Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £57,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 9 February 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 469 539 531
Rank change year-on-year +70 -8 +35
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 207 153 278
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.30% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.33% 0.39%
Number of salaries quoted 149 107 239
10th Percentile £42,250 £42,608 £42,500
25th Percentile £46,250 £52,554 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £62,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,000 £78,125
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £98,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -

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 59,580 46,251 70,577
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.08% 91.84% 94.93%
Number of salaries quoted 37,171 23,847 55,273
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -4.76%

Linux Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Linux Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Linux Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Linux Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Linux Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Linux Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Linux Engineer over the 6 months to 9 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Linux Engineer in the UK

Linux Engineer
Top 14 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Linux Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 9 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +62 177 £57,500 -5.74% 35
UK excluding London +94 146 £50,000 -9.09% 31
Work from Home +86 64 £72,500 +31.06% 20
South East +40 51 £50,000 -9.09% 11
London +9 48 £85,000 +13.33% 12
East of England +28 32 £45,000 -18.66% 3
North of England +7 19 £42,500 -32.00% 5
Scotland +4 19 £100,000 +100.00% 4
South West +2 17 £70,000 +30.84% 5
Midlands +14 9 £55,000 +69.23% 3
Yorkshire -26 9 £32,500 -
West Midlands +27 8 £55,000 +69.23% 2
North West +24 5 £53,750 -14.00% 5
North East - 5 £70,000 -

Linux Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 9 February 2026, Linux Engineer 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 Linux Engineer in the job title.

1 207 (100.00%) Linux
2 50 (24.15%) AWS
3 49 (23.67%) Python
4 47 (22.71%) Ansible
5 44 (21.26%) Bash
6 40 (19.32%) Security Cleared
7 39 (18.84%) DevOps
8 38 (18.36%) Red Hat
9 37 (17.87%) Software Engineering
10 32 (15.46%) Terraform
11 31 (14.98%) Windows
12 29 (14.01%) Degree
12 29 (14.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 28 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
14 27 (13.04%) Platform Engineering
14 27 (13.04%) SaaS
15 23 (11.11%) Azure
16 22 (10.63%) Embedded Linux
16 22 (10.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 22 (10.63%) VMware
17 21 (10.14%) C++
17 21 (10.14%) SQL
18 20 (9.66%) C
18 20 (9.66%) Kubernetes
19 19 (9.18%) Infrastructure as Code
19 19 (9.18%) Unix
20 18 (8.70%) CI/CD
20 18 (8.70%) High Availability
20 18 (8.70%) Microsoft
20 18 (8.70%) Perl

Linux Engineer 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 5 (2.42%) WebSphere
2 4 (1.93%) Tomcat
2 4 (1.93%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (1.45%) Apache
3 3 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.45%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.45%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.97%) nginx
5 1 (0.48%) JBoss
Applications
1 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 50 (24.15%) AWS
2 27 (13.04%) SaaS
3 23 (11.11%) Azure
4 13 (6.28%) Amazon EC2
5 11 (5.31%) GCP
6 10 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (4.35%) Amazon EKS
7 9 (4.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 8 (3.86%) Microsoft 365
9 7 (3.38%) Route 53
10 6 (2.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 5 (2.42%) Amazon ElastiCache
11 5 (2.42%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 5 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (2.42%) CloudFront
11 5 (2.42%) Google Workspace
11 5 (2.42%) IaaS
11 5 (2.42%) PaaS
12 4 (1.93%) Amazon S3
12 4 (1.93%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 16 (7.73%) DNS
2 9 (4.35%) DHCP
2 9 (4.35%) Firewall
2 9 (4.35%) SAN
3 6 (2.90%) SSL
3 6 (2.90%) TCP/IP
4 5 (2.42%) PuTTY
4 5 (2.42%) SSH
5 4 (1.93%) HTTP
5 4 (1.93%) LAN
5 4 (1.93%) WAN
6 3 (1.45%) Ethernet
6 3 (1.45%) InfiniBand
7 2 (0.97%) 3G
7 2 (0.97%) Fibre Channel
7 2 (0.97%) NAS
7 2 (0.97%) Network Security
7 2 (0.97%) RS-232
7 2 (0.97%) RS-485
7 2 (0.97%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.35%) Amazon RDS
2 7 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (3.38%) SQL Server
3 6 (2.90%) MySQL
4 5 (2.42%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (1.93%) DB2
6 1 (0.48%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (2.42%) GitLab
2 3 (1.45%) Git
2 3 (1.45%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.45%) JIRA
3 1 (0.48%) Ant
3 1 (0.48%) Artifactory
3 1 (0.48%) Maven
3 1 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.48%) Testinfra
General
1 32 (15.46%) Social Skills
2 25 (12.08%) Finance
3 14 (6.76%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.35%) Manufacturing
4 9 (4.35%) Retail
5 8 (3.86%) Pharmaceutical
6 4 (1.93%) Banking
7 3 (1.45%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.97%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (0.97%) Military
8 2 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.48%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.48%) Electronics
9 1 (0.48%) Legal
9 1 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.90%) LAMP
1 6 (2.90%) LDAP
2 5 (2.42%) Loki
3 4 (1.93%) LAPP Stack
3 4 (1.93%) WebSphere MQ
4 3 (1.45%) Middleware
5 2 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.48%) JSON
6 1 (0.48%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 12 (5.80%) Data Centre
2 8 (3.86%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.38%) Hedge funds
4 6 (2.90%) Linux Command Line
5 4 (1.93%) Onboarding
5 4 (1.93%) Video on Demand
5 4 (1.93%) Video\Live Streaming
6 3 (1.45%) Clustering
6 3 (1.45%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.45%) PKI
7 2 (0.97%) FPGA
7 2 (0.97%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.48%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.48%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 207 (100.00%) Linux
2 31 (14.98%) Windows
3 29 (14.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 22 (10.63%) Embedded Linux
5 19 (9.18%) Unix
6 17 (8.21%) CentOS
7 15 (7.25%) Ubuntu
8 7 (3.38%) Debian
9 6 (2.90%) Solaris
10 5 (2.42%) VMS
10 5 (2.42%) Windows Server
11 4 (1.93%) Rocky
12 2 (0.97%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.97%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.48%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (18.84%) DevOps
2 37 (17.87%) Software Engineering
3 28 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (13.04%) Platform Engineering
5 22 (10.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 19 (9.18%) Infrastructure as Code
7 18 (8.70%) CI/CD
7 18 (8.70%) High Availability
8 15 (7.25%) Disaster Recovery
9 13 (6.28%) Continuous Improvement
10 12 (5.80%) Computer Science
10 12 (5.80%) Stakeholder Management
11 11 (5.31%) Customer Service
12 9 (4.35%) Containerisation
12 9 (4.35%) E-Commerce
12 9 (4.35%) Logistics
12 9 (4.35%) Migration
12 9 (4.35%) Service Delivery
13 8 (3.86%) Presales
14 7 (3.38%) Security Hardening
Programming Languages
1 49 (23.67%) Python
2 44 (21.26%) Bash
3 21 (10.14%) C++
3 21 (10.14%) SQL
4 20 (9.66%) C
5 18 (8.70%) Perl
6 10 (4.83%) Java
7 8 (3.86%) PL/SQL
7 8 (3.86%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.38%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.90%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.42%) DCL
10 5 (2.42%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.42%) Tcl
11 4 (1.93%) Korn
11 4 (1.93%) PHP
12 1 (0.48%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 40 (19.32%) Security Cleared
2 29 (14.01%) Degree
3 13 (6.28%) SC Cleared
4 11 (5.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (4.35%) DV Cleared
5 9 (4.35%) RHCE
6 6 (2.90%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.93%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.97%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
8 2 (0.97%) Linux+ Certification
8 2 (0.97%) LPIC
8 2 (0.97%) RHCSA
9 1 (0.48%) CISA
9 1 (0.48%) CISSP
9 1 (0.48%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.86%) SLA
2 5 (2.42%) GDPR
2 5 (2.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (0.97%) MISRA
4 1 (0.48%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.48%) NIST
System Software
1 15 (7.25%) Active Directory
2 11 (5.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (4.35%) Docker
4 6 (2.90%) vSphere
5 5 (2.42%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 3 (1.45%) Lustre
6 3 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.97%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.97%) Firmware
7 2 (0.97%) NFS
8 1 (0.48%) vCloud
8 1 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 47 (22.71%) Ansible
2 32 (15.46%) Terraform
3 20 (9.66%) Kubernetes
4 7 (3.38%) Red Hat Satellite
5 6 (2.90%) Grafana
5 6 (2.90%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.45%) Nagios
6 3 (1.45%) Puppet
6 3 (1.45%) WSUS
7 2 (0.97%) Podman
7 2 (0.97%) Red Hat Spacewalk
8 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.48%) Packer
8 1 (0.48%) Proxmox
8 1 (0.48%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 38 (18.36%) Red Hat
2 22 (10.63%) VMware
3 18 (8.70%) Microsoft
4 9 (4.35%) IBM
5 7 (3.38%) Google
5 7 (3.38%) NetApp
6 5 (2.42%) Atlassian
7 3 (1.45%) Cisco
7 3 (1.45%) EMC
7 3 (1.45%) McAfee
7 3 (1.45%) Mellanox
8 2 (0.97%) Commvault
8 2 (0.97%) Dell
8 2 (0.97%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.97%) HP
8 2 (0.97%) Oracle
8 2 (0.97%) Pure Storage
9 1 (0.48%) Meraki
9 1 (0.48%) Splunk
9 1 (0.48%) Veeam