RHCE Contract Job Trends

Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for RHCE qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 25 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 568 521 572
Rank change year-on-year -47 +51 +179
Contract jobs citing RHCE 33 16 22
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.080% 0.053% 0.050%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.23% 0.18% 0.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 22 13 18
10th Percentile £427 £385 £406
25th Percentile £500 £463 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.87% +4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £538 £623 £656
90th Percentile £563 £625 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -10.87% +4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £87.50 - -
Median hourly rate £90.00 - -
75th Percentile £92.50 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

RHCE falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 14,076 9,065 13,350
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.08% 29.76% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,299 5,575 8,231
10th Percentile £330 £291 £288
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £614 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £718 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,025 443 958
10th Percentile £16.04 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.19 £20.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% -11.27%
75th Percentile £64.00 £67.25 £64.88
90th Percentile £80.00 £81.88 £77.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.25 £44.50
% change year-on-year -46.77% +6.17% -1.11%

RHCE
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing RHCE relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

RHCE job vacancy trend in the UK

RHCE
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RHCE.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RHCE

RHCE
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing RHCE over the 6 months to 25 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for RHCE in the UK

RHCE
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RHCE.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RHCE

RHCE
Top 8 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing RHCE within the UK over the 6 months to 25 February 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
England -61 30 £513 -10.87% 18
UK excluding London -62 23 £513 -10.87% 16
South East - 11 £500 - 6
Work from Home -6 9 £537 +13.05% 10
North of England - 9 £531 - 1
Yorkshire - 9 £531 -
London -47 6 £488 -18.75% 1
South West -29 3 £553 -3.91% 9

RHCE
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 3 (9.09%) Apache
2 2 (6.06%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 2 (6.06%) Tomcat
2 2 (6.06%) WebLogic
3 1 (3.03%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (3.03%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 11 (33.33%) Azure
2 10 (30.30%) AWS
2 10 (30.30%) GCP
2 10 (30.30%) OpenShift
3 1 (3.03%) Azure Key Vault
3 1 (3.03%) IaaS
3 1 (3.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (15.15%) DNS
1 5 (15.15%) Firewall
2 2 (6.06%) DHCP
2 2 (6.06%) HTTP
2 2 (6.06%) SSL
2 2 (6.06%) TCP/IP
3 1 (3.03%) iSCSI
3 1 (3.03%) Remote Desktop
3 1 (3.03%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (3.03%) MySQL
1 1 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (3.03%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (24.24%) Jenkins
2 7 (21.21%) Git
3 2 (6.06%) Bitbucket
4 1 (3.03%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (3.03%) JIRA
General
1 12 (36.36%) Social Skills
2 8 (24.24%) Documentation Skills
3 4 (12.12%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (12.12%) Public Sector
4 1 (3.03%) Finance
4 1 (3.03%) Financial Institution
4 1 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 8 (24.24%) Architect
1 8 (24.24%) Lead
2 5 (15.15%) Solutions Architect
3 4 (12.12%) Linux Engineer
4 3 (9.09%) Security Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Automation Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Cloud Architect
5 2 (6.06%) Cloud Infrastructure Architect
5 2 (6.06%) Infrastructure Architect
5 2 (6.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Linux Specialist
5 2 (6.06%) Platform Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Senior
5 2 (6.06%) Senior Linux Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Technical Leader
5 2 (6.06%) Technical Specialist
6 1 (3.03%) Administrator
6 1 (3.03%) Azure Architect
6 1 (3.03%) Python Engineer
6 1 (3.03%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (27.27%) YAML
2 2 (6.06%) LDAP
2 2 (6.06%) Middleware
3 1 (3.03%) OpenMP
3 1 (3.03%) REST
3 1 (3.03%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 7 (21.21%) Cloud Native
2 1 (3.03%) Analytical Mindset
2 1 (3.03%) CUDA
2 1 (3.03%) Cyber Defence
2 1 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
2 1 (3.03%) Hedge funds
2 1 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
2 1 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (3.03%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 31 (93.94%) Linux
2 20 (60.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 15 (45.45%) CentOS
4 13 (39.39%) Ubuntu
5 5 (15.15%) Unix
6 2 (6.06%) Windows
7 1 (3.03%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (60.61%) CI/CD
2 19 (57.58%) DevOps
3 13 (39.39%) Containerisation
4 12 (36.36%) Problem-Solving
5 11 (33.33%) Continuous Improvement
6 10 (30.30%) RBAC
7 8 (24.24%) Configuration Management
7 8 (24.24%) ITSM
8 5 (15.15%) Infrastructure Automation
8 5 (15.15%) Microservices
8 5 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
9 4 (12.12%) Agile
9 4 (12.12%) High Availability
9 4 (12.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 4 (12.12%) Migration
9 4 (12.12%) Task Automation
10 3 (9.09%) Cybersecurity
10 3 (9.09%) Reverse Engineering
10 3 (9.09%) System Testing
10 3 (9.09%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 19 (57.58%) Python
2 12 (36.36%) Bash
3 10 (30.30%) Perl
4 8 (24.24%) Ruby
5 3 (9.09%) PowerShell
6 2 (6.06%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 12 (36.36%) Security Cleared
2 10 (30.30%) RHCSA
2 10 (30.30%) SC Cleared
3 5 (15.15%) Oracle Certification
4 4 (12.12%) RHCA
5 3 (9.09%) CCNP
5 3 (9.09%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (9.09%) OCA
5 3 (9.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 2 (6.06%) AWS Certification
6 2 (6.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (6.06%) DV Cleared
6 2 (6.06%) LFCS
6 2 (6.06%) OCP
7 1 (3.03%) CESG Certified Professional
7 1 (3.03%) CISM
7 1 (3.03%) CISSP
7 1 (3.03%) CompTIA Security+
7 1 (3.03%) Degree
7 1 (3.03%) LPIC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.03%) NCSC
System Software
1 5 (15.15%) VMware Infrastructure
2 4 (12.12%) Docker
2 4 (12.12%) KVM
3 3 (9.09%) Active Directory
4 1 (3.03%) Citrix Hypervisor
4 1 (3.03%) GPFS
4 1 (3.03%) Lustre
4 1 (3.03%) Postfix
4 1 (3.03%) Samba
4 1 (3.03%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (3.03%) Varnish
4 1 (3.03%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 24 (72.73%) Ansible
2 14 (42.42%) Puppet
3 13 (39.39%) Kubernetes
4 7 (21.21%) Terraform
5 6 (18.18%) Progress Chef
6 2 (6.06%) Nagios
6 2 (6.06%) Prometheus
6 2 (6.06%) Red Hat Satellite
6 2 (6.06%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (3.03%) HAProxy
7 1 (3.03%) SELinux
Vendors
1 26 (78.79%) Red Hat
2 7 (21.21%) VMware
3 2 (6.06%) Oracle
3 2 (6.06%) Splunk
4 1 (3.03%) D-Link
4 1 (3.03%) Microsoft
4 1 (3.03%) NVIDIA