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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 29 22
Rank change year-on-year -5 -7 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 350 194 361
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.23% 5.50% 7.49%
As % of the Operating Systems category 43.21% 32.61% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 255 147 244
10th Percentile £315 £269 £350
25th Percentile £425 £418 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £608
90th Percentile £638 £600 £643
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 5 21
10th Percentile £43.81 £32.94 £35.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £51.06 £60.00
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -21.43% +12.00%
75th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £72.64 - £73.75
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 810 595 846
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.10% 16.87% 17.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 543 421 559
10th Percentile £204 £190 £203
25th Percentile £363 £260 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.84% +3.16% +11.76%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £589
90th Percentile £638 £650 £639
England median daily rate £470 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +4.44% -7.83% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 53 43
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £16.32
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.95 £24.42
Median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £57.25
Median % change year-on-year +105.19% -67.04% +4.09%
75th Percentile £60.00 £28.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 £73.00
England median hourly rate £34.68 £24.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +44.48% -26.15% -12.96%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 August 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 +16 189 £518 +8.95% 67
Hampshire -10 109 £550 +2.42% 54
Berkshire -7 80 £444 -1.44% 29
Buckinghamshire +12 67 £560 +5.96% 14
Oxfordshire +6 42 £525 +44.83% 24
Surrey -17 37 £428 +27.14% 25
West Sussex -14 8 £425 -22.73% 10
Middlesex -18 4 £198 - 1
East Sussex - 1 £459 - 8
Isle of Wight - 1 - - 2
Sussex - 1 - - 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 9 (2.57%) Apache
2 8 (2.29%) Confluence
2 8 (2.29%) nginx
3 7 (2.00%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.71%) OpenStack
5 4 (1.14%) WebSphere
5 4 (1.14%) WebSphere Application Server
6 3 (0.86%) IIS
6 3 (0.86%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.57%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.57%) JBoss
7 2 (0.57%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.57%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.57%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Service Bus
8 1 (0.29%) SAS
8 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.86%) Houdini
2 3 (0.86%) NUKE
3 2 (0.57%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.29%) CINEMA 4D
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 102 (29.14%) Azure
2 75 (21.43%) AWS
3 35 (10.00%) Entra ID
4 23 (6.57%) Microsoft 365
5 19 (5.43%) OpenShift
6 14 (4.00%) Azure Monitor
6 14 (4.00%) Azure Sentinel
7 11 (3.14%) GCP
7 11 (3.14%) SaaS
8 9 (2.57%) GitHub
8 9 (2.57%) IaaS
9 8 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (2.00%) PaaS
11 6 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.43%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (1.14%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 4 (1.14%) Cloudflare
13 4 (1.14%) Serverless
14 3 (0.86%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 44 (12.57%) DNS
2 42 (12.00%) Firewall
3 29 (8.29%) DHCP
4 23 (6.57%) VPN
5 22 (6.29%) TCP/IP
6 16 (4.57%) LAN
6 16 (4.57%) WAN
7 15 (4.29%) Network Security
8 12 (3.43%) VSAN
9 10 (2.86%) Cisco ASA
9 10 (2.86%) Cisco Firepower
9 10 (2.86%) SSH
10 9 (2.57%) SAN
10 9 (2.57%) Software-Defined Radio
10 9 (2.57%) SSL
10 9 (2.57%) Wireless
11 7 (2.00%) LTE
12 6 (1.71%) Diameter Protocol
12 6 (1.71%) VoLTE
12 6 (1.71%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (7.43%) SQL Server
2 17 (4.86%) Oracle Database
3 12 (3.43%) MySQL
4 7 (2.00%) DataStage
5 5 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.43%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (1.14%) Oracle Database 11g
6 4 (1.14%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (0.57%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.57%) Oracle Database 10g
7 2 (0.57%) Redis
7 2 (0.57%) Vitess
8 1 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.29%) Metadata
8 1 (0.29%) Pentaho
8 1 (0.29%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 25 (7.14%) JIRA
2 22 (6.29%) GitLab
3 15 (4.29%) Jenkins
4 14 (4.00%) Git
5 6 (1.71%) MLflow
6 5 (1.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (1.43%) Bitbucket
6 5 (1.43%) Eclipse
7 4 (1.14%) Jaeger
7 4 (1.14%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.86%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.86%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.86%) Xcode
9 2 (0.57%) Introscope
9 2 (0.57%) Maven
9 2 (0.57%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.57%) Subversion
10 1 (0.29%) MSI
10 1 (0.29%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
General
1 57 (16.29%) Social Skills
2 32 (9.14%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (8.57%) Public Sector
4 19 (5.43%) Documentation Skills
5 10 (2.86%) Finance
6 9 (2.57%) Aerospace
7 8 (2.29%) Military
8 7 (2.00%) Retail
9 5 (1.43%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.14%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.14%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.29%) Automotive
11 1 (0.29%) Electronics
11 1 (0.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.29%) Legal
Job Titles
1 53 (15.14%) Linux Engineer
2 48 (13.71%) Senior
3 47 (13.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 25 (7.14%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 24 (6.86%) Platform Engineer
6 23 (6.57%) Architect
7 18 (5.14%) Developer
8 16 (4.57%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (4.29%) Cloud Engineer
9 15 (4.29%) Support Engineer
10 14 (4.00%) Embedded Engineer
10 14 (4.00%) Software Engineer
11 12 (3.43%) Analyst
12 11 (3.14%) Azure Engineer
12 11 (3.14%) Citrix Engineer
12 11 (3.14%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (3.14%) Network Engineer
12 11 (3.14%) Technical Engineer
12 11 (3.14%) Technical Support
12 11 (3.14%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (17.14%) Terraform
2 14 (4.00%) Kafka
3 12 (3.43%) ARM Templates
3 12 (3.43%) YAML
4 10 (2.86%) Middleware
4 10 (2.86%) Yocto
5 8 (2.29%) LDAP
6 6 (1.71%) Keycloak
6 6 (1.71%) Loki
7 5 (1.43%) .NET
7 5 (1.43%) GraphQL
7 5 (1.43%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.14%) gRPC
8 4 (1.14%) OpenTofu
8 4 (1.14%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (1.14%) RESTful
9 3 (0.86%) 802.1X
9 3 (0.86%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.86%) LEMP Stack
9 3 (0.86%) React
Miscellaneous
1 47 (13.43%) Onboarding
2 27 (7.71%) Hybrid Cloud
3 24 (6.86%) PKI
4 17 (4.86%) Management Information System
5 16 (4.57%) Public Cloud
6 14 (4.00%) Cloud Native
7 13 (3.71%) Device Driver
7 13 (3.71%) Embedded Systems
7 13 (3.71%) Product Ownership
8 10 (2.86%) Operational Technology
9 9 (2.57%) Data Centre
9 9 (2.57%) SCADA
10 8 (2.29%) MicroBlaze
10 8 (2.29%) RISC-V
10 8 (2.29%) Security Posture
11 7 (2.00%) ARM Cortex
11 7 (2.00%) Enterprise Cloud
11 7 (2.00%) Replication
12 6 (1.71%) Cyber Defence
13 5 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 161 (46.00%) Windows
2 64 (18.29%) Unix
3 52 (14.86%) Windows Server
4 51 (14.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (5.71%) Embedded Linux
6 19 (5.43%) Ubuntu
7 13 (3.71%) Windows 10
8 12 (3.43%) CentOS
9 9 (2.57%) Debian
10 7 (2.00%) Mac OS
10 7 (2.00%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (1.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.86%) Android
12 3 (0.86%) Solaris
12 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.57%) AIX
13 2 (0.57%) HPUX
13 2 (0.57%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.29%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (19.71%) CI/CD
2 56 (16.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 53 (15.14%) ITIL
4 51 (14.57%) DevOps
5 46 (13.14%) SIEM
6 45 (12.86%) Infrastructure as Code
7 44 (12.57%) Agile
8 41 (11.71%) Cybersecurity
9 40 (11.43%) Containerisation
9 40 (11.43%) Problem-Solving
10 39 (11.14%) Platform Engineering
11 35 (10.00%) Runbook
12 34 (9.71%) ITSM
13 33 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
14 32 (9.14%) Migration
15 29 (8.29%) DevSecOps
15 29 (8.29%) Root Cause Analysis
15 29 (8.29%) Software Engineering
16 28 (8.00%) Computer Science
17 27 (7.71%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 111 (31.71%) Python
2 92 (26.29%) PowerShell
3 68 (19.43%) Bash
4 25 (7.14%) C
5 20 (5.71%) C++
5 20 (5.71%) SQL
6 14 (4.00%) Shell Script
7 12 (3.43%) Bicep
7 12 (3.43%) Java
8 11 (3.14%) JavaScript
9 10 (2.86%) Perl
10 7 (2.00%) Embedded C++
11 6 (1.71%) Embedded C
11 6 (1.71%) PL/SQL
12 5 (1.43%) Go
13 4 (1.14%) Rust
14 3 (0.86%) Korn
15 2 (0.57%) C#
15 2 (0.57%) Scala
15 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 211 (60.29%) Security Cleared
2 153 (43.71%) SC Cleared
3 80 (22.86%) DV Cleared
4 47 (13.43%) Degree
5 14 (4.00%) RHCE
6 13 (3.71%) Cisco Certification
7 12 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
9 7 (2.00%) AWS Certification
9 7 (2.00%) CISM
9 7 (2.00%) CISSP
9 7 (2.00%) RHCSA
10 6 (1.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.71%) CCNP
10 6 (1.71%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.71%) CRISC
10 6 (1.71%) GIAC
10 6 (1.71%) ISTQB
10 6 (1.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 6 (1.71%) LFCS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (11.71%) NIST
2 31 (8.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 12 (3.43%) Cyber Essentials
3 12 (3.43%) SLA
4 9 (2.57%) NCSC
5 6 (1.71%) GDPR
5 6 (1.71%) ISO 31000
6 5 (1.43%) GRC
6 5 (1.43%) JSP 440
6 5 (1.43%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.57%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.29%) DICOM
8 1 (0.29%) HL7
8 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.29%) OpenSCAP
8 1 (0.29%) QA
System Software
1 86 (24.57%) Active Directory
2 47 (13.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (8.86%) Docker
4 24 (6.86%) VMware NSX
5 16 (4.57%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (4.29%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.00%) Firmware
8 9 (2.57%) Embedded Firmware
9 7 (2.00%) Oracle RAC
10 5 (1.43%) vSphere
11 4 (1.14%) KVM
11 4 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.86%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.86%) Postfix
12 3 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.57%) UAG
13 2 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.29%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 62 (17.71%) Kubernetes
2 54 (15.43%) Ansible
3 19 (5.43%) Grafana
3 19 (5.43%) Prometheus
4 14 (4.00%) Puppet
5 10 (2.86%) SCCM
5 10 (2.86%) vCenter Server
6 9 (2.57%) Oracle RMAN
6 9 (2.57%) Red Hat Satellite
7 8 (2.29%) Progress Chef
8 7 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (2.00%) Rancher
9 6 (1.71%) Istio
9 6 (1.71%) Packer
9 6 (1.71%) WSUS
10 5 (1.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (1.43%) Data Guard
10 5 (1.43%) SCOM
11 4 (1.14%) Argo
11 4 (1.14%) Podman
Vendors
1 81 (23.14%) VMware
2 77 (22.00%) Microsoft
3 48 (13.71%) Red Hat
4 47 (13.43%) Oracle
5 24 (6.86%) CyberArk
6 22 (6.29%) BeyondTrust
7 21 (6.00%) Cisco
7 21 (6.00%) ServiceNow
8 19 (5.43%) Citrix
9 17 (4.86%) Splunk
10 15 (4.29%) Palo Alto
11 12 (3.43%) IBM
12 11 (3.14%) SolarWinds
13 8 (2.29%) CrowdStrike
13 8 (2.29%) Google
13 8 (2.29%) NVIDIA
14 7 (2.00%) Atlassian
14 7 (2.00%) Nokia
15 6 (1.71%) Ericsson
15 6 (1.71%) Huawei