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 29 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 29 29 23
Rank change year-on-year 0 -6 +8
Contract jobs citing Linux 272 256 397
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.50% 6.32% 7.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.42% 37.48% 39.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 160 263
10th Percentile £204 £203 £305
25th Percentile £358 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £538 £613 £613
90th Percentile £600 £675 £674
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -6.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 16 35
10th Percentile - £61.00 £41.84
25th Percentile £12.50 £62.50 £55.00
Median hourly rate £13.00 £68.75 £66.50
Median % change year-on-year -81.09% +3.38% +20.91%
75th Percentile £38.63 £70.00 £70.95
90th Percentile £83.60 £73.13 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £67.02 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.01% +7.23% -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 708 683 1,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 16.93% 16.87% 19.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 478 451 666
10th Percentile £190 £200 £163
25th Percentile £231 £278 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £435 £435 £410
Median % change year-on-year - +6.10% -13.68%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £565
90th Percentile £607 £656 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £480
% change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 31 81
10th Percentile £12.50 £16.32 £18.95
25th Percentile £15.50 £44.63 £24.34
Median hourly rate £20.00 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -68.00% +13.64% +193.33%
75th Percentile £25.15 £70.00 £68.63
90th Percentile £75.00 £71.25 £76.53
England median hourly rate £23.50 £60.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -61.16% +86.15% +30.00%

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025. 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 +13 121 £463 -7.50% 74
Berkshire +19 103 £425 -19.05% 33
Hampshire -8 80 £500 -13.04% 51
Surrey +1 50 £208 -53.89% 20
Buckinghamshire -1 11 £550 +1.85% 13
Sussex - 8 - - 4
Oxfordshire -11 7 £375 -23.08% 30
West Sussex -14 5 £500 -24.53% 10
Middlesex - 5 - - 1
East Sussex - 3 - - 3
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 7 (2.57%) Mattermost
1 7 (2.57%) Skype for Business
2 4 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.10%) Apache
4 2 (0.74%) JBoss
4 2 (0.74%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.37%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.37%) Gunicorn
5 1 (0.37%) nginx
Applications
1 21 (7.72%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.37%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (2.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.37%) SAP MDG
2 1 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 76 (27.94%) AWS
2 54 (19.85%) Azure
3 34 (12.50%) OpenShift
4 29 (10.66%) GitHub
5 20 (7.35%) SaaS
6 18 (6.62%) GCP
6 18 (6.62%) Sauce Labs
7 13 (4.78%) AWS CloudFormation
7 13 (4.78%) Google Workspace
8 11 (4.04%) GitHub Actions
9 10 (3.68%) IaaS
10 8 (2.94%) Amazon ECR
10 8 (2.94%) Cloud Computing
10 8 (2.94%) Serverless
11 7 (2.57%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (2.57%) OCI
12 4 (1.47%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (1.10%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (1.10%) Entra ID
13 3 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 32 (11.76%) DNS
2 26 (9.56%) TCP/IP
3 20 (7.35%) DHCP
3 20 (7.35%) Firewall
3 20 (7.35%) SAN
3 20 (7.35%) Wireless
4 14 (5.15%) VLAN
5 8 (2.94%) NFC
5 8 (2.94%) PPP
6 7 (2.57%) NAS
6 7 (2.57%) Skype
6 7 (2.57%) Wireshark
7 5 (1.84%) Network Security
8 4 (1.47%) VSAN
9 3 (1.10%) HTTP
9 3 (1.10%) LAN
9 3 (1.10%) SSL
9 3 (1.10%) WAN
10 2 (0.74%) Internet
10 2 (0.74%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (10.66%) Relational Database
2 27 (9.93%) MySQL
3 21 (7.72%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (4.78%) NoSQL
5 10 (3.68%) SQL Server
6 8 (2.94%) Amazon RDS
6 8 (2.94%) Redis
7 6 (2.21%) Amazon Redshift
7 6 (2.21%) Couchbase
8 5 (1.84%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.10%) Oracle Exadata
9 3 (1.10%) RDBMS
9 3 (1.10%) SAP HANA
10 2 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.74%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.37%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.37%) Big Data
11 1 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
11 1 (0.37%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 36 (13.24%) Jenkins
2 26 (9.56%) Eclipse
3 19 (6.99%) Browser DevTools
3 19 (6.99%) Git
4 18 (6.62%) Android Studio
4 18 (6.62%) Xcode
5 15 (5.51%) GitLab
6 12 (4.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (3.68%) JMeter
8 9 (3.31%) Burp Suite
8 9 (3.31%) Cucumber
8 9 (3.31%) JUnit
9 8 (2.94%) JIRA
9 8 (2.94%) Valgrind
10 7 (2.57%) Artifactory
10 7 (2.57%) Metasploit
11 3 (1.10%) MSI
11 3 (1.10%) Robot Framework
12 2 (0.74%) Subversion
12 2 (0.74%) Visual Studio
General
1 110 (40.44%) Social Skills
2 29 (10.66%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (8.09%) Public Sector
4 21 (7.72%) Finance
5 12 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
6 9 (3.31%) Legal
7 8 (2.94%) Military
8 6 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.84%) Banking
10 3 (1.10%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.74%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.74%) Retail
11 2 (0.74%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.37%) Back Office
12 1 (0.37%) Electronics
12 1 (0.37%) French Language
12 1 (0.37%) Front Office
12 1 (0.37%) German Language
12 1 (0.37%) Law
Job Titles
1 43 (15.81%) Support Engineer
2 33 (12.13%) Senior
3 31 (11.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 30 (11.03%) Technical Support
5 22 (8.09%) Architect
6 21 (7.72%) Technical Engineer
6 21 (7.72%) Technical Support Engineer
7 19 (6.99%) Developer
7 19 (6.99%) DevOps Engineer
7 19 (6.99%) UX Engineer
8 18 (6.62%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
8 18 (6.62%) Infrastructure Support
8 18 (6.62%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
9 17 (6.25%) Analyst
10 14 (5.15%) Software Engineer
11 13 (4.78%) Administrator
11 13 (4.78%) C++ Software Engineer
11 13 (4.78%) IT Support
12 12 (4.41%) Linux Engineer
13 11 (4.04%) Support Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (9.19%) Kafka
2 19 (6.99%) Ajax
2 19 (6.99%) AngularJS
2 19 (6.99%) CSS
2 19 (6.99%) GraphQL
2 19 (6.99%) React
3 18 (6.62%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (4.78%) REST
5 11 (4.04%) JSON
6 9 (3.31%) Spring
6 9 (3.31%) Web Services
6 9 (3.31%) XML
7 8 (2.94%) Hibernate
7 8 (2.94%) Loki
8 7 (2.57%) Keycloak
8 7 (2.57%) YAML
9 5 (1.84%) Middleware
10 3 (1.10%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 3 (1.10%) Swagger
11 2 (0.74%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 19 (6.99%) Mobile App
2 17 (6.25%) PKI
3 14 (5.15%) Cloud Native
3 14 (5.15%) Enterprise Software
3 14 (5.15%) Replication
4 11 (4.04%) Analytical Mindset
5 10 (3.68%) Management Information System
6 8 (2.94%) Security Operations Centre
6 8 (2.94%) Smartcard
6 8 (2.94%) Virtual Team
7 7 (2.57%) Enterprise Storage
8 6 (2.21%) Onboarding
8 6 (2.21%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.84%) CAN bus
9 5 (1.84%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.47%) Clustering
10 4 (1.47%) Data Centre
11 3 (1.10%) HP Storage
11 3 (1.10%) Private Cloud
11 3 (1.10%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 133 (48.90%) Windows
2 53 (19.49%) Unix
3 44 (16.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 20 (7.35%) Ubuntu
4 20 (7.35%) Windows Server
5 18 (6.62%) Android
6 13 (4.78%) Windows Server 2016
7 12 (4.41%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (3.68%) CentOS
9 9 (3.31%) Kali Linux
10 5 (1.84%) Debian
11 4 (1.47%) Mac OS
11 4 (1.47%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.74%) SUSE
12 2 (0.74%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.37%) Rocky
13 1 (0.37%) Solaris
13 1 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (27.94%) CI/CD
2 58 (21.32%) DevOps
3 52 (19.12%) Agile
3 52 (19.12%) Problem-Solving
4 47 (17.28%) ITIL
5 40 (14.71%) Infrastructure as Code
6 39 (14.34%) Containerisation
7 36 (13.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 28 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
9 27 (9.93%) OO
9 27 (9.93%) User Experience
10 26 (9.56%) Observability
11 25 (9.19%) Platform Engineering
12 22 (8.09%) Disaster Recovery
13 21 (7.72%) Incident Response
13 21 (7.72%) Test Automation
14 20 (7.35%) High Availability
14 20 (7.35%) Software Engineering
15 19 (6.99%) Mobile Application Development
16 18 (6.62%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 119 (43.75%) Python
2 56 (20.59%) Bash
3 55 (20.22%) PowerShell
4 53 (19.49%) Java
5 39 (14.34%) JavaScript
6 38 (13.97%) SQL
7 34 (12.50%) Perl
8 17 (6.25%) C#
8 17 (6.25%) Shell Script
9 16 (5.88%) C++
10 5 (1.84%) Embedded C++
11 4 (1.47%) C
11 4 (1.47%) PHP
11 4 (1.47%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.47%) Search Processing Language
12 3 (1.10%) Go
13 2 (0.74%) Ada
13 2 (0.74%) Assembly Language
13 2 (0.74%) MATLAB
14 1 (0.37%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 118 (43.38%) Security Cleared
2 72 (26.47%) SC Cleared
3 41 (15.07%) DV Cleared
4 18 (6.62%) Degree
5 13 (4.78%) CISSP
6 12 (4.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (4.41%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (4.04%) Azure Certification
7 11 (4.04%) GCFA
7 11 (4.04%) GCIH
7 11 (4.04%) Network+ Certification
7 11 (4.04%) Server+ Certification
8 9 (3.31%) GCIA
9 8 (2.94%) CEH
9 8 (2.94%) CFCE
9 8 (2.94%) OSCP
10 7 (2.57%) AWS Certification
10 7 (2.57%) GPEN
10 7 (2.57%) ITIL Certification
11 6 (2.21%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.88%) NIST
2 11 (4.04%) GDPR
2 11 (4.04%) HIPAA
3 10 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (2.94%) QA
5 4 (1.47%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.37%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.37%) Def Stans
6 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 17025
6 1 (0.37%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 56 (20.59%) VMware Infrastructure
2 34 (12.50%) Docker
3 26 (9.56%) Active Directory
4 21 (7.72%) vSphere
5 17 (6.25%) Hyper-V
6 11 (4.04%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (2.94%) VMware NSX
8 4 (1.47%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (1.10%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.74%) GPFS
10 2 (0.74%) KVM
11 1 (0.37%) Firmware
11 1 (0.37%) NDS
11 1 (0.37%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 1 (0.37%) NFS
Systems Management
1 72 (26.47%) Ansible
2 63 (23.16%) Kubernetes
3 54 (19.85%) Terraform
4 27 (9.93%) Grafana
5 26 (9.56%) Prometheus
6 16 (5.88%) Argo
7 13 (4.78%) Progress Chef
8 10 (3.68%) Red Hat Satellite
9 9 (3.31%) Nmap
9 9 (3.31%) SCOM
10 8 (2.94%) Kustomize
11 7 (2.57%) HP SiteScope
11 7 (2.57%) Sysdig
11 7 (2.57%) vCenter Server
12 6 (2.21%) NetBackup
12 6 (2.21%) Packer
12 6 (2.21%) Proxmox
12 6 (2.21%) Puppet
13 5 (1.84%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 5 (1.84%) Podman
Vendors
1 86 (31.62%) Microsoft
2 84 (30.88%) VMware
3 60 (22.06%) Red Hat
4 51 (18.75%) Splunk
5 34 (12.50%) Oracle
6 22 (8.09%) ServiceNow
7 12 (4.41%) NetApp
8 11 (4.04%) Cisco
9 10 (3.68%) CrowdStrike
9 10 (3.68%) HP
10 9 (3.31%) IBM
11 8 (2.94%) ArcSight
11 8 (2.94%) Remedy
11 8 (2.94%) Veritas
12 7 (2.57%) 3PAR
12 7 (2.57%) Dell
12 7 (2.57%) LogRhythm
13 6 (2.21%) Confluent
13 6 (2.21%) Nimble Storage
13 6 (2.21%) Pure Storage