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 5 March 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 462 526 539
Rank change year-on-year +64 +13 +33
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 220 143 288
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.31% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.34% 0.39%
Number of salaries quoted 160 108 251
10th Percentile £32,450 £44,282 £41,250
25th Percentile £46,250 £52,554 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £79,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £88,875 £102,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £55,500
% change year-on-year -9.09% -0.90% +0.91%

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 65,777 41,647 74,342
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.60% 91.11% 94.66%
Number of salaries quoted 41,594 22,804 57,442
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,250 £45,000 £39,073
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 £72,624
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% -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 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 5 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 +52 190 £55,000 -12.70% 51
UK excluding London +91 165 £50,000 -9.09% 43
Work from Home +63 61 £70,000 +26.54% 26
South East +20 58 £50,000 -9.09% 18
London +2 42 £85,000 +9.68% 12
East of England +16 30 £55,000 -0.58% 11
South West 0 24 £51,000 -1.92% 7
North of England -14 22 £47,500 -13.64% 4
Scotland +6 19 £100,000 +66.67% 1
Midlands +2 13 £52,500 +61.54% 2
West Midlands +7 10 £53,750 +65.38% 1
Yorkshire -31 10 £33,250 -30.00% 2
North West -9 6 £50,000 -9.09% 1
North East -10 6 £70,000 +16.67% 1
East Midlands -23 3 £26,265 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 5 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.

1 220 (100.00%) Linux
2 47 (21.36%) AWS
3 46 (20.91%) Python
4 42 (19.09%) Security Cleared
4 42 (19.09%) Software Engineering
5 41 (18.64%) Bash
6 40 (18.18%) Ansible
7 39 (17.73%) Red Hat
8 38 (17.27%) DevOps
9 34 (15.45%) Problem-Solving
10 33 (15.00%) Windows
11 32 (14.55%) Degree
12 29 (13.18%) SaaS
13 28 (12.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 26 (11.82%) Embedded Linux
14 26 (11.82%) Platform Engineering
15 25 (11.36%) Azure
15 25 (11.36%) Terraform
16 24 (10.91%) High Availability
17 23 (10.45%) CentOS
17 23 (10.45%) SQL
18 22 (10.00%) C
18 22 (10.00%) Infrastructure as Code
19 21 (9.55%) C++
19 21 (9.55%) DNS
19 21 (9.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 21 (9.55%) Microsoft
20 20 (9.09%) Active Directory
21 19 (8.64%) Kubernetes
22 18 (8.18%) 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 8 (3.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (2.27%) Apache
2 5 (2.27%) SharePoint
2 5 (2.27%) WebSphere
3 4 (1.82%) Tomcat
3 4 (1.82%) WebSphere Application Server
4 3 (1.36%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.91%) nginx
6 1 (0.45%) JBoss
Applications
1 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 47 (21.36%) AWS
2 29 (13.18%) SaaS
3 25 (11.36%) Azure
4 13 (5.91%) GCP
5 12 (5.45%) Amazon EC2
6 11 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
6 11 (5.00%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (4.09%) Amazon EKS
7 9 (4.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 7 (3.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 7 (3.18%) Route 53
9 5 (2.27%) Amazon ECR
9 5 (2.27%) Amazon ElastiCache
9 5 (2.27%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 5 (2.27%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (2.27%) CloudFront
9 5 (2.27%) Google Workspace
9 5 (2.27%) IaaS
9 5 (2.27%) PaaS
10 4 (1.82%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 21 (9.55%) DNS
2 10 (4.55%) Firewall
2 10 (4.55%) SAN
3 9 (4.09%) DHCP
4 7 (3.18%) HTTP
5 6 (2.73%) SSL
6 5 (2.27%) PuTTY
6 5 (2.27%) SSH
6 5 (2.27%) TCP/IP
7 4 (1.82%) 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 (0.91%) Modbus
9 2 (0.91%) NAS
9 2 (0.91%) RS-232
9 2 (0.91%) RS-485
9 2 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.09%) Amazon RDS
2 7 (3.18%) MySQL
2 7 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (3.18%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.27%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (1.82%) DB2
5 1 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (2.27%) GitLab
2 3 (1.36%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.36%) JIRA
3 2 (0.91%) Git
3 2 (0.91%) Visual Studio
4 1 (0.45%) Ant
4 1 (0.45%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.45%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.45%) Maven
4 1 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 39 (17.73%) Social Skills
2 23 (10.45%) Finance
3 14 (6.36%) Public Sector
4 11 (5.00%) Manufacturing
5 9 (4.09%) Retail
6 8 (3.64%) Pharmaceutical
7 5 (2.27%) Banking
7 5 (2.27%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.82%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.36%) Electronics
10 2 (0.91%) Analytical Skills
10 2 (0.91%) Military
10 2 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.45%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.45%) German Language
11 1 (0.45%) Law
11 1 (0.45%) Legal
11 1 (0.45%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.73%) LAMP
1 6 (2.73%) LDAP
2 5 (2.27%) Loki
3 4 (1.82%) LAPP Stack
3 4 (1.82%) WebSphere MQ
4 3 (1.36%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.36%) Middleware
5 1 (0.45%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 14 (6.36%) Data Centre
2 9 (4.09%) Hedge funds
3 8 (3.64%) Driving Licence
4 7 (3.18%) Management Information System
5 6 (2.73%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (2.27%) PKI
7 4 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
7 4 (1.82%) FPGA
7 4 (1.82%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.82%) Video on Demand
7 4 (1.82%) Video\Live Streaming
8 3 (1.36%) Clustering
9 2 (0.91%) Device Driver
9 2 (0.91%) IoT
9 2 (0.91%) PCIe
9 2 (0.91%) Photography
9 2 (0.91%) Public Cloud
9 2 (0.91%) Raspberry Pi
9 2 (0.91%) Robotics
10 1 (0.45%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 220 (100.00%) Linux
2 33 (15.00%) Windows
3 28 (12.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 26 (11.82%) Embedded Linux
5 23 (10.45%) CentOS
6 18 (8.18%) Ubuntu
7 15 (6.82%) Unix
8 7 (3.18%) Windows Server
9 5 (2.27%) VMS
10 4 (1.82%) Rocky
11 3 (1.36%) SUSE
12 2 (0.91%) FreeRTOS
12 2 (0.91%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.91%) Solaris
13 1 (0.45%) Debian
13 1 (0.45%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (19.09%) Software Engineering
2 38 (17.27%) DevOps
3 34 (15.45%) Problem-Solving
4 26 (11.82%) Platform Engineering
5 24 (10.91%) High Availability
6 22 (10.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 21 (9.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 16 (7.27%) CI/CD
9 15 (6.82%) Computer Science
9 15 (6.82%) Disaster Recovery
10 12 (5.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 11 (5.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 11 (5.00%) Customer Service
11 11 (5.00%) Migration
12 10 (4.55%) ITIL
12 10 (4.55%) Logistics
13 9 (4.09%) Containerisation
13 9 (4.09%) E-Commerce
13 9 (4.09%) Mathematics
14 8 (3.64%) Presales
Programming Languages
1 46 (20.91%) Python
2 41 (18.64%) Bash
3 23 (10.45%) SQL
4 22 (10.00%) C
5 21 (9.55%) C++
6 18 (8.18%) Perl
7 10 (4.55%) Java
8 9 (4.09%) PowerShell
9 8 (3.64%) PL/SQL
9 8 (3.64%) Shell Script
10 7 (3.18%) Embedded C++
11 6 (2.73%) PHP
12 5 (2.27%) DCL
12 5 (2.27%) Embedded C
12 5 (2.27%) Tcl
13 1 (0.45%) Go
13 1 (0.45%) Groovy
13 1 (0.45%) Korn
Qualifications
1 42 (19.09%) Security Cleared
2 32 (14.55%) Degree
3 15 (6.82%) SC Cleared
4 14 (6.36%) DV Cleared
5 11 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (3.18%) RHCE
7 4 (1.82%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.82%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (1.36%) LPIC
9 2 (0.91%) Linux+ Certification
9 2 (0.91%) RHCSA
10 1 (0.45%) CISA
10 1 (0.45%) CISSP
10 1 (0.45%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.73%) SLA
2 2 (0.91%) GDPR
2 2 (0.91%) MISRA
2 2 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.45%) Def Stans
3 1 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.45%) NIST
3 1 (0.45%) QA
System Software
1 20 (9.09%) Active Directory
2 10 (4.55%) Docker
3 7 (3.18%) Firmware
3 7 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (2.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (2.27%) vSphere
5 4 (1.82%) Embedded Firmware
6 3 (1.36%) Citrix Hypervisor
6 3 (1.36%) Lustre
6 3 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.91%) Samba
Systems Management
1 40 (18.18%) Ansible
2 25 (11.36%) Terraform
3 19 (8.64%) Kubernetes
4 8 (3.64%) Grafana
5 7 (3.18%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.73%) Puppet
7 5 (2.27%) WSUS
8 4 (1.82%) Nagios
8 4 (1.82%) Red Hat Satellite
9 2 (0.91%) Podman
9 2 (0.91%) Red Hat Spacewalk
10 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.45%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 39 (17.73%) Red Hat
2 21 (9.55%) Microsoft
3 17 (7.73%) VMware
4 9 (4.09%) IBM
5 8 (3.64%) Dell
6 7 (3.18%) Google
7 5 (2.27%) Atlassian
7 5 (2.27%) McAfee
8 4 (1.82%) Cisco
9 3 (1.36%) EMC
9 3 (1.36%) Mellanox
9 3 (1.36%) NetApp
10 2 (0.91%) D-Link
10 2 (0.91%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.91%) HP
10 2 (0.91%) Oracle
10 2 (0.91%) Splunk
11 1 (0.45%) Meraki
11 1 (0.45%) Peplink
11 1 (0.45%) Rapid7