Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £55,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 8 March 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 465 530 525
Rank change year-on-year +65 -5 +48
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 221 138 313
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.30% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.33% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 161 104 266
10th Percentile £32,500 £45,225 £41,000
25th Percentile £46,250 £55,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £67,500 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -18.52% +8.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £75,938
90th Percentile £100,000 £92,375 £102,500
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 66,107 41,309 78,203
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.65% 91.04% 94.65%
Number of salaries quoted 41,939 23,195 60,371
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,500 £43,750 £38,750
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 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -8.26% +9.00% -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 8 March 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 8 March 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 +36 191 £53,750 -23.21% 45
UK excluding London +99 166 £50,000 -9.09% 37
Work from Home +65 60 £71,250 +28.80% 17
South East +35 60 £50,000 -9.09% 15
London -21 42 £100,000 +29.03% 13
East of England +16 31 £55,000 -0.58% 9
South West +1 24 £51,000 +4.62% 8
North of England -15 20 £41,250 -25.00% 5
Scotland +6 18 £100,000 +66.67% 1
Midlands 0 13 £52,500 +61.54%
West Midlands +12 10 £53,750 +65.38%
Yorkshire -26 10 £33,250 -30.00% 2
North East -9 6 £70,000 +16.67% 1
North West 0 4 £50,000 -9.09% 2
East Midlands -19 3 £26,265 -

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

For the 6 months to 8 March 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.

1 221 (100.00%) Linux
2 46 (20.81%) AWS
2 46 (20.81%) Python
3 43 (19.46%) Software Engineering
4 42 (19.00%) Security Cleared
5 40 (18.10%) Ansible
5 40 (18.10%) Bash
6 37 (16.74%) DevOps
6 37 (16.74%) Red Hat
7 35 (15.84%) Problem-Solving
8 31 (14.03%) Degree
9 30 (13.57%) SaaS
9 30 (13.57%) Windows
10 28 (12.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 27 (12.22%) Embedded Linux
11 27 (12.22%) High Availability
11 27 (12.22%) Platform Engineering
11 27 (12.22%) Terraform
12 25 (11.31%) Azure
12 25 (11.31%) CentOS
13 23 (10.41%) DNS
13 23 (10.41%) Infrastructure as Code
13 23 (10.41%) SQL
14 22 (9.95%) C
15 21 (9.50%) C++
16 20 (9.05%) Active Directory
16 20 (9.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 20 (9.05%) Microsoft
17 19 (8.60%) Kubernetes
17 19 (8.60%) Ubuntu

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 8 (3.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.81%) Apache
3 4 (1.81%) OpenStack
4 3 (1.36%) Tomcat
4 3 (1.36%) WebSphere
4 3 (1.36%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.90%) nginx
Applications
1 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 46 (20.81%) AWS
2 30 (13.57%) SaaS
3 25 (11.31%) Azure
4 14 (6.33%) GCP
5 12 (5.43%) Azure DevOps
6 11 (4.98%) Amazon EC2
6 11 (4.98%) Microsoft 365
7 8 (3.62%) Amazon EKS
7 8 (3.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 7 (3.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 6 (2.71%) Route 53
10 5 (2.26%) Amazon ElastiCache
10 5 (2.26%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 5 (2.26%) CloudFront
10 5 (2.26%) GitHub
10 5 (2.26%) Google Workspace
10 5 (2.26%) IaaS
10 5 (2.26%) PaaS
11 4 (1.81%) Amazon ECR
11 4 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 23 (10.41%) DNS
2 11 (4.98%) Firewall
3 10 (4.52%) SAN
4 9 (4.07%) DHCP
4 9 (4.07%) HTTP
5 6 (2.71%) TCP/IP
6 5 (2.26%) PuTTY
6 5 (2.26%) SSH
6 5 (2.26%) SSL
7 4 (1.81%) VPN
8 3 (1.36%) Ethernet
8 3 (1.36%) InfiniBand
8 3 (1.36%) iSCSI
8 3 (1.36%) Remote Desktop
8 3 (1.36%) SNMP
9 2 (0.90%) Modbus
9 2 (0.90%) NAS
9 2 (0.90%) RS-232
9 2 (0.90%) RS-485
9 2 (0.90%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.62%) Amazon RDS
2 7 (3.17%) MySQL
3 6 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.71%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.26%) Amazon Aurora
5 3 (1.36%) DB2
6 1 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (2.26%) GitLab
2 3 (1.36%) Jenkins
3 2 (0.90%) JIRA
3 2 (0.90%) Visual Studio
4 1 (0.45%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.45%) Git
General
1 40 (18.10%) Social Skills
2 22 (9.95%) Finance
3 14 (6.33%) Public Sector
4 11 (4.98%) Manufacturing
5 9 (4.07%) Retail
6 8 (3.62%) Pharmaceutical
7 5 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.81%) Banking
8 4 (1.81%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.36%) Electronics
10 2 (0.90%) Analytical Skills
10 2 (0.90%) Law
10 2 (0.90%) Military
10 2 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.45%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.45%) German Language
11 1 (0.45%) Legal
11 1 (0.45%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.71%) LAMP
2 5 (2.26%) LDAP
2 5 (2.26%) Loki
3 3 (1.36%) Elastic Stack
3 3 (1.36%) LAPP Stack
3 3 (1.36%) WebSphere MQ
4 2 (0.90%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 15 (6.79%) Data Centre
2 11 (4.98%) Hedge funds
3 8 (3.62%) Driving Licence
4 6 (2.71%) Management Information System
5 5 (2.26%) Embedded Systems
5 5 (2.26%) Linux Command Line
5 5 (2.26%) PKI
6 4 (1.81%) Clustering
6 4 (1.81%) FPGA
6 4 (1.81%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.81%) Video on Demand
6 4 (1.81%) Video\Live Streaming
7 3 (1.36%) Device Driver
7 3 (1.36%) IoT
7 3 (1.36%) Robotics
8 2 (0.90%) PCIe
8 2 (0.90%) Photography
8 2 (0.90%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.90%) Raspberry Pi
9 1 (0.45%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 221 (100.00%) Linux
2 30 (13.57%) Windows
3 28 (12.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 27 (12.22%) Embedded Linux
5 25 (11.31%) CentOS
6 19 (8.60%) Ubuntu
7 14 (6.33%) Unix
8 7 (3.17%) Windows Server
9 5 (2.26%) VMS
10 4 (1.81%) Rocky
11 3 (1.36%) SUSE
12 2 (0.90%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.90%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.90%) Solaris
13 1 (0.45%) Debian
13 1 (0.45%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (19.46%) Software Engineering
2 37 (16.74%) DevOps
3 35 (15.84%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (12.22%) High Availability
4 27 (12.22%) Platform Engineering
5 23 (10.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 20 (9.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 15 (6.79%) CI/CD
7 15 (6.79%) Computer Science
8 14 (6.33%) Disaster Recovery
9 12 (5.43%) Migration
9 12 (5.43%) Stakeholder Management
10 11 (4.98%) Continuous Improvement
10 11 (4.98%) Customer Service
11 10 (4.52%) Containerisation
11 10 (4.52%) Logistics
12 9 (4.07%) E-Commerce
12 9 (4.07%) ITIL
12 9 (4.07%) Mathematics
13 8 (3.62%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 46 (20.81%) Python
2 40 (18.10%) Bash
3 23 (10.41%) SQL
4 22 (9.95%) C
5 21 (9.50%) C++
6 18 (8.14%) Perl
7 10 (4.52%) Java
8 9 (4.07%) PowerShell
9 8 (3.62%) PL/SQL
9 8 (3.62%) Shell Script
10 7 (3.17%) Embedded C++
10 7 (3.17%) PHP
11 5 (2.26%) DCL
11 5 (2.26%) Embedded C
11 5 (2.26%) Tcl
12 2 (0.90%) Go
13 1 (0.45%) Korn
Qualifications
1 42 (19.00%) Security Cleared
2 31 (14.03%) Degree
3 15 (6.79%) SC Cleared
4 14 (6.33%) DV Cleared
5 11 (4.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (3.17%) RHCE
7 3 (1.36%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.36%) ITIL Certification
7 3 (1.36%) LPIC
8 2 (0.90%) Linux+ Certification
8 2 (0.90%) RHCSA
9 1 (0.45%) CISA
9 1 (0.45%) CISSP
9 1 (0.45%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.26%) SLA
2 2 (0.90%) MISRA
3 1 (0.45%) Def Stans
3 1 (0.45%) GDPR
3 1 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.45%) NIST
3 1 (0.45%) QA
3 1 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 20 (9.05%) Active Directory
2 11 (4.98%) Docker
3 7 (3.17%) Firmware
3 7 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (2.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (2.26%) vSphere
5 4 (1.81%) Embedded Firmware
6 3 (1.36%) Citrix Hypervisor
6 3 (1.36%) Lustre
7 2 (0.90%) Samba
7 2 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 40 (18.10%) Ansible
2 27 (12.22%) Terraform
3 19 (8.60%) Kubernetes
4 9 (4.07%) Grafana
5 8 (3.62%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.71%) Puppet
7 5 (2.26%) WSUS
8 4 (1.81%) Nagios
9 3 (1.36%) Red Hat Satellite
10 2 (0.90%) Red Hat Spacewalk
11 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.45%) Podman
11 1 (0.45%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 37 (16.74%) Red Hat
2 20 (9.05%) Microsoft
3 16 (7.24%) VMware
4 8 (3.62%) Dell
4 8 (3.62%) IBM
5 7 (3.17%) Google
6 5 (2.26%) Atlassian
6 5 (2.26%) McAfee
7 4 (1.81%) Cisco
8 3 (1.36%) EMC
8 3 (1.36%) Mellanox
8 3 (1.36%) NetApp
9 2 (0.90%) D-Link
9 2 (0.90%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.90%) HP
9 2 (0.90%) Oracle
9 2 (0.90%) Splunk
10 1 (0.45%) Meraki
10 1 (0.45%) Peplink
10 1 (0.45%) Rapid7