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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 25 27 20
Rank change year-on-year +2 -7 +7
Contract jobs citing Linux 230 319 450
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 6.59% 6.90% 8.11%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.02% 39.53% 41.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 205 292
10th Percentile £214 £350 £305
25th Percentile £380 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £520 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.65% +4.00% -6.54%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £612
90th Percentile £600 £648 £675
England median daily rate £525 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -1.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 18 31
10th Percentile - £33.60 £51.25
25th Percentile £12.50 £61.76 £55.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £70.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% +12.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £58.75 - £71.90
90th Percentile - £71.13 £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.70% +8.00% -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 605 807 1,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 17.35% 17.45% 19.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 430 536 718
10th Percentile £188 £203 £173
25th Percentile £224 £326 £211
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £420
Median % change year-on-year - +7.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £573 £582 £559
90th Percentile £625 £638 £640
England median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 39 82
10th Percentile £14.20 £16.25 £17.33
25th Percentile £15.50 £26.25 £29.19
Median hourly rate £18.87 £56.75 £56.78
Median % change year-on-year -66.75% -0.06% +234.00%
75th Percentile £25.86 £70.00 £69.69
90th Percentile £66.03 £70.75 £75.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £57.25 £47.67
% change year-on-year -56.07% +20.11% +99.35%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing Linux as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for Linux 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 +10 91 £450 -16.67% 59
Berkshire +18 77 £450 -25.62% 26
Hampshire -9 73 £525 -4.55% 50
Surrey -1 44 £208 -53.89% 20
Oxfordshire -6 7 £381 -19.74% 21
Buckinghamshire -10 7 £529 +10.10% 13
Middlesex - 5 - - 4
West Sussex -14 3 £519 +12.83% 5
Sussex +4 1 - - 5
East Sussex 0 1 - - 5
Linux
England

Linux
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 13 (5.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (3.04%) Apache
2 7 (3.04%) Mattermost
2 7 (3.04%) Skype for Business
3 5 (2.17%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.87%) Confluence
5 1 (0.43%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.43%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.43%) Gunicorn
5 1 (0.43%) JBoss
5 1 (0.43%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.43%) nginx
Applications
1 11 (4.78%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 7 (3.04%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (1.30%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 46 (20.00%) AWS
2 37 (16.09%) Azure
3 19 (8.26%) GCP
4 15 (6.52%) OpenShift
5 12 (5.22%) SaaS
6 11 (4.78%) IaaS
6 11 (4.78%) Sauce Labs
7 10 (4.35%) PaaS
8 9 (3.91%) GitHub
9 8 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (3.48%) Entra ID
9 8 (3.48%) Serverless
10 5 (2.17%) Amazon S3
10 5 (2.17%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (2.17%) OCI
11 4 (1.74%) Azure Sentinel
11 4 (1.74%) Cloud Computing
11 4 (1.74%) Google Workspace
11 4 (1.74%) Microsoft 365
12 3 (1.30%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 26 (11.30%) DNS
1 26 (11.30%) SAN
2 24 (10.43%) DHCP
3 22 (9.57%) Firewall
3 22 (9.57%) VPN
3 22 (9.57%) WAN
4 19 (8.26%) LAN
4 19 (8.26%) TCP/IP
5 12 (5.22%) Wireless
6 11 (4.78%) MPLS
6 11 (4.78%) VLAN
7 10 (4.35%) ATM
7 10 (4.35%) Ethernet
7 10 (4.35%) Frame Relay
7 10 (4.35%) GPRS
7 10 (4.35%) GSM
7 10 (4.35%) LTE
7 10 (4.35%) SDH
7 10 (4.35%) UMTS
7 10 (4.35%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (8.26%) Relational Database
2 18 (7.83%) MySQL
3 14 (6.09%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (5.22%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (4.78%) NoSQL
6 10 (4.35%) Elasticsearch
7 9 (3.91%) Big Data
8 8 (3.48%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (3.48%) SQL Server
9 7 (3.04%) Oracle Database
10 6 (2.61%) Redis
11 5 (2.17%) Couchbase
12 3 (1.30%) Data Warehouse
12 3 (1.30%) Oracle Database 12c
12 3 (1.30%) Oracle Exadata
12 3 (1.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 2 (0.87%) GIS
13 2 (0.87%) MongoDB
13 2 (0.87%) RDBMS
14 1 (0.43%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 18 (7.83%) Eclipse
2 16 (6.96%) Jenkins
3 13 (5.65%) Git
4 12 (5.22%) Browser DevTools
5 11 (4.78%) Android Studio
5 11 (4.78%) Xcode
6 7 (3.04%) Robot Framework
6 7 (3.04%) Valgrind
7 6 (2.61%) JIRA
8 5 (2.17%) GitLab
8 5 (2.17%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (1.74%) MSI
10 3 (1.30%) GoogleTest
11 2 (0.87%) JUnit
11 2 (0.87%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.87%) Visual Studio
12 1 (0.43%) CMake
12 1 (0.43%) JMeter
12 1 (0.43%) Maven
12 1 (0.43%) Subversion
General
1 93 (40.43%) Social Skills
2 21 (9.13%) Finance
3 20 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (8.70%) Public Sector
4 15 (6.52%) Telecoms
5 10 (4.35%) Military
6 7 (3.04%) Legal
7 6 (2.61%) Banking
8 5 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.87%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.43%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.43%) Automotive
12 1 (0.43%) Back Office
12 1 (0.43%) Electronics
12 1 (0.43%) French Language
12 1 (0.43%) Front Office
12 1 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 44 (19.13%) Support Engineer
2 31 (13.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 23 (10.00%) Senior
4 21 (9.13%) Infrastructure Support
4 21 (9.13%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
4 21 (9.13%) Technical Support
5 19 (8.26%) Architect
6 17 (7.39%) Analyst
7 14 (6.09%) Developer
7 14 (6.09%) DevOps Engineer
7 14 (6.09%) Technical Engineer
7 14 (6.09%) Technical Support Engineer
8 12 (5.22%) 3rd Line Engineer
8 12 (5.22%) FPGA Engineer
8 12 (5.22%) UX Engineer
9 11 (4.78%) Consultant
9 11 (4.78%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
9 11 (4.78%) Test Engineer
10 10 (4.35%) Network Engineer
11 9 (3.91%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (7.39%) CSS
2 16 (6.96%) Kafka
3 14 (6.09%) React
4 13 (5.65%) AngularJS
4 13 (5.65%) Middleware
5 12 (5.22%) Ajax
5 12 (5.22%) GraphQL
6 10 (4.35%) JSON
6 10 (4.35%) REST
7 8 (3.48%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (3.48%) Web Services
7 8 (3.48%) XML
8 6 (2.61%) HTML
8 6 (2.61%) YAML
9 5 (2.17%) Keycloak
9 5 (2.17%) Node.js
9 5 (2.17%) Swagger
10 4 (1.74%) SOAP
11 3 (1.30%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 3 (1.30%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 20 (8.70%) PKI
2 17 (7.39%) Data Centre
3 12 (5.22%) FPGA
3 12 (5.22%) Mobile App
3 12 (5.22%) Verilog
4 11 (4.78%) Self-Motivation
5 10 (4.35%) Replication
6 9 (3.91%) Analytical Mindset
6 9 (3.91%) Clustering
7 8 (3.48%) Management Information System
8 7 (3.04%) Enterprise Storage
8 7 (3.04%) Smartcard
9 6 (2.61%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (2.17%) Public Cloud
10 5 (2.17%) Security Operations Centre
11 4 (1.74%) Cloud Native
11 4 (1.74%) Linux Command Line
11 4 (1.74%) Onboarding
11 4 (1.74%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 117 (50.87%) Windows
2 63 (27.39%) Unix
3 32 (13.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 30 (13.04%) Windows Server
5 20 (8.70%) Ubuntu
6 17 (7.39%) Windows Server 2016
7 15 (6.52%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (6.09%) CentOS
9 13 (5.65%) Android
10 6 (2.61%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (2.17%) Debian
12 4 (1.74%) Mac OS
13 3 (1.30%) VMS
13 3 (1.30%) Windows Server 2003
14 2 (0.87%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.87%) Solaris
14 2 (0.87%) Windows 10
15 1 (0.43%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (24.35%) Problem-Solving
2 48 (20.87%) ITIL
3 47 (20.43%) DevOps
4 38 (16.52%) CI/CD
5 37 (16.09%) Agile
6 35 (15.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 27 (11.74%) Validation
8 22 (9.57%) Containerisation
8 22 (9.57%) Software Engineering
9 19 (8.26%) User Experience
10 18 (7.83%) Disaster Recovery
10 18 (7.83%) Infrastructure as Code
10 18 (7.83%) Performance Tuning
11 17 (7.39%) OO
12 16 (6.96%) Mentoring
13 15 (6.52%) SIEM
14 14 (6.09%) Computer Science
14 14 (6.09%) Cybersecurity
14 14 (6.09%) High Availability
14 14 (6.09%) Preventative Maintenance
Programming Languages
1 88 (38.26%) Python
2 49 (21.30%) Java
3 47 (20.43%) PowerShell
4 42 (18.26%) SQL
5 32 (13.91%) JavaScript
6 28 (12.17%) Shell Script
7 24 (10.43%) Bash
7 24 (10.43%) Perl
8 12 (5.22%) SystemVerilog
8 12 (5.22%) Tcl
9 11 (4.78%) C++
10 10 (4.35%) C#
11 6 (2.61%) PHP
11 6 (2.61%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.74%) C
12 4 (1.74%) Go
12 4 (1.74%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (1.74%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (1.30%) Scala
13 3 (1.30%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 82 (35.65%) Security Cleared
2 46 (20.00%) DV Cleared
3 37 (16.09%) SC Cleared
4 25 (10.87%) Degree
5 15 (6.52%) Cisco Certification
6 13 (5.65%) CCNP
7 10 (4.35%) CISSP
7 10 (4.35%) GCIH
7 10 (4.35%) ISEB
7 10 (4.35%) ISTQB
7 10 (4.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 10 (4.35%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (3.91%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.91%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (3.91%) Network+ Certification
8 9 (3.91%) Server+ Certification
9 7 (3.04%) GCFA
9 7 (3.04%) ITIL Certification
10 6 (2.61%) CFCE
10 6 (2.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.35%) NIST
2 9 (3.91%) HIPAA
3 6 (2.61%) GDPR
4 5 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (1.74%) QA
5 4 (1.74%) SOC 2
6 3 (1.30%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.43%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.43%) AUTOSAR
7 1 (0.43%) Def Stans
7 1 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 1 (0.43%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 38 (16.52%) VMware Infrastructure
2 35 (15.22%) Active Directory
3 24 (10.43%) Docker
4 20 (8.70%) Hyper-V
5 11 (4.78%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (4.78%) vSphere
6 8 (3.48%) BitLocker
6 8 (3.48%) Microsoft App-V
6 8 (3.48%) Terminal Services
7 6 (2.61%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (2.17%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (1.30%) Firmware
10 2 (0.87%) KVM
10 2 (0.87%) NFS
10 2 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.87%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.43%) GPFS
11 1 (0.43%) NDS
11 1 (0.43%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 1 (0.43%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 54 (23.48%) Ansible
2 38 (16.52%) Kubernetes
3 31 (13.48%) Terraform
4 10 (4.35%) Puppet
5 9 (3.91%) SCOM
5 9 (3.91%) vCenter Server
6 8 (3.48%) Nagios
6 8 (3.48%) vMotion
7 7 (3.04%) HP SiteScope
8 6 (2.61%) Grafana
8 6 (2.61%) NetBackup
8 6 (2.61%) Oracle RMAN
8 6 (2.61%) Prometheus
9 5 (2.17%) Data Guard
9 5 (2.17%) Packer
9 5 (2.17%) Red Hat Satellite
9 5 (2.17%) SCCM
10 4 (1.74%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 4 (1.74%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 4 (1.74%) WMI
Vendors
1 80 (34.78%) Microsoft
2 60 (26.09%) VMware
3 40 (17.39%) Red Hat
4 34 (14.78%) Splunk
5 29 (12.61%) Oracle
6 25 (10.87%) Cisco
7 16 (6.96%) HP
8 14 (6.09%) ServiceNow
9 13 (5.65%) Google
10 12 (5.22%) Xilinx
11 10 (4.35%) Citrix
11 10 (4.35%) Juniper
11 10 (4.35%) MuleSoft
12 9 (3.91%) ArcSight
12 9 (3.91%) NetApp
13 8 (3.48%) Remedy
13 8 (3.48%) Symantec
14 7 (3.04%) 3PAR
14 7 (3.04%) IBM
14 7 (3.04%) Veritas