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 5 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 26 51
Rank change year-on-year -13 +25 -28
Contract jobs citing Linux 156 87 65
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 5.58% 6.32% 3.44%
As % of the Operating Systems category 47.27% 38.84% 26.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 50 47
10th Percentile £305 £373 £259
25th Percentile £402 £455 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £438
Median % change year-on-year -1.13% +21.37% -18.98%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £578
90th Percentile £636 £660 £657
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -6.78%
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 £66.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +10.83% -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 330 224 241
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 11.81% 16.27% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 142 167
10th Percentile £169 £164 £175
25th Percentile £304 £202 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £439 £435 £400
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% +8.65% -16.88%
75th Percentile £538 £542 £506
90th Percentile £618 £638 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -12.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 13 19
10th Percentile - £15.51 £16.36
25th Percentile £17.14 £16.67 £17.72
Median hourly rate £19.84 £18.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.45% -19.42% +32.86%
75th Percentile £26.38 £20.00 £23.75
90th Percentile £66.49 £23.92 £54.50
England median hourly rate £22.81 £41.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -44.37% +82.22% -18.18%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 +9 60 £525 -14.63% 13
Coventry -1 25 £316 +125.71% 5
Shropshire -31 16 £467 +1.56% 9
Herefordshire -10 14 £550 +4.76% 1
Warwickshire -33 14 £440 -20.15% 5
Worcestershire -3 13 £575 -17.86% 5
Solihull -9 5 - - 6
Staffordshire -3 2 - - 7
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 1
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 27 (17.31%) Confluence
2 9 (5.77%) WebLogic
3 5 (3.21%) OpenStack
4 4 (2.56%) Apache
5 3 (1.92%) nginx
6 2 (1.28%) Drupal
7 1 (0.64%) CMS
7 1 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 9 (5.77%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.92%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.64%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.64%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 1 (0.64%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.64%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 85 (54.49%) AWS
2 43 (27.56%) Azure
3 20 (12.82%) Amazon EC2
3 20 (12.82%) Amazon S3
3 20 (12.82%) GCP
4 19 (12.18%) Serverless
5 17 (10.90%) Datadog
5 17 (10.90%) OpenShift
6 13 (8.33%) AWS KMS
7 9 (5.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 9 (5.77%) Route 53
8 8 (5.13%) GitHub
9 7 (4.49%) Amazon SQS
10 6 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
13 3 (1.92%) Amazon ELB
13 3 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (1.92%) Microsoft 365
13 3 (1.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 15 (9.62%) VSAN
2 10 (6.41%) Firewall
3 7 (4.49%) Intrusion Detection
4 6 (3.85%) SMTP
4 6 (3.85%) SSH
5 5 (3.21%) Network Security
5 5 (3.21%) VPN
6 4 (2.56%) DKIM
6 4 (2.56%) DMARC
6 4 (2.56%) DNS
6 4 (2.56%) Kerberos
7 3 (1.92%) WAN
8 2 (1.28%) FTP
8 2 (1.28%) HTTP
8 2 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
8 2 (1.28%) Wireless
9 1 (0.64%) DHCP
9 1 (0.64%) IPsec
9 1 (0.64%) LAN
9 1 (0.64%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (12.82%) Amazon RDS
2 19 (12.18%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (8.33%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (8.33%) NoSQL
4 8 (5.13%) Amazon Aurora
4 8 (5.13%) MongoDB
5 7 (4.49%) DynamoDB
6 6 (3.85%) Relational Database
7 5 (3.21%) InfluxDB
8 4 (2.56%) MySQL
9 2 (1.28%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.64%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.64%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 41 (26.28%) Jenkins
2 25 (16.03%) JIRA
3 23 (14.74%) Git
4 21 (13.46%) GitLab
5 11 (7.05%) JUnit
6 10 (6.41%) Liquibase
6 10 (6.41%) Maven
6 10 (6.41%) SonarQube
7 8 (5.13%) Mockito
8 7 (4.49%) DbUnit
8 7 (4.49%) jMock
9 6 (3.85%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (3.21%) Bitbucket Server
10 5 (3.21%) CircleCI
11 4 (2.56%) Postman
12 3 (1.92%) Chocolatey
12 3 (1.92%) Cypress.io
12 3 (1.92%) Snyk
12 3 (1.92%) Sonatype Nexus
12 3 (1.92%) webpack
General
1 57 (36.54%) Social Skills
2 24 (15.38%) Finance
3 23 (14.74%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (10.90%) Public Sector
5 12 (7.69%) Presentation Skills
6 11 (7.05%) Banking
7 10 (6.41%) Financial Institution
8 9 (5.77%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.28%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.28%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.64%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.64%) Automotive
10 1 (0.64%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 39 (25.00%) Analyst
2 25 (16.03%) Infrastructure Analyst
2 25 (16.03%) Site Engineer
2 25 (16.03%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 21 (13.46%) Storage Analyst
4 14 (8.97%) Software Engineer
5 13 (8.33%) Architect
5 13 (8.33%) Splunk Engineer
6 12 (7.69%) Cloud Engineer
6 12 (7.69%) Developer
7 11 (7.05%) DevOps Engineer
8 10 (6.41%) GCP Engineer
9 8 (5.13%) AWS Engineer
9 8 (5.13%) Java Developer
9 8 (5.13%) Senior
10 7 (4.49%) Cloud Software Engineer
10 7 (4.49%) Senior Software Engineer
11 6 (3.85%) Consultant
11 6 (3.85%) DevSecOps Engineer
12 5 (3.21%) GCP Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (21.15%) Elastic Stack
2 24 (15.38%) REST
3 21 (13.46%) RESTful
4 18 (11.54%) Flash
5 16 (10.26%) Spring
6 14 (8.97%) Spring Boot
7 10 (6.41%) Node.js
8 9 (5.77%) LDAP
8 9 (5.77%) Web Services
9 8 (5.13%) SOAP
10 7 (4.49%) ActiveMQ
10 7 (4.49%) AngularJS
10 7 (4.49%) Hibernate
10 7 (4.49%) JPA
10 7 (4.49%) PowerMock
10 7 (4.49%) RabbitMQ
10 7 (4.49%) Spring Batch
10 7 (4.49%) Spring Cloud
10 7 (4.49%) Spring Integration
11 5 (3.21%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (21.79%) Linux Command Line
2 22 (14.10%) Replication
3 19 (12.18%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (8.97%) Cloud Native
4 14 (8.97%) Public Cloud
5 13 (8.33%) Management Information System
6 7 (4.49%) Data Centre
7 5 (3.21%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (3.21%) Onboarding
7 5 (3.21%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (2.56%) CSOC
8 4 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.56%) SCADA
9 3 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.92%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.92%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.28%) Derivative
10 2 (1.28%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.28%) PMI
11 1 (0.64%) Client/Server
Operating Systems
1 46 (29.49%) Windows
2 22 (14.10%) Unix
3 17 (10.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (3.85%) AIX
4 6 (3.85%) Solaris
5 5 (3.21%) Ubuntu
6 4 (2.56%) CentOS
7 3 (1.92%) Embedded Linux
7 3 (1.92%) Windows Server
8 2 (1.28%) Amazon Linux
8 2 (1.28%) Android
8 2 (1.28%) Debian
8 2 (1.28%) VMS
9 1 (0.64%) Kali Linux
9 1 (0.64%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (44.87%) Agile
2 58 (37.18%) CI/CD
3 54 (34.62%) Containerisation
4 47 (30.13%) DevOps
5 37 (23.72%) Problem-Solving
6 31 (19.87%) Microservices
7 27 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
7 27 (17.31%) Software Engineering
8 26 (16.67%) Computer Science
9 25 (16.03%) Change Management
9 25 (16.03%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 23 (14.74%) Continuous Improvement
10 23 (14.74%) Incident Response
11 22 (14.10%) Observability
12 21 (13.46%) Scrum
13 18 (11.54%) Configuration Management
13 18 (11.54%) SIEM
13 18 (11.54%) Validation
14 17 (10.90%) High Availability
15 16 (10.26%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 53 (33.97%) Python
2 38 (24.36%) SQL
3 26 (16.67%) Java
4 21 (13.46%) Bash
5 20 (12.82%) Go
5 20 (12.82%) Shell Script
6 13 (8.33%) PowerShell
7 7 (4.49%) Perl
8 5 (3.21%) C++
9 4 (2.56%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (1.92%) JavaScript
10 3 (1.92%) PHP
11 2 (1.28%) Bicep
11 2 (1.28%) Groovy
11 2 (1.28%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.28%) Ruby
11 2 (1.28%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.64%) Lisp
12 1 (0.64%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.64%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 68 (43.59%) Security Cleared
2 49 (31.41%) SC Cleared
3 32 (20.51%) Degree
4 26 (16.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (12.82%) DV Cleared
6 12 (7.69%) Master's Degree
7 11 (7.05%) AWS Certification
7 11 (7.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (5.13%) CCNA
8 8 (5.13%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (2.56%) Azure Certification
10 2 (1.28%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (1.28%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.28%) CAPM
10 2 (1.28%) CBAP
10 2 (1.28%) PMI Certification
10 2 (1.28%) PMP
10 2 (1.28%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.05%) NIST
2 9 (5.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.56%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.92%) PCI DSS
4 3 (1.92%) QA
5 2 (1.28%) NCSC
6 1 (0.64%) COBIT
6 1 (0.64%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.64%) FATCA
6 1 (0.64%) GDPR
System Software
1 61 (39.10%) Docker
2 28 (17.95%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (17.95%) vSphere
3 18 (11.54%) GPFS
3 18 (11.54%) NFS
4 15 (9.62%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (7.05%) Postfix
6 8 (5.13%) Active Directory
7 4 (2.56%) Snort
8 2 (1.28%) DFS Replication
8 2 (1.28%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (1.28%) Firmware
9 1 (0.64%) Dovecot
9 1 (0.64%) Squid
Systems Management
1 68 (43.59%) Kubernetes
2 47 (30.13%) Ansible
3 40 (25.64%) Grafana
3 40 (25.64%) Terraform
4 33 (21.15%) Prometheus
5 28 (17.95%) vRealize
6 18 (11.54%) Puppet
7 16 (10.26%) Progress Chef
8 15 (9.62%) VxRail
9 13 (8.33%) Kibana
10 5 (3.21%) Podman
11 4 (2.56%) CSIRT
12 3 (1.92%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (1.28%) Argo
13 2 (1.28%) Nessus
14 1 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
14 1 (0.64%) Packer
14 1 (0.64%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 43 (27.56%) Splunk
2 32 (20.51%) IBM
3 31 (19.87%) Cisco
4 29 (18.59%) VMware
5 28 (17.95%) Oracle
6 20 (12.82%) ServiceNow
7 17 (10.90%) Microsoft
8 15 (9.62%) AppDynamics
9 14 (8.97%) Commvault
9 14 (8.97%) SolarWinds
10 12 (7.69%) Dell
10 12 (7.69%) HP
11 9 (5.77%) Google
12 8 (5.13%) CyberArk
12 8 (5.13%) Jaspersoft
12 8 (5.13%) Red Hat
13 7 (4.49%) Atlassian
14 5 (3.21%) BeyondTrust
15 4 (2.56%) Dynatrace
16 2 (1.28%) Foundry