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 29 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 540 452 478
Rank change year-on-year -88 +26 +77
Contract jobs citing Ubuntu 90 73 112
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.25% 0.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 1.89% 1.75% 1.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 69 48 81
10th Percentile £423 £351 £453
25th Percentile £456 £415 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £560 £584 £550
90th Percentile £638 £675 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £535
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 1
10th Percentile £57.13 £46.08 -
25th Percentile £77.13 £56.31 £20.50
Median hourly rate £114.00 £66.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.73% +214.29% +12.09%
75th Percentile £119.00 £68.00 £21.50
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £114.00 £68.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year +67.65% +223.81% +20.21%

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 4,770 4,176 5,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.71% 14.26% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,119 2,787 4,010
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £300 £325 £286
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -10.19%
75th Percentile £569 £600 £594
90th Percentile £658 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £423 £450 £438
% change year-on-year -5.97% +2.86% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 164 406
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.67 £12.86
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.34 £15.50
Median hourly rate £23.54 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +12.09% -24.53%
75th Percentile £63.75 £62.69 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.30 £68.58 £68.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £24.66 £20.71
% change year-on-year -7.50% +19.10% -21.87%

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 29 March 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 29 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Ubuntu in the UK

Ubuntu
Top 13 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 29 March 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 -83 80 £531 +6.20% 43
UK excluding London -88 63 £525 +5.00% 35
Work from Home -19 24 £539 +8.24% 23
South West -14 23 £450 -12.20% 2
South East -51 17 £525 -8.70% 15
North of England -54 13 £531 +32.58% 9
London -59 12 £575 +4.55% 11
Yorkshire -51 10 £525 +31.09% 1
East of England -30 5 £681 +58.37% 1
West Midlands -53 4 £540 - 4
Midlands -69 4 £540 +2.86% 5
North West -40 3 £538 - 6
Scotland 0 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 7 (7.78%) Apache
2 2 (2.22%) OpenStack
2 2 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.11%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.11%) Apache Superset
3 1 (1.11%) JBoss
3 1 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 8 (8.89%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (4.44%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 19 (21.11%) Azure
2 13 (14.44%) AWS
3 5 (5.56%) GitHub
3 5 (5.56%) Microsoft 365
4 4 (4.44%) IaaS
4 4 (4.44%) OpenShift
5 3 (3.33%) GCP
6 2 (2.22%) Amazon S3
6 2 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (2.22%) Entra ID
6 2 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (2.22%) SaaS
6 2 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 1 (1.11%) Amazon ECR
7 1 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.11%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (1.11%) dbt
7 1 (1.11%) Nutanix
7 1 (1.11%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (11.11%) VPN
2 7 (7.78%) BGP
2 7 (7.78%) Cisco IOS
2 7 (7.78%) Network Security
3 6 (6.67%) Cisco ASA
3 6 (6.67%) MPLS
3 6 (6.67%) TACACS
3 6 (6.67%) VSAN
4 5 (5.56%) SAN
4 5 (5.56%) TCP/IP
5 4 (4.44%) DKIM
5 4 (4.44%) DMARC
5 4 (4.44%) LAN
5 4 (4.44%) SMTP
6 3 (3.33%) Firewall
7 2 (2.22%) Kerberos
7 2 (2.22%) NAS
7 2 (2.22%) NFC
7 2 (2.22%) VLAN
7 2 (2.22%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.22%) MongoDB
1 2 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
1 2 (2.22%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (1.11%) Apache Hive
2 1 (1.11%) Hadoop
2 1 (1.11%) Impala
2 1 (1.11%) MySQL
2 1 (1.11%) OpenStack Swift
2 1 (1.11%) Redis
Development Applications
1 13 (14.44%) Git
2 6 (6.67%) GitLab
3 4 (4.44%) Jenkins
4 2 (2.22%) Eclipse
4 2 (2.22%) Valgrind
5 1 (1.11%) Postman
5 1 (1.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 19 (21.11%) Social Skills
2 10 (11.11%) Documentation Skills
2 10 (11.11%) Public Sector
3 3 (3.33%) Banking
3 3 (3.33%) Finance
3 3 (3.33%) Telecoms
4 2 (2.22%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.11%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (1.11%) Billing
Job Titles
1 16 (17.78%) Linux Engineer
2 14 (15.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 9 (10.00%) DevOps Engineer
3 9 (10.00%) VMware Engineer
4 8 (8.89%) Lead
5 7 (7.78%) Migration Engineer
5 7 (7.78%) Security Engineer
5 7 (7.78%) Software Engineer
5 7 (7.78%) Ubuntu Engineer
5 7 (7.78%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
6 5 (5.56%) Administrator
6 5 (5.56%) Consultant
6 5 (5.56%) Senior
6 5 (5.56%) System Design Authority
7 4 (4.44%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
7 4 (4.44%) Product Engineer
7 4 (4.44%) Products Support Engineer
7 4 (4.44%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 4 (4.44%) Software Support Engineer
7 4 (4.44%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (12.22%) LDAP
2 9 (10.00%) YAML
3 5 (5.56%) JSON
3 5 (5.56%) Middleware
4 4 (4.44%) XML
5 3 (3.33%) REST
5 3 (3.33%) Web Services
6 2 (2.22%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (1.11%) AWS CDK
7 1 (1.11%) Jinja
7 1 (1.11%) Kafka
7 1 (1.11%) LAPP Stack
7 1 (1.11%) Node.js
7 1 (1.11%) OpenMP
7 1 (1.11%) RabbitMQ
7 1 (1.11%) React
7 1 (1.11%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 7 (7.78%) PKI
2 5 (5.56%) Data Centre
2 5 (5.56%) Replication
3 4 (4.44%) Hybrid Cloud
3 4 (4.44%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.33%) Acoustics
4 3 (3.33%) Client/Server
4 3 (3.33%) Derivative
4 3 (3.33%) Product Ownership
4 3 (3.33%) Public Cloud
4 3 (3.33%) SCADA
5 2 (2.22%) CUDA
5 2 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.22%) Private Cloud
5 2 (2.22%) Smartcard
6 1 (1.11%) Fat Client
6 1 (1.11%) FPGA
6 1 (1.11%) Grid Computing
6 1 (1.11%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 90 (100.00%) Linux
2 46 (51.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 21 (23.33%) CentOS
4 19 (21.11%) Windows
5 14 (15.56%) Windows Server
6 12 (13.33%) Debian
7 7 (7.78%) Windows Server 2016
8 6 (6.67%) Rocky
9 5 (5.56%) VMS
10 3 (3.33%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (2.22%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (1.11%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (1.11%) Android
12 1 (1.11%) Mac OS
12 1 (1.11%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (28.89%) CI/CD
2 23 (25.56%) DevOps
3 18 (20.00%) Containerisation
4 17 (18.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 16 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
6 12 (13.33%) Agile
6 12 (13.33%) Migration
7 11 (12.22%) ITIL
7 11 (12.22%) Software Engineering
8 10 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
8 10 (11.11%) DevSecOps
8 10 (11.11%) RBAC
9 9 (10.00%) Configuration Management
9 9 (10.00%) Patch Management
9 9 (10.00%) Problem Management
10 8 (8.89%) API Integration
10 8 (8.89%) Architectural Patterns
10 8 (8.89%) Cybersecurity
10 8 (8.89%) ITSM
10 8 (8.89%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 33 (36.67%) Python
2 15 (16.67%) Bash
3 13 (14.44%) PowerShell
4 10 (11.11%) JavaScript
5 8 (8.89%) Perl
5 8 (8.89%) Ruby
5 8 (8.89%) Shell Script
6 7 (7.78%) C++
7 5 (5.56%) C
7 5 (5.56%) Go
8 4 (4.44%) Ada
8 4 (4.44%) PHP
9 3 (3.33%) C#
10 2 (2.22%) Java
10 2 (2.22%) SQL
11 1 (1.11%) Embedded C
11 1 (1.11%) Embedded C++
11 1 (1.11%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (1.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 45 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 40 (44.44%) SC Cleared
3 15 (16.67%) Degree
4 14 (15.56%) DV Cleared
5 9 (10.00%) RHCE
6 5 (5.56%) CompTIA Security+
7 4 (4.44%) APMG
7 4 (4.44%) GIAC
7 4 (4.44%) SSCP
8 3 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (3.33%) GSEC
9 2 (2.22%) CISSP
9 2 (2.22%) VCAP
9 2 (2.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (1.11%) CCNP
10 1 (1.11%) CESG Certified Professional
10 1 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (1.11%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.89%) NIST
2 7 (7.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (6.67%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (4.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 3 (3.33%) NCSC
6 2 (2.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (1.11%) NIST 800
System Software
1 18 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (12.22%) Docker
3 8 (8.89%) VMware ESXi
4 6 (6.67%) Active Directory
4 6 (6.67%) QEMU
4 6 (6.67%) VMware NSX
4 6 (6.67%) vSphere
5 4 (4.44%) Postfix
6 3 (3.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (3.33%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (2.22%) GPFS
7 2 (2.22%) Hyper-V
7 2 (2.22%) Lustre
7 2 (2.22%) NFS
7 2 (2.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (1.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (1.11%) Ceph
8 1 (1.11%) iptables
8 1 (1.11%) KVM
8 1 (1.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 30 (33.33%) Ansible
2 21 (23.33%) Kubernetes
3 12 (13.33%) Terraform
4 10 (11.11%) SCOM
5 9 (10.00%) Puppet
5 9 (10.00%) vCenter Server
6 8 (8.89%) Grafana
7 7 (7.78%) Nessus
7 7 (7.78%) Podman
8 5 (5.56%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (5.56%) Prometheus
9 4 (4.44%) Packer
10 3 (3.33%) SCCM
10 3 (3.33%) WSUS
11 2 (2.22%) PowerCLI
11 2 (2.22%) SELinux
11 2 (2.22%) vMotion
11 2 (2.22%) vRealize
12 1 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (1.11%) VxRail
Vendors
1 28 (31.11%) Red Hat
2 27 (30.00%) VMware
3 17 (18.89%) NVIDIA
4 9 (10.00%) Microsoft
5 7 (7.78%) Cisco
5 7 (7.78%) Dell
6 4 (4.44%) Veeam
7 3 (3.33%) Splunk
8 2 (2.22%) Palo Alto
8 2 (2.22%) Snow
8 2 (2.22%) Sophos
8 2 (2.22%) Tenable
9 1 (1.11%) Apple
9 1 (1.11%) CheckPoint
9 1 (1.11%) Cloudera
9 1 (1.11%) Foundry
9 1 (1.11%) New Relic
9 1 (1.11%) Oracle
9 1 (1.11%) SaltStack
9 1 (1.11%) ServiceNow