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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 37 23
Rank change year-on-year -28 -14 +1
Contract jobs citing Linux 112 92 120
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.21% 5.41% 6.49%
As % of the Operating Systems category 36.01% 40.17% 42.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 72 66 72
10th Percentile £325 £380 £384
25th Percentile £413 £450 £509
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £488 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.59% -11.36% +1.85%
75th Percentile £581 £540 £678
90th Percentile £634 £622 £750
England median daily rate £525 £525 £548
% change year-on-year - -4.11% -4.78%
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 311 229 282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 8.92% 13.48% 15.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 170 183
10th Percentile £213 £160 £186
25th Percentile £382 £250 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £450 £463
Median % change year-on-year +2.78% -2.70% +15.63%
75th Percentile £526 £537 £579
90th Percentile £588 £584 £698
England median daily rate £470 £454 £490
% change year-on-year +3.47% -7.20% -2.10%
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 £33.32 £23.00 £34.50
% change year-on-year +44.85% -33.33% -16.96%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 0 27 £502 +4.58% 8
Shropshire -49 22 £469 -11.43% 5
Birmingham -28 15 £463 -2.63% 13
Solihull -18 11 £500 +11.11% 1
Herefordshire +4 9 £625 +4.17% 3
Worcestershire +3 6 £575 -4.17% 2
Coventry -22 5 £294 -52.92% 4
Staffordshire -2 4 £200 -59.60% 4
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 12 (10.71%) Confluence
2 9 (8.04%) WebLogic
3 4 (3.57%) Apache
3 4 (3.57%) SAS
4 2 (1.79%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.89%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.79%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 46 (41.07%) AWS
2 24 (21.43%) Azure
3 19 (16.96%) Amazon EC2
3 19 (16.96%) Amazon S3
4 14 (12.50%) GitHub
5 13 (11.61%) Amazon SQS
6 12 (10.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 12 (10.71%) Route 53
7 11 (9.82%) AWS KMS
8 10 (8.93%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (8.04%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (8.04%) OpenShift
10 7 (6.25%) Datadog
11 6 (5.36%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 6 (5.36%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (5.36%) Microsoft 365
12 5 (4.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 2 (1.79%) IaaS
13 2 (1.79%) Lucidchart
13 2 (1.79%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (8.93%) Firewall
2 7 (6.25%) SNMP
3 4 (3.57%) NAS
3 4 (3.57%) NetScaler
3 4 (3.57%) SAN
4 3 (2.68%) Intrusion Detection
4 3 (2.68%) LAN
4 3 (2.68%) SSL
4 3 (2.68%) VSAN
5 2 (1.79%) Structured Cabling
5 2 (1.79%) VPN
6 1 (0.89%) AMQP
6 1 (0.89%) DNS
6 1 (0.89%) DNSSEC
6 1 (0.89%) IPsec
6 1 (0.89%) Modbus
6 1 (0.89%) MQTT
6 1 (0.89%) Network Security
6 1 (0.89%) OpenVPN
6 1 (0.89%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (14.29%) Amazon RDS
2 13 (11.61%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (9.82%) Amazon Aurora
3 11 (9.82%) DynamoDB
4 5 (4.46%) Oracle Database
5 4 (3.57%) MongoDB
5 4 (3.57%) Pentaho
6 3 (2.68%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (2.68%) MySQL
6 3 (2.68%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.89%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.89%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.89%) Db2
7 1 (0.89%) IDMS
7 1 (0.89%) Metadata
7 1 (0.89%) Oracle Database 11g
7 1 (0.89%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (0.89%) SQL Server
7 1 (0.89%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (26.79%) Git
2 22 (19.64%) Jenkins
3 19 (16.96%) GitLab
4 18 (16.07%) Maven
5 13 (11.61%) SonarQube
6 12 (10.71%) JUnit
6 12 (10.71%) Mockito
7 11 (9.82%) Bitbucket Server
7 11 (9.82%) DbUnit
7 11 (9.82%) jMock
8 6 (5.36%) JIRA
9 5 (4.46%) Artifactory
10 4 (3.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (1.79%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.89%) Bitbucket
12 1 (0.89%) CircleCI
12 1 (0.89%) Gradle
12 1 (0.89%) PetaLinux
12 1 (0.89%) Postman
12 1 (0.89%) Snyk
General
1 31 (27.68%) Social Skills
2 16 (14.29%) Public Sector
3 15 (13.39%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (6.25%) Finance
5 6 (5.36%) Legal
6 5 (4.46%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.68%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.79%) Automotive
8 2 (1.79%) Banking
8 2 (1.79%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.89%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.89%) Billing
9 1 (0.89%) Electronics
9 1 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.89%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.89%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 20 (17.86%) Analyst
2 17 (15.18%) Developer
2 17 (15.18%) Java Developer
3 10 (8.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 9 (8.04%) Data Engineer
5 6 (5.36%) Architect
5 6 (5.36%) Senior
5 6 (5.36%) Site Engineer
5 6 (5.36%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 5 (4.46%) Asset Management Analyst
6 5 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
6 5 (4.46%) Java Engineer
6 5 (4.46%) Lead
7 4 (3.57%) Infrastructure Architect
7 4 (3.57%) Senior Developer
7 4 (3.57%) Senior Java Developer
7 4 (3.57%) Software Engineer
7 4 (3.57%) Storage Analyst
7 4 (3.57%) Support Engineer
8 3 (2.68%) Infrastructure Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (15.18%) Spring
1 17 (15.18%) Spring Boot
2 14 (12.50%) REST
3 12 (10.71%) ActiveMQ
3 12 (10.71%) RESTful
4 11 (9.82%) AngularJS
4 11 (9.82%) Bootstrap
4 11 (9.82%) Hibernate
4 11 (9.82%) JPA
4 11 (9.82%) PowerMock
4 11 (9.82%) SOAP
4 11 (9.82%) Spring Batch
4 11 (9.82%) Spring Integration
4 11 (9.82%) Web Services
5 10 (8.93%) Elastic Stack
5 10 (8.93%) Spring Cloud
6 7 (6.25%) Flash
7 6 (5.36%) Node.js
8 3 (2.68%) SAP Basis
9 2 (1.79%) Qt
Miscellaneous
1 17 (15.18%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (12.50%) Linux Command Line
3 10 (8.93%) Replication
4 8 (7.14%) Cloud Native
4 8 (7.14%) Data Centre
5 7 (6.25%) Private Cloud
6 5 (4.46%) SCADA
7 4 (3.57%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (3.57%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (3.57%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (2.68%) CSOC
8 3 (2.68%) Cyber Threat
8 3 (2.68%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 3 (2.68%) Embedded Systems
8 3 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (2.68%) Operational Technology
8 3 (2.68%) Security Operations Centre
9 2 (1.79%) IoT
9 2 (1.79%) PMI
9 2 (1.79%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 42 (37.50%) Windows
2 18 (16.07%) Unix
3 11 (9.82%) Windows Server
4 7 (6.25%) AIX
4 7 (6.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (4.46%) SUSE
5 5 (4.46%) Ubuntu
6 4 (3.57%) Embedded Linux
7 3 (2.68%) Solaris
8 2 (1.79%) Android
8 2 (1.79%) FreeRTOS
8 2 (1.79%) Mac OS
8 2 (1.79%) Windows 10
8 2 (1.79%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.89%) CentOS
9 1 (0.89%) HPUX
9 1 (0.89%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (33.04%) Containerisation
2 33 (29.46%) CI/CD
3 31 (27.68%) Agile
4 27 (24.11%) DevOps
5 22 (19.64%) Continuous Improvement
5 22 (19.64%) Infrastructure as Code
6 20 (17.86%) Scrum
7 19 (16.96%) Microservices
8 16 (14.29%) Performance Tuning
8 16 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
9 15 (13.39%) Kanban
9 15 (13.39%) TDD
10 14 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 12 (10.71%) Business Continuity
12 11 (9.82%) Continuous Integration
12 11 (9.82%) Disaster Recovery
12 11 (9.82%) Open Source
12 11 (9.82%) Root Cause Analysis
13 10 (8.93%) Incident Management
13 10 (8.93%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 45 (40.18%) SQL
2 27 (24.11%) Java
3 15 (13.39%) Python
4 14 (12.50%) PowerShell
5 12 (10.71%) Bash
6 10 (8.93%) Shell Script
7 9 (8.04%) PL/SQL
8 6 (5.36%) Go
9 4 (3.57%) C
9 4 (3.57%) C++
10 3 (2.68%) Kotlin
10 3 (2.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (2.68%) Perl
11 1 (0.89%) Bicep
11 1 (0.89%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.89%) SystemVerilog
11 1 (0.89%) Tcl
11 1 (0.89%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 63 (56.25%) Security Cleared
2 49 (43.75%) SC Cleared
3 18 (16.07%) DV Cleared
4 8 (7.14%) AWS Certification
4 8 (7.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (7.14%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 6 (5.36%) CCNA
5 6 (5.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 4 (3.57%) MCSE
6 4 (3.57%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (3.57%) RHCA
7 3 (2.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (2.68%) Degree
8 2 (1.79%) CAPM
8 2 (1.79%) CBAP
8 2 (1.79%) CCNP
8 2 (1.79%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (1.79%) PMI Certification
8 2 (1.79%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (8.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (4.46%) NIST
3 4 (3.57%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.79%) ISO 26262
4 2 (1.79%) MISRA
4 2 (1.79%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.89%) NCSC
5 1 (0.89%) QA
5 1 (0.89%) SLA
System Software
1 29 (25.89%) Docker
2 16 (14.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (8.04%) Postfix
4 8 (7.14%) vSphere
5 7 (6.25%) GPFS
5 7 (6.25%) NFS
6 6 (5.36%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (3.57%) Active Directory
7 4 (3.57%) Hyper-V
8 3 (2.68%) Snort
8 3 (2.68%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (1.79%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.89%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.89%) Firmware
10 1 (0.89%) KVM
10 1 (0.89%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 30 (26.79%) Kubernetes
2 22 (19.64%) Terraform
3 20 (17.86%) Grafana
4 16 (14.29%) Ansible
5 14 (12.50%) Prometheus
6 8 (7.14%) Progress Chef
6 8 (7.14%) Puppet
7 7 (6.25%) Podman
7 7 (6.25%) WMI
8 6 (5.36%) vRealize
9 3 (2.68%) CSIRT
9 3 (2.68%) QRadar
9 3 (2.68%) VxRail
10 2 (1.79%) Check_MK
10 2 (1.79%) Data Guard
10 2 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (1.79%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (1.79%) SCCM
11 1 (0.89%) Istio
11 1 (0.89%) Packer
Vendors
1 34 (30.36%) Oracle
2 23 (20.54%) Cisco
2 23 (20.54%) Microsoft
2 23 (20.54%) VMware
3 21 (18.75%) Splunk
4 17 (15.18%) ServiceNow
5 15 (13.39%) Atlassian
6 13 (11.61%) IBM
7 11 (9.82%) Jaspersoft
7 11 (9.82%) Red Hat
8 9 (8.04%) Fortinet
9 8 (7.14%) SAP
10 7 (6.25%) F5
10 7 (6.25%) Palo Alto
10 7 (6.25%) SolarWinds
11 5 (4.46%) MathWorks
11 5 (4.46%) Siemens
11 5 (4.46%) Talend
12 2 (1.79%) Commvault
12 2 (1.79%) NetApp