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 30 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 558 453 495
Rank change year-on-year -105 +42 +56
Contract jobs citing Ubuntu 87 63 105
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.22% 0.24%
As % of the Operating Systems category 1.85% 1.55% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 38 73
10th Percentile £422 £267 £425
25th Percentile £450 £418 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £550
90th Percentile £625 £631 £598
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £536
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.76% +2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 10 1
10th Percentile £35.23 £59.73 -
25th Percentile £42.31 - £20.50
Median hourly rate £53.00 £68.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.06% +223.81% +12.09%
75th Percentile £74.94 - £21.50
90th Percentile £101.38 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £83.25 £68.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year +22.43% +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 4,701 4,073 5,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.96% 13.94% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,064 2,686 3,913
10th Percentile £185 £200 £183
25th Percentile £313 £319 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £468
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.50% -7.33%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £588
90th Percentile £663 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 177 397
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.13 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.22 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.61% +9.91% -44.02%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +106.52% +4.55% -29.60%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 -82 75 £525 +5.00% 47
UK excluding London -92 56 £525 +5.00% 39
Work from Home -37 24 £537 +7.40% 22
South West -27 17 £488 -2.50% 3
South East -50 14 £550 +2.33% 19
North of England -65 14 £525 +31.09% 9
London -47 13 £525 - 12
Yorkshire -49 9 £525 +31.09% 2
East of England -37 5 £681 +58.37% 3
West Midlands -56 5 £539 - 1
Midlands -71 5 £539 +2.57% 2
North West -36 4 £538 - 2
Scotland -7 1 - -
North East - 1 £375 - 5

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 9 (10.34%) Apache
2 2 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.15%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.15%) JBoss
3 1 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.15%) nginx
3 1 (1.15%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.15%) Tomcat
Applications
1 5 (5.75%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.15%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 20 (22.99%) Azure
2 15 (17.24%) AWS
3 5 (5.75%) GitHub
3 5 (5.75%) Microsoft 365
4 4 (4.60%) IaaS
5 3 (3.45%) OpenShift
6 2 (2.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 2 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (2.30%) GCP
6 2 (2.30%) SaaS
7 1 (1.15%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.15%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (1.15%) Datadog
7 1 (1.15%) Entra ID
7 1 (1.15%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (1.15%) Nutanix
7 1 (1.15%) OneDrive
7 1 (1.15%) Power Platform
7 1 (1.15%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (11.49%) VPN
2 7 (8.05%) Cisco IOS
3 6 (6.90%) BGP
3 6 (6.90%) Cisco ASA
3 6 (6.90%) MPLS
3 6 (6.90%) Network Security
3 6 (6.90%) SAN
3 6 (6.90%) TACACS
4 5 (5.75%) DNS
4 5 (5.75%) LAN
4 5 (5.75%) TCP/IP
4 5 (5.75%) VSAN
5 4 (4.60%) DKIM
5 4 (4.60%) DMARC
5 4 (4.60%) SMTP
6 3 (3.45%) NAS
7 2 (2.30%) Firewall
7 2 (2.30%) Kerberos
7 2 (2.30%) VLAN
8 1 (1.15%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.30%) Elasticsearch
1 2 (2.30%) MongoDB
1 2 (2.30%) MySQL
1 2 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.15%) Apache Hive
2 1 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
2 1 (1.15%) Hadoop
2 1 (1.15%) Impala
2 1 (1.15%) OpenStack Swift
2 1 (1.15%) Power BI
2 1 (1.15%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (17.24%) Git
2 7 (8.05%) GitLab
3 4 (4.60%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.15%) Postman
4 1 (1.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 19 (21.84%) Social Skills
2 10 (11.49%) Documentation Skills
2 10 (11.49%) Public Sector
3 3 (3.45%) Banking
3 3 (3.45%) Finance
3 3 (3.45%) Telecoms
4 2 (2.30%) Aerospace
4 2 (2.30%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (1.15%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 19 (21.84%) Linux Engineer
2 16 (18.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 9 (10.34%) DevOps Engineer
3 9 (10.34%) VMware Engineer
4 8 (9.20%) Lead
4 8 (9.20%) Migration Engineer
4 8 (9.20%) Ubuntu Engineer
5 7 (8.05%) Security Engineer
5 7 (8.05%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
6 6 (6.90%) Senior
6 6 (6.90%) Software Engineer
7 5 (5.75%) Administrator
8 4 (4.60%) Consultant
8 4 (4.60%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
8 4 (4.60%) Open Source Engineer
8 4 (4.60%) Senior Linux Engineer
8 4 (4.60%) Systems Administrator
9 3 (3.45%) Automation Engineer
9 3 (3.45%) Windows Engineer
9 3 (3.45%) Windows Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (12.64%) LDAP
2 9 (10.34%) YAML
3 4 (4.60%) Kafka
4 3 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (2.30%) JSON
5 2 (2.30%) REST
5 2 (2.30%) XML
6 1 (1.15%) Keycloak
6 1 (1.15%) Middleware
6 1 (1.15%) OpenMP
6 1 (1.15%) SOAP
6 1 (1.15%) Web Services
6 1 (1.15%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.05%) PKI
2 5 (5.75%) Data Centre
2 5 (5.75%) Replication
3 4 (4.60%) Hybrid Cloud
3 4 (4.60%) Product Ownership
4 3 (3.45%) Acoustics
4 3 (3.45%) Client/Server
4 3 (3.45%) Derivative
4 3 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
4 3 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (3.45%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.45%) SCADA
5 2 (2.30%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.30%) Public Cloud
6 1 (1.15%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (1.15%) Lidar
6 1 (1.15%) PCIe
6 1 (1.15%) Robotics
6 1 (1.15%) Video Conferencing
6 1 (1.15%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 87 (100.00%) Linux
2 44 (50.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 22 (25.29%) CentOS
3 22 (25.29%) Windows
4 16 (18.39%) Debian
4 16 (18.39%) Windows Server
5 7 (8.05%) Rocky
5 7 (8.05%) VMS
5 7 (8.05%) Windows Server 2016
6 4 (4.60%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (2.30%) Mac OS
7 2 (2.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 2 (2.30%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (1.15%) Android
8 1 (1.15%) Unix
8 1 (1.15%) Windows 10
8 1 (1.15%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (25.29%) DevOps
2 21 (24.14%) Problem-Solving
3 20 (22.99%) CI/CD
4 18 (20.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 14 (16.09%) Migration
6 13 (14.94%) Agile
6 13 (14.94%) Containerisation
7 11 (12.64%) Configuration Management
8 10 (11.49%) Continuous Improvement
8 10 (11.49%) ITIL
9 9 (10.34%) High Availability
9 9 (10.34%) Knowledge Transfer
9 9 (10.34%) Problem Management
9 9 (10.34%) RBAC
10 8 (9.20%) Cybersecurity
10 8 (9.20%) ITSM
10 8 (9.20%) Technical Leadership
11 7 (8.05%) Observability
11 7 (8.05%) Service Management
11 7 (8.05%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 36 (41.38%) Python
2 19 (21.84%) Bash
3 14 (16.09%) PowerShell
4 10 (11.49%) Ruby
5 8 (9.20%) Go
5 8 (9.20%) Perl
6 4 (4.60%) JavaScript
6 4 (4.60%) PHP
6 4 (4.60%) Shell Script
7 1 (1.15%) C
7 1 (1.15%) C#
7 1 (1.15%) C++
7 1 (1.15%) Embedded C
7 1 (1.15%) Embedded C++
7 1 (1.15%) Ladder Logic
7 1 (1.15%) Scala
7 1 (1.15%) Search Processing Language
7 1 (1.15%) SQL
Qualifications
1 42 (48.28%) Security Cleared
2 38 (43.68%) SC Cleared
3 13 (14.94%) Degree
3 13 (14.94%) DV Cleared
4 9 (10.34%) RHCE
5 5 (5.75%) CompTIA Security+
6 4 (4.60%) APMG
6 4 (4.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (4.60%) GIAC
6 4 (4.60%) SSCP
7 3 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (3.45%) GSEC
8 2 (2.30%) VCAP
8 2 (2.30%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 1 (1.15%) CESG Certified Professional
9 1 (1.15%) CISM
9 1 (1.15%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (9.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (8.05%) NIST
3 6 (6.90%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (4.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (2.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 2 (2.30%) NCSC
6 1 (1.15%) QA
System Software
1 18 (20.69%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (12.64%) Docker
3 10 (11.49%) VMware ESXi
4 8 (9.20%) vSphere
5 7 (8.05%) Active Directory
6 6 (6.90%) QEMU
7 5 (5.75%) VMware NSX
8 4 (4.60%) Postfix
9 3 (3.45%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (2.30%) GPFS
10 2 (2.30%) Hyper-V
10 2 (2.30%) Lustre
10 2 (2.30%) NFS
10 2 (2.30%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (1.15%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 1 (1.15%) HDFS
11 1 (1.15%) iptables
11 1 (1.15%) KVM
11 1 (1.15%) Samba
Systems Management
1 34 (39.08%) Ansible
2 14 (16.09%) Terraform
3 13 (14.94%) Kubernetes
4 11 (12.64%) Puppet
5 10 (11.49%) Grafana
6 9 (10.34%) vCenter Server
7 8 (9.20%) Prometheus
8 7 (8.05%) Nessus
9 6 (6.90%) Podman
10 5 (5.75%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (4.60%) Packer
11 4 (4.60%) SCOM
12 3 (3.45%) SCCM
12 3 (3.45%) WSUS
13 2 (2.30%) Kibana
13 2 (2.30%) logstash
13 2 (2.30%) PowerCLI
13 2 (2.30%) SELinux
13 2 (2.30%) vMotion
13 2 (2.30%) vRealize
Vendors
1 29 (33.33%) VMware
2 24 (27.59%) Red Hat
3 13 (14.94%) NVIDIA
4 10 (11.49%) Microsoft
5 8 (9.20%) Cisco
6 7 (8.05%) Dell
7 3 (3.45%) Veeam
8 2 (2.30%) Snow
8 2 (2.30%) Sophos
8 2 (2.30%) Tenable
9 1 (1.15%) Cloudera
9 1 (1.15%) Cribl.io
9 1 (1.15%) Foundry
9 1 (1.15%) LogicMonitor
9 1 (1.15%) Meraki
9 1 (1.15%) New Relic
9 1 (1.15%) OneTrust
9 1 (1.15%) SaltStack
9 1 (1.15%) ServiceNow
9 1 (1.15%) Splunk