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 26 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 41 42
Rank change year-on-year +2 +1 -16
Contract jobs citing Linux 157 60 81
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 5.46% 4.55% 4.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 49.37% 30.00% 31.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 103 41 56
10th Percentile £305 £425 £308
25th Percentile £400 £463 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £540 £531
Median % change year-on-year -12.04% +1.65% -1.62%
75th Percentile £568 £583 £577
90th Percentile £619 £689 £738
England median daily rate £519 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.68% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile £58.90 - -
25th Percentile £59.61 - £67.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £70.00
75th Percentile £71.88 - £72.50
90th Percentile £75.25 - -
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 318 200 261
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 11.07% 15.16% 13.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 137 178
10th Percentile £190 £160 £181
25th Percentile £335 £200 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £425 £413
Median % change year-on-year +5.18% +3.03% -17.95%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £538
90th Percentile £618 £638 £641
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 12 21
10th Percentile - £15.36 £15.65
25th Percentile £17.14 £16.67 £17.72
Median hourly rate £21.46 £18.13 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.37% -4.58% +9.65%
75th Percentile £70.00 £19.63 £23.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £24.19 -
England median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year -18.54% +27.27% -23.88%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 +15 55 £525 -23.80% 12
Coventry -3 24 £316 +125.71% 4
Warwickshire -28 17 £363 -33.55% 3
Herefordshire -4 16 £550 +18.92% 4
Shropshire -37 16 £467 +1.56% 3
Worcestershire -1 14 £568 -18.93% 5
Solihull -12 6 - - 2
Staffordshire - 2 - - 4
Bilston - 1 £550 -
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 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 26 (16.56%) Confluence
2 9 (5.73%) WebLogic
3 5 (3.18%) Apache
4 4 (2.55%) OpenStack
5 2 (1.27%) Drupal
5 2 (1.27%) nginx
6 1 (0.64%) CMS
6 1 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 9 (5.73%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.64%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.64%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.64%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 80 (50.96%) AWS
2 44 (28.03%) Azure
3 19 (12.10%) Amazon EC2
3 19 (12.10%) Amazon S3
4 17 (10.83%) OpenShift
5 16 (10.19%) Datadog
5 16 (10.19%) GCP
5 16 (10.19%) Serverless
6 12 (7.64%) AWS KMS
7 9 (5.73%) Route 53
8 8 (5.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 8 (5.10%) Amazon SQS
8 8 (5.10%) GitHub
9 5 (3.18%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (1.91%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (1.91%) Microsoft 365
11 3 (1.91%) SaaS
12 2 (1.27%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 15 (9.55%) VSAN
2 12 (7.64%) Firewall
3 7 (4.46%) Intrusion Detection
4 5 (3.18%) Network Security
4 5 (3.18%) VPN
5 4 (2.55%) DKIM
5 4 (2.55%) DMARC
5 4 (2.55%) Kerberos
5 4 (2.55%) SMTP
5 4 (2.55%) SSH
6 3 (1.91%) SSL
6 3 (1.91%) WAN
7 2 (1.27%) DNS
7 2 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (1.27%) Wireless
8 1 (0.64%) BGP
8 1 (0.64%) DHCP
8 1 (0.64%) IPsec
8 1 (0.64%) LAN
8 1 (0.64%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (12.74%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (12.10%) Amazon RDS
3 10 (6.37%) Elasticsearch
3 10 (6.37%) NoSQL
4 8 (5.10%) Amazon Aurora
4 8 (5.10%) DynamoDB
4 8 (5.10%) MongoDB
5 6 (3.82%) Relational Database
6 5 (3.18%) InfluxDB
7 4 (2.55%) MySQL
8 3 (1.91%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.64%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.64%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 37 (23.57%) Jenkins
2 23 (14.65%) JIRA
3 22 (14.01%) Git
4 19 (12.10%) GitLab
5 11 (7.01%) JUnit
6 10 (6.37%) Maven
6 10 (6.37%) SonarQube
7 9 (5.73%) Mockito
8 8 (5.10%) DbUnit
8 8 (5.10%) jMock
9 7 (4.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 7 (4.46%) Liquibase
10 6 (3.82%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (2.55%) CircleCI
12 3 (1.91%) Artifactory
12 3 (1.91%) Chocolatey
12 3 (1.91%) Postman
13 2 (1.27%) Bitbucket
13 2 (1.27%) Gradle
13 2 (1.27%) webpack
General
1 51 (32.48%) Social Skills
2 23 (14.65%) Finance
3 22 (14.01%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (10.83%) Public Sector
5 11 (7.01%) Presentation Skills
6 9 (5.73%) Banking
7 8 (5.10%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (5.10%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.27%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.27%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.27%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.64%) Automotive
9 1 (0.64%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 41 (26.11%) Analyst
2 25 (15.92%) Infrastructure Analyst
3 22 (14.01%) Site Engineer
3 22 (14.01%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 22 (14.01%) Storage Analyst
4 13 (8.28%) Architect
4 13 (8.28%) Developer
5 12 (7.64%) Software Engineer
6 10 (6.37%) Cloud Engineer
6 10 (6.37%) Splunk Engineer
7 9 (5.73%) GCP Engineer
7 9 (5.73%) Java Developer
8 7 (4.46%) Consultant
8 7 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 6 (3.82%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 6 (3.82%) Senior
10 5 (3.18%) AWS Engineer
10 5 (3.18%) Cloud Software Engineer
11 4 (2.55%) AWS Software Engineer
11 4 (2.55%) Management Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (16.56%) Elastic Stack
2 22 (14.01%) REST
3 19 (12.10%) RESTful
4 18 (11.46%) Flash
5 17 (10.83%) Spring
6 15 (9.55%) Spring Boot
7 10 (6.37%) Node.js
7 10 (6.37%) Web Services
8 9 (5.73%) SOAP
9 8 (5.10%) ActiveMQ
9 8 (5.10%) AngularJS
9 8 (5.10%) Hibernate
9 8 (5.10%) JPA
9 8 (5.10%) LDAP
9 8 (5.10%) PowerMock
9 8 (5.10%) Spring Batch
9 8 (5.10%) Spring Cloud
9 8 (5.10%) Spring Integration
10 7 (4.46%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (3.82%) Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 34 (21.66%) Linux Command Line
2 21 (13.38%) Replication
3 18 (11.46%) Distributed Systems
4 12 (7.64%) Cloud Native
5 11 (7.01%) Public Cloud
6 10 (6.37%) Management Information System
7 7 (4.46%) Data Centre
7 7 (4.46%) SCADA
8 5 (3.18%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (3.18%) Hybrid Cloud
8 5 (3.18%) Onboarding
8 5 (3.18%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (2.55%) CSOC
10 3 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (1.91%) Product Ownership
11 2 (1.27%) Derivative
11 2 (1.27%) FPGA
11 2 (1.27%) Private Cloud
11 2 (1.27%) Verilog
11 2 (1.27%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 50 (31.85%) Windows
2 19 (12.10%) Unix
3 18 (11.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (4.46%) Windows Server
5 6 (3.82%) AIX
5 6 (3.82%) Solaris
6 4 (2.55%) CentOS
6 4 (2.55%) Embedded Linux
6 4 (2.55%) Ubuntu
7 2 (1.27%) Android
7 2 (1.27%) Debian
8 1 (0.64%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.64%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (43.31%) Agile
2 54 (34.39%) CI/CD
3 51 (32.48%) Containerisation
4 41 (26.11%) DevOps
5 35 (22.29%) Problem-Solving
6 29 (18.47%) Microservices
7 26 (16.56%) Infrastructure as Code
7 26 (16.56%) Software Engineering
8 23 (14.65%) Continuous Improvement
9 22 (14.01%) Scrum
9 22 (14.01%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 21 (13.38%) Change Management
10 21 (13.38%) Incident Response
11 20 (12.74%) Computer Science
12 19 (12.10%) Observability
12 19 (12.10%) SIEM
13 16 (10.19%) Configuration Management
14 15 (9.55%) TDD
14 15 (9.55%) Ticket Management
14 15 (9.55%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 48 (30.57%) Python
2 39 (24.84%) SQL
3 26 (16.56%) Java
4 20 (12.74%) Shell Script
5 19 (12.10%) Bash
6 17 (10.83%) Go
7 13 (8.28%) PowerShell
8 6 (3.82%) C++
8 6 (3.82%) Perl
9 4 (2.55%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (1.91%) JavaScript
10 3 (1.91%) PHP
10 3 (1.91%) PL/SQL
11 2 (1.27%) Bicep
11 2 (1.27%) C
11 2 (1.27%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.27%) Ruby
11 2 (1.27%) SystemVerilog
11 2 (1.27%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.64%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 73 (46.50%) Security Cleared
2 54 (34.39%) SC Cleared
3 25 (15.92%) Degree
4 21 (13.38%) DV Cleared
5 20 (12.74%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (7.64%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (6.37%) Master's Degree
8 9 (5.73%) AWS Certification
8 9 (5.73%) CCNA
8 9 (5.73%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (1.91%) Azure Certification
10 2 (1.27%) CAPM
10 2 (1.27%) CBAP
10 2 (1.27%) PMI Certification
10 2 (1.27%) PMP
10 2 (1.27%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.64%) RHCA
11 1 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.64%) NIST
2 11 (7.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.55%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.91%) PCI DSS
4 3 (1.91%) QA
5 2 (1.27%) NCSC
6 1 (0.64%) COBIT
6 1 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.64%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.64%) FATCA
6 1 (0.64%) GDPR
System Software
1 55 (35.03%) Docker
2 33 (21.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (17.83%) vSphere
4 18 (11.46%) GPFS
4 18 (11.46%) NFS
5 15 (9.55%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (7.01%) Postfix
7 10 (6.37%) Active Directory
8 4 (2.55%) Snort
9 3 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (1.27%) Embedded Firmware
10 2 (1.27%) Firmware
11 1 (0.64%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.64%) KVM
Systems Management
1 63 (40.13%) Kubernetes
2 43 (27.39%) Ansible
3 37 (23.57%) Terraform
4 35 (22.29%) Grafana
5 28 (17.83%) Prometheus
5 28 (17.83%) vRealize
6 15 (9.55%) Progress Chef
6 15 (9.55%) VxRail
7 14 (8.92%) Puppet
8 10 (6.37%) Kibana
9 5 (3.18%) Podman
10 4 (2.55%) CSIRT
11 3 (1.91%) Docker Swarm
12 2 (1.27%) Argo
13 1 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
13 1 (0.64%) Nessus
13 1 (0.64%) Packer
13 1 (0.64%) QRadar
Vendors
1 37 (23.57%) Splunk
2 34 (21.66%) VMware
3 32 (20.38%) Cisco
3 32 (20.38%) IBM
4 31 (19.75%) Oracle
5 19 (12.10%) Microsoft
6 18 (11.46%) ServiceNow
7 15 (9.55%) AppDynamics
8 14 (8.92%) Commvault
8 14 (8.92%) SolarWinds
9 12 (7.64%) Dell
9 12 (7.64%) HP
10 10 (6.37%) Red Hat
11 9 (5.73%) Atlassian
12 8 (5.10%) CyberArk
12 8 (5.10%) Google
12 8 (5.10%) Jaspersoft
13 5 (3.18%) BeyondTrust
14 4 (2.55%) Dynatrace
15 3 (1.91%) SAP