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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 43 25
Rank change year-on-year -17 -18 +6
Contract jobs citing Linux 121 74 115
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.56% 4.60% 5.74%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.91% 34.74% 39.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 77 52 64
10th Percentile £320 £400 £308
25th Percentile £413 £450 £509
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.53% -13.64% -
75th Percentile £581 £540 £644
90th Percentile £683 £685 £750
England median daily rate £520 £535 £540
% change year-on-year -2.80% -0.93% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - £67.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £70.00
75th Percentile £70.41 - £72.50
90th Percentile £73.35 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +3.05%

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 311 213 290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 9.14% 13.23% 14.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 155 187
10th Percentile £210 £150 £176
25th Percentile £381 £210 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £400 £447
Median % change year-on-year +14.75% -10.51% +5.18%
75th Percentile £537 £500 £573
90th Percentile £595 £583 £675
England median daily rate £463 £463 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 6 15
10th Percentile £44.22 £15.90 £14.66
25th Percentile £58.43 £16.67 £17.25
Median hourly rate £63.14 £17.83 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +254.04% -18.94% +14.29%
75th Percentile £70.23 £23.12 £23.75
90th Percentile £71.97 £24.83 £72.50
England median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £24.34
% change year-on-year +41.30% -5.51% -42.73%

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 17 July 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 17 July 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 17 July 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 +2 28 £477 +0.42% 6
Shropshire -42 21 £469 +1.96% 8
Birmingham -33 19 £463 -7.50% 14
Solihull -17 13 £500 +11.11% 1
Herefordshire +2 11 £538 -4.44% 4
Worcestershire - 9 £560 - 3
Coventry -24 6 £326 -47.89% 3
Staffordshire +1 4 £200 -59.60% 5
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 19 (15.70%) Confluence
2 6 (4.96%) WebLogic
3 4 (3.31%) Apache
3 4 (3.31%) SAS
4 2 (1.65%) CloudStack
Applications
1 2 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.65%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 54 (44.63%) AWS
2 27 (22.31%) Azure
3 22 (18.18%) Amazon EC2
3 22 (18.18%) Amazon S3
4 15 (12.40%) Amazon SQS
4 15 (12.40%) Route 53
5 14 (11.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 13 (10.74%) AWS KMS
7 12 (9.92%) GitHub
8 11 (9.09%) OpenShift
9 9 (7.44%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (6.61%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (4.96%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 6 (4.96%) Datadog
11 6 (4.96%) Microsoft 365
12 5 (4.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 4 (3.31%) AWS CloudFormation
14 3 (2.48%) GCP
14 3 (2.48%) Serverless
15 2 (1.65%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 11 (9.09%) Firewall
2 7 (5.79%) SNMP
3 5 (4.13%) Intrusion Detection
4 4 (3.31%) NAS
4 4 (3.31%) SAN
4 4 (3.31%) VPN
5 3 (2.48%) LAN
5 3 (2.48%) NetScaler
5 3 (2.48%) SSL
5 3 (2.48%) VSAN
6 2 (1.65%) AMQP
6 2 (1.65%) IPsec
6 2 (1.65%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.83%) DNS
7 1 (0.83%) MPLS
7 1 (0.83%) Network Security
7 1 (0.83%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.83%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.83%) WAN
7 1 (0.83%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (15.70%) Amazon RDS
2 15 (12.40%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (10.74%) Amazon Aurora
3 13 (10.74%) DynamoDB
4 6 (4.96%) MongoDB
5 5 (4.13%) Oracle Database
6 4 (3.31%) MySQL
7 3 (2.48%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (2.48%) Pentaho
7 3 (2.48%) SAP HANA
8 2 (1.65%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.83%) Data Lake
9 1 (0.83%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.83%) IDMS
9 1 (0.83%) InfluxDB
9 1 (0.83%) Metadata
9 1 (0.83%) Oracle Database 11g
9 1 (0.83%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.83%) SQL Server
9 1 (0.83%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 29 (23.97%) Git
2 27 (22.31%) Jenkins
3 18 (14.88%) GitLab
4 15 (12.40%) Maven
5 14 (11.57%) JIRA
5 14 (11.57%) Mockito
5 14 (11.57%) SonarQube
6 13 (10.74%) DbUnit
6 13 (10.74%) jMock
6 13 (10.74%) JUnit
7 11 (9.09%) Bitbucket Server
8 6 (4.96%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (3.31%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.83%) AppScan
10 1 (0.83%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.83%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.83%) Liquibase
10 1 (0.83%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.83%) PetaLinux
10 1 (0.83%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 36 (29.75%) Social Skills
2 19 (15.70%) Public Sector
3 13 (10.74%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (7.44%) Finance
5 6 (4.96%) Legal
6 5 (4.13%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.48%) Banking
7 3 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.65%) Automotive
8 2 (1.65%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.83%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.83%) Billing
9 1 (0.83%) Electronics
9 1 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.83%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.83%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 21 (17.36%) Analyst
2 18 (14.88%) Developer
2 18 (14.88%) Java Developer
3 9 (7.44%) Data Engineer
3 9 (7.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 9 (7.44%) Site Engineer
3 9 (7.44%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 7 (5.79%) Senior
5 6 (4.96%) Architect
5 6 (4.96%) Software Engineer
6 5 (4.13%) Asset Management Analyst
6 5 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
6 5 (4.13%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 5 (4.13%) Lead
6 5 (4.13%) Storage Analyst
7 4 (3.31%) Senior Developer
7 4 (3.31%) Senior Java Developer
7 4 (3.31%) Support Engineer
8 3 (2.48%) Administrator
8 3 (2.48%) Infrastructure Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (17.36%) Spring
1 21 (17.36%) Spring Boot
2 16 (13.22%) REST
3 14 (11.57%) ActiveMQ
4 13 (10.74%) AngularJS
4 13 (10.74%) Hibernate
4 13 (10.74%) JPA
4 13 (10.74%) PowerMock
4 13 (10.74%) SOAP
4 13 (10.74%) Spring Batch
4 13 (10.74%) Spring Integration
4 13 (10.74%) Web Services
5 12 (9.92%) RESTful
5 12 (9.92%) Spring Cloud
6 11 (9.09%) Bootstrap
7 10 (8.26%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (6.61%) Flash
8 8 (6.61%) Node.js
9 3 (2.48%) SAP Basis
10 2 (1.65%) Qt
Miscellaneous
1 19 (15.70%) Distributed Systems
2 11 (9.09%) Linux Command Line
2 11 (9.09%) Replication
3 10 (8.26%) Cloud Native
4 9 (7.44%) Data Centre
5 7 (5.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 6 (4.96%) Private Cloud
7 5 (4.13%) SCADA
8 4 (3.31%) CSOC
8 4 (3.31%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (3.31%) Operational Technology
8 4 (3.31%) Security Operations Centre
9 3 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (2.48%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (2.48%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (2.48%) Embedded Systems
9 3 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (2.48%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.65%) IoT
10 2 (1.65%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 46 (38.02%) Windows
2 18 (14.88%) Unix
3 10 (8.26%) Windows Server
4 8 (6.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (4.96%) AIX
6 5 (4.13%) SUSE
6 5 (4.13%) Ubuntu
7 4 (3.31%) Embedded Linux
8 3 (2.48%) Solaris
9 2 (1.65%) Android
9 2 (1.65%) FreeRTOS
9 2 (1.65%) Mac OS
9 2 (1.65%) Windows 10
9 2 (1.65%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.83%) CentOS
10 1 (0.83%) HPUX
10 1 (0.83%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.83%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (34.71%) CI/CD
2 37 (30.58%) Agile
2 37 (30.58%) Containerisation
3 29 (23.97%) DevOps
4 27 (22.31%) Scrum
5 23 (19.01%) Continuous Improvement
5 23 (19.01%) Infrastructure as Code
5 23 (19.01%) Microservices
6 19 (15.70%) Kanban
6 19 (15.70%) Performance Tuning
6 19 (15.70%) TDD
7 16 (13.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 16 (13.22%) Problem-Solving
8 12 (9.92%) BDD
8 12 (9.92%) Business Continuity
8 12 (9.92%) Software Engineering
8 12 (9.92%) Stakeholder Management
9 11 (9.09%) Data Protection
9 11 (9.09%) Disaster Recovery
9 11 (9.09%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 47 (38.84%) SQL
2 28 (23.14%) Java
3 15 (12.40%) Python
4 13 (10.74%) PowerShell
5 12 (9.92%) Shell Script
6 10 (8.26%) Bash
7 9 (7.44%) PL/SQL
8 7 (5.79%) Go
9 5 (4.13%) Perl
10 4 (3.31%) C
10 4 (3.31%) C++
10 4 (3.31%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (2.48%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.83%) Bicep
12 1 (0.83%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.83%) Lisp
12 1 (0.83%) SystemVerilog
12 1 (0.83%) Tcl
12 1 (0.83%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 69 (57.02%) Security Cleared
2 53 (43.80%) SC Cleared
3 20 (16.53%) DV Cleared
4 13 (10.74%) AWS Certification
5 11 (9.09%) Cisco Certification
6 9 (7.44%) CCNA
7 8 (6.61%) Azure Certification
8 5 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (4.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (2.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (2.48%) MCSE
9 3 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (2.48%) RHCA
10 2 (1.65%) CAPM
10 2 (1.65%) CBAP
10 2 (1.65%) CCNP
10 2 (1.65%) Degree
10 2 (1.65%) PMI Certification
10 2 (1.65%) PMP
11 1 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (8.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (4.96%) NIST
3 3 (2.48%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.65%) ISO 26262
4 2 (1.65%) MISRA
4 2 (1.65%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.83%) COBIT
5 1 (0.83%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.83%) FATCA
5 1 (0.83%) GDPR
5 1 (0.83%) NCSC
5 1 (0.83%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.83%) QA
5 1 (0.83%) SLA
System Software
1 36 (29.75%) Docker
2 15 (12.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (9.09%) Postfix
4 8 (6.61%) GPFS
4 8 (6.61%) NFS
4 8 (6.61%) vSphere
5 6 (4.96%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (4.13%) Active Directory
7 4 (3.31%) Snort
8 3 (2.48%) Hyper-V
8 3 (2.48%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (1.65%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.83%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.83%) Firmware
10 1 (0.83%) KVM
10 1 (0.83%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 35 (28.93%) Kubernetes
2 26 (21.49%) Terraform
3 25 (20.66%) Grafana
4 19 (15.70%) Ansible
5 17 (14.05%) Prometheus
6 11 (9.09%) Progress Chef
7 7 (5.79%) Puppet
7 7 (5.79%) WMI
8 6 (4.96%) vRealize
9 5 (4.13%) Podman
10 4 (3.31%) CSIRT
11 3 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
11 3 (2.48%) QRadar
11 3 (2.48%) VxRail
12 2 (1.65%) Check_MK
12 2 (1.65%) Data Guard
12 2 (1.65%) Oracle RMAN
12 2 (1.65%) SCCM
13 1 (0.83%) Nessus
13 1 (0.83%) Packer
Vendors
1 34 (28.10%) Oracle
2 28 (23.14%) Microsoft
3 23 (19.01%) Splunk
4 21 (17.36%) Cisco
4 21 (17.36%) VMware
5 18 (14.88%) ServiceNow
6 16 (13.22%) Atlassian
7 14 (11.57%) IBM
8 13 (10.74%) Jaspersoft
8 13 (10.74%) Red Hat
9 9 (7.44%) Fortinet
10 8 (6.61%) SAP
11 7 (5.79%) F5
11 7 (5.79%) Palo Alto
11 7 (5.79%) SolarWinds
12 5 (4.13%) MathWorks
12 5 (4.13%) Siemens
12 5 (4.13%) Talend
13 2 (1.65%) Commvault
13 2 (1.65%) QNX