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 28 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 27 21
Rank change year-on-year -5 -6 0
Contract jobs citing Linux 307 202 394
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.28% 6.75% 7.13%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.71% 39.53% 40.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 149 269
10th Percentile £300 £410 £354
25th Percentile £401 £463 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £595
90th Percentile £650 £675 £638
England median daily rate £518 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.91% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 13 23
10th Percentile £15.00 £46.21 £22.65
25th Percentile £27.34 £52.50 £41.50
Median hourly rate £47.52 £57.75 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.71% -6.85% -4.62%
75th Percentile £53.75 £62.50 £68.13
90th Percentile £70.20 £64.75 £74.00
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.00% -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 736 511 976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.65% 17.07% 17.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 504 365 647
10th Percentile £204 £205 £200
25th Percentile £350 £325 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £571 £600 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 35 59
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £15.98
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.95 £17.69
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.64% -41.05% -9.52%
75th Percentile £54.25 £59.44 £62.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £63.25 £70.75
England median hourly rate £41.94 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year +70.07% +12.09% -41.33%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 28 April 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 0 173 £450 -7.69% 68
Berkshire -6 101 £403 -19.50% 30
Hampshire -14 92 £538 -6.52% 67
Buckinghamshire +9 50 £550 +30.80% 13
Surrey -3 29 £208 -58.50% 25
Oxfordshire -4 22 £450 -18.18% 25
Sussex - 4 - -
East Sussex - 4 £459 - 1
West Sussex -18 2 £613 +11.36% 5
Isle of Wight - 1 - -
Middlesex - 1 £198 -
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 16 (5.21%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.30%) WebSphere
2 4 (1.30%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (0.98%) Apache
3 3 (0.98%) Confluence
3 3 (0.98%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.65%) Appian
4 2 (0.65%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (0.65%) JBoss
4 2 (0.65%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (0.65%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.33%) SAS
5 1 (0.33%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 64 (20.85%) AWS
2 59 (19.22%) Azure
3 22 (7.17%) OpenShift
4 19 (6.19%) GitHub
5 15 (4.89%) GitHub Actions
5 15 (4.89%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (4.56%) SaaS
7 11 (3.58%) GCP
8 9 (2.93%) Amazon EKS
8 9 (2.93%) Cloud Computing
8 9 (2.93%) Entra ID
9 8 (2.61%) AWS CloudFormation
10 7 (2.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
11 6 (1.95%) Amazon S3
11 6 (1.95%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (1.63%) IaaS
12 5 (1.63%) Sauce Labs
13 4 (1.30%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (1.30%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.77%) DNS
2 27 (8.79%) Firewall
3 21 (6.84%) TCP/IP
4 16 (5.21%) WAN
5 14 (4.56%) LAN
6 11 (3.58%) SAN
7 10 (3.26%) VSAN
8 9 (2.93%) DHCP
9 8 (2.61%) Wireless
10 7 (2.28%) NAS
10 7 (2.28%) SSH
11 6 (1.95%) Network Security
11 6 (1.95%) Software-Defined Radio
11 6 (1.95%) VPN
12 5 (1.63%) BGP
12 5 (1.63%) Ethernet VPN
12 5 (1.63%) OSPF
12 5 (1.63%) Wireshark
13 3 (0.98%) 5G
13 3 (0.98%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.79%) SQL Server
2 22 (7.17%) MySQL
3 19 (6.19%) Relational Database
4 16 (5.21%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (3.58%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.61%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.30%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (1.30%) Redis
8 2 (0.65%) Electronic Patient Records
8 2 (0.65%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.65%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.65%) Oracle Database 11g
8 2 (0.65%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.33%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (0.33%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.33%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.33%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 21 (6.84%) Jenkins
2 13 (4.23%) GitLab
2 13 (4.23%) JIRA
3 12 (3.91%) Git
4 9 (2.93%) Eclipse
5 7 (2.28%) JUnit
6 6 (1.95%) JMeter
6 6 (1.95%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (1.63%) Android Studio
7 5 (1.63%) Browser DevTools
7 5 (1.63%) Cucumber
7 5 (1.63%) Maven
7 5 (1.63%) Subversion
7 5 (1.63%) Xcode
8 4 (1.30%) Jaeger
9 3 (0.98%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.65%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.65%) Introscope
10 2 (0.65%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 53 (17.26%) Social Skills
2 30 (9.77%) Public Sector
3 20 (6.51%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (6.51%) Military
4 15 (4.89%) Documentation Skills
5 12 (3.91%) Finance
6 8 (2.61%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.30%) Financial Institution
8 3 (0.98%) Aerospace
8 3 (0.98%) Law
8 3 (0.98%) Manufacturing
8 3 (0.98%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.65%) Retail
10 1 (0.33%) Advertising
10 1 (0.33%) Back Office
10 1 (0.33%) Banking
10 1 (0.33%) Electronics
10 1 (0.33%) Front Office
10 1 (0.33%) Legal
10 1 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 36 (11.73%) Linux Engineer
1 36 (11.73%) Senior
2 31 (10.10%) Architect
3 25 (8.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 21 (6.84%) Analyst
5 19 (6.19%) Technical Support
6 18 (5.86%) Developer
6 18 (5.86%) Software Engineer
7 16 (5.21%) Technical Architect
8 15 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
8 15 (4.89%) Support Engineer
9 13 (4.23%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.91%) Administrator
10 12 (3.91%) DBA
10 12 (3.91%) Lead
11 11 (3.58%) Tester
12 10 (3.26%) Technical Engineer
12 10 (3.26%) Technical Support Engineer
13 9 (2.93%) Network Engineer
13 9 (2.93%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.23%) Middleware
2 12 (3.91%) Kafka
3 11 (3.58%) XML
4 10 (3.26%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (3.26%) YAML
5 8 (2.61%) .NET
5 8 (2.61%) JSON
6 7 (2.28%) Loki
6 7 (2.28%) Spring
7 6 (1.95%) CSS
7 6 (1.95%) React
7 6 (1.95%) Yocto
8 5 (1.63%) Ajax
8 5 (1.63%) AngularJS
8 5 (1.63%) GraphQL
8 5 (1.63%) Hibernate
8 5 (1.63%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (1.30%) Keycloak
10 3 (0.98%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 3 (0.98%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.79%) Onboarding
2 17 (5.54%) PKI
3 15 (4.89%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.56%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.56%) Public Cloud
5 12 (3.91%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.58%) Management Information System
7 10 (3.26%) Security Operations Centre
8 9 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.93%) Replication
9 8 (2.61%) Cyberattack
9 8 (2.61%) Security Posture
10 7 (2.28%) Product Ownership
11 6 (1.95%) Device Driver
11 6 (1.95%) Embedded Systems
11 6 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (1.63%) MicroBlaze
12 5 (1.63%) Mobile App
12 5 (1.63%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 150 (48.86%) Windows
2 50 (16.29%) Unix
3 44 (14.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 39 (12.70%) Windows Server
5 14 (4.56%) Ubuntu
6 10 (3.26%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (2.61%) Windows Server 2016
8 5 (1.63%) Android
8 5 (1.63%) Debian
9 4 (1.30%) CentOS
9 4 (1.30%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.98%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.65%) Kali Linux
11 2 (0.65%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.65%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.33%) Solaris
12 1 (0.33%) SUSE
12 1 (0.33%) VMS
12 1 (0.33%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (23.13%) CI/CD
2 54 (17.59%) DevOps
3 48 (15.64%) Agile
4 44 (14.33%) SIEM
5 40 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
6 33 (10.75%) Containerisation
7 32 (10.42%) Computer Science
8 31 (10.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 31 (10.10%) ITIL
9 29 (9.45%) Infrastructure as Code
10 27 (8.79%) Cybersecurity
11 25 (8.14%) High Availability
11 25 (8.14%) Platform Engineering
12 24 (7.82%) Incident Response
12 24 (7.82%) Runbook
13 23 (7.49%) Migration
14 22 (7.17%) Software Engineering
15 21 (6.84%) DevSecOps
16 20 (6.51%) Security Operations
17 19 (6.19%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 91 (29.64%) Python
2 54 (17.59%) PowerShell
3 38 (12.38%) Bash
4 28 (9.12%) Java
5 26 (8.47%) SQL
6 23 (7.49%) Perl
7 19 (6.19%) JavaScript
8 13 (4.23%) C
8 13 (4.23%) C++
9 11 (3.58%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.63%) Go
11 4 (1.30%) Embedded C++
11 4 (1.30%) Rust
12 3 (0.98%) Ada
12 3 (0.98%) C#
12 3 (0.98%) Embedded C
12 3 (0.98%) Korn
13 2 (0.65%) Jython
13 2 (0.65%) PHP
13 2 (0.65%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 196 (63.84%) Security Cleared
2 128 (41.69%) SC Cleared
3 77 (25.08%) DV Cleared
4 39 (12.70%) Degree
5 23 (7.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (4.23%) RHCE
7 8 (2.61%) AWS Certification
8 7 (2.28%) CCNP
8 7 (2.28%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (1.95%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.95%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (1.63%) CompTIA CySA+
10 5 (1.63%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (1.63%) RHCSA
11 4 (1.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (1.30%) Azure Certification
11 4 (1.30%) LFCS
11 4 (1.30%) OCP
11 4 (1.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.47%) NIST
2 17 (5.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (3.26%) GDPR
4 8 (2.61%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.28%) NCSC
6 6 (1.95%) SLA
7 5 (1.63%) PCI DSS
7 5 (1.63%) QA
8 4 (1.30%) GRC
9 3 (0.98%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.98%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.33%) DICOM
10 1 (0.33%) HL7
10 1 (0.33%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 56 (18.24%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (16.61%) Active Directory
3 17 (5.54%) Docker
4 14 (4.56%) VMware NSX
5 13 (4.23%) Hyper-V
6 10 (3.26%) vSphere
7 9 (2.93%) Firmware
8 7 (2.28%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (1.63%) Embedded Firmware
10 4 (1.30%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.98%) UAG
12 1 (0.33%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.33%) GPFS
12 1 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 53 (17.26%) Ansible
2 43 (14.01%) Kubernetes
3 38 (12.38%) Terraform
4 24 (7.82%) Grafana
5 22 (7.17%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.58%) Red Hat Satellite
7 10 (3.26%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.61%) vCenter Server
9 7 (2.28%) Progress Chef
9 7 (2.28%) Puppet
9 7 (2.28%) Rancher
10 6 (1.95%) Argo
10 6 (1.95%) Data Guard
10 6 (1.95%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 5 (1.63%) WSUS
12 4 (1.30%) Istio
12 4 (1.30%) Nessus
13 3 (0.98%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.65%) Packer
14 2 (0.65%) Podman
Vendors
1 81 (26.38%) VMware
2 62 (20.20%) Red Hat
3 61 (19.87%) Microsoft
4 44 (14.33%) Oracle
5 28 (9.12%) Splunk
6 17 (5.54%) BeyondTrust
7 15 (4.89%) CyberArk
8 14 (4.56%) Cisco
9 8 (2.61%) MuleSoft
9 8 (2.61%) Palo Alto
9 8 (2.61%) ServiceNow
10 7 (2.28%) NVIDIA
11 6 (1.95%) HP
12 5 (1.63%) Atlassian
12 5 (1.63%) Citrix
12 5 (1.63%) Dell
12 5 (1.63%) IBM
12 5 (1.63%) Mellanox
12 5 (1.63%) NetApp
12 5 (1.63%) SAP