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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 419 258 315
Rank change year-on-year -161 +57 -57
Contract jobs citing Open Source 259 351 266
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 1.06% 0.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.56% 1.18% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 174 146
10th Percentile £413 £363 £350
25th Percentile £463 £426 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -12.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £629
90th Percentile £755 £692 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £493 £511
% change year-on-year +4.26% -3.45% -8.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 14
10th Percentile - - £20.12
25th Percentile £13.09 £51.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £74.00 £56.50 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +30.97% +120.02% +20.85%
75th Percentile £79.00 £61.25 £27.72
90th Percentile £82.60 - £27.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.67 - £25.36

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 46,202 29,871 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.47% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,118 18,549 20,447
10th Percentile £325 £300 £311
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,059 1,786 1,512
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.71
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.30 £20.09
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.50 £45.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.76% -47.37% +8.72%

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 11 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Open Source over the 6 months to 11 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Open Source in the UK

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 11 September 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 -199 183 £550 +2.42% 510
UK excluding London -113 101 £514 +4.26% 216
Work from Home -114 100 £507 -7.82% 218
London -144 94 £599 -0.21% 346
North of England -80 30 £475 -1.55% 37
South West -28 24 £550 +15.79% 31
Scotland -32 17 £525 +5.00% 34
Yorkshire -39 14 £497 -5.29% 15
East of England -21 12 £552 - 36
West Midlands -42 12 £459 -8.20% 7
Midlands -44 12 £459 -8.20% 13
North West -53 9 £638 +35.64% 16
South East -70 9 £459 -19.83% 55
North East -43 7 £425 -8.60% 6

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 15 (5.79%) Confluence
2 11 (4.25%) Apache
3 8 (3.09%) SharePoint
4 7 (2.70%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.70%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.32%) SAS
6 4 (1.54%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.39%) CMS
7 1 (0.39%) Drupal
7 1 (0.39%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.39%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.39%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.77%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.39%) Magento
Cloud Services
1 118 (45.56%) AWS
2 69 (26.64%) Azure
3 54 (20.85%) GCP
4 44 (16.99%) GitHub
5 24 (9.27%) GitHub Actions
6 22 (8.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 22 (8.49%) Amazon S3
7 20 (7.72%) Serverless
8 14 (5.41%) Vertex AI
9 13 (5.02%) Amazon EKS
9 13 (5.02%) IaaS
10 12 (4.63%) Amazon EC2
10 12 (4.63%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (3.47%) Google Gemini
12 8 (3.09%) Amazon Bedrock
12 8 (3.09%) Anthropic Claude
12 8 (3.09%) SaaS
13 7 (2.70%) Amazon SQS
13 7 (2.70%) Azure Monitor
13 7 (2.70%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.70%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (2.32%) HTTPS
2 6 (2.32%) SNMP
3 5 (1.93%) DNS
4 4 (1.54%) Network Security
4 4 (1.54%) SSH
4 4 (1.54%) SSL
5 3 (1.16%) Firewall
6 2 (0.77%) 4G
6 2 (0.77%) Cisco IOS
6 2 (0.77%) HTTP
6 2 (0.77%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.77%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.77%) WAN
7 1 (0.39%) Asterisk PBX
7 1 (0.39%) Broadband
7 1 (0.39%) MQTT
7 1 (0.39%) VoIP
7 1 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (0.39%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (8.88%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (6.18%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (5.02%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.63%) DynamoDB
5 9 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
6 8 (3.09%) Big Data
6 8 (3.09%) BigQuery
6 8 (3.09%) Data Lake
7 7 (2.70%) Amazon Athena
7 7 (2.70%) Amazon QuickSight
8 6 (2.32%) Amazon Aurora
8 6 (2.32%) Relational Database
9 5 (1.93%) Apache Iceberg
9 5 (1.93%) BusinessObjects
9 5 (1.93%) Pentaho
9 5 (1.93%) Power BI
9 5 (1.93%) Redis
9 5 (1.93%) Trino
10 4 (1.54%) Flink
Development Applications
1 57 (22.01%) Git
2 25 (9.65%) Jenkins
3 22 (8.49%) GitLab
4 16 (6.18%) JIRA
5 15 (5.79%) JUnit
6 13 (5.02%) SonarQube
7 9 (3.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (2.70%) IntelliJ
9 6 (2.32%) Bitbucket Server
9 6 (2.32%) Cucumber
9 6 (2.32%) DbUnit
9 6 (2.32%) JMeter
9 6 (2.32%) jMock
9 6 (2.32%) Maven
9 6 (2.32%) Mockito
10 4 (1.54%) Cypress.io
11 3 (1.16%) LoadRunner
11 3 (1.16%) Postman
11 3 (1.16%) PowerDesigner
11 3 (1.16%) Selenium
General
1 67 (25.87%) Social Skills
2 40 (15.44%) Finance
3 38 (14.67%) Public Sector
4 18 (6.95%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (5.79%) Banking
6 12 (4.63%) Legal
7 11 (4.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 10 (3.86%) Law
9 6 (2.32%) Military
10 5 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.93%) Retail
11 4 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.16%) Front Office
12 3 (1.16%) Publishing
13 2 (0.77%) Police
13 2 (0.77%) Polish Language
13 2 (0.77%) Public Speaking
13 2 (0.77%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.39%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 49 (18.92%) Senior
2 47 (18.15%) Architect
2 47 (18.15%) Developer
3 26 (10.04%) Solutions Architect
4 23 (8.88%) AWS Architect
5 18 (6.95%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 17 (6.56%) AWS Solution Architect
7 15 (5.79%) Analyst
7 15 (5.79%) Senior Developer
7 15 (5.79%) Software Engineer
8 13 (5.02%) Consultant
9 12 (4.63%) Data Engineer
9 12 (4.63%) Software Developer
9 12 (4.63%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
10 11 (4.25%) Cloud Engineer
10 11 (4.25%) Cyber Threat Analyst
10 11 (4.25%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
11 10 (3.86%) AWS Engineer
11 10 (3.86%) Platform Engineer
12 9 (3.47%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (19.31%) Terraform
2 41 (15.83%) Kafka
3 32 (12.36%) REST
4 15 (5.79%) Spring
4 15 (5.79%) Spring Boot
5 13 (5.02%) LangChain
5 13 (5.02%) Node.js
5 13 (5.02%) RESTful
6 12 (4.63%) PyTorch
6 12 (4.63%) React
7 11 (4.25%) LangGraph
7 11 (4.25%) SOAP
8 10 (3.86%) eBPF
8 10 (3.86%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (3.86%) TensorFlow
9 8 (3.09%) Android Jetpack
9 8 (3.09%) Jetpack Compose
9 8 (3.09%) Playwright
10 7 (2.70%) AWS CDK
10 7 (2.70%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 48 (18.53%) Cloud Native
2 24 (9.27%) Distributed Systems
3 22 (8.49%) AI Agents
4 20 (7.72%) Cyber Threat
5 12 (4.63%) Private Cloud
6 11 (4.25%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (3.86%) Product Ownership
8 9 (3.47%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (3.47%) Management Information System
9 8 (3.09%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (2.70%) Blog
10 7 (2.70%) Data Structures
10 7 (2.70%) Mobile App
11 6 (2.32%) Legacy Applications
11 6 (2.32%) LIMS
11 6 (2.32%) Linux Command Line
11 6 (2.32%) Security Posture
12 5 (1.93%) Replication
12 5 (1.93%) Security Operations Centre
13 4 (1.54%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 60 (23.17%) Linux
2 18 (6.95%) Unix
3 13 (5.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (3.86%) Windows
5 9 (3.47%) Android
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
1 107 (41.31%) CI/CD
2 72 (27.80%) Agile
3 66 (25.48%) Software Engineering
4 64 (24.71%) DevOps
5 63 (24.32%) AI
6 51 (19.69%) Infrastructure as Code
7 50 (19.31%) Observability
8 43 (16.60%) Containerisation
9 40 (15.44%) Test Automation
10 39 (15.06%) Microservices
11 38 (14.67%) Event-Driven
12 35 (13.51%) Stakeholder Management
13 33 (12.74%) LLM
14 32 (12.36%) Event-Driven Architecture
15 29 (11.20%) Cybersecurity
16 28 (10.81%) Data Pipeline
16 28 (10.81%) Platform Engineering
16 28 (10.81%) Problem-Solving
17 27 (10.42%) Machine Learning
18 26 (10.04%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 106 (40.93%) Python
2 49 (18.92%) Java
3 32 (12.36%) SQL
4 21 (8.11%) Bash
5 19 (7.34%) Go
6 15 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 14 (5.41%) C++
8 13 (5.02%) TypeScript
9 12 (4.63%) Scala
10 11 (4.25%) Perl
11 10 (3.86%) C
12 9 (3.47%) Kotlin
13 6 (2.32%) MUMPS
13 6 (2.32%) Shell Script
14 3 (1.16%) C#
14 3 (1.16%) PowerShell
15 2 (0.77%) Rust
16 1 (0.39%) PL/SQL
16 1 (0.39%) Ruby
16 1 (0.39%) Swift
Qualifications
1 99 (38.22%) Security Cleared
2 72 (27.80%) 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 5 (1.93%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.16%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.16%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.77%) CEH
11 2 (0.77%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.77%) GIAC
11 2 (0.77%) LFCS
11 2 (0.77%) OSCP
11 2 (0.77%) RHCE
11 2 (0.77%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.79%) Accessibility
2 13 (5.02%) QA
3 7 (2.70%) GDPR
4 6 (2.32%) WCAG
5 4 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (1.16%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.16%) GRC
6 3 (1.16%) NIST
7 1 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.39%) NCSC
System Software
1 58 (22.39%) Docker
2 10 (3.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.93%) Postfix
4 4 (1.54%) Ceph
4 4 (1.54%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.54%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.77%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.77%) Firmware
5 2 (0.77%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 64 (24.71%) Kubernetes
2 38 (14.67%) Grafana
3 30 (11.58%) Ansible
3 30 (11.58%) Prometheus
4 10 (3.86%) Puppet
5 8 (3.09%) Progress Chef
6 4 (1.54%) Cilium
6 4 (1.54%) Istio
6 4 (1.54%) Salt
7 2 (0.77%) Control-M
7 2 (0.77%) Docker Swarm
7 2 (0.77%) Kibana
7 2 (0.77%) linkerd
8 1 (0.39%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.39%) Argo
8 1 (0.39%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.39%) QRadar
8 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.39%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 28 (10.81%) Google
2 20 (7.72%) Microsoft
2 20 (7.72%) Splunk
3 17 (6.56%) Dynatrace
4 15 (5.79%) OpenAI
5 12 (4.63%) Oracle
6 11 (4.25%) SaltStack
7 10 (3.86%) Red Hat
7 10 (3.86%) VMware
8 7 (2.70%) Checkmarx
8 7 (2.70%) Cribl.io
9 6 (2.32%) Atlassian
9 6 (2.32%) Databricks
9 6 (2.32%) Informatica
9 6 (2.32%) InterSystems
9 6 (2.32%) Jaspersoft
10 5 (1.93%) Denodo
11 4 (1.54%) Black Duck
11 4 (1.54%) IBM
12 3 (1.16%) ServiceNow