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 October 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 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 375 293 244
Rank change year-on-year -82 -49 -56
Contract jobs citing Red Hat 328 293 356
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.89% 0.95%
As % of the Vendors category 1.43% 1.87% 2.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 189 222
10th Percentile £400 £338 £363
25th Percentile £450 £418 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -7.89%
75th Percentile £638 £594 £638
90th Percentile £738 £650 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -1.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 13 10
10th Percentile £48.64 £60.40 £64.44
25th Percentile £62.19 - £69.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £68.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -8.11% +40.95%
75th Percentile - - £74.86
90th Percentile - - £112.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £68.00 £74.00
% change year-on-year +2.94% -8.11% +40.95%

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 22,916 15,709 16,713
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.72% 47.71% 44.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,818 9,689 9,822
10th Percentile £310 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £712 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,421 799 583
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.84 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.25 £17.87 £16.25
Median hourly rate £24.25 £25.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -24.24% -24.79%
75th Percentile £56.43 £38.59 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.35 £30.21
% change year-on-year +8.60% -29.33% -29.76%

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 October 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 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Red Hat in the UK

Red Hat
Top 16 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 October 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 -106 285 £525 +2.44% 255
UK excluding London -70 204 £510 +2.00% 138
Work from Home -69 95 £525 - 137
London -68 94 £570 +3.64% 130
North of England -39 74 £500 -3.12% 41
South East -65 68 £505 +1.00% 32
South West -33 31 £525 +7.69% 23
North West -41 29 £479 +7.16% 22
North East -25 26 £510 -7.27% 14
Yorkshire -38 20 £725 +39.42% 5
Midlands -44 19 £450 -10.00% 12
West Midlands -46 16 £438 -22.22% 9
East of England -18 14 £400 +14.29% 5
Scotland -19 14 £450 -14.29% 14
East Midlands -15 3 £488 +16.07% 3
Wales - 1 £475 - 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 17 (5.18%) JBoss
2 15 (4.57%) nginx
3 11 (3.35%) Apache
4 10 (3.05%) SharePoint
5 8 (2.44%) Tomcat
6 7 (2.13%) Confluence
7 3 (0.91%) IIS
7 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.61%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.61%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.61%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.61%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.30%) Oracle Coherence
9 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Maximo
1 1 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 112 (34.15%) OpenShift
2 73 (22.26%) Azure
3 71 (21.65%) AWS
4 37 (11.28%) GitHub
5 31 (9.45%) GCP
6 21 (6.40%) GitHub Actions
7 18 (5.49%) AWS CloudFormation
8 16 (4.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (4.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 14 (4.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 14 (4.27%) Serverless
11 13 (3.96%) Entra ID
12 12 (3.66%) Amazon EKS
13 11 (3.35%) Amazon EC2
13 11 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (3.35%) IaaS
14 10 (3.05%) AWS Lambda
14 10 (3.05%) Datadog
15 9 (2.74%) AWS CloudTrail
15 9 (2.74%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 36 (10.98%) DNS
2 32 (9.76%) Firewall
3 18 (5.49%) SAN
4 17 (5.18%) DHCP
5 15 (4.57%) TCP/IP
6 12 (3.66%) BGP
7 11 (3.35%) Kerberos
7 11 (3.35%) Network Security
7 11 (3.35%) SSL
8 10 (3.05%) Ethernet VPN
8 10 (3.05%) NX-OS
8 10 (3.05%) VXLAN
9 8 (2.44%) VPN
10 7 (2.13%) SSH
10 7 (2.13%) TACACS
10 7 (2.13%) VLAN
10 7 (2.13%) WAN
11 6 (1.83%) VoIP
12 4 (1.22%) NAS
12 4 (1.22%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.79%) SQL Server
2 13 (3.96%) Oracle Database
3 7 (2.13%) Big Data
3 7 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
4 6 (1.83%) Hadoop
5 5 (1.52%) MySQL
5 5 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (1.22%) Data Lake
6 4 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (0.91%) Oracle Database 12c
7 3 (0.91%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.61%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.61%) GIS
8 2 (0.61%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.30%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.30%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.30%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.30%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.30%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 36 (10.98%) Jenkins
2 33 (10.06%) Git
3 31 (9.45%) SonarQube
4 25 (7.62%) GitLab
5 7 (2.13%) JIRA
5 7 (2.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.91%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.91%) Maven
6 3 (0.91%) Toad
7 2 (0.61%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.61%) JUnit
7 2 (0.61%) Mockito
7 2 (0.61%) Serenity BDD
8 1 (0.30%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.30%) VSS/SourceSafe
General
1 63 (19.21%) Social Skills
2 51 (15.55%) Finance
3 24 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (6.40%) Public Sector
5 17 (5.18%) Banking
6 16 (4.88%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.44%) Telecoms
8 5 (1.52%) Aerospace
8 5 (1.52%) Military
9 4 (1.22%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.91%) Law
10 3 (0.91%) Retail
11 2 (0.61%) Aviation
11 2 (0.61%) Legal
11 2 (0.61%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.30%) Local Government
12 1 (0.30%) Police
12 1 (0.30%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 53 (16.16%) Linux Engineer
2 39 (11.89%) Architect
3 37 (11.28%) Senior
4 29 (8.84%) Developer
4 29 (8.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 21 (6.40%) DevOps Engineer
6 20 (6.10%) Cloud Engineer
6 20 (6.10%) Security Engineer
7 18 (5.49%) Administrator
8 16 (4.88%) Java Developer
8 16 (4.88%) Lead
8 16 (4.88%) Platform Engineer
9 15 (4.57%) Systems Engineer
10 13 (3.96%) Analyst
10 13 (3.96%) Solutions Architect
11 12 (3.66%) Linux Administrator
11 12 (3.66%) Linux Systems Engineer
12 11 (3.35%) Consultant
12 11 (3.35%) Senior Linux Engineer
13 10 (3.05%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (22.26%) Terraform
2 29 (8.84%) AngularJS
3 28 (8.54%) Quarkus
4 17 (5.18%) YAML
5 16 (4.88%) REST
6 13 (3.96%) JSON
7 11 (3.35%) Node.js
8 10 (3.05%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (2.44%) Express.js
10 7 (2.13%) ARM Templates
10 7 (2.13%) Kafka
10 7 (2.13%) React
11 6 (1.83%) Jakarta EE
11 6 (1.83%) Middleware
12 5 (1.52%) LDAP
13 4 (1.22%) boto
13 4 (1.22%) CSS
13 4 (1.22%) HTML
13 4 (1.22%) LAMP
13 4 (1.22%) OpenTofu
Miscellaneous
1 41 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 31 (9.45%) Data Centre
3 18 (5.49%) Management Information System
3 18 (5.49%) Security Posture
4 15 (4.57%) Data Protection Act
5 14 (4.27%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (4.27%) Onboarding
6 12 (3.66%) Clustering
6 12 (3.66%) Linux Command Line
7 9 (2.74%) Private Cloud
7 9 (2.74%) Virtual Team
8 7 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.13%) Replication
9 6 (1.83%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.52%) Cloud Security Posture
10 5 (1.52%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.52%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
10 5 (1.52%) PKI
11 4 (1.22%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 217 (66.16%) Linux
2 169 (51.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 84 (25.61%) Windows
4 40 (12.20%) Windows Server
5 29 (8.84%) Unix
6 16 (4.88%) SUSE
7 13 (3.96%) Solaris
7 13 (3.96%) Ubuntu
8 11 (3.35%) AIX
9 9 (2.74%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (2.13%) CentOS
11 6 (1.83%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (1.52%) Rocky
13 4 (1.22%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.91%) HPUX
14 3 (0.91%) VMS
15 2 (0.61%) CoreOS
15 2 (0.61%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (31.40%) CI/CD
2 98 (29.88%) DevOps
3 83 (25.30%) Agile
4 62 (18.90%) Migration
5 60 (18.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 60 (18.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 53 (16.16%) Test Automation
7 52 (15.85%) Problem-Solving
8 50 (15.24%) Platform Engineering
9 48 (14.63%) Containerisation
9 48 (14.63%) DevSecOps
10 44 (13.41%) Continuous Improvement
10 44 (13.41%) Scrum
11 43 (13.11%) Infrastructure Automation
11 43 (13.11%) Observability
12 41 (12.50%) Configuration Management
13 40 (12.20%) Software Engineering
14 39 (11.89%) Change Management
14 39 (11.89%) ITIL
15 37 (11.28%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 100 (30.49%) Python
2 73 (22.26%) Bash
3 70 (21.34%) Java
4 63 (19.21%) PowerShell
5 17 (5.18%) Shell Script
6 15 (4.57%) SQL
7 11 (3.35%) Perl
8 10 (3.05%) Bicep
9 8 (2.44%) C
10 7 (2.13%) C++
10 7 (2.13%) JavaScript
11 4 (1.22%) Go
12 3 (0.91%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.61%) Groovy
13 2 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.61%) MATLAB
13 2 (0.61%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.30%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.30%) C#
14 1 (0.30%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 132 (40.24%) Security Cleared
2 92 (28.05%) SC Cleared
3 37 (11.28%) DV Cleared
4 30 (9.15%) Degree
5 28 (8.54%) Azure Certification
6 21 (6.40%) RHCE
7 20 (6.10%) AWS Certification
8 19 (5.79%) CISSP
9 12 (3.66%) RHCSA
10 10 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (1.83%) LFCS
12 6 (1.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 3 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
13 3 (0.91%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (0.91%) RHCA
14 2 (0.61%) CCNA
14 2 (0.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 2 (0.61%) LPIC
14 2 (0.61%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (9.45%) QA
2 9 (2.74%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.22%) GRC
3 4 (1.22%) SLA
4 3 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
4 3 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (0.91%) NIST
5 2 (0.61%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.30%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.30%) GLBA
6 1 (0.30%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.30%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.30%) NCSC
6 1 (0.30%) OpenSCAP
6 1 (0.30%) PMO
6 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 66 (20.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (15.85%) Docker
3 37 (11.28%) Active Directory
4 17 (5.18%) vSphere
5 13 (3.96%) NFS
6 11 (3.35%) Hyper-V
6 11 (3.35%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (2.74%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (2.74%) VMware NSX
8 5 (1.52%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (1.52%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 3 (0.91%) Ceph
9 3 (0.91%) Dovecot
9 3 (0.91%) Postfix
9 3 (0.91%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 2 (0.61%) Corosync
10 2 (0.61%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 2 (0.61%) KVM
10 2 (0.61%) Squid
10 2 (0.61%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 112 (34.15%) Kubernetes
2 91 (27.74%) Ansible
3 42 (12.80%) Argo
4 29 (8.84%) Progress Chef
5 28 (8.54%) Grafana
6 27 (8.23%) Red Hat Satellite
7 25 (7.62%) Puppet
8 19 (5.79%) Prometheus
9 16 (4.88%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (3.35%) Failover Clustering
11 6 (1.83%) Podman
12 5 (1.52%) Packer
12 5 (1.52%) SELinux
12 5 (1.52%) vCenter Server
13 4 (1.22%) Data Guard
13 4 (1.22%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (1.22%) Nagios
13 4 (1.22%) Oracle RMAN
13 4 (1.22%) WSUS
14 3 (0.91%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 85 (25.91%) VMware
2 68 (20.73%) Microsoft
3 51 (15.55%) Oracle
4 37 (11.28%) Cisco
5 22 (6.71%) ServiceNow
6 21 (6.40%) Google
6 21 (6.40%) IBM
7 13 (3.96%) SAP
8 11 (3.35%) SaltStack
9 9 (2.74%) Splunk
10 8 (2.44%) MathWorks
10 8 (2.44%) NetApp
10 8 (2.44%) Siemens
11 5 (1.52%) Infoblox
12 4 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
12 4 (1.22%) Dell
12 4 (1.22%) EMC
12 4 (1.22%) F5
12 4 (1.22%) McAfee
12 4 (1.22%) PagerDuty