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 5 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 28 20
Rank change year-on-year -4 -8 +1
Contract jobs citing Linux 319 202 391
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.44% 6.73% 7.08%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.65% 39.38% 40.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 151 269
10th Percentile £219 £413 £354
25th Percentile £401 £463 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £528
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.17% -3.12%
75th Percentile £598 £600 £600
90th Percentile £651 £675 £638
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 13 23
10th Percentile £15.56 £46.21 £32.00
25th Percentile £43.81 £52.50 £48.13
Median hourly rate £47.54 £57.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.68% -7.60% -3.85%
75th Percentile £53.75 £62.50 £69.38
90th Percentile £67.40 £64.75 £74.00
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.24% +4.40% -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 748 513 976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.76% 17.09% 17.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 511 368 648
10th Percentile £204 £204 £200
25th Percentile £350 £339 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £455
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +9.89% -4.21%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £465
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 35 58
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £15.96
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.95 £17.69
Median hourly rate £47.52 £28.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.71% -41.05% -12.44%
75th Percentile £54.75 £59.44 £62.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £63.25 £71.13
England median hourly rate £47.50 £24.09 £22.00
% change year-on-year +97.18% +9.50% -41.33%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 +3 183 £450 -7.17% 72
Berkshire -6 101 £403 -18.48% 29
Hampshire -13 91 £538 -6.52% 66
Buckinghamshire +9 53 £536 +27.56% 14
Surrey +2 34 £208 -58.50% 28
Oxfordshire -1 29 £450 -18.18% 29
East Sussex - 4 £459 - 1
Sussex - 3 - -
West Sussex -23 1 £700 +27.27% 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 (5.02%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.25%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.25%) WebSphere
2 4 (1.25%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (0.94%) Apache
3 3 (0.94%) Confluence
4 2 (0.63%) Appian
4 2 (0.63%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (0.63%) JBoss
4 2 (0.63%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (0.63%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.31%) SAS
5 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 66 (20.69%) Azure
2 65 (20.38%) AWS
3 21 (6.58%) Microsoft 365
3 21 (6.58%) OpenShift
4 19 (5.96%) GitHub
5 17 (5.33%) SaaS
6 16 (5.02%) Entra ID
6 16 (5.02%) GitHub Actions
7 12 (3.76%) Amazon EKS
8 11 (3.45%) GCP
9 10 (3.13%) IaaS
10 9 (2.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (2.51%) Cloud Computing
11 8 (2.51%) PaaS
12 7 (2.19%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (1.88%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (1.88%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.88%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (1.88%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 29 (9.09%) DNS
2 24 (7.52%) Firewall
3 21 (6.58%) TCP/IP
4 16 (5.02%) WAN
5 14 (4.39%) LAN
6 11 (3.45%) VSAN
7 9 (2.82%) SAN
7 9 (2.82%) Wireless
8 8 (2.51%) DHCP
9 7 (2.19%) Software-Defined Radio
9 7 (2.19%) SSH
10 6 (1.88%) Network Security
10 6 (1.88%) VPN
10 6 (1.88%) Wireshark
11 5 (1.57%) BGP
11 5 (1.57%) Ethernet VPN
11 5 (1.57%) NAS
11 5 (1.57%) OSPF
12 4 (1.25%) 5G
12 4 (1.25%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.78%) SQL Server
2 24 (7.52%) MySQL
3 21 (6.58%) Relational Database
4 15 (4.70%) PostgreSQL
5 12 (3.76%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.25%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (1.25%) Redis
8 2 (0.63%) Electronic Patient Records
8 2 (0.63%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.63%) Oracle Database 11g
8 2 (0.63%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.31%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (0.31%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.31%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.31%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 20 (6.27%) Jenkins
2 13 (4.08%) JIRA
3 12 (3.76%) Git
3 12 (3.76%) GitLab
4 10 (3.13%) Eclipse
5 6 (1.88%) Android Studio
5 6 (1.88%) Browser DevTools
5 6 (1.88%) JUnit
5 6 (1.88%) Xcode
6 5 (1.57%) Maven
6 5 (1.57%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (1.25%) Cucumber
7 4 (1.25%) Jaeger
7 4 (1.25%) JMeter
7 4 (1.25%) Subversion
8 2 (0.63%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.63%) Burp Suite
8 2 (0.63%) Introscope
8 2 (0.63%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.31%) Bitbucket
General
1 55 (17.24%) Social Skills
2 31 (9.72%) Public Sector
3 21 (6.58%) Military
4 19 (5.96%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (5.02%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (3.76%) Finance
7 7 (2.19%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.25%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.25%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.94%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.94%) Law
9 3 (0.94%) Retail
9 3 (0.94%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.31%) Advertising
10 1 (0.31%) Back Office
10 1 (0.31%) Banking
10 1 (0.31%) Electronics
10 1 (0.31%) Front Office
10 1 (0.31%) Legal
10 1 (0.31%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 36 (11.29%) Senior
2 35 (10.97%) Linux Engineer
3 29 (9.09%) Architect
4 25 (7.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 22 (6.90%) Technical Support
6 21 (6.58%) Analyst
7 19 (5.96%) Software Engineer
7 19 (5.96%) Support Engineer
8 18 (5.64%) DevOps Engineer
9 17 (5.33%) Developer
10 16 (5.02%) Technical Architect
11 13 (4.08%) DBA
11 13 (4.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 13 (4.08%) Technical Engineer
11 13 (4.08%) Technical Support Engineer
12 12 (3.76%) Administrator
12 12 (3.76%) Lead
13 11 (3.45%) Tester
14 10 (3.13%) Network Engineer
14 10 (3.13%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.08%) Middleware
2 11 (3.45%) Kafka
2 11 (3.45%) XML
3 10 (3.13%) YAML
4 9 (2.82%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (2.51%) .NET
5 8 (2.51%) GraphQL
5 8 (2.51%) JSON
5 8 (2.51%) Loki
6 7 (2.19%) CSS
6 7 (2.19%) React
6 7 (2.19%) Yocto
7 6 (1.88%) Ajax
7 6 (1.88%) AngularJS
7 6 (1.88%) Spring
8 5 (1.57%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (1.25%) Hibernate
9 4 (1.25%) Keycloak
10 3 (0.94%) REST
10 3 (0.94%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 29 (9.09%) Onboarding
2 17 (5.33%) PKI
3 16 (5.02%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.39%) Public Cloud
5 13 (4.08%) Cloud Native
6 12 (3.76%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (3.76%) Management Information System
7 10 (3.13%) Security Operations Centre
8 9 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.51%) Cyberattack
9 8 (2.51%) Operational Technology
9 8 (2.51%) Security Posture
10 7 (2.19%) Device Driver
10 7 (2.19%) Embedded Systems
10 7 (2.19%) Product Ownership
10 7 (2.19%) Replication
11 6 (1.88%) Cyber Defence
11 6 (1.88%) MicroBlaze
11 6 (1.88%) Mobile App
11 6 (1.88%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 157 (49.22%) Windows
2 61 (19.12%) Unix
3 43 (13.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 39 (12.23%) Windows Server
5 14 (4.39%) Ubuntu
6 11 (3.45%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (2.51%) Windows Server 2016
8 6 (1.88%) Android
9 5 (1.57%) Debian
10 4 (1.25%) CentOS
10 4 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.63%) Kali Linux
11 2 (0.63%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.63%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.31%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.31%) VMS
12 1 (0.31%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (23.82%) CI/CD
2 57 (17.87%) DevOps
3 52 (16.30%) SIEM
4 50 (15.67%) Agile
5 42 (13.17%) Problem-Solving
6 35 (10.97%) Containerisation
7 34 (10.66%) Computer Science
8 33 (10.34%) Cybersecurity
8 33 (10.34%) ITIL
9 32 (10.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 30 (9.40%) Infrastructure as Code
11 27 (8.46%) Platform Engineering
12 26 (8.15%) High Availability
12 26 (8.15%) Software Engineering
13 25 (7.84%) Runbook
14 23 (7.21%) Incident Response
14 23 (7.21%) Migration
15 22 (6.90%) Root Cause Analysis
16 21 (6.58%) DevSecOps
16 21 (6.58%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 96 (30.09%) Python
2 57 (17.87%) PowerShell
3 38 (11.91%) Bash
4 32 (10.03%) Java
5 29 (9.09%) SQL
6 25 (7.84%) JavaScript
7 24 (7.52%) Perl
8 14 (4.39%) C
8 14 (4.39%) C++
9 13 (4.08%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.57%) Go
11 4 (1.25%) Embedded C++
11 4 (1.25%) Rust
12 3 (0.94%) Ada
12 3 (0.94%) C#
12 3 (0.94%) Embedded C
12 3 (0.94%) Korn
12 3 (0.94%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.94%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 202 (63.32%) Security Cleared
2 134 (42.01%) SC Cleared
3 77 (24.14%) DV Cleared
4 46 (14.42%) Degree
5 25 (7.84%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (4.39%) RHCE
7 13 (4.08%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (2.51%) AWS Certification
8 8 (2.51%) CCNP
9 7 (2.19%) CISSP
9 7 (2.19%) GIAC
10 6 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (1.88%) ISTQB
10 6 (1.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (1.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (1.57%) CESG Certified Professional
11 5 (1.57%) CompTIA CySA+
11 5 (1.57%) CompTIA Security+
11 5 (1.57%) RHCSA
11 5 (1.57%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (10.34%) NIST
2 24 (7.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.39%) Cyber Essentials
4 9 (2.82%) GDPR
4 9 (2.82%) NCSC
5 8 (2.51%) SLA
6 5 (1.57%) ISO 31000
6 5 (1.57%) PCI DSS
7 4 (1.25%) GRC
7 4 (1.25%) QA
8 3 (0.94%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.94%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.31%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.31%) DICOM
9 1 (0.31%) HL7
9 1 (0.31%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 56 (17.55%) Active Directory
2 55 (17.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (5.64%) Docker
4 14 (4.39%) VMware NSX
5 13 (4.08%) Hyper-V
6 10 (3.13%) Firmware
7 8 (2.51%) vSphere
8 7 (2.19%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (1.88%) Embedded Firmware
10 5 (1.57%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.94%) UAG
13 1 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.31%) GPFS
13 1 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 52 (16.30%) Ansible
2 44 (13.79%) Kubernetes
3 39 (12.23%) Terraform
4 23 (7.21%) Grafana
5 21 (6.58%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.45%) Oracle RMAN
7 10 (3.13%) Red Hat Satellite
8 9 (2.82%) Puppet
9 8 (2.51%) vCenter Server
10 7 (2.19%) Data Guard
10 7 (2.19%) Rancher
11 6 (1.88%) Argo
11 6 (1.88%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 6 (1.88%) Progress Chef
12 5 (1.57%) WSUS
13 4 (1.25%) Istio
13 4 (1.25%) Nessus
14 2 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 2 (0.63%) Podman
14 2 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 80 (25.08%) VMware
2 67 (21.00%) Microsoft
3 61 (19.12%) Red Hat
4 47 (14.73%) Oracle
5 29 (9.09%) Splunk
6 18 (5.64%) BeyondTrust
7 16 (5.02%) CyberArk
8 15 (4.70%) Cisco
9 9 (2.82%) Palo Alto
9 9 (2.82%) ServiceNow
10 8 (2.51%) MuleSoft
11 7 (2.19%) Citrix
11 7 (2.19%) NVIDIA
12 5 (1.57%) Atlassian
12 5 (1.57%) Dell
12 5 (1.57%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.57%) HP
12 5 (1.57%) IBM
12 5 (1.57%) Mellanox
13 4 (1.25%) Tanium