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 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 31 21
Rank change year-on-year -3 -10 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 335 192 413
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.14% 5.68% 7.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.31% 32.54% 42.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 248 144 272
10th Percentile £319 £380 £328
25th Percentile £414 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.62% -0.81% +0.96%
75th Percentile £595 £600 £608
90th Percentile £643 £605 £638
England median daily rate £520 £537 £539
% change year-on-year -3.17% -0.32% -8.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 6 26
10th Percentile £27.88 £35.96 £26.25
25th Percentile £43.81 £51.42 £47.19
Median hourly rate £52.50 £56.25 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -19.64% +7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £67.47 £60.63 £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year - -1.89% +1.53%

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 811 590 966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.45% 17.45% 17.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 539 400 611
10th Percentile £204 £193 £203
25th Percentile £356 £309 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +3.16% +4.11%
75th Percentile £572 £600 £595
90th Percentile £640 £650 £650
England median daily rate £463 £463 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 51 63
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £16.05
25th Percentile £20.37 £16.95 £17.85
Median hourly rate £33.86 £18.87 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +79.44% -60.27% -13.64%
75th Percentile £53.75 £28.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £62.17 £62.50 £73.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £24.34
% change year-on-year +41.30% -5.51% -42.73%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 +12 191 £500 - 50
Hampshire -12 104 £550 - 70
Berkshire -9 86 £430 -14.00% 21
Buckinghamshire +11 64 £536 +1.50% 6
Oxfordshire +7 41 £525 +44.83% 23
Surrey -17 28 £208 -56.32% 28
West Sussex -18 8 £425 -20.93% 10
East Sussex - 2 £459 - 2
Middlesex - 2 £198 - 2
Isle of Wight - 1 - - 1
Sussex - 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 15 (4.48%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (2.09%) Apache
3 6 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.79%) OpenStack
4 5 (1.49%) nginx
5 4 (1.19%) Confluence
5 4 (1.19%) WebSphere
5 4 (1.19%) WebSphere Application Server
6 3 (0.90%) IIS
6 3 (0.90%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.60%) Appian
7 2 (0.60%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.60%) JBoss
7 2 (0.60%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.60%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.60%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle Service Bus
8 1 (0.30%) SAS
8 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 1 (0.30%) Houdini
2 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.30%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.30%) NUKE
Cloud Services
1 75 (22.39%) Azure
2 71 (21.19%) AWS
3 26 (7.76%) Entra ID
4 18 (5.37%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (3.88%) OpenShift
6 12 (3.58%) SaaS
7 11 (3.28%) GCP
8 9 (2.69%) GitHub
8 9 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.09%) Azure Sentinel
9 7 (2.09%) IaaS
9 7 (2.09%) PaaS
10 6 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 5 (1.49%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.19%) Serverless
13 3 (0.90%) Amazon S3
13 3 (0.90%) Cloudflare
13 3 (0.90%) Sauce Labs
14 2 (0.60%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (9.25%) DNS
2 26 (7.76%) Firewall
3 14 (4.18%) WAN
4 13 (3.88%) VSAN
5 12 (3.58%) LAN
5 12 (3.58%) Network Security
6 11 (3.28%) DHCP
6 11 (3.28%) VPN
7 10 (2.99%) Cisco ASA
7 10 (2.99%) Cisco Firepower
7 10 (2.99%) TCP/IP
8 8 (2.39%) SSH
8 8 (2.39%) SSL
9 7 (2.09%) SAN
9 7 (2.09%) Wireless
9 7 (2.09%) Wireshark
10 6 (1.79%) Cisco Nexus
10 6 (1.79%) IPsec
10 6 (1.79%) LTE
10 6 (1.79%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (9.85%) SQL Server
2 18 (5.37%) MySQL
3 15 (4.48%) Oracle Database
4 11 (3.28%) Relational Database
5 7 (2.09%) DataStage
5 7 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (1.79%) Oracle Database 12c
7 5 (1.49%) Oracle Database 11g
8 4 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.60%) Electronic Patient Records
9 2 (0.60%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.60%) Oracle Database 10g
9 2 (0.60%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.60%) Redis
9 2 (0.60%) Vitess
10 1 (0.30%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.30%) Pentaho
10 1 (0.30%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 19 (5.67%) JIRA
2 18 (5.37%) GitLab
3 13 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.99%) Git
5 7 (2.09%) Eclipse
6 6 (1.79%) MLflow
7 5 (1.49%) Maven
8 4 (1.19%) Jaeger
8 4 (1.19%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.19%) Subversion
9 3 (0.90%) Android Studio
9 3 (0.90%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.90%) Xcode
10 2 (0.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.60%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.60%) Introscope
10 2 (0.60%) JUnit
10 2 (0.60%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.30%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 51 (15.22%) Social Skills
2 36 (10.75%) Public Sector
3 26 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
5 13 (3.88%) Military
6 10 (2.99%) Finance
7 7 (2.09%) Retail
8 6 (1.79%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.49%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.19%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.19%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.60%) Law
11 2 (0.60%) Legal
12 1 (0.30%) Advertising
12 1 (0.30%) Automotive
12 1 (0.30%) Electronics
12 1 (0.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.30%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 47 (14.03%) Linux Engineer
2 44 (13.13%) Senior
3 36 (10.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (6.87%) Developer
5 21 (6.27%) Architect
6 18 (5.37%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 15 (4.48%) Analyst
8 14 (4.18%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (4.18%) Network Engineer
8 14 (4.18%) Platform Engineer
9 13 (3.88%) Support Engineer
9 13 (3.88%) Technical Support
10 12 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
10 12 (3.58%) DBA
10 12 (3.58%) Software Engineer
10 12 (3.58%) Technical Architect
11 11 (3.28%) Citrix Engineer
11 11 (3.28%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (3.28%) Technical Engineer
11 11 (3.28%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (4.18%) Kafka
2 12 (3.58%) YAML
3 8 (2.39%) LDAP
3 8 (2.39%) Middleware
4 7 (2.09%) .NET
4 7 (2.09%) Yocto
5 6 (1.79%) Keycloak
5 6 (1.79%) Loki
6 5 (1.49%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.49%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (1.19%) 802.1X
7 4 (1.19%) CSS
7 4 (1.19%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (1.19%) gRPC
7 4 (1.19%) LAMP
7 4 (1.19%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (1.19%) React
7 4 (1.19%) RESTful
7 4 (1.19%) Web Services
7 4 (1.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (11.04%) Onboarding
2 22 (6.57%) PKI
3 17 (5.07%) Public Cloud
4 15 (4.48%) Data Centre
4 15 (4.48%) Product Ownership
5 14 (4.18%) Management Information System
6 12 (3.58%) Hybrid Cloud
7 10 (2.99%) Operational Technology
8 9 (2.69%) Cloud Native
8 9 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.69%) SCADA
8 9 (2.69%) Security Posture
9 8 (2.39%) Device Driver
9 8 (2.39%) Embedded Systems
10 7 (2.09%) Replication
11 6 (1.79%) Cyber Defence
11 6 (1.79%) MicroBlaze
11 6 (1.79%) RISC-V
11 6 (1.79%) Security Operations Centre
12 5 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 148 (44.18%) Windows
2 71 (21.19%) Unix
3 49 (14.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 37 (11.04%) Windows Server
5 14 (4.18%) Embedded Linux
5 14 (4.18%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.39%) Debian
7 6 (1.79%) CentOS
8 5 (1.49%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (1.19%) Oracle Linux
9 4 (1.19%) Windows 10
9 4 (1.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.90%) Android
10 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.60%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.30%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.30%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.30%) Solaris
12 1 (0.30%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (18.81%) CI/CD
2 52 (15.52%) SIEM
3 44 (13.13%) ITIL
4 42 (12.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 40 (11.94%) Problem-Solving
6 38 (11.34%) DevOps
7 36 (10.75%) Containerisation
8 35 (10.45%) Agile
8 35 (10.45%) Cybersecurity
8 35 (10.45%) Runbook
9 33 (9.85%) Migration
10 31 (9.25%) DevSecOps
11 30 (8.96%) High Availability
12 29 (8.66%) Computer Science
12 29 (8.66%) Infrastructure as Code
12 29 (8.66%) ITSM
13 28 (8.36%) Root Cause Analysis
14 26 (7.76%) Change Control
15 25 (7.46%) Privileged Access Management
15 25 (7.46%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 110 (32.84%) Python
2 70 (20.90%) PowerShell
3 51 (15.22%) Bash
4 27 (8.06%) SQL
5 22 (6.57%) C
6 19 (5.67%) Java
7 16 (4.78%) C++
7 16 (4.78%) JavaScript
8 14 (4.18%) Perl
9 12 (3.58%) Shell Script
10 6 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.79%) Rust
11 5 (1.49%) Embedded C++
11 5 (1.49%) Go
12 4 (1.19%) Embedded C
13 3 (0.90%) Ada
13 3 (0.90%) Korn
13 3 (0.90%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.60%) Scala
14 2 (0.60%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 206 (61.49%) Security Cleared
2 153 (45.67%) SC Cleared
3 73 (21.79%) DV Cleared
4 49 (14.63%) Degree
5 15 (4.48%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (4.18%) RHCE
7 13 (3.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (3.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (2.69%) AWS Certification
9 8 (2.39%) CCNP
10 7 (2.09%) RHCSA
11 6 (1.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (1.79%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.79%) CISM
11 6 (1.79%) CISSP
11 6 (1.79%) CRISC
11 6 (1.79%) GIAC
11 6 (1.79%) LFCS
12 5 (1.49%) CCSE
12 5 (1.49%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (13.43%) NIST
2 33 (9.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.18%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.58%) SLA
5 9 (2.69%) NCSC
6 6 (1.79%) ISO 31000
7 5 (1.49%) GDPR
7 5 (1.49%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.19%) GRC
9 3 (0.90%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.90%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.60%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.30%) DICOM
11 1 (0.30%) HL7
11 1 (0.30%) OpenSCAP
11 1 (0.30%) QA
System Software
1 77 (22.99%) Active Directory
2 50 (14.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (8.06%) Docker
4 26 (7.76%) VMware NSX
5 14 (4.18%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (3.58%) Hyper-V
7 10 (2.99%) Firmware
8 7 (2.09%) Oracle RAC
9 6 (1.79%) Embedded Firmware
10 4 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (1.19%) vSphere
11 3 (0.90%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.90%) Postfix
11 3 (0.90%) UAG
12 2 (0.60%) KVM
13 1 (0.30%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 48 (14.33%) Kubernetes
2 46 (13.73%) Ansible
3 38 (11.34%) Terraform
4 18 (5.37%) Grafana
4 18 (5.37%) Prometheus
5 13 (3.88%) Puppet
6 12 (3.58%) Red Hat Satellite
7 11 (3.28%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.39%) vCenter Server
9 7 (2.09%) Progress Chef
9 7 (2.09%) Rancher
10 6 (1.79%) Data Guard
11 5 (1.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (1.19%) Istio
12 4 (1.19%) Podman
12 4 (1.19%) WSUS
13 3 (0.90%) Argo
13 3 (0.90%) HAProxy
13 3 (0.90%) SCOM
13 3 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 84 (25.07%) VMware
2 59 (17.61%) Microsoft
3 50 (14.93%) Red Hat
4 49 (14.63%) Oracle
5 26 (7.76%) BeyondTrust
6 25 (7.46%) Cisco
6 25 (7.46%) CyberArk
7 18 (5.37%) Citrix
8 17 (5.07%) ServiceNow
8 17 (5.07%) Splunk
9 15 (4.48%) Palo Alto
10 12 (3.58%) IBM
11 10 (2.99%) NVIDIA
11 10 (2.99%) SolarWinds
12 7 (2.09%) Google
12 7 (2.09%) Nokia
13 6 (1.79%) BT
13 6 (1.79%) CheckPoint
13 6 (1.79%) Ericsson
13 6 (1.79%) Huawei