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 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 537 463 485
Rank change year-on-year -74 +22 +62
Contract jobs citing Ubuntu 88 66 99
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.23% 0.23%
As % of the Operating Systems category 1.89% 1.63% 1.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 69 36 71
10th Percentile £403 £221 £375
25th Percentile £425 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £522
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.21% -5.09%
75th Percentile £550 £525 £550
90th Percentile £625 £555 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £522
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.21% +1.61%
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 4,663 4,059 5,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.92% 13.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,668 3,836
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £469 £470
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -0.27% -6.50%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £654 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -0.11% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 176 392
10th Percentile £15.72 £15.24 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.44
Median hourly rate £41.94 £22.25 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.49% +1.14% -43.66%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.18 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £20.94 £22.50
% change year-on-year +100.29% -6.93% -25.00%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -90 76 £513 +2.50% 51
UK excluding London -83 54 £525 +5.00% 43
Work from Home -45 20 £519 +3.70% 20
London -51 17 £500 - 7
South West -37 15 £525 +5.00% 3
South East -59 15 £550 +10.00% 24
North of England -53 14 £525 +31.09% 9
Yorkshire -49 9 £525 +31.09% 2
East of England -32 5 £681 +58.37% 3
North West -38 4 £538 - 1
West Midlands -50 4 £338 - 1
Midlands -68 4 £338 -35.71% 2
Scotland -15 1 - -
North East - 1 £375 - 6

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 13 (14.77%) Apache
2 4 (4.55%) CloudStack
3 2 (2.27%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.14%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.14%) JBoss
4 1 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (1.14%) nginx
4 1 (1.14%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.14%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (3.41%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.14%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 22 (25.00%) Azure
2 19 (21.59%) AWS
3 5 (5.68%) GitHub
4 4 (4.55%) IaaS
4 4 (4.55%) Microsoft 365
4 4 (4.55%) OpenShift
5 2 (2.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 2 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
5 2 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (2.27%) GCP
5 2 (2.27%) SaaS
6 1 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
6 1 (1.14%) Amazon ELB
6 1 (1.14%) Amazon S3
6 1 (1.14%) Azure Monitor
6 1 (1.14%) Azure Stack
6 1 (1.14%) Cloud Computing
6 1 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.14%) Nutanix
6 1 (1.14%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (11.36%) VPN
2 9 (10.23%) SAN
3 7 (7.95%) Cisco IOS
4 6 (6.82%) BGP
4 6 (6.82%) Cisco ASA
4 6 (6.82%) DNS
4 6 (6.82%) MPLS
4 6 (6.82%) NAS
4 6 (6.82%) Network Security
4 6 (6.82%) TACACS
4 6 (6.82%) TCP/IP
5 5 (5.68%) Firewall
5 5 (5.68%) LAN
5 5 (5.68%) VSAN
6 4 (4.55%) VLAN
7 3 (3.41%) Kerberos
8 2 (2.27%) DHCP
8 2 (2.27%) SSH
8 2 (2.27%) Structured Cabling
8 2 (2.27%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.41%) MongoDB
1 3 (3.41%) MySQL
1 3 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (2.27%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (1.14%) Apache Hive
3 1 (1.14%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (1.14%) Hadoop
3 1 (1.14%) Impala
3 1 (1.14%) OpenStack Swift
3 1 (1.14%) Power BI
3 1 (1.14%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 16 (18.18%) Git
2 8 (9.09%) GitLab
3 4 (4.55%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.14%) Postman
General
1 21 (23.86%) Social Skills
2 11 (12.50%) Public Sector
3 10 (11.36%) Documentation Skills
4 4 (4.55%) Finance
5 3 (3.41%) Banking
5 3 (3.41%) Telecoms
6 2 (2.27%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.27%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (2.27%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.14%) Retail
Job Titles
1 25 (28.41%) Linux Engineer
2 16 (18.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 8 (9.09%) DevOps Engineer
3 8 (9.09%) Lead
3 8 (9.09%) Migration Engineer
3 8 (9.09%) Ubuntu Engineer
4 7 (7.95%) Security Engineer
5 6 (6.82%) Senior
5 6 (6.82%) VMware Engineer
6 5 (5.68%) Administrator
6 5 (5.68%) Software Engineer
7 4 (4.55%) Consultant
7 4 (4.55%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
7 4 (4.55%) Open Source Engineer
7 4 (4.55%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 4 (4.55%) Systems Administrator
7 4 (4.55%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Automation Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (3.41%) Server Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (10.23%) YAML
2 8 (9.09%) LDAP
3 6 (6.82%) Elastic Stack
4 5 (5.68%) Kafka
5 3 (3.41%) cloud-init
6 2 (2.27%) JSON
6 2 (2.27%) Keycloak
6 2 (2.27%) Middleware
6 2 (2.27%) REST
6 2 (2.27%) XML
7 1 (1.14%) OpenMP
7 1 (1.14%) SOAP
7 1 (1.14%) Web Services
7 1 (1.14%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 9 (10.23%) Data Centre
2 8 (9.09%) PKI
3 6 (6.82%) Hybrid Cloud
4 5 (5.68%) Onboarding
5 4 (4.55%) Product Ownership
5 4 (4.55%) Public Cloud
5 4 (4.55%) Replication
6 3 (3.41%) Acoustics
6 3 (3.41%) Cloud Native
6 3 (3.41%) Derivative
6 3 (3.41%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (3.41%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (3.41%) Private Cloud
7 2 (2.27%) Client/Server
8 1 (1.14%) CUDA
8 1 (1.14%) Device Driver
8 1 (1.14%) EPoS
8 1 (1.14%) Lidar
8 1 (1.14%) Robotics
8 1 (1.14%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 88 (100.00%) Linux
2 41 (46.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 23 (26.14%) Windows
4 19 (21.59%) CentOS
5 17 (19.32%) Windows Server
6 16 (18.18%) Debian
7 8 (9.09%) Rocky
8 7 (7.95%) VMS
9 6 (6.82%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (4.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (3.41%) Mac OS
11 3 (3.41%) Windows 10
12 2 (2.27%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (2.27%) Windows 7
12 2 (2.27%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (1.14%) Android
13 1 (1.14%) SUSE
13 1 (1.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (26.14%) DevOps
2 21 (23.86%) Problem-Solving
3 20 (22.73%) CI/CD
4 18 (20.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 18 (20.45%) Migration
5 14 (15.91%) Containerisation
6 13 (14.77%) Configuration Management
7 12 (13.64%) Agile
8 11 (12.50%) Disaster Recovery
8 11 (12.50%) Observability
9 10 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
10 9 (10.23%) High Availability
10 9 (10.23%) Knowledge Transfer
10 9 (10.23%) Problem Management
10 9 (10.23%) RBAC
11 8 (9.09%) Capacity Planning
11 8 (9.09%) Infrastructure as Code
11 8 (9.09%) ITIL
11 8 (9.09%) ITSM
11 8 (9.09%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 35 (39.77%) Python
2 17 (19.32%) Bash
3 14 (15.91%) PowerShell
4 10 (11.36%) Ruby
5 8 (9.09%) Go
5 8 (9.09%) Perl
6 4 (4.55%) JavaScript
6 4 (4.55%) PHP
6 4 (4.55%) Shell Script
7 1 (1.14%) Ladder Logic
7 1 (1.14%) Scala
7 1 (1.14%) Search Processing Language
7 1 (1.14%) SQL
7 1 (1.14%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 39 (44.32%) Security Cleared
2 34 (38.64%) SC Cleared
3 12 (13.64%) DV Cleared
4 10 (11.36%) Degree
5 9 (10.23%) RHCE
6 5 (5.68%) CompTIA Security+
7 4 (4.55%) APMG
7 4 (4.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (4.55%) GIAC
7 4 (4.55%) SSCP
7 4 (4.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 3 (3.41%) GSEC
9 2 (2.27%) AWS Certification
9 2 (2.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (2.27%) Azure Certification
9 2 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (2.27%) CCNP
9 2 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (2.27%) VCAP
10 1 (1.14%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (9.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (7.95%) NIST
3 6 (6.82%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (4.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (2.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 2 (2.27%) NCSC
6 1 (1.14%) QA
System Software
1 20 (22.73%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (13.64%) Docker
3 10 (11.36%) VMware ESXi
3 10 (11.36%) vSphere
4 7 (7.95%) Active Directory
5 6 (6.82%) QEMU
6 5 (5.68%) NFS
6 5 (5.68%) VMware NSX
7 4 (4.55%) KVM
8 3 (3.41%) Hyper-V
8 3 (3.41%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (2.27%) Ceph
9 2 (2.27%) GPFS
9 2 (2.27%) Lustre
9 2 (2.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (2.27%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (1.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (1.14%) HDFS
10 1 (1.14%) iptables
10 1 (1.14%) Samba
Systems Management
1 37 (42.05%) Ansible
2 16 (18.18%) Terraform
3 14 (15.91%) Grafana
3 14 (15.91%) Kubernetes
4 12 (13.64%) Prometheus
4 12 (13.64%) Puppet
5 9 (10.23%) vCenter Server
6 6 (6.82%) Podman
7 5 (5.68%) Nessus
8 4 (4.55%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (4.55%) SELinux
9 3 (3.41%) SCOM
9 3 (3.41%) WSUS
10 2 (2.27%) Check_MK
10 2 (2.27%) Kibana
10 2 (2.27%) logstash
10 2 (2.27%) Packer
10 2 (2.27%) SCCM
10 2 (2.27%) vMotion
10 2 (2.27%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 29 (32.95%) VMware
2 24 (27.27%) Red Hat
3 13 (14.77%) NVIDIA
4 12 (13.64%) Microsoft
5 10 (11.36%) Cisco
6 7 (7.95%) Dell
7 4 (4.55%) Veeam
8 2 (2.27%) Commvault
8 2 (2.27%) Fortinet
8 2 (2.27%) Snow
8 2 (2.27%) Sophos
8 2 (2.27%) Splunk
8 2 (2.27%) Tenable
9 1 (1.14%) Apple
9 1 (1.14%) CheckPoint
9 1 (1.14%) Cloudera
9 1 (1.14%) Cribl.io
9 1 (1.14%) LogicMonitor
9 1 (1.14%) OneTrust
9 1 (1.14%) Oracle