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 9 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 39 39
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -13
Contract jobs citing Linux 152 58 75
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 5.06% 4.31% 3.90%
As % of the Operating Systems category 46.34% 30.05% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 41 50
10th Percentile £303 £425 £357
25th Percentile £382 £463 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £540 £544
Median % change year-on-year -13.43% -0.69% +0.69%
75th Percentile £570 £583 £575
90th Percentile £619 £689 £750
England median daily rate £518 £550 £540
% change year-on-year -5.91% +1.85% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - £67.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £70.00
75th Percentile £70.59 - £72.50
90th Percentile £74.73 - -
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 328 193 246
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 10.92% 14.35% 12.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 133 165
10th Percentile £200 £152 £185
25th Percentile £346 £200 £219
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £443 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +10.81% -5.88% -15.84%
75th Percentile £537 £537 £538
90th Percentile £609 £638 £660
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -12.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 12 21
10th Percentile £17.14 £15.36 £15.65
25th Percentile £20.38 £16.67 £17.72
Median hourly rate £57.82 £18.13 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +218.91% -4.58% +9.65%
75th Percentile £70.15 £19.63 £23.75
90th Percentile £76.81 £24.19 -
England median hourly rate £26.00 £28.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year -7.14% +30.23% -25.86%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 +6 42 £525 -23.80% 12
Coventry -2 25 £316 +125.71% 4
Shropshire -33 21 £467 +1.56% 3
Herefordshire -1 18 £550 +18.92% 4
Warwickshire -29 17 £363 -33.55% 3
Worcestershire +2 13 £560 -20.00% 5
Solihull -11 7 - - 2
Staffordshire - 2 - - 4
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 26 (17.11%) Confluence
2 9 (5.92%) WebLogic
3 5 (3.29%) Apache
4 4 (2.63%) SAS
5 3 (1.97%) OpenStack
6 2 (1.32%) Drupal
6 2 (1.32%) nginx
7 1 (0.66%) CMS
7 1 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 9 (5.92%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.66%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.66%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.66%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 74 (48.68%) AWS
2 43 (28.29%) Azure
3 20 (13.16%) Amazon EC2
3 20 (13.16%) Amazon S3
4 16 (10.53%) OpenShift
5 15 (9.87%) Datadog
6 10 (6.58%) Route 53
7 9 (5.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 9 (5.92%) Amazon SQS
7 9 (5.92%) AWS KMS
8 8 (5.26%) GitHub
9 7 (4.61%) Serverless
10 6 (3.95%) GCP
11 4 (2.63%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (2.63%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
12 3 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
12 3 (1.97%) Azure Sentinel
12 3 (1.97%) SaaS
13 2 (1.32%) Lucidchart
Communications & Networking
1 16 (10.53%) VSAN
2 11 (7.24%) Firewall
3 7 (4.61%) Intrusion Detection
4 5 (3.29%) Network Security
4 5 (3.29%) VPN
5 4 (2.63%) DKIM
5 4 (2.63%) DMARC
5 4 (2.63%) Kerberos
5 4 (2.63%) SMTP
5 4 (2.63%) SSH
6 3 (1.97%) SSL
6 3 (1.97%) WAN
7 2 (1.32%) DNS
7 2 (1.32%) Wireless
8 1 (0.66%) BGP
8 1 (0.66%) DHCP
8 1 (0.66%) IPsec
8 1 (0.66%) MPLS
8 1 (0.66%) OSPF
8 1 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (13.16%) Amazon RDS
2 13 (8.55%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (5.92%) Amazon Aurora
3 9 (5.92%) DynamoDB
3 9 (5.92%) Elasticsearch
4 8 (5.26%) MongoDB
5 6 (3.95%) Relational Database
6 5 (3.29%) InfluxDB
7 4 (2.63%) MySQL
8 3 (1.97%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.66%) IDMS
9 1 (0.66%) Metadata
9 1 (0.66%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.66%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.66%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 26 (17.11%) Jenkins
2 23 (15.13%) JIRA
3 20 (13.16%) Git
4 12 (7.89%) GitLab
5 11 (7.24%) JUnit
6 10 (6.58%) Maven
6 10 (6.58%) Mockito
6 10 (6.58%) SonarQube
7 9 (5.92%) DbUnit
7 9 (5.92%) jMock
8 7 (4.61%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 7 (4.61%) Bitbucket Server
9 3 (1.97%) Chocolatey
9 3 (1.97%) CircleCI
10 2 (1.32%) Artifactory
10 2 (1.32%) Liquibase
10 2 (1.32%) Postman
11 1 (0.66%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.66%) Gradle
11 1 (0.66%) webpack
General
1 44 (28.95%) Social Skills
2 24 (15.79%) Analytical Skills
3 18 (11.84%) Public Sector
4 16 (10.53%) Finance
5 11 (7.24%) Presentation Skills
6 8 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (2.63%) Banking
8 2 (1.32%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.32%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.66%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.66%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.66%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (28.29%) Analyst
2 26 (17.11%) Infrastructure Analyst
3 23 (15.13%) Storage Analyst
4 21 (13.82%) Site Engineer
4 21 (13.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 13 (8.55%) Architect
5 13 (8.55%) Developer
6 11 (7.24%) Java Developer
7 9 (5.92%) Splunk Engineer
8 8 (5.26%) Software Engineer
9 7 (4.61%) Consultant
10 6 (3.95%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 5 (3.29%) Data Engineer
11 5 (3.29%) DevOps Engineer
11 5 (3.29%) Senior
12 4 (2.63%) Administrator
12 4 (2.63%) IT Support
12 4 (2.63%) Management Consultant
13 3 (1.97%) IT Technician
13 3 (1.97%) SAP Basis Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (12.50%) Flash
2 17 (11.18%) Spring
2 17 (11.18%) Spring Boot
3 15 (9.87%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (8.55%) REST
5 11 (7.24%) RESTful
5 11 (7.24%) Web Services
6 10 (6.58%) Node.js
6 10 (6.58%) SOAP
7 9 (5.92%) ActiveMQ
7 9 (5.92%) AngularJS
7 9 (5.92%) Hibernate
7 9 (5.92%) JPA
7 9 (5.92%) PowerMock
7 9 (5.92%) Spring Batch
7 9 (5.92%) Spring Cloud
7 9 (5.92%) Spring Integration
8 8 (5.26%) LDAP
9 7 (4.61%) Bootstrap
9 7 (4.61%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 36 (23.68%) Linux Command Line
2 22 (14.47%) Replication
3 10 (6.58%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (5.92%) Management Information System
5 7 (4.61%) Cloud Native
5 7 (4.61%) SCADA
6 6 (3.95%) Data Centre
7 5 (3.29%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (3.29%) Hybrid Cloud
8 4 (2.63%) CSOC
8 4 (2.63%) Security Operations Centre
9 3 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.97%) Onboarding
9 3 (1.97%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (1.32%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (1.32%) FPGA
10 2 (1.32%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.32%) Verilog
10 2 (1.32%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 52 (34.21%) Windows
2 24 (15.79%) Unix
3 17 (11.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (5.26%) Windows Server
5 6 (3.95%) AIX
5 6 (3.95%) Solaris
6 4 (2.63%) CentOS
6 4 (2.63%) Embedded Linux
6 4 (2.63%) Ubuntu
7 2 (1.32%) Android
7 2 (1.32%) Debian
8 1 (0.66%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (42.11%) Agile
2 44 (28.95%) CI/CD
3 42 (27.63%) Containerisation
4 35 (23.03%) Problem-Solving
5 31 (20.39%) DevOps
6 26 (17.11%) Scrum
7 24 (15.79%) Microservices
8 21 (13.82%) Continuous Improvement
8 21 (13.82%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 20 (13.16%) Incident Response
9 20 (13.16%) Software Engineering
10 19 (12.50%) SIEM
11 18 (11.84%) Observability
12 17 (11.18%) Infrastructure as Code
13 16 (10.53%) Change Management
13 16 (10.53%) Kanban
13 16 (10.53%) TDD
13 16 (10.53%) Ticket Management
14 15 (9.87%) Configuration Management
15 14 (9.21%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 42 (27.63%) SQL
2 39 (25.66%) Python
3 26 (17.11%) Java
4 21 (13.82%) Shell Script
5 19 (12.50%) Bash
6 14 (9.21%) PowerShell
7 8 (5.26%) Go
8 6 (3.95%) C++
8 6 (3.95%) Perl
9 5 (3.29%) PL/SQL
10 4 (2.63%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (1.97%) JavaScript
11 3 (1.97%) PHP
12 2 (1.32%) Bicep
12 2 (1.32%) C
12 2 (1.32%) Kotlin
12 2 (1.32%) Ruby
12 2 (1.32%) SystemVerilog
12 2 (1.32%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.66%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 76 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 60 (39.47%) SC Cleared
3 20 (13.16%) DV Cleared
4 15 (9.87%) Degree
5 11 (7.24%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (6.58%) CCNA
6 10 (6.58%) Cisco Certification
6 10 (6.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (5.92%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.97%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.32%) CAPM
9 2 (1.32%) CBAP
9 2 (1.32%) MCSE
9 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (1.32%) PMI Certification
9 2 (1.32%) PMP
9 2 (1.32%) RHCA
9 2 (1.32%) TOGAF Certification
9 2 (1.32%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 12 (7.89%) NIST
2 4 (2.63%) SOC 2
3 3 (1.97%) PCI DSS
3 3 (1.97%) QA
4 2 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.32%) NCSC
5 1 (0.66%) COBIT
5 1 (0.66%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.66%) FATCA
5 1 (0.66%) GDPR
System Software
1 48 (31.58%) Docker
2 35 (23.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (19.08%) vSphere
4 19 (12.50%) GPFS
4 19 (12.50%) NFS
5 16 (10.53%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (7.89%) Postfix
7 10 (6.58%) Active Directory
8 4 (2.63%) Snort
9 3 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (1.32%) Embedded Firmware
10 2 (1.32%) Firmware
10 2 (1.32%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.66%) KVM
Systems Management
1 53 (34.87%) Kubernetes
2 32 (21.05%) Ansible
3 29 (19.08%) vRealize
4 28 (18.42%) Terraform
5 26 (17.11%) Grafana
6 19 (12.50%) Prometheus
7 16 (10.53%) VxRail
8 14 (9.21%) Progress Chef
9 12 (7.89%) Puppet
10 9 (5.92%) Kibana
11 5 (3.29%) Podman
12 4 (2.63%) CSIRT
13 3 (1.97%) Docker Swarm
14 2 (1.32%) Argo
14 2 (1.32%) QRadar
15 1 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.66%) Nessus
15 1 (0.66%) Packer
Vendors
1 36 (23.68%) Oracle
1 36 (23.68%) VMware
2 33 (21.71%) Cisco
2 33 (21.71%) IBM
3 26 (17.11%) Splunk
4 20 (13.16%) Microsoft
5 19 (12.50%) ServiceNow
6 15 (9.87%) AppDynamics
7 14 (9.21%) Commvault
7 14 (9.21%) SolarWinds
8 12 (7.89%) Dell
8 12 (7.89%) HP
9 11 (7.24%) Atlassian
10 9 (5.92%) Jaspersoft
10 9 (5.92%) Red Hat
11 8 (5.26%) CyberArk
12 5 (3.29%) BeyondTrust
13 4 (2.63%) Dynatrace
14 3 (1.97%) Google
14 3 (1.97%) SAP