Senior Systems Administrator Job Trends

Senior System Administrator (Senior Sysadmin)
UK

The median Senior System Administrator (Senior Sysadmin) salary in the UK is £58,750 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 January 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 651 689 713
Rank change year-on-year +38 +24 +219
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Systems Administrator 4 13 27
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.007% 0.024% 0.046%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.007% 0.026% 0.048%
Number of salaries quoted 4 6 19
10th Percentile £49,832 - £39,000
25th Percentile £53,154 - £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,750 £45,000 £51,498
Median % change year-on-year +30.56% -12.62% -14.17%
75th Percentile £63,750 £47,813 £55,000
90th Percentile - £48,750 £58,100
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +38.89% -10.00% +4.17%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 55,347 49,429 56,262
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.79% 92.66% 95.18%
Number of salaries quoted 34,239 25,628 43,493
10th Percentile £28,675 £33,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £76,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -5.25%

Senior Systems Administrator
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Senior Systems Administrator' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Senior Systems Administrator job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Systems Administrator
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Senior Systems Administrator job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Senior Systems Administrator job vacancies in the UK

Senior Systems Administrator
Top 5 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Systems Administrator within the UK over the 6 months to 17 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +61 4 £58,750 +30.56% 7
UK excluding London +32 3 £62,500 +38.89% 7
South East +27 3 £62,500 +38.89% 5
Work from Home +62 1 £62,500 - 4
London +54 1 £50,860 - 1

Senior Systems Administrator Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 17 January 2026, Senior Systems Administrator job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Senior Systems Administrator in the job title.

1 4 (100.00%) Linux
2 2 (50.00%) AI
2 2 (50.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 2 (50.00%) Amazon EKS
2 2 (50.00%) Ansible
2 2 (50.00%) AWS
2 2 (50.00%) AWS Certification
2 2 (50.00%) Bash
2 2 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 2 (50.00%) Cloud Security
2 2 (50.00%) Configuration Management
2 2 (50.00%) DevOps
2 2 (50.00%) Firewall
2 2 (50.00%) GitHub
2 2 (50.00%) GitHub Actions
2 2 (50.00%) Go
2 2 (50.00%) Grafana
2 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure Automation
2 2 (50.00%) Kubernetes
2 2 (50.00%) Observability
2 2 (50.00%) Prometheus
2 2 (50.00%) Proxmox
2 2 (50.00%) Python
2 2 (50.00%) Red Hat
2 2 (50.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (50.00%) Terraform
2 2 (50.00%) VMware
2 2 (50.00%) VPN
3 1 (25.00%) Apache

Senior Systems Administrator Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 1 (25.00%) Apache
1 1 (25.00%) CMS
1 1 (25.00%) Confluence
1 1 (25.00%) SharePoint
1 1 (25.00%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 1 (25.00%) Oracle 11i
1 1 (25.00%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (25.00%) Oracle ERP
1 1 (25.00%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2 (50.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
1 2 (50.00%) Amazon EKS
1 2 (50.00%) AWS
1 2 (50.00%) GitHub
1 2 (50.00%) GitHub Actions
2 1 (25.00%) OCI
2 1 (25.00%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 2 (50.00%) Firewall
1 2 (50.00%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (25.00%) Oracle Database
1 1 (25.00%) Oracle Database 12c
1 1 (25.00%) Power BI
1 1 (25.00%) RDBMS
1 1 (25.00%) Relational Database
1 1 (25.00%) SQL Server
1 1 (25.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 1 (25.00%) Bitbucket
1 1 (25.00%) JIRA
General
1 2 (50.00%) Retail
2 1 (25.00%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (25.00%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 2 (50.00%) Hybrid Cloud
1 2 (50.00%) Private Cloud
2 1 (25.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 4 (100.00%) Linux
2 2 (50.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (50.00%) AI
1 2 (50.00%) CI/CD
1 2 (50.00%) Cloud Security
1 2 (50.00%) Configuration Management
1 2 (50.00%) DevOps
1 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure as Code
1 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure Automation
1 2 (50.00%) Observability
2 1 (25.00%) Content Management
2 1 (25.00%) Disaster Recovery
2 1 (25.00%) ERP
2 1 (25.00%) Line Management
2 1 (25.00%) PLM
2 1 (25.00%) Server Hardening
2 1 (25.00%) Service Delivery
2 1 (25.00%) Service Management
2 1 (25.00%) Statistics
2 1 (25.00%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 2 (50.00%) Bash
1 2 (50.00%) Go
1 2 (50.00%) Python
2 1 (25.00%) PHP
2 1 (25.00%) SQL
2 1 (25.00%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2 (50.00%) AWS Certification
2 1 (25.00%) BPSS Clearance
Systems Management
1 2 (50.00%) Ansible
1 2 (50.00%) Grafana
1 2 (50.00%) Kubernetes
1 2 (50.00%) Prometheus
1 2 (50.00%) Proxmox
1 2 (50.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (50.00%) Red Hat
1 2 (50.00%) VMware
2 1 (25.00%) Atlassian
2 1 (25.00%) Oracle
2 1 (25.00%) Siemens