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 1 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 594 498 570
Rank change year-on-year -96 +72 +131
Contract jobs citing RHCE 36 26 12
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.076% 0.089% 0.028%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.24% 0.29% 0.090%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 22 8
10th Percentile £480 £414 £340
25th Percentile £500 £470 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £575 £500
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +15.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £538 £588 £616
90th Percentile £582 £625 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £575 £450
% change year-on-year -12.52% +27.78% -18.18%
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 15,296 8,991 13,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.37% 30.72% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,167 5,685 8,194
10th Percentile £350 £288 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £707 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £532
% change year-on-year -0.10% -5.92% +0.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,109 509 1,077
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.00 £17.88
Median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.75% - -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.20 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £42.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +11.76% +3.81% -17.37%

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 1 May 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 9 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 1 May 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 -89 33 £506 -12.00% 7
UK excluding London -82 31 £503 -12.52% 2
North of England -55 15 £506 -2.65%
South East - 13 £500 -
Yorkshire - 10 £531 -
Work from Home -30 7 £537 +6.02% 2
North West -40 5 £494 -4.95%
South West -38 3 £553 -3.91% 2
London -57 1 £525 - 4

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 1 (2.78%) Apache
1 1 (2.78%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 12 (33.33%) OpenShift
2 7 (19.44%) Azure
3 5 (13.89%) AWS
3 5 (13.89%) GCP
4 1 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (2.78%) Azure Key Vault
4 1 (2.78%) GitHub
4 1 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (2.78%) IaaS
4 1 (2.78%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (5.56%) Firewall
2 1 (2.78%) DNS
2 1 (2.78%) iSCSI
2 1 (2.78%) Remote Desktop
2 1 (2.78%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.78%) MySQL
1 1 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (2.78%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 9 (25.00%) Jenkins
2 7 (19.44%) Git
3 2 (5.56%) Bitbucket
4 1 (2.78%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (2.78%) GitLab
4 1 (2.78%) JIRA
General
1 15 (41.67%) Social Skills
2 8 (22.22%) Documentation Skills
3 5 (13.89%) Finance
4 4 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (11.11%) Banking
4 4 (11.11%) Public Sector
5 1 (2.78%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 9 (25.00%) Lead
2 7 (19.44%) Architect
3 6 (16.67%) Linux Engineer
4 5 (13.89%) Solutions Architect
5 4 (11.11%) Unix Engineer
6 3 (8.33%) Platform Engineer
6 3 (8.33%) Security Engineer
6 3 (8.33%) Senior
7 2 (5.56%) Automation Engineer
7 2 (5.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 2 (5.56%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 2 (5.56%) Technical Leader
8 1 (2.78%) Azure Architect
8 1 (2.78%) Deployment Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Migration Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Performance Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Python Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Python Software Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Senior Unix Engineer
8 1 (2.78%) Technology Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (25.00%) YAML
2 2 (5.56%) LDAP
3 1 (2.78%) OpenMP
3 1 (2.78%) REST
3 1 (2.78%) SOAP
3 1 (2.78%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 5 (13.89%) Cloud Native
2 4 (11.11%) Data Centre
2 4 (11.11%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (8.33%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (5.56%) Virtual Team
5 1 (2.78%) CMDB
5 1 (2.78%) CUDA
5 1 (2.78%) Cyber Defence
5 1 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (2.78%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (2.78%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 34 (94.44%) Linux
2 22 (61.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 10 (27.78%) CentOS
4 9 (25.00%) Ubuntu
5 5 (13.89%) Unix
6 4 (11.11%) AIX
6 4 (11.11%) HPUX
6 4 (11.11%) Oracle Linux
6 4 (11.11%) Solaris
6 4 (11.11%) SUSE
6 4 (11.11%) Windows
7 1 (2.78%) CoreOS
7 1 (2.78%) Mac OS
7 1 (2.78%) Rocky
7 1 (2.78%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (52.78%) CI/CD
1 19 (52.78%) DevOps
2 14 (38.89%) RBAC
3 13 (36.11%) Continuous Improvement
3 13 (36.11%) Problem-Solving
4 11 (30.56%) Containerisation
5 8 (22.22%) ITSM
5 8 (22.22%) Migration
5 8 (22.22%) Runbook
6 7 (19.44%) Vulnerability Management
7 5 (13.89%) Change Management
7 5 (13.89%) Configuration Management
7 5 (13.89%) ITIL
7 5 (13.89%) Microservices
7 5 (13.89%) Service Management
7 5 (13.89%) Stakeholder Management
8 4 (11.11%) Deployment Automation
8 4 (11.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 4 (11.11%) Security Hardening
8 4 (11.11%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 15 (41.67%) Python
2 8 (22.22%) Bash
2 8 (22.22%) Perl
2 8 (22.22%) Ruby
3 4 (11.11%) PowerShell
4 1 (2.78%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 16 (44.44%) Security Cleared
2 14 (38.89%) SC Cleared
3 10 (27.78%) RHCSA
4 6 (16.67%) RHCA
5 5 (13.89%) CISSP
5 5 (13.89%) CompTIA Security+
5 5 (13.89%) Oracle Certification
6 4 (11.11%) DV Cleared
6 4 (11.11%) LFCS
7 3 (8.33%) CCNP
7 3 (8.33%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (8.33%) LPIC
7 3 (8.33%) OCA
7 3 (8.33%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 2 (5.56%) Degree
8 2 (5.56%) OCP
9 1 (2.78%) CESG Certified Professional
9 1 (2.78%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (11.11%) GRC
2 1 (2.78%) NCSC
2 1 (2.78%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 3 (8.33%) Active Directory
1 3 (8.33%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (5.56%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (2.78%) Citrix Hypervisor
3 1 (2.78%) GPFS
3 1 (2.78%) KVM
3 1 (2.78%) Lustre
3 1 (2.78%) Postfix
3 1 (2.78%) Samba
3 1 (2.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (2.78%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 20 (55.56%) Ansible
2 11 (30.56%) Puppet
3 10 (27.78%) Kubernetes
4 6 (16.67%) Terraform
5 4 (11.11%) Progress Chef
6 2 (5.56%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (2.78%) Argo
7 1 (2.78%) Grafana
7 1 (2.78%) HAProxy
7 1 (2.78%) Packer
7 1 (2.78%) Prometheus
7 1 (2.78%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (2.78%) SELinux
Vendors
1 30 (83.33%) Red Hat
2 5 (13.89%) VMware
3 4 (11.11%) HP
3 4 (11.11%) Microsoft
3 4 (11.11%) Oracle
4 1 (2.78%) D-Link
4 1 (2.78%) NVIDIA
4 1 (2.78%) ServiceNow