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 9 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 318 269 266
Rank change year-on-year -49 -3 -13
Contract jobs citing Open Source 349 278 377
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 0.95% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.89% 1.05% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 203 247
10th Percentile £350 £400 £360
25th Percentile £448 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £580
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -0.86% -3.33%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £801 £838 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £591
% change year-on-year - -15.43% +9.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 4
10th Percentile - £32.90 £58.04
25th Percentile £15.25 £43.25 £66.35
Median hourly rate £15.50 £60.50 £71.93
Median % change year-on-year -74.38% -15.89% -4.09%
75th Percentile £39.75 £77.75 £74.36
90th Percentile £54.15 £88.10 £76.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.50 - £71.93

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 39,074 26,483 37,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.36% 90.62% 86.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,751 17,195 24,633
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 997 2,379
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £19.34 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.70 £31.64 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +15.99% -4.31% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.91
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.80 £70.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £30.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +22.37% -9.09% -8.08%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 -79 284 £552 -8.08% 149
London -70 149 £625 - 78
UK excluding London -53 126 £500 - 93
Work from Home -40 122 £550 -8.33% 59
North of England -52 36 £450 -2.70% 21
South East -42 23 £413 -17.50% 20
Scotland +4 20 £663 +40.96% 10
South West -10 20 £365 -40.16% 12
North West -20 20 £450 -2.70% 9
West Midlands -51 16 £475 +10.08% 5
Midlands -62 16 £475 +10.08% 6
Yorkshire -46 13 £525 - 8
East of England -34 11 £550 +22.22% 21
North East -17 3 - - 4

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 (4.30%) Apache
2 11 (3.15%) Confluence
3 10 (2.87%) Apache Spark
4 8 (2.29%) Appian
5 6 (1.72%) JBoss
5 6 (1.72%) WebLogic
6 5 (1.43%) OpenStack
6 5 (1.43%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.15%) nginx
8 3 (0.86%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.57%) Liferay
9 2 (0.57%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.29%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 2 (0.57%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.57%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.29%) Magento
2 1 (0.29%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 174 (49.86%) AWS
2 83 (23.78%) Azure
3 44 (12.61%) GitHub
4 36 (10.32%) GCP
5 29 (8.31%) Amazon S3
6 26 (7.45%) Serverless
7 20 (5.73%) Azure AI
7 20 (5.73%) GitHub Actions
8 18 (5.16%) Amazon EC2
9 14 (4.01%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (3.72%) Anthropic Claude
10 13 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (3.15%) Amazon SageMaker
12 10 (2.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 10 (2.87%) Azure Cognitive Services
12 10 (2.87%) Azure Data Factory
12 10 (2.87%) Google Gemini
13 9 (2.58%) Route 53
14 8 (2.29%) Amazon SQS
14 8 (2.29%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 16 (4.58%) Firewall
2 7 (2.01%) DNS
2 7 (2.01%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (1.72%) DHCP
3 6 (1.72%) WAN
4 3 (0.86%) VLAN
5 2 (0.57%) Internet
5 2 (0.57%) NaaS
5 2 (0.57%) SSH
5 2 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.29%) InfiniBand
6 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.29%) LTE
6 1 (0.29%) NAS
6 1 (0.29%) Network Security
6 1 (0.29%) RTP
6 1 (0.29%) SAN
6 1 (0.29%) Spanning Tree
6 1 (0.29%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (16.05%) Apache Cassandra
2 50 (14.33%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (5.44%) MongoDB
3 19 (5.44%) NoSQL
4 16 (4.58%) SQL Server
5 13 (3.72%) DynamoDB
6 12 (3.44%) Pinecone
6 12 (3.44%) Redis
7 11 (3.15%) BigQuery
8 10 (2.87%) Amazon RDS
9 9 (2.58%) Relational Database
10 8 (2.29%) Metadata
11 7 (2.01%) Amazon Aurora
11 7 (2.01%) Amazon QuickSight
11 7 (2.01%) Big Data
12 6 (1.72%) Flink
12 6 (1.72%) RDBMS
13 5 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
14 4 (1.15%) GIS
14 4 (1.15%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 58 (16.62%) Git
2 27 (7.74%) GitLab
3 25 (7.16%) Jenkins
3 25 (7.16%) JUnit
4 16 (4.58%) JIRA
5 14 (4.01%) SonarQube
6 11 (3.15%) IntelliJ
6 11 (3.15%) MLflow
7 8 (2.29%) Maven
8 7 (2.01%) Bitbucket Server
8 7 (2.01%) DbUnit
8 7 (2.01%) Gradle
8 7 (2.01%) jMock
8 7 (2.01%) Mockito
8 7 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (1.72%) CircleCI
9 6 (1.72%) Mocha
10 5 (1.43%) Artifactory
10 5 (1.43%) Selenium
11 4 (1.15%) PowerDesigner
General
1 69 (19.77%) Social Skills
2 67 (19.20%) Finance
3 49 (14.04%) Public Sector
4 30 (8.60%) Banking
5 27 (7.74%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.30%) Legal
7 12 (3.44%) Front Office
8 8 (2.29%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.01%) Retail
10 6 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.72%) Publishing
11 5 (1.43%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.43%) Military
12 4 (1.15%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.86%) Law
13 3 (0.86%) Marketing
13 3 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 108 (30.95%) Developer
2 79 (22.64%) Senior
3 62 (17.77%) Architect
4 50 (14.33%) Senior Developer
5 37 (10.60%) Software Engineer
6 28 (8.02%) Solutions Architect
7 25 (7.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 20 (5.73%) AWS Architect
9 16 (4.58%) Data Engineer
10 15 (4.30%) Python Developer
11 14 (4.01%) Android Developer
11 14 (4.01%) AWS Solution Architect
12 13 (3.72%) Cloud Engineer
12 13 (3.72%) Java Developer
13 11 (3.15%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 10 (2.87%) Automation Engineer
14 10 (2.87%) Consultant
14 10 (2.87%) GCP Engineer
14 10 (2.87%) Lead
14 10 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (28.65%) Kafka
2 62 (17.77%) gRPC
3 50 (14.33%) REST
4 36 (10.32%) React
5 34 (9.74%) Node.js
6 30 (8.60%) Spring
7 29 (8.31%) RESTful
8 24 (6.88%) Spring Boot
9 23 (6.59%) LangChain
10 22 (6.30%) AngularJS
10 22 (6.30%) Web Services
11 21 (6.02%) .NET
12 18 (5.16%) HTML
13 15 (4.30%) PyTorch
14 14 (4.01%) Android Jetpack
14 14 (4.01%) CSS
14 14 (4.01%) Hugging Face
14 14 (4.01%) Jetpack Compose
15 13 (3.72%) Android SDK
15 13 (3.72%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 76 (21.78%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (10.32%) Cloud Native
3 21 (6.02%) Product Ownership
4 11 (3.15%) AI Agents
5 10 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (2.58%) Legacy Code
7 8 (2.29%) Distributed Computing
7 8 (2.29%) Low-Code
7 8 (2.29%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (2.01%) Equities
8 7 (2.01%) Fat Client
8 7 (2.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 7 (2.01%) PKI
8 7 (2.01%) Thin Client
9 6 (1.72%) Data Centre
9 6 (1.72%) Mobile App
9 6 (1.72%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.43%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 49 (14.04%) Linux
2 23 (6.59%) Android
3 15 (4.30%) Windows
4 9 (2.58%) Unix
5 7 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (2.01%) Windows 7
6 6 (1.72%) Apple iOS
7 4 (1.15%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.86%) Debian
8 3 (0.86%) Rocky
8 3 (0.86%) Windows Server
9 2 (0.57%) CentOS
9 2 (0.57%) VMS
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (30.95%) Software Engineering
2 97 (27.79%) Microservices
3 93 (26.65%) CI/CD
4 83 (23.78%) AI
5 78 (22.35%) Agile
6 66 (18.91%) DevOps
7 60 (17.19%) Containerisation
8 57 (16.33%) LLM
9 53 (15.19%) Infrastructure as Code
9 53 (15.19%) Problem-Solving
10 48 (13.75%) Machine Learning
11 43 (12.32%) Generative AI
12 40 (11.46%) Stakeholder Management
13 38 (10.89%) Data Pipeline
14 32 (9.17%) TDD
15 31 (8.88%) Computer Science
15 31 (8.88%) Observability
15 31 (8.88%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
15 31 (8.88%) Test Automation
16 28 (8.02%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 148 (42.41%) Python
2 75 (21.49%) Go
2 75 (21.49%) Java
3 56 (16.05%) SQL
4 30 (8.60%) JavaScript
4 30 (8.60%) TypeScript
5 24 (6.88%) C#
6 19 (5.44%) Kotlin
7 18 (5.16%) Bash
8 11 (3.15%) Ruby
8 11 (3.15%) Scala
9 8 (2.29%) PowerShell
9 8 (2.29%) Shell Script
10 6 (1.72%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.15%) C++
11 4 (1.15%) Delphi
11 4 (1.15%) PHP
12 2 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.29%) Bicep
13 1 (0.29%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 86 (24.64%) Security Cleared
2 59 (16.91%) SC Cleared
3 35 (10.03%) Degree
4 15 (4.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 15 (4.30%) Computer Science Degree
4 15 (4.30%) DV Cleared
5 10 (2.87%) Master's Degree
6 7 (2.01%) PhD
7 4 (1.15%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.15%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.29%) CCIP
9 1 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.29%) ISEB
9 1 (0.29%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (5.73%) QA
2 17 (4.87%) Accessibility
3 10 (2.87%) Data Quality
3 10 (2.87%) WCAG
4 6 (1.72%) NIST
5 4 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.86%) GDPR
7 2 (0.57%) GPG for Computer-Based Electronic Evidence
7 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 2 (0.57%) ISO17020
8 1 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.29%) GRC
8 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.29%) SLA
8 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 124 (35.53%) Docker
2 16 (4.58%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.72%) Postfix
4 5 (1.43%) Ceph
4 5 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.15%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (0.86%) ISA Server
6 3 (0.86%) KVM
7 2 (0.57%) Oracle Clusterware
8 1 (0.29%) Firmware
8 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.29%) iptables
8 1 (0.29%) Lustre
8 1 (0.29%) NFS
8 1 (0.29%) QEMU
8 1 (0.29%) Samba
8 1 (0.29%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.29%) Squid
8 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 112 (32.09%) Kubernetes
2 40 (11.46%) Terraform
3 31 (8.88%) Grafana
4 28 (8.02%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.01%) Ansible
6 8 (2.29%) Istio
6 8 (2.29%) Puppet
7 7 (2.01%) WMI
8 6 (1.72%) Argo
9 4 (1.15%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.15%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.15%) Salt
10 3 (0.86%) HAProxy
11 2 (0.57%) Amdocs OSS
11 2 (0.57%) Knative
11 2 (0.57%) Rancher
12 1 (0.29%) CASB
12 1 (0.29%) MOM
12 1 (0.29%) SELinux
Vendors
1 30 (8.60%) Google
2 28 (8.02%) Microsoft
3 25 (7.16%) OpenAI
4 9 (2.58%) Atlassian
4 9 (2.58%) Splunk
4 9 (2.58%) UiPath
4 9 (2.58%) VMware
5 8 (2.29%) Automation Anywhere
5 8 (2.29%) Oracle
6 7 (2.01%) Jaspersoft
7 6 (1.72%) Checkmarx
7 6 (1.72%) Dynatrace
8 5 (1.43%) Confluent
8 5 (1.43%) Databricks
8 5 (1.43%) Red Hat
9 4 (1.15%) Cloudera
9 4 (1.15%) Fortinet
9 4 (1.15%) IBM
9 4 (1.15%) webMethods
9 4 (1.15%) Xamarin