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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 26 29
Rank change year-on-year -15 +3 -11
Contract jobs citing Linux 328 225 302
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.00% 6.43% 6.81%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.82% 36.89% 38.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 162 191
10th Percentile £275 £204 £350
25th Percentile £440 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -5.00% -0.20%
75th Percentile £600 £558 £608
90th Percentile £650 £600 £638
England median daily rate £525 £525 £543
% change year-on-year - -3.27% -5.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 8 16
10th Percentile £43.81 - £40.44
25th Percentile £52.81 £12.50 £69.26
Median hourly rate £60.00 £34.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.47% -51.43% +8.37%
75th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £70.50 £59.20 £71.88
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 766 610 793
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.67% 17.43% 17.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 499 440 526
10th Percentile £204 £190 £203
25th Percentile £313 £219 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £436 £450
Median % change year-on-year +10.83% -3.06% +5.88%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £585
90th Percentile £640 £609 £638
England median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 47 35
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £16.13
25th Percentile £20.50 £15.50 £28.13
Median hourly rate £33.86 £18.87 £57.25
Median % change year-on-year +79.44% -67.04% +2.18%
75th Percentile £60.00 £26.58 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.47 £69.35 £72.25
England median hourly rate £35.79 £25.15 £58.49
% change year-on-year +42.30% -57.00% +22.71%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -6 162 £525 +16.67% 142
Hampshire -4 110 £550 +7.32% 102
Berkshire -25 69 £465 +9.41% 57
Buckinghamshire +10 53 £570 +7.85% 18
Oxfordshire 0 40 £525 +37.70% 67
Surrey -21 37 £455 +119.28% 39
West Sussex -18 9 £425 +1.49% 21
Middlesex -18 6 £198 -
Sussex -3 2 - - 1
East Sussex 0 1 £459 - 12
Home Counties - 1 £600 -
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 (2.74%) Apache
2 8 (2.44%) nginx
3 7 (2.13%) Confluence
3 7 (2.13%) IIS
4 6 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.83%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.91%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.61%) JBoss
6 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.61%) SAS
6 2 (0.61%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.61%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.61%) WebSphere Application Server
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Service Bus
7 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Houdini
1 3 (0.91%) NUKE
2 2 (0.61%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 1 (0.30%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.30%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 103 (31.40%) Azure
2 73 (22.26%) AWS
3 38 (11.59%) Entra ID
4 24 (7.32%) OpenShift
5 21 (6.40%) Microsoft 365
6 17 (5.18%) GCP
7 15 (4.57%) Azure Monitor
8 12 (3.66%) Azure Sentinel
9 9 (2.74%) IaaS
9 9 (2.74%) SaaS
10 8 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (2.13%) PaaS
12 6 (1.83%) GitHub
13 5 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
14 4 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
14 4 (1.22%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 4 (1.22%) Cloudflare
14 4 (1.22%) Serverless
15 3 (0.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 3 (0.91%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 45 (13.72%) DNS
2 39 (11.89%) Firewall
3 36 (10.98%) DHCP
4 28 (8.54%) VPN
5 20 (6.10%) TCP/IP
6 17 (5.18%) Network Security
7 12 (3.66%) LAN
8 10 (3.05%) WAN
9 9 (2.74%) Software-Defined Radio
9 9 (2.74%) SSH
9 9 (2.74%) Wireless
10 8 (2.44%) Cisco ASA
10 8 (2.44%) Cisco Firepower
10 8 (2.44%) SSL
11 7 (2.13%) LTE
12 6 (1.83%) Diameter Protocol
12 6 (1.83%) Radio Access Network
12 6 (1.83%) VoLTE
12 6 (1.83%) VoWiFi
12 6 (1.83%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (6.71%) SQL Server
2 18 (5.49%) Oracle Database
3 10 (3.05%) MySQL
4 8 (2.44%) DataStage
5 5 (1.52%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (1.22%) Oracle Database 11g
7 3 (0.91%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.61%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.61%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.30%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.30%) IBM InfoSphere
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%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (7.01%) GitLab
2 22 (6.71%) JIRA
3 18 (5.49%) Git
4 15 (4.57%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.83%) MLflow
6 5 (1.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (1.52%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.22%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.91%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.91%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.91%) Eclipse
8 3 (0.91%) Xcode
9 1 (0.30%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.30%) MSI
9 1 (0.30%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.30%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 56 (17.07%) Social Skills
2 33 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (7.93%) Public Sector
4 20 (6.10%) Documentation Skills
5 10 (3.05%) Aerospace
6 6 (1.83%) Finance
6 6 (1.83%) Military
7 5 (1.52%) Retail
8 4 (1.22%) Telecoms
9 3 (0.91%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
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 45 (13.72%) Linux Engineer
2 44 (13.41%) Senior
3 41 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (7.32%) Architect
5 21 (6.40%) Platform Engineer
6 20 (6.10%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 19 (5.79%) Support Engineer
8 17 (5.18%) Developer
9 16 (4.88%) Analyst
9 16 (4.88%) Embedded Engineer
9 16 (4.88%) Software Engineer
10 15 (4.57%) Cloud Engineer
11 13 (3.96%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
11 13 (3.96%) Systems Engineer
12 11 (3.35%) DevSecOps Engineer
12 11 (3.35%) Embedded Software Engineer
12 11 (3.35%) Technical Engineer
12 11 (3.35%) Technical Support
12 11 (3.35%) Technical Support Engineer
13 10 (3.05%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (20.12%) Terraform
2 13 (3.96%) ARM Templates
3 11 (3.35%) Kafka
3 11 (3.35%) LDAP
4 10 (3.05%) YAML
5 9 (2.74%) Yocto
6 7 (2.13%) OpenTofu
7 5 (1.52%) 802.1X
7 5 (1.52%) GraphQL
7 5 (1.52%) Keycloak
8 4 (1.22%) gRPC
8 4 (1.22%) Middleware
8 4 (1.22%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (1.22%) RESTful
9 3 (0.91%) Ajax
9 3 (0.91%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.91%) CSS
9 3 (0.91%) LAMP
9 3 (0.91%) React
9 3 (0.91%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 45 (13.72%) Onboarding
2 23 (7.01%) Management Information System
3 22 (6.71%) Hybrid Cloud
4 19 (5.79%) PKI
5 17 (5.18%) Embedded Systems
6 15 (4.57%) Product Ownership
7 14 (4.27%) Data Centre
8 13 (3.96%) Cloud Native
8 13 (3.96%) Public Cloud
9 12 (3.66%) Device Driver
10 11 (3.35%) Operational Technology
11 10 (3.05%) Enterprise Cloud
11 10 (3.05%) SCADA
12 8 (2.44%) MicroBlaze
12 8 (2.44%) RISC-V
13 7 (2.13%) ARM Cortex
14 6 (1.83%) Cyber Defence
15 5 (1.52%) Social Media
16 4 (1.22%) Mobile Payment
16 4 (1.22%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 163 (49.70%) Windows
2 62 (18.90%) Unix
3 55 (16.77%) Windows Server
4 49 (14.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (6.10%) Ubuntu
6 17 (5.18%) CentOS
6 17 (5.18%) Windows 10
7 16 (4.88%) Embedded Linux
8 9 (2.74%) Debian
9 6 (1.83%) Mac OS
10 5 (1.52%) Oracle Linux
11 4 (1.22%) Rocky
12 3 (0.91%) Android
12 3 (0.91%) Solaris
13 2 (0.61%) AIX
13 2 (0.61%) HPUX
13 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (20.43%) CI/CD
2 56 (17.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 52 (15.85%) DevOps
4 50 (15.24%) Infrastructure as Code
5 47 (14.33%) Agile
5 47 (14.33%) Cybersecurity
6 46 (14.02%) ITIL
7 42 (12.80%) Problem-Solving
7 42 (12.80%) SIEM
8 39 (11.89%) Containerisation
9 37 (11.28%) Continuous Improvement
10 36 (10.98%) Platform Engineering
11 35 (10.67%) ITSM
11 35 (10.67%) Runbook
12 34 (10.37%) Software Engineering
13 33 (10.06%) Computer Science
14 30 (9.15%) DevSecOps
15 28 (8.54%) Change Control
16 27 (8.23%) Migration
17 25 (7.62%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 103 (31.40%) Python
2 86 (26.22%) PowerShell
3 67 (20.43%) Bash
4 26 (7.93%) C
5 20 (6.10%) SQL
6 17 (5.18%) Shell Script
7 16 (4.88%) C++
8 13 (3.96%) Bicep
9 11 (3.35%) JavaScript
10 10 (3.05%) Java
11 8 (2.44%) Perl
12 7 (2.13%) PL/SQL
13 4 (1.22%) Embedded C++
13 4 (1.22%) Rust
14 3 (0.91%) Embedded C
15 2 (0.61%) Scala
15 2 (0.61%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.61%) VBScript
16 1 (0.30%) Go
16 1 (0.30%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 194 (59.15%) Security Cleared
2 125 (38.11%) SC Cleared
3 83 (25.30%) DV Cleared
4 48 (14.63%) Degree
5 15 (4.57%) Cisco Certification
6 13 (3.96%) CISM
6 13 (3.96%) CISSP
7 12 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 10 (3.05%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 10 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 10 (3.05%) RHCE
9 8 (2.44%) GIAC
9 8 (2.44%) ISTQB
9 8 (2.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 6 (1.83%) AWS Certification
10 6 (1.83%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.83%) CRISC
11 5 (1.52%) Azure Certification
11 5 (1.52%) RHCSA
11 5 (1.52%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (13.41%) NIST
2 37 (11.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (3.35%) Cyber Essentials
4 10 (3.05%) ISO 31000
4 10 (3.05%) SLA
5 6 (1.83%) GDPR
5 6 (1.83%) GRC
5 6 (1.83%) NCSC
6 5 (1.52%) PCI DSS
7 4 (1.22%) ISO 9001
7 4 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 3 (0.91%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.91%) QA
9 2 (0.61%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.30%) DICOM
10 1 (0.30%) HL7
10 1 (0.30%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.30%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 84 (25.61%) Active Directory
2 40 (12.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (11.28%) Docker
4 18 (5.49%) VMware ESXi
5 17 (5.18%) Hyper-V
5 17 (5.18%) VMware NSX
6 13 (3.96%) Firmware
7 9 (2.74%) Embedded Firmware
8 5 (1.52%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (1.52%) vSphere
9 4 (1.22%) ISA Server
9 4 (1.22%) KVM
9 4 (1.22%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (1.22%) Virtual Servers
10 3 (0.91%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.91%) Postfix
10 3 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.61%) UAG
Systems Management
1 67 (20.43%) Kubernetes
2 60 (18.29%) Ansible
3 18 (5.49%) Grafana
3 18 (5.49%) Prometheus
4 14 (4.27%) Puppet
5 11 (3.35%) SCCM
5 11 (3.35%) vCenter Server
6 9 (2.74%) Red Hat Satellite
7 8 (2.44%) Progress Chef
8 7 (2.13%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (2.13%) Oracle RMAN
8 7 (2.13%) Podman
9 6 (1.83%) Packer
10 5 (1.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (1.52%) Data Guard
10 5 (1.52%) SCOM
11 4 (1.22%) CASB
11 4 (1.22%) Istio
11 4 (1.22%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 80 (24.39%) Microsoft
2 69 (21.04%) VMware
3 45 (13.72%) Oracle
4 40 (12.20%) Red Hat
5 24 (7.32%) CyberArk
6 22 (6.71%) BeyondTrust
7 19 (5.79%) Cisco
8 18 (5.49%) ServiceNow
9 17 (5.18%) Citrix
9 17 (5.18%) Splunk
10 13 (3.96%) Palo Alto
11 12 (3.66%) CrowdStrike
11 12 (3.66%) Google
12 11 (3.35%) IBM
13 10 (3.05%) SolarWinds
14 8 (2.44%) F5
15 7 (2.13%) Nokia
15 7 (2.13%) Tenable
16 6 (1.83%) Ericsson
16 6 (1.83%) Tanium