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

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 35 21
Rank change year-on-year 0 -14 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 344 191 403
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.24% 5.58% 7.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.80% 32.15% 42.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 254 144 265
10th Percentile £330 £368 £350
25th Percentile £414 £450 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.34% -1.76% +2.44%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £644 - £638
England median daily rate £520 £537 £540
% change year-on-year -3.17% -0.56% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 6 25
10th Percentile £29.47 £35.96 £29.75
25th Percentile £43.81 £51.42 £50.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £56.25 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -19.64% +12.00%
75th Percentile £62.33 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £67.47 £60.63 £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +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 823 594 956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.53% 17.35% 17.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 403 607
10th Percentile £204 £193 £204
25th Percentile £357 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +3.16% +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £595
90th Percentile £638 £650 £654
England median daily rate £463 £463 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 52 59
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £16.20
25th Percentile £20.46 £16.95 £18.00
Median hourly rate £35.22 £18.87 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +86.65% -60.27% -13.64%
75th Percentile £53.75 £28.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £64.55 £62.13 £74.00
England median hourly rate £31.75 £23.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +38.04% -8.00% -41.18%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +9 194 £518 +3.50% 39
Hampshire -10 107 £550 - 60
Berkshire -10 84 £434 -13.30% 16
Buckinghamshire +16 68 £536 +1.50% 6
Oxfordshire +12 42 £525 +44.83% 17
Surrey -12 30 £210 -55.79% 26
West Sussex -18 8 £425 -20.93% 6
Middlesex - 3 £198 - 2
East Sussex - 2 £459 - 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 (4.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (2.33%) Apache
3 6 (1.74%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.74%) nginx
3 6 (1.74%) OpenStack
4 5 (1.45%) Confluence
5 4 (1.16%) WebSphere
5 4 (1.16%) WebSphere Application Server
6 3 (0.87%) IIS
6 3 (0.87%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.58%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.58%) JBoss
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.58%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.29%) Appian
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Service Bus
8 1 (0.29%) SAS
8 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (0.58%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.58%) Houdini
2 2 (0.58%) NUKE
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 84 (24.42%) Azure
2 73 (21.22%) AWS
3 31 (9.01%) Entra ID
4 19 (5.52%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (3.78%) OpenShift
6 12 (3.49%) Azure Sentinel
6 12 (3.49%) SaaS
7 11 (3.20%) GCP
8 9 (2.62%) GitHub
8 9 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.03%) Azure Monitor
9 7 (2.03%) IaaS
9 7 (2.03%) PaaS
10 6 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 5 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (1.45%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.16%) Serverless
13 3 (0.87%) Amazon S3
13 3 (0.87%) Cloudflare
13 3 (0.87%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 37 (10.76%) DNS
2 32 (9.30%) Firewall
3 18 (5.23%) DHCP
4 17 (4.94%) VPN
5 14 (4.07%) Network Security
5 14 (4.07%) TCP/IP
5 14 (4.07%) WAN
6 13 (3.78%) VSAN
7 12 (3.49%) LAN
7 12 (3.49%) SSH
8 10 (2.91%) Cisco ASA
8 10 (2.91%) Cisco Firepower
9 9 (2.62%) SSL
10 8 (2.33%) SAN
11 7 (2.03%) Wireless
11 7 (2.03%) Wireshark
12 6 (1.74%) Cisco Nexus
12 6 (1.74%) Radio Access Network
12 6 (1.74%) Software-Defined Radio
12 6 (1.74%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (9.30%) SQL Server
2 16 (4.65%) MySQL
2 16 (4.65%) Oracle Database
3 9 (2.62%) Relational Database
4 7 (2.03%) DataStage
4 7 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.74%) Oracle Database 12c
6 5 (1.45%) Oracle Database 11g
7 4 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.58%) Electronic Patient Records
8 2 (0.58%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.58%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.58%) Redis
8 2 (0.58%) Vitess
9 1 (0.29%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.29%) Pentaho
9 1 (0.29%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.29%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 20 (5.81%) JIRA
2 18 (5.23%) GitLab
3 13 (3.78%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.91%) Git
5 7 (2.03%) Eclipse
6 6 (1.74%) MLflow
7 5 (1.45%) Maven
8 4 (1.16%) Jaeger
8 4 (1.16%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.16%) Subversion
9 3 (0.87%) Android Studio
9 3 (0.87%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.87%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.87%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.87%) Xcode
10 2 (0.58%) Introscope
10 2 (0.58%) JUnit
10 2 (0.58%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.29%) Mockito
11 1 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 51 (14.83%) Social Skills
2 37 (10.76%) Public Sector
3 25 (7.27%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
5 15 (4.36%) Military
6 10 (2.91%) Finance
7 7 (2.03%) Retail
8 6 (1.74%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.16%) Aerospace
9 4 (1.16%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.16%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.58%) Law
10 2 (0.58%) Legal
11 1 (0.29%) Advertising
11 1 (0.29%) Automotive
11 1 (0.29%) Electronics
11 1 (0.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.29%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 50 (14.53%) Linux Engineer
2 47 (13.66%) Senior
3 41 (11.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (6.69%) Architect
4 23 (6.69%) Developer
5 22 (6.40%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 18 (5.23%) Platform Engineer
7 15 (4.36%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (4.07%) Network Engineer
9 13 (3.78%) Analyst
9 13 (3.78%) Support Engineer
10 12 (3.49%) Cloud Engineer
10 12 (3.49%) DBA
10 12 (3.49%) Software Engineer
10 12 (3.49%) Technical Architect
10 12 (3.49%) Technical Support
11 11 (3.20%) Citrix Engineer
11 11 (3.20%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (3.20%) Technical Engineer
11 11 (3.20%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (4.07%) Kafka
2 12 (3.49%) YAML
3 8 (2.33%) LDAP
3 8 (2.33%) Middleware
4 7 (2.03%) Yocto
5 6 (1.74%) .NET
5 6 (1.74%) ARM Templates
5 6 (1.74%) Keycloak
5 6 (1.74%) Loki
6 5 (1.45%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.45%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (1.16%) 802.1X
7 4 (1.16%) CSS
7 4 (1.16%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (1.16%) gRPC
7 4 (1.16%) LAMP
7 4 (1.16%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (1.16%) React
7 4 (1.16%) Web Services
7 4 (1.16%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 42 (12.21%) Onboarding
2 22 (6.40%) PKI
3 18 (5.23%) Hybrid Cloud
3 18 (5.23%) Public Cloud
4 17 (4.94%) Management Information System
5 15 (4.36%) Data Centre
5 15 (4.36%) Product Ownership
6 10 (2.91%) Operational Technology
7 9 (2.62%) Cloud Native
7 9 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (2.62%) SCADA
7 9 (2.62%) Security Posture
8 8 (2.33%) Device Driver
8 8 (2.33%) Embedded Systems
9 7 (2.03%) Replication
10 6 (1.74%) Cyber Defence
10 6 (1.74%) MicroBlaze
10 6 (1.74%) RISC-V
11 5 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
11 5 (1.45%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 154 (44.77%) Windows
2 70 (20.35%) Unix
3 50 (14.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 44 (12.79%) Windows Server
5 15 (4.36%) Embedded Linux
5 15 (4.36%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.33%) Debian
7 7 (2.03%) CentOS
8 6 (1.74%) Windows 10
9 5 (1.45%) Oracle Linux
9 5 (1.45%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (1.16%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.87%) Android
11 3 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.58%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.58%) Solaris
12 2 (0.58%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.29%) AIX
13 1 (0.29%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (19.19%) CI/CD
2 50 (14.53%) SIEM
3 48 (13.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 47 (13.66%) ITIL
5 41 (11.92%) DevOps
6 39 (11.34%) Problem-Solving
7 37 (10.76%) Cybersecurity
8 36 (10.47%) Containerisation
9 35 (10.17%) Agile
9 35 (10.17%) Runbook
10 34 (9.88%) Migration
11 32 (9.30%) Infrastructure as Code
12 31 (9.01%) DevSecOps
13 30 (8.72%) High Availability
13 30 (8.72%) ITSM
14 29 (8.43%) Computer Science
14 29 (8.43%) Platform Engineering
15 28 (8.14%) Root Cause Analysis
16 26 (7.56%) Change Control
17 25 (7.27%) Privileged Access Management
Programming Languages
1 110 (31.98%) Python
2 78 (22.67%) PowerShell
3 57 (16.57%) Bash
4 26 (7.56%) SQL
5 22 (6.40%) C
6 18 (5.23%) Java
7 16 (4.65%) C++
8 15 (4.36%) JavaScript
9 13 (3.78%) Perl
9 13 (3.78%) Shell Script
10 6 (1.74%) Bicep
10 6 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.74%) Rust
11 5 (1.45%) Embedded C++
11 5 (1.45%) Go
12 4 (1.16%) Embedded C
13 3 (0.87%) Ada
13 3 (0.87%) Korn
13 3 (0.87%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.58%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 214 (62.21%) Security Cleared
2 154 (44.77%) SC Cleared
3 79 (22.97%) DV Cleared
4 49 (14.24%) Degree
5 15 (4.36%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (4.07%) RHCE
7 13 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
8 11 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
9 9 (2.62%) AWS Certification
10 8 (2.33%) CCNP
11 7 (2.03%) RHCSA
12 6 (1.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 6 (1.74%) CESG Certified Professional
12 6 (1.74%) CISM
12 6 (1.74%) CISSP
12 6 (1.74%) CRISC
12 6 (1.74%) GIAC
12 6 (1.74%) LFCS
13 5 (1.45%) CCSE
13 5 (1.45%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (13.08%) NIST
2 33 (9.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.07%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.49%) SLA
5 9 (2.62%) NCSC
6 6 (1.74%) ISO 31000
7 5 (1.45%) GDPR
7 5 (1.45%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.16%) GRC
9 3 (0.87%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.87%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.29%) DICOM
11 1 (0.29%) HL7
11 1 (0.29%) OpenSCAP
11 1 (0.29%) QA
System Software
1 85 (24.71%) Active Directory
2 51 (14.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (7.85%) Docker
4 26 (7.56%) VMware NSX
5 15 (4.36%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (3.49%) Hyper-V
7 10 (2.91%) Firmware
8 7 (2.03%) Oracle RAC
9 6 (1.74%) Embedded Firmware
10 5 (1.45%) vSphere
11 4 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.87%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.87%) KVM
12 3 (0.87%) Postfix
12 3 (0.87%) UAG
13 1 (0.29%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 50 (14.53%) Ansible
2 49 (14.24%) Kubernetes
3 45 (13.08%) Terraform
4 18 (5.23%) Grafana
4 18 (5.23%) Prometheus
5 13 (3.78%) Puppet
6 12 (3.49%) Red Hat Satellite
7 11 (3.20%) Oracle RMAN
8 9 (2.62%) vCenter Server
9 7 (2.03%) Progress Chef
9 7 (2.03%) Rancher
10 6 (1.74%) Data Guard
10 6 (1.74%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (1.74%) SCCM
11 5 (1.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (1.16%) Istio
12 4 (1.16%) Packer
12 4 (1.16%) Podman
12 4 (1.16%) WSUS
13 3 (0.87%) SCOM
Vendors
1 86 (25.00%) VMware
2 67 (19.48%) Microsoft
3 50 (14.53%) Red Hat
4 49 (14.24%) Oracle
5 26 (7.56%) BeyondTrust
6 25 (7.27%) Cisco
6 25 (7.27%) CyberArk
7 18 (5.23%) Citrix
7 18 (5.23%) ServiceNow
8 15 (4.36%) Palo Alto
8 15 (4.36%) Splunk
9 12 (3.49%) IBM
10 10 (2.91%) NVIDIA
10 10 (2.91%) SolarWinds
11 7 (2.03%) Google
11 7 (2.03%) Nokia
12 6 (1.74%) BT
12 6 (1.74%) CheckPoint
12 6 (1.74%) Ericsson
12 6 (1.74%) Huawei