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

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 28 39
Rank change year-on-year +2 +11 -18
Contract jobs citing Linux 180 100 78
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 7.86% 6.22% 4.37%
As % of the Operating Systems category 53.57% 41.84% 30.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 61 54
10th Percentile £310 £375 £206
25th Percentile £421 £450 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +15.79% -11.71%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £600
90th Percentile £625 £713 £688
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £60.00 - -
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £50.00
75th Percentile £69.99 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £61.84
% change year-on-year -5.06% +7.54% -4.86%

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 336 239 260
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 14.67% 14.85% 14.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 233 147 183
10th Percentile £176 £178 £163
25th Percentile £291 £210 £203
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £426 £400
Median % change year-on-year +11.50% +6.50% -19.19%
75th Percentile £563 £575 £523
90th Percentile £619 £668 £635
England median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -6.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 12 12
10th Percentile - £15.22 £16.59
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.40 £17.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £18.57 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +15.59% +4.77% +7.39%
75th Percentile £29.25 £22.89 £23.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £24.05 £27.58
England median hourly rate £25.15 £47.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year -46.49% +44.62% +30.00%

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 4 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 4 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 +2 76 £525 -4.55% 20
Shropshire -13 26 £520 +12.74% 18
Coventry +5 23 £313 +123.21% 8
Warwickshire -9 22 £515 -10.43% 3
Worcestershire -6 13 £600 -14.29% 14
Herefordshire -16 9 £550 +4.76%
Staffordshire -1 2 - - 14
Solihull +2 1 - -
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 9
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 28 (15.56%) Confluence
2 18 (10.00%) Apache
3 15 (8.33%) WebLogic
4 11 (6.11%) nginx
5 7 (3.89%) OpenStack
6 6 (3.33%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (3.33%) Apache Spark
7 2 (1.11%) Drupal
8 1 (0.56%) JBoss
8 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 10 (5.56%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 9 (5.00%) MS Visio
3 3 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) SAP GRC
1 1 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 92 (51.11%) AWS
2 63 (35.00%) Azure
3 26 (14.44%) Amazon S3
4 24 (13.33%) Amazon EC2
4 24 (13.33%) GCP
5 20 (11.11%) AWS KMS
6 19 (10.56%) Datadog
6 19 (10.56%) Serverless
7 16 (8.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 16 (8.89%) Amazon ELB
7 16 (8.89%) OpenShift
7 16 (8.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 14 (7.78%) Azure Monitor
9 13 (7.22%) GitHub
10 12 (6.67%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (6.11%) Microsoft 365
12 10 (5.56%) Amazon ECS
12 10 (5.56%) Route 53
13 7 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (3.33%) Amazon Glacier
Communications & Networking
1 25 (13.89%) DNS
1 25 (13.89%) SMTP
1 25 (13.89%) SSH
2 22 (12.22%) Firewall
3 16 (8.89%) FTP
3 16 (8.89%) HTTP
4 13 (7.22%) VSAN
5 10 (5.56%) IMAP
5 10 (5.56%) OpenLDAP
6 9 (5.00%) DKIM
6 9 (5.00%) DMARC
7 6 (3.33%) Internet
8 5 (2.78%) Kerberos
8 5 (2.78%) TCP/IP
9 4 (2.22%) Network Security
10 2 (1.11%) DHCP
10 2 (1.11%) Intrusion Detection
10 2 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (1.11%) Wireless
11 1 (0.56%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (13.33%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (12.78%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (8.89%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (8.89%) NoSQL
4 10 (5.56%) Amazon Aurora
5 6 (3.33%) Hadoop
6 5 (2.78%) Relational Database
7 4 (2.22%) Apache Hive
7 4 (2.22%) HBase
7 4 (2.22%) InfluxDB
8 3 (1.67%) MongoDB
9 2 (1.11%) Big Data
9 2 (1.11%) Delta Lake
9 2 (1.11%) MySQL
9 2 (1.11%) Parquet
9 2 (1.11%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.56%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.56%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 51 (28.33%) Jenkins
2 29 (16.11%) Git
3 25 (13.89%) JIRA
4 23 (12.78%) GitLab
5 16 (8.89%) Vagrant
6 10 (5.56%) Liquibase
7 9 (5.00%) SonarQube
7 9 (5.00%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (3.89%) CircleCI
9 6 (3.33%) Bitbucket
9 6 (3.33%) JUnit
9 6 (3.33%) Postman
10 5 (2.78%) Artifactory
10 5 (2.78%) Cypress.io
10 5 (2.78%) Gradle
10 5 (2.78%) Maven
10 5 (2.78%) Selenium
10 5 (2.78%) Snyk
10 5 (2.78%) webpack
11 2 (1.11%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 81 (45.00%) Social Skills
2 29 (16.11%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (13.89%) Public Sector
4 22 (12.22%) Finance
5 21 (11.67%) Presentation Skills
6 17 (9.44%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (5.56%) Financial Institution
8 9 (5.00%) Banking
9 2 (1.11%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.11%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.56%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.56%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 30 (16.67%) Analyst
2 26 (14.44%) DevOps Engineer
3 23 (12.78%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 22 (12.22%) AWS Engineer
4 22 (12.22%) Platform Engineer
5 20 (11.11%) Site Engineer
5 20 (11.11%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 17 (9.44%) Cloud Platform Engineer
7 16 (8.89%) AWS DevOps
7 16 (8.89%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 16 (8.89%) Storage Analyst
8 13 (7.22%) Splunk Engineer
9 12 (6.67%) Architect
9 12 (6.67%) Cloud Engineer
9 12 (6.67%) Software Engineer
10 10 (5.56%) AWS Platform Engineer
10 10 (5.56%) Senior
11 9 (5.00%) GCP Engineer
12 8 (4.44%) DevOps Platform Engineer
12 8 (4.44%) Monitoring Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (22.22%) Elastic Stack
2 21 (11.67%) LDAP
3 19 (10.56%) REST
4 17 (9.44%) RESTful
5 16 (8.89%) Flash
6 6 (3.33%) RabbitMQ
6 6 (3.33%) YAML
7 5 (2.78%) JSON
7 5 (2.78%) OAuth
7 5 (2.78%) SAML
8 4 (2.22%) Middleware
8 4 (2.22%) Node.js
8 4 (2.22%) NumPy
8 4 (2.22%) Spark Streaming
8 4 (2.22%) Spring
9 3 (1.67%) Flask
9 3 (1.67%) Pandas
9 3 (1.67%) Spring Boot
10 2 (1.11%) Drush
10 2 (1.11%) React
Miscellaneous
1 33 (18.33%) Linux Command Line
2 32 (17.78%) Replication
3 14 (7.78%) Management Information System
3 14 (7.78%) Public Cloud
4 12 (6.67%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (5.56%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.78%) Data Centre
6 5 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (2.78%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.78%) Private Cloud
7 4 (2.22%) Client/Server
8 3 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.67%) SCADA
9 2 (1.11%) Derivative
9 2 (1.11%) Product Ownership
10 1 (0.56%) CCTV
10 1 (0.56%) FPGA
10 1 (0.56%) HP Storage
10 1 (0.56%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 75 (41.67%) Windows
2 38 (21.11%) Unix
3 21 (11.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (9.44%) VMS
5 16 (8.89%) Amazon Linux
6 14 (7.78%) Ubuntu
7 9 (5.00%) AIX
7 9 (5.00%) Solaris
8 6 (3.33%) Windows Server
9 4 (2.22%) CentOS
10 3 (1.67%) Embedded Linux
10 3 (1.67%) Mac OS X
11 2 (1.11%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (36.11%) DevOps
2 58 (32.22%) Agile
3 57 (31.67%) CI/CD
4 46 (25.56%) Containerisation
5 42 (23.33%) Problem-Solving
6 39 (21.67%) Change Management
7 33 (18.33%) Incident Response
8 32 (17.78%) Configuration Management
8 32 (17.78%) Observability
9 28 (15.56%) SIEM
10 27 (15.00%) Computer Science
11 26 (14.44%) Cloud Security
12 24 (13.33%) Software Engineering
13 23 (12.78%) Continuous Improvement
13 23 (12.78%) Infrastructure as Code
13 23 (12.78%) Platform Engineering
14 21 (11.67%) Microservices
14 21 (11.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 21 (11.67%) Validation
15 20 (11.11%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 92 (51.11%) Python
2 46 (25.56%) SQL
3 38 (21.11%) PowerShell
4 28 (15.56%) Bash
5 23 (12.78%) Go
6 19 (10.56%) Groovy
7 16 (8.89%) Java
7 16 (8.89%) Shell Script
8 8 (4.44%) Perl
9 5 (2.78%) C++
10 3 (1.67%) JavaScript
10 3 (1.67%) VBScript
11 2 (1.11%) PHP
11 2 (1.11%) Ruby
11 2 (1.11%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.56%) Bicep
12 1 (0.56%) C
12 1 (0.56%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.56%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 80 (44.44%) Security Cleared
2 61 (33.89%) SC Cleared
3 42 (23.33%) Degree
4 26 (14.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (12.22%) DV Cleared
6 12 (6.67%) AWS Certification
6 12 (6.67%) Master's Degree
7 10 (5.56%) Azure Certification
8 9 (5.00%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (1.11%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (1.11%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.56%) CAPM
10 1 (0.56%) CBAP
10 1 (0.56%) CEH
10 1 (0.56%) CISSP
10 1 (0.56%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.56%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.11%) NIST
2 9 (5.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.22%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.67%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.11%) NCSC
5 2 (1.11%) QA
6 1 (0.56%) SLA
System Software
1 62 (34.44%) Docker
2 33 (18.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (15.00%) vSphere
4 19 (10.56%) Postfix
5 16 (8.89%) Active Directory
5 16 (8.89%) DFS Replication
5 16 (8.89%) GPFS
5 16 (8.89%) NFS
6 15 (8.33%) Dovecot
7 14 (7.78%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (5.56%) Squid
9 4 (2.22%) HDFS
10 3 (1.67%) Firmware
11 2 (1.11%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.56%) Snort
12 1 (0.56%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 52 (28.89%) Kubernetes
2 47 (26.11%) Grafana
2 47 (26.11%) Terraform
3 46 (25.56%) Prometheus
4 45 (25.00%) Ansible
5 27 (15.00%) vRealize
6 22 (12.22%) Puppet
7 16 (8.89%) Kibana
8 14 (7.78%) Progress Chef
9 13 (7.22%) VxRail
10 11 (6.11%) Nessus
11 10 (5.56%) Proxmox
12 5 (2.78%) Podman
13 4 (2.22%) Argo
13 4 (2.22%) Hadoop YARN
14 3 (1.67%) logstash
15 2 (1.11%) Docker Swarm
15 2 (1.11%) Istio
16 1 (0.56%) Dell DRAC
16 1 (0.56%) Rsyslog
Vendors
1 52 (28.89%) Splunk
2 43 (23.89%) Cisco
3 38 (21.11%) VMware
4 32 (17.78%) ServiceNow
5 31 (17.22%) Oracle
6 30 (16.67%) IBM
7 29 (16.11%) AppDynamics
8 18 (10.00%) CyberArk
9 15 (8.33%) BeyondTrust
9 15 (8.33%) Microsoft
9 15 (8.33%) SolarWinds
10 14 (7.78%) Commvault
10 14 (7.78%) Dell
10 14 (7.78%) Dynatrace
11 13 (7.22%) HP
12 11 (6.11%) Red Hat
13 10 (5.56%) Jaspersoft
14 9 (5.00%) Google
15 5 (2.78%) Broadcom
16 2 (1.11%) ArcSight