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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 27 53
Rank change year-on-year +1 +26 -30
Contract jobs citing Linux 171 99 65
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.89% 6.54% 3.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 51.82% 41.77% 27.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 57 42
10th Percentile £305 £378 £223
25th Percentile £409 £475 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £551 £444
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% +24.17% -17.82%
75th Percentile £575 £611 £585
90th Percentile £619 £689 £660
England median daily rate £510 £551 £550
% change year-on-year -7.44% +0.18% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 3
10th Percentile - - £53.50
25th Percentile £60.00 - £58.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £70.00
75th Percentile £69.99 - £72.50
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year -3.98% +9.58% -7.69%

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 330 237 236
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 13.30% 15.66% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 231 145 160
10th Percentile £163 £186 £165
25th Percentile £263 £213 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £434 £400
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% +8.50% -19.19%
75th Percentile £544 £575 £503
90th Percentile £618 £676 £626
England median daily rate £447 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -5.89% +2.70% -10.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 12 18
10th Percentile - £15.22 £16.54
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.40 £17.72
Median hourly rate £21.46 £18.57 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.59% -17.49% +32.86%
75th Percentile £29.25 £22.89 £23.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £24.05 £56.75
England median hourly rate £22.54 £49.50 £25.06
% change year-on-year -54.47% +97.55% -2.54%

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 3 February 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
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 3 February 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 +5 68 £525 -4.55% 21
Coventry +7 27 £316 +125.71% 1
Shropshire -22 19 £500 +8.70% 1
Warwickshire -17 18 £440 -23.48% 7
Worcestershire -6 14 £575 -17.86% 9
Herefordshire -16 13 £550 +4.76% 3
Staffordshire 0 2 - - 3
Solihull -5 1 - -
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 2
Bilston - 1 £550 - 1
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 24 (14.04%) Confluence
2 13 (7.60%) Apache
3 10 (5.85%) WebLogic
4 9 (5.26%) nginx
5 6 (3.51%) OpenStack
6 4 (2.34%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (2.34%) Apache Spark
7 2 (1.17%) Drupal
8 1 (0.58%) CMS
8 1 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 8 (4.68%) MS Visio
2 7 (4.09%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 1 (0.58%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.58%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.58%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 89 (52.05%) AWS
2 52 (30.41%) Azure
3 21 (12.28%) Amazon EC2
3 21 (12.28%) Amazon S3
3 21 (12.28%) GCP
4 20 (11.70%) Serverless
5 18 (10.53%) Datadog
5 18 (10.53%) OpenShift
6 14 (8.19%) AWS KMS
7 11 (6.43%) Amazon ELB
7 11 (6.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 10 (5.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 10 (5.85%) GitHub
9 9 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
10 8 (4.68%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (4.68%) Route 53
11 7 (4.09%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
12 6 (3.51%) Azure Sentinel
13 4 (2.34%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (11.11%) Firewall
2 16 (9.36%) SSH
3 14 (8.19%) SMTP
3 14 (8.19%) VSAN
4 13 (7.60%) DNS
5 10 (5.85%) FTP
5 10 (5.85%) HTTP
6 7 (4.09%) IMAP
6 7 (4.09%) OpenLDAP
7 4 (2.34%) DKIM
7 4 (2.34%) DMARC
7 4 (2.34%) Intrusion Detection
7 4 (2.34%) Kerberos
7 4 (2.34%) Network Security
7 4 (2.34%) VPN
8 3 (1.75%) WAN
9 2 (1.17%) DHCP
9 2 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 2 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
9 2 (1.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (12.28%) Amazon RDS
2 18 (10.53%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (9.94%) Elasticsearch
4 14 (8.19%) NoSQL
5 7 (4.09%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (3.51%) Relational Database
7 5 (2.92%) InfluxDB
8 4 (2.34%) Apache Hive
8 4 (2.34%) Hadoop
8 4 (2.34%) HBase
8 4 (2.34%) MongoDB
8 4 (2.34%) MySQL
9 1 (0.58%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 44 (25.73%) Jenkins
2 24 (14.04%) JIRA
3 22 (12.87%) GitLab
4 21 (12.28%) Git
5 10 (5.85%) Liquibase
5 10 (5.85%) Vagrant
6 6 (3.51%) CircleCI
7 5 (2.92%) JUnit
7 5 (2.92%) Postman
8 4 (2.34%) Artifactory
8 4 (2.34%) Bitbucket
8 4 (2.34%) Cypress.io
8 4 (2.34%) Gradle
8 4 (2.34%) Maven
8 4 (2.34%) Selenium
8 4 (2.34%) Snyk
8 4 (2.34%) SonarQube
8 4 (2.34%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (2.34%) webpack
9 3 (1.75%) Chocolatey
General
1 68 (39.77%) Social Skills
2 29 (16.96%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (12.87%) Finance
4 19 (11.11%) Public Sector
5 17 (9.94%) Presentation Skills
6 12 (7.02%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (5.85%) Financial Institution
8 9 (5.26%) Banking
9 2 (1.17%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.58%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.58%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 32 (18.71%) Analyst
2 26 (15.20%) Site Engineer
2 26 (15.20%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 24 (14.04%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 19 (11.11%) Storage Analyst
5 17 (9.94%) DevOps Engineer
6 16 (9.36%) AWS Engineer
7 14 (8.19%) Splunk Engineer
8 13 (7.60%) Architect
9 12 (7.02%) Software Engineer
10 11 (6.43%) Cloud Engineer
10 11 (6.43%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (5.85%) AWS DevOps
11 10 (5.85%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 10 (5.85%) Cloud Platform Engineer
11 10 (5.85%) Senior
12 9 (5.26%) GCP Engineer
13 7 (4.09%) AWS Platform Engineer
13 7 (4.09%) Developer
13 7 (4.09%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (22.22%) Elastic Stack
2 19 (11.11%) Flash
3 18 (10.53%) REST
4 17 (9.94%) LDAP
4 17 (9.94%) RESTful
5 7 (4.09%) RabbitMQ
6 6 (3.51%) YAML
7 5 (2.92%) JSON
7 5 (2.92%) Spring
8 4 (2.34%) Middleware
8 4 (2.34%) Node.js
8 4 (2.34%) OAuth
8 4 (2.34%) SAML
8 4 (2.34%) Spark Streaming
9 3 (1.75%) CSS
9 3 (1.75%) Spring Boot
10 2 (1.17%) Drush
10 2 (1.17%) OpenTelemetry
10 2 (1.17%) React
10 2 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 36 (21.05%) Linux Command Line
2 29 (16.96%) Replication
3 15 (8.77%) Management Information System
4 14 (8.19%) Public Cloud
5 12 (7.02%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (6.43%) Cloud Native
7 6 (3.51%) Data Centre
8 5 (2.92%) Onboarding
9 4 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (2.34%) Private Cloud
9 4 (2.34%) SCADA
10 3 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.75%) Product Ownership
11 2 (1.17%) Derivative
11 2 (1.17%) Security Operations Centre
12 1 (0.58%) Cyberattack
12 1 (0.58%) HP Storage
12 1 (0.58%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 62 (36.26%) Windows
2 33 (19.30%) Unix
3 13 (7.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (6.43%) Ubuntu
5 10 (5.85%) Amazon Linux
5 10 (5.85%) VMS
6 7 (4.09%) AIX
6 7 (4.09%) Solaris
7 4 (2.34%) CentOS
8 3 (1.75%) Embedded Linux
8 3 (1.75%) Windows Server
9 2 (1.17%) Debian
9 2 (1.17%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.58%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (36.26%) Agile
2 58 (33.92%) CI/CD
3 53 (30.99%) DevOps
4 47 (27.49%) Containerisation
5 42 (24.56%) Problem-Solving
6 34 (19.88%) Change Management
7 30 (17.54%) Configuration Management
7 30 (17.54%) Observability
8 28 (16.37%) Computer Science
8 28 (16.37%) Incident Response
9 27 (15.79%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 26 (15.20%) SIEM
11 24 (14.04%) Infrastructure as Code
11 24 (14.04%) Software Engineering
12 21 (12.28%) Microservices
13 20 (11.70%) Cloud Security
14 19 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
14 19 (11.11%) Data Ingestion
14 19 (11.11%) Validation
15 17 (9.94%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 78 (45.61%) Python
2 40 (23.39%) SQL
3 27 (15.79%) PowerShell
4 26 (15.20%) Bash
5 22 (12.87%) Go
6 20 (11.70%) Shell Script
7 15 (8.77%) Java
8 10 (5.85%) Groovy
9 5 (2.92%) C++
9 5 (2.92%) Perl
10 3 (1.75%) JavaScript
10 3 (1.75%) PHP
11 2 (1.17%) Ruby
11 2 (1.17%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.58%) Bicep
12 1 (0.58%) C
12 1 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.58%) Lisp
12 1 (0.58%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.58%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 71 (41.52%) Security Cleared
2 54 (31.58%) SC Cleared
3 38 (22.22%) Degree
4 28 (16.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (12.28%) DV Cleared
6 12 (7.02%) Master's Degree
7 11 (6.43%) AWS Certification
7 11 (6.43%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (4.09%) Azure Certification
9 5 (2.92%) CCNA
9 5 (2.92%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.17%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (1.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.17%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.58%) CEH
11 1 (0.58%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.85%) NIST
2 8 (4.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (1.75%) PCI DSS
3 3 (1.75%) QA
4 2 (1.17%) NCSC
4 2 (1.17%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.58%) COBIT
5 1 (0.58%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.58%) FATCA
5 1 (0.58%) GDPR
System Software
1 61 (35.67%) Docker
2 31 (18.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (17.54%) vSphere
4 19 (11.11%) GPFS
4 19 (11.11%) NFS
5 17 (9.94%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (7.02%) Active Directory
7 11 (6.43%) Postfix
8 10 (5.85%) DFS Replication
9 7 (4.09%) Dovecot
9 7 (4.09%) Squid
10 4 (2.34%) HDFS
11 3 (1.75%) Firmware
12 2 (1.17%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.58%) Snort
13 1 (0.58%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 61 (35.67%) Kubernetes
2 51 (29.82%) Ansible
3 46 (26.90%) Terraform
4 44 (25.73%) Grafana
5 43 (25.15%) Prometheus
6 30 (17.54%) vRealize
7 23 (13.45%) Puppet
8 17 (9.94%) Kibana
8 17 (9.94%) Progress Chef
9 14 (8.19%) VxRail
10 9 (5.26%) Nessus
11 7 (4.09%) Proxmox
12 4 (2.34%) Hadoop YARN
12 4 (2.34%) Podman
13 3 (1.75%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (1.75%) logstash
14 2 (1.17%) Argo
15 1 (0.58%) Dell DRAC
15 1 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.58%) Rsyslog
Vendors
1 46 (26.90%) Splunk
2 38 (22.22%) Cisco
3 33 (19.30%) IBM
3 33 (19.30%) VMware
4 31 (18.13%) Oracle
5 29 (16.96%) ServiceNow
6 20 (11.70%) AppDynamics
7 17 (9.94%) CyberArk
8 16 (9.36%) Microsoft
9 15 (8.77%) SolarWinds
10 14 (8.19%) BeyondTrust
10 14 (8.19%) Commvault
10 14 (8.19%) Dell
11 13 (7.60%) HP
12 9 (5.26%) Dynatrace
13 8 (4.68%) Google
14 7 (4.09%) Jaspersoft
15 4 (2.34%) Red Hat
16 2 (1.17%) Calypso
16 2 (1.17%) Foundry