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 13 May 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
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 309 258 303
Rank change year-on-year -51 +45 -94
Contract jobs citing Red Hat 351 289 297
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.74% 1.00% 0.69%
As % of the Vendors category 1.80% 2.10% 1.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 190 222
10th Percentile £400 £400 £350
25th Percentile £450 £441 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £550 £520
Median % change year-on-year -8.09% +5.77% -11.26%
75th Percentile £562 £623 £587
90th Percentile £634 £700 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £537 £525
% change year-on-year -6.89% +2.29% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 11 4
10th Percentile £46.25 - £60.95
25th Percentile £60.75 - £68.38
Median hourly rate £70.00 £68.00 £74.44
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -8.65% +41.79%
75th Percentile £78.00 - £75.21
90th Percentile £89.10 - £76.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £68.00 £74.44
% change year-on-year +2.94% -8.65% +46.68%

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 19,485 13,772 18,132
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.28% 47.52% 42.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,350 8,611 11,252
10th Percentile £313 £281 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.49% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £618 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -0.61% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 986 554 1,092
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.44 £14.46
Median hourly rate £32.36 £25.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.91% +13.33% -47.06%
75th Percentile £59.56 £56.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.65 £74.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £23.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +22.13% +6.98% -45.64%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 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 -68 302 £508 -7.64% 81
UK excluding London -29 255 £500 -6.89% 58
Work from Home -44 101 £500 -8.17% 31
North of England -19 92 £500 +24.15% 9
South East -3 85 £500 -9.09% 19
Yorkshire -5 59 £500 +23.46% 3
London -105 53 £550 -7.56% 26
South West -37 36 £525 -14.63% 19
East of England -20 22 £477 +2.47% 6
North West -42 17 £475 +20.87% 4
Midlands -54 16 £501 -8.17% 6
North East - 16 £513 - 2
West Midlands -54 15 £530 -2.80% 4
Scotland -9 7 £425 -15.00%
Wales -11 4 £475 -
Northern Ireland +3 2 £375 +7.14%
East Midlands -31 1 £425 -21.80% 2

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 26 (7.41%) Confluence
2 23 (6.55%) nginx
3 14 (3.99%) Apache
4 13 (3.70%) Tomcat
5 7 (1.99%) WebLogic
6 6 (1.71%) JBoss
7 5 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (1.14%) OpenStack
8 4 (1.14%) WebSphere
8 4 (1.14%) WebSphere Application Server
9 3 (0.85%) SAS
10 2 (0.57%) Camunda
10 2 (0.57%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.57%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.57%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Fuse
11 1 (0.28%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.42%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 140 (39.89%) OpenShift
2 79 (22.51%) AWS
3 65 (18.52%) Azure
4 37 (10.54%) GitHub
5 21 (5.98%) GCP
6 15 (4.27%) Amazon S3
7 14 (3.99%) Amazon EC2
8 13 (3.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 10 (2.85%) Amazon EKS
9 10 (2.85%) Serverless
10 9 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
10 9 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (2.56%) Route 53
11 8 (2.28%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (2.28%) CloudBees
12 6 (1.71%) Azure AKS
12 6 (1.71%) Cloud Computing
13 5 (1.42%) Azure Monitor
13 5 (1.42%) Azure Sentinel
13 5 (1.42%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 35 (9.97%) DNS
2 32 (9.12%) Firewall
3 25 (7.12%) SAN
4 22 (6.27%) TCP/IP
5 16 (4.56%) VPN
6 10 (2.85%) HTTP
7 9 (2.56%) OpenVPN
7 9 (2.56%) VSAN
8 5 (1.42%) iSCSI
8 5 (1.42%) Kerberos
8 5 (1.42%) NAS
8 5 (1.42%) SSL
9 3 (0.85%) FCoE
9 3 (0.85%) Fibre Channel
9 3 (0.85%) VLAN
9 3 (0.85%) WAN
10 2 (0.57%) Calico
10 2 (0.57%) Multicast
10 2 (0.57%) Remote Desktop
10 2 (0.57%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (5.98%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (5.13%) Elasticsearch
3 10 (2.85%) Oracle Database
4 8 (2.28%) MongoDB
5 7 (1.99%) SAP HANA
6 6 (1.71%) SQL Server
7 5 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
7 5 (1.42%) GIS
7 5 (1.42%) MySQL
7 5 (1.42%) Redis
8 3 (0.85%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.57%) CockroachDB
9 2 (0.57%) MariaDB
9 2 (0.57%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.57%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.28%) Impala
10 1 (0.28%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 67 (19.09%) Jenkins
2 45 (12.82%) GitLab
3 31 (8.83%) JIRA
3 31 (8.83%) SonarQube
4 30 (8.55%) Git
5 8 (2.28%) Artifactory
6 7 (1.99%) Bitbucket
7 6 (1.71%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (1.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (1.14%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.57%) Ant
10 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.57%) Gatling
10 2 (0.57%) Gradle
10 2 (0.57%) Introscope
10 2 (0.57%) JUnit
10 2 (0.57%) Maven
10 2 (0.57%) Mockito
10 2 (0.57%) Robot Framework
10 2 (0.57%) Selenium
General
1 66 (18.80%) Social Skills
2 36 (10.26%) Public Sector
3 32 (9.12%) Documentation Skills
4 28 (7.98%) Finance
5 20 (5.70%) Banking
6 12 (3.42%) Aerospace
7 11 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
8 4 (1.14%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.57%) Legal
9 2 (0.57%) Military
9 2 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (0.57%) Retail
10 1 (0.28%) Back Office
10 1 (0.28%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.28%) Front Office
10 1 (0.28%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 51 (14.53%) Architect
2 40 (11.40%) Linux Engineer
3 36 (10.26%) DevOps Engineer
4 35 (9.97%) Administrator
5 34 (9.69%) Software Engineer
6 29 (8.26%) Senior
7 27 (7.69%) Lead
8 24 (6.84%) Developer
9 17 (4.84%) Linux Administrator
10 15 (4.27%) Platform Engineer
11 14 (3.99%) Solutions Architect
12 12 (3.42%) Consultant
12 12 (3.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 12 (3.42%) Java Engineer
13 11 (3.13%) Java Developer
14 8 (2.28%) Java Software Engineer
14 8 (2.28%) Senior Linux Engineer
14 8 (2.28%) Systems Administrator
15 7 (1.99%) Technical Architect
15 7 (1.99%) Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (8.26%) AngularJS
1 29 (8.26%) YAML
2 25 (7.12%) LDAP
3 24 (6.84%) Quarkus
4 17 (4.84%) Middleware
5 16 (4.56%) OpenTelemetry
6 15 (4.27%) REST
7 13 (3.70%) Kafka
8 12 (3.42%) Spring
9 11 (3.13%) Node.js
10 10 (2.85%) OpenID
11 9 (2.56%) Elastic Stack
11 9 (2.56%) Spring Boot
11 9 (2.56%) XML
12 8 (2.28%) Apache NiFi
12 8 (2.28%) JSON
13 7 (1.99%) Keycloak
14 6 (1.71%) EJB
14 6 (1.71%) Express.js
15 5 (1.42%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 46 (13.11%) Cloud Native
2 37 (10.54%) Data Centre
3 34 (9.69%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (4.56%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (3.99%) Management Information System
6 11 (3.13%) Clustering
6 11 (3.13%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.85%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.28%) Enterprise Storage
8 8 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.99%) Legacy Applications
9 7 (1.99%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.99%) Replication
10 6 (1.71%) FlexPod
11 5 (1.42%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.42%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
12 4 (1.14%) EMC VMAX
13 3 (0.85%) Product Ownership
13 3 (0.85%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 213 (60.68%) Linux
2 164 (46.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 58 (16.52%) Windows
4 27 (7.69%) Windows Server
5 25 (7.12%) CentOS
6 24 (6.84%) Ubuntu
7 18 (5.13%) Solaris
8 17 (4.84%) Unix
9 14 (3.99%) Windows Server 2019
10 11 (3.13%) VMS
11 10 (2.85%) Windows Server 2008
11 10 (2.85%) Windows Server 2016
12 8 (2.28%) CoreOS
13 7 (1.99%) Data ONTAP
13 7 (1.99%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (1.71%) AIX
15 4 (1.14%) Debian
15 4 (1.14%) HPUX
15 4 (1.14%) SUSE
16 2 (0.57%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (39.03%) DevOps
2 127 (36.18%) CI/CD
3 80 (22.79%) Containerisation
4 64 (18.23%) Problem-Solving
5 60 (17.09%) Agile
6 58 (16.52%) Migration
6 58 (16.52%) Software Engineering
7 53 (15.10%) RBAC
8 49 (13.96%) Test Automation
9 47 (13.39%) DevSecOps
10 45 (12.82%) High Availability
11 44 (12.54%) Continuous Improvement
12 42 (11.97%) Infrastructure as Code
13 36 (10.26%) Observability
13 36 (10.26%) Roadmaps
14 35 (9.97%) ITIL
15 34 (9.69%) Disaster Recovery
16 33 (9.40%) Scrum
17 32 (9.12%) Performance Tuning
17 32 (9.12%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 118 (33.62%) Python
2 65 (18.52%) Bash
3 47 (13.39%) Java
4 39 (11.11%) Shell Script
5 37 (10.54%) PowerShell
6 23 (6.55%) SQL
7 21 (5.98%) Perl
8 12 (3.42%) JavaScript
9 11 (3.13%) MATLAB
10 9 (2.56%) PL/SQL
10 9 (2.56%) Ruby
11 8 (2.28%) Bicep
12 7 (1.99%) Go
13 5 (1.42%) Korn
14 3 (0.85%) R
14 3 (0.85%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.57%) Jython
15 2 (0.57%) Rust
Qualifications
1 170 (48.43%) Security Cleared
2 134 (38.18%) SC Cleared
3 35 (9.97%) DV Cleared
4 31 (8.83%) RHCE
5 21 (5.98%) OCP
5 21 (5.98%) Oracle Certification
6 17 (4.84%) Degree
7 15 (4.27%) CISSP
8 14 (3.99%) Azure Certification
9 9 (2.56%) RHCSA
10 7 (1.99%) CISM
11 6 (1.71%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 5 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
12 5 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
13 4 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (1.14%) CompTIA Security+
13 4 (1.14%) LFCS
13 4 (1.14%) RHCA
14 3 (0.85%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (7.69%) QA
2 12 (3.42%) SLA
3 10 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (2.56%) NCSC
5 8 (2.28%) NIST
6 7 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 6 (1.71%) NIST 800
8 4 (1.14%) GDPR
8 4 (1.14%) GRC
9 2 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.28%) OpenSCAP
10 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.28%) PMO
10 1 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 52 (14.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 33 (9.40%) Docker
3 28 (7.98%) Active Directory
4 25 (7.12%) vSphere
5 22 (6.27%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (4.27%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (4.27%) VMware NSX
7 10 (2.85%) NFS
8 9 (2.56%) Squid
9 8 (2.28%) Oracle RAC
10 6 (1.71%) Corosync
10 6 (1.71%) KVM
11 4 (1.14%) SRDF
12 3 (0.85%) Ceph
13 2 (0.57%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 2 (0.57%) Hyper-V
13 2 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.28%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 1 (0.28%) Terminal Services
14 1 (0.28%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 143 (40.74%) Kubernetes
2 138 (39.32%) Ansible
3 84 (23.93%) Terraform
4 57 (16.24%) Grafana
5 55 (15.67%) Argo
6 41 (11.68%) Prometheus
7 26 (7.41%) Red Hat Satellite
8 22 (6.27%) vCenter Server
9 21 (5.98%) Puppet
9 21 (5.98%) Single Sign-On
10 17 (4.84%) Podman
11 13 (3.70%) Check_MK
12 12 (3.42%) NetBackup
13 11 (3.13%) Oracle RMAN
14 9 (2.56%) FortiGate
15 8 (2.28%) Istio
15 8 (2.28%) Progress Chef
16 7 (1.99%) Consul
16 7 (1.99%) Failover Clustering
16 7 (1.99%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 93 (26.50%) VMware
2 38 (10.83%) Microsoft
3 34 (9.69%) Oracle
4 27 (7.69%) Splunk
5 23 (6.55%) Dell
6 21 (5.98%) IBM
7 18 (5.13%) Pure Storage
8 16 (4.56%) Cisco
9 13 (3.70%) Google
10 12 (3.42%) Veritas
11 11 (3.13%) Commvault
12 9 (2.56%) Dynatrace
12 9 (2.56%) NetApp
13 8 (2.28%) SAP
14 7 (1.99%) Atlassian
14 7 (1.99%) Fortinet
14 7 (1.99%) HP
14 7 (1.99%) NVIDIA
15 6 (1.71%) Brocade
16 5 (1.42%) EMC