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 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 23 49
Rank change year-on-year -3 +26 -25
Contract jobs citing Linux 176 108 62
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 7.16% 6.96% 3.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 53.33% 43.37% 26.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 65 43
10th Percentile £305 £392 £204
25th Percentile £413 £475 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £551 £438
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% +25.94% -18.98%
75th Percentile £584 £648 £591
90th Percentile £619 £708 £712
England median daily rate £506 £551 £550
% change year-on-year -8.17% +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 £65.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.84% -4.62%

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 330 249 231
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 13.43% 16.05% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 154 160
10th Percentile £163 £188 £170
25th Percentile £263 £222 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £443 £400
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% +10.63% -19.19%
75th Percentile £550 £583 £500
90th Percentile £619 £700 £638
England median daily rate £447 £475 £466
% change year-on-year -5.89% +1.93% -9.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 12 17
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% +26.98%
75th Percentile £29.25 £22.89 £23.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £24.05 £59.00
England median hourly rate £22.79 £50.00 £25.25
% change year-on-year -54.43% +98.02% -1.79%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 -1 70 £525 -8.70% 22
Coventry +6 27 £316 +125.71% 1
Shropshire -23 20 £500 +8.70% 3
Warwickshire -20 18 £440 -23.48% 5
Worcestershire -3 16 £575 -17.86% 8
Herefordshire -16 13 £550 +4.76% 1
Staffordshire -1 2 - - 3
Solihull -3 1 - -
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 (15.34%) Confluence
2 14 (7.95%) Apache
3 11 (6.25%) WebLogic
4 10 (5.68%) nginx
5 7 (3.98%) OpenStack
6 4 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (2.27%) Apache Spark
7 2 (1.14%) Drupal
8 1 (0.57%) CMS
8 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 9 (5.11%) MS Visio
2 8 (4.55%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.57%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.57%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 93 (52.84%) AWS
2 56 (31.82%) Azure
3 23 (13.07%) Amazon EC2
3 23 (13.07%) Amazon S3
4 22 (12.50%) GCP
5 20 (11.36%) Serverless
6 19 (10.80%) Datadog
6 19 (10.80%) OpenShift
7 16 (9.09%) AWS KMS
8 13 (7.39%) Amazon ELB
8 13 (7.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 12 (6.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 11 (6.25%) GitHub
11 10 (5.68%) Microsoft 365
12 9 (5.11%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (5.11%) Route 53
13 8 (4.55%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (3.98%) Azure Monitor
15 6 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
15 6 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 21 (11.93%) Firewall
2 18 (10.23%) SSH
3 16 (9.09%) SMTP
4 15 (8.52%) DNS
5 14 (7.95%) VSAN
6 12 (6.82%) FTP
6 12 (6.82%) HTTP
7 8 (4.55%) IMAP
7 8 (4.55%) OpenLDAP
8 4 (2.27%) DKIM
8 4 (2.27%) DMARC
8 4 (2.27%) Intrusion Detection
8 4 (2.27%) Kerberos
8 4 (2.27%) Network Security
8 4 (2.27%) VPN
9 3 (1.70%) WAN
10 2 (1.14%) DHCP
10 2 (1.14%) TCP/IP
10 2 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (1.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (13.07%) Amazon RDS
2 19 (10.80%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (9.66%) Elasticsearch
4 14 (7.95%) NoSQL
5 8 (4.55%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (2.84%) InfluxDB
6 5 (2.84%) Relational Database
7 4 (2.27%) Apache Hive
7 4 (2.27%) Hadoop
7 4 (2.27%) HBase
7 4 (2.27%) MongoDB
8 3 (1.70%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 47 (26.70%) Jenkins
2 26 (14.77%) JIRA
3 24 (13.64%) Git
4 23 (13.07%) GitLab
5 12 (6.82%) Vagrant
6 10 (5.68%) Liquibase
7 7 (3.98%) CircleCI
8 6 (3.41%) JUnit
8 6 (3.41%) Postman
9 5 (2.84%) Artifactory
9 5 (2.84%) Bitbucket
9 5 (2.84%) Cypress.io
9 5 (2.84%) Gradle
9 5 (2.84%) Maven
9 5 (2.84%) Selenium
9 5 (2.84%) Snyk
9 5 (2.84%) SonarQube
9 5 (2.84%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (2.84%) webpack
10 3 (1.70%) Chocolatey
General
1 71 (40.34%) Social Skills
2 29 (16.48%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (12.50%) Finance
4 21 (11.93%) Public Sector
5 18 (10.23%) Presentation Skills
6 14 (7.95%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (5.68%) Financial Institution
8 9 (5.11%) Banking
9 2 (1.14%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.14%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.57%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.57%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 33 (18.75%) Analyst
2 26 (14.77%) Site Engineer
2 26 (14.77%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 24 (13.64%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 20 (11.36%) DevOps Engineer
5 19 (10.80%) Storage Analyst
6 18 (10.23%) AWS Engineer
7 14 (7.95%) Splunk Engineer
8 13 (7.39%) Architect
8 13 (7.39%) Platform Engineer
9 12 (6.82%) AWS DevOps
9 12 (6.82%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 12 (6.82%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 12 (6.82%) Software Engineer
10 11 (6.25%) Cloud Engineer
11 10 (5.68%) Senior
12 9 (5.11%) GCP Engineer
13 8 (4.55%) AWS Platform Engineer
14 7 (3.98%) Developer
14 7 (3.98%) Monitoring Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (22.16%) Elastic Stack
2 19 (10.80%) Flash
2 19 (10.80%) REST
3 18 (10.23%) LDAP
4 17 (9.66%) RESTful
5 7 (3.98%) RabbitMQ
5 7 (3.98%) YAML
6 5 (2.84%) JSON
6 5 (2.84%) Spring
7 4 (2.27%) Middleware
7 4 (2.27%) Node.js
7 4 (2.27%) OAuth
7 4 (2.27%) SAML
7 4 (2.27%) Spark Streaming
8 3 (1.70%) CSS
8 3 (1.70%) Spring Boot
9 2 (1.14%) Drush
9 2 (1.14%) Kafka
9 2 (1.14%) React
9 2 (1.14%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 36 (20.45%) Linux Command Line
2 31 (17.61%) Replication
3 15 (8.52%) Management Information System
4 14 (7.95%) Public Cloud
5 12 (6.82%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (6.25%) Cloud Native
7 6 (3.41%) Data Centre
8 5 (2.84%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.84%) Private Cloud
9 4 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (2.27%) SCADA
10 3 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.70%) Product Ownership
11 2 (1.14%) Client/Server
11 2 (1.14%) Derivative
11 2 (1.14%) Security Operations Centre
12 1 (0.57%) IoT
12 1 (0.57%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 67 (38.07%) Windows
2 33 (18.75%) Unix
3 14 (7.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (6.82%) Amazon Linux
4 12 (6.82%) Ubuntu
4 12 (6.82%) VMS
5 8 (4.55%) AIX
5 8 (4.55%) Solaris
6 4 (2.27%) CentOS
6 4 (2.27%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.70%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (1.14%) Debian
8 2 (1.14%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.57%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (36.36%) Agile
2 60 (34.09%) CI/CD
3 56 (31.82%) DevOps
4 48 (27.27%) Containerisation
5 42 (23.86%) Problem-Solving
6 36 (20.45%) Change Management
7 33 (18.75%) Configuration Management
8 31 (17.61%) Observability
9 29 (16.48%) Computer Science
9 29 (16.48%) Incident Response
10 27 (15.34%) SIEM
10 27 (15.34%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 25 (14.20%) Infrastructure as Code
11 25 (14.20%) Software Engineering
12 22 (12.50%) Cloud Security
13 21 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
13 21 (11.93%) Microservices
14 18 (10.23%) Data Ingestion
14 18 (10.23%) Task Automation
14 18 (10.23%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 82 (46.59%) Python
2 41 (23.30%) SQL
3 30 (17.05%) PowerShell
4 27 (15.34%) Bash
5 23 (13.07%) Go
6 19 (10.80%) Shell Script
7 15 (8.52%) Java
8 12 (6.82%) Groovy
9 6 (3.41%) Perl
10 5 (2.84%) C++
11 3 (1.70%) JavaScript
11 3 (1.70%) PHP
12 2 (1.14%) Ruby
12 2 (1.14%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.57%) Bicep
13 1 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.57%) Lisp
13 1 (0.57%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.57%) SystemVerilog
13 1 (0.57%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 75 (42.61%) Security Cleared
2 56 (31.82%) SC Cleared
3 41 (23.30%) Degree
4 28 (15.91%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (13.07%) DV Cleared
6 12 (6.82%) AWS Certification
6 12 (6.82%) Master's Degree
7 11 (6.25%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (4.55%) Azure Certification
9 5 (2.84%) CCNA
9 5 (2.84%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.14%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (1.14%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.14%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.57%) CAPM
11 1 (0.57%) CBAP
11 1 (0.57%) CEH
11 1 (0.57%) CISSP
11 1 (0.57%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.57%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.25%) NIST
2 9 (5.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (1.70%) PCI DSS
3 3 (1.70%) QA
3 3 (1.70%) SOC 2
4 2 (1.14%) NCSC
5 1 (0.57%) COBIT
5 1 (0.57%) GDPR
System Software
1 64 (36.36%) Docker
2 31 (17.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (17.05%) vSphere
4 19 (10.80%) GPFS
4 19 (10.80%) NFS
5 17 (9.66%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (7.39%) Active Directory
7 12 (6.82%) DFS Replication
7 12 (6.82%) Postfix
8 8 (4.55%) Dovecot
8 8 (4.55%) Squid
9 4 (2.27%) HDFS
10 3 (1.70%) Firmware
11 2 (1.14%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.57%) Snort
12 1 (0.57%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 62 (35.23%) Kubernetes
2 52 (29.55%) Ansible
3 49 (27.84%) Terraform
4 47 (26.70%) Grafana
5 46 (26.14%) Prometheus
6 30 (17.05%) vRealize
7 24 (13.64%) Puppet
8 18 (10.23%) Progress Chef
9 17 (9.66%) Kibana
10 14 (7.95%) VxRail
11 10 (5.68%) Nessus
12 8 (4.55%) Proxmox
13 5 (2.84%) Podman
14 4 (2.27%) Hadoop YARN
15 3 (1.70%) Docker Swarm
15 3 (1.70%) logstash
16 2 (1.14%) Argo
17 1 (0.57%) CSIRT
17 1 (0.57%) Dell DRAC
17 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 48 (27.27%) Splunk
2 39 (22.16%) Cisco
3 34 (19.32%) VMware
4 33 (18.75%) IBM
5 31 (17.61%) Oracle
5 31 (17.61%) ServiceNow
6 21 (11.93%) AppDynamics
7 17 (9.66%) CyberArk
8 15 (8.52%) Microsoft
8 15 (8.52%) SolarWinds
9 14 (7.95%) BeyondTrust
9 14 (7.95%) Commvault
9 14 (7.95%) Dell
10 13 (7.39%) HP
11 10 (5.68%) Dynatrace
12 8 (4.55%) Google
12 8 (4.55%) Jaspersoft
13 4 (2.27%) Red Hat
14 2 (1.14%) Calypso
14 2 (1.14%) Foundry