Red Hat Enterprise Linux Contract Job Trends

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Red Hat Enterprise Linux skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 244 259
Rank change year-on-year -104 +15 -50
Contract jobs citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 249 335 422
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 1.07% 0.95%
As % of the Operating Systems category 5.28% 7.59% 6.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 217 298
10th Percentile £385 £415 £400
25th Percentile £450 £484 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £582 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.79% +5.82% -5.17%
75th Percentile £606 £675 £638
90th Percentile £675 £750 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £565 £545
% change year-on-year -11.50% +3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 2 3
10th Percentile £74.30 - £21.69
25th Percentile £74.92 - £23.00
Median hourly rate £90.00 £112.00 £25.18
Median % change year-on-year -19.64% +344.80% -64.03%
75th Percentile £114.88 - £39.47
90th Percentile £119.00 - £48.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 - £25.18
% change year-on-year - - -65.51%

All Operating Systems
UK

Red Hat Enterprise Linux falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,717 4,415 6,326
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.50% 14.11% 14.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,127 2,743 4,287
10th Percentile £173 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £318 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.06% -8.74%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £408 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 160 360
10th Percentile £14.30 £16.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.03 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.00 £34.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.54% +15.00% +17.12%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £63.13
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.10 £72.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £31.79 £26.00
% change year-on-year -26.08% +22.27% +8.65%

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux job vacancy trend in the UK

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux over the 6 months to 26 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the UK

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux over the 6 months to 26 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the UK

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Red Hat Enterprise Linux within the UK over the 6 months to 26 January 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 -129 197 £525 -12.50% 43
UK excluding London -68 156 £500 -11.50% 35
Work from Home -53 68 £538 -1.74% 16
London -75 51 £525 -12.50% 18
South East -36 41 £485 -11.82% 12
North of England -66 33 £537 -14.42% 5
South West -20 23 £563 -8.54% 8
Midlands -52 20 £501 -9.17% 3
East of England +1 17 £477 -20.58% 3
North West -22 16 £550 - 2
Scotland -8 14 £500 - 4
West Midlands -46 14 £550 -0.18% 1
Yorkshire -61 12 £525 -27.59% 2
North East -12 8 £550 - 1
East Midlands -25 6 £420 -23.39% 2
Northern Ireland - 6 £375 -
Wales - 2 - - 1

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
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 9 (3.61%) Apache
2 7 (2.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (2.81%) SAS
2 7 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 6 (2.41%) nginx
3 6 (2.41%) Tomcat
4 4 (1.61%) WebLogic
5 3 (1.20%) Confluence
6 2 (0.80%) JBoss
6 2 (0.80%) NetWeaver
6 2 (0.80%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.80%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 1 (0.40%) CMS
7 1 (0.40%) Documentum
7 1 (0.40%) FileNet
7 1 (0.40%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 4 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.80%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
1 2 (0.80%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 43 (17.27%) AWS
2 40 (16.06%) OpenShift
3 37 (14.86%) Azure
4 15 (6.02%) Amazon EC2
4 15 (6.02%) GitHub
5 14 (5.62%) Amazon S3
6 10 (4.02%) Entra ID
6 10 (4.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 9 (3.61%) GCP
8 7 (2.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 7 (2.81%) Azure Sentinel
8 7 (2.81%) OCI
9 6 (2.41%) Nutanix
10 5 (2.01%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (2.01%) IaaS
11 4 (1.61%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (1.61%) AWS Fargate
11 4 (1.61%) Microsoft 365
11 4 (1.61%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 26 (10.44%) Firewall
2 20 (8.03%) DNS
3 16 (6.43%) SAN
4 11 (4.42%) VLAN
5 8 (3.21%) TCP/IP
6 6 (2.41%) BGP
6 6 (2.41%) Kerberos
6 6 (2.41%) SMTP
6 6 (2.41%) Software-Defined Networking
6 6 (2.41%) WebEx
7 5 (2.01%) DHCP
7 5 (2.01%) Fibre Channel
7 5 (2.01%) SSL
8 4 (1.61%) AMQP
8 4 (1.61%) DKIM
8 4 (1.61%) DMARC
8 4 (1.61%) HTTP
8 4 (1.61%) Network Security
8 4 (1.61%) VSAN
9 3 (1.20%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.84%) Oracle Database
2 19 (7.63%) MongoDB
3 7 (2.81%) Amazon RDS
3 7 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (2.81%) MySQL
4 6 (2.41%) SQL Server
5 5 (2.01%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (2.01%) RDBMS
5 5 (2.01%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.61%) GIS
6 4 (1.61%) MariaDB
7 3 (1.20%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.20%) Oracle Exadata
7 3 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.80%) DB2
8 2 (0.80%) InfluxDB
8 2 (0.80%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.40%) Metadata
9 1 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 27 (10.84%) Git
2 26 (10.44%) GitLab
3 21 (8.43%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.81%) JIRA
4 7 (2.81%) Maven
5 5 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (2.01%) Subversion
6 4 (1.61%) TeamCity
6 4 (1.61%) Terragrunt
7 3 (1.20%) Mockito
8 2 (0.80%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.80%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.80%) Gradle
9 1 (0.40%) GoCD
9 1 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
General
1 72 (28.92%) Social Skills
2 29 (11.65%) Analytical Skills
3 27 (10.84%) Public Sector
4 23 (9.24%) Documentation Skills
5 17 (6.83%) Finance
6 7 (2.81%) Legal
7 6 (2.41%) Aerospace
7 6 (2.41%) Banking
8 5 (2.01%) Financial Institution
8 5 (2.01%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.61%) Telecoms
10 3 (1.20%) Back Office
10 3 (1.20%) Front Office
11 1 (0.40%) Automotive
11 1 (0.40%) Billing
11 1 (0.40%) Electronics
11 1 (0.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.40%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.40%) Military
11 1 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 34 (13.65%) Administrator
2 31 (12.45%) Architect
3 22 (8.84%) Linux Engineer
4 20 (8.03%) Platform Engineer
5 18 (7.23%) Lead
5 18 (7.23%) Linux Administrator
6 13 (5.22%) DevOps Engineer
7 12 (4.82%) Senior
8 11 (4.42%) Consultant
8 11 (4.42%) Developer
8 11 (4.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 11 (4.42%) Systems Administrator
9 10 (4.02%) Site Engineer
9 10 (4.02%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 10 (4.02%) Support Engineer
10 8 (3.21%) Applications Engineer
10 8 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
11 7 (2.81%) Infrastructure Support
12 6 (2.41%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
12 6 (2.41%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (6.83%) LDAP
2 15 (6.02%) Middleware
3 12 (4.82%) Loki
4 8 (3.21%) YAML
5 7 (2.81%) Kafka
5 7 (2.81%) REST
5 7 (2.81%) Spring
6 6 (2.41%) AWS CDK
6 6 (2.41%) XMPP
7 5 (2.01%) Keycloak
7 5 (2.01%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.61%) cloud-init
8 4 (1.61%) EJB
8 4 (1.61%) Java SE
8 4 (1.61%) OpenLayers
9 3 (1.20%) ActiveMQ
9 3 (1.20%) Elastic Stack
9 3 (1.20%) JSP
9 3 (1.20%) SAP Basis
9 3 (1.20%) Spring Security
Miscellaneous
1 30 (12.05%) Data Centre
2 20 (8.03%) Cloud Native
3 15 (6.02%) Clustering
3 15 (6.02%) Product Ownership
4 13 (5.22%) Onboarding
5 9 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (3.61%) Management Information System
6 8 (3.21%) Virtual Team
7 7 (2.81%) Public Cloud
8 6 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (2.41%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (2.41%) PKI
9 5 (2.01%) Hedge funds
10 4 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.61%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (1.61%) NVMe
10 4 (1.61%) Replication
11 3 (1.20%) Acoustics
11 3 (1.20%) Cyber Defence
11 3 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 249 (100.00%) Linux
2 75 (30.12%) Windows
3 40 (16.06%) Windows Server
4 39 (15.66%) CentOS
5 34 (13.65%) Ubuntu
6 28 (11.24%) Unix
7 16 (6.43%) Solaris
8 10 (4.02%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (3.61%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (2.01%) OpenVMS
10 5 (2.01%) Oracle Linux
11 4 (1.61%) Debian
11 4 (1.61%) VMS
11 4 (1.61%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (1.20%) AIX
12 3 (1.20%) Rocky
12 3 (1.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.40%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.40%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (32.13%) CI/CD
2 58 (23.29%) Problem-Solving
3 57 (22.89%) DevOps
4 47 (18.88%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (16.87%) Containerisation
6 36 (14.46%) Agile
7 35 (14.06%) High Availability
8 29 (11.65%) Continuous Improvement
8 29 (11.65%) Disaster Recovery
9 27 (10.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 26 (10.44%) Migration
10 26 (10.44%) Platform Engineering
11 24 (9.64%) DevSecOps
11 24 (9.64%) SIEM
12 22 (8.84%) ITSM
12 22 (8.84%) Observability
13 21 (8.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 19 (7.63%) ITIL
14 19 (7.63%) RBAC
15 18 (7.23%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 95 (38.15%) Python
2 80 (32.13%) Bash
3 44 (17.67%) PowerShell
4 39 (15.66%) Shell Script
5 33 (13.25%) Perl
6 24 (9.64%) SQL
7 21 (8.43%) Java
8 8 (3.21%) Go
8 8 (3.21%) PL/SQL
8 8 (3.21%) Ruby
9 7 (2.81%) MATLAB
10 4 (1.61%) JavaScript
11 3 (1.20%) Korn
12 2 (0.80%) Rust
13 1 (0.40%) C#
13 1 (0.40%) C++
13 1 (0.40%) Groovy
13 1 (0.40%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 115 (46.18%) Security Cleared
2 83 (33.33%) SC Cleared
3 26 (10.44%) DV Cleared
4 19 (7.63%) RHCE
5 13 (5.22%) Degree
6 10 (4.02%) CCNP
6 10 (4.02%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (3.61%) CCDP
7 9 (3.61%) CCNA
8 7 (2.81%) OCP
8 7 (2.81%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (2.01%) RHCSA
10 3 (1.20%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.20%) CESG Certified Professional
10 3 (1.20%) CISSP
10 3 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.20%) SAP Certification
11 2 (0.80%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.80%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (3.61%) GDPR
2 7 (2.81%) SLA
3 6 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.41%) NCSC
4 5 (2.01%) NIST
5 4 (1.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (1.20%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.80%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.80%) QA
8 1 (0.40%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.40%) HL7
8 1 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 42 (16.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 35 (14.06%) Docker
3 30 (12.05%) Active Directory
4 13 (5.22%) VMware ESXi
4 13 (5.22%) vSphere
5 9 (3.61%) Oracle RAC
6 8 (3.21%) KVM
7 7 (2.81%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (2.01%) Postfix
8 5 (2.01%) VMware NSX
9 4 (1.61%) NFS
9 4 (1.61%) QEMU
9 4 (1.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 4 (1.61%) Veritas File System
9 4 (1.61%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 3 (1.20%) GPFS
11 2 (0.80%) Ceph
11 2 (0.80%) Firmware
11 2 (0.80%) Lustre
12 1 (0.40%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 103 (41.37%) Ansible
2 65 (26.10%) Kubernetes
3 41 (16.47%) Red Hat Satellite
4 38 (15.26%) Terraform
5 28 (11.24%) Grafana
6 22 (8.84%) Prometheus
7 16 (6.43%) Podman
8 15 (6.02%) Argo
9 13 (5.22%) Puppet
10 11 (4.42%) SCOM
11 10 (4.02%) Kustomize
12 9 (3.61%) Check_MK
12 9 (3.61%) Data Guard
13 7 (2.81%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (2.81%) EMC VPLEX
13 7 (2.81%) Oracle RMAN
13 7 (2.81%) SCCM
14 5 (2.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (2.01%) Nagios
14 5 (2.01%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 158 (63.45%) Red Hat
2 87 (34.94%) VMware
3 43 (17.27%) Oracle
4 36 (14.46%) Splunk
5 31 (12.45%) Microsoft
6 24 (9.64%) Cisco
7 19 (7.63%) Dell
8 14 (5.62%) Citrix
9 11 (4.42%) Brocade
9 11 (4.42%) CyberArk
9 11 (4.42%) NVIDIA
10 7 (2.81%) EMC
10 7 (2.81%) IBM
10 7 (2.81%) Isilon
10 7 (2.81%) Qualys
11 6 (2.41%) Commvault
11 6 (2.41%) ServiceNow
11 6 (2.41%) Symantec
11 6 (2.41%) Tenable
12 5 (2.01%) Okta