Red Hat Contract Job Trends

Red Hat
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of Red Hat products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Red Hat over the 6 months leading up to 5 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within Red Hat, Inc.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 294 256 205
Rank change year-on-year -38 -51 +22
Contract jobs citing Red Hat 335 311 509
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.86% 1.00% 1.14%
As % of the Vendors category 1.88% 2.16% 2.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 222 198 399
10th Percentile £393 £413 £350
25th Percentile £450 £464 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.87% +4.55% -
75th Percentile £573 £670 £650
90th Percentile £675 £810 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £551 £533
% change year-on-year -8.76% +3.47% +1.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 5 3
10th Percentile £46.25 £62.84 £20.56
25th Percentile £53.13 £68.00 £20.66
Median hourly rate £68.00 £74.44 £22.28
Median % change year-on-year -8.65% +234.19% -69.49%
75th Percentile £82.50 £112.00 £24.45
90th Percentile £90.00 - £24.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.50 £68.00 £22.28
% change year-on-year -5.15% +205.27% -69.49%

All Vendors
UK

Red Hat falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 17,782 14,379 19,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.42% 46.17% 43.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,440 8,539 12,289
10th Percentile £300 £275 £253
25th Percentile £410 £408 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -2.33%
75th Percentile £608 £625 £633
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 848 422 916
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £12.93
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £15.63
Median hourly rate £23.83 £28.60 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.70% -4.67% +4.53%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.25 £59.93
90th Percentile £73.75 £80.09 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £26.42 £26.66
% change year-on-year -16.72% -0.91% +3.41%

Red Hat
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Red Hat job vacancy trend in the UK

Red Hat
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Red Hat
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Red Hat over the 6 months to 5 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Red Hat in the UK

Red Hat
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Red Hat
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Red Hat over the 6 months to 5 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Red Hat in the UK

Red Hat
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 within the UK over the 6 months to 5 February 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 -53 299 £519 -9.82% 77
UK excluding London +2 238 £503 -8.76% 55
Work from Home -4 84 £500 -9.09% 50
South East +7 79 £500 -13.04% 22
North of England -21 73 £525 +4.17% 14
London -93 72 £525 -12.50% 27
Yorkshire -24 48 £520 +5.48% 4
South West -9 46 £612 -0.57% 8
East of England -20 16 £470 +9.30% 3
North West -27 15 £550 +12.82% 6
Midlands -56 15 £487 -11.62% 6
North East 0 13 £550 - 4
West Midlands -43 10 £532 -3.54% 4
Scotland +8 7 £438 -11.97% 2
Northern Ireland - 6 £375 - 1
East Midlands -21 5 £420 -20.75% 2
Wales +5 3 - -

Red Hat
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 23 (6.87%) Confluence
2 16 (4.78%) Apache
3 14 (4.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (2.69%) nginx
5 7 (2.09%) SharePoint
6 4 (1.19%) JBoss
6 4 (1.19%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.90%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.60%) Appian
8 2 (0.60%) Camunda
9 1 (0.30%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Fuse
9 1 (0.30%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (2.39%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 118 (35.22%) OpenShift
2 71 (21.19%) AWS
3 66 (19.70%) Azure
4 41 (12.24%) GitHub
5 26 (7.76%) GCP
6 15 (4.48%) Amazon S3
7 14 (4.18%) Amazon EC2
8 8 (2.39%) Azure AKS
8 8 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (2.39%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 8 (2.39%) Azure Monitor
8 8 (2.39%) Azure Sentinel
8 8 (2.39%) CloudBees
8 8 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (2.39%) IaaS
9 7 (2.09%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (1.79%) Cloud Computing
10 6 (1.79%) Entra ID
10 6 (1.79%) Serverless
11 5 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 28 (8.36%) DNS
2 25 (7.46%) Firewall
3 18 (5.37%) TCP/IP
4 15 (4.48%) SAN
5 13 (3.88%) VPN
6 9 (2.69%) VLAN
7 7 (2.09%) VSAN
8 6 (1.79%) BGP
8 6 (1.79%) Software-Defined Networking
8 6 (1.79%) WebEx
9 5 (1.49%) Network Security
9 5 (1.49%) OpenVPN
10 4 (1.19%) DHCP
11 3 (0.90%) HTTP
11 3 (0.90%) LAN
11 3 (0.90%) Multicast
11 3 (0.90%) NAS
11 3 (0.90%) Skype
12 2 (0.60%) BIG-IP
12 2 (0.60%) Calico
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.87%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (3.58%) Elasticsearch
2 12 (3.58%) MongoDB
3 8 (2.39%) MySQL
3 8 (2.39%) Oracle Database
4 7 (2.09%) Redis
5 4 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.19%) MariaDB
5 4 (1.19%) Relational Database
5 4 (1.19%) SQL Server
6 3 (0.90%) Apache Cassandra
6 3 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.60%) GIS
8 1 (0.30%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.30%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.30%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.30%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.30%) Impala
8 1 (0.30%) Metadata
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 53 (15.82%) GitLab
2 52 (15.52%) Jenkins
3 33 (9.85%) Git
4 26 (7.76%) JIRA
5 14 (4.18%) SonarQube
6 11 (3.28%) Artifactory
7 10 (2.99%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.79%) Cucumber
9 5 (1.49%) Bitbucket
9 5 (1.49%) Gradle
9 5 (1.49%) Maven
9 5 (1.49%) Mockito
10 4 (1.19%) Subversion
11 3 (0.90%) TeamCity
12 2 (0.60%) Ant
12 2 (0.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.60%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.60%) JUnit
12 2 (0.60%) Robot Framework
12 2 (0.60%) Selenium
General
1 82 (24.48%) Social Skills
2 33 (9.85%) Public Sector
3 24 (7.16%) Documentation Skills
4 23 (6.87%) Finance
5 20 (5.97%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (2.99%) Aerospace
7 7 (2.09%) Banking
7 7 (2.09%) Financial Institution
7 7 (2.09%) Legal
8 4 (1.19%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.19%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.30%) Automotive
10 1 (0.30%) Aviation
10 1 (0.30%) Back Office
10 1 (0.30%) Front Office
10 1 (0.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 43 (12.84%) Architect
2 41 (12.24%) Administrator
3 40 (11.94%) DevOps Engineer
4 31 (9.25%) Developer
5 26 (7.76%) Linux Engineer
6 22 (6.57%) Software Engineer
7 20 (5.97%) Linux Administrator
8 19 (5.67%) Platform Engineer
8 19 (5.67%) Support Engineer
9 18 (5.37%) Senior
10 16 (4.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 16 (4.78%) Lead
11 15 (4.48%) Full-Stack Developer
12 13 (3.88%) Automation Engineer
13 12 (3.58%) Product Engineer
13 12 (3.58%) Products Support Engineer
13 12 (3.58%) Software Support Engineer
13 12 (3.58%) Systems Administrator
14 9 (2.69%) Azure Engineer
14 9 (2.69%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (8.66%) YAML
2 25 (7.46%) AngularJS
3 20 (5.97%) Node.js
3 20 (5.97%) Spring
4 19 (5.67%) Middleware
4 19 (5.67%) React
5 17 (5.07%) LDAP
5 17 (5.07%) REST
6 16 (4.78%) CSS
6 16 (4.78%) HTML
7 13 (3.88%) Vue
8 12 (3.58%) Kafka
8 12 (3.58%) Loki
9 11 (3.28%) ARM Templates
9 11 (3.28%) Keycloak
9 11 (3.28%) OpenTelemetry
10 10 (2.99%) Apache NiFi
10 10 (2.99%) Elastic Stack
10 10 (2.99%) Spring Boot
11 9 (2.69%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 46 (13.73%) Cloud Native
2 25 (7.46%) Product Ownership
3 23 (6.87%) Hybrid Cloud
4 19 (5.67%) Onboarding
5 17 (5.07%) Enterprise Software
6 16 (4.78%) Data Centre
7 10 (2.99%) Clustering
8 8 (2.39%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.39%) Virtual Team
9 7 (2.09%) Hedge funds
9 7 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.79%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.49%) Enterprise Storage
11 5 (1.49%) PKI
12 4 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
12 4 (1.19%) Linux Command Line
12 4 (1.19%) Public Cloud
13 3 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
13 3 (0.90%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 217 (64.78%) Linux
2 156 (46.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 57 (17.01%) Windows
4 36 (10.75%) Ubuntu
5 30 (8.96%) Windows Server
6 29 (8.66%) CentOS
7 22 (6.57%) Unix
8 12 (3.58%) Solaris
9 4 (1.19%) Debian
9 4 (1.19%) Mac OS
9 4 (1.19%) OpenVMS
9 4 (1.19%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.90%) AIX
10 3 (0.90%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.60%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.60%) VMS
11 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (42.39%) CI/CD
2 130 (38.81%) DevOps
3 85 (25.37%) Containerisation
4 78 (23.28%) Problem-Solving
5 48 (14.33%) RBAC
6 47 (14.03%) Software Engineering
7 44 (13.13%) Migration
8 43 (12.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 42 (12.54%) Agile
10 41 (12.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 36 (10.75%) DevSecOps
12 35 (10.45%) Continuous Improvement
12 35 (10.45%) Platform Engineering
13 33 (9.85%) High Availability
14 32 (9.55%) Configuration Management
14 32 (9.55%) ITIL
15 31 (9.25%) ITSM
16 30 (8.96%) Microservices
17 27 (8.06%) Full-Stack Development
17 27 (8.06%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 138 (41.19%) Python
2 88 (26.27%) Bash
3 49 (14.63%) Shell Script
4 36 (10.75%) Java
5 35 (10.45%) PowerShell
6 31 (9.25%) Perl
7 30 (8.96%) JavaScript
8 24 (7.16%) SQL
9 17 (5.07%) Ruby
10 16 (4.78%) C
11 13 (3.88%) TypeScript
12 12 (3.58%) Ada
12 12 (3.58%) C++
13 8 (2.39%) Bicep
14 7 (2.09%) Go
14 7 (2.09%) MATLAB
15 3 (0.90%) PL/SQL
16 2 (0.60%) C#
16 2 (0.60%) Korn
16 2 (0.60%) R
Qualifications
1 166 (49.55%) Security Cleared
2 128 (38.21%) SC Cleared
3 40 (11.94%) DV Cleared
4 22 (6.57%) RHCE
5 19 (5.67%) Degree
6 11 (3.28%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (2.69%) CCDP
7 9 (2.69%) CCNA
7 9 (2.69%) CCNP
7 9 (2.69%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (2.69%) CISSP
7 9 (2.69%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 8 (2.39%) CISM
8 8 (2.39%) OCP
8 8 (2.39%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (2.39%) RHCSA
9 7 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.90%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (4.78%) QA
2 11 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (3.28%) NIST
3 9 (2.69%) NIST 800
4 8 (2.39%) GDPR
4 8 (2.39%) NCSC
5 7 (2.09%) SLA
6 3 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.30%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.30%) HL7
System Software
1 56 (16.72%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (14.33%) Docker
3 31 (9.25%) Active Directory
4 28 (8.36%) vSphere
5 16 (4.78%) VMware NSX
6 13 (3.88%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (2.39%) KVM
8 6 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (1.49%) Oracle RAC
9 5 (1.49%) Squid
10 4 (1.19%) NFS
11 3 (0.90%) Veritas File System
11 3 (0.90%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 2 (0.60%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.30%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 1 (0.30%) Ceph
13 1 (0.30%) GPFS
13 1 (0.30%) HDFS
13 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
13 1 (0.30%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 139 (41.49%) Kubernetes
2 137 (40.90%) Ansible
3 72 (21.49%) Terraform
4 55 (16.42%) Argo
5 45 (13.43%) Grafana
6 42 (12.54%) Prometheus
7 40 (11.94%) Red Hat Satellite
8 21 (6.27%) Puppet
9 20 (5.97%) vCenter Server
10 15 (4.48%) Podman
11 13 (3.88%) NetBackup
12 11 (3.28%) Istio
12 11 (3.28%) Single Sign-On
13 10 (2.99%) Kustomize
14 9 (2.69%) Check_MK
15 7 (2.09%) EMC NetWorker
15 7 (2.09%) EMC VPLEX
15 7 (2.09%) Progress Chef
16 6 (1.79%) linkerd
16 6 (1.79%) WSUS
Vendors
1 109 (32.54%) VMware
2 34 (10.15%) Microsoft
3 32 (9.55%) Splunk
4 23 (6.87%) Cisco
5 22 (6.57%) Dell
6 16 (4.78%) Oracle
7 13 (3.88%) IBM
8 12 (3.58%) Commvault
8 12 (3.58%) Pure Storage
9 11 (3.28%) Veritas
10 10 (2.99%) Citrix
11 8 (2.39%) NVIDIA
12 7 (2.09%) Brocade
12 7 (2.09%) EMC
12 7 (2.09%) Isilon
13 6 (1.79%) Google
14 5 (1.49%) Atlassian
14 5 (1.49%) Dynatrace
14 5 (1.49%) F5
14 5 (1.49%) Fortinet