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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 28 25
Rank change year-on-year -9 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 330 212 325
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.05% 6.14% 7.00%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.97% 35.57% 40.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 155 210
10th Percentile £285 £219 £355
25th Percentile £437 £393 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £516
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -3.15% +3.25%
75th Percentile £599 £588 £608
90th Percentile £644 £600 £646
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 5 19
10th Percentile £44.13 £32.94 £34.65
25th Percentile £51.25 £51.06 £60.63
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -21.43% +14.29%
75th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £71.15 - £70.75
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 768 596 801
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.74% 17.26% 17.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 506 421 528
10th Percentile £204 £190 £203
25th Percentile £363 £250 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.79% +5.56% +5.88%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £586
90th Percentile £640 £638 £638
England median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 52 39
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £16.25
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.95 £24.25
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 £70.75
England median hourly rate £33.32 £24.66 £49.00
% change year-on-year +35.10% -49.67% +11.43%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +3 170 £518 +15.00% 117
Hampshire -15 104 £550 +4.76% 88
Berkshire -14 73 £450 - 58
Buckinghamshire +9 57 £563 +6.43% 16
Oxfordshire +5 40 £525 +44.83% 43
Surrey -16 38 £455 +111.63% 47
West Sussex -18 9 £425 -18.11% 16
Middlesex -21 5 £198 -
Sussex - 2 - - 2
Isle of Wight - 1 - - 2
East Sussex - 1 £459 - 7
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 (2.73%) Apache
2 8 (2.42%) Confluence
2 8 (2.42%) nginx
3 6 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.82%) OpenStack
4 5 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (1.21%) IIS
5 4 (1.21%) WebSphere
5 4 (1.21%) WebSphere Application Server
6 3 (0.91%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.61%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.61%) JBoss
7 2 (0.61%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.61%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.61%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle Service Bus
8 1 (0.30%) SAS
8 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.91%) Houdini
2 3 (0.91%) NUKE
3 2 (0.61%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.30%) CINEMA 4D
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.30%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 98 (29.70%) Azure
2 71 (21.52%) AWS
3 36 (10.91%) Entra ID
4 23 (6.97%) Microsoft 365
5 18 (5.45%) OpenShift
6 15 (4.55%) Azure Monitor
7 14 (4.24%) Azure Sentinel
8 12 (3.64%) GCP
9 9 (2.73%) IaaS
9 9 (2.73%) SaaS
10 7 (2.12%) PaaS
11 5 (1.52%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (1.52%) GitHub
12 4 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (1.21%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 4 (1.21%) Cloudflare
12 4 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (1.21%) Serverless
13 3 (0.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 3 (0.91%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 45 (13.64%) DNS
2 40 (12.12%) Firewall
3 32 (9.70%) DHCP
4 25 (7.58%) VPN
5 23 (6.97%) TCP/IP
6 15 (4.55%) Network Security
7 14 (4.24%) LAN
7 14 (4.24%) WAN
8 11 (3.33%) Software-Defined Radio
8 11 (3.33%) Wireless
9 10 (3.03%) Cisco ASA
9 10 (3.03%) Cisco Firepower
9 10 (3.03%) VSAN
10 9 (2.73%) SSH
10 9 (2.73%) SSL
11 8 (2.42%) SAN
12 7 (2.12%) LTE
13 6 (1.82%) Radio Access Network
13 6 (1.82%) VoLTE
13 6 (1.82%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.27%) SQL Server
2 18 (5.45%) Oracle Database
3 10 (3.03%) MySQL
4 7 (2.12%) DataStage
5 5 (1.52%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (1.21%) Oracle Database 11g
7 3 (0.91%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.61%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.30%) Electronic Patient Records
9 1 (0.30%) Metadata
9 1 (0.30%) Oracle ODI
9 1 (0.30%) Pentaho
9 1 (0.30%) Redis
9 1 (0.30%) SQLite
9 1 (0.30%) Vitess
Development Applications
1 26 (7.88%) JIRA
2 21 (6.36%) GitLab
3 14 (4.24%) Git
4 13 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.82%) MLflow
6 5 (1.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (1.52%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.21%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.91%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.91%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.91%) Eclipse
8 3 (0.91%) Xcode
9 2 (0.61%) Introscope
10 1 (0.30%) Jaeger
10 1 (0.30%) MSI
10 1 (0.30%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
10 1 (0.30%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 54 (16.36%) Social Skills
2 31 (9.39%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (7.88%) Public Sector
4 19 (5.76%) Documentation Skills
5 11 (3.33%) Aerospace
6 9 (2.73%) Finance
7 7 (2.12%) Military
7 7 (2.12%) Retail
8 5 (1.52%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.61%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.30%) Automotive
11 1 (0.30%) Banking
11 1 (0.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.30%) Legal
Job Titles
1 48 (14.55%) Linux Engineer
2 45 (13.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 45 (13.64%) Senior
3 25 (7.58%) Architect
4 24 (7.27%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 21 (6.36%) Platform Engineer
6 17 (5.15%) Embedded Engineer
6 17 (5.15%) Software Engineer
6 17 (5.15%) Support Engineer
7 15 (4.55%) Cloud Engineer
7 15 (4.55%) Developer
8 14 (4.24%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
9 12 (3.64%) Analyst
9 12 (3.64%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 12 (3.64%) Systems Engineer
10 11 (3.33%) Citrix Engineer
10 11 (3.33%) Network Engineer
10 11 (3.33%) Technical Engineer
10 11 (3.33%) Technical Support
10 11 (3.33%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (16.36%) Terraform
2 13 (3.94%) ARM Templates
2 13 (3.94%) Kafka
3 11 (3.33%) Yocto
4 10 (3.03%) YAML
5 8 (2.42%) LDAP
5 8 (2.42%) Middleware
6 5 (1.52%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.52%) Keycloak
7 4 (1.21%) gRPC
7 4 (1.21%) OpenTofu
7 4 (1.21%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (1.21%) RESTful
8 3 (0.91%) Ajax
8 3 (0.91%) AngularJS
8 3 (0.91%) CSS
8 3 (0.91%) LAMP
8 3 (0.91%) LEMP Stack
8 3 (0.91%) Loki
8 3 (0.91%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 45 (13.64%) Onboarding
2 24 (7.27%) Hybrid Cloud
3 21 (6.36%) PKI
4 18 (5.45%) Management Information System
5 16 (4.85%) Embedded Systems
6 14 (4.24%) Device Driver
6 14 (4.24%) Public Cloud
7 13 (3.94%) Cloud Native
7 13 (3.94%) Product Ownership
8 11 (3.33%) Operational Technology
9 10 (3.03%) Enterprise Cloud
9 10 (3.03%) MicroBlaze
9 10 (3.03%) RISC-V
9 10 (3.03%) SCADA
10 9 (2.73%) Data Centre
11 7 (2.12%) ARM Cortex
12 6 (1.82%) Cyber Defence
12 6 (1.82%) Replication
13 5 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
14 4 (1.21%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 160 (48.48%) Windows
2 65 (19.70%) Unix
3 54 (16.36%) Windows Server
4 50 (15.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (6.06%) Embedded Linux
6 17 (5.15%) Ubuntu
7 15 (4.55%) Windows 10
8 12 (3.64%) CentOS
9 10 (3.03%) Debian
10 7 (2.12%) Oracle Linux
11 6 (1.82%) Mac OS
12 4 (1.21%) Rocky
12 4 (1.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.91%) Android
13 3 (0.91%) Solaris
14 2 (0.61%) AIX
14 2 (0.61%) HPUX
14 2 (0.61%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (19.09%) CI/CD
2 54 (16.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 52 (15.76%) ITIL
4 46 (13.94%) Agile
5 44 (13.33%) DevOps
6 43 (13.03%) SIEM
7 41 (12.42%) Cybersecurity
7 41 (12.42%) Infrastructure as Code
7 41 (12.42%) Problem-Solving
8 36 (10.91%) Containerisation
9 35 (10.61%) Platform Engineering
10 34 (10.30%) ITSM
11 33 (10.00%) Runbook
12 32 (9.70%) Continuous Improvement
12 32 (9.70%) Software Engineering
13 31 (9.39%) Migration
14 29 (8.79%) Computer Science
15 27 (8.18%) DevSecOps
16 25 (7.58%) Change Control
17 24 (7.27%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 100 (30.30%) Python
2 85 (25.76%) PowerShell
3 64 (19.39%) Bash
4 26 (7.88%) C
5 20 (6.06%) C++
6 19 (5.76%) SQL
7 16 (4.85%) Shell Script
8 13 (3.94%) Bicep
9 11 (3.33%) JavaScript
10 10 (3.03%) Java
10 10 (3.03%) Perl
11 7 (2.12%) PL/SQL
12 6 (1.82%) Embedded C++
13 5 (1.52%) Embedded C
14 4 (1.21%) Rust
15 2 (0.61%) C#
15 2 (0.61%) Jython
15 2 (0.61%) Scala
15 2 (0.61%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.61%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 198 (60.00%) Security Cleared
2 139 (42.12%) SC Cleared
3 80 (24.24%) DV Cleared
4 46 (13.94%) Degree
5 14 (4.24%) Cisco Certification
6 12 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.03%) RHCE
8 8 (2.42%) CISM
8 8 (2.42%) CISSP
9 7 (2.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 7 (2.12%) ISTQB
9 7 (2.12%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 6 (1.82%) AWS Certification
10 6 (1.82%) CCNP
10 6 (1.82%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.82%) CRISC
10 6 (1.82%) GIAC
11 5 (1.52%) CCSE
11 5 (1.52%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (12.42%) NIST
2 32 (9.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 12 (3.64%) SLA
4 11 (3.33%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (2.42%) NCSC
6 7 (2.12%) ISO 31000
7 4 (1.21%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.91%) GDPR
8 3 (0.91%) GRC
9 2 (0.61%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.61%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.61%) QA
10 1 (0.30%) DICOM
10 1 (0.30%) HL7
10 1 (0.30%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 1 (0.30%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.30%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 83 (25.15%) Active Directory
2 45 (13.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 33 (10.00%) Docker
4 23 (6.97%) VMware NSX
5 20 (6.06%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (4.85%) Hyper-V
7 15 (4.55%) Firmware
8 11 (3.33%) Embedded Firmware
9 7 (2.12%) vSphere
10 5 (1.52%) Oracle RAC
10 5 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (1.21%) KVM
12 3 (0.91%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.91%) Postfix
12 3 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.61%) UAG
13 2 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.30%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 59 (17.88%) Kubernetes
2 53 (16.06%) Ansible
3 16 (4.85%) Grafana
3 16 (4.85%) Prometheus
4 14 (4.24%) Puppet
5 11 (3.33%) SCCM
5 11 (3.33%) vCenter Server
6 9 (2.73%) Red Hat Satellite
7 8 (2.42%) Progress Chef
8 7 (2.12%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (2.12%) Oracle RMAN
8 7 (2.12%) Podman
9 6 (1.82%) Packer
10 5 (1.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (1.52%) Data Guard
10 5 (1.52%) SCOM
10 5 (1.52%) WSUS
11 4 (1.21%) Istio
11 4 (1.21%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.91%) Argo
Vendors
1 78 (23.64%) Microsoft
1 78 (23.64%) VMware
2 49 (14.85%) Oracle
3 42 (12.73%) Red Hat
4 24 (7.27%) CyberArk
5 22 (6.67%) BeyondTrust
6 21 (6.36%) Cisco
6 21 (6.36%) ServiceNow
7 19 (5.76%) Citrix
8 15 (4.55%) Splunk
9 14 (4.24%) Palo Alto
10 12 (3.64%) IBM
11 11 (3.33%) SolarWinds
12 9 (2.73%) CrowdStrike
12 9 (2.73%) Google
13 7 (2.12%) Nokia
13 7 (2.12%) NVIDIA
14 6 (1.82%) BT
14 6 (1.82%) Ericsson
14 6 (1.82%) Huawei