Ubuntu Contract Job Trends

Ubuntu Linux
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Ubuntu skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 533 458 493
Rank change year-on-year -75 +35 +62
Contract jobs citing Ubuntu 96 63 93
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.22% 0.22%
As % of the Operating Systems category 2.02% 1.58% 1.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 73 34 67
10th Percentile £403 £209 £375
25th Percentile £425 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £498 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.02% -2.93% -6.82%
75th Percentile £550 £500 £550
90th Percentile £616 £550 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £493 £521
% change year-on-year +6.60% -5.47% +1.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 11 0
10th Percentile £33.65 £62.00 -
25th Percentile £38.38 - -
Median hourly rate £47.50 £68.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -30.15% - -
75th Percentile £54.50 - -
90th Percentile £57.95 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £68.00 -
% change year-on-year -30.15% - -

All Operating Systems
UK

Ubuntu falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,763 3,975 5,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.87% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,040 2,618 3,897
10th Percentile £186 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £469 £474
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% -1.11% -5.20%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 348 175 402
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.11 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.59% -2.22% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.38 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £19.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +75.03% -13.33% -28.00%

Ubuntu
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Ubuntu job vacancy trend in the UK

Ubuntu
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Ubuntu

Ubuntu
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Ubuntu over the 6 months to 28 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Ubuntu in the UK

Ubuntu
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Ubuntu

Ubuntu
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Ubuntu over the 6 months to 28 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Ubuntu in the UK

Ubuntu
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Ubuntu within the UK over the 6 months to 28 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 -91 83 £509 +1.75% 32
UK excluding London -78 58 £525 +6.60% 34
Work from Home -49 23 £500 - 16
London -58 20 £465 -7.00% 6
South East -43 18 £538 +7.50% 15
North of England -60 16 £525 +31.09% 5
South West -25 14 £525 +5.00% 4
Yorkshire -49 10 £531 +32.58% 1
East of England -32 5 £681 +58.37%
North West -36 4 £538 -
West Midlands -59 4 £338 -46.00%
Midlands -65 4 £338 -38.64% 2
North East - 2 £388 - 4
Scotland -9 1 - - 1

Ubuntu
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 (17.71%) Apache
2 4 (4.17%) CloudStack
2 4 (4.17%) nginx
2 4 (4.17%) SharePoint
2 4 (4.17%) Tomcat
3 3 (3.13%) IIS
4 2 (2.08%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (1.04%) Apache Spark
5 1 (1.04%) JBoss
5 1 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (1.04%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (2.08%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.04%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 27 (28.13%) Azure
2 26 (27.08%) AWS
3 5 (5.21%) GitHub
4 4 (4.17%) GCP
4 4 (4.17%) OpenShift
5 3 (3.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 3 (3.13%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (3.13%) Cloudflare
5 3 (3.13%) Entra ID
5 3 (3.13%) IaaS
5 3 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (2.08%) Amazon S3
6 2 (2.08%) AWS Control Tower
6 2 (2.08%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (2.08%) Azure Sentinel
6 2 (2.08%) Power Platform
6 2 (2.08%) SaaS
6 2 (2.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 1 (1.04%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 10 (10.42%) SAN
1 10 (10.42%) VPN
2 9 (9.38%) DNS
3 8 (8.33%) Firewall
4 7 (7.29%) Cisco IOS
4 7 (7.29%) NAS
5 6 (6.25%) BGP
5 6 (6.25%) Cisco ASA
5 6 (6.25%) MPLS
5 6 (6.25%) Network Security
5 6 (6.25%) TACACS
5 6 (6.25%) TCP/IP
6 5 (5.21%) VSAN
7 4 (4.17%) LAN
7 4 (4.17%) VLAN
8 3 (3.13%) Kerberos
9 2 (2.08%) BIG-IP
9 2 (2.08%) DHCP
9 2 (2.08%) SSH
9 2 (2.08%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.29%) MySQL
2 4 (4.17%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (4.17%) SQL Server
3 2 (2.08%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
3 2 (2.08%) Power BI
4 1 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (1.04%) Apache Hive
4 1 (1.04%) Hadoop
4 1 (1.04%) Impala
4 1 (1.04%) OpenStack Swift
Development Applications
1 17 (17.71%) Git
2 10 (10.42%) GitLab
3 5 (5.21%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.04%) Postman
General
1 23 (23.96%) Social Skills
2 13 (13.54%) Public Sector
3 10 (10.42%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (3.13%) Banking
4 3 (3.13%) Finance
4 3 (3.13%) Telecoms
5 2 (2.08%) Aerospace
5 2 (2.08%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.04%) Retail
Job Titles
1 28 (29.17%) Linux Engineer
2 15 (15.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 8 (8.33%) DevOps Engineer
3 8 (8.33%) Lead
3 8 (8.33%) Migration Engineer
3 8 (8.33%) Senior
3 8 (8.33%) Ubuntu Engineer
4 7 (7.29%) Security Engineer
5 5 (5.21%) Administrator
5 5 (5.21%) AWS Engineer
5 5 (5.21%) Cloud Engineer
5 5 (5.21%) Software Engineer
6 4 (4.17%) Architect
6 4 (4.17%) Consultant
6 4 (4.17%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
6 4 (4.17%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
6 4 (4.17%) Open Source Engineer
6 4 (4.17%) Senior Linux Engineer
6 4 (4.17%) Systems Administrator
6 4 (4.17%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (12.50%) YAML
2 8 (8.33%) LDAP
3 6 (6.25%) Elastic Stack
3 6 (6.25%) Kafka
4 4 (4.17%) cloud-init
5 3 (3.13%) Keycloak
5 3 (3.13%) LAMP
5 3 (3.13%) LEMP Stack
5 3 (3.13%) Middleware
5 3 (3.13%) REST
6 2 (2.08%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (2.08%) JSON
6 2 (2.08%) SOAP
6 2 (2.08%) XML
7 1 (1.04%) OpenMP
7 1 (1.04%) Web Services
7 1 (1.04%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 9 (9.38%) Data Centre
1 9 (9.38%) PKI
2 6 (6.25%) Cloud Native
2 6 (6.25%) Hybrid Cloud
2 6 (6.25%) Public Cloud
3 5 (5.21%) Onboarding
4 4 (4.17%) Product Ownership
5 3 (3.13%) Acoustics
5 3 (3.13%) Derivative
5 3 (3.13%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (3.13%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (3.13%) Private Cloud
5 3 (3.13%) Replication
6 2 (2.08%) CMDB
6 2 (2.08%) Legacy Applications
6 2 (2.08%) Management Information System
6 2 (2.08%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.04%) CUDA
7 1 (1.04%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.04%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 96 (100.00%) Linux
2 45 (46.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 26 (27.08%) Windows
4 23 (23.96%) CentOS
5 20 (20.83%) Windows Server
6 16 (16.67%) Debian
7 8 (8.33%) Rocky
8 7 (7.29%) VMS
9 6 (6.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (5.21%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (4.17%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (3.13%) Mac OS
12 3 (3.13%) Windows 10
13 2 (2.08%) Alpine Linux
13 2 (2.08%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (2.08%) Windows 7
14 1 (1.04%) Android
14 1 (1.04%) SUSE
14 1 (1.04%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (27.08%) DevOps
2 22 (22.92%) CI/CD
2 22 (22.92%) Problem-Solving
3 21 (21.88%) Migration
4 17 (17.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 16 (16.67%) Configuration Management
5 16 (16.67%) Containerisation
6 12 (12.50%) Agile
6 12 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 12 (12.50%) Observability
7 11 (11.46%) RBAC
8 10 (10.42%) Continuous Improvement
8 10 (10.42%) Cybersecurity
8 10 (10.42%) Disaster Recovery
8 10 (10.42%) High Availability
8 10 (10.42%) Knowledge Transfer
9 9 (9.38%) Problem Management
10 8 (8.33%) Capacity Planning
10 8 (8.33%) ITSM
10 8 (8.33%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 41 (42.71%) Python
2 21 (21.88%) Bash
3 18 (18.75%) PowerShell
4 10 (10.42%) Ruby
5 8 (8.33%) Go
5 8 (8.33%) Perl
6 4 (4.17%) JavaScript
6 4 (4.17%) PHP
6 4 (4.17%) Shell Script
7 2 (2.08%) Bicep
7 2 (2.08%) SQL
8 1 (1.04%) Ladder Logic
8 1 (1.04%) Scala
8 1 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
8 1 (1.04%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 41 (42.71%) Security Cleared
2 36 (37.50%) SC Cleared
3 11 (11.46%) DV Cleared
4 9 (9.38%) Degree
4 9 (9.38%) RHCE
5 5 (5.21%) CompTIA Security+
5 5 (5.21%) GIAC
6 4 (4.17%) APMG
6 4 (4.17%) AWS Certification
6 4 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (4.17%) GSEC
6 4 (4.17%) SSCP
6 4 (4.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 3 (3.13%) CISM
7 3 (3.13%) CISSP
8 2 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (2.08%) CCNP
8 2 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (2.08%) ISSAP
8 2 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (10.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (9.38%) NIST
3 6 (6.25%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (4.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (2.08%) HIPAA
5 2 (2.08%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 2 (2.08%) NCSC
5 2 (2.08%) SOC 2
6 1 (1.04%) QA
System Software
1 19 (19.79%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (12.50%) Docker
3 10 (10.42%) VMware ESXi
3 10 (10.42%) vSphere
4 9 (9.38%) Active Directory
5 6 (6.25%) QEMU
6 5 (5.21%) NFS
6 5 (5.21%) VMware NSX
7 4 (4.17%) KVM
7 4 (4.17%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (3.13%) Dovecot
8 3 (3.13%) Hyper-V
8 3 (3.13%) Postfix
9 2 (2.08%) Ceph
9 2 (2.08%) GPFS
9 2 (2.08%) Lustre
9 2 (2.08%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (1.04%) HDFS
10 1 (1.04%) iptables
10 1 (1.04%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 44 (45.83%) Ansible
2 22 (22.92%) Terraform
3 15 (15.63%) Grafana
4 14 (14.58%) Kubernetes
4 14 (14.58%) Puppet
5 13 (13.54%) Prometheus
6 9 (9.38%) vCenter Server
7 6 (6.25%) Podman
8 4 (4.17%) Nessus
8 4 (4.17%) SELinux
9 3 (3.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 3 (3.13%) HAProxy
9 3 (3.13%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (3.13%) SCOM
9 3 (3.13%) WSUS
10 2 (2.08%) logstash
10 2 (2.08%) PowerCLI
10 2 (2.08%) vMotion
10 2 (2.08%) vRealize
10 2 (2.08%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 28 (29.17%) Red Hat
2 27 (28.13%) VMware
3 14 (14.58%) Microsoft
4 13 (13.54%) Cisco
4 13 (13.54%) NVIDIA
5 7 (7.29%) Dell
6 4 (4.17%) Splunk
6 4 (4.17%) Tenable
7 3 (3.13%) F5
7 3 (3.13%) Juniper
7 3 (3.13%) Rapid7
7 3 (3.13%) Veeam
8 2 (2.08%) Commvault
8 2 (2.08%) Fortinet
8 2 (2.08%) Google
8 2 (2.08%) Oracle
8 2 (2.08%) Qualys
8 2 (2.08%) Snow
8 2 (2.08%) Sophos
8 2 (2.08%) TOWER Software