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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 34 22
Rank change year-on-year -3 -12 -1
Contract jobs citing Linux 349 185 374
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.21% 5.28% 7.59%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.00% 31.57% 42.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 256 142 256
10th Percentile £341 £325 £350
25th Percentile £433 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.19% -3.10% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £643 - £638
England median daily rate £525 £525 £548
% change year-on-year - -4.11% -4.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 5 22
10th Percentile £43.81 £32.94 £35.18
25th Percentile £50.00 £51.06 £57.19
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -21.43% +17.89%
75th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £73.86 - £73.38
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +5.88%

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 831 586 882
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.41% 16.72% 17.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 552 414 580
10th Percentile £204 £190 £205
25th Percentile £361 £263 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £473
Median % change year-on-year - +0.37% +11.35%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £638 £650 £638
England median daily rate £473 £450 £490
% change year-on-year +5.06% -8.07% -2.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 52 47
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £16.32
25th Percentile £21.15 £16.95 £24.42
Median hourly rate £42.71 £18.87 £57.25
Median % change year-on-year +126.31% -67.04% +4.09%
75th Percentile £59.00 £28.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 £71.50
England median hourly rate £34.68 £23.00 £34.50
% change year-on-year +50.76% -33.33% -13.75%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +10 191 £518 +8.95% 86
Hampshire -10 110 £550 - 63
Berkshire -13 82 £440 -2.22% 32
Buckinghamshire +11 67 £560 +5.96% 15
Oxfordshire +9 42 £525 +44.83% 39
Surrey -13 34 £304 -36.05% 22
West Sussex -20 8 £425 -22.73% 13
Middlesex -14 4 £198 - 2
East Sussex - 1 £459 - 7
Isle of Wight - 1 - - 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 10 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (2.58%) Apache
3 8 (2.29%) Confluence
3 8 (2.29%) nginx
4 6 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.72%) OpenStack
5 4 (1.15%) WebSphere
5 4 (1.15%) WebSphere Application Server
6 3 (0.86%) IIS
6 3 (0.86%) 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 (0.29%) Oracle Service Bus
8 1 (0.29%) SAS
8 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.86%) Houdini
2 3 (0.86%) NUKE
3 2 (0.57%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.29%) CINEMA 4D
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 98 (28.08%) Azure
2 75 (21.49%) AWS
3 31 (8.88%) Entra ID
4 21 (6.02%) Microsoft 365
5 18 (5.16%) OpenShift
6 13 (3.72%) Azure Sentinel
7 12 (3.44%) Azure Monitor
7 12 (3.44%) SaaS
8 10 (2.87%) GCP
9 9 (2.58%) GitHub
9 9 (2.58%) IaaS
10 8 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (2.01%) PaaS
12 6 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (1.72%) Azure DevOps
13 5 (1.43%) Amazon EKS
14 4 (1.15%) Cloudflare
14 4 (1.15%) Serverless
15 3 (0.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 3 (0.86%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 45 (12.89%) DNS
2 42 (12.03%) Firewall
3 28 (8.02%) DHCP
4 21 (6.02%) VPN
5 20 (5.73%) TCP/IP
6 15 (4.30%) LAN
6 15 (4.30%) WAN
7 14 (4.01%) Network Security
8 13 (3.72%) VSAN
9 10 (2.87%) Cisco ASA
9 10 (2.87%) Cisco Firepower
10 9 (2.58%) SAN
10 9 (2.58%) SSH
10 9 (2.58%) SSL
11 8 (2.29%) Software-Defined Radio
11 8 (2.29%) Wireless
12 7 (2.01%) LTE
13 6 (1.72%) Radio Access Network
13 6 (1.72%) VoLTE
13 6 (1.72%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.02%) SQL Server
2 18 (5.16%) Oracle Database
3 12 (3.44%) MySQL
4 7 (2.01%) DataStage
5 6 (1.72%) Oracle Database 12c
6 5 (1.43%) Oracle Database 11g
6 5 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (1.43%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
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 (0.29%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.29%) Metadata
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.29%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 23 (6.59%) JIRA
2 20 (5.73%) GitLab
3 13 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 12 (3.44%) Git
5 7 (2.01%) Eclipse
6 6 (1.72%) MLflow
7 5 (1.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (1.43%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.15%) Jaeger
8 4 (1.15%) Maven
8 4 (1.15%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.15%) Subversion
9 3 (0.86%) Android Studio
9 3 (0.86%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.86%) Xcode
10 2 (0.57%) Introscope
10 2 (0.57%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.29%) MSI
11 1 (0.29%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
General
1 59 (16.91%) Social Skills
2 33 (9.46%) Analytical Skills
3 32 (9.17%) Public Sector
4 19 (5.44%) Documentation Skills
5 11 (3.15%) Military
6 10 (2.87%) Finance
7 9 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 7 (2.01%) Retail
9 6 (1.72%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.15%) Financial Institution
11 4 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.29%) Automotive
12 1 (0.29%) Electronics
12 1 (0.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.29%) Legal
12 1 (0.29%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 52 (14.90%) Linux Engineer
2 48 (13.75%) Senior
3 46 (13.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (6.88%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 22 (6.30%) Architect
5 22 (6.30%) Platform Engineer
6 20 (5.73%) Developer
7 16 (4.58%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (4.30%) Cloud Engineer
9 13 (3.72%) Support Engineer
10 12 (3.44%) Analyst
10 12 (3.44%) DBA
10 12 (3.44%) Embedded Engineer
10 12 (3.44%) Software Engineer
11 11 (3.15%) Citrix Engineer
11 11 (3.15%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (3.15%) Network Engineer
11 11 (3.15%) Technical Engineer
11 11 (3.15%) Technical Support
11 11 (3.15%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (4.01%) Kafka
2 13 (3.72%) YAML
3 10 (2.87%) ARM Templates
3 10 (2.87%) Middleware
4 9 (2.58%) Yocto
5 8 (2.29%) LDAP
6 6 (1.72%) Keycloak
6 6 (1.72%) Loki
7 5 (1.43%) .NET
7 5 (1.43%) GraphQL
7 5 (1.43%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.15%) gRPC
8 4 (1.15%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (1.15%) RESTful
8 4 (1.15%) XML
9 3 (0.86%) 802.1X
9 3 (0.86%) Ajax
9 3 (0.86%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.86%) LEMP Stack
9 3 (0.86%) React
Miscellaneous
1 43 (12.32%) Onboarding
2 25 (7.16%) Hybrid Cloud
3 24 (6.88%) PKI
4 18 (5.16%) Public Cloud
5 16 (4.58%) Management Information System
6 14 (4.01%) Product Ownership
7 13 (3.72%) Cloud Native
8 12 (3.44%) Device Driver
8 12 (3.44%) Embedded Systems
9 11 (3.15%) Data Centre
10 10 (2.87%) Operational Technology
11 9 (2.58%) SCADA
12 8 (2.29%) Replication
12 8 (2.29%) Security Posture
13 7 (2.01%) MicroBlaze
13 7 (2.01%) RISC-V
14 6 (1.72%) ARM Cortex
14 6 (1.72%) Cyber Defence
14 6 (1.72%) Enterprise Cloud
14 6 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 158 (45.27%) Windows
2 66 (18.91%) Unix
3 52 (14.90%) Windows Server
4 50 (14.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (5.44%) Embedded Linux
6 17 (4.87%) Ubuntu
7 10 (2.87%) Windows 10
8 9 (2.58%) CentOS
9 8 (2.29%) Debian
10 7 (2.01%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (1.43%) Mac OS
11 5 (1.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.86%) Android
12 3 (0.86%) Solaris
12 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.57%) AIX
13 2 (0.57%) HPUX
13 2 (0.57%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.29%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (19.77%) CI/CD
2 55 (15.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 53 (15.19%) ITIL
4 49 (14.04%) DevOps
5 45 (12.89%) SIEM
6 43 (12.32%) Infrastructure as Code
7 42 (12.03%) Agile
8 40 (11.46%) Problem-Solving
9 39 (11.17%) Containerisation
10 38 (10.89%) Cybersecurity
11 37 (10.60%) Platform Engineering
12 35 (10.03%) Migration
13 34 (9.74%) Runbook
14 32 (9.17%) Root Cause Analysis
15 31 (8.88%) Continuous Improvement
15 31 (8.88%) ITSM
16 30 (8.60%) High Availability
17 29 (8.31%) DevSecOps
18 27 (7.74%) Computer Science
19 26 (7.45%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 110 (31.52%) Python
2 88 (25.21%) PowerShell
3 66 (18.91%) Bash
4 24 (6.88%) C
4 24 (6.88%) SQL
5 20 (5.73%) C++
6 14 (4.01%) Java
6 14 (4.01%) Shell Script
7 11 (3.15%) JavaScript
8 10 (2.87%) Bicep
8 10 (2.87%) Perl
9 7 (2.01%) Embedded C++
10 6 (1.72%) Embedded C
10 6 (1.72%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.43%) Go
12 4 (1.15%) Rust
13 3 (0.86%) Korn
14 2 (0.57%) C#
14 2 (0.57%) Scala
14 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 212 (60.74%) Security Cleared
2 156 (44.70%) SC Cleared
3 77 (22.06%) DV Cleared
4 46 (13.18%) Degree
5 14 (4.01%) RHCE
6 13 (3.72%) Cisco Certification
7 11 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (2.01%) AWS Certification
8 7 (2.01%) CISM
8 7 (2.01%) CISSP
8 7 (2.01%) ISTQB
8 7 (2.01%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 7 (2.01%) RHCSA
9 6 (1.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 6 (1.72%) CCNP
9 6 (1.72%) CESG Certified Professional
9 6 (1.72%) CRISC
9 6 (1.72%) GIAC
9 6 (1.72%) LFCS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (12.32%) NIST
2 31 (8.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.01%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.44%) SLA
5 10 (2.87%) NCSC
6 6 (1.72%) GDPR
6 6 (1.72%) ISO 31000
6 6 (1.72%) JSP 440
7 5 (1.43%) GRC
7 5 (1.43%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.57%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.57%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.29%) DICOM
9 1 (0.29%) HL7
9 1 (0.29%) OpenSCAP
9 1 (0.29%) QA
System Software
1 84 (24.07%) Active Directory
2 51 (14.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (8.31%) Docker
4 25 (7.16%) VMware NSX
5 18 (5.16%) Hyper-V
6 16 (4.58%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (3.72%) Firmware
8 8 (2.29%) Embedded Firmware
9 7 (2.01%) Oracle RAC
10 5 (1.43%) vSphere
11 4 (1.15%) KVM
11 4 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.86%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.86%) Postfix
12 3 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.57%) UAG
13 2 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.29%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 59 (16.91%) Kubernetes
2 56 (16.05%) Terraform
3 54 (15.47%) Ansible
4 19 (5.44%) Grafana
4 19 (5.44%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.01%) Puppet
6 11 (3.15%) Oracle RMAN
7 10 (2.87%) vCenter Server
8 9 (2.58%) Red Hat Satellite
8 9 (2.58%) SCCM
9 8 (2.29%) Progress Chef
10 7 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
10 7 (2.01%) Rancher
11 6 (1.72%) Data Guard
11 6 (1.72%) Istio
11 6 (1.72%) Packer
11 6 (1.72%) WSUS
12 5 (1.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (1.43%) SCOM
13 4 (1.15%) Podman
Vendors
1 86 (24.64%) VMware
2 75 (21.49%) Microsoft
3 49 (14.04%) Red Hat
4 48 (13.75%) Oracle
5 23 (6.59%) CyberArk
6 22 (6.30%) BeyondTrust
6 22 (6.30%) Cisco
7 21 (6.02%) ServiceNow
8 19 (5.44%) Citrix
9 17 (4.87%) Splunk
10 16 (4.58%) Palo Alto
11 12 (3.44%) IBM
12 11 (3.15%) SolarWinds
13 8 (2.29%) NVIDIA
14 7 (2.01%) Atlassian
14 7 (2.01%) CrowdStrike
14 7 (2.01%) Google
14 7 (2.01%) Nokia
15 6 (1.72%) BT
15 6 (1.72%) Ericsson