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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 27 21
Rank change year-on-year -6 -6 0
Contract jobs citing Linux 310 202 396
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.37% 6.73% 7.11%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.01% 39.22% 40.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 149 271
10th Percentile £296 £410 £350
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 £598
90th Percentile £650 £675 £638
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -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 £62.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.84% -4.62%

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 738 515 984
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.78% 17.17% 17.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 506 368 652
10th Percentile £204 £205 £200
25th Percentile £351 £334 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -10.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 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% -9.09%
75th Percentile £54.50 £59.44 £62.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £63.25 £70.75
England median hourly rate £42.71 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year +73.18% +12.09% -37.14%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +2 173 £450 -7.69% 69
Berkshire -5 102 £403 -19.50% 30
Hampshire -14 94 £530 -7.83% 51
Buckinghamshire +8 49 £550 +30.80% 14
Surrey -2 30 £208 -58.50% 20
Oxfordshire -5 22 £450 -18.18% 25
Sussex - 4 - -
East Sussex - 4 £459 - 2
West Sussex -20 2 £613 +11.36% 6
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 (5.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.29%) WebSphere
2 4 (1.29%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (0.97%) Apache
3 3 (0.97%) Confluence
3 3 (0.97%) 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 (0.32%) SAS
5 1 (0.32%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 66 (21.29%) AWS
2 59 (19.03%) Azure
3 23 (7.42%) OpenShift
4 21 (6.77%) GitHub
5 16 (5.16%) GitHub Actions
6 15 (4.84%) Microsoft 365
6 15 (4.84%) SaaS
7 11 (3.55%) GCP
8 10 (3.23%) Cloud Computing
9 9 (2.90%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (2.90%) Entra ID
10 8 (2.58%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (2.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.26%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (1.94%) Amazon S3
12 6 (1.94%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (1.94%) Sauce Labs
13 5 (1.61%) IaaS
14 4 (1.29%) Amazon ECS
14 4 (1.29%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.68%) DNS
2 27 (8.71%) Firewall
3 21 (6.77%) TCP/IP
4 16 (5.16%) WAN
5 14 (4.52%) LAN
6 11 (3.55%) SAN
7 10 (3.23%) VSAN
8 9 (2.90%) DHCP
8 9 (2.90%) Wireless
9 7 (2.26%) NAS
9 7 (2.26%) SSH
10 6 (1.94%) Network Security
10 6 (1.94%) Software-Defined Radio
10 6 (1.94%) VPN
11 5 (1.61%) BGP
11 5 (1.61%) Ethernet VPN
11 5 (1.61%) OSPF
11 5 (1.61%) Wireshark
12 3 (0.97%) Cisco Firepower
12 3 (0.97%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.71%) SQL Server
2 23 (7.42%) MySQL
3 20 (6.45%) Relational Database
4 17 (5.48%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (3.55%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.58%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.29%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (1.29%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (1.29%) Redis
8 3 (0.97%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.65%) Electronic Patient Records
9 2 (0.65%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.65%) Oracle Database 11g
9 2 (0.65%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.32%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.32%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.32%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 22 (7.10%) Jenkins
2 14 (4.52%) GitLab
3 13 (4.19%) JIRA
4 12 (3.87%) Git
5 10 (3.23%) Eclipse
6 8 (2.58%) JUnit
7 7 (2.26%) JMeter
7 7 (2.26%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.94%) Android Studio
8 6 (1.94%) Browser DevTools
8 6 (1.94%) Cucumber
8 6 (1.94%) Xcode
9 5 (1.61%) Maven
9 5 (1.61%) Subversion
10 4 (1.29%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.29%) Jaeger
11 2 (0.65%) Burp Suite
11 2 (0.65%) Introscope
11 2 (0.65%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.32%) Metasploit
General
1 55 (17.74%) Social Skills
2 31 (10.00%) Public Sector
3 20 (6.45%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (6.45%) Military
4 15 (4.84%) Documentation Skills
5 13 (4.19%) Finance
6 8 (2.58%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.29%) Financial Institution
8 3 (0.97%) Aerospace
8 3 (0.97%) Law
8 3 (0.97%) Manufacturing
8 3 (0.97%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.65%) Legal
9 2 (0.65%) Retail
10 1 (0.32%) Advertising
10 1 (0.32%) Back Office
10 1 (0.32%) Banking
10 1 (0.32%) Electronics
10 1 (0.32%) Front Office
10 1 (0.32%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 36 (11.61%) Senior
2 35 (11.29%) Linux Engineer
3 31 (10.00%) Architect
4 25 (8.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 22 (7.10%) Analyst
6 20 (6.45%) Technical Support
7 19 (6.13%) Developer
8 18 (5.81%) Software Engineer
9 16 (5.16%) Support Engineer
9 16 (5.16%) Technical Architect
10 15 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
11 13 (4.19%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 12 (3.87%) Administrator
12 12 (3.87%) DBA
12 12 (3.87%) Lead
13 11 (3.55%) Technical Engineer
13 11 (3.55%) Technical Support Engineer
13 11 (3.55%) Tester
14 10 (3.23%) SOC Analyst
15 9 (2.90%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.19%) Kafka
1 13 (4.19%) Middleware
2 11 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
2 11 (3.55%) XML
3 10 (3.23%) YAML
4 8 (2.58%) .NET
4 8 (2.58%) JSON
4 8 (2.58%) Spring
5 7 (2.26%) CSS
5 7 (2.26%) Loki
5 7 (2.26%) React
6 6 (1.94%) Ajax
6 6 (1.94%) AngularJS
6 6 (1.94%) GraphQL
6 6 (1.94%) Hibernate
6 6 (1.94%) Yocto
7 5 (1.61%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.29%) Keycloak
9 3 (0.97%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 3 (0.97%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.71%) Onboarding
2 17 (5.48%) PKI
3 15 (4.84%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.52%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.52%) Public Cloud
5 12 (3.87%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (3.87%) Management Information System
6 11 (3.55%) Security Operations Centre
7 9 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (2.90%) Replication
8 8 (2.58%) Cyberattack
8 8 (2.58%) Security Posture
9 7 (2.26%) Product Ownership
10 6 (1.94%) Device Driver
10 6 (1.94%) Embedded Systems
10 6 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.94%) Mobile App
11 5 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.61%) MicroBlaze
11 5 (1.61%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 152 (49.03%) Windows
2 51 (16.45%) Unix
3 44 (14.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 39 (12.58%) Windows Server
5 14 (4.52%) Ubuntu
6 10 (3.23%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (2.58%) Windows Server 2016
8 6 (1.94%) Android
9 5 (1.61%) Debian
10 4 (1.29%) CentOS
10 4 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.97%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.65%) Kali Linux
12 2 (0.65%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.65%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.32%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.32%) Solaris
13 1 (0.32%) VMS
13 1 (0.32%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (23.55%) CI/CD
2 55 (17.74%) DevOps
3 48 (15.48%) Agile
4 45 (14.52%) SIEM
5 40 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
6 33 (10.65%) Containerisation
7 32 (10.32%) Computer Science
8 31 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 31 (10.00%) ITIL
9 29 (9.35%) Infrastructure as Code
10 27 (8.71%) Cybersecurity
11 25 (8.06%) High Availability
11 25 (8.06%) Incident Response
11 25 (8.06%) Platform Engineering
12 24 (7.74%) Runbook
13 23 (7.42%) Migration
14 22 (7.10%) Software Engineering
15 21 (6.77%) DevSecOps
15 21 (6.77%) Security Operations
16 19 (6.13%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 93 (30.00%) Python
2 55 (17.74%) PowerShell
3 38 (12.26%) Bash
4 30 (9.68%) Java
5 26 (8.39%) SQL
6 24 (7.74%) Perl
7 20 (6.45%) JavaScript
8 13 (4.19%) C
8 13 (4.19%) C++
9 11 (3.55%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.61%) Go
11 4 (1.29%) Embedded C++
11 4 (1.29%) Rust
12 3 (0.97%) Ada
12 3 (0.97%) C#
12 3 (0.97%) Embedded C
12 3 (0.97%) Korn
13 2 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.65%) PHP
13 2 (0.65%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 197 (63.55%) Security Cleared
2 128 (41.29%) SC Cleared
3 76 (24.52%) DV Cleared
4 39 (12.58%) Degree
5 23 (7.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (4.19%) RHCE
7 8 (2.58%) AWS Certification
8 7 (2.26%) CCNP
8 7 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (1.94%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (1.61%) CompTIA CySA+
10 5 (1.61%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (1.61%) RHCSA
11 4 (1.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (1.29%) Azure Certification
11 4 (1.29%) LFCS
11 4 (1.29%) OCP
11 4 (1.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (8.71%) NIST
2 18 (5.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (3.55%) GDPR
4 8 (2.58%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.26%) NCSC
6 6 (1.94%) QA
6 6 (1.94%) SLA
7 5 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.29%) GRC
9 3 (0.97%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.97%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.32%) DICOM
10 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.32%) HL7
10 1 (0.32%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 56 (18.06%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (16.45%) Active Directory
3 17 (5.48%) Docker
4 14 (4.52%) VMware NSX
5 13 (4.19%) Hyper-V
6 10 (3.23%) vSphere
7 9 (2.90%) Firmware
8 7 (2.26%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (1.61%) Embedded Firmware
10 4 (1.29%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.97%) UAG
12 1 (0.32%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.32%) GPFS
12 1 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 54 (17.42%) Ansible
2 45 (14.52%) Kubernetes
3 39 (12.58%) Terraform
4 25 (8.06%) Grafana
5 23 (7.42%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.55%) Red Hat Satellite
7 10 (3.23%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.58%) Progress Chef
8 8 (2.58%) vCenter Server
9 7 (2.26%) Puppet
9 7 (2.26%) Rancher
10 6 (1.94%) Argo
10 6 (1.94%) Data Guard
10 6 (1.94%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 5 (1.61%) WSUS
12 4 (1.29%) Istio
12 4 (1.29%) Nessus
12 4 (1.29%) Sysdig
13 2 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 2 (0.65%) Podman
Vendors
1 82 (26.45%) VMware
2 62 (20.00%) Microsoft
2 62 (20.00%) Red Hat
3 45 (14.52%) Oracle
4 30 (9.68%) Splunk
5 17 (5.48%) BeyondTrust
6 15 (4.84%) CyberArk
7 14 (4.52%) Cisco
8 9 (2.90%) ServiceNow
9 8 (2.58%) MuleSoft
9 8 (2.58%) Palo Alto
10 7 (2.26%) NVIDIA
11 6 (1.94%) HP
12 5 (1.61%) Atlassian
12 5 (1.61%) Citrix
12 5 (1.61%) Dell
12 5 (1.61%) IBM
12 5 (1.61%) Mellanox
12 5 (1.61%) NetApp
12 5 (1.61%) SAP