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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 26 20
Rank change year-on-year -2 -6 +3
Contract jobs citing Linux 319 214 402
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 6.50% 6.87% 7.24%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.48% 39.05% 39.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 139 263
10th Percentile £211 £399 £313
25th Percentile £400 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £556 £613 £591
90th Percentile £640 £675 £638
England median daily rate £520 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.45% - -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 12 38
10th Percentile - £55.79 £29.18
25th Percentile £12.50 £60.81 £51.94
Median hourly rate £18.51 £62.50 £65.75
Median % change year-on-year -70.38% -4.94% +9.58%
75th Percentile £48.75 £64.06 £74.22
90th Percentile £70.13 £70.63 £76.53
England median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +10.83% -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 751 548 1,026
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 15.30% 17.59% 18.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 374 666
10th Percentile £200 £200 £175
25th Percentile £275 £277 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £463 £441
Median % change year-on-year - +4.82% -11.75%
75th Percentile £550 £580 £575
90th Percentile £647 £659 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -12.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 25 82
10th Percentile £12.50 £18.92 £16.25
25th Percentile £15.50 £28.00 £23.72
Median hourly rate £20.79 £57.75 £52.28
Median % change year-on-year -64.00% +10.46% +80.28%
75th Percentile £48.75 £62.50 £69.69
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.50 £76.53
England median hourly rate £22.81 £44.50 £23.88
% change year-on-year -48.74% +86.39% -10.48%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +7 166 £450 -6.64% 128
Berkshire +1 124 £425 -12.33% 79
Hampshire -6 102 £525 -8.70% 57
Surrey 0 32 £208 -58.50% 30
Buckinghamshire +13 31 £595 +40.00% 29
Oxfordshire -8 11 £425 -20.93% 20
Sussex - 10 - -
West Sussex -12 5 £500 -31.03% 11
East Sussex - 5 - - 7
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 12 (3.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.94%) Apache
2 3 (0.94%) Mattermost
2 3 (0.94%) Skype for Business
3 2 (0.63%) Appian
3 2 (0.63%) Confluence
4 1 (0.31%) JBoss
4 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
Applications
1 16 (5.02%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.94%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.31%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 80 (25.08%) AWS
2 61 (19.12%) Azure
3 38 (11.91%) OpenShift
4 29 (9.09%) GitHub
5 17 (5.33%) SaaS
6 16 (5.02%) GCP
6 16 (5.02%) GitHub Actions
7 14 (4.39%) IaaS
8 13 (4.08%) Cloud Computing
8 13 (4.08%) Sauce Labs
9 12 (3.76%) AWS CloudFormation
9 12 (3.76%) Google Workspace
10 10 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
11 8 (2.51%) Amazon ECR
11 8 (2.51%) Entra ID
12 7 (2.19%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (2.19%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (2.19%) OCI
13 6 (1.88%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.88%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 39 (12.23%) DNS
2 27 (8.46%) Firewall
3 26 (8.15%) TCP/IP
4 13 (4.08%) DHCP
4 13 (4.08%) Wireless
5 10 (3.13%) SAN
6 9 (2.82%) WAN
6 9 (2.82%) Wireshark
7 7 (2.19%) LAN
7 7 (2.19%) Network Security
7 7 (2.19%) VLAN
8 6 (1.88%) SSH
9 5 (1.57%) BGP
9 5 (1.57%) Ethernet VPN
9 5 (1.57%) OSPF
9 5 (1.57%) VPN
10 4 (1.25%) NAS
11 3 (0.94%) NFC
11 3 (0.94%) PPP
11 3 (0.94%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.46%) MySQL
1 27 (8.46%) Relational Database
2 20 (6.27%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (5.33%) SQL Server
4 12 (3.76%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (2.82%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.51%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (1.25%) Couchbase
7 4 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.94%) RDBMS
8 3 (0.94%) Redis
8 3 (0.94%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.63%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.63%) Oracle Database 12c
9 2 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 1 (0.31%) GIS
10 1 (0.31%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 38 (11.91%) Jenkins
2 20 (6.27%) Git
3 19 (5.96%) Eclipse
4 13 (4.08%) Android Studio
4 13 (4.08%) Browser DevTools
4 13 (4.08%) JIRA
4 13 (4.08%) Xcode
5 11 (3.45%) Burp Suite
5 11 (3.45%) GitLab
5 11 (3.45%) JUnit
6 10 (3.13%) JMeter
6 10 (3.13%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (2.82%) Cucumber
8 8 (2.51%) Metasploit
9 7 (2.19%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.25%) Maven
10 4 (1.25%) Subversion
11 3 (0.94%) Valgrind
12 2 (0.63%) Jaeger
13 1 (0.31%) Storybook
General
1 91 (28.53%) Social Skills
2 30 (9.40%) Analytical Skills
3 29 (9.09%) Public Sector
4 19 (5.96%) Military
5 14 (4.39%) Organisational Skills
6 12 (3.76%) Finance
7 7 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.57%) Legal
9 4 (1.25%) Law
10 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.63%) Banking
10 2 (0.63%) Electronics
10 2 (0.63%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.31%) Advertising
11 1 (0.31%) Back Office
11 1 (0.31%) Front Office
11 1 (0.31%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.31%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.31%) Retail
Job Titles
1 35 (10.97%) Architect
2 30 (9.40%) Senior
3 29 (9.09%) Analyst
4 28 (8.78%) Support Engineer
5 23 (7.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 22 (6.90%) Technical Support
7 21 (6.58%) Software Engineer
8 20 (6.27%) DevOps Engineer
9 19 (5.96%) Developer
9 19 (5.96%) Linux Engineer
9 19 (5.96%) Tester
10 14 (4.39%) SOC Analyst
11 13 (4.08%) Infrastructure Architect
11 13 (4.08%) Technical Engineer
11 13 (4.08%) Technical Support Engineer
11 13 (4.08%) UX Engineer
12 12 (3.76%) IT Support
12 12 (3.76%) Support Officer
13 11 (3.45%) AWS DevOps
13 11 (3.45%) Infrastructure Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.96%) Kafka
2 15 (4.70%) Elastic Stack
3 14 (4.39%) CSS
3 14 (4.39%) React
4 13 (4.08%) Ajax
4 13 (4.08%) AngularJS
4 13 (4.08%) GraphQL
4 13 (4.08%) XML
5 12 (3.76%) Loki
6 11 (3.45%) JSON
6 11 (3.45%) Spring
6 11 (3.45%) YAML
7 9 (2.82%) Hibernate
8 7 (2.19%) REST
9 5 (1.57%) .NET
9 5 (1.57%) Middleware
9 5 (1.57%) Web Services
10 3 (0.94%) Keycloak
10 3 (0.94%) OpenTelemetry
10 3 (0.94%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.70%) Security Operations Centre
3 14 (4.39%) PKI
4 13 (4.08%) Enterprise Software
4 13 (4.08%) Mobile App
5 12 (3.76%) Onboarding
6 11 (3.45%) Replication
7 10 (3.13%) Data Centre
7 10 (3.13%) Management Information System
8 9 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
8 9 (2.82%) Security Posture
9 8 (2.51%) Cyberattack
9 8 (2.51%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.51%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.88%) Linux Command Line
10 6 (1.88%) Product Ownership
10 6 (1.88%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.57%) CAN bus
11 5 (1.57%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 156 (48.90%) Windows
2 47 (14.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 41 (12.85%) Unix
4 30 (9.40%) Windows Server
5 16 (5.02%) Ubuntu
6 13 (4.08%) Android
7 11 (3.45%) Kali Linux
8 6 (1.88%) CentOS
9 5 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.94%) Debian
11 2 (0.63%) Embedded Linux
11 2 (0.63%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.63%) SUSE
11 2 (0.63%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.31%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.31%) Solaris
12 1 (0.31%) VMS
12 1 (0.31%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (29.78%) CI/CD
2 68 (21.32%) DevOps
3 51 (15.99%) Agile
4 44 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (12.85%) Containerisation
6 38 (11.91%) Infrastructure as Code
7 35 (10.97%) SIEM
8 32 (10.03%) Cybersecurity
8 32 (10.03%) Incident Response
9 29 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 27 (8.46%) ITIL
10 27 (8.46%) Security Operations
11 26 (8.15%) Computer Science
11 26 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
11 26 (8.15%) High Availability
11 26 (8.15%) OO
12 25 (7.84%) Software Engineering
13 24 (7.52%) DevSecOps
13 24 (7.52%) Observability
14 23 (7.21%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 116 (36.36%) Python
2 54 (16.93%) PowerShell
3 53 (16.61%) Bash
4 44 (13.79%) Java
5 30 (9.40%) Perl
6 29 (9.09%) SQL
7 28 (8.78%) JavaScript
8 14 (4.39%) C++
8 14 (4.39%) Shell Script
9 12 (3.76%) C#
10 7 (2.19%) C
11 5 (1.57%) Embedded C++
12 4 (1.25%) Ada
12 4 (1.25%) Rust
13 3 (0.94%) Go
14 2 (0.63%) Korn
14 2 (0.63%) MATLAB
14 2 (0.63%) PHP
14 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.31%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 186 (58.31%) Security Cleared
2 115 (36.05%) SC Cleared
3 66 (20.69%) DV Cleared
4 32 (10.03%) Degree
5 21 (6.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.45%) RHCE
7 10 (3.13%) CEH
8 9 (2.82%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.82%) CISSP
8 9 (2.82%) OSCP
9 8 (2.51%) AWS Certification
9 8 (2.51%) GPEN
9 8 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (1.88%) CompTIA CySA+
10 6 (1.88%) GCFA
10 6 (1.88%) GCIA
10 6 (1.88%) GCIH
10 6 (1.88%) ISTQB
10 6 (1.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.02%) NIST
2 12 (3.76%) GDPR
2 12 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (2.19%) QA
4 5 (1.57%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (1.25%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.94%) NCSC
6 3 (0.94%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.63%) GRC
7 2 (0.63%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.63%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.31%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.31%) SLA
8 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 63 (19.75%) VMware Infrastructure
2 37 (11.60%) Active Directory
3 32 (10.03%) Docker
4 21 (6.58%) vSphere
5 19 (5.96%) Hyper-V
6 11 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (3.13%) VMware NSX
8 5 (1.57%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.94%) Firmware
10 2 (0.63%) KVM
10 2 (0.63%) Oracle RAC
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%) NFS
11 1 (0.31%) UAG
Systems Management
1 71 (22.26%) Ansible
2 63 (19.75%) Kubernetes
3 53 (16.61%) Terraform
4 30 (9.40%) Grafana
5 28 (8.78%) Prometheus
6 17 (5.33%) Argo
7 15 (4.70%) Red Hat Satellite
8 13 (4.08%) Progress Chef
9 12 (3.76%) vCenter Server
10 11 (3.45%) Nmap
11 9 (2.82%) Puppet
12 8 (2.51%) Kustomize
13 7 (2.19%) Oracle RMAN
13 7 (2.19%) Sysdig
14 6 (1.88%) Podman
15 5 (1.57%) Data Guard
15 5 (1.57%) Nessus
15 5 (1.57%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 4 (1.25%) Rancher
16 4 (1.25%) SCOM
Vendors
1 94 (29.47%) VMware
2 76 (23.82%) Microsoft
3 68 (21.32%) Red Hat
4 43 (13.48%) Splunk
5 39 (12.23%) Oracle
6 12 (3.76%) ServiceNow
7 10 (3.13%) Cisco
8 7 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
9 6 (1.88%) CyberArk
9 6 (1.88%) HP
9 6 (1.88%) NetApp
9 6 (1.88%) Pure Storage
10 5 (1.57%) ArcSight
10 5 (1.57%) Dell
10 5 (1.57%) IBM
10 5 (1.57%) Mellanox
10 5 (1.57%) Zscaler
11 4 (1.25%) Confluent
11 4 (1.25%) CrowdStrike
11 4 (1.25%) Tanium