Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £61,250 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 5 May 2026.

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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 483 556 546
Rank change year-on-year +73 -10 +17
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 253 98 359
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.28% 0.23% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.30% 0.26% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 186 83 300
10th Percentile £41,250 £38,800 £40,000
25th Percentile £46,250 £45,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,250 £61,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +0.41% -2.40% +4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £78,750 £75,313
90th Percentile £100,000 £86,250 £95,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £51,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +12.75% -11.30% +7.48%

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 84,558 38,400 90,620
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.98% 89.39% 94.55%
Number of salaries quoted 54,560 23,425 66,674
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,425 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,375 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £59,000 £52,900
Median % change year-on-year -6.78% +11.53% -11.83%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -5.66%

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 5 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Linux Engineer in the UK

Linux Engineer
Top 15 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 5 May 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 +89 229 £60,000 -1.64% 41
UK excluding London +84 198 £57,500 +12.75% 36
South East +34 72 £50,000 -28.57% 7
Work from Home +39 64 £70,000 +30.84% 12
London -11 48 £97,500 +34.48% 11
East of England +24 43 £65,000 +18.18% 15
South West -25 28 £55,000 - 3
North of England -48 25 £59,500 +32.22% 6
Scotland -2 18 £100,000 +81.82%
North West -16 14 £60,000 +37.14% 1
Midlands -34 12 £40,000 - 2
Yorkshire -53 9 £34,000 -28.42% 5
West Midlands -22 7 £52,500 +10.53%
East Midlands -42 5 £26,265 -34.34% 2
North East -30 2 £47,500 -20.83%

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

For the 6 months to 5 May 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.

1 253 (100.00%) Linux
2 56 (22.13%) Python
3 53 (20.95%) Bash
3 53 (20.95%) Red Hat
3 53 (20.95%) Software Engineering
4 50 (19.76%) Ansible
4 50 (19.76%) AWS
5 46 (18.18%) DevOps
5 46 (18.18%) Security Cleared
6 39 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
7 37 (14.62%) Terraform
8 36 (14.23%) High Availability
9 34 (13.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 33 (13.04%) SaaS
11 30 (11.86%) Azure
11 30 (11.86%) Kubernetes
12 28 (11.07%) CentOS
12 28 (11.07%) Degree
12 28 (11.07%) Embedded Linux
12 28 (11.07%) Platform Engineering
13 27 (10.67%) Infrastructure as Code
14 24 (9.49%) Docker
15 22 (8.70%) Active Directory
15 22 (8.70%) DNS
15 22 (8.70%) Ubuntu
16 21 (8.30%) CI/CD
16 21 (8.30%) Perl
17 19 (7.51%) DV Cleared
17 19 (7.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 19 (7.51%) Microsoft

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 13 (5.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.98%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.98%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.58%) Apache
4 2 (0.79%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 50 (19.76%) AWS
2 33 (13.04%) SaaS
3 30 (11.86%) Azure
4 18 (7.11%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (5.14%) GCP
5 13 (5.14%) Microsoft 365
6 10 (3.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 5 (1.98%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (1.98%) Amazon ECR
7 5 (1.98%) Amazon ECS
7 5 (1.98%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (1.98%) Amazon ElastiCache
7 5 (1.98%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 5 (1.98%) CloudFront
7 5 (1.98%) IaaS
7 5 (1.98%) PaaS
7 5 (1.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 4 (1.58%) GitHub
9 3 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (1.19%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 22 (8.70%) DNS
2 15 (5.93%) Firewall
2 15 (5.93%) SAN
3 10 (3.95%) HTTP
4 8 (3.16%) iSCSI
4 8 (3.16%) Remote Desktop
5 6 (2.37%) DHCP
6 5 (1.98%) PuTTY
6 5 (1.98%) SSH
6 5 (1.98%) TCP/IP
7 4 (1.58%) VPN
8 3 (1.19%) Ethernet
8 3 (1.19%) InfiniBand
8 3 (1.19%) LAN
8 3 (1.19%) SNMP
8 3 (1.19%) WAN
9 2 (0.79%) Bluetooth
9 2 (0.79%) NAS
9 2 (0.79%) Network Security
9 2 (0.79%) PBX
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (5.93%) MySQL
2 9 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (3.16%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.98%) Amazon Aurora
4 5 (1.98%) Amazon RDS
4 5 (1.98%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (1.58%) KDB
6 1 (0.40%) InfluxDB
6 1 (0.40%) MariaDB
6 1 (0.40%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 8 (3.16%) GitLab
2 5 (1.98%) Git
3 3 (1.19%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.19%) Visual Studio
4 2 (0.79%) JIRA
5 1 (0.40%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.40%) GDB
5 1 (0.40%) WinDbg
General
1 47 (18.58%) Social Skills
2 24 (9.49%) Finance
3 11 (4.35%) Telecoms
4 10 (3.95%) Public Sector
5 9 (3.56%) Organisational Skills
6 7 (2.77%) Banking
6 7 (2.77%) Manufacturing
7 5 (1.98%) Pharmaceutical
7 5 (1.98%) Retail
8 4 (1.58%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.58%) Front Office
9 3 (1.19%) Electronics
10 2 (0.79%) Law
10 2 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.40%) Analytical Skills
11 1 (0.40%) German Language
11 1 (0.40%) Legal
11 1 (0.40%) Military
11 1 (0.40%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (1.98%) Loki
2 4 (1.58%) FIX Protocol
2 4 (1.58%) LAMP
3 2 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (0.79%) LDAP
3 2 (0.79%) Middleware
4 1 (0.40%) ARM Templates
4 1 (0.40%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.51%) Data Centre
2 12 (4.74%) Hedge funds
3 11 (4.35%) Management Information System
4 7 (2.77%) Embedded Systems
5 6 (2.37%) Cloud Native
6 5 (1.98%) Driving Licence
6 5 (1.98%) PKI
7 4 (1.58%) Clustering
7 4 (1.58%) Device Driver
7 4 (1.58%) Fixed Income
7 4 (1.58%) FPGA
7 4 (1.58%) IoT
7 4 (1.58%) Robotics
8 3 (1.19%) Onboarding
8 3 (1.19%) Video on Demand
8 3 (1.19%) Video\Live Streaming
9 2 (0.79%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.79%) PCIe
9 2 (0.79%) Photography
9 2 (0.79%) Raspberry Pi
Operating Systems
1 253 (100.00%) Linux
2 34 (13.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 28 (11.07%) CentOS
3 28 (11.07%) Embedded Linux
4 22 (8.70%) Ubuntu
5 19 (7.51%) Windows
6 18 (7.11%) Unix
7 6 (2.37%) Windows Server
8 5 (1.98%) VMS
9 4 (1.58%) Solaris
9 4 (1.58%) SUSE
10 3 (1.19%) AIX
11 2 (0.79%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.79%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.79%) Rocky
12 1 (0.40%) Debian
12 1 (0.40%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (20.95%) Software Engineering
2 46 (18.18%) DevOps
3 39 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
4 36 (14.23%) High Availability
5 28 (11.07%) Platform Engineering
6 27 (10.67%) Infrastructure as Code
7 21 (8.30%) CI/CD
8 19 (7.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 14 (5.53%) Containerisation
10 11 (4.35%) Deployment Automation
10 11 (4.35%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 10 (3.95%) Computer Science
11 10 (3.95%) Continuous Improvement
11 10 (3.95%) ITIL
11 10 (3.95%) Migration
12 9 (3.56%) Customer Service
12 9 (3.56%) Disaster Recovery
12 9 (3.56%) Linux Kernel Development
12 9 (3.56%) Observability
12 9 (3.56%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 56 (22.13%) Python
2 53 (20.95%) Bash
3 21 (8.30%) Perl
4 18 (7.11%) C++
4 18 (7.11%) SQL
5 17 (6.72%) C
6 12 (4.74%) PowerShell
7 9 (3.56%) Shell Script
8 8 (3.16%) PHP
9 7 (2.77%) Java
10 6 (2.37%) Korn
11 5 (1.98%) DCL
11 5 (1.98%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.98%) Tcl
12 4 (1.58%) Embedded C
12 4 (1.58%) Embedded C++
13 2 (0.79%) Go
14 1 (0.40%) C#
Qualifications
1 46 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 28 (11.07%) Degree
3 19 (7.51%) DV Cleared
4 17 (6.72%) SC Cleared
5 8 (3.16%) RHCE
6 6 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.19%) LPIC
8 2 (0.79%) Linux+ Certification
8 2 (0.79%) RHCSA
9 1 (0.40%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.40%) CISA
9 1 (0.40%) CISSP
9 1 (0.40%) CompTIA CySA+
9 1 (0.40%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (1.98%) QA
2 2 (0.79%) SLA
3 1 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.40%) NIST
System Software
1 24 (9.49%) Docker
2 22 (8.70%) Active Directory
3 9 (3.56%) Citrix Hypervisor
4 8 (3.16%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (2.77%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 5 (1.98%) Firmware
6 5 (1.98%) vSphere
7 3 (1.19%) Lustre
8 2 (0.79%) Embedded Firmware
8 2 (0.79%) Samba
9 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 50 (19.76%) Ansible
2 37 (14.62%) Terraform
3 30 (11.86%) Kubernetes
4 12 (4.74%) Grafana
5 7 (2.77%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.37%) Nagios
6 6 (2.37%) Puppet
7 5 (1.98%) WSUS
8 4 (1.58%) Podman
9 2 (0.79%) Red Hat Satellite
9 2 (0.79%) Red Hat Spacewalk
Vendors
1 53 (20.95%) Red Hat
2 19 (7.51%) Microsoft
3 14 (5.53%) VMware
4 13 (5.14%) Dell
5 7 (2.77%) Oracle
6 5 (1.98%) IBM
6 5 (1.98%) McAfee
6 5 (1.98%) Rapid7
6 5 (1.98%) Splunk
7 4 (1.58%) Cisco
7 4 (1.58%) Google
8 3 (1.19%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.19%) EMC
8 3 (1.19%) Mellanox
8 3 (1.19%) Mirantis
8 3 (1.19%) NetApp
9 2 (0.79%) D-Link
9 2 (0.79%) HP
10 1 (0.40%) Juniper
10 1 (0.40%) SAP