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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 24 27
Rank change year-on-year -15 +3 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 343 228 318
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.18% 6.53% 6.90%
As % of the Operating Systems category 44.09% 37.81% 39.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 239 165 205
10th Percentile £275 £211 £350
25th Percentile £439 £380 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £520
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -8.65% +4.00%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £648 £600 £650
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 5 18
10th Percentile £44.13 - £33.60
25th Percentile £51.25 £12.50 £61.76
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -21.43% +12.00%
75th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £71.15 - £71.13
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 778 603 807
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.74% 17.28% 17.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 508 428 537
10th Percentile £204 £188 £203
25th Percentile £334 £221 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +9.94% - +9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £570 £585
90th Percentile £645 £623 £638
England median daily rate £465 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 48 39
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £16.25
25th Percentile £20.50 £15.50 £26.25
Median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £56.75
Median % change year-on-year +105.19% -66.75% +1.33%
75th Percentile £60.00 £25.86 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.47 £66.03 £70.75
England median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +53.08% -56.26% +20.22%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +2 173 £525 +16.67% 152
Hampshire -8 113 £550 +4.76% 101
Berkshire -19 72 £465 +3.33% 61
Buckinghamshire +12 60 £570 +7.85% 15
Oxfordshire 0 41 £525 +37.70% 76
Surrey -20 38 £455 +119.28% 43
West Sussex -19 9 £425 -18.11% 23
Middlesex -17 6 £198 -
Sussex -3 2 - - 1
East Sussex -2 1 £459 - 8
Isle of Wight - 1 - -
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 (2.62%) Apache
2 8 (2.33%) Confluence
2 8 (2.33%) nginx
3 6 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.75%) IIS
3 6 (1.75%) OpenStack
4 4 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.87%) Tomcat
5 3 (0.87%) WebSphere
5 3 (0.87%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.58%) JBoss
6 2 (0.58%) SAS
6 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.29%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle Service Bus
7 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.29%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (0.87%) Houdini
1 3 (0.87%) NUKE
2 2 (0.58%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.29%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 104 (30.32%) Azure
2 73 (21.28%) AWS
3 38 (11.08%) Entra ID
4 24 (7.00%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (6.71%) OpenShift
6 15 (4.37%) Azure Monitor
6 15 (4.37%) GCP
7 12 (3.50%) Azure Sentinel
8 9 (2.62%) IaaS
8 9 (2.62%) SaaS
9 8 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (2.04%) PaaS
11 6 (1.75%) GitHub
12 5 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (1.17%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (1.17%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 4 (1.17%) Cloudflare
13 4 (1.17%) Serverless
14 3 (0.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 3 (0.87%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 44 (12.83%) DNS
2 40 (11.66%) Firewall
3 33 (9.62%) DHCP
4 26 (7.58%) VPN
5 22 (6.41%) TCP/IP
6 16 (4.66%) Network Security
7 14 (4.08%) LAN
8 13 (3.79%) WAN
9 11 (3.21%) Software-Defined Radio
9 11 (3.21%) Wireless
10 9 (2.62%) SSH
11 8 (2.33%) Cisco ASA
11 8 (2.33%) Cisco Firepower
11 8 (2.33%) SSL
12 7 (2.04%) LTE
13 6 (1.75%) Diameter Protocol
13 6 (1.75%) Radio Access Network
13 6 (1.75%) SAN
13 6 (1.75%) VoLTE
13 6 (1.75%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.71%) SQL Server
2 18 (5.25%) Oracle Database
3 10 (2.92%) MySQL
4 8 (2.33%) DataStage
5 5 (1.46%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (1.17%) Oracle Database 11g
7 3 (0.87%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.58%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.58%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
9 1 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.29%) Electronic Patient Records
9 1 (0.29%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.29%) IBM InfoSphere
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle ODI
9 1 (0.29%) Pentaho
9 1 (0.29%) Redis
9 1 (0.29%) SQLite
9 1 (0.29%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 25 (7.29%) JIRA
2 24 (7.00%) GitLab
3 18 (5.25%) Git
4 16 (4.66%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.75%) MLflow
6 5 (1.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (1.46%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.17%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.87%) Android Studio
8 3 (0.87%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (0.87%) Eclipse
8 3 (0.87%) Xcode
9 1 (0.29%) Introscope
9 1 (0.29%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.29%) MSI
9 1 (0.29%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.29%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 56 (16.33%) Social Skills
2 33 (9.62%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (7.58%) Public Sector
4 20 (5.83%) Documentation Skills
5 11 (3.21%) Aerospace
6 7 (2.04%) Finance
7 6 (1.75%) Military
8 5 (1.46%) Retail
9 4 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 3 (0.87%) Manufacturing
10 3 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.29%) Automotive
11 1 (0.29%) Banking
11 1 (0.29%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.29%) Legal
Job Titles
1 52 (15.16%) Linux Engineer
2 49 (14.29%) Senior
3 46 (13.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 25 (7.29%) Architect
5 24 (7.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 21 (6.12%) Platform Engineer
7 19 (5.54%) Support Engineer
8 18 (5.25%) Developer
8 18 (5.25%) Software Engineer
9 17 (4.96%) Embedded Engineer
10 16 (4.66%) Cloud Engineer
11 15 (4.37%) Analyst
11 15 (4.37%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
12 13 (3.79%) Systems Engineer
13 12 (3.50%) Embedded Software Engineer
14 11 (3.21%) Citrix Engineer
14 11 (3.21%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
14 11 (3.21%) Technical Engineer
14 11 (3.21%) Technical Support
14 11 (3.21%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (18.66%) Terraform
2 13 (3.79%) ARM Templates
3 12 (3.50%) Kafka
4 11 (3.21%) LDAP
4 11 (3.21%) Yocto
5 10 (2.92%) YAML
6 7 (2.04%) OpenTofu
7 6 (1.75%) Middleware
8 5 (1.46%) GraphQL
8 5 (1.46%) Keycloak
9 4 (1.17%) 802.1X
9 4 (1.17%) gRPC
9 4 (1.17%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (1.17%) RESTful
10 3 (0.87%) Ajax
10 3 (0.87%) AngularJS
10 3 (0.87%) CSS
10 3 (0.87%) LAMP
10 3 (0.87%) React
10 3 (0.87%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 44 (12.83%) Onboarding
2 23 (6.71%) Hybrid Cloud
3 22 (6.41%) Management Information System
4 20 (5.83%) PKI
5 18 (5.25%) Embedded Systems
6 14 (4.08%) Device Driver
6 14 (4.08%) Product Ownership
6 14 (4.08%) Public Cloud
7 13 (3.79%) Cloud Native
8 11 (3.21%) Operational Technology
9 10 (2.92%) Data Centre
9 10 (2.92%) Enterprise Cloud
9 10 (2.92%) MicroBlaze
9 10 (2.92%) RISC-V
9 10 (2.92%) SCADA
10 7 (2.04%) ARM Cortex
11 6 (1.75%) Cyber Defence
12 5 (1.46%) Social Media
13 4 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
13 4 (1.17%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 162 (47.23%) Windows
2 63 (18.37%) Unix
3 53 (15.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 53 (15.45%) Windows Server
4 20 (5.83%) Ubuntu
5 19 (5.54%) Embedded Linux
6 17 (4.96%) CentOS
6 17 (4.96%) Windows 10
7 10 (2.92%) Debian
8 6 (1.75%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.75%) Oracle Linux
9 4 (1.17%) Rocky
10 3 (0.87%) Android
10 3 (0.87%) Solaris
11 2 (0.58%) AIX
11 2 (0.58%) HPUX
11 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.29%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (19.83%) CI/CD
2 59 (17.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 52 (15.16%) DevOps
4 50 (14.58%) ITIL
5 49 (14.29%) Agile
6 47 (13.70%) Infrastructure as Code
7 45 (13.12%) Cybersecurity
7 45 (13.12%) Problem-Solving
8 42 (12.24%) Containerisation
8 42 (12.24%) SIEM
9 36 (10.50%) Platform Engineering
9 36 (10.50%) Software Engineering
10 35 (10.20%) Continuous Improvement
10 35 (10.20%) ITSM
11 34 (9.91%) Runbook
12 32 (9.33%) Computer Science
13 30 (8.75%) DevSecOps
14 28 (8.16%) Migration
15 27 (7.87%) Change Control
16 24 (7.00%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 104 (30.32%) Python
2 87 (25.36%) PowerShell
3 68 (19.83%) Bash
4 29 (8.45%) C
5 20 (5.83%) SQL
6 19 (5.54%) C++
7 17 (4.96%) Shell Script
8 13 (3.79%) Bicep
9 11 (3.21%) JavaScript
10 10 (2.92%) Java
11 9 (2.62%) Perl
12 7 (2.04%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.46%) Embedded C++
14 4 (1.17%) Embedded C
14 4 (1.17%) Rust
15 2 (0.58%) C#
15 2 (0.58%) Scala
15 2 (0.58%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.58%) VBScript
16 1 (0.29%) Go
Qualifications
1 206 (60.06%) Security Cleared
2 138 (40.23%) SC Cleared
3 88 (25.66%) DV Cleared
4 48 (13.99%) Degree
5 14 (4.08%) Cisco Certification
6 12 (3.50%) CISM
6 12 (3.50%) CISSP
6 12 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.50%) RHCE
7 10 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (2.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 8 (2.33%) GIAC
9 8 (2.33%) ISTQB
9 8 (2.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 7 (2.04%) RHCSA
11 6 (1.75%) AWS Certification
11 6 (1.75%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.75%) CRISC
11 6 (1.75%) LFCS
12 5 (1.46%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (12.83%) NIST
2 36 (10.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 12 (3.50%) Cyber Essentials
4 10 (2.92%) SLA
5 9 (2.62%) ISO 31000
6 7 (2.04%) NCSC
7 5 (1.46%) GDPR
7 5 (1.46%) GRC
8 4 (1.17%) JSP 440
8 4 (1.17%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.87%) ISO 9001
9 3 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27005
9 3 (0.87%) QA
10 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.29%) DICOM
11 1 (0.29%) HL7
11 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.29%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 85 (24.78%) Active Directory
2 39 (11.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (10.79%) Docker
4 20 (5.83%) VMware NSX
5 18 (5.25%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (4.37%) Firmware
6 15 (4.37%) Hyper-V
7 11 (3.21%) Embedded Firmware
8 5 (1.46%) Oracle RAC
8 5 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (1.46%) vSphere
9 4 (1.17%) KVM
10 3 (0.87%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.87%) ISA Server
10 3 (0.87%) Postfix
10 3 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 2 (0.58%) UAG
11 2 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 66 (19.24%) Kubernetes
2 59 (17.20%) Ansible
3 17 (4.96%) Grafana
3 17 (4.96%) Prometheus
4 14 (4.08%) Puppet
5 11 (3.21%) SCCM
5 11 (3.21%) vCenter Server
6 9 (2.62%) Red Hat Satellite
7 8 (2.33%) Progress Chef
8 7 (2.04%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (2.04%) Oracle RMAN
8 7 (2.04%) Podman
9 6 (1.75%) Packer
10 5 (1.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (1.46%) Data Guard
10 5 (1.46%) SCOM
11 4 (1.17%) Istio
11 4 (1.17%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.87%) CASB
12 3 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 81 (23.62%) Microsoft
2 72 (20.99%) VMware
3 47 (13.70%) Oracle
4 44 (12.83%) Red Hat
5 24 (7.00%) CyberArk
6 22 (6.41%) BeyondTrust
7 20 (5.83%) Cisco
8 19 (5.54%) Citrix
8 19 (5.54%) ServiceNow
9 17 (4.96%) Splunk
10 12 (3.50%) IBM
10 12 (3.50%) Palo Alto
11 11 (3.21%) CrowdStrike
11 11 (3.21%) Google
11 11 (3.21%) SolarWinds
12 7 (2.04%) F5
12 7 (2.04%) Nokia
12 7 (2.04%) Tenable
13 6 (1.75%) Ericsson
13 6 (1.75%) Tanium