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 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 341 257 293
Rank change year-on-year -84 +36 -31
Contract jobs citing Open Source 312 305 330
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 1.04% 0.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.78% 1.15% 0.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 148 204 218
10th Percentile £400 £400 £363
25th Percentile £467 £456 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £570
Median % change year-on-year - -3.51% -5.00%
75th Percentile £645 £657 £675
90th Percentile £791 £838 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £588
% change year-on-year +5.26% -19.15% +2.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 8
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £61.25 - £25.99
Median hourly rate £62.50 £95.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.21% +72.73% -26.67%
75th Percentile £63.75 - £72.90
90th Percentile - - £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £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 40,059 26,552 37,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,139 17,089 23,891
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% -1.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +2.93% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,402 1,086 2,440
10th Percentile £14.97 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.48% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 -118 250 £550 -8.33% 165
London -84 134 £600 - 97
Work from Home -70 117 £550 -8.33% 70
UK excluding London -90 111 £500 +5.26% 82
North of England -64 28 £450 -3.23% 12
South West -17 18 £538 -14.00% 18
Midlands -52 18 £475 +10.08% 5
South East -52 18 £400 -20.00% 30
West Midlands -54 18 £475 +10.08% 4
Scotland -11 17 £675 +28.57% 2
North West -36 17 £450 -2.70% 7
East of England -23 13 £550 +37.50% 14
Yorkshire -48 10 £485 - 3

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 (5.45%) Confluence
2 10 (3.21%) Apache
3 8 (2.56%) Appian
3 8 (2.56%) SharePoint
4 5 (1.60%) SAS
5 4 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.28%) Apache Spark
5 4 (1.28%) nginx
5 4 (1.28%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.96%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.64%) JBoss
7 2 (0.64%) Liferay
7 2 (0.64%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.64%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.32%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 3 (0.96%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.64%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 160 (51.28%) AWS
2 80 (25.64%) Azure
3 42 (13.46%) GitHub
4 40 (12.82%) GCP
5 36 (11.54%) Amazon S3
6 30 (9.62%) Serverless
7 22 (7.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 20 (6.41%) Amazon EC2
8 20 (6.41%) Azure AI
9 18 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
10 17 (5.45%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (4.49%) Google Gemini
12 13 (4.17%) Anthropic Claude
12 13 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (3.53%) Route 53
14 10 (3.21%) Amazon SQS
14 10 (3.21%) Azure Cognitive Services
15 9 (2.88%) Amazon SageMaker
15 9 (2.88%) AWS KMS
15 9 (2.88%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 13 (4.17%) Firewall
2 7 (2.24%) Reverse Proxy
3 6 (1.92%) DNS
3 6 (1.92%) SNMP
3 6 (1.92%) WAN
4 4 (1.28%) DHCP
5 3 (0.96%) Network Security
6 2 (0.64%) NaaS
6 2 (0.64%) SSH
6 2 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.64%) VLAN
7 1 (0.32%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.32%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.32%) iSCSI
7 1 (0.32%) Kerberos
7 1 (0.32%) LAN
7 1 (0.32%) LTE
7 1 (0.32%) NGFW
7 1 (0.32%) SAN
7 1 (0.32%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (15.38%) PostgreSQL
2 44 (14.10%) Apache Cassandra
3 20 (6.41%) DynamoDB
4 17 (5.45%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (4.81%) BigQuery
5 15 (4.81%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.17%) MongoDB
6 13 (4.17%) Pinecone
7 10 (3.21%) NoSQL
8 9 (2.88%) Amazon Athena
8 9 (2.88%) Amazon Aurora
8 9 (2.88%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
9 7 (2.24%) Amazon QuickSight
9 7 (2.24%) Metadata
9 7 (2.24%) Relational Database
10 6 (1.92%) Data Lake
10 6 (1.92%) RDBMS
10 6 (1.92%) Redis
11 5 (1.60%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 57 (18.27%) Git
2 30 (9.62%) GitLab
3 23 (7.37%) Jenkins
4 22 (7.05%) JUnit
5 21 (6.73%) JIRA
6 17 (5.45%) SonarQube
7 12 (3.85%) Sonatype Nexus
8 11 (3.53%) MLflow
9 9 (2.88%) Bitbucket Server
9 9 (2.88%) DbUnit
9 9 (2.88%) jMock
9 9 (2.88%) Maven
9 9 (2.88%) Mockito
10 8 (2.56%) IntelliJ
11 6 (1.92%) CircleCI
11 6 (1.92%) Gradle
12 5 (1.60%) Artifactory
13 4 (1.28%) PowerDesigner
14 3 (0.96%) Cucumber
14 3 (0.96%) Jasmine
General
1 66 (21.15%) Social Skills
2 63 (20.19%) Finance
3 45 (14.42%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.05%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (6.41%) Banking
6 19 (6.09%) Legal
7 8 (2.56%) Retail
8 7 (2.24%) Front Office
8 7 (2.24%) Law
9 5 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.60%) Military
10 3 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.96%) Publishing
10 3 (0.96%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.64%) Billing
11 2 (0.64%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.64%) Marketing
11 2 (0.64%) Police
11 2 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 83 (26.60%) Developer
2 61 (19.55%) Senior
3 57 (18.27%) Architect
4 35 (11.22%) Software Engineer
5 33 (10.58%) Senior Developer
6 28 (8.97%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 28 (8.97%) Solutions Architect
7 22 (7.05%) Data Engineer
8 21 (6.73%) AWS Architect
9 15 (4.81%) Cloud Engineer
9 15 (4.81%) Consultant
10 14 (4.49%) AWS Solution Architect
11 13 (4.17%) Python Developer
12 12 (3.85%) Java Developer
12 12 (3.85%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (3.53%) Lead
14 10 (3.21%) Android Developer
14 10 (3.21%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (3.21%) Cloud Architect
14 10 (3.21%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (25.32%) Kafka
2 48 (15.38%) gRPC
3 43 (13.78%) REST
4 31 (9.94%) RESTful
5 29 (9.29%) Node.js
6 28 (8.97%) React
7 27 (8.65%) Spring
7 27 (8.65%) Spring Boot
8 24 (7.69%) AngularJS
8 24 (7.69%) LangChain
9 22 (7.05%) Web Services
10 20 (6.41%) .NET
11 18 (5.77%) PyTorch
12 17 (5.45%) Hugging Face
13 16 (5.13%) TensorFlow
14 15 (4.81%) OpenTelemetry
15 13 (4.17%) Android Jetpack
15 13 (4.17%) Jetpack Compose
16 12 (3.85%) Django
17 11 (3.53%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 66 (21.15%) Distributed Systems
2 43 (13.78%) Cloud Native
3 21 (6.73%) Product Ownership
4 10 (3.21%) AI Agents
4 10 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (2.88%) Legacy Code
5 9 (2.88%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.56%) Low-Code
7 7 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (1.92%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.60%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.28%) Fat Client
10 4 (1.28%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.28%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.28%) PKI
10 4 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.28%) Thin Client
11 3 (0.96%) Clustering
11 3 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 49 (15.71%) Linux
2 16 (5.13%) Android
3 11 (3.53%) Windows
4 6 (1.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (1.60%) Unix
6 4 (1.28%) Debian
6 4 (1.28%) Rocky
6 4 (1.28%) Ubuntu
6 4 (1.28%) Windows 7
7 3 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.64%) VMS
8 2 (0.64%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 91 (29.17%) Software Engineering
2 89 (28.53%) CI/CD
3 84 (26.92%) Microservices
4 82 (26.28%) AI
5 71 (22.76%) Agile
6 67 (21.47%) DevOps
7 62 (19.87%) Containerisation
8 57 (18.27%) LLM
9 46 (14.74%) Stakeholder Management
10 45 (14.42%) Machine Learning
11 44 (14.10%) Generative AI
12 43 (13.78%) Infrastructure as Code
13 42 (13.46%) Data Pipeline
14 41 (13.14%) Observability
15 38 (12.18%) Problem-Solving
16 36 (11.54%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 28 (8.97%) Prompt Engineering
17 28 (8.97%) TDD
18 27 (8.65%) SDLC
19 26 (8.33%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 137 (43.91%) Python
2 61 (19.55%) Go
3 58 (18.59%) Java
4 50 (16.03%) SQL
5 23 (7.37%) TypeScript
6 22 (7.05%) C#
7 21 (6.73%) Bash
8 20 (6.41%) JavaScript
9 15 (4.81%) Kotlin
10 8 (2.56%) Ruby
11 7 (2.24%) PowerShell
12 6 (1.92%) PL/SQL
12 6 (1.92%) Shell Script
13 4 (1.28%) C++
13 4 (1.28%) Delphi
13 4 (1.28%) PHP
14 3 (0.96%) Scala
15 2 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
16 1 (0.32%) Bicep
16 1 (0.32%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 89 (28.53%) Security Cleared
2 69 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 27 (8.65%) Degree
4 12 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.28%) AWS Certification
6 4 (1.28%) Azure Certification
6 4 (1.28%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.96%) PhD
8 2 (0.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.32%) CEH
9 1 (0.32%) CISM
9 1 (0.32%) CISSP
9 1 (0.32%) GCIA
9 1 (0.32%) GIAC
9 1 (0.32%) ISEB
9 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.32%) MPhil
9 1 (0.32%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.45%) QA
2 10 (3.21%) Data Quality
3 9 (2.88%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.28%) NIST
4 4 (1.28%) WCAG
5 3 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.32%) GDPR
6 1 (0.32%) GRC
6 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.32%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.32%) SLA
6 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 106 (33.97%) Docker
2 11 (3.53%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.56%) Postfix
4 5 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.28%) Ceph
5 4 (1.28%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (0.96%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.64%) KVM
7 2 (0.64%) Oracle Clusterware
8 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.32%) iptables
8 1 (0.32%) Lustre
8 1 (0.32%) NFS
8 1 (0.32%) Samba
8 1 (0.32%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.32%) Squid
8 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 95 (30.45%) Kubernetes
2 43 (13.78%) Terraform
3 37 (11.86%) Grafana
4 31 (9.94%) Prometheus
5 16 (5.13%) Ansible
6 10 (3.21%) Istio
7 6 (1.92%) Argo
8 4 (1.28%) Data Guard
8 4 (1.28%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (1.28%) Puppet
8 4 (1.28%) Salt
8 4 (1.28%) WMI
9 2 (0.64%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.64%) HAProxy
9 2 (0.64%) Knative
9 2 (0.64%) Rancher
10 1 (0.32%) CASB
10 1 (0.32%) MOM
10 1 (0.32%) QRadar
10 1 (0.32%) SELinux
Vendors
1 27 (8.65%) Google
2 26 (8.33%) OpenAI
3 23 (7.37%) Microsoft
4 19 (6.09%) Dynatrace
5 13 (4.17%) Splunk
6 12 (3.85%) Oracle
7 9 (2.88%) Atlassian
7 9 (2.88%) Jaspersoft
7 9 (2.88%) UiPath
8 8 (2.56%) Automation Anywhere
9 7 (2.24%) Checkmarx
10 6 (1.92%) VMware
11 5 (1.60%) Cribl.io
11 5 (1.60%) Denodo
11 5 (1.60%) Informatica
12 4 (1.28%) Databricks
12 4 (1.28%) Fortinet
12 4 (1.28%) IBM
12 4 (1.28%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.28%) ServiceNow