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 12 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 28 20
Rank change year-on-year -7 -8 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 301 187 439
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.96% 6.23% 7.63%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.35% 34.06% 43.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 141 295
10th Percentile £300 £413 £355
25th Percentile £406 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -1.87% +2.88%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £655 £626 £638
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 7 26
10th Percentile £26.37 £38.98 £26.25
25th Percentile £43.81 £51.78 £47.19
Median hourly rate £48.13 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.30% -8.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £54.06 £59.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £64.20 £61.08 £75.00
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% - -

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 746 549 1,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.30% 18.29% 17.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 495 389 661
10th Percentile £204 £200 £205
25th Percentile £319 £325 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £491 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% +3.26% +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £660 £663
England median daily rate £455 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -2.15% -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 38 59
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £15.98
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.95 £18.00
Median hourly rate £35.22 £18.85 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +86.89% -60.33% -17.39%
75th Percentile £52.58 £28.00 £69.38
90th Percentile £59.60 £58.75 £74.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £22.50
% change year-on-year +72.23% -16.13% -48.57%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 +6 188 £492 -1.65% 52
Berkshire -11 84 £410 -18.10% 21
Hampshire -17 78 £575 +4.55% 54
Buckinghamshire +10 68 £560 +6.67% 11
Oxfordshire +2 36 £450 -18.18% 20
Surrey -16 26 £208 -56.32% 32
West Sussex -20 4 £580 +7.81% 3
East Sussex - 3 £459 - 3
Isle of Wight - 1 - -
Middlesex - 1 £198 - 4
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 16 (5.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.99%) OpenStack
3 4 (1.33%) Apache
3 4 (1.33%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.33%) WebSphere Application Server
4 3 (1.00%) Confluence
4 3 (1.00%) IIS
4 3 (1.00%) nginx
4 3 (1.00%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.00%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.66%) Appian
5 2 (0.66%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.66%) JBoss
5 2 (0.66%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.66%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.33%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.33%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 68 (22.59%) Azure
2 56 (18.60%) AWS
3 25 (8.31%) Entra ID
4 23 (7.64%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (4.32%) OpenShift
5 13 (4.32%) SaaS
6 12 (3.99%) GitHub
7 11 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (3.32%) GCP
9 8 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
10 7 (2.33%) Azure Sentinel
10 7 (2.33%) IaaS
10 7 (2.33%) PaaS
11 5 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.33%) Amazon ECS
12 4 (1.33%) Cloud Computing
12 4 (1.33%) Sauce Labs
12 4 (1.33%) Serverless
13 3 (1.00%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 30 (9.97%) DNS
2 24 (7.97%) Firewall
3 16 (5.32%) WAN
4 14 (4.65%) LAN
5 13 (4.32%) VSAN
6 12 (3.99%) Network Security
6 12 (3.99%) TCP/IP
7 9 (2.99%) Cisco ASA
7 9 (2.99%) Cisco Firepower
7 9 (2.99%) VPN
8 8 (2.66%) SSH
8 8 (2.66%) Wireless
8 8 (2.66%) Wireshark
9 7 (2.33%) DHCP
9 7 (2.33%) SAN
9 7 (2.33%) Software-Defined Radio
10 6 (1.99%) Cisco Nexus
10 6 (1.99%) Diameter Protocol
10 6 (1.99%) SSL
10 6 (1.99%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (10.30%) SQL Server
2 22 (7.31%) MySQL
3 15 (4.98%) Relational Database
4 9 (2.99%) Oracle Database
5 7 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (1.66%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.00%) Oracle Database 11g
8 3 (1.00%) Redis
9 2 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.66%) DataStage
9 2 (0.66%) Electronic Patient Records
9 2 (0.66%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.66%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.66%) Vitess
10 1 (0.33%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.33%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.33%) Pentaho
10 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 12 (3.99%) GitLab
1 12 (3.99%) JIRA
2 11 (3.65%) Jenkins
3 8 (2.66%) Eclipse
3 8 (2.66%) Git
4 5 (1.66%) Maven
5 4 (1.33%) Android Studio
5 4 (1.33%) Browser DevTools
5 4 (1.33%) Jaeger
5 4 (1.33%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.33%) Subversion
5 4 (1.33%) Xcode
6 2 (0.66%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.66%) Introscope
6 2 (0.66%) JUnit
6 2 (0.66%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.33%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.33%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.33%) Mockito
7 1 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 44 (14.62%) Social Skills
2 35 (11.63%) Public Sector
3 21 (6.98%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (6.31%) Military
5 18 (5.98%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (2.99%) Finance
7 6 (1.99%) Manufacturing
7 6 (1.99%) Retail
8 5 (1.66%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.33%) Financial Institution
10 3 (1.00%) Law
10 3 (1.00%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.66%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.33%) Advertising
12 1 (0.33%) Back Office
12 1 (0.33%) Electronics
12 1 (0.33%) Front Office
12 1 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.33%) Legal
12 1 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 42 (13.95%) Senior
2 40 (13.29%) Linux Engineer
3 31 (10.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 20 (6.64%) Architect
5 18 (5.98%) Analyst
6 17 (5.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 17 (5.65%) Technical Support
7 16 (5.32%) Software Engineer
8 15 (4.98%) Network Engineer
8 15 (4.98%) Support Engineer
9 14 (4.65%) Developer
10 13 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
10 13 (4.32%) Technical Architect
11 12 (3.99%) Lead
11 12 (3.99%) Technical Engineer
11 12 (3.99%) Technical Support Engineer
12 11 (3.65%) Citrix Engineer
12 11 (3.65%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (3.65%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
13 10 (3.32%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.65%) YAML
2 10 (3.32%) Middleware
3 9 (2.99%) Kafka
4 8 (2.66%) Loki
4 8 (2.66%) XML
5 7 (2.33%) .NET
5 7 (2.33%) Keycloak
5 7 (2.33%) Yocto
6 6 (1.99%) GraphQL
6 6 (1.99%) JSON
7 5 (1.66%) CSS
7 5 (1.66%) OpenTelemetry
7 5 (1.66%) React
8 4 (1.33%) Ajax
8 4 (1.33%) AngularJS
8 4 (1.33%) LAMP
8 4 (1.33%) LDAP
8 4 (1.33%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (1.33%) RESTful
8 4 (1.33%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 33 (10.96%) Onboarding
2 20 (6.64%) PKI
3 18 (5.98%) Data Centre
4 16 (5.32%) Public Cloud
5 14 (4.65%) Management Information System
6 12 (3.99%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (3.99%) Product Ownership
7 10 (3.32%) Security Operations Centre
8 9 (2.99%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.99%) Security Posture
9 8 (2.66%) Cyberattack
9 8 (2.66%) Operational Technology
10 7 (2.33%) Device Driver
10 7 (2.33%) Embedded Systems
10 7 (2.33%) SCADA
11 6 (1.99%) Cloud Native
11 6 (1.99%) Cyber Defence
11 6 (1.99%) MicroBlaze
11 6 (1.99%) Replication
11 6 (1.99%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 147 (48.84%) Windows
2 66 (21.93%) Unix
3 40 (13.29%) Windows Server
4 37 (12.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.65%) Ubuntu
6 11 (3.65%) Embedded Linux
7 8 (2.66%) Windows Server 2016
8 7 (2.33%) CentOS
8 7 (2.33%) Debian
9 6 (1.99%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (1.33%) Android
10 4 (1.33%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.66%) Kali Linux
11 2 (0.66%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.66%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.66%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.33%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.33%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (18.60%) CI/CD
2 55 (18.27%) SIEM
3 39 (12.96%) DevOps
3 39 (12.96%) Problem-Solving
4 37 (12.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 36 (11.96%) ITIL
6 35 (11.63%) Cybersecurity
7 34 (11.30%) Agile
8 32 (10.63%) Computer Science
9 30 (9.97%) Runbook
10 28 (9.30%) High Availability
10 28 (9.30%) Infrastructure as Code
11 25 (8.31%) Containerisation
11 25 (8.31%) ITSM
11 25 (8.31%) Migration
12 24 (7.97%) Change Control
13 23 (7.64%) Root Cause Analysis
14 22 (7.31%) Software Engineering
15 21 (6.98%) Privileged Access Management
15 21 (6.98%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 94 (31.23%) Python
2 63 (20.93%) PowerShell
3 36 (11.96%) Bash
4 23 (7.64%) SQL
5 22 (7.31%) Java
6 20 (6.64%) JavaScript
7 17 (5.65%) Perl
8 16 (5.32%) C
9 14 (4.65%) C++
10 11 (3.65%) Shell Script
11 7 (2.33%) Rust
12 5 (1.66%) Go
13 4 (1.33%) Embedded C++
14 3 (1.00%) Ada
14 3 (1.00%) Embedded C
14 3 (1.00%) Korn
14 3 (1.00%) PL/SQL
14 3 (1.00%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.66%) Jython
15 2 (0.66%) Scala
Qualifications
1 192 (63.79%) Security Cleared
2 137 (45.51%) SC Cleared
3 70 (23.26%) DV Cleared
4 51 (16.94%) Degree
5 19 (6.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (5.32%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (4.32%) RHCE
8 10 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
8 10 (3.32%) CCNP
9 7 (2.33%) AWS Certification
9 7 (2.33%) CISSP
9 7 (2.33%) GIAC
9 7 (2.33%) RHCSA
10 6 (1.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.99%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.99%) CISM
10 6 (1.99%) CRISC
10 6 (1.99%) LFCS
10 6 (1.99%) SANS
11 5 (1.66%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (13.95%) NIST
2 30 (9.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.65%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.99%) SLA
5 9 (2.99%) NCSC
6 6 (1.99%) ISO 31000
7 5 (1.66%) GDPR
7 5 (1.66%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.33%) GRC
9 3 (1.00%) JSP 440
9 3 (1.00%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.66%) QA
11 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.33%) DICOM
11 1 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.33%) HL7
11 1 (0.33%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 66 (21.93%) Active Directory
2 45 (14.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (7.97%) VMware NSX
4 11 (3.65%) Docker
5 10 (3.32%) Firmware
5 10 (3.32%) Hyper-V
6 9 (2.99%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (2.33%) vSphere
8 6 (1.99%) Embedded Firmware
9 5 (1.66%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (1.00%) Dovecot
10 3 (1.00%) Postfix
10 3 (1.00%) UAG
11 2 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
12 1 (0.33%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 43 (14.29%) Ansible
2 35 (11.63%) Terraform
3 33 (10.96%) Kubernetes
4 19 (6.31%) Grafana
4 19 (6.31%) Prometheus
5 12 (3.99%) Puppet
6 9 (2.99%) Oracle RMAN
6 9 (2.99%) Red Hat Satellite
7 8 (2.66%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.99%) Rancher
9 5 (1.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (1.66%) Argo
10 4 (1.33%) Data Guard
10 4 (1.33%) Istio
10 4 (1.33%) Nessus
10 4 (1.33%) Podman
10 4 (1.33%) Progress Chef
10 4 (1.33%) WSUS
11 3 (1.00%) HAProxy
11 3 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 76 (25.25%) VMware
2 56 (18.60%) Microsoft
3 49 (16.28%) Red Hat
4 43 (14.29%) Oracle
5 24 (7.97%) BeyondTrust
6 23 (7.64%) Cisco
7 22 (7.31%) Splunk
8 21 (6.98%) CyberArk
9 18 (5.98%) Citrix
10 14 (4.65%) Palo Alto
11 13 (4.32%) ServiceNow
12 11 (3.65%) NVIDIA
13 6 (1.99%) CheckPoint
13 6 (1.99%) Ericsson
13 6 (1.99%) Fortinet
13 6 (1.99%) Huawei
13 6 (1.99%) IBM
13 6 (1.99%) Nokia
13 6 (1.99%) SolarWinds
13 6 (1.99%) Tenable