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 11 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 565 507 557
Rank change year-on-year -58 +50 +205
Contract jobs citing RHCE 23 9 34
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.063% 0.028% 0.079%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.19% 0.095% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 6 25
10th Percentile £429 £369 £421
25th Percentile - £388 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £494 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.21% -10.18% +4.76%
75th Percentile £537 £601 £675
90th Percentile £538 £624 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £388 £500
% change year-on-year +29.03% -22.50% -4.76%
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 12,359 9,492 12,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.96% 29.86% 30.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,105 5,758 8,144
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £633 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £540
% change year-on-year -0.10% -7.31% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 946 455 755
10th Percentile £16.13 £18.94 £15.37
25th Percentile £19.10 £24.18 £24.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -20.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.38 £79.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -39.40% -17.00% +11.11%

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 -31 20 £500 +11.11% 10
UK excluding London -46 14 £500 +29.03% 7
Work from Home -5 7 £537 +8.70% 4
South East - 7 £500 - 2
London -5 6 £450 -25.00% 4
North of England -35 6 £525 - 2
Yorkshire - 6 £525 - 2
Scotland - 1 - -

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 2 (8.70%) Apache
1 2 (8.70%) Oracle HTTP Server
1 2 (8.70%) Tomcat
1 2 (8.70%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 10 (43.48%) AWS
1 10 (43.48%) Azure
1 10 (43.48%) GCP
2 7 (30.43%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 5 (21.74%) Firewall
2 4 (17.39%) DNS
3 3 (13.04%) SSL
4 2 (8.70%) DHCP
4 2 (8.70%) HTTP
4 2 (8.70%) TCP/IP
5 1 (4.35%) Intrusion Detection
Development Applications
1 5 (21.74%) Git
1 5 (21.74%) Jenkins
General
1 6 (26.09%) Documentation Skills
1 6 (26.09%) Social Skills
2 2 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
2 2 (8.70%) Finance
2 2 (8.70%) Financial Institution
3 1 (4.35%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 7 (30.43%) Architect
1 7 (30.43%) Lead
2 5 (21.74%) Solutions Architect
3 3 (13.04%) Security Engineer
4 2 (8.70%) Administrator
4 2 (8.70%) Cloud Architect
4 2 (8.70%) Cloud Infrastructure Architect
4 2 (8.70%) Infrastructure Architect
4 2 (8.70%) Linux Specialist
4 2 (8.70%) Technical Leader
4 2 (8.70%) Technical Specialist
5 1 (4.35%) Performance Engineer
5 1 (4.35%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (26.09%) YAML
2 2 (8.70%) LDAP
2 2 (8.70%) Middleware
3 1 (4.35%) OpenMP
Miscellaneous
1 7 (30.43%) Cloud Native
2 2 (8.70%) Hedge funds
3 1 (4.35%) CUDA
3 1 (4.35%) Cyber Defence
3 1 (4.35%) Cyber Security Posture
3 1 (4.35%) Hybrid Cloud
3 1 (4.35%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (4.35%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 23 (100.00%) Linux
2 16 (69.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 12 (52.17%) CentOS
4 11 (47.83%) Ubuntu
5 4 (17.39%) Unix
6 1 (4.35%) Rocky
6 1 (4.35%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (65.22%) DevOps
2 14 (60.87%) CI/CD
3 10 (43.48%) Containerisation
4 8 (34.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 8 (34.78%) Problem-Solving
4 8 (34.78%) RBAC
5 6 (26.09%) Configuration Management
5 6 (26.09%) ITSM
6 5 (21.74%) Microservices
6 5 (21.74%) Stakeholder Management
7 4 (17.39%) Cybersecurity
7 4 (17.39%) Disaster Recovery
8 3 (13.04%) Identity Access Management
8 3 (13.04%) Migration
8 3 (13.04%) Vulnerability Management
9 2 (8.70%) Load Balancing
9 2 (8.70%) Network Management
9 2 (8.70%) Patch Management
9 2 (8.70%) Performance Metrics
9 2 (8.70%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 13 (56.52%) Python
2 8 (34.78%) Perl
3 7 (30.43%) Bash
4 6 (26.09%) Ruby
5 2 (8.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 7 (30.43%) RHCSA
2 4 (17.39%) Security Cleared
3 3 (13.04%) SC Cleared
4 2 (8.70%) AWS Certification
4 2 (8.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 2 (8.70%) CISM
4 2 (8.70%) CISSP
4 2 (8.70%) OCP
4 2 (8.70%) Oracle Certification
5 1 (4.35%) CCNP
5 1 (4.35%) CESG Certified Professional
5 1 (4.35%) Cisco Certification
5 1 (4.35%) CompTIA Security+
5 1 (4.35%) DV Cleared
5 1 (4.35%) MCSE
5 1 (4.35%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.35%) NCSC
System Software
1 4 (17.39%) Docker
1 4 (17.39%) KVM
1 4 (17.39%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (13.04%) Active Directory
3 1 (4.35%) GPFS
3 1 (4.35%) Lustre
3 1 (4.35%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 19 (82.61%) Ansible
2 11 (47.83%) Kubernetes
3 10 (43.48%) Puppet
4 7 (30.43%) Terraform
5 4 (17.39%) Progress Chef
6 3 (13.04%) Nagios
6 3 (13.04%) Red Hat Satellite
7 2 (8.70%) Prometheus
7 2 (8.70%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (4.35%) Host Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (4.35%) SELinux
Vendors
1 19 (82.61%) Red Hat
2 4 (17.39%) VMware
3 2 (8.70%) Oracle
3 2 (8.70%) Splunk
4 1 (4.35%) Fortinet
4 1 (4.35%) McAfee
4 1 (4.35%) Microsoft
4 1 (4.35%) NVIDIA
4 1 (4.35%) Veeam