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 16 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 43 38
Rank change year-on-year -5 -5 -9
Contract jobs citing Linux 138 58 78
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.38% 4.19% 4.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 45.85% 29.44% 32.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 41 48
10th Percentile £309 £420 £299
25th Percentile £413 £455 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.52% -2.36% +1.85%
75th Percentile £583 £638 £598
90th Percentile £619 £689 £833
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - £67.50
Median hourly rate £64.07 - £70.00
75th Percentile £70.44 - £72.50
90th Percentile £74.04 - -
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 301 197 239
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 9.54% 14.23% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 133 163
10th Percentile £183 £145 £182
25th Percentile £377 £190 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £330 £400
Median % change year-on-year +38.11% -17.50% -15.79%
75th Percentile £539 £514 £550
90th Percentile £602 £638 £695
England median daily rate £450 £467 £470
% change year-on-year -3.64% -0.64% -8.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 13 17
10th Percentile £44.22 £15.22 £14.99
25th Percentile £58.43 £16.67 £18.50
Median hourly rate £63.14 £18.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +248.23% -19.42% +26.98%
75th Percentile £70.59 £19.50 £23.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £23.73 £43.25
England median hourly rate £47.50 £21.28 £22.00
% change year-on-year +123.21% -3.27% -41.33%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 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
Birmingham +4 38 £475 -30.98% 8
Herefordshire +1 16 £550 +4.76% 4
Warwickshire -29 16 £573 +6.41% 2
Shropshire -38 16 £468 +1.63% 2
Coventry -5 15 £394 -0.32% 2
Worcestershire +5 14 £568 -18.93% 7
Solihull -9 11 £500 +8.70%
Staffordshire 0 3 - - 3
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 19 (13.77%) Confluence
2 7 (5.07%) Apache
2 7 (5.07%) WebLogic
3 4 (2.90%) SAS
4 3 (2.17%) OpenStack
5 2 (1.45%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.72%) CMS
6 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.72%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (2.90%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.72%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.72%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.72%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 61 (44.20%) AWS
2 33 (23.91%) Azure
3 19 (13.77%) Amazon EC2
3 19 (13.77%) Amazon S3
4 15 (10.87%) OpenShift
5 12 (8.70%) Route 53
6 11 (7.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 11 (7.97%) Amazon SQS
6 11 (7.97%) AWS KMS
6 11 (7.97%) GitHub
7 7 (5.07%) Datadog
8 6 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (2.90%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (2.90%) Serverless
11 3 (2.17%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (2.17%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (2.17%) GCP
11 3 (2.17%) IaaS
11 3 (2.17%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (9.42%) Firewall
2 8 (5.80%) VSAN
3 5 (3.62%) Intrusion Detection
3 5 (3.62%) SNMP
3 5 (3.62%) VPN
4 4 (2.90%) NAS
4 4 (2.90%) Network Security
4 4 (2.90%) SAN
5 3 (2.17%) LAN
5 3 (2.17%) SSL
5 3 (2.17%) WAN
6 2 (1.45%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.72%) AMQP
7 1 (0.72%) Anycast
7 1 (0.72%) DKIM
7 1 (0.72%) DMARC
7 1 (0.72%) DMVPN
7 1 (0.72%) IPsec
7 1 (0.72%) NGFW
7 1 (0.72%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (13.77%) Amazon RDS
2 13 (9.42%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (7.97%) Amazon Aurora
3 11 (7.97%) DynamoDB
4 8 (5.80%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (3.62%) MongoDB
5 5 (3.62%) Relational Database
6 4 (2.90%) InfluxDB
7 3 (2.17%) SAP HANA
8 2 (1.45%) MySQL
8 2 (1.45%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.72%) IDMS
9 1 (0.72%) Metadata
9 1 (0.72%) Oracle Database 11g
9 1 (0.72%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 26 (18.84%) Jenkins
2 21 (15.22%) Git
3 19 (13.77%) JIRA
4 14 (10.14%) GitLab
5 12 (8.70%) JUnit
5 12 (8.70%) Maven
5 12 (8.70%) SonarQube
6 11 (7.97%) DbUnit
6 11 (7.97%) jMock
6 11 (7.97%) Mockito
7 9 (6.52%) Bitbucket Server
8 6 (4.35%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (2.17%) Artifactory
9 3 (2.17%) Chocolatey
9 3 (2.17%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.72%) PetaLinux
10 1 (0.72%) Postman
10 1 (0.72%) Snyk
10 1 (0.72%) Vite
10 1 (0.72%) webpack
General
1 44 (31.88%) Social Skills
2 20 (14.49%) Analytical Skills
3 17 (12.32%) Public Sector
4 11 (7.97%) Finance
5 6 (4.35%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.17%) Banking
6 3 (2.17%) Manufacturing
6 3 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (2.17%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.45%) Legal
8 1 (0.72%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.72%) Automotive
8 1 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.72%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 29 (21.01%) Analyst
2 19 (13.77%) Site Engineer
2 19 (13.77%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 16 (11.59%) Storage Analyst
4 13 (9.42%) Developer
4 13 (9.42%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 13 (9.42%) Java Developer
5 11 (7.97%) Architect
6 8 (5.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 8 (5.80%) Splunk Engineer
7 7 (5.07%) Software Engineer
8 6 (4.35%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 5 (3.62%) Data Engineer
9 5 (3.62%) DevOps Engineer
10 4 (2.90%) Lead
10 4 (2.90%) Senior
10 4 (2.90%) Support Engineer
11 3 (2.17%) IT Support Technician
11 3 (2.17%) SAP Consultant
11 3 (2.17%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (13.04%) Flash
2 17 (12.32%) Spring
2 17 (12.32%) Spring Boot
3 16 (11.59%) Elastic Stack
4 15 (10.87%) REST
5 11 (7.97%) ActiveMQ
5 11 (7.97%) AngularJS
5 11 (7.97%) Hibernate
5 11 (7.97%) JPA
5 11 (7.97%) PowerMock
5 11 (7.97%) SOAP
5 11 (7.97%) Spring Batch
5 11 (7.97%) Spring Cloud
5 11 (7.97%) Spring Integration
5 11 (7.97%) Web Services
6 10 (7.25%) RESTful
7 9 (6.52%) Bootstrap
7 9 (6.52%) Node.js
8 6 (4.35%) RabbitMQ
9 3 (2.17%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 23 (16.67%) Linux Command Line
2 21 (15.22%) Replication
3 13 (9.42%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (6.52%) Data Centre
5 8 (5.80%) Management Information System
6 7 (5.07%) Cloud Native
6 7 (5.07%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (3.62%) SCADA
8 4 (2.90%) CSOC
8 4 (2.90%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.90%) Security Operations Centre
9 3 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (2.17%) Private Cloud
9 3 (2.17%) Product Ownership
9 3 (2.17%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.45%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (1.45%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.45%) Verilog
10 2 (1.45%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 55 (39.86%) Windows
2 26 (18.84%) Unix
3 13 (9.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (7.97%) Windows Server
5 5 (3.62%) Ubuntu
6 4 (2.90%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (1.45%) AIX
7 2 (1.45%) Android
7 2 (1.45%) Mac OS
7 2 (1.45%) Solaris
7 2 (1.45%) Windows 10
7 2 (1.45%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.72%) CentOS
8 1 (0.72%) Debian
8 1 (0.72%) FreeRTOS
8 1 (0.72%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (35.51%) Agile
2 43 (31.16%) CI/CD
3 42 (30.43%) Containerisation
4 35 (25.36%) DevOps
5 27 (19.57%) Problem-Solving
6 25 (18.12%) Scrum
7 21 (15.22%) Continuous Improvement
7 21 (15.22%) Microservices
8 20 (14.49%) Infrastructure as Code
9 19 (13.77%) Observability
9 19 (13.77%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 19 (13.77%) Software Engineering
10 17 (12.32%) Kanban
11 16 (11.59%) Incident Response
11 16 (11.59%) TDD
12 15 (10.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 15 (10.87%) SIEM
13 13 (9.42%) Change Management
13 13 (9.42%) Migration
13 13 (9.42%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 44 (31.88%) SQL
2 31 (22.46%) Python
3 24 (17.39%) Java
4 16 (11.59%) Bash
4 16 (11.59%) Shell Script
5 14 (10.14%) PowerShell
6 8 (5.80%) Go
7 6 (4.35%) C++
7 6 (4.35%) PL/SQL
8 5 (3.62%) Perl
9 4 (2.90%) JavaScript
9 4 (2.90%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (2.17%) C
10 3 (2.17%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.45%) Bicep
11 2 (1.45%) SystemVerilog
11 2 (1.45%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.72%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.72%) PHP
12 1 (0.72%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 73 (52.90%) Security Cleared
2 57 (41.30%) SC Cleared
3 22 (15.94%) DV Cleared
4 13 (9.42%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (7.97%) AWS Certification
5 11 (7.97%) CCNA
5 11 (7.97%) Degree
6 8 (5.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (5.80%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (4.35%) Azure Certification
8 5 (3.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (2.17%) MCSE
9 3 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (2.17%) RHCA
10 2 (1.45%) CAPM
10 2 (1.45%) CBAP
10 2 (1.45%) CCNP
10 2 (1.45%) PMI Certification
10 2 (1.45%) PMP
10 2 (1.45%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (7.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (5.80%) NIST
3 3 (2.17%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (2.17%) QA
4 2 (1.45%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.72%) COBIT
5 1 (0.72%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.72%) FATCA
5 1 (0.72%) GDPR
5 1 (0.72%) ISO 26262
5 1 (0.72%) MISRA
5 1 (0.72%) NCSC
5 1 (0.72%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 46 (33.33%) Docker
2 26 (18.84%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (14.49%) vSphere
4 18 (13.04%) GPFS
4 18 (13.04%) NFS
5 14 (10.14%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (7.97%) Postfix
7 6 (4.35%) Active Directory
8 4 (2.90%) Snort
9 3 (2.17%) Hyper-V
9 3 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.72%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.72%) Firmware
10 1 (0.72%) KVM
10 1 (0.72%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.72%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 50 (36.23%) Kubernetes
2 31 (22.46%) Ansible
3 28 (20.29%) Grafana
3 28 (20.29%) Terraform
4 19 (13.77%) Prometheus
5 18 (13.04%) vRealize
6 13 (9.42%) Progress Chef
6 13 (9.42%) Puppet
7 8 (5.80%) Kibana
7 8 (5.80%) VxRail
8 6 (4.35%) Podman
9 5 (3.62%) WMI
10 4 (2.90%) CSIRT
11 3 (2.17%) Docker Swarm
12 2 (1.45%) Argo
12 2 (1.45%) Check_MK
12 2 (1.45%) QRadar
13 1 (0.72%) Data Guard
13 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
13 1 (0.72%) Packer
Vendors
1 34 (24.64%) Oracle
2 29 (21.01%) Splunk
3 28 (20.29%) Cisco
3 28 (20.29%) VMware
4 24 (17.39%) Microsoft
5 23 (16.67%) ServiceNow
6 22 (15.94%) IBM
7 14 (10.14%) Atlassian
8 11 (7.97%) Jaspersoft
9 9 (6.52%) Red Hat
9 9 (6.52%) SolarWinds
10 7 (5.07%) Fortinet
11 6 (4.35%) Commvault
12 5 (3.62%) F5
12 5 (3.62%) Palo Alto
13 4 (2.90%) AppDynamics
13 4 (2.90%) HP
14 3 (2.17%) Dell
14 3 (2.17%) Dynatrace
14 3 (2.17%) SAP