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 27 January 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 435 529 516
Rank change year-on-year +94 -13 +54
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 206 167 276
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.32% 0.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.35% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 143 113 236
10th Percentile £41,250 £41,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £45,000 £52,500 £48,438
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,000 £77,813
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -2.22%

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 57,089 48,235 65,037
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.82% 92.27% 95.15%
Number of salaries quoted 35,459 24,690 50,853
10th Percentile £28,750 £33,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -9.09%
75th Percentile £75,000 £79,569 £75,000
90th Percentile £94,257 £99,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -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 27 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 27 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 +67 178 £55,000 -9.84% 35
UK excluding London +106 142 £50,000 -9.09% 36
Work from Home +102 68 £72,500 +31.06% 19
London +29 53 £85,000 +9.68% 7
South East +42 45 £50,000 -9.09% 20
East of England +33 34 £45,000 -18.66% 5
North of England +24 19 £42,500 -32.00% 1
Scotland +10 17 - - 6
South West +6 17 £70,000 +53.85% 3
Midlands +8 11 £55,000 +69.23% 1
West Midlands +28 10 £55,000 +69.23% 1
Yorkshire -12 9 £32,500 -
North West +28 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 27 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.

1 206 (100.00%) Linux
2 54 (26.21%) Python
3 53 (25.73%) AWS
4 48 (23.30%) Ansible
5 42 (20.39%) Bash
6 41 (19.90%) DevOps
6 41 (19.90%) Security Cleared
7 40 (19.42%) Red Hat
8 35 (16.99%) Software Engineering
9 34 (16.50%) Terraform
10 31 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
10 31 (15.05%) Windows
11 30 (14.56%) Degree
11 30 (14.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 27 (13.11%) Platform Engineering
13 25 (12.14%) SaaS
14 24 (11.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 23 (11.17%) VMware
16 22 (10.68%) Embedded Linux
16 22 (10.68%) Kubernetes
16 22 (10.68%) Unix
17 21 (10.19%) Azure
17 21 (10.19%) C++
17 21 (10.19%) Infrastructure as Code
18 20 (9.71%) Perl
19 18 (8.74%) C
19 18 (8.74%) High Availability
19 18 (8.74%) Microsoft
19 18 (8.74%) SQL
20 17 (8.25%) CentOS

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 7 (3.40%) WebSphere
2 5 (2.43%) Tomcat
2 5 (2.43%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (1.46%) Apache
4 2 (0.97%) nginx
5 1 (0.49%) JBoss
5 1 (0.49%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 53 (25.73%) AWS
2 25 (12.14%) SaaS
3 21 (10.19%) Azure
4 16 (7.77%) Amazon EC2
5 12 (5.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 11 (5.34%) GCP
7 10 (4.85%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (3.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 8 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (3.88%) Microsoft 365
8 8 (3.88%) Route 53
9 7 (3.40%) Amazon S3
10 6 (2.91%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (2.91%) Cohesity
10 6 (2.91%) GitHub
11 5 (2.43%) Amazon ECR
11 5 (2.43%) Amazon ElastiCache
11 5 (2.43%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 5 (2.43%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (2.43%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (7.28%) DNS
2 11 (5.34%) Firewall
3 9 (4.37%) DHCP
4 8 (3.88%) SAN
4 8 (3.88%) TCP/IP
5 7 (3.40%) SSH
5 7 (3.40%) SSL
6 6 (2.91%) HTTP
6 6 (2.91%) LAN
6 6 (2.91%) WAN
7 5 (2.43%) PuTTY
8 4 (1.94%) Fibre Channel
9 3 (1.46%) Ethernet
9 3 (1.46%) InfiniBand
10 2 (0.97%) 3G
10 2 (0.97%) FTP
10 2 (0.97%) NAS
10 2 (0.97%) Network Security
10 2 (0.97%) SMTP
10 2 (0.97%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.83%) Amazon RDS
1 12 (5.83%) SQL Server
2 10 (4.85%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (3.88%) MySQL
4 5 (2.43%) Amazon Aurora
4 5 (2.43%) DB2
5 1 (0.49%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (2.43%) Git
1 5 (2.43%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.46%) GitLab
3 2 (0.97%) JIRA
3 2 (0.97%) Subversion
3 2 (0.97%) Vagrant
4 1 (0.49%) Ant
4 1 (0.49%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.49%) Maven
4 1 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (0.49%) Testinfra
General
1 33 (16.02%) Social Skills
2 29 (14.08%) Finance
3 14 (6.80%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.37%) Manufacturing
4 9 (4.37%) Retail
5 8 (3.88%) Pharmaceutical
6 5 (2.43%) Banking
7 3 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.46%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.97%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (0.97%) Military
9 1 (0.49%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.49%) Electronics
9 1 (0.49%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (3.40%) LDAP
2 6 (2.91%) LAMP
3 5 (2.43%) LAPP Stack
3 5 (2.43%) Loki
3 5 (2.43%) WebSphere MQ
4 3 (1.46%) Middleware
5 2 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.49%) JSON
6 1 (0.49%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 9 (4.37%) Data Centre
2 8 (3.88%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.40%) Hedge funds
3 7 (3.40%) Linux Command Line
4 5 (2.43%) Management Information System
5 4 (1.94%) Onboarding
5 4 (1.94%) Video on Demand
5 4 (1.94%) Video\Live Streaming
6 2 (0.97%) FPGA
6 2 (0.97%) Public Cloud
7 1 (0.49%) Clustering
7 1 (0.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (0.49%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 206 (100.00%) Linux
2 31 (15.05%) Windows
3 30 (14.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 22 (10.68%) Embedded Linux
4 22 (10.68%) Unix
5 17 (8.25%) CentOS
6 13 (6.31%) Ubuntu
7 8 (3.88%) Debian
7 8 (3.88%) Solaris
8 7 (3.40%) VMS
9 4 (1.94%) Rocky
10 2 (0.97%) FreeRTOS
10 2 (0.97%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.97%) Windows Server
11 1 (0.49%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (19.90%) DevOps
2 35 (16.99%) Software Engineering
3 31 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (13.11%) Platform Engineering
5 24 (11.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 21 (10.19%) Infrastructure as Code
7 18 (8.74%) High Availability
8 17 (8.25%) CI/CD
9 16 (7.77%) Disaster Recovery
10 13 (6.31%) Continuous Improvement
11 12 (5.83%) Computer Science
11 12 (5.83%) Stakeholder Management
12 11 (5.34%) Customer Service
13 10 (4.85%) Containerisation
13 10 (4.85%) Service Delivery
14 9 (4.37%) Cloud Security
14 9 (4.37%) E-Commerce
14 9 (4.37%) Logistics
14 9 (4.37%) Migration
14 9 (4.37%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 54 (26.21%) Python
2 42 (20.39%) Bash
3 21 (10.19%) C++
4 20 (9.71%) Perl
5 18 (8.74%) C
5 18 (8.74%) SQL
6 12 (5.83%) Java
7 8 (3.88%) PL/SQL
7 8 (3.88%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.40%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.91%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.43%) DCL
10 5 (2.43%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.43%) Korn
10 5 (2.43%) Tcl
11 4 (1.94%) PHP
12 3 (1.46%) Groovy
13 2 (0.97%) C#
13 2 (0.97%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 41 (19.90%) Security Cleared
2 30 (14.56%) Degree
3 15 (7.28%) SC Cleared
4 11 (5.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (4.37%) AWS Certification
5 9 (4.37%) RHCE
6 7 (3.40%) DV Cleared
7 5 (2.43%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.97%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
8 2 (0.97%) RHCSA
9 1 (0.49%) CISA
9 1 (0.49%) CISSP
9 1 (0.49%) CompTIA CySA+
9 1 (0.49%) Linux+ Certification
9 1 (0.49%) LPIC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.85%) SLA
2 6 (2.91%) GDPR
2 6 (2.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (0.97%) MISRA
4 1 (0.49%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.49%) NIST
System Software
1 12 (5.83%) Active Directory
2 11 (5.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (4.37%) Docker
4 5 (2.43%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (2.43%) vSphere
5 4 (1.94%) NFS
6 3 (1.46%) Lustre
6 3 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.97%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.97%) Firmware
8 1 (0.49%) vCloud
8 1 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 48 (23.30%) Ansible
2 34 (16.50%) Terraform
3 22 (10.68%) Kubernetes
4 8 (3.88%) Red Hat Satellite
5 6 (2.91%) Grafana
5 6 (2.91%) Prometheus
6 5 (2.43%) Nagios
7 2 (0.97%) Podman
7 2 (0.97%) Puppet
7 2 (0.97%) Red Hat Spacewalk
8 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.49%) Packer
8 1 (0.49%) Proxmox
8 1 (0.49%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 40 (19.42%) Red Hat
2 23 (11.17%) VMware
3 18 (8.74%) Microsoft
4 11 (5.34%) IBM
5 9 (4.37%) NetApp
6 7 (3.40%) Google
7 5 (2.43%) Atlassian
7 5 (2.43%) Cisco
8 4 (1.94%) Commvault
8 4 (1.94%) Oracle
8 4 (1.94%) Pure Storage
9 3 (1.46%) EMC
9 3 (1.46%) Mellanox
10 2 (0.97%) Dell
10 2 (0.97%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.97%) HP
11 1 (0.49%) Mirantis
11 1 (0.49%) Splunk
11 1 (0.49%) Ubiquiti
11 1 (0.49%) Veeam