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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 35 21
Rank change year-on-year -37 -14 +7
Contract jobs citing Linux 100 100 128
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.89% 5.84% 6.84%
As % of the Operating Systems category 34.01% 41.49% 44.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 71 78
10th Percentile £316 £400 £401
25th Percentile £409 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% -9.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £580 £540 £675
90th Percentile £596 £618 £754
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £58.43 - -
Median hourly rate £64.07 - -
75th Percentile £70.32 - -
90th Percentile £72.66 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 294 241 285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 8.48% 14.08% 15.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 216 181 187
10th Percentile £211 £160 £188
25th Percentile £380 £225 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £450 £463
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -2.70% +15.63%
75th Percentile £525 £537 £575
90th Percentile £585 £588 £698
England median daily rate £472 £450 £490
% change year-on-year +4.94% -8.16% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 4 8
10th Percentile £47.73 £16.14 £15.40
25th Percentile £58.43 £17.66 £17.88
Median hourly rate £63.14 £21.59 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +192.49% +13.61% -5.00%
75th Percentile £70.17 £24.75 £22.44
90th Percentile £71.28 £24.90 £39.13
England median hourly rate £34.68 £23.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +50.76% -29.23% -5.80%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 18 August 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 -13 24 £477 -6.01% 8
Shropshire -48 18 £470 -11.24% 1
Birmingham -36 13 £463 -2.63% 18
Solihull -12 10 £500 +11.11% 2
Herefordshire 0 8 £625 +4.17% 3
Worcestershire -1 6 £575 -4.17%
Coventry -23 5 £294 -52.92% 2
Staffordshire -2 4 £200 -59.60% 3
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 7 (7.00%) Confluence
2 6 (6.00%) WebLogic
3 4 (4.00%) Apache
3 4 (4.00%) SAS
4 2 (2.00%) CloudStack
5 1 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (1.00%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 41 (41.00%) AWS
2 20 (20.00%) Azure
3 17 (17.00%) Amazon EC2
3 17 (17.00%) Amazon S3
4 13 (13.00%) GitHub
5 11 (11.00%) Amazon SQS
6 10 (10.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 10 (10.00%) Route 53
7 9 (9.00%) AWS KMS
7 9 (9.00%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (9.00%) OpenShift
8 8 (8.00%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (7.00%) Datadog
10 6 (6.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 6 (6.00%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (6.00%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (5.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 2 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
12 2 (2.00%) GCP
12 2 (2.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (10.00%) Firewall
2 7 (7.00%) SNMP
3 4 (4.00%) NetScaler
4 3 (3.00%) LAN
4 3 (3.00%) NAS
4 3 (3.00%) SAN
4 3 (3.00%) SSL
4 3 (3.00%) VSAN
5 2 (2.00%) DNS
5 2 (2.00%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (1.00%) AMQP
6 1 (1.00%) DHCP
6 1 (1.00%) IPsec
6 1 (1.00%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (1.00%) Modbus
6 1 (1.00%) MQTT
6 1 (1.00%) OpenVPN
6 1 (1.00%) TCP/IP
6 1 (1.00%) VPN
6 1 (1.00%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (14.00%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (11.00%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (9.00%) Amazon Aurora
3 9 (9.00%) DynamoDB
4 5 (5.00%) Oracle Database
5 4 (4.00%) Pentaho
6 3 (3.00%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (3.00%) MySQL
6 3 (3.00%) SAP HANA
7 2 (2.00%) SQL Server
8 1 (1.00%) Data Lake
8 1 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (1.00%) Db2
8 1 (1.00%) IDMS
8 1 (1.00%) Metadata
8 1 (1.00%) MongoDB
8 1 (1.00%) Oracle Database 11g
8 1 (1.00%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 25 (25.00%) Git
2 20 (20.00%) Jenkins
3 18 (18.00%) GitLab
4 16 (16.00%) Maven
5 11 (11.00%) SonarQube
6 10 (10.00%) JUnit
6 10 (10.00%) Mockito
7 9 (9.00%) Bitbucket Server
7 9 (9.00%) DbUnit
7 9 (9.00%) jMock
8 5 (5.00%) Artifactory
9 3 (3.00%) JIRA
10 2 (2.00%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (1.00%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (1.00%) CircleCI
11 1 (1.00%) PetaLinux
11 1 (1.00%) Postman
11 1 (1.00%) Selenium
11 1 (1.00%) Snyk
11 1 (1.00%) webpack
General
1 23 (23.00%) Social Skills
2 14 (14.00%) Analytical Skills
2 14 (14.00%) Public Sector
3 7 (7.00%) Finance
4 6 (6.00%) Legal
5 3 (3.00%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (3.00%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (2.00%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.00%) Automotive
6 2 (2.00%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.00%) Banking
7 1 (1.00%) Billing
7 1 (1.00%) Electronics
7 1 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.00%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 14 (14.00%) Analyst
1 14 (14.00%) Developer
1 14 (14.00%) Java Developer
2 11 (11.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 9 (9.00%) Data Engineer
4 7 (7.00%) Senior
5 6 (6.00%) Architect
5 6 (6.00%) Site Engineer
5 6 (6.00%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 5 (5.00%) Asset Management Analyst
6 5 (5.00%) Java Engineer
6 5 (5.00%) Lead
7 4 (4.00%) DevOps Engineer
7 4 (4.00%) Infrastructure Architect
7 4 (4.00%) Senior Developer
7 4 (4.00%) Senior Java Developer
7 4 (4.00%) Storage Analyst
8 3 (3.00%) Consultant
8 3 (3.00%) Infrastructure Analyst
8 3 (3.00%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (12.00%) REST
1 12 (12.00%) Spring
1 12 (12.00%) Spring Boot
2 10 (10.00%) ActiveMQ
2 10 (10.00%) Elastic Stack
2 10 (10.00%) RESTful
3 9 (9.00%) AngularJS
3 9 (9.00%) Bootstrap
3 9 (9.00%) Hibernate
3 9 (9.00%) JPA
3 9 (9.00%) PowerMock
3 9 (9.00%) SOAP
3 9 (9.00%) Spring Batch
3 9 (9.00%) Spring Integration
3 9 (9.00%) Web Services
4 8 (8.00%) Spring Cloud
5 7 (7.00%) Flash
6 4 (4.00%) Node.js
7 3 (3.00%) SAP Basis
8 2 (2.00%) QML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (15.00%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (14.00%) Linux Command Line
3 10 (10.00%) Replication
4 7 (7.00%) Private Cloud
5 5 (5.00%) Cloud Native
5 5 (5.00%) SCADA
6 4 (4.00%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (4.00%) Data Centre
6 4 (4.00%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (4.00%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (3.00%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (3.00%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 3 (3.00%) Embedded Systems
7 3 (3.00%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (2.00%) Enterprise Storage
8 2 (2.00%) IoT
8 2 (2.00%) Operational Technology
8 2 (2.00%) Public Cloud
9 1 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (1.00%) Industry 4.0
Operating Systems
1 36 (36.00%) Windows
2 17 (17.00%) Unix
3 11 (11.00%) Windows Server
4 6 (6.00%) Ubuntu
5 5 (5.00%) AIX
5 5 (5.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (5.00%) SUSE
6 4 (4.00%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (2.00%) CentOS
7 2 (2.00%) FreeRTOS
7 2 (2.00%) Mac OS
7 2 (2.00%) Windows 10
7 2 (2.00%) Windows 7
8 1 (1.00%) Android
8 1 (1.00%) HPUX
8 1 (1.00%) Mac OS X
8 1 (1.00%) Solaris
8 1 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (34.00%) Containerisation
2 28 (28.00%) CI/CD
3 26 (26.00%) Agile
4 25 (25.00%) DevOps
5 21 (21.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 15 (15.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 15 (15.00%) Performance Tuning
6 15 (15.00%) Scrum
7 14 (14.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 14 (14.00%) Microservices
8 12 (12.00%) Business Continuity
9 11 (11.00%) Disaster Recovery
9 11 (11.00%) Kanban
9 11 (11.00%) Problem-Solving
9 11 (11.00%) Root Cause Analysis
10 10 (10.00%) Data Protection
10 10 (10.00%) TDD
11 9 (9.00%) Continuous Integration
11 9 (9.00%) Incident Management
11 9 (9.00%) Problem Management
Programming Languages
1 40 (40.00%) SQL
2 21 (21.00%) Java
3 15 (15.00%) Python
4 13 (13.00%) PowerShell
5 12 (12.00%) Bash
6 9 (9.00%) PL/SQL
7 7 (7.00%) Shell Script
8 6 (6.00%) Go
9 4 (4.00%) C
9 4 (4.00%) C++
10 2 (2.00%) Kotlin
11 1 (1.00%) JavaScript
11 1 (1.00%) SystemVerilog
11 1 (1.00%) Tcl
11 1 (1.00%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 54 (54.00%) Security Cleared
2 39 (39.00%) SC Cleared
3 18 (18.00%) DV Cleared
4 8 (8.00%) AWS Certification
4 8 (8.00%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (8.00%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 6 (6.00%) CCNA
5 6 (6.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 4 (4.00%) MCSE
6 4 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (4.00%) RHCA
7 3 (3.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (2.00%) CCNP
9 1 (1.00%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 1 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (1.00%) Degree
9 1 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (4.00%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (3.00%) NIST
4 2 (2.00%) ISO 26262
4 2 (2.00%) MISRA
5 1 (1.00%) NCSC
5 1 (1.00%) QA
5 1 (1.00%) SLA
System Software
1 26 (26.00%) Docker
2 17 (17.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (9.00%) vSphere
4 8 (8.00%) Postfix
5 7 (7.00%) GPFS
5 7 (7.00%) NFS
5 7 (7.00%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (4.00%) Active Directory
6 4 (4.00%) Hyper-V
7 3 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (2.00%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (1.00%) Embedded Firmware
9 1 (1.00%) Firmware
9 1 (1.00%) KVM
9 1 (1.00%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 24 (24.00%) Kubernetes
2 21 (21.00%) Terraform
3 18 (18.00%) Grafana
4 15 (15.00%) Ansible
5 14 (14.00%) Prometheus
6 8 (8.00%) Progress Chef
6 8 (8.00%) Puppet
7 7 (7.00%) WMI
8 6 (6.00%) Podman
8 6 (6.00%) vRealize
9 3 (3.00%) QRadar
9 3 (3.00%) VxRail
10 2 (2.00%) Check_MK
10 2 (2.00%) Data Guard
10 2 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (2.00%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (2.00%) SCCM
11 1 (1.00%) Argo
11 1 (1.00%) Istio
Vendors
1 32 (32.00%) Oracle
2 24 (24.00%) Cisco
2 24 (24.00%) VMware
3 21 (21.00%) Microsoft
4 17 (17.00%) ServiceNow
4 17 (17.00%) Splunk
5 13 (13.00%) Atlassian
5 13 (13.00%) IBM
6 10 (10.00%) Fortinet
7 9 (9.00%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (8.00%) Palo Alto
8 8 (8.00%) Red Hat
8 8 (8.00%) SAP
9 7 (7.00%) F5
9 7 (7.00%) SolarWinds
10 5 (5.00%) MathWorks
10 5 (5.00%) Siemens
10 5 (5.00%) Talend
11 3 (3.00%) NetApp
12 2 (2.00%) Commvault