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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 28 21
Rank change year-on-year -2 -7 0
Contract jobs citing Linux 305 197 393
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.32% 6.59% 7.03%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.33% 38.63% 39.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 145 269
10th Percentile £292 £406 £350
25th Percentile £400 £463 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £599 £600 £600
90th Percentile £646 £675 £640
England median daily rate £518 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.91% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 13 23
10th Percentile £15.00 £46.21 £22.65
25th Percentile £25.72 £52.50 £41.50
Median hourly rate £47.50 £57.75 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.75% -6.85% -4.62%
75th Percentile £52.58 £62.50 £68.13
90th Percentile £70.00 £64.75 £74.00
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 738 510 985
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.86% 17.05% 17.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 505 362 653
10th Percentile £204 £205 £200
25th Percentile £350 £328 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -5.76%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £648
England median daily rate £450 £475 £459
% change year-on-year -5.26% +3.49% -10.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 36 62
10th Percentile £15.10 £14.20 £16.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.95 £17.69
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.00 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +69.64% -23.81% -29.33%
75th Percentile £53.75 £60.47 £62.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £64.38 £70.00
England median hourly rate £37.50 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year +52.07% +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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +3 171 £450 -7.17% 72
Berkshire -7 103 £403 -18.48% 33
Hampshire -14 91 £534 -7.17% 54
Buckinghamshire +11 47 £550 +30.80% 14
Surrey +2 30 £208 -58.50% 19
Oxfordshire -5 21 £450 -18.18% 26
Sussex - 4 - -
East Sussex - 4 £459 - 1
West Sussex -15 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 (5.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.31%) WebSphere
2 4 (1.31%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (0.98%) Apache
3 3 (0.98%) Confluence
3 3 (0.98%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.66%) Appian
4 2 (0.66%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (0.66%) JBoss
4 2 (0.66%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (0.66%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.33%) SAS
5 1 (0.33%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
1 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 66 (21.64%) AWS
2 59 (19.34%) Azure
3 23 (7.54%) OpenShift
4 21 (6.89%) GitHub
5 16 (5.25%) GitHub Actions
6 15 (4.92%) Microsoft 365
6 15 (4.92%) SaaS
7 11 (3.61%) GCP
8 10 (3.28%) Cloud Computing
9 9 (2.95%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (2.95%) Entra ID
10 8 (2.62%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (2.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.30%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 6 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (1.97%) Sauce Labs
13 5 (1.64%) IaaS
14 4 (1.31%) Amazon ECS
14 4 (1.31%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 29 (9.51%) DNS
2 26 (8.52%) Firewall
3 21 (6.89%) TCP/IP
4 15 (4.92%) WAN
5 13 (4.26%) LAN
6 11 (3.61%) SAN
7 9 (2.95%) VSAN
8 8 (2.62%) DHCP
9 7 (2.30%) NAS
9 7 (2.30%) SSH
9 7 (2.30%) Wireless
10 5 (1.64%) BGP
10 5 (1.64%) Ethernet VPN
10 5 (1.64%) Network Security
10 5 (1.64%) OSPF
10 5 (1.64%) VPN
10 5 (1.64%) Wireshark
11 4 (1.31%) Software-Defined Radio
12 3 (0.98%) Diameter Protocol
12 3 (0.98%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (8.52%) SQL Server
2 23 (7.54%) MySQL
3 20 (6.56%) Relational Database
4 17 (5.57%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (3.61%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.31%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (1.31%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (1.31%) Redis
8 3 (0.98%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.66%) Electronic Patient Records
9 2 (0.66%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.66%) Oracle Database 11g
9 2 (0.66%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.33%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.33%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.33%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 22 (7.21%) Jenkins
2 14 (4.59%) GitLab
3 13 (4.26%) JIRA
4 12 (3.93%) Git
5 10 (3.28%) Eclipse
6 8 (2.62%) JUnit
7 7 (2.30%) JMeter
7 7 (2.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.97%) Android Studio
8 6 (1.97%) Browser DevTools
8 6 (1.97%) Cucumber
8 6 (1.97%) Xcode
9 5 (1.64%) Maven
9 5 (1.64%) Subversion
10 4 (1.31%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.31%) Jaeger
11 2 (0.66%) Burp Suite
11 2 (0.66%) Introscope
11 2 (0.66%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.33%) LoadRunner
General
1 54 (17.70%) Social Skills
2 31 (10.16%) Public Sector
3 20 (6.56%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (6.56%) Military
4 14 (4.59%) Documentation Skills
5 13 (4.26%) Finance
6 8 (2.62%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.31%) Financial Institution
8 3 (0.98%) Law
8 3 (0.98%) Manufacturing
8 3 (0.98%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.66%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.66%) Legal
9 2 (0.66%) Retail
10 1 (0.33%) Advertising
10 1 (0.33%) Back Office
10 1 (0.33%) Banking
10 1 (0.33%) Electronics
10 1 (0.33%) Front Office
10 1 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 35 (11.48%) Linux Engineer
1 35 (11.48%) Senior
2 30 (9.84%) Architect
3 25 (8.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (7.54%) Analyst
5 20 (6.56%) Technical Support
6 18 (5.90%) Developer
7 16 (5.25%) Software Engineer
7 16 (5.25%) Support Engineer
8 15 (4.92%) DevOps Engineer
8 15 (4.92%) Technical Architect
9 13 (4.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.93%) Administrator
10 12 (3.93%) DBA
10 12 (3.93%) Lead
11 11 (3.61%) SOC Analyst
11 11 (3.61%) Technical Engineer
11 11 (3.61%) Technical Support Engineer
11 11 (3.61%) Tester
12 9 (2.95%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.26%) Kafka
1 13 (4.26%) Middleware
2 11 (3.61%) Elastic Stack
2 11 (3.61%) XML
3 10 (3.28%) YAML
4 8 (2.62%) .NET
4 8 (2.62%) JSON
4 8 (2.62%) Spring
5 7 (2.30%) CSS
5 7 (2.30%) Loki
5 7 (2.30%) React
6 6 (1.97%) Ajax
6 6 (1.97%) AngularJS
6 6 (1.97%) GraphQL
6 6 (1.97%) Hibernate
7 5 (1.64%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.31%) Keycloak
8 4 (1.31%) Yocto
9 3 (0.98%) REST
9 3 (0.98%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 26 (8.52%) Onboarding
2 16 (5.25%) PKI
3 15 (4.92%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.59%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.59%) Public Cloud
5 12 (3.93%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (3.93%) Management Information System
5 12 (3.93%) Security Operations Centre
6 9 (2.95%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (2.95%) Replication
7 8 (2.62%) Cyberattack
7 8 (2.62%) Security Posture
8 7 (2.30%) Product Ownership
9 6 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.97%) Mobile App
10 5 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.31%) Clustering
11 4 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (1.31%) Embedded Systems
11 4 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 150 (49.18%) Windows
2 50 (16.39%) Unix
3 44 (14.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 39 (12.79%) Windows Server
5 14 (4.59%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.62%) Embedded Linux
6 8 (2.62%) Windows Server 2016
7 6 (1.97%) Android
8 5 (1.64%) Debian
9 4 (1.31%) CentOS
9 4 (1.31%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.98%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.66%) Kali Linux
11 2 (0.66%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.33%) Solaris
12 1 (0.33%) SUSE
12 1 (0.33%) VMS
12 1 (0.33%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (23.93%) CI/CD
2 55 (18.03%) DevOps
3 45 (14.75%) Agile
3 45 (14.75%) SIEM
4 39 (12.79%) Problem-Solving
5 32 (10.49%) Computer Science
5 32 (10.49%) Containerisation
6 31 (10.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 30 (9.84%) ITIL
8 28 (9.18%) Cybersecurity
8 28 (9.18%) Infrastructure as Code
9 26 (8.52%) Incident Response
10 25 (8.20%) High Availability
10 25 (8.20%) Platform Engineering
11 23 (7.54%) Migration
11 23 (7.54%) Runbook
12 22 (7.21%) Security Operations
13 21 (6.89%) DevSecOps
14 19 (6.23%) Observability
14 19 (6.23%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 93 (30.49%) Python
2 55 (18.03%) PowerShell
3 38 (12.46%) Bash
4 30 (9.84%) Java
5 26 (8.52%) SQL
6 24 (7.87%) Perl
7 20 (6.56%) JavaScript
8 11 (3.61%) C
8 11 (3.61%) Shell Script
9 10 (3.28%) C++
10 5 (1.64%) Go
11 4 (1.31%) Rust
12 3 (0.98%) Ada
12 3 (0.98%) C#
12 3 (0.98%) Embedded C
12 3 (0.98%) Embedded C++
12 3 (0.98%) Korn
13 2 (0.66%) Jython
13 2 (0.66%) PHP
13 2 (0.66%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 191 (62.62%) Security Cleared
2 123 (40.33%) SC Cleared
3 74 (24.26%) DV Cleared
4 39 (12.79%) Degree
5 23 (7.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (4.26%) RHCE
7 8 (2.62%) AWS Certification
8 7 (2.30%) CCNP
8 7 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (1.97%) CompTIA CySA+
9 6 (1.97%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.97%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (1.64%) RHCSA
11 4 (1.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (1.31%) Azure Certification
11 4 (1.31%) CISSP
11 4 (1.31%) OCP
11 4 (1.31%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (8.20%) NIST
2 18 (5.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (3.61%) GDPR
4 7 (2.30%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (1.97%) NCSC
5 6 (1.97%) QA
5 6 (1.97%) SLA
6 5 (1.64%) PCI DSS
7 4 (1.31%) GRC
8 3 (0.98%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.98%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.33%) DICOM
9 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.33%) HL7
9 1 (0.33%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 54 (17.70%) VMware Infrastructure
2 49 (16.07%) Active Directory
3 17 (5.57%) Docker
4 13 (4.26%) Hyper-V
5 12 (3.93%) VMware NSX
6 10 (3.28%) vSphere
7 7 (2.30%) Firmware
7 7 (2.30%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (1.31%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.98%) Embedded Firmware
9 3 (0.98%) UAG
10 1 (0.33%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 1 (0.33%) GPFS
10 1 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 54 (17.70%) Ansible
2 45 (14.75%) Kubernetes
3 39 (12.79%) Terraform
4 25 (8.20%) Grafana
5 23 (7.54%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.61%) Red Hat Satellite
7 10 (3.28%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.62%) Progress Chef
8 8 (2.62%) vCenter Server
9 7 (2.30%) Puppet
9 7 (2.30%) Rancher
10 6 (1.97%) Argo
10 6 (1.97%) Data Guard
10 6 (1.97%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 5 (1.64%) WSUS
12 4 (1.31%) Istio
12 4 (1.31%) Nessus
12 4 (1.31%) Sysdig
13 2 (0.66%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 2 (0.66%) Packer
Vendors
1 80 (26.23%) VMware
2 62 (20.33%) Microsoft
2 62 (20.33%) Red Hat
3 45 (14.75%) Oracle
4 31 (10.16%) Splunk
5 16 (5.25%) BeyondTrust
6 14 (4.59%) CyberArk
7 13 (4.26%) Cisco
8 8 (2.62%) MuleSoft
8 8 (2.62%) ServiceNow
9 7 (2.30%) NVIDIA
9 7 (2.30%) Palo Alto
10 6 (1.97%) HP
11 5 (1.64%) Atlassian
11 5 (1.64%) Citrix
11 5 (1.64%) Dell
11 5 (1.64%) IBM
11 5 (1.64%) Mellanox
11 5 (1.64%) NetApp
11 5 (1.64%) SAP