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 24 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 26 31 21
Rank change year-on-year +5 -10 +9
Contract jobs citing Linux 308 242 376
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.99% 6.55% 7.58%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.68% 37.46% 38.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 157 251
10th Percentile £204 £298 £306
25th Percentile £360 £420 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £538 £613 £608
90th Percentile £626 £675 £675
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -5.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 13 34
10th Percentile - £55.60 £41.38
25th Percentile £12.50 £61.25 £55.00
Median hourly rate £16.00 £62.50 £65.75
Median % change year-on-year -74.40% -4.94% +24.64%
75th Percentile £48.75 £67.02 £71.42
90th Percentile £76.05 £71.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £63.75 £66.50 £62.17
% change year-on-year -4.14% +6.96% -4.35%

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 739 646 983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 16.76% 17.48% 19.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 521 447 656
10th Percentile £190 £200 £160
25th Percentile £250 £278 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £438 £400
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% +9.38% -16.67%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £566
90th Percentile £638 £658 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 25 74
10th Percentile £12.50 £26.20 £19.04
25th Percentile £15.62 £38.00 £27.13
Median hourly rate £20.79 £57.25 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -63.69% +4.09% +195.30%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.75 £69.66
90th Percentile £80.20 £70.75 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £55.33 £32.50
% change year-on-year -54.54% +70.23% +30.00%

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 24 December 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 24 December 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 24 December 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 +18 140 £453 -7.08% 123
Berkshire +18 120 £425 -11.46% 76
Hampshire -5 93 £500 -13.04% 67
Surrey +5 53 £208 -57.65% 32
Buckinghamshire +8 14 £600 +9.09% 26
Sussex - 9 - - 1
West Sussex -7 6 £513 -29.31% 11
Oxfordshire -12 6 £388 -22.50% 21
Middlesex - 5 - - 1
East Sussex - 3 - - 11
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 7 (2.27%) Mattermost
1 7 (2.27%) Skype for Business
2 4 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.65%) Apache
3 2 (0.65%) JBoss
4 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.32%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.32%) Confluence
4 1 (0.32%) Gunicorn
4 1 (0.32%) nginx
4 1 (0.32%) SharePoint
Applications
1 22 (7.14%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (2.27%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.32%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 84 (27.27%) AWS
2 59 (19.16%) Azure
3 34 (11.04%) OpenShift
4 28 (9.09%) GitHub
5 24 (7.79%) SaaS
6 21 (6.82%) Sauce Labs
7 20 (6.49%) GCP
8 14 (4.55%) AWS CloudFormation
8 14 (4.55%) Cloud Computing
8 14 (4.55%) Google Workspace
9 13 (4.22%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (4.22%) IaaS
10 8 (2.60%) Amazon ECR
10 8 (2.60%) OCI
10 8 (2.60%) Serverless
11 7 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (2.27%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (1.95%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (1.95%) Amazon S3
13 5 (1.62%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 37 (12.01%) DNS
2 30 (9.74%) TCP/IP
3 23 (7.47%) Firewall
4 20 (6.49%) DHCP
4 20 (6.49%) Wireless
5 16 (5.19%) SAN
6 13 (4.22%) VLAN
7 8 (2.60%) Network Security
8 7 (2.27%) Skype
8 7 (2.27%) Wireshark
9 6 (1.95%) LAN
9 6 (1.95%) WAN
10 5 (1.62%) NAS
11 4 (1.30%) NFC
11 4 (1.30%) PPP
12 3 (0.97%) HTTP
12 3 (0.97%) SSL
13 2 (0.65%) Internet
13 2 (0.65%) VoIP
13 2 (0.65%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (11.04%) Relational Database
2 33 (10.71%) MySQL
3 19 (6.17%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (3.90%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (3.57%) NoSQL
5 11 (3.57%) SQL Server
6 10 (3.25%) Oracle Database
7 6 (1.95%) Amazon Redshift
7 6 (1.95%) Couchbase
8 5 (1.62%) Redis
9 4 (1.30%) Oracle Exadata
10 3 (0.97%) Oracle Reports
10 3 (0.97%) RDBMS
10 3 (0.97%) SAP HANA
11 2 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.32%) Big Data
12 1 (0.32%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.32%) Oracle Database 12c
12 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 39 (12.66%) Jenkins
2 25 (8.12%) Eclipse
3 22 (7.14%) Browser DevTools
4 21 (6.82%) Android Studio
4 21 (6.82%) Xcode
5 20 (6.49%) Git
6 14 (4.55%) GitLab
7 10 (3.25%) JIRA
7 10 (3.25%) JMeter
8 9 (2.92%) Burp Suite
8 9 (2.92%) Cucumber
8 9 (2.92%) JUnit
8 9 (2.92%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (2.27%) Artifactory
9 7 (2.27%) Metasploit
10 4 (1.30%) Valgrind
11 2 (0.65%) Subversion
11 2 (0.65%) Visual Studio
12 1 (0.32%) LoadRunner
12 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 109 (35.39%) Social Skills
2 30 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (6.82%) Finance
3 21 (6.82%) Public Sector
4 13 (4.22%) Military
4 13 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
5 8 (2.60%) Legal
6 5 (1.62%) Banking
7 4 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.97%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.65%) Back Office
9 2 (0.65%) Front Office
9 2 (0.65%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.32%) Electronics
10 1 (0.32%) French Language
10 1 (0.32%) German Language
10 1 (0.32%) Law
10 1 (0.32%) Retail
Job Titles
1 46 (14.94%) Support Engineer
2 36 (11.69%) Technical Support
3 31 (10.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 29 (9.42%) Analyst
5 27 (8.77%) Architect
6 26 (8.44%) Senior
7 24 (7.79%) Technical Engineer
7 24 (7.79%) Technical Support Engineer
8 23 (7.47%) DevOps Engineer
9 22 (7.14%) UX Engineer
10 19 (6.17%) Infrastructure Support
10 19 (6.17%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
11 18 (5.84%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
12 16 (5.19%) Software Engineer
13 15 (4.87%) SOC Analyst
14 14 (4.55%) Developer
14 14 (4.55%) IT Support
15 13 (4.22%) Tester
16 12 (3.90%) Administrator
16 12 (3.90%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (7.14%) Ajax
1 22 (7.14%) AngularJS
1 22 (7.14%) CSS
1 22 (7.14%) GraphQL
1 22 (7.14%) Kafka
1 22 (7.14%) React
2 16 (5.19%) Elastic Stack
3 11 (3.57%) XML
4 10 (3.25%) JSON
4 10 (3.25%) Loki
5 9 (2.92%) Spring
5 9 (2.92%) YAML
6 8 (2.60%) Hibernate
6 8 (2.60%) REST
7 6 (1.95%) Middleware
8 5 (1.62%) Web Services
9 4 (1.30%) Keycloak
9 4 (1.30%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 3 (0.97%) Swagger
11 2 (0.65%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.14%) Mobile App
2 20 (6.49%) Cloud Native
3 16 (5.19%) PKI
4 14 (4.55%) Analytical Mindset
4 14 (4.55%) Replication
5 13 (4.22%) Enterprise Software
5 13 (4.22%) Security Operations Centre
6 10 (3.25%) Management Information System
7 8 (2.60%) Virtual Team
8 7 (2.27%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (2.27%) Enterprise Storage
9 6 (1.95%) Onboarding
9 6 (1.95%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.62%) CAN bus
10 5 (1.62%) Data Centre
11 4 (1.30%) Cyberattack
11 4 (1.30%) Linux Command Line
11 4 (1.30%) Smartcard
12 3 (0.97%) Clustering
12 3 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 151 (49.03%) Windows
2 57 (18.51%) Unix
3 49 (15.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 21 (6.82%) Android
5 14 (4.55%) Ubuntu
6 13 (4.22%) Windows Server
7 9 (2.92%) Kali Linux
7 9 (2.92%) Windows Server 2016
7 9 (2.92%) Windows Server 2019
8 5 (1.62%) CentOS
8 5 (1.62%) Mac OS
9 4 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.97%) Debian
11 2 (0.65%) SUSE
11 2 (0.65%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.32%) Solaris
12 1 (0.32%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (27.92%) CI/CD
2 68 (22.08%) DevOps
3 54 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
4 51 (16.56%) Agile
5 50 (16.23%) ITIL
6 39 (12.66%) Containerisation
6 39 (12.66%) Infrastructure as Code
6 39 (12.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 33 (10.71%) OO
8 26 (8.44%) Continuous Improvement
8 26 (8.44%) Incident Response
8 26 (8.44%) SIEM
8 26 (8.44%) User Experience
9 25 (8.12%) Observability
10 24 (7.79%) Cybersecurity
11 23 (7.47%) Performance Tuning
11 23 (7.47%) Platform Engineering
12 22 (7.14%) DevSecOps
12 22 (7.14%) High Availability
12 22 (7.14%) Mobile Application Development
Programming Languages
1 120 (38.96%) Python
2 56 (18.18%) Java
3 53 (17.21%) Bash
3 53 (17.21%) PowerShell
4 43 (13.96%) SQL
5 41 (13.31%) JavaScript
6 39 (12.66%) Perl
7 22 (7.14%) Shell Script
8 14 (4.55%) C#
9 12 (3.90%) C++
10 5 (1.62%) Embedded C++
10 5 (1.62%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.30%) C
11 4 (1.30%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (0.97%) Go
13 2 (0.65%) Ada
13 2 (0.65%) Assembly Language
13 2 (0.65%) MATLAB
14 1 (0.32%) Delphi
14 1 (0.32%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 152 (49.35%) Security Cleared
2 92 (29.87%) SC Cleared
3 57 (18.51%) DV Cleared
4 24 (7.79%) Degree
5 19 (6.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (4.55%) Azure Certification
6 14 (4.55%) CISSP
7 12 (3.90%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (3.57%) GCFA
8 11 (3.57%) GCIH
8 11 (3.57%) Network+ Certification
8 11 (3.57%) Server+ Certification
9 9 (2.92%) CEH
9 9 (2.92%) GCIA
10 8 (2.60%) CFCE
10 8 (2.60%) OSCP
11 7 (2.27%) AWS Certification
11 7 (2.27%) GIAC
11 7 (2.27%) GPEN
11 7 (2.27%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.19%) NIST
2 13 (4.22%) GDPR
3 11 (3.57%) QA
4 10 (3.25%) HIPAA
4 10 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (1.30%) SOC 2
6 2 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.32%) Def Stans
7 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 1 (0.32%) SLA
System Software
1 57 (18.51%) VMware Infrastructure
2 34 (11.04%) Docker
3 22 (7.14%) Active Directory
4 19 (6.17%) vSphere
5 17 (5.52%) Hyper-V
6 12 (3.90%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (2.60%) VMware NSX
8 4 (1.30%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (1.30%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.65%) KVM
10 1 (0.32%) Firmware
10 1 (0.32%) GPFS
10 1 (0.32%) NDS
10 1 (0.32%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 1 (0.32%) NFS
Systems Management
1 73 (23.70%) Ansible
2 62 (20.13%) Kubernetes
3 56 (18.18%) Terraform
4 27 (8.77%) Grafana
5 25 (8.12%) Prometheus
6 18 (5.84%) Argo
7 14 (4.55%) Red Hat Satellite
8 13 (4.22%) Progress Chef
9 9 (2.92%) Nmap
9 9 (2.92%) Puppet
9 9 (2.92%) SCOM
10 8 (2.60%) Kustomize
10 8 (2.60%) vCenter Server
11 7 (2.27%) Data Guard
11 7 (2.27%) HP SiteScope
11 7 (2.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 7 (2.27%) Oracle RMAN
11 7 (2.27%) Sysdig
12 6 (1.95%) NetBackup
12 6 (1.95%) Podman
Vendors
1 90 (29.22%) Microsoft
2 84 (27.27%) VMware
3 70 (22.73%) Red Hat
4 56 (18.18%) Splunk
5 46 (14.94%) Oracle
6 22 (7.14%) ServiceNow
7 11 (3.57%) NetApp
8 10 (3.25%) CrowdStrike
8 10 (3.25%) HP
9 9 (2.92%) Cisco
10 8 (2.60%) ArcSight
10 8 (2.60%) Veritas
11 7 (2.27%) 3PAR
11 7 (2.27%) IBM
11 7 (2.27%) LogRhythm
11 7 (2.27%) Remedy
12 6 (1.95%) Confluent
12 6 (1.95%) Nimble Storage
12 6 (1.95%) Pure Storage
13 5 (1.62%) Dell