Linux Contract Job Trends in the South East

Linux
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Linux skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 27 27
Rank change year-on-year -17 0 -10
Contract jobs citing Linux 326 241 297
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.95% 6.66% 6.93%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.89% 37.36% 38.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 174 183
10th Percentile £275 £204 £350
25th Percentile £450 £364 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +13.05% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £550 £608
90th Percentile £642 £600 £650
England median daily rate £525 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +1.01% -5.50% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 8 18
10th Percentile £44.55 - £46.11
25th Percentile £59.94 £12.50 £63.63
Median hourly rate £60.00 £13.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +361.54% -81.43% +4.07%
75th Percentile £67.47 £25.19 -
90th Percentile £70.78 £76.23 £71.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

All Operating Systems
South East

Linux 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 in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 760 645 769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.54% 17.81% 17.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 496 453 507
10th Percentile £204 £190 £200
25th Percentile £305 £219 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £438 £450
Median % change year-on-year +9.71% -2.78% +5.88%
75th Percentile £578 £538 £584
90th Percentile £638 £600 £650
England median daily rate £465 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 59 33
10th Percentile £16.00 £12.50 £23.05
25th Percentile £21.00 £15.50 £35.58
Median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £58.49
Median % change year-on-year +72.23% -67.74% +1.72%
75th Percentile £60.00 £25.15 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.47 £64.80 -
England median hourly rate £32.29 £24.00 £60.72
% change year-on-year +34.54% -60.47% +25.44%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Linux relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Linux job vacancy trend in the South East

Linux
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Linux.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Linux

Linux
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux in the South East over the 6 months to 16 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Linux in the South East

Linux
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Linux.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Linux

Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Linux in the South East over the 6 months to 16 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Linux in the South East

Linux
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux within the South East region over the 6 months to 16 October 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
Thames Valley -6 154 £545 +13.84% 44
Hampshire -3 115 £550 +8.64% 31
Berkshire -29 67 £500 +11.11% 24
Buckinghamshire +14 55 £575 +4.55% 13
Surrey -22 37 £455 +119.28% 19
Oxfordshire -3 32 £525 +37.70% 11
West Sussex -13 12 £425 -15.00% 11
Middlesex -18 6 £198 -
Sussex -3 2 - - 3
Home Counties - 1 £600 -
Linux
England

Linux
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 (2.76%) Apache
2 8 (2.45%) nginx
3 7 (2.15%) Confluence
3 7 (2.15%) IIS
4 6 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.23%) OpenStack
5 4 (1.23%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.61%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.31%) Oracle Service Bus
7 1 (0.31%) SAS
7 1 (0.31%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (0.92%) Houdini
1 3 (0.92%) NUKE
2 2 (0.61%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 1 (0.31%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 110 (33.74%) Azure
2 70 (21.47%) AWS
3 43 (13.19%) Entra ID
4 24 (7.36%) OpenShift
5 21 (6.44%) Azure Monitor
6 20 (6.13%) Microsoft 365
7 18 (5.52%) Azure Sentinel
7 18 (5.52%) GCP
8 9 (2.76%) IaaS
9 8 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (2.45%) SaaS
10 7 (2.15%) GitHub
10 7 (2.15%) PaaS
11 6 (1.84%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 6 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (1.23%) Cloudflare
12 4 (1.23%) Serverless
13 3 (0.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 3 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.92%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 48 (14.72%) DNS
2 44 (13.50%) Firewall
3 39 (11.96%) DHCP
4 33 (10.12%) VPN
5 24 (7.36%) TCP/IP
6 21 (6.44%) Network Security
7 12 (3.68%) LAN
7 12 (3.68%) SSH
8 10 (3.07%) Software-Defined Radio
8 10 (3.07%) WAN
8 10 (3.07%) Wireless
9 8 (2.45%) Cisco ASA
9 8 (2.45%) Cisco Firepower
9 8 (2.45%) SSL
10 5 (1.53%) Broadband
10 5 (1.53%) IPsec
10 5 (1.53%) LTE
10 5 (1.53%) SAN
10 5 (1.53%) VLAN
11 4 (1.23%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (5.52%) Oracle Database
2 15 (4.60%) SQL Server
3 10 (3.07%) MySQL
4 8 (2.45%) DataStage
5 5 (1.53%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (1.23%) Oracle Database 11g
7 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.61%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.61%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.31%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.31%) IBM InfoSphere
9 1 (0.31%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.31%) Oracle ODI
9 1 (0.31%) Pentaho
9 1 (0.31%) SQLite
9 1 (0.31%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 24 (7.36%) JIRA
2 23 (7.06%) GitLab
3 21 (6.44%) Git
4 17 (5.21%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.84%) MLflow
6 5 (1.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (1.53%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.23%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.92%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.92%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.92%) Eclipse
8 3 (0.92%) Xcode
9 1 (0.31%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.31%) MSI
9 1 (0.31%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.31%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 62 (19.02%) Social Skills
2 32 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (6.13%) Public Sector
4 13 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
5 11 (3.37%) Aerospace
6 6 (1.84%) Finance
6 6 (1.84%) Military
7 5 (1.53%) Retail
8 4 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (0.92%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.92%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.61%) Electronics
11 1 (0.31%) Automotive
11 1 (0.31%) Banking
11 1 (0.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.31%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.31%) Legal
11 1 (0.31%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 48 (14.72%) Senior
2 43 (13.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 40 (12.27%) Linux Engineer
4 23 (7.06%) Architect
4 23 (7.06%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 22 (6.75%) Platform Engineer
6 19 (5.83%) Support Engineer
7 18 (5.52%) Developer
8 17 (5.21%) Embedded Engineer
8 17 (5.21%) Software Engineer
9 15 (4.60%) Analyst
9 15 (4.60%) Cloud Engineer
10 12 (3.68%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 12 (3.68%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.68%) Systems Engineer
11 11 (3.37%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 11 (3.37%) Technical Engineer
11 11 (3.37%) Technical Support
11 11 (3.37%) Technical Support Engineer
12 10 (3.07%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (23.31%) Terraform
2 18 (5.52%) ARM Templates
3 15 (4.60%) LDAP
4 10 (3.07%) Kafka
4 10 (3.07%) YAML
4 10 (3.07%) Yocto
5 9 (2.76%) OpenTofu
6 5 (1.53%) 802.1X
6 5 (1.53%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.53%) REST
7 4 (1.23%) gRPC
7 4 (1.23%) Keycloak
7 4 (1.23%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (1.23%) RESTful
8 3 (0.92%) AngularJS
8 3 (0.92%) CSS
8 3 (0.92%) LEMP Stack
8 3 (0.92%) Loki
8 3 (0.92%) React
8 3 (0.92%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 45 (13.80%) Onboarding
2 26 (7.98%) Hybrid Cloud
3 20 (6.13%) Management Information System
4 18 (5.52%) Embedded Systems
4 18 (5.52%) PKI
4 18 (5.52%) Product Ownership
5 14 (4.29%) Cloud Native
6 13 (3.99%) Device Driver
6 13 (3.99%) Operational Technology
6 13 (3.99%) Public Cloud
7 12 (3.68%) Data Centre
7 12 (3.68%) SCADA
8 11 (3.37%) ARM Cortex
9 10 (3.07%) Enterprise Cloud
10 9 (2.76%) MicroBlaze
10 9 (2.76%) RISC-V
11 6 (1.84%) Cyber Defence
12 5 (1.53%) Social Media
13 4 (1.23%) Mobile Payment
13 4 (1.23%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 165 (50.61%) Windows
2 55 (16.87%) Windows Server
3 53 (16.26%) Unix
4 50 (15.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (7.06%) Ubuntu
6 18 (5.52%) CentOS
7 17 (5.21%) Embedded Linux
7 17 (5.21%) Windows 10
8 8 (2.45%) Debian
9 7 (2.15%) Oracle Linux
10 6 (1.84%) macOS
10 6 (1.84%) Rocky
11 3 (0.92%) Android
11 3 (0.92%) Solaris
12 2 (0.61%) AIX
12 2 (0.61%) HPUX
12 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.31%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (22.39%) CI/CD
2 60 (18.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 56 (17.18%) DevOps
4 55 (16.87%) Infrastructure as Code
5 51 (15.64%) Cybersecurity
6 50 (15.34%) Agile
6 50 (15.34%) ITIL
7 43 (13.19%) Problem-Solving
8 42 (12.88%) Platform Engineering
9 41 (12.58%) Containerisation
10 39 (11.96%) Continuous Improvement
11 38 (11.66%) Software Engineering
12 35 (10.74%) SIEM
13 32 (9.82%) DevSecOps
14 31 (9.51%) ITSM
15 28 (8.59%) Computer Science
16 26 (7.98%) Disaster Recovery
16 26 (7.98%) Security Hardening
17 25 (7.67%) High Availability
18 24 (7.36%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 94 (28.83%) Python
2 84 (25.77%) PowerShell
3 72 (22.09%) Bash
4 30 (9.20%) C
5 21 (6.44%) SQL
6 18 (5.52%) Bicep
6 18 (5.52%) C++
7 15 (4.60%) Shell Script
8 11 (3.37%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.07%) Java
10 7 (2.15%) PL/SQL
11 6 (1.84%) Perl
12 4 (1.23%) Embedded C++
12 4 (1.23%) Rust
13 3 (0.92%) Embedded C
14 2 (0.61%) Scala
14 2 (0.61%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.61%) VBScript
15 1 (0.31%) Go
15 1 (0.31%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 193 (59.20%) Security Cleared
2 112 (34.36%) SC Cleared
3 92 (28.22%) DV Cleared
4 44 (13.50%) Degree
5 15 (4.60%) Cisco Certification
6 13 (3.99%) CISM
6 13 (3.99%) CISSP
7 11 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 10 (3.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 8 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (2.45%) GIAC
9 8 (2.45%) ISTQB
9 8 (2.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.45%) RHCE
10 6 (1.84%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.84%) CRISC
11 5 (1.53%) AWS Certification
11 5 (1.53%) Azure Certification
11 5 (1.53%) CISA
11 5 (1.53%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (10.43%) NIST
2 29 (8.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (3.37%) Cyber Essentials
4 10 (3.07%) ISO 31000
5 9 (2.76%) SLA
6 6 (1.84%) GDPR
6 6 (1.84%) GRC
7 5 (1.53%) NCSC
7 5 (1.53%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.23%) ISO 9001
8 4 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27005
9 3 (0.92%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.92%) QA
10 2 (0.61%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 85 (26.07%) Active Directory
2 40 (12.27%) Docker
3 37 (11.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (5.21%) Hyper-V
5 16 (4.91%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (4.60%) VMware NSX
7 14 (4.29%) Firmware
8 10 (3.07%) Embedded Firmware
9 6 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.53%) Oracle RAC
10 5 (1.53%) vSphere
11 4 (1.23%) ISA Server
11 4 (1.23%) KVM
11 4 (1.23%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 4 (1.23%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.92%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.92%) Postfix
13 2 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
14 1 (0.31%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 67 (20.55%) Ansible
2 66 (20.25%) Kubernetes
3 16 (4.91%) Grafana
3 16 (4.91%) Prometheus
3 16 (4.91%) SCCM
4 14 (4.29%) Puppet
5 12 (3.68%) Microsoft Intune
6 9 (2.76%) vCenter Server
7 8 (2.45%) Progress Chef
7 8 (2.45%) Red Hat Satellite
8 7 (2.15%) Oracle RMAN
8 7 (2.15%) Podman
9 5 (1.53%) Data Guard
9 5 (1.53%) Packer
9 5 (1.53%) SCOM
10 4 (1.23%) CASB
10 4 (1.23%) Istio
10 4 (1.23%) NetBackup
10 4 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 85 (26.07%) Microsoft
2 65 (19.94%) VMware
3 41 (12.58%) Oracle
4 37 (11.35%) Red Hat
5 21 (6.44%) ServiceNow
6 19 (5.83%) Cisco
7 18 (5.52%) CyberArk
8 17 (5.21%) CrowdStrike
9 16 (4.91%) Citrix
10 15 (4.60%) Splunk
11 14 (4.29%) BeyondTrust
12 13 (3.99%) Google
12 13 (3.99%) Palo Alto
13 10 (3.07%) SolarWinds
14 9 (2.76%) IBM
15 8 (2.45%) F5
16 7 (2.15%) Tenable
17 6 (1.84%) Qualys
17 6 (1.84%) Tanium
18 5 (1.53%) Atlassian