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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 500 441 429
Rank change year-on-year -59 -12 +173
Contract jobs citing Ubuntu 86 74 157
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.23% 0.24% 0.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 1.82% 1.69% 2.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 49 125
10th Percentile £151 £340 £400
25th Percentile £450 £415 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -3.70% -1.82%
75th Percentile £557 £613 £576
90th Percentile £640 £675 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £524 £517
% change year-on-year -4.01% +1.26% -1.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 3 1
10th Percentile £62.00 £76.80 -
25th Percentile - £90.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £68.00 £112.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.29% +433.33% +5.00%
75th Percentile £116.25 - £21.50
90th Percentile £119.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £68.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year - +223.81% -45.79%

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 4,726 4,390 6,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.68% 14.04% 14.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,144 2,726 4,269
10th Percentile £175 £200 £181
25th Percentile £267 £313 £285
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £568 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £696 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 165 337
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.05 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.08 £37.00 £29.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.23% +25.42% +18.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £32.50 £25.15
% change year-on-year -26.15% +29.24% +11.77%

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 January 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 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Ubuntu in the UK

Ubuntu
Top 11 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 January 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 -35 81 £525 +0.24% 36
UK excluding London -36 66 £503 -4.01% 36
South West +15 26 £450 -16.28% 6
Work from Home -24 21 £537 +4.02% 23
London -26 20 £578 +92.50% 3
West Midlands -21 13 £539 - 2
Midlands -30 13 £539 - 3
South East -32 12 £475 -17.39% 15
North of England -49 9 £531 - 4
Yorkshire - 9 £531 - 1
East of England -16 6 £628 +46.05% 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 10 (11.63%) nginx
2 9 (10.47%) Confluence
3 6 (6.98%) Apache
4 2 (2.33%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (2.33%) Tomcat
4 2 (2.33%) WebLogic
5 1 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 1 (1.16%) Apache Superset
5 1 (1.16%) OpenStack
5 1 (1.16%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (10.47%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 7 (8.14%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (4.65%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 20 (23.26%) Azure
2 19 (22.09%) AWS
3 14 (16.28%) Microsoft 365
4 10 (11.63%) Amazon S3
4 10 (11.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 9 (10.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 9 (10.47%) Amazon EC2
5 9 (10.47%) Amazon ECS
5 9 (10.47%) Amazon ELB
5 9 (10.47%) AWS KMS
5 9 (10.47%) Route 53
6 5 (5.81%) GCP
7 4 (4.65%) IaaS
8 2 (2.33%) GitHub
9 1 (1.16%) Amazon ECR
9 1 (1.16%) Amazon EKS
9 1 (1.16%) dbt
9 1 (1.16%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (1.16%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 16 (18.60%) Firewall
2 14 (16.28%) DNS
3 13 (15.12%) SMTP
4 11 (12.79%) HTTP
5 9 (10.47%) FTP
5 9 (10.47%) IMAP
5 9 (10.47%) OpenLDAP
5 9 (10.47%) SSH
6 6 (6.98%) TCP/IP
7 4 (4.65%) BGP
7 4 (4.65%) DKIM
7 4 (4.65%) DMARC
7 4 (4.65%) Network Security
7 4 (4.65%) NFC
7 4 (4.65%) PPP
7 4 (4.65%) SAN
7 4 (4.65%) VPN
8 3 (3.49%) Cisco ASA
8 3 (3.49%) Cisco IOS
8 3 (3.49%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (11.63%) Amazon Aurora
1 10 (11.63%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (10.47%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.16%) Apache Hive
3 1 (1.16%) Hadoop
3 1 (1.16%) Impala
3 1 (1.16%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.16%) Redis
3 1 (1.16%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (20.93%) Git
2 11 (12.79%) Jenkins
3 10 (11.63%) JIRA
4 9 (10.47%) Vagrant
5 4 (4.65%) Eclipse
5 4 (4.65%) Valgrind
6 3 (3.49%) GitLab
7 1 (1.16%) Postman
7 1 (1.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 24 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 12 (13.95%) Public Sector
3 11 (12.79%) Documentation Skills
4 9 (10.47%) Presentation Skills
5 3 (3.49%) Aerospace
5 3 (3.49%) Banking
5 3 (3.49%) Finance
5 3 (3.49%) Telecoms
6 2 (2.33%) Analytical Skills
7 1 (1.16%) Aviation
7 1 (1.16%) Billing
7 1 (1.16%) Law
Job Titles
1 15 (17.44%) DevOps Engineer
2 13 (15.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 12 (13.95%) Product Engineer
3 12 (13.95%) Products Support Engineer
3 12 (13.95%) Software Support Engineer
3 12 (13.95%) Support Engineer
4 9 (10.47%) AWS Engineer
4 9 (10.47%) AWS Platform Engineer
4 9 (10.47%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 9 (10.47%) Linux Engineer
4 9 (10.47%) Platform Engineer
5 8 (9.30%) Lead
6 7 (8.14%) AWS DevOps
6 7 (8.14%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 7 (8.14%) DevOps Platform Engineer
6 7 (8.14%) Software Engineer
6 7 (8.14%) VMware Engineer
6 7 (8.14%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
7 6 (6.98%) Architect
7 6 (6.98%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (18.60%) LDAP
2 13 (15.12%) Middleware
3 9 (10.47%) YAML
4 6 (6.98%) JSON
5 5 (5.81%) XML
6 4 (4.65%) REST
6 4 (4.65%) Web Services
7 1 (1.16%) AWS CDK
7 1 (1.16%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (1.16%) Jinja
7 1 (1.16%) Kafka
7 1 (1.16%) LAPP Stack
7 1 (1.16%) Node.js
7 1 (1.16%) OpenMP
7 1 (1.16%) RabbitMQ
7 1 (1.16%) React
7 1 (1.16%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 13 (15.12%) Replication
2 5 (5.81%) Data Centre
3 4 (4.65%) PKI
3 4 (4.65%) Smartcard
4 3 (3.49%) Acoustics
4 3 (3.49%) Client/Server
4 3 (3.49%) Derivative
4 3 (3.49%) SCADA
5 2 (2.33%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.33%) CUDA
5 2 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.33%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.16%) Fat Client
6 1 (1.16%) FPGA
6 1 (1.16%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.16%) Product Ownership
6 1 (1.16%) Public Cloud
6 1 (1.16%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 86 (100.00%) Linux
2 34 (39.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 21 (24.42%) CentOS
4 19 (22.09%) Windows
5 12 (13.95%) VMS
6 10 (11.63%) Debian
7 9 (10.47%) Amazon Linux
8 6 (6.98%) Windows Server
9 4 (4.65%) Unix
9 4 (4.65%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (2.33%) Rocky
11 1 (1.16%) Alpine Linux
11 1 (1.16%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (36.05%) CI/CD
2 30 (34.88%) DevOps
3 20 (23.26%) Containerisation
4 19 (22.09%) Software Engineering
5 16 (18.60%) Configuration Management
5 16 (18.60%) Patch Management
6 15 (17.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 13 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
8 12 (13.95%) Change Management
8 12 (13.95%) Continuous Improvement
9 11 (12.79%) Performance Tuning
10 10 (11.63%) Cloud Security
10 10 (11.63%) RBAC
11 9 (10.47%) DevSecOps
11 9 (10.47%) High Availability
11 9 (10.47%) Machine Learning
11 9 (10.47%) Platform Engineering
12 8 (9.30%) Agile
12 8 (9.30%) ITSM
12 8 (9.30%) Problem Management
Programming Languages
1 38 (44.19%) Python
2 18 (20.93%) JavaScript
3 17 (19.77%) C++
4 16 (18.60%) Shell Script
5 15 (17.44%) PowerShell
6 13 (15.12%) C
7 12 (13.95%) Ada
7 12 (13.95%) SQL
8 11 (12.79%) Bash
9 10 (11.63%) Perl
10 9 (10.47%) Groovy
11 8 (9.30%) Ruby
12 5 (5.81%) C#
13 4 (4.65%) Java
14 2 (2.33%) Go
15 1 (1.16%) Embedded C
15 1 (1.16%) Embedded C++
15 1 (1.16%) PHP
15 1 (1.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 43 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 39 (45.35%) SC Cleared
3 18 (20.93%) Degree
4 13 (15.12%) RHCE
5 11 (12.79%) AWS Certification
5 11 (12.79%) DV Cleared
6 9 (10.47%) Azure Certification
7 3 (3.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (2.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (2.33%) CISSP
8 2 (2.33%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (2.33%) RHCSA
9 1 (1.16%) APMG
9 1 (1.16%) CCNP
9 1 (1.16%) CESG Certified Professional
9 1 (1.16%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (1.16%) CISM
9 1 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (1.16%) GIAC
9 1 (1.16%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.65%) NIST
2 3 (3.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (2.33%) NCSC
4 1 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (1.16%) NIST 800
4 1 (1.16%) QA
System Software
1 22 (25.58%) Docker
2 13 (15.12%) Postfix
3 11 (12.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (10.47%) DFS Replication
4 9 (10.47%) Dovecot
4 9 (10.47%) Squid
5 6 (6.98%) QEMU
6 5 (5.81%) Active Directory
7 3 (3.49%) KVM
7 3 (3.49%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (3.49%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (1.16%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (1.16%) Ceph
8 1 (1.16%) DRBD
8 1 (1.16%) GPFS
8 1 (1.16%) HDFS
8 1 (1.16%) Lustre
8 1 (1.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (1.16%) VMware NSX
8 1 (1.16%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 27 (31.40%) Ansible
2 23 (26.74%) Kubernetes
3 20 (23.26%) Terraform
4 15 (17.44%) Prometheus
5 14 (16.28%) Grafana
5 14 (16.28%) Nessus
6 10 (11.63%) Puppet
7 9 (10.47%) Proxmox
7 9 (10.47%) SCOM
8 7 (8.14%) Podman
9 4 (4.65%) Packer
9 4 (4.65%) vCenter Server
10 3 (3.49%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (3.49%) SCCM
11 2 (2.33%) Nagios
11 2 (2.33%) Progress Chef
12 1 (1.16%) FortiGate
12 1 (1.16%) Kibana
12 1 (1.16%) Rsyslog
12 1 (1.16%) SELinux
Vendors
1 37 (43.02%) Red Hat
2 18 (20.93%) VMware
3 14 (16.28%) NVIDIA
4 9 (10.47%) Jaspersoft
4 9 (10.47%) ServiceNow
5 7 (8.14%) Dell
6 6 (6.98%) Microsoft
7 4 (4.65%) Splunk
7 4 (4.65%) Veeam
8 3 (3.49%) Cisco
9 2 (2.33%) Oracle
10 1 (1.16%) Cloudera
10 1 (1.16%) Foundry
10 1 (1.16%) Palo Alto