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 3 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 38 31
Rank change year-on-year -14 -7 +2
Contract jobs citing Linux 129 68 98
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.04% 4.85% 5.04%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.43% 33.01% 36.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 50 59
10th Percentile £325 £398 £320
25th Percentile £413 £455 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.60% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £582 £586 £654
90th Percentile £619 £689 £750
England median daily rate £511 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.09% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - £67.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £70.00
75th Percentile £70.41 - £72.50
90th Percentile £73.35 - -
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% - -

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 304 206 266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 9.52% 14.70% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 145 176
10th Percentile £196 £150 £181
25th Percentile £381 £200 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +14.75% -5.88% -5.56%
75th Percentile £537 £500 £577
90th Percentile £600 £638 £688
England median daily rate £455 £467 £475
% change year-on-year -2.47% -1.79% -5.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 11 17
10th Percentile £47.73 £15.22 £14.99
25th Percentile £58.43 £16.67 £18.50
Median hourly rate £64.07 £18.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +253.38% -19.42% +32.86%
75th Percentile £70.50 £19.01 £23.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £24.66 £72.50
England median hourly rate £34.68 £19.64 £22.50
% change year-on-year +76.60% -12.73% -47.06%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 -11 31 £469 -14.77% 13
Shropshire -35 19 £468 +1.79% 4
Warwickshire -26 16 £565 +5.21% 4
Worcestershire +10 13 £560 -20.00% 6
Herefordshire +1 13 £538 +2.38% 8
Coventry -9 13 £402 -23.43%
Solihull -12 13 £500 +8.70%
Staffordshire -2 2 - - 2
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 21 (16.28%) Confluence
2 7 (5.43%) Apache
2 7 (5.43%) WebLogic
3 4 (3.10%) SAS
4 2 (1.55%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.78%) CMS
5 1 (0.78%) nginx
5 1 (0.78%) OpenStack
Applications
1 3 (2.33%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.78%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.78%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.78%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 60 (46.51%) AWS
2 30 (23.26%) Azure
3 21 (16.28%) Amazon EC2
3 21 (16.28%) Amazon S3
4 15 (11.63%) Route 53
5 14 (10.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 13 (10.08%) Amazon SQS
6 13 (10.08%) AWS KMS
7 11 (8.53%) GitHub
7 11 (8.53%) OpenShift
8 7 (5.43%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (3.88%) Datadog
11 4 (3.10%) GCP
11 4 (3.10%) Microsoft 365
12 3 (2.33%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 3 (2.33%) Azure Sentinel
12 3 (2.33%) IaaS
12 3 (2.33%) SaaS
12 3 (2.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 13 (10.08%) Firewall
2 6 (4.65%) VSAN
3 5 (3.88%) Intrusion Detection
3 5 (3.88%) SNMP
3 5 (3.88%) VPN
4 4 (3.10%) NAS
4 4 (3.10%) SAN
5 3 (2.33%) LAN
5 3 (2.33%) SSL
5 3 (2.33%) WAN
6 2 (1.55%) Network Security
6 2 (1.55%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.78%) AMQP
7 1 (0.78%) Anycast
7 1 (0.78%) BGP
7 1 (0.78%) DMVPN
7 1 (0.78%) IPsec
7 1 (0.78%) MPLS
7 1 (0.78%) NGFW
7 1 (0.78%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (13.95%) Amazon RDS
2 16 (12.40%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (10.08%) Amazon Aurora
3 13 (10.08%) DynamoDB
4 6 (4.65%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (3.88%) MongoDB
5 5 (3.88%) MySQL
5 5 (3.88%) Oracle Database
6 3 (2.33%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (2.33%) Pentaho
6 3 (2.33%) Relational Database
6 3 (2.33%) SAP HANA
7 2 (1.55%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.78%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.78%) DB2
8 1 (0.78%) IDMS
8 1 (0.78%) Oracle Database 11g
8 1 (0.78%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (0.78%) SQL Server
8 1 (0.78%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 27 (20.93%) Git
1 27 (20.93%) Jenkins
2 17 (13.18%) GitLab
2 17 (13.18%) JIRA
3 15 (11.63%) SonarQube
4 14 (10.85%) JUnit
4 14 (10.85%) Maven
5 13 (10.08%) DbUnit
5 13 (10.08%) jMock
5 13 (10.08%) Mockito
6 11 (8.53%) Bitbucket Server
7 6 (4.65%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (3.88%) Artifactory
9 3 (2.33%) Chocolatey
10 2 (1.55%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.78%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.78%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.78%) Postman
11 1 (0.78%) Snyk
11 1 (0.78%) webpack
General
1 42 (32.56%) Social Skills
2 20 (15.50%) Analytical Skills
3 19 (14.73%) Public Sector
4 9 (6.98%) Finance
5 5 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (3.10%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (2.33%) Banking
7 3 (2.33%) Legal
8 2 (1.55%) Automotive
8 2 (1.55%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.78%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.78%) Billing
9 1 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.78%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 25 (19.38%) Analyst
2 15 (11.63%) Developer
2 15 (11.63%) Java Developer
3 14 (10.85%) Site Engineer
3 14 (10.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 14 (10.85%) Storage Analyst
4 9 (6.98%) Architect
4 9 (6.98%) Data Engineer
5 8 (6.20%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 8 (6.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 6 (4.65%) DevOps Engineer
6 6 (4.65%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 6 (4.65%) Senior
6 6 (4.65%) Software Engineer
6 6 (4.65%) Splunk Engineer
7 5 (3.88%) Lead
8 4 (3.10%) Support Engineer
9 3 (2.33%) Administrator
9 3 (2.33%) Senior Developer
9 3 (2.33%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (14.73%) Spring
1 19 (14.73%) Spring Boot
2 17 (13.18%) REST
3 16 (12.40%) Flash
4 14 (10.85%) Elastic Stack
5 13 (10.08%) ActiveMQ
5 13 (10.08%) AngularJS
5 13 (10.08%) Hibernate
5 13 (10.08%) JPA
5 13 (10.08%) PowerMock
5 13 (10.08%) SOAP
5 13 (10.08%) Spring Batch
5 13 (10.08%) Spring Integration
5 13 (10.08%) Web Services
6 12 (9.30%) RESTful
6 12 (9.30%) Spring Cloud
7 11 (8.53%) Bootstrap
8 8 (6.20%) Node.js
9 3 (2.33%) SAP Basis
9 3 (2.33%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (14.73%) Replication
2 18 (13.95%) Linux Command Line
3 16 (12.40%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (6.98%) Data Centre
5 7 (5.43%) Cloud Native
5 7 (5.43%) Hybrid Cloud
6 6 (4.65%) Management Information System
7 4 (3.10%) CSOC
7 4 (3.10%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (3.10%) Private Cloud
7 4 (3.10%) SCADA
7 4 (3.10%) Security Operations Centre
8 3 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (2.33%) Cyber Threat
8 3 (2.33%) Public Cloud
9 2 (1.55%) Embedded Systems
9 2 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (1.55%) FPGA
9 2 (1.55%) Verilog
9 2 (1.55%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 50 (38.76%) Windows
2 26 (20.16%) Unix
3 10 (7.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 10 (7.75%) Windows Server
4 4 (3.10%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (3.10%) Ubuntu
5 3 (2.33%) AIX
5 3 (2.33%) Solaris
6 2 (1.55%) Android
6 2 (1.55%) FreeRTOS
6 2 (1.55%) Mac OS
6 2 (1.55%) Windows 10
6 2 (1.55%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.78%) HPUX
7 1 (0.78%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (34.88%) Agile
2 43 (33.33%) CI/CD
3 40 (31.01%) Containerisation
4 33 (25.58%) DevOps
5 28 (21.71%) Scrum
6 24 (18.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 23 (17.83%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (15.50%) Infrastructure as Code
8 20 (15.50%) Microservices
9 19 (14.73%) Kanban
10 18 (13.95%) TDD
11 17 (13.18%) Observability
12 16 (12.40%) Performance Tuning
13 15 (11.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 14 (10.85%) Incident Response
14 14 (10.85%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 14 (10.85%) Software Engineering
15 12 (9.30%) Continuous Integration
15 12 (9.30%) Migration
15 12 (9.30%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 47 (36.43%) SQL
2 24 (18.60%) Java
2 24 (18.60%) Python
3 15 (11.63%) Bash
3 15 (11.63%) PowerShell
4 12 (9.30%) Shell Script
5 7 (5.43%) PL/SQL
6 5 (3.88%) Go
6 5 (3.88%) Perl
7 4 (3.10%) C
7 4 (3.10%) C++
7 4 (3.10%) Kusto Query Language
8 3 (2.33%) Kotlin
9 2 (1.55%) Bicep
9 2 (1.55%) JavaScript
9 2 (1.55%) SystemVerilog
10 1 (0.78%) Lisp
10 1 (0.78%) PHP
10 1 (0.78%) Tcl
10 1 (0.78%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 72 (55.81%) Security Cleared
2 59 (45.74%) SC Cleared
3 18 (13.95%) DV Cleared
4 13 (10.08%) AWS Certification
4 13 (10.08%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (8.53%) CCNA
6 8 (6.20%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (6.20%) Degree
7 7 (5.43%) Azure Certification
8 6 (4.65%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (3.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 3 (2.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (2.33%) MCSE
10 3 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (2.33%) RHCA
11 2 (1.55%) CAPM
11 2 (1.55%) CBAP
11 2 (1.55%) CCNP
11 2 (1.55%) PMP
11 2 (1.55%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (8.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (6.20%) NIST
3 3 (2.33%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.55%) ISO 26262
4 2 (1.55%) MISRA
4 2 (1.55%) QA
4 2 (1.55%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.78%) COBIT
5 1 (0.78%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.78%) FATCA
5 1 (0.78%) GDPR
5 1 (0.78%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.78%) SLA
System Software
1 43 (33.33%) Docker
2 21 (16.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (12.40%) GPFS
3 16 (12.40%) NFS
4 15 (11.63%) vSphere
5 12 (9.30%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (8.53%) Postfix
7 5 (3.88%) Active Directory
8 4 (3.10%) Snort
9 3 (2.33%) Hyper-V
9 3 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (1.55%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.78%) KVM
11 1 (0.78%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 43 (33.33%) Kubernetes
2 25 (19.38%) Ansible
2 25 (19.38%) Grafana
3 24 (18.60%) Terraform
4 17 (13.18%) Prometheus
5 13 (10.08%) vRealize
6 12 (9.30%) Puppet
7 11 (8.53%) Progress Chef
8 6 (4.65%) Kibana
8 6 (4.65%) Podman
8 6 (4.65%) VxRail
9 5 (3.88%) WMI
10 4 (3.10%) CSIRT
11 3 (2.33%) QRadar
12 2 (1.55%) Check_MK
12 2 (1.55%) Data Guard
12 2 (1.55%) Docker Swarm
12 2 (1.55%) Oracle RMAN
13 1 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
13 1 (0.78%) Nessus
Vendors
1 38 (29.46%) Oracle
2 28 (21.71%) Splunk
3 24 (18.60%) Microsoft
3 24 (18.60%) ServiceNow
4 23 (17.83%) Cisco
4 23 (17.83%) VMware
5 18 (13.95%) IBM
6 16 (12.40%) Atlassian
7 13 (10.08%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (6.20%) Red Hat
9 7 (5.43%) Fortinet
10 6 (4.65%) SolarWinds
11 5 (3.88%) F5
11 5 (3.88%) Palo Alto
11 5 (3.88%) Talend
12 3 (2.33%) Commvault
12 3 (2.33%) CyberArk
12 3 (2.33%) Dynatrace
12 3 (2.33%) SAP
13 2 (1.55%) Veeam