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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 33 31
Rank change year-on-year -19 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Linux 124 74 101
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.87% 5.10% 5.00%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.66% 34.74% 35.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 80 55 61
10th Percentile £250 £416 £325
25th Percentile £402 £455 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.85% -9.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £581 £585 £635
90th Percentile £619 £676 £750
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -8.33%
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 £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% - -

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 305 213 287
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 9.51% 14.69% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 224 150 189
10th Percentile £193 £150 £185
25th Percentile £380 £200 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £400 £438
Median % change year-on-year +14.75% -8.57% -5.41%
75th Percentile £537 £511 £575
90th Percentile £600 £638 £678
England median daily rate £455 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -2.15% -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 11 17
10th Percentile £44.22 £15.22 £14.99
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% +23.29%
75th Percentile £70.23 £19.01 £23.75
90th Percentile £71.97 £24.66 £72.50
England median hourly rate £32.50 £18.94 £22.50
% change year-on-year +71.64% -15.84% -48.78%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 -20 27 £463 -7.50% 8
Shropshire -41 19 £468 +1.79% 3
Warwickshire -21 18 £565 +5.21% 5
Solihull -12 13 £500 +11.11%
Herefordshire +2 12 £538 -4.44% 3
Worcestershire +8 11 £175 -75.00% 6
Coventry -13 11 £402 -23.43% 1
Staffordshire +1 4 £200 -59.60% 2
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 (16.13%) Confluence
2 7 (5.65%) Apache
2 7 (5.65%) WebLogic
3 4 (3.23%) SAS
4 2 (1.61%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.81%) CMS
5 1 (0.81%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.61%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.81%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.81%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.81%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 58 (46.77%) AWS
2 27 (21.77%) Azure
3 20 (16.13%) Amazon EC2
3 20 (16.13%) Amazon S3
4 15 (12.10%) Route 53
5 14 (11.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 13 (10.48%) Amazon SQS
6 13 (10.48%) AWS KMS
7 10 (8.06%) GitHub
8 9 (7.26%) OpenShift
9 6 (4.84%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (4.84%) Microsoft 365
10 5 (4.03%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (2.42%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 3 (2.42%) Datadog
11 3 (2.42%) GCP
11 3 (2.42%) IaaS
11 3 (2.42%) SaaS
12 2 (1.61%) CloudFront
12 2 (1.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (10.48%) Firewall
2 6 (4.84%) SNMP
3 5 (4.03%) Intrusion Detection
3 5 (4.03%) VPN
4 4 (3.23%) NAS
4 4 (3.23%) SAN
4 4 (3.23%) VSAN
5 3 (2.42%) LAN
5 3 (2.42%) SSL
5 3 (2.42%) WAN
6 2 (1.61%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.81%) AMQP
7 1 (0.81%) Anycast
7 1 (0.81%) BGP
7 1 (0.81%) DMVPN
7 1 (0.81%) IPsec
7 1 (0.81%) MPLS
7 1 (0.81%) Network Security
7 1 (0.81%) NGFW
7 1 (0.81%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (13.71%) Amazon RDS
2 16 (12.90%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (10.48%) Amazon Aurora
3 13 (10.48%) DynamoDB
4 5 (4.03%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (4.03%) MongoDB
4 5 (4.03%) MySQL
4 5 (4.03%) Oracle Database
5 3 (2.42%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (2.42%) Pentaho
5 3 (2.42%) SAP HANA
6 2 (1.61%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.81%) Db2
7 1 (0.81%) IDMS
7 1 (0.81%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.81%) Metadata
7 1 (0.81%) Oracle Database 11g
7 1 (0.81%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (0.81%) SQL Server
7 1 (0.81%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 26 (20.97%) Git
2 25 (20.16%) Jenkins
3 17 (13.71%) JIRA
4 15 (12.10%) GitLab
5 14 (11.29%) SonarQube
6 13 (10.48%) DbUnit
6 13 (10.48%) jMock
6 13 (10.48%) JUnit
6 13 (10.48%) Maven
6 13 (10.48%) Mockito
7 11 (8.87%) Bitbucket Server
8 6 (4.84%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (3.23%) Artifactory
10 3 (2.42%) Chocolatey
11 1 (0.81%) AppScan
11 1 (0.81%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.81%) Liquibase
11 1 (0.81%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.81%) Vite
General
1 42 (33.87%) Social Skills
2 19 (15.32%) Analytical Skills
3 18 (14.52%) Public Sector
4 8 (6.45%) Finance
5 5 (4.03%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.42%) Banking
6 3 (2.42%) Legal
6 3 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (1.61%) Automotive
7 2 (1.61%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.81%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.81%) Billing
8 1 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.81%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.81%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 24 (19.35%) Analyst
2 15 (12.10%) Developer
2 15 (12.10%) Java Developer
3 12 (9.68%) Site Engineer
3 12 (9.68%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 12 (9.68%) Storage Analyst
4 9 (7.26%) Data Engineer
4 9 (7.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 6 (4.84%) Architect
5 6 (4.84%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 6 (4.84%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 6 (4.84%) Senior
5 6 (4.84%) Software Engineer
6 5 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
6 5 (4.03%) Lead
6 5 (4.03%) Splunk Engineer
7 4 (3.23%) Support Engineer
8 3 (2.42%) Administrator
8 3 (2.42%) Senior Developer
8 3 (2.42%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (15.32%) Spring
1 19 (15.32%) Spring Boot
2 16 (12.90%) REST
3 15 (12.10%) Flash
4 13 (10.48%) ActiveMQ
4 13 (10.48%) AngularJS
4 13 (10.48%) Hibernate
4 13 (10.48%) JPA
4 13 (10.48%) PowerMock
4 13 (10.48%) SOAP
4 13 (10.48%) Spring Batch
4 13 (10.48%) Spring Integration
4 13 (10.48%) Web Services
5 12 (9.68%) Elastic Stack
5 12 (9.68%) RESTful
5 12 (9.68%) Spring Cloud
6 11 (8.87%) Bootstrap
7 8 (6.45%) Node.js
8 3 (2.42%) SAP Basis
9 2 (1.61%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 18 (14.52%) Replication
2 16 (12.90%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (12.90%) Linux Command Line
3 9 (7.26%) Data Centre
4 7 (5.65%) Cloud Native
4 7 (5.65%) Hybrid Cloud
5 5 (4.03%) Management Information System
6 4 (3.23%) CSOC
6 4 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (3.23%) SCADA
6 4 (3.23%) Security Operations Centre
7 3 (2.42%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (2.42%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (2.42%) Private Cloud
7 3 (2.42%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.61%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.61%) Operational Technology
8 2 (1.61%) PMI
8 2 (1.61%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 50 (40.32%) Windows
2 25 (20.16%) Unix
3 10 (8.06%) Windows Server
4 7 (5.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (3.23%) Ubuntu
6 3 (2.42%) AIX
6 3 (2.42%) Embedded Linux
6 3 (2.42%) Solaris
7 2 (1.61%) Android
7 2 (1.61%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (1.61%) Mac OS
7 2 (1.61%) Windows 10
7 2 (1.61%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.81%) HPUX
8 1 (0.81%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.81%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (33.87%) Agile
2 41 (33.06%) CI/CD
3 37 (29.84%) Containerisation
4 31 (25.00%) DevOps
5 27 (21.77%) Scrum
6 23 (18.55%) Continuous Improvement
7 21 (16.94%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (16.13%) Microservices
9 19 (15.32%) Kanban
10 18 (14.52%) Infrastructure as Code
10 18 (14.52%) TDD
11 16 (12.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 16 (12.90%) Performance Tuning
12 15 (12.10%) Observability
13 13 (10.48%) Incident Response
14 12 (9.68%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 12 (9.68%) Software Engineering
14 12 (9.68%) Stakeholder Management
15 11 (8.87%) Continuous Integration
15 11 (8.87%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 47 (37.90%) SQL
2 23 (18.55%) Java
3 19 (15.32%) Python
4 14 (11.29%) Bash
5 13 (10.48%) PowerShell
6 11 (8.87%) Shell Script
7 7 (5.65%) PL/SQL
8 5 (4.03%) Perl
9 4 (3.23%) Go
9 4 (3.23%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (2.42%) C
10 3 (2.42%) C++
10 3 (2.42%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.61%) Bicep
11 2 (1.61%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.81%) Lisp
12 1 (0.81%) PHP
12 1 (0.81%) SystemVerilog
12 1 (0.81%) Tcl
12 1 (0.81%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 67 (54.03%) Security Cleared
2 56 (45.16%) SC Cleared
3 17 (13.71%) DV Cleared
4 13 (10.48%) AWS Certification
4 13 (10.48%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (8.87%) CCNA
6 7 (5.65%) Azure Certification
6 7 (5.65%) Degree
7 6 (4.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (4.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (2.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (2.42%) MCSE
9 3 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (2.42%) RHCA
10 2 (1.61%) CAPM
10 2 (1.61%) CCNP
10 2 (1.61%) PMI Certification
10 2 (1.61%) PMP
10 2 (1.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (8.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (6.45%) NIST
3 3 (2.42%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.61%) ISO 26262
4 2 (1.61%) MISRA
4 2 (1.61%) QA
4 2 (1.61%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.81%) COBIT
5 1 (0.81%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.81%) FATCA
5 1 (0.81%) GDPR
5 1 (0.81%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.81%) SLA
System Software
1 40 (32.26%) Docker
2 20 (16.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (12.10%) GPFS
3 15 (12.10%) NFS
4 13 (10.48%) vSphere
5 11 (8.87%) Postfix
5 11 (8.87%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (4.03%) Active Directory
7 4 (3.23%) Snort
8 3 (2.42%) Hyper-V
8 3 (2.42%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (1.61%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.81%) KVM
10 1 (0.81%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 40 (32.26%) Kubernetes
2 23 (18.55%) Grafana
3 22 (17.74%) Ansible
3 22 (17.74%) Terraform
4 15 (12.10%) Prometheus
5 11 (8.87%) vRealize
6 9 (7.26%) Progress Chef
6 9 (7.26%) Puppet
7 6 (4.84%) WMI
8 5 (4.03%) Kibana
8 5 (4.03%) Podman
9 4 (3.23%) CSIRT
9 4 (3.23%) VxRail
10 3 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (2.42%) QRadar
11 2 (1.61%) Check_MK
11 2 (1.61%) Data Guard
11 2 (1.61%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (1.61%) SCCM
12 1 (0.81%) Nessus
Vendors
1 38 (30.65%) Oracle
2 24 (19.35%) ServiceNow
2 24 (19.35%) Splunk
3 23 (18.55%) Microsoft
3 23 (18.55%) VMware
4 22 (17.74%) Cisco
5 17 (13.71%) IBM
6 16 (12.90%) Atlassian
7 13 (10.48%) Jaspersoft
8 9 (7.26%) Red Hat
9 8 (6.45%) Fortinet
10 6 (4.84%) F5
10 6 (4.84%) Palo Alto
10 6 (4.84%) SolarWinds
11 5 (4.03%) Talend
12 4 (3.23%) SAP
13 3 (2.42%) CyberArk
13 3 (2.42%) Dynatrace
14 2 (1.61%) Commvault
14 2 (1.61%) Denodo