Linux Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Linux
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Linux skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 37 22
Rank change year-on-year -28 -15 +3
Contract jobs citing Linux 116 89 117
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.33% 5.31% 6.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 36.94% 38.53% 41.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 73 65 68
10th Percentile £325 £377 £357
25th Percentile £413 £450 £509
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £495 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.05% -10.00% +1.85%
75th Percentile £581 £540 £678
90th Percentile £638 £622 £750
England median daily rate £525 £525 £549
% change year-on-year - -4.33% -5.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - -
Median hourly rate £64.07 - -
75th Percentile £70.32 - -
90th Percentile £72.66 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +3.85%

All Operating Systems
West Midlands

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 West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 314 231 281
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 9.00% 13.78% 15.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 174 180
10th Percentile £213 £152 £184
25th Percentile £386 £226 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £448 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.91% -0.56% +12.50%
75th Percentile £527 £537 £577
90th Percentile £590 £583 £689
England median daily rate £469 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +4.22% -7.69% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 6 9
10th Percentile £47.73 £15.90 £15.32
25th Percentile £58.43 £16.67 £16.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £17.83 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +254.04% -6.14% -5.00%
75th Percentile £70.17 £23.12 £22.00
90th Percentile £71.28 £24.83 £34.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £31.00
% change year-on-year +41.30% -25.81% -25.38%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Linux relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Linux job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Linux
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Linux.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Linux

Linux
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Linux in the West Midlands

Linux
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Linux.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Linux

Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Linux in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Linux in the West Midlands

Linux
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 6 August 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
Warwickshire -5 27 £502 +4.58% 9
Shropshire -49 22 £469 -11.43% 7
Birmingham -24 18 £463 -2.63% 13
Solihull -16 13 £500 +11.11% 2
Herefordshire +3 9 £625 +4.17% 4
Worcestershire +3 7 £575 -4.17% 2
Coventry -23 5 £294 -52.92% 4
Staffordshire -2 4 £200 -59.60% 3
Linux
England

Linux
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 15 (12.93%) Confluence
2 9 (7.76%) WebLogic
3 4 (3.45%) Apache
3 4 (3.45%) SAS
4 2 (1.72%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.86%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.72%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 50 (43.10%) AWS
2 26 (22.41%) Azure
3 21 (18.10%) Amazon EC2
3 21 (18.10%) Amazon S3
4 15 (12.93%) Amazon SQS
5 14 (12.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 14 (12.07%) GitHub
5 14 (12.07%) Route 53
6 13 (11.21%) AWS KMS
7 10 (8.62%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (7.76%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (7.76%) OpenShift
9 7 (6.03%) Datadog
10 6 (5.17%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 6 (5.17%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (5.17%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (4.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 3 (2.59%) GCP
13 2 (1.72%) IaaS
13 2 (1.72%) Lucidchart
Communications & Networking
1 10 (8.62%) Firewall
2 7 (6.03%) SNMP
3 4 (3.45%) NAS
3 4 (3.45%) NetScaler
3 4 (3.45%) SAN
4 3 (2.59%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (2.59%) LAN
4 3 (2.59%) SSL
4 3 (2.59%) VSAN
5 2 (1.72%) Structured Cabling
5 2 (1.72%) VPN
6 1 (0.86%) DNS
6 1 (0.86%) DNSSEC
6 1 (0.86%) IPsec
6 1 (0.86%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.86%) Modbus
6 1 (0.86%) MQTT
6 1 (0.86%) Network Security
6 1 (0.86%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.86%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (15.52%) Amazon RDS
2 15 (12.93%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (11.21%) Amazon Aurora
3 13 (11.21%) DynamoDB
4 5 (4.31%) Oracle Database
5 4 (3.45%) MongoDB
5 4 (3.45%) Pentaho
6 3 (2.59%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (2.59%) MySQL
6 3 (2.59%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.86%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.86%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.86%) Db2
7 1 (0.86%) IDMS
7 1 (0.86%) Metadata
7 1 (0.86%) Oracle Database 11g
7 1 (0.86%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (0.86%) SQL Server
7 1 (0.86%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 32 (27.59%) Git
2 25 (21.55%) Jenkins
3 20 (17.24%) GitLab
3 20 (17.24%) Maven
4 15 (12.93%) SonarQube
5 14 (12.07%) JUnit
5 14 (12.07%) Mockito
6 13 (11.21%) DbUnit
6 13 (11.21%) jMock
7 11 (9.48%) Bitbucket Server
8 9 (7.76%) JIRA
9 5 (4.31%) Artifactory
10 4 (3.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (1.72%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.86%) Bitbucket
12 1 (0.86%) CircleCI
12 1 (0.86%) Gradle
12 1 (0.86%) Liquibase
12 1 (0.86%) Snyk
12 1 (0.86%) webpack
General
1 33 (28.45%) Social Skills
2 18 (15.52%) Public Sector
3 15 (12.93%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (6.90%) Finance
5 6 (5.17%) Legal
6 5 (4.31%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.59%) Banking
7 3 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.72%) Automotive
8 2 (1.72%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.86%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.86%) Billing
9 1 (0.86%) Electronics
9 1 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.86%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.86%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 20 (17.24%) Analyst
2 19 (16.38%) Developer
2 19 (16.38%) Java Developer
3 10 (8.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 9 (7.76%) Data Engineer
5 7 (6.03%) Senior
6 6 (5.17%) Architect
6 6 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
6 6 (5.17%) Site Engineer
6 6 (5.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 5 (4.31%) Asset Management Analyst
7 5 (4.31%) Java Engineer
7 5 (4.31%) Lead
7 5 (4.31%) Software Engineer
8 4 (3.45%) Infrastructure Architect
8 4 (3.45%) Senior Developer
8 4 (3.45%) Senior Java Developer
8 4 (3.45%) Storage Analyst
8 4 (3.45%) Support Engineer
9 3 (2.59%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (16.38%) Spring
1 19 (16.38%) Spring Boot
2 17 (14.66%) REST
3 14 (12.07%) ActiveMQ
4 13 (11.21%) AngularJS
4 13 (11.21%) Hibernate
4 13 (11.21%) JPA
4 13 (11.21%) PowerMock
4 13 (11.21%) SOAP
4 13 (11.21%) Spring Batch
4 13 (11.21%) Spring Integration
4 13 (11.21%) Web Services
5 12 (10.34%) RESTful
5 12 (10.34%) Spring Cloud
6 11 (9.48%) Bootstrap
6 11 (9.48%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (6.90%) Node.js
8 7 (6.03%) Flash
9 3 (2.59%) SAP Basis
10 2 (1.72%) QML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (16.38%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (12.07%) Linux Command Line
3 10 (8.62%) Replication
4 9 (7.76%) Cloud Native
5 8 (6.90%) Data Centre
6 7 (6.03%) Private Cloud
7 5 (4.31%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (4.31%) SCADA
8 4 (3.45%) Analytical Mindset
8 4 (3.45%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (2.59%) CSOC
9 3 (2.59%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (2.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (2.59%) Embedded Systems
9 3 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (2.59%) Operational Technology
9 3 (2.59%) Public Cloud
9 3 (2.59%) Security Operations Centre
10 2 (1.72%) IoT
10 2 (1.72%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 43 (37.07%) Windows
2 18 (15.52%) Unix
3 11 (9.48%) Windows Server
4 7 (6.03%) AIX
4 7 (6.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (4.31%) SUSE
5 5 (4.31%) Ubuntu
6 4 (3.45%) Embedded Linux
7 3 (2.59%) Solaris
8 2 (1.72%) Android
8 2 (1.72%) FreeRTOS
8 2 (1.72%) Mac OS
8 2 (1.72%) Windows 10
8 2 (1.72%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.86%) CentOS
9 1 (0.86%) HPUX
9 1 (0.86%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (35.34%) Containerisation
2 37 (31.90%) CI/CD
3 34 (29.31%) Agile
4 30 (25.86%) DevOps
5 24 (20.69%) Continuous Improvement
5 24 (20.69%) Infrastructure as Code
6 23 (19.83%) Scrum
7 21 (18.10%) Microservices
8 18 (15.52%) Performance Tuning
9 17 (14.66%) Kanban
9 17 (14.66%) TDD
10 16 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
11 15 (12.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 12 (10.34%) BDD
12 12 (10.34%) Business Continuity
12 12 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
13 11 (9.48%) Continuous Integration
13 11 (9.48%) Disaster Recovery
13 11 (9.48%) Open Source
13 11 (9.48%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 46 (39.66%) SQL
2 29 (25.00%) Java
3 16 (13.79%) Python
4 14 (12.07%) PowerShell
5 12 (10.34%) Bash
6 10 (8.62%) Shell Script
7 9 (7.76%) PL/SQL
8 7 (6.03%) Go
9 4 (3.45%) C
9 4 (3.45%) C++
10 3 (2.59%) Kotlin
10 3 (2.59%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (2.59%) Perl
11 1 (0.86%) Bicep
11 1 (0.86%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.86%) SystemVerilog
11 1 (0.86%) Tcl
11 1 (0.86%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 66 (56.90%) Security Cleared
2 51 (43.97%) SC Cleared
3 19 (16.38%) DV Cleared
4 11 (9.48%) AWS Certification
5 9 (7.76%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (6.90%) Azure Certification
6 8 (6.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (6.03%) CCNA
8 6 (5.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 4 (3.45%) MCSE
9 4 (3.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (3.45%) RHCA
10 3 (2.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (2.59%) Degree
11 2 (1.72%) CAPM
11 2 (1.72%) CBAP
11 2 (1.72%) CCNP
11 2 (1.72%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (1.72%) PMI Certification
11 2 (1.72%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (8.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (4.31%) NIST
3 4 (3.45%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.72%) ISO 26262
4 2 (1.72%) MISRA
4 2 (1.72%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.86%) NCSC
5 1 (0.86%) QA
5 1 (0.86%) SLA
System Software
1 33 (28.45%) Docker
2 16 (13.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (9.48%) Postfix
4 8 (6.90%) vSphere
5 7 (6.03%) GPFS
5 7 (6.03%) NFS
6 6 (5.17%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (3.45%) Active Directory
7 4 (3.45%) Hyper-V
8 3 (2.59%) Snort
8 3 (2.59%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (1.72%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.86%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.86%) Firmware
10 1 (0.86%) KVM
10 1 (0.86%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 32 (27.59%) Kubernetes
2 24 (20.69%) Terraform
3 23 (19.83%) Grafana
4 17 (14.66%) Ansible
5 15 (12.93%) Prometheus
6 8 (6.90%) Progress Chef
6 8 (6.90%) Puppet
7 7 (6.03%) Podman
7 7 (6.03%) WMI
8 6 (5.17%) vRealize
9 3 (2.59%) CSIRT
9 3 (2.59%) QRadar
9 3 (2.59%) VxRail
10 2 (1.72%) Check_MK
10 2 (1.72%) Data Guard
10 2 (1.72%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (1.72%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (1.72%) SCCM
11 1 (0.86%) Istio
11 1 (0.86%) Packer
Vendors
1 34 (29.31%) Oracle
2 24 (20.69%) Microsoft
3 23 (19.83%) Cisco
3 23 (19.83%) VMware
4 22 (18.97%) Splunk
5 17 (14.66%) Atlassian
5 17 (14.66%) ServiceNow
6 13 (11.21%) IBM
6 13 (11.21%) Jaspersoft
7 11 (9.48%) Red Hat
8 9 (7.76%) Fortinet
9 8 (6.90%) SAP
10 7 (6.03%) F5
10 7 (6.03%) Palo Alto
10 7 (6.03%) SolarWinds
11 5 (4.31%) MathWorks
11 5 (4.31%) Siemens
11 5 (4.31%) Talend
12 2 (1.72%) NetApp
12 2 (1.72%) QNX