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 31 January 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
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 293 251 206
Rank change year-on-year -42 -45 +23
Contract jobs citing Red Hat 334 321 517
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.86% 1.02% 1.16%
As % of the Vendors category 1.89% 2.21% 2.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 204 406
10th Percentile £393 £413 £354
25th Percentile £450 £463 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.87% +4.55% -
75th Percentile £575 £664 £650
90th Percentile £675 £810 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £550 £530
% change year-on-year -6.82% +3.77% -
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 17,661 14,540 19,631
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.58% 46.24% 43.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,354 8,598 12,385
10th Percentile £300 £281 £250
25th Percentile £410 £409 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -2.33%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £638
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 837 425 889
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £23.83 £28.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.91% -6.67% +1.69%
75th Percentile £51.02 £61.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £73.00 £80.06 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £25.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -14.16% -16.67% +16.37%

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 31 January 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 31 January 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 31 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 -50 299 £520 -9.57% 68
UK excluding London -5 238 £513 -6.82% 45
Work from Home -6 86 £513 -3.57% 27
South East +9 79 £500 -13.04% 18
North of England -15 74 £525 +1.94% 12
London -93 71 £525 -12.50% 29
Yorkshire -20 47 £525 +1.94% 2
South West -14 46 £612 -0.57% 9
East of England -14 16 £470 +9.30% 3
North East -2 15 £550 - 3
North West -29 15 £550 +12.82% 7
Midlands -45 13 £450 -18.33% 3
West Midlands -47 8 £532 -3.54% 1
Scotland -4 6 £438 -7.89% 1
Northern Ireland - 6 £375 -
East Midlands -19 5 £420 -7.18% 2
Wales +1 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 25 (7.49%) Confluence
2 17 (5.09%) Apache
3 14 (4.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 11 (3.29%) nginx
5 7 (2.10%) SharePoint
6 5 (1.50%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.90%) JBoss
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%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (2.40%) Maximo
2 1 (0.30%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 114 (34.13%) OpenShift
2 72 (21.56%) AWS
3 66 (19.76%) Azure
4 37 (11.08%) GitHub
5 26 (7.78%) GCP
6 15 (4.49%) Amazon S3
7 14 (4.19%) Amazon EC2
8 10 (2.99%) CloudBees
9 8 (2.40%) Azure AKS
9 8 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (2.40%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 8 (2.40%) Azure Monitor
9 8 (2.40%) Azure Sentinel
9 8 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (2.40%) IaaS
10 7 (2.10%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (1.80%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (1.80%) Entra ID
12 5 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (1.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (7.49%) Firewall
2 24 (7.19%) DNS
3 18 (5.39%) TCP/IP
4 15 (4.49%) SAN
5 13 (3.89%) VPN
6 9 (2.69%) VLAN
7 7 (2.10%) VSAN
8 6 (1.80%) BGP
8 6 (1.80%) Software-Defined Networking
8 6 (1.80%) WebEx
9 5 (1.50%) Network Security
9 5 (1.50%) OpenVPN
10 4 (1.20%) 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 24 (7.19%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (3.89%) Elasticsearch
3 12 (3.59%) MongoDB
4 9 (2.69%) Oracle Database
5 8 (2.40%) MySQL
6 7 (2.10%) Redis
7 5 (1.50%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (1.20%) GIS
8 4 (1.20%) MariaDB
8 4 (1.20%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.90%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.30%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.30%) Apache Hive
10 1 (0.30%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.30%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.30%) Impala
10 1 (0.30%) Oracle Database 11g
10 1 (0.30%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 54 (16.17%) GitLab
2 51 (15.27%) Jenkins
3 33 (9.88%) Git
4 28 (8.38%) JIRA
5 14 (4.19%) SonarQube
6 11 (3.29%) Artifactory
7 9 (2.69%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.80%) Cucumber
9 5 (1.50%) Bitbucket
9 5 (1.50%) Gradle
9 5 (1.50%) Maven
9 5 (1.50%) Mockito
10 4 (1.20%) 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 78 (23.35%) Social Skills
2 31 (9.28%) Public Sector
3 24 (7.19%) Documentation Skills
4 21 (6.29%) Finance
5 20 (5.99%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (2.99%) Aerospace
7 7 (2.10%) Banking
7 7 (2.10%) Financial Institution
7 7 (2.10%) Legal
8 4 (1.20%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.20%) 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 40 (11.98%) Administrator
1 40 (11.98%) DevOps Engineer
2 39 (11.68%) Architect
3 32 (9.58%) Developer
4 26 (7.78%) Linux Engineer
5 23 (6.89%) Software Engineer
6 20 (5.99%) Linux Administrator
6 20 (5.99%) Platform Engineer
7 19 (5.69%) Support Engineer
8 18 (5.39%) Senior
9 16 (4.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (4.79%) Lead
10 15 (4.49%) Automation Engineer
10 15 (4.49%) Full-Stack Developer
11 12 (3.59%) Product Engineer
11 12 (3.59%) Products Support Engineer
11 12 (3.59%) Software Support Engineer
12 11 (3.29%) Systems Administrator
13 10 (2.99%) Data Protection Engineer
14 9 (2.69%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (8.38%) YAML
2 24 (7.19%) AngularJS
3 22 (6.59%) Spring
4 20 (5.99%) Node.js
5 19 (5.69%) Middleware
5 19 (5.69%) React
6 17 (5.09%) LDAP
6 17 (5.09%) REST
7 16 (4.79%) CSS
7 16 (4.79%) HTML
8 13 (3.89%) Keycloak
9 12 (3.59%) Loki
9 12 (3.59%) Vue
10 11 (3.29%) ARM Templates
10 11 (3.29%) Kafka
11 10 (2.99%) Apache NiFi
11 10 (2.99%) Elastic Stack
11 10 (2.99%) Spring Boot
12 8 (2.40%) OpenID
12 8 (2.40%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 42 (12.57%) Cloud Native
2 28 (8.38%) Product Ownership
3 20 (5.99%) Onboarding
4 19 (5.69%) Hybrid Cloud
5 18 (5.39%) Data Centre
6 16 (4.79%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (2.99%) Clustering
8 8 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.40%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.40%) Virtual Team
9 7 (2.10%) Hedge funds
10 6 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.80%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.50%) Enterprise Storage
11 5 (1.50%) PKI
12 4 (1.20%) Public Cloud
13 3 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
13 3 (0.90%) Cyber Defence
13 3 (0.90%) Linux Command Line
13 3 (0.90%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 215 (64.37%) Linux
2 156 (46.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 56 (16.77%) Windows
4 36 (10.78%) Ubuntu
5 29 (8.68%) CentOS
5 29 (8.68%) Windows Server
6 22 (6.59%) Unix
7 13 (3.89%) Solaris
8 4 (1.20%) Debian
8 4 (1.20%) Mac OS
8 4 (1.20%) OpenVMS
8 4 (1.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.90%) AIX
9 3 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.60%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.60%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (42.51%) CI/CD
2 129 (38.62%) DevOps
3 80 (23.95%) Containerisation
4 74 (22.16%) Problem-Solving
5 49 (14.67%) Software Engineering
6 45 (13.47%) Infrastructure as Code
7 44 (13.17%) RBAC
8 43 (12.87%) Migration
9 41 (12.28%) Agile
10 39 (11.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 37 (11.08%) DevSecOps
12 36 (10.78%) Platform Engineering
13 35 (10.48%) Continuous Improvement
14 33 (9.88%) Configuration Management
15 32 (9.58%) ITIL
16 31 (9.28%) ITSM
17 30 (8.98%) High Availability
17 30 (8.98%) Microservices
18 28 (8.38%) Test Automation
19 27 (8.08%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 137 (41.02%) Python
2 89 (26.65%) Bash
3 48 (14.37%) Shell Script
4 37 (11.08%) Java
5 35 (10.48%) PowerShell
6 31 (9.28%) Perl
7 30 (8.98%) JavaScript
8 26 (7.78%) SQL
9 16 (4.79%) C
9 16 (4.79%) Ruby
10 13 (3.89%) TypeScript
11 12 (3.59%) Ada
11 12 (3.59%) C++
12 8 (2.40%) Bicep
13 7 (2.10%) MATLAB
14 5 (1.50%) Go
14 5 (1.50%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.60%) C#
15 2 (0.60%) Korn
15 2 (0.60%) R
Qualifications
1 167 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 132 (39.52%) SC Cleared
3 40 (11.98%) DV Cleared
4 22 (6.59%) RHCE
5 19 (5.69%) Degree
6 11 (3.29%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.29%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.29%) 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 (2.40%) CISM
8 8 (2.40%) OCP
8 8 (2.40%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (2.40%) RHCSA
9 7 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.90%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (4.79%) QA
2 11 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (2.99%) NIST
4 9 (2.69%) NIST 800
5 8 (2.40%) GDPR
5 8 (2.40%) NCSC
6 7 (2.10%) SLA
7 3 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.30%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.30%) HL7
System Software
1 52 (15.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (14.07%) Docker
3 31 (9.28%) Active Directory
4 25 (7.49%) vSphere
5 13 (3.89%) VMware ESXi
5 13 (3.89%) VMware NSX
6 8 (2.40%) KVM
7 6 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (1.50%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (1.50%) Squid
9 4 (1.20%) NFS
10 3 (0.90%) Veritas File System
10 3 (0.90%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 2 (0.60%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 1 (0.30%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 1 (0.30%) Ceph
12 1 (0.30%) GPFS
12 1 (0.30%) HDFS
12 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.30%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 137 (41.02%) Ansible
2 136 (40.72%) Kubernetes
3 69 (20.66%) Terraform
4 54 (16.17%) Argo
5 40 (11.98%) Grafana
5 40 (11.98%) Red Hat Satellite
6 39 (11.68%) Prometheus
7 20 (5.99%) Puppet
8 17 (5.09%) vCenter Server
9 15 (4.49%) NetBackup
9 15 (4.49%) Podman
10 13 (3.89%) Istio
11 10 (2.99%) Kustomize
11 10 (2.99%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (2.69%) Check_MK
13 7 (2.10%) Data Guard
13 7 (2.10%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (2.10%) EMC VPLEX
13 7 (2.10%) Progress Chef
14 6 (1.80%) WSUS
Vendors
1 106 (31.74%) VMware
2 36 (10.78%) Microsoft
3 27 (8.08%) Splunk
4 23 (6.89%) Cisco
5 22 (6.59%) Dell
6 18 (5.39%) Oracle
7 15 (4.49%) IBM
8 14 (4.19%) Commvault
9 13 (3.89%) Veritas
10 10 (2.99%) Citrix
11 9 (2.69%) Pure Storage
12 8 (2.40%) NVIDIA
13 7 (2.10%) Brocade
13 7 (2.10%) EMC
13 7 (2.10%) Isilon
14 6 (1.80%) Google
15 5 (1.50%) Atlassian
15 5 (1.50%) Dynatrace
15 5 (1.50%) F5
15 5 (1.50%) Fortinet