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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 26 22
Rank change year-on-year -4 -4 +2
Contract jobs citing Linux 318 207 418
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.02% 6.92% 7.43%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.25% 38.55% 40.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 137 282
10th Percentile £243 £398 £305
25th Percentile £401 £463 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% -0.47% -4.09%
75th Percentile £560 £613 £589
90th Percentile £639 £675 £638
England median daily rate £513 £550 £540
% change year-on-year -6.82% +1.85% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 14 31
10th Percentile - £46.82 £31.25
25th Percentile £12.50 £56.41 £50.63
Median hourly rate £23.38 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -62.59% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.08 £69.38 £76.53
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.25 £60.00
% change year-on-year -3.24% +8.75% -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 771 537 1,029
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.60% 17.94% 18.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 535 371 669
10th Percentile £204 £195 £193
25th Percentile £300 £288 £215
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £575
90th Percentile £642 £675 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 31 72
10th Percentile £12.50 £16.95 £16.25
25th Percentile £15.62 £22.76 £20.38
Median hourly rate £21.40 £55.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -61.10% +15.79% +63.79%
75th Percentile £48.75 £62.50 £64.06
90th Percentile £75.00 £71.25 £73.38
England median hourly rate £22.58 £29.00 £22.21
% change year-on-year -22.16% +30.56% -16.18%

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 16 March 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 March 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 March 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 +3 167 £450 -8.86% 74
Berkshire -1 123 £417 -16.60% 36
Hampshire -8 105 £525 -8.70% 49
Buckinghamshire +8 34 £555 +30.59% 17
Surrey -4 30 £208 -58.50% 19
Oxfordshire -10 10 £425 -20.93% 21
Sussex - 9 - -
West Sussex -17 4 £513 -19.61% 5
East Sussex - 4 - - 4
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 13 (4.09%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.94%) Apache
3 2 (0.63%) Appian
3 2 (0.63%) Confluence
4 1 (0.31%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (0.31%) JBoss
4 1 (0.31%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.31%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (0.31%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 11 (3.46%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (0.31%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 77 (24.21%) AWS
2 65 (20.44%) Azure
3 38 (11.95%) OpenShift
4 30 (9.43%) GitHub
5 17 (5.35%) GitHub Actions
5 17 (5.35%) SaaS
6 13 (4.09%) Cloud Computing
6 13 (4.09%) GCP
7 12 (3.77%) IaaS
8 11 (3.46%) Sauce Labs
9 10 (3.14%) Google Workspace
10 9 (2.83%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
11 8 (2.52%) Amazon ECR
11 8 (2.52%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (2.52%) Entra ID
12 7 (2.20%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (1.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (1.89%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 39 (12.26%) DNS
2 29 (9.12%) Firewall
3 25 (7.86%) TCP/IP
4 12 (3.77%) WAN
5 11 (3.46%) DHCP
5 11 (3.46%) SAN
5 11 (3.46%) Wireless
6 10 (3.14%) LAN
7 9 (2.83%) Wireshark
8 7 (2.20%) Network Security
9 6 (1.89%) SSH
10 5 (1.57%) BGP
10 5 (1.57%) Ethernet VPN
10 5 (1.57%) NAS
10 5 (1.57%) OSPF
10 5 (1.57%) VLAN
10 5 (1.57%) VPN
10 5 (1.57%) VSAN
11 3 (0.94%) NFC
11 3 (0.94%) PPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (8.18%) MySQL
2 25 (7.86%) Relational Database
3 20 (6.29%) PostgreSQL
4 18 (5.66%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.14%) Oracle Database
6 9 (2.83%) Amazon RDS
7 5 (1.57%) NoSQL
8 4 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (1.26%) Redis
9 3 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.94%) RDBMS
9 3 (0.94%) SAP HANA
10 2 (0.63%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.31%) Couchbase
11 1 (0.31%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.31%) GIS
11 1 (0.31%) Oracle Exadata
11 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 35 (11.01%) Jenkins
2 18 (5.66%) Eclipse
2 18 (5.66%) Git
3 16 (5.03%) JIRA
4 13 (4.09%) GitLab
5 11 (3.46%) Android Studio
5 11 (3.46%) Browser DevTools
5 11 (3.46%) Burp Suite
5 11 (3.46%) Xcode
6 10 (3.14%) JUnit
7 9 (2.83%) JMeter
7 9 (2.83%) Sonatype Nexus
8 8 (2.52%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.52%) Metasploit
9 7 (2.20%) Artifactory
10 5 (1.57%) Maven
10 5 (1.57%) Subversion
11 3 (0.94%) Jaeger
11 3 (0.94%) Valgrind
12 2 (0.63%) Robot Framework
General
1 85 (26.73%) Social Skills
2 31 (9.75%) Public Sector
3 30 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (6.29%) Military
5 13 (4.09%) Finance
5 13 (4.09%) Organisational Skills
6 7 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.26%) Law
7 4 (1.26%) Legal
8 3 (0.94%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.63%) Electronics
9 2 (0.63%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.63%) Retail
9 2 (0.63%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.31%) Advertising
10 1 (0.31%) Back Office
10 1 (0.31%) Banking
10 1 (0.31%) Front Office
10 1 (0.31%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 36 (11.32%) Architect
2 33 (10.38%) Senior
3 25 (7.86%) Analyst
4 22 (6.92%) Linux Engineer
5 21 (6.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 21 (6.60%) Software Engineer
5 21 (6.60%) Support Engineer
6 20 (6.29%) Technical Support
7 19 (5.97%) DevOps Engineer
7 19 (5.97%) Tester
8 18 (5.66%) Developer
9 13 (4.09%) SOC Analyst
9 13 (4.09%) Technical Architect
10 11 (3.46%) AWS DevOps
10 11 (3.46%) Infrastructure Architect
10 11 (3.46%) Technical Engineer
10 11 (3.46%) Technical Support Engineer
10 11 (3.46%) UX Engineer
11 10 (3.14%) Administrator
11 10 (3.14%) Penetration Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (4.72%) Elastic Stack
1 15 (4.72%) Kafka
2 14 (4.40%) XML
3 13 (4.09%) Loki
4 12 (3.77%) CSS
4 12 (3.77%) React
5 11 (3.46%) Ajax
5 11 (3.46%) AngularJS
5 11 (3.46%) GraphQL
5 11 (3.46%) JSON
5 11 (3.46%) YAML
6 10 (3.14%) Spring
7 9 (2.83%) Middleware
8 8 (2.52%) Hibernate
9 7 (2.20%) REST
10 6 (1.89%) .NET
11 5 (1.57%) Web Services
12 4 (1.26%) Keycloak
12 4 (1.26%) OpenTelemetry
13 3 (0.94%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.60%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.72%) PKI
3 14 (4.40%) Security Operations Centre
4 13 (4.09%) Onboarding
5 12 (3.77%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (3.46%) Mobile App
7 10 (3.14%) Public Cloud
7 10 (3.14%) Replication
7 10 (3.14%) Security Posture
8 9 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
8 9 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.83%) Management Information System
9 8 (2.52%) Analytical Mindset
9 8 (2.52%) Cyberattack
9 8 (2.52%) Virtual Team
10 7 (2.20%) Product Ownership
11 6 (1.89%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.57%) CAN bus
13 4 (1.26%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 158 (49.69%) Windows
2 50 (15.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 36 (11.32%) Unix
4 32 (10.06%) Windows Server
5 19 (5.97%) Ubuntu
6 11 (3.46%) Android
6 11 (3.46%) Kali Linux
7 7 (2.20%) CentOS
7 7 (2.20%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.26%) Embedded Linux
9 3 (0.94%) Debian
9 3 (0.94%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 3 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.63%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.63%) SUSE
10 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.31%) OpenVMS
11 1 (0.31%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.31%) Solaris
11 1 (0.31%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (28.30%) CI/CD
2 69 (21.70%) DevOps
3 53 (16.67%) Agile
4 43 (13.52%) Problem-Solving
5 40 (12.58%) Containerisation
6 36 (11.32%) Infrastructure as Code
7 34 (10.69%) SIEM
8 32 (10.06%) Incident Response
9 30 (9.43%) Cybersecurity
10 27 (8.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 26 (8.18%) ITIL
12 25 (7.86%) Computer Science
12 25 (7.86%) Continuous Improvement
12 25 (7.86%) High Availability
12 25 (7.86%) Observability
12 25 (7.86%) Software Engineering
13 24 (7.55%) OO
13 24 (7.55%) Security Operations
14 23 (7.23%) DevSecOps
14 23 (7.23%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 112 (35.22%) Python
2 55 (17.30%) Bash
3 53 (16.67%) PowerShell
4 41 (12.89%) Java
5 29 (9.12%) Perl
6 26 (8.18%) JavaScript
6 26 (8.18%) SQL
7 15 (4.72%) C++
8 11 (3.46%) C#
9 9 (2.83%) Shell Script
10 7 (2.20%) C
10 7 (2.20%) Embedded C++
11 4 (1.26%) Go
11 4 (1.26%) Rust
12 3 (0.94%) Ada
12 3 (0.94%) Korn
13 2 (0.63%) Embedded C
13 2 (0.63%) PHP
13 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.31%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 192 (60.38%) Security Cleared
2 120 (37.74%) SC Cleared
3 65 (20.44%) DV Cleared
4 32 (10.06%) Degree
5 21 (6.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.46%) RHCE
7 10 (3.14%) CEH
8 9 (2.83%) OSCP
9 8 (2.52%) AWS Certification
9 8 (2.52%) CISSP
9 8 (2.52%) GPEN
10 7 (2.20%) Azure Certification
10 7 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.89%) CCNP
11 6 (1.89%) CompTIA CySA+
11 6 (1.89%) CompTIA Security+
11 6 (1.89%) ISTQB
11 6 (1.89%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 5 (1.57%) GCIA
12 5 (1.57%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.72%) NIST
2 12 (3.77%) GDPR
3 11 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.20%) QA
5 5 (1.57%) Cyber Essentials
6 4 (1.26%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.94%) GRC
7 3 (0.94%) NCSC
8 2 (0.63%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.63%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.63%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.63%) SLA
9 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.31%) Def Stans
System Software
1 65 (20.44%) VMware Infrastructure
2 36 (11.32%) Active Directory
3 33 (10.38%) Docker
4 22 (6.92%) vSphere
5 18 (5.66%) Hyper-V
6 11 (3.46%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (3.46%) VMware NSX
7 5 (1.57%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (1.26%) Firmware
9 3 (0.94%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.63%) KVM
11 1 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 1 (0.31%) GPFS
11 1 (0.31%) NDS
11 1 (0.31%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 1 (0.31%) UAG
Systems Management
1 69 (21.70%) Ansible
2 62 (19.50%) Kubernetes
3 50 (15.72%) Terraform
4 33 (10.38%) Grafana
5 31 (9.75%) Prometheus
6 18 (5.66%) Argo
7 14 (4.40%) Red Hat Satellite
8 12 (3.77%) Progress Chef
8 12 (3.77%) vCenter Server
9 11 (3.46%) Nmap
10 9 (2.83%) Puppet
11 8 (2.52%) Kustomize
11 8 (2.52%) Oracle RMAN
12 7 (2.20%) Sysdig
13 6 (1.89%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 6 (1.89%) Podman
14 5 (1.57%) Data Guard
14 5 (1.57%) Nessus
14 5 (1.57%) Rancher
15 3 (0.94%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 95 (29.87%) VMware
2 71 (22.33%) Red Hat
3 68 (21.38%) Microsoft
4 40 (12.58%) Oracle
5 36 (11.32%) Splunk
6 12 (3.77%) ServiceNow
7 8 (2.52%) Cisco
8 7 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
8 7 (2.20%) MuleSoft
9 6 (1.89%) CyberArk
9 6 (1.89%) HP
9 6 (1.89%) NVIDIA
9 6 (1.89%) Pure Storage
9 6 (1.89%) SAP
10 5 (1.57%) Atlassian
10 5 (1.57%) Dell
10 5 (1.57%) Mellanox
10 5 (1.57%) NetApp
10 5 (1.57%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.57%) Zscaler