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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 24 51
Rank change year-on-year -8 +27 -27
Contract jobs citing Linux 166 88 65
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.12% 6.26% 3.46%
As % of the Operating Systems category 49.55% 38.26% 26.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 50 45
10th Percentile £306 £373 £235
25th Percentile £409 £457 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £539 £438
Median % change year-on-year -2.51% +23.09% -18.98%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £581
90th Percentile £635 £660 £658
England median daily rate £522 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.05% - -6.14%
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 335 230 242
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 12.35% 16.37% 12.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 141 165
10th Percentile £165 £163 £174
25th Percentile £303 £206 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £434 £400
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +8.56% -19.19%
75th Percentile £542 £550 £500
90th Percentile £618 £648 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -12.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 15 18
10th Percentile - £15.22 £16.27
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 £21.44 £23.75
90th Percentile £66.49 £23.66 £56.75
England median hourly rate £22.81 £41.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -44.37% +64.00% -5.96%

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 25 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 25 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 +12 64 £525 -15.66% 12
Coventry +4 25 £316 +125.71% 6
Shropshire -26 19 £468 +1.63% 8
Herefordshire -12 15 £550 +4.76% 2
Worcestershire +1 14 £575 -17.86% 8
Warwickshire -32 14 £440 -20.15% 5
Solihull -8 6 - - 5
Staffordshire -6 2 - - 6
Bilston - 1 £550 - 1
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 2
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 (16.87%) Confluence
2 12 (7.23%) WebLogic
3 7 (4.22%) Apache
4 6 (3.61%) OpenStack
5 5 (3.01%) nginx
6 2 (1.20%) Drupal
7 1 (0.60%) CMS
7 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 10 (6.02%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.81%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 1 (0.60%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.60%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 92 (55.42%) AWS
2 50 (30.12%) Azure
3 22 (13.25%) Amazon EC2
3 22 (13.25%) Amazon S3
3 22 (13.25%) GCP
4 20 (12.05%) Serverless
5 18 (10.84%) Datadog
5 18 (10.84%) OpenShift
6 15 (9.04%) AWS KMS
7 11 (6.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 11 (6.63%) Route 53
8 10 (6.02%) GitHub
9 8 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (4.22%) Amazon SQS
11 6 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (3.01%) Amazon ELB
12 5 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
12 5 (3.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 4 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (2.41%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 14 (8.43%) VSAN
2 12 (7.23%) Firewall
3 8 (4.82%) SMTP
3 8 (4.82%) SSH
4 7 (4.22%) Intrusion Detection
5 6 (3.61%) DNS
6 5 (3.01%) Network Security
6 5 (3.01%) VPN
7 4 (2.41%) DKIM
7 4 (2.41%) DMARC
7 4 (2.41%) FTP
7 4 (2.41%) HTTP
7 4 (2.41%) Kerberos
8 3 (1.81%) IMAP
8 3 (1.81%) OpenLDAP
8 3 (1.81%) WAN
9 2 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
9 2 (1.20%) Wireless
10 1 (0.60%) IPsec
10 1 (0.60%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (13.25%) Amazon RDS
2 21 (12.65%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (9.04%) Elasticsearch
4 14 (8.43%) NoSQL
5 10 (6.02%) Amazon Aurora
6 8 (4.82%) MongoDB
7 7 (4.22%) DynamoDB
8 6 (3.61%) Relational Database
9 5 (3.01%) InfluxDB
10 4 (2.41%) MySQL
11 1 (0.60%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.60%) SAP HANA
11 1 (0.60%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 45 (27.11%) Jenkins
2 26 (15.66%) Git
2 26 (15.66%) JIRA
3 23 (13.86%) GitLab
4 12 (7.23%) JUnit
5 11 (6.63%) Liquibase
5 11 (6.63%) Maven
5 11 (6.63%) SonarQube
6 8 (4.82%) Mockito
7 7 (4.22%) DbUnit
7 7 (4.22%) jMock
8 6 (3.61%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (3.61%) CircleCI
9 5 (3.01%) Bitbucket Server
9 5 (3.01%) Postman
10 4 (2.41%) Selenium
10 4 (2.41%) Snyk
10 4 (2.41%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (2.41%) Vagrant
10 4 (2.41%) webpack
General
1 65 (39.16%) Social Skills
2 25 (15.06%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (13.86%) Finance
4 19 (11.45%) Public Sector
5 14 (8.43%) Presentation Skills
6 11 (6.63%) Banking
7 10 (6.02%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (6.02%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.20%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.20%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.60%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.60%) Automotive
9 1 (0.60%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 38 (22.89%) Analyst
2 26 (15.66%) Site Engineer
2 26 (15.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 24 (14.46%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 20 (12.05%) Storage Analyst
5 15 (9.04%) Software Engineer
6 14 (8.43%) DevOps Engineer
6 14 (8.43%) Splunk Engineer
7 13 (7.83%) Architect
7 13 (7.83%) Developer
8 12 (7.23%) Cloud Engineer
9 10 (6.02%) AWS Engineer
9 10 (6.02%) GCP Engineer
9 10 (6.02%) Senior
10 8 (4.82%) Java Developer
10 8 (4.82%) Senior Software Engineer
11 7 (4.22%) Cloud Software Engineer
12 6 (3.61%) Senior DevOps
12 6 (3.61%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 5 (3.01%) AWS DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (22.29%) Elastic Stack
2 26 (15.66%) REST
3 22 (13.25%) RESTful
4 18 (10.84%) Flash
5 16 (9.64%) Spring
6 14 (8.43%) Spring Boot
7 11 (6.63%) LDAP
8 10 (6.02%) Node.js
9 9 (5.42%) Web Services
10 8 (4.82%) SOAP
11 7 (4.22%) ActiveMQ
11 7 (4.22%) AngularJS
11 7 (4.22%) Hibernate
11 7 (4.22%) JPA
11 7 (4.22%) PowerMock
11 7 (4.22%) RabbitMQ
11 7 (4.22%) Spring Batch
11 7 (4.22%) Spring Cloud
11 7 (4.22%) Spring Integration
12 6 (3.61%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (20.48%) Linux Command Line
2 23 (13.86%) Replication
3 19 (11.45%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (9.04%) Cloud Native
4 15 (9.04%) Public Cloud
5 14 (8.43%) Management Information System
6 7 (4.22%) Data Centre
7 5 (3.01%) Onboarding
7 5 (3.01%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (2.41%) CSOC
8 4 (2.41%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.41%) Hybrid Cloud
8 4 (2.41%) Private Cloud
8 4 (2.41%) SCADA
9 3 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.81%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.20%) Derivative
10 2 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (1.20%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.20%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 50 (30.12%) Windows
2 26 (15.66%) Unix
3 17 (10.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (4.22%) Ubuntu
5 6 (3.61%) AIX
5 6 (3.61%) Solaris
6 4 (2.41%) Amazon Linux
6 4 (2.41%) CentOS
6 4 (2.41%) VMS
7 3 (1.81%) Embedded Linux
7 3 (1.81%) Windows Server
8 2 (1.20%) Android
8 2 (1.20%) Debian
9 1 (0.60%) Kali Linux
9 1 (0.60%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (42.77%) Agile
2 63 (37.95%) CI/CD
3 58 (34.94%) Containerisation
4 54 (32.53%) DevOps
5 39 (23.49%) Problem-Solving
6 32 (19.28%) Microservices
7 29 (17.47%) Software Engineering
8 28 (16.87%) Change Management
8 28 (16.87%) Computer Science
8 28 (16.87%) Incident Response
8 28 (16.87%) Infrastructure as Code
9 27 (16.27%) Continuous Improvement
9 27 (16.27%) Observability
9 27 (16.27%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 21 (12.65%) Configuration Management
11 20 (12.05%) Scrum
11 20 (12.05%) SIEM
12 19 (11.45%) Validation
13 18 (10.84%) Cybersecurity
13 18 (10.84%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 59 (35.54%) Python
2 44 (26.51%) SQL
3 26 (15.66%) Java
4 23 (13.86%) Bash
5 22 (13.25%) Go
6 20 (12.05%) Shell Script
7 15 (9.04%) PowerShell
8 7 (4.22%) Perl
9 5 (3.01%) C++
10 4 (2.41%) Groovy
10 4 (2.41%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (1.81%) JavaScript
11 3 (1.81%) PHP
12 2 (1.20%) Bicep
12 2 (1.20%) Kotlin
12 2 (1.20%) Ruby
12 2 (1.20%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.60%) Lisp
13 1 (0.60%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.60%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 74 (44.58%) Security Cleared
2 55 (33.13%) SC Cleared
3 36 (21.69%) Degree
4 28 (16.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (13.25%) DV Cleared
6 12 (7.23%) AWS Certification
6 12 (7.23%) Master's Degree
7 11 (6.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (4.22%) CCNA
8 7 (4.22%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (3.61%) Azure Certification
10 2 (1.20%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (1.20%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.20%) CAPM
10 2 (1.20%) CBAP
10 2 (1.20%) PMI Certification
10 2 (1.20%) PMP
10 2 (1.20%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.63%) NIST
2 9 (5.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.41%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.81%) PCI DSS
4 3 (1.81%) QA
5 2 (1.20%) NCSC
6 1 (0.60%) COBIT
6 1 (0.60%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.60%) FATCA
6 1 (0.60%) GDPR
System Software
1 66 (39.76%) Docker
2 28 (16.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (16.87%) vSphere
3 18 (10.84%) GPFS
3 18 (10.84%) NFS
4 15 (9.04%) VMware ESXi
5 13 (7.83%) Postfix
6 8 (4.82%) Active Directory
7 4 (2.41%) DFS Replication
7 4 (2.41%) Snort
8 3 (1.81%) Dovecot
8 3 (1.81%) Squid
9 2 (1.20%) Embedded Firmware
9 2 (1.20%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 71 (42.77%) Kubernetes
2 50 (30.12%) Ansible
3 45 (27.11%) Grafana
4 44 (26.51%) Terraform
5 38 (22.89%) Prometheus
6 28 (16.87%) vRealize
7 20 (12.05%) Puppet
8 17 (10.24%) Progress Chef
9 15 (9.04%) Kibana
10 14 (8.43%) VxRail
11 6 (3.61%) Podman
12 4 (2.41%) CSIRT
12 4 (2.41%) Nessus
13 3 (1.81%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (1.81%) Proxmox
14 2 (1.20%) Argo
15 1 (0.60%) logstash
15 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
15 1 (0.60%) Packer
Vendors
1 49 (29.52%) Splunk
2 34 (20.48%) Cisco
3 32 (19.28%) IBM
4 31 (18.67%) Oracle
5 29 (17.47%) VMware
6 22 (13.25%) ServiceNow
7 18 (10.84%) AppDynamics
7 18 (10.84%) Microsoft
8 14 (8.43%) Commvault
8 14 (8.43%) SolarWinds
9 12 (7.23%) Dell
9 12 (7.23%) HP
10 10 (6.02%) Jaspersoft
11 9 (5.42%) Google
12 8 (4.82%) CyberArk
12 8 (4.82%) Red Hat
13 7 (4.22%) Atlassian
13 7 (4.22%) Dynatrace
14 5 (3.01%) BeyondTrust
15 2 (1.20%) Foundry