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 2 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 28 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -10 0
Contract jobs citing Linux 307 185 434
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.17% 6.29% 7.69%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.37% 34.64% 43.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 138 293
10th Percentile £274 £402 £355
25th Percentile £402 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £550 £535
Median % change year-on-year -8.18% +2.80% +1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £651 £644 £648
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 9 25
10th Percentile £22.48 £45.02 £26.25
25th Percentile £43.81 £52.50 £46.25
Median hourly rate £47.54 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.32% -8.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £53.75 £62.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £60.00 £62.75 £74.50
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% - -

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 742 534 1,006
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.49% 18.14% 17.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 501 382 660
10th Percentile £204 £200 £205
25th Percentile £350 £325 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +3.16% +2.70%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £661 £663
England median daily rate £455 £469 £475
% change year-on-year -2.93% -1.32% -6.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 37 59
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.20 £15.98
25th Percentile £20.41 £16.95 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.71 £21.90 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +95.00% -53.89% -13.64%
75th Percentile £53.17 £33.75 £66.25
90th Percentile £60.00 £61.08 £73.75
England median hourly rate £34.68 £19.64 £22.50
% change year-on-year +76.60% -12.73% -47.06%

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 2 June 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 2 June 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 2 June 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 +3 194 £475 -5.00% 79
Berkshire -8 90 £405 -19.00% 37
Hampshire -16 76 £550 -4.35% 80
Buckinghamshire +15 72 £550 +30.80% 14
Oxfordshire +5 32 £450 -18.18% 28
Surrey -9 28 £208 -58.50% 34
East Sussex - 3 £459 - 2
West Sussex -19 2 £700 +30.23% 6
Sussex - 2 - -
Isle of Wight - 1 - -
Middlesex - 1 £198 - 3
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 17 (5.54%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.95%) Apache
2 6 (1.95%) OpenStack
3 4 (1.30%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.30%) WebSphere Application Server
4 3 (0.98%) Confluence
4 3 (0.98%) IIS
4 3 (0.98%) nginx
4 3 (0.98%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.98%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.65%) Appian
5 2 (0.65%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.65%) JBoss
5 2 (0.65%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.65%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.33%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
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 67 (21.82%) Azure
2 56 (18.24%) AWS
3 23 (7.49%) Microsoft 365
4 22 (7.17%) Entra ID
5 15 (4.89%) OpenShift
5 15 (4.89%) SaaS
6 12 (3.91%) GitHub
7 11 (3.58%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (3.26%) GCP
9 9 (2.93%) IaaS
9 9 (2.93%) PaaS
10 8 (2.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.28%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (2.28%) Azure Sentinel
12 5 (1.63%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (1.63%) Cloud Computing
12 5 (1.63%) Sauce Labs
13 4 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (1.30%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (1.30%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.77%) DNS
2 25 (8.14%) Firewall
3 16 (5.21%) WAN
4 15 (4.89%) TCP/IP
5 14 (4.56%) LAN
6 13 (4.23%) VSAN
7 11 (3.58%) Network Security
8 9 (2.93%) Cisco ASA
8 9 (2.93%) Cisco Firepower
8 9 (2.93%) SAN
8 9 (2.93%) VPN
9 8 (2.61%) Wireless
9 8 (2.61%) Wireshark
10 7 (2.28%) DHCP
10 7 (2.28%) Software-Defined Radio
10 7 (2.28%) SSH
11 6 (1.95%) Cisco Nexus
11 6 (1.95%) Diameter Protocol
11 6 (1.95%) SSL
11 6 (1.95%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.79%) SQL Server
2 24 (7.82%) MySQL
3 18 (5.86%) Relational Database
4 13 (4.23%) Oracle Database
5 7 (2.28%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.63%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.98%) Oracle Database 11g
8 3 (0.98%) Redis
9 2 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.65%) Electronic Patient Records
9 2 (0.65%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.65%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.65%) Vitess
10 1 (0.33%) DataStage
10 1 (0.33%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 12 (3.91%) JIRA
2 11 (3.58%) Jenkins
3 9 (2.93%) Eclipse
3 9 (2.93%) GitLab
4 7 (2.28%) Git
5 5 (1.63%) Android Studio
5 5 (1.63%) Browser DevTools
5 5 (1.63%) Maven
5 5 (1.63%) Xcode
6 4 (1.30%) Jaeger
6 4 (1.30%) Subversion
7 2 (0.65%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.65%) Introscope
7 2 (0.65%) JUnit
7 2 (0.65%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.33%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.33%) Storybook
General
1 42 (13.68%) Social Skills
2 32 (10.42%) Public Sector
3 20 (6.51%) Military
4 16 (5.21%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
5 9 (2.93%) Finance
6 6 (1.95%) Manufacturing
6 6 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
6 6 (1.95%) Retail
7 4 (1.30%) Financial Institution
8 3 (0.98%) Law
8 3 (0.98%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.65%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.33%) Advertising
10 1 (0.33%) Back Office
10 1 (0.33%) Electronics
10 1 (0.33%) Front Office
10 1 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.33%) Legal
10 1 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 42 (13.68%) Linux Engineer
2 40 (13.03%) Senior
3 31 (10.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 22 (7.17%) Architect
5 20 (6.51%) Technical Support
6 19 (6.19%) Analyst
7 17 (5.54%) Software Engineer
8 16 (5.21%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.21%) Support Engineer
9 15 (4.89%) Network Engineer
10 14 (4.56%) DBA
10 14 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.23%) Developer
11 13 (4.23%) Technical Architect
11 13 (4.23%) Technical Engineer
11 13 (4.23%) Technical Support Engineer
12 12 (3.91%) Lead
13 11 (3.58%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
13 11 (3.58%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
13 11 (3.58%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (3.91%) YAML
2 10 (3.26%) Middleware
2 10 (3.26%) XML
3 8 (2.61%) Loki
4 7 (2.28%) .NET
4 7 (2.28%) GraphQL
4 7 (2.28%) JSON
4 7 (2.28%) Kafka
4 7 (2.28%) Yocto
5 6 (1.95%) CSS
5 6 (1.95%) React
6 5 (1.63%) Ajax
6 5 (1.63%) AngularJS
6 5 (1.63%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (1.63%) Keycloak
6 5 (1.63%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (1.30%) 802.1X
7 4 (1.30%) LAMP
7 4 (1.30%) Web Services
8 3 (0.98%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 29 (9.45%) Onboarding
2 19 (6.19%) PKI
3 18 (5.86%) Data Centre
4 16 (5.21%) Public Cloud
5 12 (3.91%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (3.91%) Management Information System
6 11 (3.58%) Security Operations Centre
7 9 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (2.93%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.93%) Security Posture
8 8 (2.61%) Cyberattack
8 8 (2.61%) Operational Technology
9 7 (2.28%) Cloud Native
9 7 (2.28%) Device Driver
9 7 (2.28%) Embedded Systems
9 7 (2.28%) SCADA
10 6 (1.95%) Cyber Defence
10 6 (1.95%) MicroBlaze
10 6 (1.95%) Replication
10 6 (1.95%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 148 (48.21%) Windows
2 65 (21.17%) Unix
3 40 (13.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 37 (12.05%) Windows Server
5 17 (5.54%) Ubuntu
6 11 (3.58%) Embedded Linux
7 10 (3.26%) Debian
8 8 (2.61%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (2.28%) CentOS
10 6 (1.95%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (1.63%) Android
12 4 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.65%) Kali Linux
13 2 (0.65%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.65%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.65%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.65%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.33%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.33%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (18.57%) CI/CD
2 54 (17.59%) SIEM
3 45 (14.66%) DevOps
4 39 (12.70%) ITIL
4 39 (12.70%) Problem-Solving
5 37 (12.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 36 (11.73%) Agile
7 32 (10.42%) Cybersecurity
8 31 (10.10%) Computer Science
9 30 (9.77%) High Availability
10 28 (9.12%) Runbook
11 25 (8.14%) Containerisation
12 24 (7.82%) Migration
13 22 (7.17%) Root Cause Analysis
14 21 (6.84%) Infrastructure as Code
14 21 (6.84%) ITSM
14 21 (6.84%) Security Operations
14 21 (6.84%) Software Engineering
15 20 (6.51%) Change Control
15 20 (6.51%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 91 (29.64%) Python
2 57 (18.57%) PowerShell
3 31 (10.10%) Bash
4 27 (8.79%) SQL
5 25 (8.14%) Java
6 23 (7.49%) JavaScript
7 20 (6.51%) Perl
8 14 (4.56%) C
8 14 (4.56%) C++
8 14 (4.56%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.63%) Go
9 5 (1.63%) Rust
10 4 (1.30%) Embedded C++
11 3 (0.98%) Ada
11 3 (0.98%) Embedded C
11 3 (0.98%) Korn
11 3 (0.98%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.98%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.65%) C#
12 2 (0.65%) Scala
Qualifications
1 197 (64.17%) Security Cleared
2 136 (44.30%) SC Cleared
3 76 (24.76%) DV Cleared
4 48 (15.64%) Degree
5 22 (7.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (5.21%) Cisco Certification
7 14 (4.56%) RHCE
8 10 (3.26%) CCNP
9 8 (2.61%) CISSP
9 8 (2.61%) GIAC
10 7 (2.28%) RHCSA
11 6 (1.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.95%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.95%) CISM
11 6 (1.95%) CRISC
11 6 (1.95%) LFCS
11 6 (1.95%) SANS
12 5 (1.63%) CCSM
12 5 (1.63%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (12.38%) NIST
2 26 (8.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.56%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.91%) SLA
5 9 (2.93%) NCSC
6 8 (2.61%) GDPR
7 6 (1.95%) ISO 31000
8 5 (1.63%) PCI DSS
9 4 (1.30%) GRC
10 3 (0.98%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.98%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.98%) QA
11 1 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.33%) DICOM
11 1 (0.33%) HL7
11 1 (0.33%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 61 (19.87%) Active Directory
2 46 (14.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (7.49%) VMware NSX
4 10 (3.26%) Firmware
5 9 (2.93%) Hyper-V
6 8 (2.61%) Docker
6 8 (2.61%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (2.28%) vSphere
8 6 (1.95%) Embedded Firmware
9 5 (1.63%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.98%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.98%) Postfix
11 3 (0.98%) UAG
12 1 (0.33%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 38 (12.38%) Ansible
2 30 (9.77%) Kubernetes
3 29 (9.45%) Terraform
4 17 (5.54%) Grafana
4 17 (5.54%) Prometheus
5 12 (3.91%) Oracle RMAN
6 9 (2.93%) Red Hat Satellite
7 7 (2.28%) Data Guard
7 7 (2.28%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.95%) Puppet
8 6 (1.95%) Rancher
9 5 (1.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (1.63%) Argo
9 5 (1.63%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 4 (1.30%) Istio
10 4 (1.30%) Nessus
10 4 (1.30%) WSUS
11 3 (0.98%) HAProxy
11 3 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.65%) Podman
Vendors
1 81 (26.38%) VMware
2 59 (19.22%) Microsoft
3 58 (18.89%) Red Hat
4 45 (14.66%) Oracle
5 23 (7.49%) Cisco
5 23 (7.49%) Splunk
6 20 (6.51%) BeyondTrust
7 18 (5.86%) Citrix
8 17 (5.54%) CyberArk
9 14 (4.56%) Palo Alto
10 12 (3.91%) ServiceNow
11 9 (2.93%) NVIDIA
12 6 (1.95%) BT
12 6 (1.95%) CheckPoint
12 6 (1.95%) Ericsson
12 6 (1.95%) Fortinet
12 6 (1.95%) Huawei
12 6 (1.95%) Nokia
12 6 (1.95%) SolarWinds
13 5 (1.63%) IBM