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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 34 22
Rank change year-on-year -2 -12 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 347 183 380
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.24% 5.33% 7.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 41.76% 31.72% 41.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 251 143 260
10th Percentile £359 £359 £355
25th Percentile £425 £450 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £513 £527
Median % change year-on-year +0.98% -2.66% +2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £648 - £650
England median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 5 22
10th Percentile £32.66 £32.94 £35.18
25th Percentile £43.81 £51.06 £57.19
Median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -21.43% +17.89%
75th Percentile £66.37 £58.75 -
90th Percentile £74.49 - £74.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +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 831 577 912
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.55% 16.79% 17.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 400 593
10th Percentile £204 £193 £205
25th Percentile £357 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.95% +5.56%
75th Percentile £574 £600 £595
90th Percentile £639 £650 £650
England median daily rate £465 £460 £475
% change year-on-year +1.09% -3.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 50 55
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.03 £16.32
25th Percentile £20.50 £16.95 £18.00
Median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +105.19% -62.26% -9.09%
75th Percentile £53.88 £28.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £67.47 £61.18 £72.25
England median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year +41.30% -14.81% -36.47%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 July 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 +9 194 £518 +3.50% 65
Hampshire -10 108 £550 - 64
Berkshire -14 80 £439 -7.68% 17
Buckinghamshire +9 68 £536 +1.50% 14
Oxfordshire +12 46 £525 +44.83% 34
Surrey -18 31 £208 -56.32% 23
West Sussex -22 8 £425 -20.93% 3
Middlesex - 4 £198 - 2
East Sussex - 2 £459 - 3
Isle of Wight - 1 - - 1
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 14 (4.03%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (2.59%) Apache
3 7 (2.02%) nginx
4 6 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.73%) Confluence
4 6 (1.73%) OpenStack
5 4 (1.15%) WebSphere
5 4 (1.15%) WebSphere Application Server
6 3 (0.86%) IIS
6 3 (0.86%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.58%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.58%) JBoss
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.58%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.29%) Appian
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Service Bus
8 1 (0.29%) SAS
8 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.86%) Houdini
2 3 (0.86%) NUKE
3 2 (0.58%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.29%) CINEMA 4D
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 88 (25.36%) Azure
2 75 (21.61%) AWS
3 34 (9.80%) Entra ID
4 20 (5.76%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (3.75%) Azure Sentinel
5 13 (3.75%) SaaS
6 12 (3.46%) OpenShift
7 11 (3.17%) GCP
8 8 (2.31%) Azure Monitor
8 8 (2.31%) GitHub
8 8 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (2.31%) IaaS
8 8 (2.31%) PaaS
9 6 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 5 (1.44%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (1.44%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (1.15%) Serverless
12 3 (0.86%) Amazon S3
12 3 (0.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 3 (0.86%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 38 (10.95%) DNS
2 34 (9.80%) Firewall
3 20 (5.76%) DHCP
4 19 (5.48%) VPN
5 15 (4.32%) Network Security
5 15 (4.32%) TCP/IP
5 15 (4.32%) WAN
6 14 (4.03%) SSH
7 13 (3.75%) LAN
7 13 (3.75%) VSAN
8 10 (2.88%) Cisco ASA
8 10 (2.88%) Cisco Firepower
9 9 (2.59%) SSL
10 8 (2.31%) SAN
11 7 (2.02%) Wireless
11 7 (2.02%) Wireshark
12 6 (1.73%) Diameter Protocol
12 6 (1.73%) LTE
12 6 (1.73%) Software-Defined Radio
12 6 (1.73%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (9.51%) SQL Server
2 17 (4.90%) Oracle Database
3 14 (4.03%) MySQL
4 7 (2.02%) DataStage
5 6 (1.73%) Oracle Database 12c
5 6 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.44%) Oracle Database 11g
7 4 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.58%) Electronic Patient Records
8 2 (0.58%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.58%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.58%) Redis
8 2 (0.58%) Vitess
9 1 (0.29%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.29%) Pentaho
9 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.29%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 21 (6.05%) JIRA
2 18 (5.19%) GitLab
3 12 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 11 (3.17%) Git
5 7 (2.02%) Eclipse
6 6 (1.73%) MLflow
7 5 (1.44%) Maven
8 4 (1.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (1.15%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.15%) Jaeger
8 4 (1.15%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.15%) Subversion
9 3 (0.86%) Android Studio
9 3 (0.86%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.86%) Xcode
10 2 (0.58%) Introscope
10 2 (0.58%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.29%) Mockito
11 1 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.29%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 53 (15.27%) Social Skills
2 38 (10.95%) Public Sector
3 26 (7.49%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (6.05%) Documentation Skills
5 16 (4.61%) Military
6 10 (2.88%) Finance
7 7 (2.02%) Retail
8 6 (1.73%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 4 (1.15%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.15%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.58%) Law
10 2 (0.58%) Legal
11 1 (0.29%) Automotive
11 1 (0.29%) Electronics
11 1 (0.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.29%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 50 (14.41%) Linux Engineer
2 47 (13.54%) Senior
3 43 (12.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (6.63%) Architect
5 22 (6.34%) Developer
5 22 (6.34%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 19 (5.48%) Platform Engineer
7 15 (4.32%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (4.03%) Cloud Engineer
8 14 (4.03%) Network Engineer
9 13 (3.75%) Support Engineer
10 12 (3.46%) DBA
10 12 (3.46%) Software Engineer
10 12 (3.46%) Technical Architect
11 11 (3.17%) Analyst
11 11 (3.17%) Citrix Engineer
11 11 (3.17%) Embedded Engineer
11 11 (3.17%) Technical Engineer
11 11 (3.17%) Technical Support
11 11 (3.17%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (4.03%) Kafka
2 12 (3.46%) YAML
3 8 (2.31%) LDAP
3 8 (2.31%) Middleware
4 7 (2.02%) ARM Templates
4 7 (2.02%) Yocto
5 6 (1.73%) .NET
5 6 (1.73%) Keycloak
5 6 (1.73%) Loki
6 5 (1.44%) GraphQL
6 5 (1.44%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (1.15%) 802.1X
7 4 (1.15%) gRPC
7 4 (1.15%) LAMP
7 4 (1.15%) Protocol Buffers
7 4 (1.15%) RESTful
7 4 (1.15%) Web Services
7 4 (1.15%) XML
8 3 (0.86%) Ajax
8 3 (0.86%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 47 (13.54%) Onboarding
2 22 (6.34%) PKI
3 19 (5.48%) Hybrid Cloud
3 19 (5.48%) Management Information System
4 18 (5.19%) Public Cloud
5 16 (4.61%) Product Ownership
6 15 (4.32%) Data Centre
7 10 (2.88%) Cloud Native
7 10 (2.88%) Operational Technology
8 9 (2.59%) Device Driver
8 9 (2.59%) Embedded Systems
8 9 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.59%) SCADA
9 8 (2.31%) Replication
9 8 (2.31%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.73%) Cyber Defence
10 6 (1.73%) MicroBlaze
10 6 (1.73%) RISC-V
11 5 (1.44%) ARM Cortex
11 5 (1.44%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 156 (44.96%) Windows
2 70 (20.17%) Unix
3 50 (14.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 49 (14.12%) Windows Server
5 16 (4.61%) Embedded Linux
5 16 (4.61%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.31%) CentOS
6 8 (2.31%) Debian
6 8 (2.31%) Windows 10
7 5 (1.44%) Oracle Linux
7 5 (1.44%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (1.15%) Mac OS
8 4 (1.15%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.86%) Android
9 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.58%) Solaris
10 2 (0.58%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.29%) AIX
11 1 (0.29%) OpenVMS
11 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (18.73%) CI/CD
2 51 (14.70%) SIEM
3 50 (14.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 48 (13.83%) ITIL
5 41 (11.82%) DevOps
6 39 (11.24%) Cybersecurity
7 37 (10.66%) Runbook
8 36 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
9 35 (10.09%) Containerisation
9 35 (10.09%) Infrastructure as Code
9 35 (10.09%) Migration
10 34 (9.80%) Agile
11 32 (9.22%) ITSM
12 31 (8.93%) DevSecOps
12 31 (8.93%) Platform Engineering
13 30 (8.65%) High Availability
14 29 (8.36%) Computer Science
15 28 (8.07%) Root Cause Analysis
16 27 (7.78%) Change Control
16 27 (7.78%) Privileged Access Management
Programming Languages
1 109 (31.41%) Python
2 82 (23.63%) PowerShell
3 59 (17.00%) Bash
4 24 (6.92%) SQL
5 23 (6.63%) C
6 17 (4.90%) C++
7 15 (4.32%) Java
8 13 (3.75%) Shell Script
9 12 (3.46%) JavaScript
10 11 (3.17%) Perl
11 7 (2.02%) Bicep
12 6 (1.73%) Embedded C++
12 6 (1.73%) PL/SQL
12 6 (1.73%) Rust
13 5 (1.44%) Embedded C
13 5 (1.44%) Go
14 3 (0.86%) Ada
14 3 (0.86%) Korn
15 2 (0.58%) C#
15 2 (0.58%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 213 (61.38%) Security Cleared
2 153 (44.09%) SC Cleared
3 79 (22.77%) DV Cleared
4 49 (14.12%) Degree
5 16 (4.61%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (4.03%) RHCE
7 13 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (2.59%) AWS Certification
8 9 (2.59%) CCNP
8 9 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 7 (2.02%) CISM
9 7 (2.02%) CISSP
9 7 (2.02%) RHCSA
10 6 (1.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.73%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.73%) CRISC
10 6 (1.73%) GIAC
10 6 (1.73%) LFCS
11 5 (1.44%) CCSM
11 5 (1.44%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (13.83%) NIST
2 36 (10.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (4.32%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (3.46%) SLA
5 9 (2.59%) NCSC
6 6 (1.73%) GDPR
6 6 (1.73%) ISO 31000
7 5 (1.44%) GRC
7 5 (1.44%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.86%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.86%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.29%) DICOM
10 1 (0.29%) HL7
10 1 (0.29%) OpenSCAP
10 1 (0.29%) QA
System Software
1 88 (25.36%) Active Directory
2 49 (14.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (7.49%) Docker
3 26 (7.49%) VMware NSX
4 16 (4.61%) VMware ESXi
5 12 (3.46%) Hyper-V
6 11 (3.17%) Firmware
7 7 (2.02%) Oracle RAC
8 6 (1.73%) Embedded Firmware
9 5 (1.44%) vSphere
10 4 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.86%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.86%) KVM
11 3 (0.86%) Postfix
11 3 (0.86%) UAG
12 1 (0.29%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 53 (15.27%) Ansible
2 50 (14.41%) Terraform
3 49 (14.12%) Kubernetes
4 18 (5.19%) Grafana
4 18 (5.19%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.03%) Puppet
6 12 (3.46%) Red Hat Satellite
7 11 (3.17%) Oracle RMAN
8 10 (2.88%) vCenter Server
9 8 (2.31%) Progress Chef
10 7 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
10 7 (2.02%) Rancher
10 7 (2.02%) SCCM
11 6 (1.73%) Data Guard
12 5 (1.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (1.44%) Packer
13 4 (1.15%) Istio
13 4 (1.15%) Podman
13 4 (1.15%) WSUS
14 3 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 85 (24.50%) VMware
2 67 (19.31%) Microsoft
3 49 (14.12%) Oracle
3 49 (14.12%) Red Hat
4 27 (7.78%) BeyondTrust
5 26 (7.49%) CyberArk
6 25 (7.20%) Cisco
7 19 (5.48%) ServiceNow
8 18 (5.19%) Citrix
9 15 (4.32%) Palo Alto
9 15 (4.32%) Splunk
10 12 (3.46%) IBM
11 10 (2.88%) NVIDIA
11 10 (2.88%) SolarWinds
12 7 (2.02%) Google
12 7 (2.02%) Nokia
12 7 (2.02%) Tenable
13 6 (1.73%) BT
13 6 (1.73%) CheckPoint
13 6 (1.73%) Ericsson