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 28 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
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 292 243 196
Rank change year-on-year -49 -47 +37
Contract jobs citing Red Hat 336 322 516
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.88% 1.03% 1.17%
As % of the Vendors category 1.91% 2.23% 2.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 203 404
10th Percentile £400 £413 £359
25th Percentile £450 £463 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.43% +4.55% -
75th Percentile £575 £666 £650
90th Percentile £675 £810 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £550 £528
% change year-on-year -6.82% +4.27% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 6 3
10th Percentile £46.25 £63.70 £20.56
25th Percentile £53.13 £69.50 £20.66
Median hourly rate £68.00 £74.22 £22.28
Median % change year-on-year -8.38% +233.20% -69.49%
75th Percentile £82.50 £102.61 £24.45
90th Percentile £90.00 £112.00 £24.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.50 £71.00 £22.28
% change year-on-year -9.16% +218.74% -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 17,567 14,410 19,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.76% 46.03% 43.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,326 8,510 12,226
10th Percentile £300 £282 £250
25th Percentile £410 £409 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.56% -0.21% -2.42%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 824 422 862
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.05
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.50 £32.06
Median % change year-on-year -13.36% -14.22% +6.86%
75th Percentile £50.00 £61.31 £60.00
90th Percentile £73.38 £80.00 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £25.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -14.80% -16.67% +20.00%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -60 298 £520 -9.57% 68
UK excluding London -1 238 £513 -6.82% 49
Work from Home -17 88 £513 -3.57% 41
South East +12 78 £500 -13.04% 21
London -84 74 £525 -12.50% 24
North of England -20 72 £525 +1.94% 10
South West -14 46 £612 -0.57% 10
Yorkshire -25 44 £525 +1.94% 3
North East +1 16 £550 -
North West -28 15 £550 +12.82% 7
East of England -13 14 £473 +9.88% 3
Midlands -49 14 £440 -20.19% 4
Scotland 0 10 £500 +5.26% 2
West Midlands -41 8 £532 -3.54% 2
East Midlands -27 6 £420 -7.18% 2
Northern Ireland - 6 £375 -
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 (7.44%) Confluence
2 17 (5.06%) Apache
3 13 (3.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (2.98%) nginx
5 7 (2.08%) SharePoint
6 5 (1.49%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.89%) JBoss
7 3 (0.89%) 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 (0.89%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (2.38%) Maximo
2 1 (0.30%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 115 (34.23%) OpenShift
2 76 (22.62%) AWS
3 66 (19.64%) Azure
4 38 (11.31%) GitHub
5 26 (7.74%) GCP
6 19 (5.65%) Amazon S3
7 18 (5.36%) Amazon EC2
8 10 (2.98%) Amazon EKS
8 10 (2.98%) CloudBees
9 9 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (2.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 8 (2.38%) Azure AKS
10 8 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (2.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 8 (2.38%) Azure Monitor
10 8 (2.38%) Azure Sentinel
10 8 (2.38%) IaaS
11 7 (2.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (1.79%) Cloud Computing
12 6 (1.79%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 25 (7.44%) DNS
1 25 (7.44%) Firewall
2 20 (5.95%) TCP/IP
3 16 (4.76%) SAN
4 14 (4.17%) VPN
5 10 (2.98%) VLAN
6 7 (2.08%) VSAN
7 6 (1.79%) BGP
7 6 (1.79%) Software-Defined Networking
7 6 (1.79%) WebEx
8 5 (1.49%) DHCP
8 5 (1.49%) Network Security
8 5 (1.49%) OpenVPN
9 4 (1.19%) NAS
10 3 (0.89%) LAN
10 3 (0.89%) Multicast
10 3 (0.89%) Skype
11 2 (0.60%) HTTP
11 2 (0.60%) SSL
11 2 (0.60%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (4.46%) MongoDB
3 14 (4.17%) Elasticsearch
4 11 (3.27%) Oracle Database
5 8 (2.38%) MySQL
6 7 (2.08%) Redis
7 5 (1.49%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (1.19%) MariaDB
8 4 (1.19%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.89%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (0.89%) GIS
9 3 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.60%) InfluxDB
11 1 (0.30%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.30%) Apache Hive
11 1 (0.30%) Data Lake
11 1 (0.30%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.30%) Metadata
11 1 (0.30%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 54 (16.07%) GitLab
2 50 (14.88%) Jenkins
3 37 (11.01%) Git
4 28 (8.33%) JIRA
5 14 (4.17%) SonarQube
6 11 (3.27%) Artifactory
7 9 (2.68%) 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
9 5 (1.49%) Subversion
10 4 (1.19%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.60%) Ant
11 2 (0.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.60%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.60%) JUnit
11 2 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
11 2 (0.60%) Selenium
General
1 77 (22.92%) Social Skills
2 34 (10.12%) Public Sector
3 25 (7.44%) Documentation Skills
4 22 (6.55%) Finance
5 20 (5.95%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (2.98%) Aerospace
7 7 (2.08%) Banking
7 7 (2.08%) Financial Institution
7 7 (2.08%) Legal
8 5 (1.49%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.19%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.30%) Automotive
11 1 (0.30%) Aviation
11 1 (0.30%) Back Office
11 1 (0.30%) Front Office
11 1 (0.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.30%) Law
Job Titles
1 40 (11.90%) DevOps Engineer
2 38 (11.31%) Administrator
2 38 (11.31%) Architect
3 33 (9.82%) Developer
4 26 (7.74%) Linux Engineer
5 23 (6.85%) Software Engineer
6 19 (5.65%) Platform Engineer
6 19 (5.65%) Support Engineer
7 18 (5.36%) Linux Administrator
7 18 (5.36%) Senior
8 16 (4.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (4.76%) Lead
9 15 (4.46%) Automation Engineer
9 15 (4.46%) Full-Stack Developer
10 12 (3.57%) Product Engineer
10 12 (3.57%) Products Support Engineer
10 12 (3.57%) Software Support Engineer
11 11 (3.27%) Systems Administrator
12 10 (2.98%) Consultant
12 10 (2.98%) Data Protection Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (8.33%) YAML
2 24 (7.14%) AngularJS
3 22 (6.55%) Spring
4 20 (5.95%) Node.js
5 19 (5.65%) Middleware
5 19 (5.65%) React
5 19 (5.65%) REST
6 17 (5.06%) CSS
6 17 (5.06%) HTML
6 17 (5.06%) LDAP
7 14 (4.17%) Keycloak
8 12 (3.57%) Loki
8 12 (3.57%) Vue
9 11 (3.27%) ARM Templates
9 11 (3.27%) Kafka
10 10 (2.98%) Apache NiFi
10 10 (2.98%) Elastic Stack
10 10 (2.98%) Spring Boot
11 9 (2.68%) JSON
12 8 (2.38%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 42 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 28 (8.33%) Product Ownership
3 20 (5.95%) Onboarding
4 18 (5.36%) Data Centre
4 18 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (3.27%) Clustering
7 8 (2.38%) Hedge funds
7 8 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (2.38%) Management Information System
7 8 (2.38%) Virtual Team
8 6 (1.79%) Enterprise Storage
8 6 (1.79%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.49%) PKI
10 4 (1.19%) Public Cloud
10 4 (1.19%) Replication
11 3 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (0.89%) Cyber Defence
11 3 (0.89%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 217 (64.58%) Linux
2 160 (47.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 53 (15.77%) Windows
4 36 (10.71%) Ubuntu
5 30 (8.93%) CentOS
6 29 (8.63%) Windows Server
7 26 (7.74%) Unix
8 13 (3.87%) Solaris
9 5 (1.49%) OpenVMS
10 4 (1.19%) Debian
10 4 (1.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (1.19%) Oracle Linux
11 3 (0.89%) AIX
11 3 (0.89%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.89%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.60%) VMS
12 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (42.86%) CI/CD
2 129 (38.39%) DevOps
3 77 (22.92%) Containerisation
4 73 (21.73%) Problem-Solving
5 50 (14.88%) Infrastructure as Code
6 49 (14.58%) Software Engineering
7 46 (13.69%) Agile
8 44 (13.10%) RBAC
9 43 (12.80%) Migration
10 39 (11.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 37 (11.01%) DevSecOps
12 35 (10.42%) Continuous Improvement
13 34 (10.12%) Platform Engineering
14 32 (9.52%) ITIL
15 31 (9.23%) Configuration Management
15 31 (9.23%) ITSM
16 30 (8.93%) High Availability
17 29 (8.63%) Microservices
17 29 (8.63%) Scrum
18 28 (8.33%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 140 (41.67%) Python
2 95 (28.27%) Bash
3 49 (14.58%) Shell Script
4 36 (10.71%) Java
4 36 (10.71%) Perl
4 36 (10.71%) PowerShell
5 31 (9.23%) JavaScript
6 26 (7.74%) SQL
7 16 (4.76%) C
7 16 (4.76%) Ruby
8 13 (3.87%) TypeScript
9 12 (3.57%) Ada
9 12 (3.57%) C++
10 8 (2.38%) Bicep
11 7 (2.08%) MATLAB
12 5 (1.49%) PL/SQL
13 4 (1.19%) Go
14 2 (0.60%) C#
14 2 (0.60%) Korn
14 2 (0.60%) R
Qualifications
1 167 (49.70%) Security Cleared
2 133 (39.58%) SC Cleared
3 39 (11.61%) DV Cleared
4 21 (6.25%) RHCE
5 19 (5.65%) Degree
6 11 (3.27%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.27%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (2.68%) CCDP
7 9 (2.68%) CCNA
7 9 (2.68%) CCNP
7 9 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (2.68%) CISSP
7 9 (2.68%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 8 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.38%) CISM
8 8 (2.38%) OCP
8 8 (2.38%) Oracle Certification
9 7 (2.08%) RHCSA
10 3 (0.89%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (4.76%) QA
2 11 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (2.98%) NIST
4 9 (2.68%) GDPR
4 9 (2.68%) NIST 800
5 8 (2.38%) NCSC
6 7 (2.08%) SLA
7 4 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.30%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.30%) HL7
System Software
1 50 (14.88%) VMware Infrastructure
2 49 (14.58%) Docker
3 30 (8.93%) Active Directory
4 24 (7.14%) vSphere
5 13 (3.87%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (3.57%) VMware NSX
7 10 (2.98%) KVM
8 5 (1.49%) NFS
8 5 (1.49%) Squid
8 5 (1.49%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (1.19%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (1.19%) Veritas File System
9 4 (1.19%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 2 (0.60%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.30%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 1 (0.30%) GPFS
11 1 (0.30%) HDFS
11 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.30%) Lustre
11 1 (0.30%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 140 (41.67%) Ansible
2 139 (41.37%) Kubernetes
3 72 (21.43%) Terraform
4 54 (16.07%) Argo
5 45 (13.39%) Red Hat Satellite
6 42 (12.50%) Grafana
6 42 (12.50%) Prometheus
7 20 (5.95%) Puppet
8 16 (4.76%) vCenter Server
9 15 (4.46%) NetBackup
9 15 (4.46%) Podman
10 14 (4.17%) Istio
11 10 (2.98%) Kustomize
11 10 (2.98%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (2.68%) Check_MK
13 7 (2.08%) Data Guard
13 7 (2.08%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (2.08%) EMC VPLEX
13 7 (2.08%) Progress Chef
14 6 (1.79%) WSUS
Vendors
1 104 (30.95%) VMware
2 35 (10.42%) Microsoft
3 27 (8.04%) Splunk
4 24 (7.14%) Cisco
5 22 (6.55%) Dell
6 21 (6.25%) Oracle
7 17 (5.06%) Commvault
8 14 (4.17%) IBM
9 13 (3.87%) Veritas
10 10 (2.98%) Citrix
11 8 (2.38%) NVIDIA
11 8 (2.38%) Pure Storage
12 7 (2.08%) Brocade
12 7 (2.08%) EMC
12 7 (2.08%) Isilon
13 6 (1.79%) Google
14 5 (1.49%) Atlassian
14 5 (1.49%) F5
14 5 (1.49%) Fortinet
14 5 (1.49%) Qualys