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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 35 21
Rank change year-on-year +1 -14 0
Contract jobs citing Linux 352 185 372
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.27% 5.29% 7.49%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.95% 31.68% 42.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 254 143 254
10th Percentile £335 £325 £352
25th Percentile £418 £425 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% -2.38% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £646 - £643
England median daily rate £525 £525 £549
% change year-on-year - -4.33% -5.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 5 21
10th Percentile £39.03 £32.94 £35.00
25th Percentile £44.60 £51.06 £60.00
Median hourly rate £53.75 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -21.43% +17.89%
75th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £72.60 - £73.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +3.85%

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 839 584 882
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.56% 16.69% 17.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 551 410 579
10th Percentile £204 £190 £205
25th Percentile £358 £253 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £589
90th Percentile £644 £650 £639
England median daily rate £469 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +4.22% -7.69% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 51 48
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £16.32
25th Percentile £20.88 £16.95 £21.19
Median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £52.75
Median % change year-on-year +105.19% -64.23% -4.09%
75th Percentile £55.63 £28.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 £71.13
England median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £31.00
% change year-on-year +41.30% -25.81% -25.38%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +16 200 £518 +8.95% 90
Hampshire -14 106 £550 - 66
Berkshire -11 83 £437 -2.89% 31
Buckinghamshire +13 69 £548 +3.73% 17
Oxfordshire +14 48 £525 +44.83% 42
Surrey -16 33 £208 -56.32% 21
West Sussex -18 8 £425 -22.73% 14
Middlesex -14 4 £198 - 2
East Sussex - 1 £459 - 7
Isle of Wight - 1 - - 1
Sussex - 1 - - 3
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 12 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (2.56%) Apache
3 8 (2.27%) Confluence
3 8 (2.27%) nginx
4 6 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.70%) OpenStack
5 4 (1.14%) WebSphere
5 4 (1.14%) WebSphere Application Server
6 3 (0.85%) IIS
6 3 (0.85%) 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 (0.28%) Appian
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle Service Bus
8 1 (0.28%) SAS
8 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.85%) Houdini
2 3 (0.85%) NUKE
3 2 (0.57%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.28%) CINEMA 4D
4 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 95 (26.99%) Azure
2 76 (21.59%) AWS
3 37 (10.51%) Entra ID
4 21 (5.97%) Microsoft 365
5 14 (3.98%) Azure Sentinel
5 14 (3.98%) OpenShift
6 13 (3.69%) SaaS
7 11 (3.13%) GCP
8 10 (2.84%) Azure Monitor
9 9 (2.56%) GitHub
10 8 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (2.27%) IaaS
10 8 (2.27%) PaaS
11 6 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.42%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.14%) Cloudflare
13 4 (1.14%) Serverless
14 3 (0.85%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 3 (0.85%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 44 (12.50%) DNS
2 39 (11.08%) Firewall
3 25 (7.10%) DHCP
4 20 (5.68%) VPN
5 18 (5.11%) TCP/IP
6 14 (3.98%) Network Security
6 14 (3.98%) SSH
6 14 (3.98%) WAN
7 13 (3.69%) LAN
7 13 (3.69%) VSAN
8 10 (2.84%) Cisco ASA
8 10 (2.84%) Cisco Firepower
9 9 (2.56%) SAN
9 9 (2.56%) SSL
10 7 (1.99%) LTE
10 7 (1.99%) Wireless
10 7 (1.99%) Wireshark
11 6 (1.70%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (1.70%) Software-Defined Radio
11 6 (1.70%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (9.38%) SQL Server
2 17 (4.83%) Oracle Database
3 13 (3.69%) MySQL
4 7 (1.99%) DataStage
5 6 (1.70%) Oracle Database 12c
5 6 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.70%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.42%) Oracle Database 11g
7 4 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.57%) Electronic Patient Records
8 2 (0.57%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.57%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.57%) Redis
8 2 (0.57%) Vitess
9 1 (0.28%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.28%) Metadata
9 1 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.28%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 23 (6.53%) JIRA
2 19 (5.40%) GitLab
3 12 (3.41%) Git
3 12 (3.41%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.99%) Eclipse
5 6 (1.70%) MLflow
6 5 (1.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (1.42%) Bitbucket
6 5 (1.42%) Maven
7 4 (1.14%) Jaeger
7 4 (1.14%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.14%) Subversion
8 3 (0.85%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.85%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.85%) Xcode
9 2 (0.57%) Introscope
9 2 (0.57%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.28%) JUnit
10 1 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 58 (16.48%) Social Skills
2 38 (10.80%) Public Sector
3 28 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
4 22 (6.25%) Documentation Skills
5 14 (3.98%) Military
6 10 (2.84%) Finance
7 7 (1.99%) Aerospace
7 7 (1.99%) Retail
8 6 (1.70%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
9 5 (1.42%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.14%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.28%) Automotive
11 1 (0.28%) Electronics
11 1 (0.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.28%) Law
11 1 (0.28%) Legal
11 1 (0.28%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 52 (14.77%) Linux Engineer
2 48 (13.64%) Senior
3 45 (12.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (6.53%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 21 (5.97%) Architect
5 21 (5.97%) Developer
5 21 (5.97%) Platform Engineer
6 16 (4.55%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
7 15 (4.26%) Cloud Engineer
8 13 (3.69%) Support Engineer
9 12 (3.41%) DBA
9 12 (3.41%) Network Engineer
10 11 (3.13%) Analyst
10 11 (3.13%) Citrix Engineer
10 11 (3.13%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
10 11 (3.13%) Embedded Engineer
10 11 (3.13%) Software Engineer
10 11 (3.13%) Technical Engineer
10 11 (3.13%) Technical Support
10 11 (3.13%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (3.98%) Kafka
2 12 (3.41%) YAML
3 10 (2.84%) ARM Templates
4 8 (2.27%) LDAP
4 8 (2.27%) Middleware
5 7 (1.99%) Yocto
6 6 (1.70%) .NET
6 6 (1.70%) Keycloak
6 6 (1.70%) Loki
7 5 (1.42%) GraphQL
7 5 (1.42%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.14%) 802.1X
8 4 (1.14%) gRPC
8 4 (1.14%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (1.14%) RESTful
8 4 (1.14%) Web Services
8 4 (1.14%) XML
9 3 (0.85%) Ajax
9 3 (0.85%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.85%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 49 (13.92%) Onboarding
2 24 (6.82%) Hybrid Cloud
3 23 (6.53%) PKI
4 20 (5.68%) Management Information System
5 18 (5.11%) Public Cloud
6 16 (4.55%) Product Ownership
7 12 (3.41%) Cloud Native
7 12 (3.41%) Data Centre
8 10 (2.84%) Device Driver
8 10 (2.84%) Embedded Systems
8 10 (2.84%) Operational Technology
9 9 (2.56%) SCADA
10 8 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
10 8 (2.27%) Replication
10 8 (2.27%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.70%) ARM Cortex
11 6 (1.70%) Cyber Defence
11 6 (1.70%) MicroBlaze
11 6 (1.70%) RISC-V
12 5 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 161 (45.74%) Windows
2 72 (20.45%) Unix
3 54 (15.34%) Windows Server
4 51 (14.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (5.11%) Ubuntu
6 17 (4.83%) Embedded Linux
7 10 (2.84%) Windows 10
8 9 (2.56%) CentOS
9 8 (2.27%) Debian
10 7 (1.99%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (1.42%) Mac OS
11 5 (1.42%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (1.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.85%) Android
13 3 (0.85%) Solaris
13 3 (0.85%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.57%) AIX
14 2 (0.57%) HPUX
14 2 (0.57%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.28%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (18.75%) CI/CD
2 53 (15.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 52 (14.77%) ITIL
4 51 (14.49%) SIEM
5 44 (12.50%) DevOps
6 40 (11.36%) Cybersecurity
7 39 (11.08%) Infrastructure as Code
8 38 (10.80%) Agile
8 38 (10.80%) Containerisation
8 38 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
9 37 (10.51%) Runbook
10 36 (10.23%) Migration
11 35 (9.94%) Platform Engineering
12 33 (9.38%) ITSM
13 31 (8.81%) Computer Science
13 31 (8.81%) DevSecOps
14 30 (8.52%) High Availability
14 30 (8.52%) Root Cause Analysis
15 29 (8.24%) Continuous Improvement
16 28 (7.95%) Privileged Access Management
Programming Languages
1 112 (31.82%) Python
2 89 (25.28%) PowerShell
3 64 (18.18%) Bash
4 24 (6.82%) SQL
5 23 (6.53%) C
6 18 (5.11%) C++
7 15 (4.26%) Java
8 14 (3.98%) Shell Script
9 11 (3.13%) JavaScript
10 10 (2.84%) Bicep
10 10 (2.84%) Perl
11 7 (1.99%) Embedded C++
12 6 (1.70%) Embedded C
12 6 (1.70%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.42%) Go
13 5 (1.42%) Rust
14 3 (0.85%) Korn
15 2 (0.57%) C#
15 2 (0.57%) Scala
15 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 213 (60.51%) Security Cleared
2 155 (44.03%) SC Cleared
3 76 (21.59%) DV Cleared
4 51 (14.49%) Degree
5 14 (3.98%) Cisco Certification
5 14 (3.98%) RHCE
6 13 (3.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (2.27%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.99%) CCNP
9 7 (1.99%) CISM
9 7 (1.99%) CISSP
9 7 (1.99%) RHCSA
10 6 (1.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.70%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.70%) CRISC
10 6 (1.70%) GIAC
10 6 (1.70%) LFCS
11 5 (1.42%) CCSM
11 5 (1.42%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (13.64%) NIST
2 37 (10.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (4.26%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.41%) SLA
5 9 (2.56%) NCSC
6 6 (1.70%) GDPR
6 6 (1.70%) ISO 31000
7 5 (1.42%) GRC
7 5 (1.42%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.14%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.57%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.57%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.28%) DICOM
10 1 (0.28%) HL7
10 1 (0.28%) OpenSCAP
10 1 (0.28%) QA
System Software
1 92 (26.14%) Active Directory
2 50 (14.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (7.95%) Docker
4 25 (7.10%) VMware NSX
5 16 (4.55%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (4.26%) Hyper-V
7 12 (3.41%) Firmware
8 7 (1.99%) Oracle RAC
9 6 (1.70%) Embedded Firmware
10 5 (1.42%) vSphere
11 4 (1.14%) KVM
11 4 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.85%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.85%) Postfix
13 2 (0.57%) UAG
14 1 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 1 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 55 (15.63%) Ansible
2 54 (15.34%) Kubernetes
2 54 (15.34%) Terraform
3 19 (5.40%) Grafana
3 19 (5.40%) Prometheus
4 14 (3.98%) Puppet
5 12 (3.41%) Red Hat Satellite
6 11 (3.13%) Oracle RMAN
7 10 (2.84%) vCenter Server
8 9 (2.56%) SCCM
9 8 (2.27%) Microsoft Intune
9 8 (2.27%) Progress Chef
10 7 (1.99%) Rancher
11 6 (1.70%) Data Guard
11 6 (1.70%) Istio
11 6 (1.70%) Packer
12 5 (1.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (1.42%) WSUS
13 4 (1.14%) Argo
13 4 (1.14%) Podman
Vendors
1 87 (24.72%) VMware
2 71 (20.17%) Microsoft
3 51 (14.49%) Oracle
3 51 (14.49%) Red Hat
4 28 (7.95%) BeyondTrust
5 27 (7.67%) CyberArk
6 23 (6.53%) Cisco
7 20 (5.68%) ServiceNow
8 19 (5.40%) Citrix
9 17 (4.83%) Splunk
10 15 (4.26%) Palo Alto
11 12 (3.41%) IBM
11 12 (3.41%) SolarWinds
12 8 (2.27%) NVIDIA
13 7 (1.99%) Atlassian
13 7 (1.99%) CrowdStrike
13 7 (1.99%) Google
13 7 (1.99%) Nokia
13 7 (1.99%) Tenable
14 6 (1.70%) Huawei