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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 27 53
Rank change year-on-year -5 +26 -31
Contract jobs citing Linux 166 90 62
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.21% 6.25% 3.26%
As % of the Operating Systems category 50.15% 38.79% 25.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 108 52 43
10th Percentile £305 £376 £227
25th Percentile £405 £455 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £438
Median % change year-on-year -1.13% +21.37% -18.98%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £582
90th Percentile £634 £655 £659
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -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 £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 331 232 240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 12.38% 16.12% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 231 142 166
10th Percentile £163 £175 £174
25th Percentile £300 £210 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £434 £400
Median % change year-on-year +2.51% +8.53% -19.19%
75th Percentile £544 £550 £500
90th Percentile £619 £648 £638
England median daily rate £450 £471 £454
% change year-on-year -4.51% +3.80% -12.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 14 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 £22.16 £23.75
90th Percentile £66.49 £23.79 £56.75
England median hourly rate £22.50 £38.00 £25.22
% change year-on-year -40.79% +50.70% -8.31%

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 21 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 21 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 +10 65 £525 +0.86% 17
Coventry +3 25 £316 +125.71% 4
Shropshire -30 19 £468 +1.63% 8
Warwickshire -32 15 £408 -26.04% 5
Worcestershire +2 14 £575 -17.86% 11
Herefordshire -12 14 £550 +4.76% 3
Solihull -6 5 - - 5
Staffordshire -2 2 - - 5
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 29 (17.47%) Confluence
2 12 (7.23%) WebLogic
3 7 (4.22%) Apache
4 6 (3.61%) nginx
4 6 (3.61%) OpenStack
5 2 (1.20%) Drupal
6 1 (0.60%) CMS
6 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 10 (6.02%) MS Visio
2 4 (2.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 3 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.60%) Adobe Illustrator
4 1 (0.60%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 92 (55.42%) AWS
2 52 (31.33%) Azure
3 23 (13.86%) Amazon EC2
3 23 (13.86%) Amazon S3
4 22 (13.25%) GCP
5 20 (12.05%) Serverless
6 18 (10.84%) Datadog
6 18 (10.84%) OpenShift
7 16 (9.64%) AWS KMS
8 12 (7.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 11 (6.63%) Route 53
10 10 (6.02%) GitHub
11 8 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (4.22%) Amazon ELB
12 7 (4.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 6 (3.61%) Amazon SQS
13 6 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (3.61%) Microsoft 365
14 4 (2.41%) AWS Lambda
14 4 (2.41%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 15 (9.04%) Firewall
2 14 (8.43%) VSAN
3 10 (6.02%) SMTP
3 10 (6.02%) SSH
4 9 (5.42%) DNS
5 7 (4.22%) Intrusion Detection
6 6 (3.61%) FTP
6 6 (3.61%) HTTP
7 5 (3.01%) Network Security
7 5 (3.01%) VPN
8 4 (2.41%) DKIM
8 4 (2.41%) DMARC
8 4 (2.41%) IMAP
8 4 (2.41%) Kerberos
8 4 (2.41%) OpenLDAP
9 3 (1.81%) WAN
10 2 (1.20%) DHCP
10 2 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (1.20%) Wireless
11 1 (0.60%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (13.86%) 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 6 (3.61%) DynamoDB
7 6 (3.61%) Relational Database
8 5 (3.01%) InfluxDB
9 4 (2.41%) MySQL
10 1 (0.60%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.60%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 46 (27.71%) Jenkins
2 27 (16.27%) Git
2 27 (16.27%) JIRA
3 23 (13.86%) GitLab
4 11 (6.63%) JUnit
4 11 (6.63%) Liquibase
5 10 (6.02%) Maven
5 10 (6.02%) SonarQube
6 7 (4.22%) Mockito
7 6 (3.61%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 6 (3.61%) CircleCI
7 6 (3.61%) DbUnit
7 6 (3.61%) jMock
7 6 (3.61%) Vagrant
8 5 (3.01%) Postman
9 4 (2.41%) Artifactory
9 4 (2.41%) Bitbucket Server
9 4 (2.41%) Gradle
9 4 (2.41%) Snyk
9 4 (2.41%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 66 (39.76%) Social Skills
2 24 (14.46%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (13.86%) Finance
4 20 (12.05%) Public Sector
5 15 (9.04%) 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 16 (9.64%) DevOps Engineer
6 15 (9.04%) Software Engineer
7 14 (8.43%) Splunk Engineer
8 13 (7.83%) Architect
9 12 (7.23%) AWS Engineer
9 12 (7.23%) Cloud Engineer
9 12 (7.23%) Developer
10 11 (6.63%) Senior
11 10 (6.02%) GCP Engineer
12 8 (4.82%) Senior Software Engineer
13 7 (4.22%) AWS DevOps
13 7 (4.22%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 7 (4.22%) Cloud Software Engineer
13 7 (4.22%) Java Developer
13 7 (4.22%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (22.29%) Elastic Stack
2 25 (15.06%) REST
3 21 (12.65%) RESTful
4 18 (10.84%) Flash
5 15 (9.04%) Spring
6 13 (7.83%) Spring Boot
7 12 (7.23%) LDAP
8 10 (6.02%) Node.js
9 8 (4.82%) Web Services
10 7 (4.22%) RabbitMQ
10 7 (4.22%) SOAP
11 6 (3.61%) ActiveMQ
11 6 (3.61%) AngularJS
11 6 (3.61%) Hibernate
11 6 (3.61%) JPA
11 6 (3.61%) PowerMock
11 6 (3.61%) Spring Batch
11 6 (3.61%) Spring Cloud
11 6 (3.61%) Spring Integration
11 6 (3.61%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (20.48%) Linux Command Line
2 24 (14.46%) Replication
3 18 (10.84%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (9.04%) Cloud Native
4 15 (9.04%) Public Cloud
5 14 (8.43%) Management Information System
6 8 (4.82%) 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%) Private Cloud
8 4 (2.41%) SCADA
9 3 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
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 53 (31.93%) Windows
2 27 (16.27%) Unix
3 17 (10.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (4.82%) Ubuntu
5 6 (3.61%) AIX
5 6 (3.61%) Amazon Linux
5 6 (3.61%) Solaris
5 6 (3.61%) VMS
6 4 (2.41%) CentOS
6 4 (2.41%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.81%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (1.20%) Debian
9 1 (0.60%) Android
9 1 (0.60%) Kali Linux
9 1 (0.60%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (42.17%) Agile
2 63 (37.95%) CI/CD
3 55 (33.13%) Containerisation
3 55 (33.13%) DevOps
4 40 (24.10%) Problem-Solving
5 31 (18.67%) Microservices
6 30 (18.07%) Change Management
7 29 (17.47%) Software Engineering
8 28 (16.87%) Computer Science
8 28 (16.87%) Incident Response
9 27 (16.27%) Continuous Improvement
9 27 (16.27%) Infrastructure as Code
9 27 (16.27%) Observability
9 27 (16.27%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 23 (13.86%) Configuration Management
11 20 (12.05%) SIEM
12 19 (11.45%) Validation
13 18 (10.84%) Cybersecurity
13 18 (10.84%) Data Ingestion
13 18 (10.84%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 61 (36.75%) Python
2 44 (26.51%) SQL
3 25 (15.06%) Java
4 23 (13.86%) Bash
5 22 (13.25%) Go
6 20 (12.05%) Shell Script
7 17 (10.24%) PowerShell
8 8 (4.82%) Perl
9 6 (3.61%) Groovy
10 5 (3.01%) C++
11 4 (2.41%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (1.81%) JavaScript
12 3 (1.81%) PHP
13 2 (1.20%) Bicep
13 2 (1.20%) Ruby
13 2 (1.20%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.60%) C
14 1 (0.60%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.60%) Lisp
14 1 (0.60%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 74 (44.58%) Security Cleared
2 56 (33.73%) SC Cleared
3 37 (22.29%) Degree
4 28 (16.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (12.65%) 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%) Azure Certification
9 6 (3.61%) CCNA
9 6 (3.61%) Cisco 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 65 (39.16%) Docker
2 29 (17.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (16.87%) vSphere
4 18 (10.84%) GPFS
4 18 (10.84%) NFS
5 15 (9.04%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (7.83%) Postfix
7 10 (6.02%) Active Directory
8 6 (3.61%) DFS Replication
9 4 (2.41%) Dovecot
9 4 (2.41%) Snort
9 4 (2.41%) Squid
10 3 (1.81%) Firmware
11 2 (1.20%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.60%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 70 (42.17%) Kubernetes
2 50 (30.12%) Ansible
3 46 (27.71%) Grafana
4 45 (27.11%) Terraform
5 39 (23.49%) 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%) Nessus
12 5 (3.01%) Podman
13 4 (2.41%) CSIRT
13 4 (2.41%) Proxmox
14 3 (1.81%) Docker Swarm
15 2 (1.20%) Argo
16 1 (0.60%) logstash
16 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
16 1 (0.60%) Packer
16 1 (0.60%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 49 (29.52%) Splunk
2 35 (21.08%) Cisco
3 32 (19.28%) IBM
4 31 (18.67%) Oracle
5 30 (18.07%) VMware
6 24 (14.46%) ServiceNow
7 18 (10.84%) AppDynamics
8 17 (10.24%) Microsoft
9 15 (9.04%) SolarWinds
10 14 (8.43%) Commvault
10 14 (8.43%) Dell
11 12 (7.23%) HP
12 10 (6.02%) Jaspersoft
13 9 (5.42%) Google
14 8 (4.82%) CyberArk
14 8 (4.82%) Red Hat
15 7 (4.22%) Dynatrace
16 6 (3.61%) Atlassian
17 5 (3.01%) BeyondTrust
18 2 (1.20%) Foundry