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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 30 18
Rank change year-on-year -4 -12 +3
Contract jobs citing Linux 321 191 439
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.06% 5.88% 7.68%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.21% 32.65% 43.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 145 291
10th Percentile £311 £396 £350
25th Percentile £414 £450 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.50% +2.50%
75th Percentile £595 £600 £608
90th Percentile £643 £619 £638
England median daily rate £513 £538 £548
% change year-on-year -4.65% -1.83% -8.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 7 27
10th Percentile £27.66 £38.98 £26.25
25th Percentile £43.81 £51.78 £48.13
Median hourly rate £51.25 £57.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.87% -17.86% +7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £59.44 -
90th Percentile £67.15 £61.08 £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 779 585 1,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.29% 18.00% 17.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 516 407 641
10th Percentile £204 £198 £203
25th Percentile £323 £315 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £484
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +1.24% +7.56%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £595
90th Percentile £643 £650 £663
England median daily rate £459 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -0.81% -2.58% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 44 66
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.48 £15.94
25th Percentile £19.77 £15.50 £17.77
Median hourly rate £32.50 £18.82 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +72.69% -60.38% -13.64%
75th Percentile £53.75 £28.00 £69.92
90th Percentile £60.00 £58.33 £71.88
England median hourly rate £29.48 £20.00 £24.86
% change year-on-year +47.40% -19.53% -41.52%

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 4 July 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 4 July 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 4 July 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 +9 189 £500 - 52
Hampshire -10 97 £550 - 83
Berkshire -8 87 £414 -17.20% 23
Buckinghamshire +9 63 £536 +2.17% 6
Oxfordshire +3 39 £513 -6.82% 23
Surrey -19 24 £208 -56.32% 37
West Sussex -16 5 £425 -20.93% 11
East Sussex - 3 £459 - 1
Middlesex - 2 £198 - 2
Isle of Wight - 1 - -
Sussex - 1 - - 2
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 (4.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.87%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.87%) OpenStack
3 5 (1.56%) Apache
4 4 (1.25%) Confluence
4 4 (1.25%) nginx
4 4 (1.25%) WebSphere
4 4 (1.25%) WebSphere Application Server
5 3 (0.93%) IIS
5 3 (0.93%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.62%) Appian
6 2 (0.62%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.62%) JBoss
6 2 (0.62%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.62%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.62%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.31%) Oracle Service Bus
7 1 (0.31%) SAS
7 1 (0.31%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 1 (0.31%) Houdini
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.31%) NUKE
Cloud Services
1 69 (21.50%) Azure
2 65 (20.25%) AWS
3 25 (7.79%) Entra ID
4 19 (5.92%) Microsoft 365
5 14 (4.36%) OpenShift
6 12 (3.74%) SaaS
7 11 (3.43%) GCP
8 10 (3.12%) GitHub
9 9 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (2.18%) Azure Sentinel
10 7 (2.18%) IaaS
10 7 (2.18%) PaaS
11 6 (1.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.56%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.56%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.25%) Serverless
14 3 (0.93%) Cloudflare
14 3 (0.93%) Sauce Labs
15 2 (0.62%) Amazon EC2
15 2 (0.62%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (8.41%) DNS
2 22 (6.85%) Firewall
3 13 (4.05%) VSAN
3 13 (4.05%) WAN
4 11 (3.43%) LAN
4 11 (3.43%) Network Security
5 9 (2.80%) Cisco ASA
5 9 (2.80%) Cisco Firepower
5 9 (2.80%) DHCP
6 8 (2.49%) SAN
6 8 (2.49%) SSH
6 8 (2.49%) TCP/IP
6 8 (2.49%) VPN
6 8 (2.49%) Wireless
6 8 (2.49%) Wireshark
7 7 (2.18%) Software-Defined Radio
7 7 (2.18%) SSL
8 6 (1.87%) 5G
8 6 (1.87%) Diameter Protocol
8 6 (1.87%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (9.97%) SQL Server
2 19 (5.92%) MySQL
3 12 (3.74%) Oracle Database
3 12 (3.74%) Relational Database
4 7 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.87%) Oracle Database 12c
6 5 (1.56%) Oracle Database 11g
7 4 (1.25%) DataStage
7 4 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.93%) Redis
9 2 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.62%) Electronic Patient Records
9 2 (0.62%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.62%) Oracle Database 10g
9 2 (0.62%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.62%) Vitess
10 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.31%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.31%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.31%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 18 (5.61%) GitLab
2 16 (4.98%) JIRA
3 12 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 10 (3.12%) Git
5 7 (2.18%) Eclipse
6 6 (1.87%) MLflow
7 5 (1.56%) Maven
8 4 (1.25%) Jaeger
8 4 (1.25%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.25%) Subversion
9 3 (0.93%) Android Studio
9 3 (0.93%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.93%) Xcode
10 2 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.62%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.62%) Introscope
10 2 (0.62%) JUnit
10 2 (0.62%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.31%) MSI
General
1 51 (15.89%) Social Skills
2 38 (11.84%) Public Sector
3 24 (7.48%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (5.92%) Documentation Skills
5 14 (4.36%) Military
6 10 (3.12%) Finance
7 7 (2.18%) Retail
8 6 (1.87%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.56%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.25%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.93%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.93%) Law
12 2 (0.62%) Legal
13 1 (0.31%) Advertising
13 1 (0.31%) Automotive
13 1 (0.31%) Electronics
13 1 (0.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.31%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 45 (14.02%) Senior
2 44 (13.71%) Linux Engineer
3 35 (10.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (5.92%) Developer
5 18 (5.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 17 (5.30%) Analyst
6 17 (5.30%) Architect
7 14 (4.36%) Platform Engineer
7 14 (4.36%) Software Engineer
7 14 (4.36%) Technical Support
8 13 (4.05%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
8 13 (4.05%) Network Engineer
8 13 (4.05%) Support Engineer
9 12 (3.74%) DBA
9 12 (3.74%) Technical Architect
10 11 (3.43%) Citrix Engineer
10 11 (3.43%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
10 11 (3.43%) Technical Engineer
10 11 (3.43%) Technical Support Engineer
11 9 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (4.36%) Kafka
2 13 (4.05%) YAML
3 8 (2.49%) Middleware
4 7 (2.18%) .NET
4 7 (2.18%) Keycloak
4 7 (2.18%) LDAP
4 7 (2.18%) Yocto
5 6 (1.87%) Loki
6 5 (1.56%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (1.56%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.56%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (1.25%) 802.1X
7 4 (1.25%) CSS
7 4 (1.25%) gRPC
7 4 (1.25%) LAMP
7 4 (1.25%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (1.25%) React
7 4 (1.25%) RESTful
7 4 (1.25%) Web Services
7 4 (1.25%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (11.53%) Onboarding
2 21 (6.54%) PKI
3 16 (4.98%) Public Cloud
4 15 (4.67%) Data Centre
4 15 (4.67%) Management Information System
5 13 (4.05%) Product Ownership
6 12 (3.74%) Hybrid Cloud
7 10 (3.12%) Security Posture
8 9 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.49%) Embedded Systems
9 8 (2.49%) Operational Technology
10 7 (2.18%) Device Driver
10 7 (2.18%) SCADA
10 7 (2.18%) Security Operations Centre
11 6 (1.87%) Cloud Native
11 6 (1.87%) Cyber Defence
11 6 (1.87%) MicroBlaze
11 6 (1.87%) Replication
11 6 (1.87%) RISC-V
12 5 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 144 (44.86%) Windows
2 69 (21.50%) Unix
3 42 (13.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 37 (11.53%) Windows Server
5 14 (4.36%) Ubuntu
6 11 (3.43%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (2.49%) Debian
8 6 (1.87%) CentOS
9 5 (1.56%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (1.25%) Oracle Linux
10 4 (1.25%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.93%) Android
11 3 (0.93%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.62%) Kali Linux
12 2 (0.62%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.31%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.31%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.31%) Solaris
13 1 (0.31%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (19.31%) CI/CD
2 53 (16.51%) SIEM
3 42 (13.08%) ITIL
4 41 (12.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 41 (12.77%) Problem-Solving
5 40 (12.46%) DevOps
6 35 (10.90%) Runbook
7 34 (10.59%) Containerisation
7 34 (10.59%) Cybersecurity
8 33 (10.28%) Agile
9 31 (9.66%) Computer Science
10 30 (9.35%) DevSecOps
11 29 (9.03%) High Availability
11 29 (9.03%) ITSM
12 28 (8.72%) Migration
13 27 (8.41%) Change Control
13 27 (8.41%) Infrastructure as Code
14 25 (7.79%) Platform Engineering
14 25 (7.79%) Root Cause Analysis
14 25 (7.79%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 104 (32.40%) Python
2 67 (20.87%) PowerShell
3 48 (14.95%) Bash
4 25 (7.79%) SQL
5 22 (6.85%) C
6 19 (5.92%) Java
7 17 (5.30%) JavaScript
8 16 (4.98%) C++
9 15 (4.67%) Perl
10 12 (3.74%) Shell Script
11 7 (2.18%) Rust
12 5 (1.56%) Go
12 5 (1.56%) PL/SQL
13 4 (1.25%) Ada
13 4 (1.25%) Embedded C++
14 3 (0.93%) Embedded C
14 3 (0.93%) Korn
14 3 (0.93%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.62%) C#
15 2 (0.62%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 208 (64.80%) Security Cleared
2 154 (47.98%) SC Cleared
3 71 (22.12%) DV Cleared
4 51 (15.89%) Degree
5 15 (4.67%) Cisco Certification
5 15 (4.67%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (4.36%) RHCE
7 13 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.49%) CCNP
9 7 (2.18%) AWS Certification
9 7 (2.18%) CISSP
9 7 (2.18%) GIAC
9 7 (2.18%) RHCSA
10 6 (1.87%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.87%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.87%) CISM
10 6 (1.87%) CRISC
10 6 (1.87%) ISTQB
10 6 (1.87%) LFCS
10 6 (1.87%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (13.71%) NIST
2 33 (10.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.36%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.74%) SLA
5 9 (2.80%) NCSC
6 6 (1.87%) ISO 31000
7 5 (1.56%) GDPR
7 5 (1.56%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.25%) GRC
9 3 (0.93%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.93%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.62%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.31%) DICOM
11 1 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.31%) HL7
11 1 (0.31%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 73 (22.74%) Active Directory
2 46 (14.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (7.79%) Docker
3 25 (7.79%) VMware NSX
4 12 (3.74%) Hyper-V
5 11 (3.43%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (3.12%) Firmware
7 7 (2.18%) Oracle RAC
8 6 (1.87%) Embedded Firmware
9 5 (1.56%) vSphere
10 3 (0.93%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.93%) Postfix
10 3 (0.93%) UAG
10 3 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
11 2 (0.62%) KVM
12 1 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 43 (13.40%) Ansible
1 43 (13.40%) Kubernetes
2 35 (10.90%) Terraform
3 17 (5.30%) Grafana
3 17 (5.30%) Prometheus
4 12 (3.74%) Red Hat Satellite
5 11 (3.43%) Oracle RMAN
6 10 (3.12%) Puppet
7 7 (2.18%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.87%) Data Guard
8 6 (1.87%) Rancher
9 5 (1.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.25%) Istio
10 4 (1.25%) Podman
10 4 (1.25%) Progress Chef
10 4 (1.25%) WSUS
11 3 (0.93%) Argo
11 3 (0.93%) HAProxy
11 3 (0.93%) Nessus
11 3 (0.93%) Packer
Vendors
1 78 (24.30%) VMware
2 53 (16.51%) Microsoft
3 49 (15.26%) Red Hat
4 46 (14.33%) Oracle
5 26 (8.10%) BeyondTrust
6 24 (7.48%) Cisco
6 24 (7.48%) CyberArk
7 18 (5.61%) Citrix
8 17 (5.30%) Splunk
9 14 (4.36%) Palo Alto
9 14 (4.36%) ServiceNow
10 10 (3.12%) NVIDIA
11 9 (2.80%) IBM
12 8 (2.49%) SolarWinds
13 7 (2.18%) Google
13 7 (2.18%) Nokia
14 6 (1.87%) BT
14 6 (1.87%) CheckPoint
14 6 (1.87%) Ericsson
14 6 (1.87%) Huawei