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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 25 54
Rank change year-on-year -4 +29 -29
Contract jobs citing Linux 170 90 63
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.59% 6.16% 3.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 51.52% 38.79% 26.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 51 44
10th Percentile £305 £375 £231
25th Percentile £408 £455 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £551 £444
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% +24.17% -17.82%
75th Percentile £588 £624 £584
90th Percentile £626 £689 £659
England median daily rate £509 £551 £550
% change year-on-year -7.62% +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 £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 330 232 236
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 12.80% 15.89% 12.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 230 141 164
10th Percentile £163 £178 £174
25th Percentile £269 £210 £205
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £446 £426 £400
Median % change year-on-year +4.69% +6.50% -19.19%
75th Percentile £545 £573 £500
90th Percentile £619 £656 £600
England median daily rate £447 £475 £453
% change year-on-year -5.89% +4.86% -12.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 14 18
10th Percentile - £15.22 £16.27
25th Percentile £17.14 £16.67 £17.72
Median hourly rate £21.46 £18.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.37% -19.42% +32.86%
75th Percentile £29.25 £22.16 £23.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £23.79 £56.75
England median hourly rate £22.50 £34.50 £25.15
% change year-on-year -34.78% +37.19% -3.28%

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 14 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 14 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 +6 70 £525 -8.70% 21
Coventry +7 26 £316 +125.71% 1
Shropshire -23 18 £475 +3.26% 8
Worcestershire -1 15 £575 -17.86% 9
Herefordshire -13 14 £550 +4.76% 4
Warwickshire -26 14 £363 -36.96% 6
Solihull -5 3 - - 4
Staffordshire -3 2 - - 2
Bilston - 1 £550 - 2
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 29 (17.06%) Confluence
2 11 (6.47%) Apache
2 11 (6.47%) WebLogic
3 8 (4.71%) nginx
4 6 (3.53%) OpenStack
5 4 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.35%) Apache Spark
6 2 (1.18%) Drupal
7 1 (0.59%) CMS
7 1 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 9 (5.29%) MS Visio
2 6 (3.53%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.59%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.59%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.59%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 91 (53.53%) AWS
2 52 (30.59%) Azure
3 22 (12.94%) Amazon EC2
3 22 (12.94%) Amazon S3
3 22 (12.94%) GCP
4 20 (11.76%) Serverless
5 18 (10.59%) Datadog
5 18 (10.59%) OpenShift
6 15 (8.82%) AWS KMS
7 11 (6.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 11 (6.47%) GitHub
8 10 (5.88%) Route 53
9 9 (5.29%) Amazon ELB
9 9 (5.29%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (5.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 8 (4.71%) Microsoft 365
11 6 (3.53%) Amazon ECS
11 6 (3.53%) Azure Sentinel
12 5 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (2.35%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 18 (10.59%) Firewall
2 14 (8.24%) VSAN
3 12 (7.06%) SMTP
3 12 (7.06%) SSH
4 11 (6.47%) DNS
5 8 (4.71%) FTP
5 8 (4.71%) HTTP
6 6 (3.53%) IMAP
6 6 (3.53%) OpenLDAP
7 5 (2.94%) Intrusion Detection
7 5 (2.94%) Network Security
7 5 (2.94%) VPN
8 4 (2.35%) DKIM
8 4 (2.35%) DMARC
8 4 (2.35%) Kerberos
9 3 (1.76%) WAN
10 2 (1.18%) DHCP
10 2 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (1.18%) Wireless
11 1 (0.59%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (12.94%) Amazon RDS
2 20 (11.76%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (10.00%) Elasticsearch
4 14 (8.24%) NoSQL
5 9 (5.29%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (4.12%) MongoDB
7 6 (3.53%) Relational Database
8 5 (2.94%) InfluxDB
9 4 (2.35%) Apache Hive
9 4 (2.35%) Hadoop
9 4 (2.35%) HBase
9 4 (2.35%) MySQL
10 3 (1.76%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.59%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 46 (27.06%) Jenkins
2 28 (16.47%) JIRA
3 25 (14.71%) Git
4 24 (14.12%) GitLab
5 11 (6.47%) Liquibase
6 8 (4.71%) JUnit
6 8 (4.71%) Vagrant
7 7 (4.12%) Maven
7 7 (4.12%) SonarQube
8 6 (3.53%) CircleCI
9 5 (2.94%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (2.94%) Postman
10 4 (2.35%) Artifactory
10 4 (2.35%) Bitbucket
10 4 (2.35%) Cypress.io
10 4 (2.35%) Gradle
10 4 (2.35%) Mockito
10 4 (2.35%) Selenium
10 4 (2.35%) Snyk
10 4 (2.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 66 (38.82%) Social Skills
2 24 (14.12%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (13.53%) Finance
4 19 (11.18%) Public Sector
5 16 (9.41%) Presentation Skills
6 10 (5.88%) Banking
6 10 (5.88%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (5.88%) Financial Institution
7 2 (1.18%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.18%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.59%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.59%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 34 (20.00%) Analyst
2 26 (15.29%) Site Engineer
2 26 (15.29%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 24 (14.12%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 20 (11.76%) Storage Analyst
5 17 (10.00%) DevOps Engineer
6 15 (8.82%) Software Engineer
7 14 (8.24%) AWS Engineer
7 14 (8.24%) Splunk Engineer
8 13 (7.65%) Architect
9 12 (7.06%) Cloud Engineer
10 11 (6.47%) Senior
11 10 (5.88%) Developer
11 10 (5.88%) GCP Engineer
12 9 (5.29%) Platform Engineer
13 8 (4.71%) AWS DevOps
13 8 (4.71%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 8 (4.71%) Cloud Platform Engineer
13 8 (4.71%) Senior Software Engineer
14 7 (4.12%) Cloud Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (22.94%) Elastic Stack
2 22 (12.94%) REST
3 19 (11.18%) Flash
4 18 (10.59%) RESTful
5 14 (8.24%) LDAP
6 11 (6.47%) Spring
7 9 (5.29%) Spring Boot
8 7 (4.12%) Node.js
8 7 (4.12%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (3.53%) YAML
10 5 (2.94%) JSON
10 5 (2.94%) Web Services
11 4 (2.35%) Middleware
11 4 (2.35%) OAuth
11 4 (2.35%) SAML
11 4 (2.35%) SOAP
11 4 (2.35%) Spark Streaming
12 3 (1.76%) Spring Batch
12 3 (1.76%) Spring Cloud
12 3 (1.76%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 36 (21.18%) Linux Command Line
2 27 (15.88%) Replication
3 15 (8.82%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (8.82%) Management Information System
3 15 (8.82%) Public Cloud
4 13 (7.65%) Cloud Native
5 9 (5.29%) Data Centre
6 5 (2.94%) Onboarding
7 4 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (2.35%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (2.35%) Private Cloud
7 4 (2.35%) SCADA
8 3 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.76%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.76%) Security Operations Centre
9 2 (1.18%) CSOC
9 2 (1.18%) Derivative
9 2 (1.18%) Operational Technology
10 1 (0.59%) HP Storage
Operating Systems
1 53 (31.18%) Windows
2 27 (15.88%) Unix
3 16 (9.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (5.88%) Ubuntu
5 8 (4.71%) Amazon Linux
5 8 (4.71%) VMS
6 6 (3.53%) AIX
6 6 (3.53%) Solaris
7 4 (2.35%) CentOS
7 4 (2.35%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.76%) Embedded Linux
9 2 (1.18%) Debian
10 1 (0.59%) Android
10 1 (0.59%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.59%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (39.41%) Agile
2 66 (38.82%) CI/CD
3 56 (32.94%) DevOps
4 53 (31.18%) Containerisation
5 41 (24.12%) Problem-Solving
6 33 (19.41%) Change Management
7 28 (16.47%) Computer Science
7 28 (16.47%) Configuration Management
7 28 (16.47%) Incident Response
7 28 (16.47%) Observability
7 28 (16.47%) Software Engineering
8 27 (15.88%) Infrastructure as Code
8 27 (15.88%) Microservices
8 27 (15.88%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 24 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
10 21 (12.35%) SIEM
11 19 (11.18%) Data Ingestion
12 18 (10.59%) Cybersecurity
12 18 (10.59%) Validation
13 17 (10.00%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 71 (41.76%) Python
2 42 (24.71%) SQL
3 26 (15.29%) Bash
4 23 (13.53%) Go
4 23 (13.53%) Shell Script
5 21 (12.35%) Java
6 20 (11.76%) PowerShell
7 8 (4.71%) Groovy
8 7 (4.12%) Perl
9 5 (2.94%) C++
10 3 (1.76%) JavaScript
10 3 (1.76%) PHP
11 2 (1.18%) Bicep
11 2 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (1.18%) Ruby
11 2 (1.18%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.59%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.59%) Lisp
12 1 (0.59%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.59%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 74 (43.53%) Security Cleared
2 56 (32.94%) SC Cleared
3 38 (22.35%) Degree
4 28 (16.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (13.53%) DV Cleared
6 13 (7.65%) AWS Certification
7 12 (7.06%) Master's Degree
8 11 (6.47%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (4.71%) Azure Certification
10 6 (3.53%) CCNA
10 6 (3.53%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (1.18%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (1.18%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (1.18%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.59%) CAPM
12 1 (0.59%) CBAP
12 1 (0.59%) CEH
12 1 (0.59%) CISSP
12 1 (0.59%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.59%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.47%) NIST
2 9 (5.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (1.76%) PCI DSS
3 3 (1.76%) QA
3 3 (1.76%) SOC 2
4 2 (1.18%) NCSC
5 1 (0.59%) COBIT
5 1 (0.59%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.59%) FATCA
5 1 (0.59%) GDPR
System Software
1 65 (38.24%) Docker
2 30 (17.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (17.06%) vSphere
4 19 (11.18%) GPFS
4 19 (11.18%) NFS
5 16 (9.41%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (7.65%) Postfix
7 10 (5.88%) Active Directory
8 8 (4.71%) DFS Replication
9 6 (3.53%) Dovecot
9 6 (3.53%) Squid
10 4 (2.35%) HDFS
11 3 (1.76%) Firmware
12 2 (1.18%) Embedded Firmware
12 2 (1.18%) Snort
13 1 (0.59%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 67 (39.41%) Kubernetes
2 53 (31.18%) Ansible
3 47 (27.65%) Terraform
4 46 (27.06%) Grafana
5 42 (24.71%) Prometheus
6 29 (17.06%) vRealize
7 23 (13.53%) Puppet
8 17 (10.00%) Kibana
8 17 (10.00%) Progress Chef
9 14 (8.24%) VxRail
10 8 (4.71%) Nessus
11 6 (3.53%) Proxmox
12 5 (2.94%) Podman
13 4 (2.35%) Hadoop YARN
14 3 (1.76%) Docker Swarm
14 3 (1.76%) logstash
15 2 (1.18%) Argo
15 2 (1.18%) CSIRT
16 1 (0.59%) Dell DRAC
16 1 (0.59%) Packer
Vendors
1 46 (27.06%) Splunk
2 36 (21.18%) Cisco
3 33 (19.41%) IBM
4 32 (18.82%) VMware
5 31 (18.24%) Oracle
6 27 (15.88%) ServiceNow
7 18 (10.59%) AppDynamics
8 16 (9.41%) Microsoft
9 15 (8.82%) SolarWinds
10 14 (8.24%) Commvault
10 14 (8.24%) Dell
11 13 (7.65%) HP
12 9 (5.29%) CyberArk
12 9 (5.29%) Google
12 9 (5.29%) Jaspersoft
13 7 (4.12%) Dynatrace
13 7 (4.12%) Red Hat
14 6 (3.53%) BeyondTrust
15 3 (1.76%) Atlassian
16 2 (1.18%) Foundry