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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 35 34
Rank change year-on-year -15 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 132 63 89
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.13% 4.60% 4.65%
As % of the Operating Systems category 43.56% 31.98% 35.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 80 46 55
10th Percentile £298 £388 £310
25th Percentile £410 £455 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.25% -3.45% -
75th Percentile £583 £625 £655
90th Percentile £619 £689 £795
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - £67.50
Median hourly rate £64.07 - £70.00
75th Percentile £70.44 - £72.50
90th Percentile £74.04 - -
England median hourly rate £62.50 £64.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -3.10% -0.77% -

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 303 197 250
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 9.48% 14.39% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 136 170
10th Percentile £190 £145 £185
25th Percentile £375 £200 £266
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £400 £431
Median % change year-on-year +13.75% -7.25% -9.21%
75th Percentile £525 £527 £575
90th Percentile £588 £643 £688
England median daily rate £451 £467 £475
% change year-on-year -3.43% -1.79% -7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 12 18
10th Percentile £44.22 £15.36 £15.16
25th Percentile £58.43 £16.67 £18.50
Median hourly rate £63.14 £18.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +248.23% -19.42% +29.85%
75th Percentile £70.59 £19.63 £23.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £24.19 £72.50
England median hourly rate £41.71 £20.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +108.55% -11.11% -45.84%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 32 £469 -28.02% 8
Warwickshire -32 16 £573 +6.70% 2
Shropshire -40 16 £473 +2.72% 4
Coventry -4 15 £394 -37.00%
Worcestershire +9 13 £560 -20.00% 3
Herefordshire +1 13 £538 +2.38% 5
Solihull -10 13 £500 +8.70%
Staffordshire +1 4 - - 1
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 20 (15.15%) Confluence
2 7 (5.30%) Apache
2 7 (5.30%) WebLogic
3 4 (3.03%) SAS
4 2 (1.52%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.76%) CMS
5 1 (0.76%) nginx
5 1 (0.76%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (3.03%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.76%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.76%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.76%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 61 (46.21%) AWS
2 32 (24.24%) Azure
3 18 (13.64%) Amazon EC2
3 18 (13.64%) Amazon S3
4 14 (10.61%) Route 53
5 13 (9.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 13 (9.85%) Amazon SQS
5 13 (9.85%) AWS KMS
5 13 (9.85%) OpenShift
6 10 (7.58%) GitHub
7 8 (6.06%) Datadog
8 6 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (3.79%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (3.03%) Microsoft 365
11 3 (2.27%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 3 (2.27%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (2.27%) GCP
11 3 (2.27%) IaaS
11 3 (2.27%) SaaS
12 2 (1.52%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 13 (9.85%) Firewall
2 8 (6.06%) VSAN
3 5 (3.79%) Intrusion Detection
3 5 (3.79%) SNMP
3 5 (3.79%) VPN
4 4 (3.03%) NAS
4 4 (3.03%) SAN
5 3 (2.27%) LAN
5 3 (2.27%) SSL
5 3 (2.27%) WAN
6 2 (1.52%) Network Security
6 2 (1.52%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.76%) AMQP
7 1 (0.76%) Anycast
7 1 (0.76%) BGP
7 1 (0.76%) DMVPN
7 1 (0.76%) IPsec
7 1 (0.76%) MPLS
7 1 (0.76%) NGFW
7 1 (0.76%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (13.64%) Amazon RDS
2 16 (12.12%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (9.85%) Amazon Aurora
3 13 (9.85%) DynamoDB
4 7 (5.30%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (3.79%) MongoDB
6 3 (2.27%) Oracle Database
6 3 (2.27%) Relational Database
6 3 (2.27%) SAP HANA
7 2 (1.52%) InfluxDB
7 2 (1.52%) MySQL
8 1 (0.76%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.76%) DB2
8 1 (0.76%) IDMS
8 1 (0.76%) Metadata
8 1 (0.76%) Oracle Database 11g
8 1 (0.76%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (0.76%) SQL Server
8 1 (0.76%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 24 (18.18%) Git
1 24 (18.18%) Jenkins
2 18 (13.64%) JIRA
3 14 (10.61%) JUnit
3 14 (10.61%) Maven
3 14 (10.61%) SonarQube
4 13 (9.85%) DbUnit
4 13 (9.85%) GitLab
4 13 (9.85%) jMock
4 13 (9.85%) Mockito
5 11 (8.33%) Bitbucket Server
6 6 (4.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (3.03%) Artifactory
8 3 (2.27%) Chocolatey
9 1 (0.76%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.76%) Gradle
9 1 (0.76%) Postman
9 1 (0.76%) Snyk
9 1 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.76%) Vite
General
1 42 (31.82%) Social Skills
2 21 (15.91%) Analytical Skills
3 19 (14.39%) Public Sector
4 10 (7.58%) Finance
5 4 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (3.03%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (2.27%) Banking
6 3 (2.27%) Legal
7 2 (1.52%) Automotive
7 2 (1.52%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.76%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.76%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.76%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 28 (21.21%) Analyst
2 16 (12.12%) Site Engineer
2 16 (12.12%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 15 (11.36%) Developer
3 15 (11.36%) Java Developer
3 15 (11.36%) Storage Analyst
4 12 (9.09%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 9 (6.82%) Architect
6 8 (6.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 8 (6.06%) Software Engineer
7 7 (5.30%) Splunk Engineer
8 6 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 6 (4.55%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 5 (3.79%) DevOps Engineer
9 5 (3.79%) Senior
10 4 (3.03%) Lead
10 4 (3.03%) Support Engineer
11 3 (2.27%) Administrator
11 3 (2.27%) Senior Developer
11 3 (2.27%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (14.39%) Spring
1 19 (14.39%) Spring Boot
2 17 (12.88%) Flash
2 17 (12.88%) REST
3 14 (10.61%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (9.85%) ActiveMQ
4 13 (9.85%) AngularJS
4 13 (9.85%) Hibernate
4 13 (9.85%) JPA
4 13 (9.85%) PowerMock
4 13 (9.85%) SOAP
4 13 (9.85%) Spring Batch
4 13 (9.85%) Spring Integration
4 13 (9.85%) Web Services
5 12 (9.09%) RESTful
5 12 (9.09%) Spring Cloud
6 11 (8.33%) Bootstrap
7 10 (7.58%) Node.js
8 3 (2.27%) SAP Basis
8 3 (2.27%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (16.67%) Linux Command Line
2 20 (15.15%) Replication
3 16 (12.12%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (6.82%) Data Centre
5 7 (5.30%) Cloud Native
5 7 (5.30%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (5.30%) Management Information System
6 4 (3.03%) CSOC
6 4 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (3.03%) Private Cloud
6 4 (3.03%) SCADA
6 4 (3.03%) Security Operations Centre
7 3 (2.27%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (2.27%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.52%) Cyber Threat
8 2 (1.52%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.52%) FPGA
8 2 (1.52%) Verilog
8 2 (1.52%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 50 (37.88%) Windows
2 26 (19.70%) Unix
3 10 (7.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 10 (7.58%) Windows Server
4 4 (3.03%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (3.03%) Ubuntu
5 3 (2.27%) AIX
5 3 (2.27%) Solaris
6 2 (1.52%) Android
6 2 (1.52%) FreeRTOS
6 2 (1.52%) Mac OS
6 2 (1.52%) Windows 10
6 2 (1.52%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.76%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (36.36%) Agile
2 40 (30.30%) CI/CD
2 40 (30.30%) Containerisation
3 33 (25.00%) DevOps
4 27 (20.45%) Scrum
5 24 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
6 22 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
7 21 (15.91%) Microservices
8 19 (14.39%) Infrastructure as Code
8 19 (14.39%) Kanban
9 18 (13.64%) Observability
9 18 (13.64%) TDD
10 16 (12.12%) Performance Tuning
10 16 (12.12%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 16 (12.12%) Software Engineering
11 15 (11.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 14 (10.61%) Incident Response
13 12 (9.09%) Continuous Integration
13 12 (9.09%) Migration
13 12 (9.09%) Ticket Management
Programming Languages
1 44 (33.33%) SQL
2 24 (18.18%) Java
2 24 (18.18%) Python
3 15 (11.36%) Bash
4 14 (10.61%) PowerShell
5 13 (9.85%) Shell Script
6 7 (5.30%) PL/SQL
7 6 (4.55%) C++
8 5 (3.79%) Go
8 5 (3.79%) Perl
9 4 (3.03%) C
9 4 (3.03%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (2.27%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.52%) Bicep
11 2 (1.52%) JavaScript
11 2 (1.52%) SystemVerilog
11 2 (1.52%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.76%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.76%) PHP
12 1 (0.76%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 70 (53.03%) Security Cleared
2 56 (42.42%) SC Cleared
3 19 (14.39%) DV Cleared
4 13 (9.85%) Cisco Certification
5 12 (9.09%) AWS Certification
6 11 (8.33%) CCNA
7 10 (7.58%) Degree
8 8 (6.06%) BPSS Clearance
9 7 (5.30%) Azure Certification
9 7 (5.30%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (3.79%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 3 (2.27%) MCSE
11 3 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (2.27%) RHCA
12 2 (1.52%) CAPM
12 2 (1.52%) CBAP
12 2 (1.52%) CCNP
12 2 (1.52%) PMI Certification
12 2 (1.52%) PMP
12 2 (1.52%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (7.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (6.06%) NIST
3 3 (2.27%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.52%) ISO 26262
4 2 (1.52%) MISRA
4 2 (1.52%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.76%) COBIT
5 1 (0.76%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.76%) FATCA
5 1 (0.76%) GDPR
5 1 (0.76%) NCSC
5 1 (0.76%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.76%) QA
5 1 (0.76%) SLA
System Software
1 44 (33.33%) Docker
2 25 (18.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (14.39%) vSphere
4 17 (12.88%) GPFS
4 17 (12.88%) NFS
5 13 (9.85%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (8.33%) Postfix
7 5 (3.79%) Active Directory
8 4 (3.03%) Snort
9 3 (2.27%) Hyper-V
9 3 (2.27%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (1.52%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.76%) KVM
11 1 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 45 (34.09%) Kubernetes
2 26 (19.70%) Ansible
3 25 (18.94%) Grafana
4 24 (18.18%) Terraform
5 17 (12.88%) Prometheus
5 17 (12.88%) vRealize
6 12 (9.09%) Puppet
7 11 (8.33%) Progress Chef
8 8 (6.06%) VxRail
9 7 (5.30%) Kibana
10 6 (4.55%) Podman
11 5 (3.79%) WMI
12 4 (3.03%) CSIRT
13 2 (1.52%) Check_MK
13 2 (1.52%) Data Guard
13 2 (1.52%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (1.52%) Oracle RMAN
13 2 (1.52%) QRadar
14 1 (0.76%) Nessus
14 1 (0.76%) Packer
Vendors
1 35 (26.52%) Oracle
2 28 (21.21%) Splunk
3 27 (20.45%) Cisco
3 27 (20.45%) VMware
4 23 (17.42%) Microsoft
5 22 (16.67%) IBM
5 22 (16.67%) ServiceNow
6 16 (12.12%) Atlassian
7 13 (9.85%) Jaspersoft
8 9 (6.82%) SolarWinds
9 8 (6.06%) Red Hat
10 7 (5.30%) Fortinet
11 6 (4.55%) Commvault
12 5 (3.79%) F5
12 5 (3.79%) Palo Alto
13 4 (3.03%) AppDynamics
13 4 (3.03%) HP
14 3 (2.27%) Dell
14 3 (2.27%) Dynatrace
14 3 (2.27%) SAP