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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 42 40
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -10
Contract jobs citing Linux 133 58 79
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.24% 4.21% 4.16%
As % of the Operating Systems category 44.93% 29.44% 32.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 85 41 49
10th Percentile £306 £420 £300
25th Percentile £413 £455 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.80% -2.36% +1.85%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £585
90th Percentile £619 £689 £830
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 £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 296 197 241
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 9.44% 14.31% 12.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 133 165
10th Percentile £183 £146 £183
25th Percentile £373 £190 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £330 £400
Median % change year-on-year +37.88% -17.50% -15.79%
75th Percentile £538 £514 £550
90th Percentile £607 £638 £690
England median daily rate £450 £469 £470
% change year-on-year -4.00% -0.27% -8.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 13 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% +26.98%
75th Percentile £70.59 £19.50 £23.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £23.73 £43.25
England median hourly rate £47.50 £21.59 £22.00
% change year-on-year +120.01% -1.86% -42.11%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +2 36 £480 -30.26% 8
Herefordshire +1 16 £550 +4.76% 4
Shropshire -38 16 £468 +1.63% 2
Coventry -5 15 £394 -0.32% 4
Worcestershire +5 14 £568 -18.93% 7
Warwickshire -27 14 £581 +7.89% 2
Solihull -11 10 £500 +8.70%
Staffordshire 0 3 - - 3
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 19 (14.29%) Confluence
2 7 (5.26%) WebLogic
3 6 (4.51%) Apache
4 4 (3.01%) SAS
5 3 (2.26%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.75%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.75%) CMS
6 1 (0.75%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.75%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (3.01%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.50%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.75%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.75%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.75%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 60 (45.11%) AWS
2 32 (24.06%) Azure
3 19 (14.29%) Amazon EC2
3 19 (14.29%) Amazon S3
4 14 (10.53%) OpenShift
5 12 (9.02%) Route 53
6 11 (8.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 11 (8.27%) Amazon SQS
6 11 (8.27%) AWS KMS
6 11 (8.27%) GitHub
7 7 (5.26%) Datadog
8 6 (4.51%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (3.01%) Serverless
11 3 (2.26%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (2.26%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (2.26%) GCP
11 3 (2.26%) SaaS
12 2 (1.50%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 12 (9.02%) Firewall
2 8 (6.02%) VSAN
3 5 (3.76%) Intrusion Detection
3 5 (3.76%) VPN
4 4 (3.01%) Network Security
5 3 (2.26%) SNMP
5 3 (2.26%) SSL
5 3 (2.26%) WAN
6 2 (1.50%) LAN
6 2 (1.50%) NAS
6 2 (1.50%) SAN
7 1 (0.75%) AMQP
7 1 (0.75%) Anycast
7 1 (0.75%) BGP
7 1 (0.75%) DNS
7 1 (0.75%) IPsec
7 1 (0.75%) MPLS
7 1 (0.75%) OSPF
7 1 (0.75%) SMTP
7 1 (0.75%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (14.29%) Amazon RDS
2 13 (9.77%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (8.27%) Amazon Aurora
3 11 (8.27%) DynamoDB
4 8 (6.02%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (3.76%) MongoDB
5 5 (3.76%) Relational Database
6 4 (3.01%) InfluxDB
7 3 (2.26%) SAP HANA
8 2 (1.50%) MySQL
8 2 (1.50%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.75%) IDMS
9 1 (0.75%) Metadata
9 1 (0.75%) Oracle Database 11g
9 1 (0.75%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 26 (19.55%) Jenkins
2 21 (15.79%) Git
3 19 (14.29%) JIRA
4 14 (10.53%) GitLab
5 12 (9.02%) JUnit
5 12 (9.02%) Maven
5 12 (9.02%) SonarQube
6 11 (8.27%) DbUnit
6 11 (8.27%) jMock
6 11 (8.27%) Mockito
7 9 (6.77%) Bitbucket Server
8 6 (4.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (2.26%) Artifactory
9 3 (2.26%) Chocolatey
9 3 (2.26%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.75%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.75%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.75%) Gradle
10 1 (0.75%) Liquibase
10 1 (0.75%) webpack
General
1 41 (30.83%) Social Skills
2 20 (15.04%) Analytical Skills
3 17 (12.78%) Public Sector
4 11 (8.27%) Finance
5 6 (4.51%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.26%) Banking
6 3 (2.26%) Manufacturing
6 3 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (1.50%) Legal
7 2 (1.50%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.75%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.75%) Automotive
8 1 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.75%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 29 (21.80%) Analyst
2 19 (14.29%) Site Engineer
2 19 (14.29%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 16 (12.03%) Storage Analyst
4 13 (9.77%) Developer
4 13 (9.77%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 13 (9.77%) Java Developer
5 11 (8.27%) Architect
6 8 (6.02%) Splunk Engineer
7 7 (5.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 7 (5.26%) Software Engineer
8 6 (4.51%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 5 (3.76%) Data Engineer
9 5 (3.76%) DevOps Engineer
10 4 (3.01%) Lead
10 4 (3.01%) Senior
11 3 (2.26%) Consultant
11 3 (2.26%) SAP Basis Consultant
11 3 (2.26%) SAS Engineer
11 3 (2.26%) SC Cleared Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (13.53%) Flash
2 17 (12.78%) Spring
2 17 (12.78%) Spring Boot
3 15 (11.28%) Elastic Stack
3 15 (11.28%) REST
4 11 (8.27%) ActiveMQ
4 11 (8.27%) AngularJS
4 11 (8.27%) Hibernate
4 11 (8.27%) JPA
4 11 (8.27%) PowerMock
4 11 (8.27%) SOAP
4 11 (8.27%) Spring Batch
4 11 (8.27%) Spring Cloud
4 11 (8.27%) Spring Integration
4 11 (8.27%) Web Services
5 10 (7.52%) RESTful
6 9 (6.77%) Bootstrap
6 9 (6.77%) Node.js
7 6 (4.51%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (2.26%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 23 (17.29%) Linux Command Line
2 21 (15.79%) Replication
3 13 (9.77%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (6.02%) Management Information System
5 7 (5.26%) Cloud Native
5 7 (5.26%) Data Centre
6 6 (4.51%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (3.76%) SCADA
8 4 (3.01%) CSOC
8 4 (3.01%) Security Operations Centre
9 3 (2.26%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (2.26%) Private Cloud
9 3 (2.26%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.50%) FPGA
10 2 (1.50%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.50%) PMI
10 2 (1.50%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.50%) Verilog
10 2 (1.50%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 50 (37.59%) Windows
2 25 (18.80%) Unix
3 13 (9.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 9 (6.77%) Windows Server
5 4 (3.01%) Embedded Linux
5 4 (3.01%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.50%) AIX
6 2 (1.50%) Android
6 2 (1.50%) Mac OS
6 2 (1.50%) Solaris
6 2 (1.50%) Windows 10
6 2 (1.50%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.75%) CentOS
7 1 (0.75%) Debian
7 1 (0.75%) FreeRTOS
7 1 (0.75%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (36.84%) Agile
2 43 (32.33%) CI/CD
3 42 (31.58%) Containerisation
4 34 (25.56%) DevOps
5 26 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
6 25 (18.80%) Scrum
7 21 (15.79%) Continuous Improvement
7 21 (15.79%) Microservices
8 20 (15.04%) Infrastructure as Code
9 19 (14.29%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 19 (14.29%) Software Engineering
10 18 (13.53%) Observability
11 17 (12.78%) Kanban
12 16 (12.03%) Incident Response
12 16 (12.03%) TDD
13 15 (11.28%) SIEM
14 13 (9.77%) Change Management
14 13 (9.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 13 (9.77%) Performance Tuning
14 13 (9.77%) Ticket Management
Programming Languages
1 42 (31.58%) SQL
2 31 (23.31%) Python
3 24 (18.05%) Java
4 16 (12.03%) Bash
4 16 (12.03%) Shell Script
5 14 (10.53%) PowerShell
6 8 (6.02%) Go
7 6 (4.51%) C++
7 6 (4.51%) PL/SQL
8 5 (3.76%) Perl
9 4 (3.01%) JavaScript
9 4 (3.01%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (2.26%) C
10 3 (2.26%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.50%) Bicep
11 2 (1.50%) SystemVerilog
11 2 (1.50%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.75%) Lisp
12 1 (0.75%) PHP
12 1 (0.75%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 73 (54.89%) Security Cleared
2 57 (42.86%) SC Cleared
3 22 (16.54%) DV Cleared
4 12 (9.02%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (8.27%) CCNA
5 11 (8.27%) Degree
6 10 (7.52%) AWS Certification
7 8 (6.02%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (6.02%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (3.76%) Azure Certification
9 4 (3.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 3 (2.26%) MCSE
10 3 (2.26%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (2.26%) RHCA
11 2 (1.50%) CAPM
11 2 (1.50%) CBAP
11 2 (1.50%) PMI Certification
11 2 (1.50%) PMP
11 2 (1.50%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (7.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (6.02%) NIST
3 3 (2.26%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (2.26%) QA
4 2 (1.50%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.75%) COBIT
5 1 (0.75%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.75%) FATCA
5 1 (0.75%) GDPR
5 1 (0.75%) ISO 26262
5 1 (0.75%) MISRA
5 1 (0.75%) NCSC
5 1 (0.75%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 46 (34.59%) Docker
2 24 (18.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (14.29%) vSphere
4 18 (13.53%) GPFS
4 18 (13.53%) NFS
5 14 (10.53%) VMware ESXi
6 11 (8.27%) Postfix
7 6 (4.51%) Active Directory
8 4 (3.01%) Snort
9 3 (2.26%) Hyper-V
9 3 (2.26%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.75%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.75%) Firmware
10 1 (0.75%) KVM
10 1 (0.75%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 48 (36.09%) Kubernetes
2 31 (23.31%) Ansible
3 28 (21.05%) Terraform
4 27 (20.30%) Grafana
5 18 (13.53%) Prometheus
5 18 (13.53%) vRealize
6 13 (9.77%) Progress Chef
6 13 (9.77%) Puppet
7 8 (6.02%) Kibana
7 8 (6.02%) VxRail
8 6 (4.51%) Podman
9 4 (3.01%) CSIRT
10 3 (2.26%) Docker Swarm
10 3 (2.26%) WMI
11 2 (1.50%) Argo
11 2 (1.50%) QRadar
12 1 (0.75%) Check_MK
12 1 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.75%) Nessus
12 1 (0.75%) Packer
Vendors
1 34 (25.56%) Oracle
2 27 (20.30%) Splunk
3 26 (19.55%) VMware
4 25 (18.80%) Cisco
5 22 (16.54%) IBM
6 21 (15.79%) Microsoft
6 21 (15.79%) ServiceNow
7 14 (10.53%) Atlassian
8 11 (8.27%) Jaspersoft
9 9 (6.77%) Red Hat
10 7 (5.26%) SolarWinds
11 5 (3.76%) Commvault
12 4 (3.01%) AppDynamics
12 4 (3.01%) Fortinet
12 4 (3.01%) HP
13 3 (2.26%) CyberArk
13 3 (2.26%) Dell
13 3 (2.26%) Dynatrace
13 3 (2.26%) F5
13 3 (2.26%) Palo Alto