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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 30 21
Rank change year-on-year -1 -9 0
Contract jobs citing Linux 319 199 399
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.81% 6.74% 7.08%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.54% 38.72% 39.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 140 267
10th Percentile £327 £400 £340
25th Percentile £401 £464 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £544 £530
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +2.55% -3.64%
75th Percentile £575 £603 £595
90th Percentile £642 £675 £643
England median daily rate £525 £550 £540
% change year-on-year -4.55% +1.85% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 14 28
10th Percentile £12.50 £46.82 £28.03
25th Percentile £15.00 £56.41 £49.06
Median hourly rate £47.50 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.00% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.44 £68.66
90th Percentile £80.63 £69.38 £75.46
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 768 514 999
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 13.99% 17.40% 17.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 521 361 653
10th Percentile £204 £200 £195
25th Percentile £356 £325 £225
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -7.69%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £648
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 35 66
10th Percentile £12.50 £16.95 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.44 £17.58 £18.24
Median hourly rate £22.00 £28.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% -34.88% -10.42%
75th Percentile £48.75 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £69.38
England median hourly rate £23.58 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year -15.80% +27.27% -24.14%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 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
Thames Valley +6 171 £456 -7.60% 82
Berkshire -2 116 £414 -17.20% 37
Hampshire -9 104 £525 -8.70% 49
Buckinghamshire +13 44 £555 +31.28% 21
Surrey -2 28 £213 -57.50% 17
Oxfordshire -12 11 £450 -16.28% 24
Sussex - 7 - - 1
West Sussex -17 4 £513 -6.82% 4
East Sussex - 4 - - 4
Isle of Wight - 1 - -
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 15 (4.70%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.94%) Apache
2 3 (0.94%) Confluence
3 2 (0.63%) Appian
3 2 (0.63%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.63%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.63%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.63%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.63%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.31%) JBoss
4 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 76 (23.82%) AWS
2 63 (19.75%) Azure
3 37 (11.60%) OpenShift
4 28 (8.78%) GitHub
5 16 (5.02%) GitHub Actions
6 14 (4.39%) SaaS
7 13 (4.08%) Cloud Computing
7 13 (4.08%) Microsoft 365
8 11 (3.45%) GCP
8 11 (3.45%) IaaS
9 9 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
10 8 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
10 8 (2.51%) Google Workspace
10 8 (2.51%) Sauce Labs
11 7 (2.19%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (2.19%) Amazon ECR
11 7 (2.19%) Entra ID
12 6 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (1.88%) Amazon S3
13 5 (1.57%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 36 (11.29%) DNS
2 27 (8.46%) Firewall
3 21 (6.58%) TCP/IP
4 15 (4.70%) WAN
5 13 (4.08%) LAN
6 12 (3.76%) SAN
7 11 (3.45%) Wireless
8 9 (2.82%) VSAN
9 7 (2.19%) Network Security
10 6 (1.88%) DHCP
10 6 (1.88%) NAS
10 6 (1.88%) SSH
11 5 (1.57%) BGP
11 5 (1.57%) Ethernet VPN
11 5 (1.57%) OSPF
11 5 (1.57%) VPN
11 5 (1.57%) Wireshark
12 4 (1.25%) Software-Defined Radio
13 3 (0.94%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (0.94%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (7.21%) MySQL
2 22 (6.90%) Relational Database
3 19 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
4 18 (5.64%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.13%) Oracle Database
6 9 (2.82%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.25%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (1.25%) Redis
8 3 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
8 3 (0.94%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.63%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.63%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 1 (0.31%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.31%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.31%) GIS
10 1 (0.31%) Oracle Database 11g
10 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 34 (10.66%) Jenkins
2 16 (5.02%) Git
2 16 (5.02%) JIRA
3 14 (4.39%) GitLab
4 13 (4.08%) Eclipse
5 10 (3.13%) JUnit
6 9 (2.82%) JMeter
6 9 (2.82%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (2.51%) Android Studio
7 8 (2.51%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (2.51%) Cucumber
7 8 (2.51%) Xcode
8 7 (2.19%) Artifactory
8 7 (2.19%) Burp Suite
9 5 (1.57%) Maven
9 5 (1.57%) Subversion
10 4 (1.25%) Metasploit
11 3 (0.94%) Jaeger
12 2 (0.63%) Introscope
12 2 (0.63%) Robot Framework
General
1 76 (23.82%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.09%) Public Sector
3 21 (6.58%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (5.96%) Military
5 15 (4.70%) Finance
6 12 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.25%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.25%) Law
9 3 (0.94%) Legal
9 3 (0.94%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.94%) Retail
10 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.63%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.31%) Advertising
11 1 (0.31%) Back Office
11 1 (0.31%) Banking
11 1 (0.31%) Electronics
11 1 (0.31%) Front Office
11 1 (0.31%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 39 (12.23%) Architect
2 37 (11.60%) Senior
3 29 (9.09%) Linux Engineer
4 25 (7.84%) Analyst
5 22 (6.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 20 (6.27%) Software Engineer
7 19 (5.96%) Developer
8 17 (5.33%) Technical Support
9 16 (5.02%) DevOps Engineer
9 16 (5.02%) Technical Architect
10 15 (4.70%) Tester
11 13 (4.08%) SOC Analyst
11 13 (4.08%) Support Engineer
12 12 (3.76%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 11 (3.45%) Administrator
13 11 (3.45%) Infrastructure Architect
14 10 (3.13%) AWS DevOps
14 10 (3.13%) Lead
14 10 (3.13%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 9 (2.82%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (5.02%) Kafka
2 15 (4.70%) Elastic Stack
3 13 (4.08%) Loki
4 12 (3.76%) XML
5 11 (3.45%) Middleware
5 11 (3.45%) YAML
6 10 (3.13%) Spring
7 9 (2.82%) CSS
7 9 (2.82%) JSON
7 9 (2.82%) React
8 8 (2.51%) Ajax
8 8 (2.51%) AngularJS
8 8 (2.51%) GraphQL
8 8 (2.51%) Hibernate
9 7 (2.19%) .NET
10 5 (1.57%) REST
11 4 (1.25%) Keycloak
11 4 (1.25%) OpenTelemetry
11 4 (1.25%) Yocto
12 3 (0.94%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.64%) PKI
3 14 (4.39%) Onboarding
3 14 (4.39%) Public Cloud
4 13 (4.08%) Data Centre
4 13 (4.08%) Security Operations Centre
5 11 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (3.45%) Replication
6 10 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (3.13%) Management Information System
6 10 (3.13%) Security Posture
7 9 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.51%) Cyberattack
8 8 (2.51%) Mobile App
8 8 (2.51%) Virtual Team
9 7 (2.19%) Product Ownership
10 5 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (1.57%) Clustering
11 4 (1.25%) Device Driver
11 4 (1.25%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 152 (47.65%) Windows
2 51 (15.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 33 (10.34%) Unix
4 32 (10.03%) Windows Server
5 16 (5.02%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.51%) Android
6 8 (2.51%) Embedded Linux
6 8 (2.51%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (2.19%) Kali Linux
8 5 (1.57%) CentOS
9 4 (1.25%) Debian
9 4 (1.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 4 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.63%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.63%) SUSE
10 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.31%) Solaris
11 1 (0.31%) VMS
11 1 (0.31%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 91 (28.53%) CI/CD
2 66 (20.69%) DevOps
3 54 (16.93%) Agile
4 42 (13.17%) Containerisation
5 39 (12.23%) Problem-Solving
6 37 (11.60%) Infrastructure as Code
7 35 (10.97%) SIEM
8 31 (9.72%) Cybersecurity
8 31 (9.72%) Incident Response
9 28 (8.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 27 (8.46%) ITIL
11 26 (8.15%) Observability
12 25 (7.84%) Computer Science
13 24 (7.52%) DevSecOps
13 24 (7.52%) High Availability
13 24 (7.52%) Migration
13 24 (7.52%) Platform Engineering
13 24 (7.52%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 24 (7.52%) Software Engineering
14 23 (7.21%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 100 (31.35%) Python
2 50 (15.67%) Bash
2 50 (15.67%) PowerShell
3 35 (10.97%) Java
4 25 (7.84%) Perl
5 24 (7.52%) SQL
6 21 (6.58%) JavaScript
7 15 (4.70%) C++
8 11 (3.45%) C
9 9 (2.82%) Shell Script
10 8 (2.51%) C#
11 6 (1.88%) Embedded C++
12 4 (1.25%) Go
12 4 (1.25%) Rust
13 3 (0.94%) Ada
13 3 (0.94%) Embedded C
13 3 (0.94%) Korn
14 2 (0.63%) Jython
14 2 (0.63%) PHP
14 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 202 (63.32%) Security Cleared
2 130 (40.75%) SC Cleared
3 72 (22.57%) DV Cleared
4 33 (10.34%) Degree
5 21 (6.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.45%) RHCE
7 8 (2.51%) AWS Certification
7 8 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (2.51%) CISSP
8 7 (2.19%) CCNP
9 6 (1.88%) CEH
9 6 (1.88%) CompTIA CySA+
9 6 (1.88%) CompTIA Security+
9 6 (1.88%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (1.57%) GCFA
10 5 (1.57%) GCIA
10 5 (1.57%) GCIH
10 5 (1.57%) OSCP
11 4 (1.25%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.33%) NIST
2 12 (3.76%) GDPR
3 11 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.19%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (1.88%) QA
6 5 (1.57%) NCSC
7 4 (1.25%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.94%) GRC
8 3 (0.94%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.94%) SLA
9 2 (0.63%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.63%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.31%) DICOM
10 1 (0.31%) HL7
System Software
1 63 (19.75%) VMware Infrastructure
2 39 (12.23%) Active Directory
3 28 (8.78%) Docker
4 23 (7.21%) vSphere
5 16 (5.02%) VMware NSX
6 14 (4.39%) Hyper-V
7 7 (2.19%) Firmware
7 7 (2.19%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (1.57%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.94%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.94%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 1 (0.31%) GPFS
10 1 (0.31%) UAG
Systems Management
1 65 (20.38%) Ansible
2 57 (17.87%) Kubernetes
3 48 (15.05%) Terraform
4 33 (10.34%) Grafana
5 31 (9.72%) Prometheus
6 18 (5.64%) Argo
7 12 (3.76%) Red Hat Satellite
7 12 (3.76%) vCenter Server
8 10 (3.13%) Progress Chef
9 8 (2.51%) Kustomize
9 8 (2.51%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (2.19%) Nmap
10 7 (2.19%) Puppet
10 7 (2.19%) Sysdig
11 6 (1.88%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 5 (1.57%) Data Guard
12 5 (1.57%) Nessus
12 5 (1.57%) Podman
12 5 (1.57%) Rancher
12 5 (1.57%) WSUS
Vendors
1 94 (29.47%) VMware
2 72 (22.57%) Red Hat
3 65 (20.38%) Microsoft
4 38 (11.91%) Oracle
5 35 (10.97%) Splunk
6 11 (3.45%) Cisco
7 10 (3.13%) ServiceNow
8 8 (2.51%) MuleSoft
8 8 (2.51%) Palo Alto
9 7 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
9 7 (2.19%) NVIDIA
10 6 (1.88%) CyberArk
10 6 (1.88%) HP
10 6 (1.88%) Pure Storage
10 6 (1.88%) SAP
11 5 (1.57%) Atlassian
11 5 (1.57%) Dell
11 5 (1.57%) Mellanox
11 5 (1.57%) NetApp
11 5 (1.57%) Zscaler