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 27 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 30 18
Rank change year-on-year -42 -12 +14
Contract jobs citing Linux 97 109 133
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.82% 6.28% 6.99%
As % of the Operating Systems category 34.40% 44.49% 45.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 75 81
10th Percentile £313 £377 £425
25th Percentile £413 £459 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% -9.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £581 £565 £675
90th Percentile £600 £630 £750
England median daily rate £525 £525 £543
% change year-on-year - -3.23% -5.65%
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% +8.00%

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 282 245 294
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 8.20% 14.12% 15.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 181 192
10th Percentile £200 £160 £188
25th Percentile £366 £250 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £450 £456
Median % change year-on-year +2.78% -1.37% +14.06%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £577
90th Percentile £588 £618 £688
England median daily rate £465 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 3 9
10th Percentile £57.00 £17.03 £15.60
25th Percentile £58.43 £19.89 £18.50
Median hourly rate £63.14 £24.66 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +156.02% +29.79% -5.00%
75th Percentile £70.23 £24.83 £22.89
90th Percentile £71.97 £24.93 £34.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £24.00 £34.50
% change year-on-year +35.42% -30.43% -13.75%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -3 24 £477 -7.74% 6
Shropshire -52 18 £470 -10.48% 5
Birmingham -37 13 £463 -2.63% 23
Herefordshire +3 8 - - 3
Solihull -9 8 £500 +11.11% 1
Worcestershire -2 5 £575 -4.17% 5
Staffordshire -4 5 £200 -59.60% 5
Coventry -24 4 £263 -57.95% 1
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 6 (6.19%) Confluence
1 6 (6.19%) WebLogic
2 4 (4.12%) Apache
2 4 (4.12%) SAS
3 2 (2.06%) CloudStack
3 2 (2.06%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (1.03%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.03%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.03%) Skype for Business
Business Applications
1 1 (1.03%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 38 (39.18%) AWS
2 20 (20.62%) Azure
3 14 (14.43%) Amazon EC2
3 14 (14.43%) Amazon S3
4 13 (13.40%) GitHub
5 9 (9.28%) OpenShift
6 8 (8.25%) Amazon SQS
6 8 (8.25%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (8.25%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (8.25%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (7.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 7 (7.22%) Datadog
7 7 (7.22%) Route 53
8 6 (6.19%) Amazon OpenSearch
8 6 (6.19%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (6.19%) AWS KMS
9 5 (5.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 2 (2.06%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (2.06%) GCP
10 2 (2.06%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (11.34%) Firewall
2 7 (7.22%) SNMP
3 4 (4.12%) NetScaler
3 4 (4.12%) SAN
4 3 (3.09%) DNS
4 3 (3.09%) LAN
4 3 (3.09%) NAS
4 3 (3.09%) SSL
5 2 (2.06%) DHCP
5 2 (2.06%) Structured Cabling
5 2 (2.06%) TCP/IP
5 2 (2.06%) VSAN
6 1 (1.03%) DNSSEC
6 1 (1.03%) IPsec
6 1 (1.03%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (1.03%) Modbus
6 1 (1.03%) MQTT
6 1 (1.03%) Skype
6 1 (1.03%) VPN
6 1 (1.03%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (11.34%) Amazon RDS
2 8 (8.25%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (6.19%) Amazon Aurora
3 6 (6.19%) DynamoDB
3 6 (6.19%) Oracle Database
4 4 (4.12%) Pentaho
5 3 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (3.09%) MySQL
5 3 (3.09%) SQL Server
6 2 (2.06%) SAP HANA
7 1 (1.03%) Data Lake
7 1 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.03%) Db2
7 1 (1.03%) IDMS
7 1 (1.03%) MongoDB
7 1 (1.03%) Oracle Database 11g
7 1 (1.03%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (1.03%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (1.03%) RDBMS
7 1 (1.03%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 22 (22.68%) Git
2 19 (19.59%) GitLab
3 17 (17.53%) Jenkins
4 13 (13.40%) Maven
5 8 (8.25%) SonarQube
6 7 (7.22%) JUnit
6 7 (7.22%) Mockito
7 6 (6.19%) Bitbucket Server
7 6 (6.19%) DbUnit
7 6 (6.19%) jMock
8 5 (5.15%) Artifactory
9 2 (2.06%) JIRA
9 2 (2.06%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (1.03%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (1.03%) Bitbucket
10 1 (1.03%) CircleCI
10 1 (1.03%) Cypress.io
10 1 (1.03%) Gradle
10 1 (1.03%) Selenium
10 1 (1.03%) webpack
General
1 24 (24.74%) Social Skills
2 12 (12.37%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (11.34%) Public Sector
4 6 (6.19%) Finance
4 6 (6.19%) Legal
5 3 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (2.06%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.06%) Automotive
6 2 (2.06%) Manufacturing
6 2 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.03%) Banking
7 1 (1.03%) Billing
7 1 (1.03%) Electronics
7 1 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.03%) Military
7 1 (1.03%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 14 (14.43%) Analyst
1 14 (14.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 11 (11.34%) Developer
2 11 (11.34%) Java Developer
3 9 (9.28%) Data Engineer
3 9 (9.28%) Senior
4 6 (6.19%) Architect
4 6 (6.19%) Lead
4 6 (6.19%) Site Engineer
4 6 (6.19%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 5 (5.15%) Asset Management Analyst
5 5 (5.15%) Java Engineer
6 4 (4.12%) DevOps Engineer
6 4 (4.12%) Infrastructure Architect
6 4 (4.12%) Senior Developer
6 4 (4.12%) Senior Java Developer
6 4 (4.12%) SOC Analyst
7 3 (3.09%) Embedded Software Engineer
7 3 (3.09%) Software Engineer
7 3 (3.09%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (21.65%) Terraform
2 10 (10.31%) Elastic Stack
3 9 (9.28%) REST
3 9 (9.28%) Spring
3 9 (9.28%) Spring Boot
4 7 (7.22%) ActiveMQ
4 7 (7.22%) RESTful
5 6 (6.19%) AngularJS
5 6 (6.19%) Bootstrap
5 6 (6.19%) Flash
5 6 (6.19%) Hibernate
5 6 (6.19%) JPA
5 6 (6.19%) PowerMock
5 6 (6.19%) SOAP
5 6 (6.19%) Spring Batch
5 6 (6.19%) Spring Integration
5 6 (6.19%) Web Services
6 5 (5.15%) Spring Cloud
7 2 (2.06%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (2.06%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 14 (14.43%) Linux Command Line
2 12 (12.37%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (8.25%) Replication
4 7 (7.22%) Private Cloud
5 5 (5.15%) Cloud Native
5 5 (5.15%) SCADA
6 4 (4.12%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (4.12%) Data Centre
6 4 (4.12%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (3.09%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (3.09%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 3 (3.09%) Embedded Systems
7 3 (3.09%) Enterprise Storage
7 3 (3.09%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (3.09%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (3.09%) Public Cloud
8 2 (2.06%) IoT
8 2 (2.06%) Operational Technology
9 1 (1.03%) Product Ownership
9 1 (1.03%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 37 (38.14%) Windows
2 17 (17.53%) Unix
3 13 (13.40%) Windows Server
4 7 (7.22%) Ubuntu
5 6 (6.19%) AIX
6 5 (5.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (5.15%) SUSE
7 4 (4.12%) Embedded Linux
8 3 (3.09%) CentOS
9 2 (2.06%) FreeRTOS
9 2 (2.06%) Mac OS
9 2 (2.06%) Windows 10
9 2 (2.06%) Windows 7
10 1 (1.03%) HPUX
10 1 (1.03%) Mac OS X
10 1 (1.03%) Solaris
10 1 (1.03%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (1.03%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (1.03%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (29.90%) Containerisation
2 25 (25.77%) CI/CD
3 22 (22.68%) DevOps
4 21 (21.65%) Agile
4 21 (21.65%) Infrastructure as Code
5 16 (16.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 15 (15.46%) Continuous Improvement
7 14 (14.43%) Performance Tuning
8 12 (12.37%) Problem-Solving
9 11 (11.34%) Business Continuity
9 11 (11.34%) Data Protection
9 11 (11.34%) Disaster Recovery
9 11 (11.34%) Microservices
9 11 (11.34%) Scrum
10 10 (10.31%) Root Cause Analysis
11 9 (9.28%) Batch Processing
11 9 (9.28%) Incident Management
11 9 (9.28%) Kanban
11 9 (9.28%) Observability
12 8 (8.25%) Business Continuity Planning
Programming Languages
1 38 (39.18%) SQL
2 17 (17.53%) Java
3 15 (15.46%) Python
4 14 (14.43%) PowerShell
5 12 (12.37%) Bash
6 9 (9.28%) PL/SQL
7 7 (7.22%) Shell Script
8 6 (6.19%) Go
9 4 (4.12%) C
9 4 (4.12%) C++
10 1 (1.03%) JavaScript
10 1 (1.03%) Kotlin
10 1 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
10 1 (1.03%) SystemVerilog
10 1 (1.03%) Tcl
10 1 (1.03%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 52 (53.61%) Security Cleared
2 37 (38.14%) SC Cleared
3 17 (17.53%) DV Cleared
4 8 (8.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (7.22%) Cisco Certification
6 6 (6.19%) AWS Certification
6 6 (6.19%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 5 (5.15%) Azure Certification
7 5 (5.15%) CCNA
8 4 (4.12%) MCSE
8 4 (4.12%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (4.12%) RHCA
9 3 (3.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (2.06%) CCNP
10 2 (2.06%) Degree
11 1 (1.03%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (1.03%) CISSP
11 1 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (1.03%) GCIH
11 1 (1.03%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (4.12%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (3.09%) NIST
4 2 (2.06%) ISO 26262
4 2 (2.06%) MISRA
5 1 (1.03%) GDPR
5 1 (1.03%) NCSC
5 1 (1.03%) QA
5 1 (1.03%) SLA
System Software
1 21 (21.65%) Docker
2 18 (18.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (8.25%) vSphere
4 6 (6.19%) GPFS
4 6 (6.19%) NFS
4 6 (6.19%) VMware ESXi
5 5 (5.15%) Active Directory
5 5 (5.15%) Hyper-V
5 5 (5.15%) Postfix
6 3 (3.09%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (3.09%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (1.03%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (1.03%) Firmware
7 1 (1.03%) KVM
7 1 (1.03%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 23 (23.71%) Kubernetes
2 16 (16.49%) Ansible
3 15 (15.46%) Grafana
4 13 (13.40%) Prometheus
5 8 (8.25%) Progress Chef
5 8 (8.25%) Puppet
6 7 (7.22%) WMI
7 5 (5.15%) Podman
7 5 (5.15%) vRealize
8 3 (3.09%) Data Guard
8 3 (3.09%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (3.09%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (3.09%) QRadar
8 3 (3.09%) SCCM
9 2 (2.06%) Check_MK
9 2 (2.06%) VxRail
10 1 (1.03%) Argo
10 1 (1.03%) Istio
Vendors
1 32 (32.99%) Oracle
2 25 (25.77%) VMware
3 23 (23.71%) Cisco
3 23 (23.71%) Microsoft
4 18 (18.56%) Splunk
5 16 (16.49%) ServiceNow
6 12 (12.37%) IBM
7 10 (10.31%) Atlassian
7 10 (10.31%) Fortinet
8 8 (8.25%) Palo Alto
8 8 (8.25%) Red Hat
9 7 (7.22%) F5
9 7 (7.22%) SAP
9 7 (7.22%) SolarWinds
10 6 (6.19%) Jaspersoft
11 5 (5.15%) MathWorks
11 5 (5.15%) Siemens
11 5 (5.15%) Talend
12 4 (4.12%) NetApp
13 2 (2.06%) QNX