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 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 25 27 41
Rank change year-on-year +2 +14 -17
Contract jobs citing Linux 178 97 84
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 7.95% 5.83% 4.58%
As % of the Operating Systems category 52.66% 40.59% 31.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 56 59
10th Percentile £309 £378 £215
25th Percentile £433 £435 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +10.00% -7.06%
75th Percentile £580 £620 £600
90th Percentile £625 £713 £728
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £60.00 - -
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £50.00
75th Percentile £69.99 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year -1.15% +5.20% -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 338 239 271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 15.09% 14.37% 14.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 149 195
10th Percentile £178 £184 £164
25th Percentile £291 £213 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% +6.25% -19.19%
75th Percentile £552 £550 £518
90th Percentile £618 £665 £625
England median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 7 12
10th Percentile - £13.71 £16.59
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.61 £17.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £21.59 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% +21.84% +7.85%
75th Percentile £29.25 £23.53 £23.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £28.01 £27.58
England median hourly rate £25.15 £57.25 £32.50
% change year-on-year -56.07% +76.15% +30.00%

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 18 December 2025.

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
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 18 December 2025. 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 71 £525 -4.55% 23
Shropshire -10 29 £508 +9.73% 25
Warwickshire -2 22 £515 -9.65% 4
Coventry - 21 £310 - 12
Worcestershire -6 13 £600 -14.29% 21
Herefordshire -15 9 £550 +4.76%
Solihull +1 2 £450 +157.14%
Staffordshire 0 2 - - 27
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 13
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 30 (16.85%) Confluence
2 18 (10.11%) Apache
3 15 (8.43%) WebLogic
4 12 (6.74%) nginx
5 7 (3.93%) OpenStack
6 6 (3.37%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (3.37%) Apache Spark
7 2 (1.12%) Drupal
8 1 (0.56%) JBoss
8 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 11 (6.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 9 (5.06%) MS Visio
3 3 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) SAP GRC
1 1 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 97 (54.49%) AWS
2 66 (37.08%) Azure
3 33 (18.54%) Amazon S3
4 31 (17.42%) Amazon EC2
5 27 (15.17%) AWS KMS
6 24 (13.48%) GCP
7 23 (12.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 23 (12.92%) Serverless
7 23 (12.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 19 (10.67%) Amazon ELB
8 19 (10.67%) Datadog
9 16 (8.99%) OpenShift
10 14 (7.87%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (6.74%) GitHub
11 12 (6.74%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (6.74%) Microsoft 365
11 12 (6.74%) Route 53
12 11 (6.18%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (4.49%) Amazon Glacier
13 8 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 31 (17.42%) DNS
2 28 (15.73%) SMTP
3 27 (15.17%) SSH
4 24 (13.48%) Firewall
5 18 (10.11%) FTP
5 18 (10.11%) HTTP
6 14 (7.87%) VSAN
7 11 (6.18%) IMAP
7 11 (6.18%) OpenLDAP
8 9 (5.06%) DKIM
8 9 (5.06%) DMARC
9 6 (3.37%) DHCP
9 6 (3.37%) Internet
10 5 (2.81%) Kerberos
10 5 (2.81%) TCP/IP
11 4 (2.25%) Network Security
12 2 (1.12%) Intrusion Detection
12 2 (1.12%) LAN
12 2 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (1.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (15.73%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (12.92%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (8.99%) NoSQL
4 14 (7.87%) Elasticsearch
5 11 (6.18%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (3.37%) Hadoop
7 5 (2.81%) Relational Database
8 4 (2.25%) Apache Hive
8 4 (2.25%) HBase
8 4 (2.25%) InfluxDB
9 3 (1.69%) MongoDB
9 3 (1.69%) SQL Server
10 2 (1.12%) Big Data
10 2 (1.12%) Delta Lake
10 2 (1.12%) MySQL
10 2 (1.12%) Parquet
11 1 (0.56%) RDBMS
11 1 (0.56%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 54 (30.34%) Jenkins
2 32 (17.98%) Git
3 27 (15.17%) JIRA
4 23 (12.92%) GitLab
5 19 (10.67%) Vagrant
6 10 (5.62%) Liquibase
7 9 (5.06%) SonarQube
7 9 (5.06%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (3.93%) CircleCI
9 6 (3.37%) Bitbucket
9 6 (3.37%) JUnit
9 6 (3.37%) Postman
10 5 (2.81%) Artifactory
10 5 (2.81%) Cypress.io
10 5 (2.81%) Gradle
10 5 (2.81%) Maven
10 5 (2.81%) Selenium
10 5 (2.81%) Snyk
10 5 (2.81%) webpack
11 2 (1.12%) MLflow
General
1 79 (44.38%) Social Skills
2 26 (14.61%) Analytical Skills
2 26 (14.61%) Public Sector
3 22 (12.36%) Finance
3 22 (12.36%) Presentation Skills
4 17 (9.55%) Documentation Skills
5 10 (5.62%) Financial Institution
6 9 (5.06%) Banking
7 2 (1.12%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.12%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.56%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.56%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 29 (16.29%) DevOps Engineer
2 26 (14.61%) Analyst
3 24 (13.48%) AWS Engineer
3 24 (13.48%) Platform Engineer
4 21 (11.80%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 19 (10.67%) Cloud Platform Engineer
6 18 (10.11%) AWS DevOps
6 18 (10.11%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 18 (10.11%) Site Engineer
6 18 (10.11%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 13 (7.30%) Senior
8 12 (6.74%) Cloud Engineer
8 12 (6.74%) Software Engineer
8 12 (6.74%) Storage Analyst
9 11 (6.18%) AWS Platform Engineer
9 11 (6.18%) Splunk Engineer
10 10 (5.62%) Architect
11 9 (5.06%) DevOps Platform Engineer
11 9 (5.06%) GCP Engineer
12 8 (4.49%) Monitoring Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (21.35%) Elastic Stack
2 22 (12.36%) LDAP
3 19 (10.67%) REST
4 17 (9.55%) RESTful
5 12 (6.74%) Flash
6 6 (3.37%) RabbitMQ
7 5 (2.81%) JSON
7 5 (2.81%) OAuth
7 5 (2.81%) SAML
7 5 (2.81%) YAML
8 4 (2.25%) Node.js
8 4 (2.25%) NumPy
8 4 (2.25%) Spark Streaming
8 4 (2.25%) Spring
9 3 (1.69%) Flask
9 3 (1.69%) Pandas
9 3 (1.69%) Spring Boot
10 2 (1.12%) Apache Avro
10 2 (1.12%) Drush
10 2 (1.12%) React
Miscellaneous
1 31 (17.42%) Replication
2 30 (16.85%) Linux Command Line
3 14 (7.87%) Public Cloud
4 12 (6.74%) Distributed Systems
4 12 (6.74%) Management Information System
5 10 (5.62%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.81%) Data Centre
6 5 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (2.81%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.81%) Private Cloud
7 4 (2.25%) Client/Server
8 3 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.69%) SCADA
9 2 (1.12%) Derivative
9 2 (1.12%) PKI
9 2 (1.12%) Product Ownership
10 1 (0.56%) CCTV
10 1 (0.56%) FPGA
10 1 (0.56%) HP Storage
10 1 (0.56%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 78 (43.82%) Windows
2 34 (19.10%) Unix
3 22 (12.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 20 (11.24%) VMS
5 19 (10.67%) Amazon Linux
6 15 (8.43%) Ubuntu
7 9 (5.06%) AIX
7 9 (5.06%) Solaris
8 7 (3.93%) Windows Server
9 4 (2.25%) CentOS
10 3 (1.69%) Embedded Linux
10 3 (1.69%) Mac OS X
11 2 (1.12%) Debian
12 1 (0.56%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (35.96%) DevOps
2 56 (31.46%) CI/CD
3 55 (30.90%) Agile
4 43 (24.16%) Containerisation
5 41 (23.03%) Change Management
6 40 (22.47%) Problem-Solving
7 35 (19.66%) Configuration Management
8 31 (17.42%) Incident Response
9 30 (16.85%) Observability
10 29 (16.29%) Cloud Security
11 28 (15.73%) SIEM
12 26 (14.61%) Platform Engineering
13 25 (14.04%) Computer Science
14 24 (13.48%) Software Engineering
15 23 (12.92%) Continuous Improvement
16 22 (12.36%) Infrastructure as Code
17 21 (11.80%) Microservices
18 20 (11.24%) Service Management
19 19 (10.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 19 (10.67%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 91 (51.12%) Python
2 48 (26.97%) SQL
3 42 (23.60%) PowerShell
4 25 (14.04%) Bash
5 23 (12.92%) Go
6 22 (12.36%) Groovy
7 18 (10.11%) Java
8 16 (8.99%) Shell Script
9 10 (5.62%) Perl
10 5 (2.81%) C++
11 3 (1.69%) JavaScript
11 3 (1.69%) VBScript
12 2 (1.12%) PHP
12 2 (1.12%) Ruby
12 2 (1.12%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.56%) C
13 1 (0.56%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.56%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 80 (44.94%) Security Cleared
2 61 (34.27%) SC Cleared
3 40 (22.47%) Degree
4 24 (13.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (12.36%) DV Cleared
6 13 (7.30%) AWS Certification
7 12 (6.74%) Master's Degree
8 10 (5.62%) Azure Certification
9 7 (3.93%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (1.12%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (1.12%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.56%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
11 1 (0.56%) CAPM
11 1 (0.56%) CBAP
11 1 (0.56%) CEH
11 1 (0.56%) CISSP
11 1 (0.56%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.56%) PMP
11 1 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (5.06%) NIST
2 7 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.25%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.69%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.12%) NCSC
5 2 (1.12%) QA
6 1 (0.56%) SLA
System Software
1 62 (34.83%) Docker
2 31 (17.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (14.04%) vSphere
4 22 (12.36%) Active Directory
5 20 (11.24%) Postfix
6 18 (10.11%) DFS Replication
7 16 (8.99%) Dovecot
8 12 (6.74%) GPFS
8 12 (6.74%) NFS
8 12 (6.74%) VMware ESXi
9 11 (6.18%) Squid
10 4 (2.25%) HDFS
11 3 (1.69%) Firmware
12 2 (1.12%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.56%) Snort
13 1 (0.56%) Terminal Services
13 1 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
13 1 (0.56%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 50 (28.09%) Grafana
1 50 (28.09%) Terraform
2 49 (27.53%) Kubernetes
2 49 (27.53%) Prometheus
3 43 (24.16%) Ansible
4 25 (14.04%) vRealize
5 20 (11.24%) Puppet
6 14 (7.87%) Kibana
6 14 (7.87%) Progress Chef
7 13 (7.30%) VxRail
8 12 (6.74%) Nessus
9 10 (5.62%) Proxmox
10 5 (2.81%) Podman
11 4 (2.25%) Argo
11 4 (2.25%) Hadoop YARN
12 3 (1.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (1.69%) logstash
13 2 (1.12%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (1.12%) Istio
14 1 (0.56%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 50 (28.09%) Splunk
2 41 (23.03%) Cisco
3 37 (20.79%) VMware
4 32 (17.98%) AppDynamics
5 31 (17.42%) ServiceNow
6 27 (15.17%) Oracle
7 26 (14.61%) IBM
8 19 (10.67%) Microsoft
9 17 (9.55%) Dynatrace
10 16 (8.99%) CyberArk
11 15 (8.43%) BeyondTrust
11 15 (8.43%) SolarWinds
12 14 (7.87%) Commvault
12 14 (7.87%) Dell
13 13 (7.30%) HP
14 11 (6.18%) Jaspersoft
14 11 (6.18%) Red Hat
15 9 (5.06%) Google
16 5 (2.81%) Broadcom
17 2 (1.12%) Veeam