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 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 453 533 489
Rank change year-on-year +80 -44 +79
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 208 170 259
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.34% 0.32% 0.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.38% 0.34% 0.46%
Number of salaries quoted 147 113 223
10th Percentile £41,250 £41,500 £42,250
25th Percentile £45,000 £52,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £61,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.84% +1.67% -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,000 £78,125
90th Percentile £92,500 £93,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%

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%

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 17 January 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 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 +87 181 £55,000 -9.84% 30
UK excluding London +99 139 £50,000 -9.09% 30
Work from Home +100 71 £72,500 +31.06% 20
London +33 58 £80,000 +3.23% 8
South East +51 43 £50,000 -9.09% 15
East of England +33 36 £45,000 -18.66% 7
North of England +23 19 £42,500 -32.00% 1
Scotland +20 16 - - 5
South West +11 15 £70,000 +53.85% 2
Midlands +20 11 £55,000 +69.23%
West Midlands +33 10 £55,000 +69.23%
Yorkshire -11 9 £32,500 -
North West +22 5 £53,750 -14.00% 1
North East - 5 £70,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 17 January 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.

1 208 (100.00%) Linux
2 60 (28.85%) Python
3 55 (26.44%) AWS
4 53 (25.48%) Ansible
5 48 (23.08%) Bash
6 45 (21.63%) Security Cleared
7 43 (20.67%) DevOps
7 43 (20.67%) Red Hat
8 36 (17.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 34 (16.35%) Software Engineering
9 34 (16.35%) Terraform
10 33 (15.87%) Windows
11 31 (14.90%) Degree
12 30 (14.42%) Problem-Solving
13 28 (13.46%) Platform Engineering
14 27 (12.98%) VMware
15 26 (12.50%) Unix
16 25 (12.02%) Kubernetes
17 23 (11.06%) SaaS
18 22 (10.58%) Infrastructure as Code
18 22 (10.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 21 (10.10%) Azure
19 21 (10.10%) C++
19 21 (10.10%) Embedded Linux
19 21 (10.10%) Perl
20 20 (9.62%) CI/CD
21 19 (9.13%) High Availability
21 19 (9.13%) Microsoft
22 18 (8.65%) C
22 18 (8.65%) SQL

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 (3.85%) WebSphere
2 5 (2.40%) Tomcat
2 5 (2.40%) WebSphere Application Server
3 4 (1.92%) Apache
4 2 (0.96%) JBoss
4 2 (0.96%) nginx
5 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.48%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 55 (26.44%) AWS
2 23 (11.06%) SaaS
3 21 (10.10%) Azure
4 16 (7.69%) Amazon EC2
5 12 (5.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 11 (5.29%) GCP
7 10 (4.81%) Amazon EKS
8 9 (4.33%) Cohesity
8 9 (4.33%) Microsoft 365
9 8 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 8 (3.85%) Route 53
10 7 (3.37%) Amazon S3
10 7 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (3.37%) GitHub
11 6 (2.88%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (2.40%) Amazon ECR
12 5 (2.40%) Amazon ElastiCache
12 5 (2.40%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 5 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (2.40%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 14 (6.73%) DNS
2 13 (6.25%) Firewall
3 12 (5.77%) SAN
4 9 (4.33%) DHCP
4 9 (4.33%) TCP/IP
5 7 (3.37%) LAN
5 7 (3.37%) SSH
5 7 (3.37%) SSL
5 7 (3.37%) WAN
6 5 (2.40%) Fibre Channel
6 5 (2.40%) HTTP
6 5 (2.40%) PuTTY
7 3 (1.44%) Ethernet
7 3 (1.44%) InfiniBand
8 2 (0.96%) 3G
8 2 (0.96%) Modbus
8 2 (0.96%) NAS
8 2 (0.96%) Network Security
8 2 (0.96%) RS-232
8 2 (0.96%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (6.25%) SQL Server
2 12 (5.77%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (5.29%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (4.33%) MySQL
5 5 (2.40%) Amazon Aurora
5 5 (2.40%) DB2
6 1 (0.48%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (3.85%) Git
2 6 (2.88%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.44%) GitLab
3 3 (1.44%) JIRA
4 2 (0.96%) Ant
4 2 (0.96%) Artifactory
4 2 (0.96%) Maven
4 2 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (0.96%) Subversion
4 2 (0.96%) Vagrant
5 1 (0.48%) Testinfra
General
1 34 (16.35%) Social Skills
2 32 (15.38%) Finance
3 14 (6.73%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.33%) Manufacturing
4 9 (4.33%) Retail
5 8 (3.85%) Pharmaceutical
6 6 (2.88%) Banking
7 4 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.44%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.96%) Analytical Skills
9 2 (0.96%) Military
10 1 (0.48%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.48%) Electronics
10 1 (0.48%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.48%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (3.37%) LDAP
2 6 (2.88%) LAMP
3 5 (2.40%) LAPP Stack
3 5 (2.40%) Loki
3 5 (2.40%) WebSphere MQ
4 4 (1.92%) Middleware
5 3 (1.44%) Elastic Stack
6 2 (0.96%) Kafka
7 1 (0.48%) JSON
7 1 (0.48%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 8 (3.85%) Data Centre
1 8 (3.85%) Driving Licence
1 8 (3.85%) Management Information System
2 7 (3.37%) Hedge funds
2 7 (3.37%) Linux Command Line
3 4 (1.92%) Onboarding
3 4 (1.92%) Video on Demand
3 4 (1.92%) Video\Live Streaming
4 2 (0.96%) FPGA
4 2 (0.96%) Public Cloud
5 1 (0.48%) Cloud Native
5 1 (0.48%) Clustering
5 1 (0.48%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (0.48%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 208 (100.00%) Linux
2 36 (17.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 33 (15.87%) Windows
4 26 (12.50%) Unix
5 21 (10.10%) Embedded Linux
6 16 (7.69%) CentOS
7 12 (5.77%) Solaris
7 12 (5.77%) Ubuntu
8 11 (5.29%) Debian
9 7 (3.37%) VMS
10 4 (1.92%) Rocky
11 2 (0.96%) FreeRTOS
11 2 (0.96%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.96%) Windows Server
12 1 (0.48%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (20.67%) DevOps
2 34 (16.35%) Software Engineering
3 30 (14.42%) Problem-Solving
4 28 (13.46%) Platform Engineering
5 22 (10.58%) Infrastructure as Code
5 22 (10.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 20 (9.62%) CI/CD
7 19 (9.13%) High Availability
8 17 (8.17%) Disaster Recovery
9 13 (6.25%) Continuous Improvement
10 12 (5.77%) Computer Science
10 12 (5.77%) Service Delivery
10 12 (5.77%) Stakeholder Management
11 11 (5.29%) Containerisation
11 11 (5.29%) Customer Service
12 10 (4.81%) Root Cause Analysis
12 10 (4.81%) Security Hardening
13 9 (4.33%) E-Commerce
13 9 (4.33%) Logistics
13 9 (4.33%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 60 (28.85%) Python
2 48 (23.08%) Bash
3 21 (10.10%) C++
3 21 (10.10%) Perl
4 18 (8.65%) C
4 18 (8.65%) SQL
5 12 (5.77%) Java
6 9 (4.33%) Korn
7 8 (3.85%) PL/SQL
7 8 (3.85%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.37%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.88%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.40%) DCL
10 5 (2.40%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.40%) Tcl
11 4 (1.92%) Groovy
12 3 (1.44%) PHP
13 2 (0.96%) C#
13 2 (0.96%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 45 (21.63%) Security Cleared
2 31 (14.90%) Degree
3 17 (8.17%) SC Cleared
4 11 (5.29%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.81%) DV Cleared
6 9 (4.33%) AWS Certification
6 9 (4.33%) RHCE
7 5 (2.40%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.96%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
8 2 (0.96%) RHCSA
9 1 (0.48%) CISA
9 1 (0.48%) CISSP
9 1 (0.48%) CompTIA CySA+
9 1 (0.48%) Linux+ Certification
9 1 (0.48%) LPIC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.25%) SLA
2 8 (3.85%) GDPR
2 8 (3.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (0.96%) MISRA
4 1 (0.48%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.48%) NIST
System Software
1 15 (7.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (6.25%) Active Directory
3 10 (4.81%) Docker
4 6 (2.88%) vSphere
5 5 (2.40%) NFS
6 3 (1.44%) Lustre
6 3 (1.44%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 3 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.96%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.96%) Firmware
8 1 (0.48%) Citrix Hypervisor
8 1 (0.48%) vCloud
8 1 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 53 (25.48%) Ansible
2 34 (16.35%) Terraform
3 25 (12.02%) Kubernetes
4 9 (4.33%) Red Hat Satellite
5 6 (2.88%) Grafana
5 6 (2.88%) Prometheus
6 5 (2.40%) Nagios
7 3 (1.44%) Podman
7 3 (1.44%) Puppet
8 2 (0.96%) Red Hat Spacewalk
9 1 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.48%) Packer
9 1 (0.48%) Proxmox
9 1 (0.48%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 43 (20.67%) Red Hat
2 27 (12.98%) VMware
3 19 (9.13%) Microsoft
4 12 (5.77%) NetApp
5 11 (5.29%) IBM
6 7 (3.37%) Google
7 6 (2.88%) Cisco
8 5 (2.40%) Atlassian
8 5 (2.40%) Commvault
8 5 (2.40%) Pure Storage
9 4 (1.92%) Oracle
10 3 (1.44%) Dell
10 3 (1.44%) EMC
10 3 (1.44%) Mellanox
11 2 (0.96%) Dynatrace
11 2 (0.96%) HP
11 2 (0.96%) Splunk
12 1 (0.48%) Meraki
12 1 (0.48%) Mirantis
12 1 (0.48%) Ubiquiti