (1.89%) Flink
11 5 (1.89%) Metadata
11 5 (1.89%) Pentaho
11 5 (1.89%) Pinecone
11 5 (1.89%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 58 (21.89%) Git
2 23 (8.68%) GitLab
2 23 (8.68%) JUnit
3 21 (7.92%) Jenkins
4 19 (7.17%) JIRA
5 18 (6.79%) SonarQube
6 14 (5.28%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (4.15%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (4.15%) DbUnit
7 11 (4.15%) jMock
7 11 (4.15%) Maven
7 11 (4.15%) Mockito
8 8 (3.02%) IntelliJ
9 5 (1.89%) CircleCI
9 5 (1.89%) Gradle
9 5 (1.89%) MLflow
9 5 (1.89%) PowerDesigner
10 4 (1.51%) Artifactory
11 3 (1.13%) Cucumber
12 2 (0.75%) JMeter
General
1 65 (24.53%) Social Skills
2 49 (18.49%) Finance
3 39 (14.72%) Public Sector
4 22 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.92%) Banking
6 20 (7.55%) Legal
7 11 (4.15%) Law
8 7 (2.64%) Military
9 5 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.51%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.51%) Front Office
10 4 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.13%) Retail
12 2 (0.75%) Billing
12 2 (0.75%) Police
12 2 (0.75%) Public Speaking
12 2 (0.75%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.38%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 61 (23.02%) Architect
2 53 (20.00%) Developer
3 39 (14.72%) Senior
4 32 (12.08%) Solutions Architect
5 25 (9.43%) AWS Architect
6 23 (8.68%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 21 (7.92%) Data Engineer
8 18 (6.79%) AWS Solution Architect
8 18 (6.79%) Software Engineer
9 17 (6.42%) Senior Developer
10 14 (5.28%) Consultant
10 14 (5.28%) Java Developer
11 13 (4.91%) Analyst
12 12 (4.53%) Senior Data Engineer
13 10 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
13 10 (3.77%) Cyber Threat Analyst
13 10 (3.77%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
13 10 (3.77%) Lead
13 10 (3.77%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
14 9 (3.40%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (20.75%) Kafka
2 40 (15.09%) REST
3 21 (7.92%) RESTful
4 19 (7.17%) Spring
4 19 (7.17%) Spring Boot
5 18 (6.79%) LangChain
5 18 (6.79%) Node.js
5 18 (6.79%) React
6 16 (6.04%) gRPC
7 14 (5.28%) Android Jetpack
7 14 (5.28%) Jetpack Compose
7 14 (5.28%) SOAP
8 13 (4.91%) AngularJS
8 13 (4.91%) PyTorch
8 13 (4.91%) Web Services
9 12 (4.53%) Hugging Face
9 12 (4.53%) TensorFlow
10 11 (4.15%) Bootstrap
10 11 (4.15%) JPA
10 11 (4.15%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 42 (15.85%) Cloud Native
1 42 (15.85%) Distributed Systems
2 18 (6.79%) AI Agents
3 13 (4.91%) Cyber Threat
4 11 (4.15%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (3.77%) Data Protection Act
5 10 (3.77%) Product Ownership
5 10 (3.77%) Self-Motivation
6 9 (3.40%) Mobile App
7 8 (3.02%) Management Information System
8 6 (2.26%) Data Centre
8 6 (2.26%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
9 5 (1.89%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.51%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.51%) Virtual Team
11 3 (1.13%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 3 (1.13%) Legacy Code
11 3 (1.13%) LIMS
11 3 (1.13%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 52 (19.62%) Linux
2 16 (6.04%) Android
3 7 (2.64%) Unix
4 6 (2.26%) Windows
5 5 (1.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (1.13%) Apple iOS
6 3 (1.13%) Debian
6 3 (1.13%) Rocky
6 3 (1.13%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.38%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (32.83%) CI/CD
2 73 (27.55%) AI
3 63 (23.77%) Agile
3 63 (23.77%) DevOps
4 58 (21.89%) Software Engineering
5 51 (19.25%) LLM
5 51 (19.25%) Microservices
6 48 (18.11%) Stakeholder Management
7 45 (16.98%) Containerisation
8 43 (16.23%) Infrastructure as Code
9 40 (15.09%) Event-Driven
10 39 (14.72%) Observability
11 35 (13.21%) Machine Learning
12 34 (12.83%) Data Pipeline
13 33 (12.45%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 32 (12.08%) Problem-Solving
15 27 (10.19%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 25 (9.43%) Performance Optimisation
17 24 (9.06%) Generative AI
18 23 (8.68%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 117 (44.15%) Python
2 55 (20.75%) Java
3 37 (13.96%) SQL
4 28 (10.57%) Go
5 17 (6.42%) Bash
6 16 (6.04%) Kotlin
7 14 (5.28%) JavaScript
8 13 (4.91%) TypeScript
9 9 (3.40%) C#
10 7 (2.64%) C++
11 6 (2.26%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.51%) Scala
13 3 (1.13%) MUMPS
13 3 (1.13%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.13%) PowerShell
14 1 (0.38%) Groovy
14 1 (0.38%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.38%) Ruby
14 1 (0.38%) Rust
14 1 (0.38%) Swift
Qualifications
1 92 (34.72%) Security Cleared
2 66 (24.91%) SC Cleared
3 30 (11.32%) Degree
4 15 (5.66%) DV Cleared
5 14 (5.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.26%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.26%) Azure Certification
6 6 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.89%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.13%) CISM
8 3 (1.13%) CISSP
8 3 (1.13%) PhD
9 2 (0.75%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.38%) GCIA
10 1 (0.38%) GIAC
10 1 (0.38%) ISEB
10 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.38%) MPhil
10 1 (0.38%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.28%) QA
2 7 (2.64%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.89%) Data Quality
3 5 (1.89%) NIST
4 4 (1.51%) GDPR
4 4 (1.51%) WCAG
5 3 (1.13%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.13%) GRC
5 3 (1.13%) 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 66 (24.91%) Docker
2 9 (3.40%) Postfix
3 3 (1.13%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.75%) Ceph
4 2 (0.75%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.75%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 1 (0.38%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.38%) Squid
Systems Management
1 60 (22.64%) Kubernetes
2 40 (15.09%) Terraform
3 33 (12.45%) Grafana
4 30 (11.32%) Prometheus
5 19 (7.17%) Ansible
6 4 (1.51%) Puppet
7 3 (1.13%) Salt
8 2 (0.75%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.75%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.75%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.75%) Istio
8 2 (0.75%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.75%) Rancher
9 1 (0.38%) Argo
9 1 (0.38%) CASB
9 1 (0.38%) Cilium
9 1 (0.38%) Control-M
9 1 (0.38%) MOM
9 1 (0.38%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 26 (9.81%) Google
2 24 (9.06%) Microsoft
3 22 (8.30%) OpenAI
4 19 (7.17%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.91%) Splunk
6 12 (4.53%) Oracle
7 11 (4.15%) Atlassian
7 11 (4.15%) Jaspersoft
8 7 (2.64%) Checkmarx
9 6 (2.26%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.26%) Informatica
10 5 (1.89%) Black Duck
10 5 (1.89%) Denodo
10 5 (1.89%) IBM
10 5 (1.89%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.13%) Confluent
11 3 (1.13%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.13%) InterSystems
11 3 (1.13%) Sonatype
11 3 (1.13%) VMware