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 19 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 43 43
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 -19
Contract jobs citing Linux 146 55 73
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.77% 4.05% 3.80%
As % of the Operating Systems category 45.63% 28.21% 29.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 93 38 45
10th Percentile £303 £410 £393
25th Percentile £371 £457 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.07% -2.36% +1.85%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £583
90th Percentile £619 £690 £750
England median daily rate £518 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.91% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - £67.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £70.00
75th Percentile £70.59 - £72.50
90th Percentile £74.73 - -
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 320 195 245
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 10.45% 14.35% 12.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 218 132 164
10th Percentile £200 £150 £185
25th Percentile £350 £200 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £446 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +11.50% -5.88% -15.84%
75th Percentile £537 £525 £550
90th Percentile £611 £647 £675
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -12.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 12 18
10th Percentile £20.92 £15.36 £15.16
25th Percentile £28.91 £16.67 £16.84
Median hourly rate £63.14 £18.13 £22.25
Median % change year-on-year +248.23% -18.52% +28.41%
75th Percentile £70.44 £19.63 £23.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £24.19 £38.38
England median hourly rate £35.00 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year +41.93% +12.09% -24.91%

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 19 April 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 19 April 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 19 April 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
Birmingham +6 41 £525 -23.80% 9
Coventry -2 25 £316 -20.00% 3
Shropshire -38 18 £467 +1.48% 4
Herefordshire +2 17 £550 +18.92% 5
Warwickshire -27 14 £363 -31.73% 2
Worcestershire +4 13 £560 -20.00% 6
Solihull -11 9 - - 1
Staffordshire - 2 - - 1
Bilston - 1 £550 -
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 25 (17.12%) Confluence
2 9 (6.16%) WebLogic
3 5 (3.42%) Apache
4 4 (2.74%) SAS
5 3 (2.05%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.68%) CMS
6 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.68%) nginx
Applications
1 9 (6.16%) MS Visio
2 3 (2.05%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.68%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.68%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.68%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 72 (49.32%) AWS
2 41 (28.08%) Azure
3 21 (14.38%) Amazon EC2
3 21 (14.38%) Amazon S3
4 15 (10.27%) Datadog
5 14 (9.59%) OpenShift
6 12 (8.22%) Route 53
7 11 (7.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 11 (7.53%) Amazon SQS
7 11 (7.53%) AWS KMS
8 8 (5.48%) GitHub
9 6 (4.11%) Serverless
10 4 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (2.74%) GCP
10 4 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
11 3 (2.05%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (2.05%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (2.05%) SaaS
12 2 (1.37%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 16 (10.96%) VSAN
2 10 (6.85%) Firewall
3 7 (4.79%) Intrusion Detection
4 5 (3.42%) Network Security
4 5 (3.42%) VPN
5 4 (2.74%) DKIM
5 4 (2.74%) DMARC
5 4 (2.74%) SMTP
6 3 (2.05%) SSL
6 3 (2.05%) WAN
7 2 (1.37%) DNS
7 2 (1.37%) Kerberos
7 2 (1.37%) SSH
7 2 (1.37%) Wireless
8 1 (0.68%) AMQP
8 1 (0.68%) BGP
8 1 (0.68%) DHCP
8 1 (0.68%) IPsec
8 1 (0.68%) NAS
8 1 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (14.38%) Amazon RDS
2 13 (8.90%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (7.53%) Amazon Aurora
3 11 (7.53%) DynamoDB
4 8 (5.48%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (4.11%) MongoDB
5 6 (4.11%) Relational Database
6 5 (3.42%) InfluxDB
7 3 (2.05%) SAP HANA
8 2 (1.37%) MySQL
9 1 (0.68%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.68%) IDMS
9 1 (0.68%) Metadata
9 1 (0.68%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.68%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.68%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 27 (18.49%) Jenkins
2 20 (13.70%) Git
2 20 (13.70%) JIRA
3 12 (8.22%) GitLab
3 12 (8.22%) JUnit
3 12 (8.22%) Maven
3 12 (8.22%) SonarQube
4 11 (7.53%) DbUnit
4 11 (7.53%) jMock
4 11 (7.53%) Mockito
5 9 (6.16%) Bitbucket Server
6 7 (4.79%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 3 (2.05%) Chocolatey
7 3 (2.05%) CircleCI
8 2 (1.37%) Artifactory
8 2 (1.37%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.68%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.68%) Gradle
9 1 (0.68%) webpack
General
1 41 (28.08%) Social Skills
2 23 (15.75%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (13.70%) Public Sector
4 16 (10.96%) Finance
5 8 (5.48%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (2.74%) Banking
8 2 (1.37%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.37%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.68%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.68%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.68%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (29.45%) Analyst
2 26 (17.81%) Infrastructure Analyst
3 23 (15.75%) Storage Analyst
4 19 (13.01%) Site Engineer
4 19 (13.01%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 13 (8.90%) Architect
5 13 (8.90%) Developer
5 13 (8.90%) Java Developer
6 8 (5.48%) Software Engineer
6 8 (5.48%) Splunk Engineer
7 6 (4.11%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 5 (3.42%) Consultant
8 5 (3.42%) Data Engineer
8 5 (3.42%) DevOps Engineer
8 5 (3.42%) Senior
9 4 (2.74%) Administrator
9 4 (2.74%) IT Support
10 3 (2.05%) IT Technician
10 3 (2.05%) SAP Basis Consultant
10 3 (2.05%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (13.01%) Flash
2 18 (12.33%) Spring
2 18 (12.33%) Spring Boot
3 15 (10.27%) REST
4 13 (8.90%) Elastic Stack
5 11 (7.53%) ActiveMQ
5 11 (7.53%) AngularJS
5 11 (7.53%) Hibernate
5 11 (7.53%) JPA
5 11 (7.53%) PowerMock
5 11 (7.53%) SOAP
5 11 (7.53%) Spring Batch
5 11 (7.53%) Spring Cloud
5 11 (7.53%) Spring Integration
5 11 (7.53%) Web Services
6 10 (6.85%) RESTful
7 9 (6.16%) Bootstrap
7 9 (6.16%) Node.js
8 7 (4.79%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (4.11%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 34 (23.29%) Linux Command Line
2 22 (15.07%) Replication
3 12 (8.22%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (5.48%) Management Information System
5 7 (4.79%) Cloud Native
5 7 (4.79%) SCADA
6 6 (4.11%) Data Centre
7 5 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
8 4 (2.74%) CSOC
8 4 (2.74%) Security Operations Centre
9 3 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (2.05%) Onboarding
9 3 (2.05%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.37%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (1.37%) FPGA
10 2 (1.37%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.37%) PMI
10 2 (1.37%) Verilog
10 2 (1.37%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 50 (34.25%) Windows
2 23 (15.75%) Unix
3 17 (11.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (5.48%) Windows Server
5 4 (2.74%) AIX
5 4 (2.74%) CentOS
5 4 (2.74%) Embedded Linux
5 4 (2.74%) Solaris
5 4 (2.74%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.37%) Android
6 2 (1.37%) Debian
7 1 (0.68%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (43.15%) Agile
2 43 (29.45%) CI/CD
3 40 (27.40%) Containerisation
4 32 (21.92%) DevOps
5 31 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
6 26 (17.81%) Scrum
7 23 (15.75%) Microservices
8 21 (14.38%) Continuous Improvement
9 20 (13.70%) Software Engineering
10 19 (13.01%) Incident Response
10 19 (13.01%) SIEM
10 19 (13.01%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 18 (12.33%) Kanban
12 17 (11.64%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (11.64%) Observability
12 17 (11.64%) TDD
13 16 (10.96%) Ticket Management
14 15 (10.27%) Change Management
15 14 (9.59%) Configuration Management
16 13 (8.90%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 43 (29.45%) SQL
2 34 (23.29%) Python
3 25 (17.12%) Java
4 19 (13.01%) Shell Script
5 16 (10.96%) Bash
6 12 (8.22%) PowerShell
7 8 (5.48%) Go
8 6 (4.11%) C++
8 6 (4.11%) Perl
9 5 (3.42%) PL/SQL
10 4 (2.74%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (2.05%) JavaScript
12 2 (1.37%) Bicep
12 2 (1.37%) C
12 2 (1.37%) Kotlin
12 2 (1.37%) SystemVerilog
12 2 (1.37%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.68%) Lisp
13 1 (0.68%) PHP
13 1 (0.68%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 75 (51.37%) Security Cleared
2 60 (41.10%) SC Cleared
3 19 (13.01%) DV Cleared
4 14 (9.59%) Degree
5 11 (7.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (6.85%) AWS Certification
6 10 (6.85%) CCNA
6 10 (6.85%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (6.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (2.74%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.37%) CAPM
9 2 (1.37%) CBAP
9 2 (1.37%) MCSE
9 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (1.37%) PMI Certification
9 2 (1.37%) PMP
9 2 (1.37%) RHCA
9 2 (1.37%) TOGAF Certification
9 2 (1.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (6.16%) NIST
3 3 (2.05%) QA
4 2 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.37%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.68%) COBIT
5 1 (0.68%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.68%) FATCA
5 1 (0.68%) GDPR
5 1 (0.68%) NCSC
5 1 (0.68%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 45 (30.82%) Docker
2 35 (23.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (19.86%) vSphere
4 19 (13.01%) GPFS
4 19 (13.01%) NFS
5 16 (10.96%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (9.59%) Postfix
7 8 (5.48%) Active Directory
8 4 (2.74%) Snort
9 3 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (1.37%) Embedded Firmware
10 2 (1.37%) Firmware
10 2 (1.37%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.68%) KVM
Systems Management
1 47 (32.19%) Kubernetes
2 30 (20.55%) Ansible
3 29 (19.86%) vRealize
4 27 (18.49%) Grafana
4 27 (18.49%) Terraform
5 18 (12.33%) Prometheus
6 16 (10.96%) VxRail
7 13 (8.90%) Progress Chef
8 11 (7.53%) Puppet
9 8 (5.48%) Kibana
10 5 (3.42%) Podman
11 4 (2.74%) CSIRT
12 3 (2.05%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (1.37%) Argo
13 2 (1.37%) QRadar
14 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.68%) Nessus
14 1 (0.68%) Packer
Vendors
1 36 (24.66%) Oracle
1 36 (24.66%) VMware
2 33 (22.60%) Cisco
2 33 (22.60%) IBM
3 25 (17.12%) Splunk
4 20 (13.70%) Microsoft
5 19 (13.01%) ServiceNow
6 15 (10.27%) AppDynamics
7 14 (9.59%) Commvault
7 14 (9.59%) SolarWinds
8 13 (8.90%) Atlassian
9 12 (8.22%) Dell
9 12 (8.22%) HP
10 11 (7.53%) Jaspersoft
11 9 (6.16%) Red Hat
12 6 (4.11%) CyberArk
13 4 (2.74%) Dynatrace
14 3 (2.05%) BeyondTrust
14 3 (2.05%) SAP
15 2 (1.37%) Foundry