Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £56,250 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 29 January 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 446 546 511
Rank change year-on-year +100 -35 +52
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 204 166 273
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.32% 0.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.34% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 142 112 233
10th Percentile £41,250 £41,375 £42,500
25th Percentile £45,313 £52,541 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,250 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +4.17% -
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £95,000
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 57,468 48,384 64,674
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.83% 92.28% 95.12%
Number of salaries quoted 35,727 24,872 50,479
10th Percentile £28,785 £33,750 £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% -8.41%
75th Percentile £75,000 £79,648 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £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 29 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 29 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 +78 176 £55,000 -9.84% 32
UK excluding London +90 141 £50,000 -9.09% 32
Work from Home +91 67 £72,500 +31.06% 18
London +20 51 £85,000 +9.68% 7
South East +47 46 £50,000 -9.09% 18
East of England +32 33 £45,000 -18.66% 4
North of England +21 19 £42,500 -32.00% 1
Scotland +13 17 - - 5
South West +12 17 £70,000 +53.85% 3
Midlands +8 10 £55,000 +69.23% 1
West Midlands +32 9 £55,000 +69.23% 1
Yorkshire -14 9 £32,500 -
North West +27 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 29 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.

1 204 (100.00%) Linux
2 53 (25.98%) Python
3 51 (25.00%) AWS
4 47 (23.04%) Ansible
5 42 (20.59%) Bash
6 40 (19.61%) DevOps
6 40 (19.61%) Red Hat
7 39 (19.12%) Security Cleared
8 35 (17.16%) Software Engineering
9 32 (15.69%) Terraform
10 30 (14.71%) Degree
10 30 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
10 30 (14.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 30 (14.71%) Windows
11 27 (13.24%) Platform Engineering
12 25 (12.25%) SaaS
13 24 (11.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 22 (10.78%) Embedded Linux
14 22 (10.78%) Unix
14 22 (10.78%) VMware
15 21 (10.29%) Azure
15 21 (10.29%) C++
15 21 (10.29%) Infrastructure as Code
15 21 (10.29%) Kubernetes
16 19 (9.31%) Perl
17 18 (8.82%) C
17 18 (8.82%) High Availability
17 18 (8.82%) Microsoft
17 18 (8.82%) SQL
18 17 (8.33%) 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 (3.43%) WebSphere
2 5 (2.45%) Tomcat
2 5 (2.45%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (1.47%) Apache
4 2 (0.98%) nginx
5 1 (0.49%) JBoss
5 1 (0.49%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 51 (25.00%) AWS
2 25 (12.25%) SaaS
3 21 (10.29%) Azure
4 15 (7.35%) Amazon EC2
5 11 (5.39%) GCP
5 11 (5.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 10 (4.90%) Amazon EKS
7 8 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
7 8 (3.92%) Microsoft 365
7 8 (3.92%) Route 53
8 7 (3.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 6 (2.94%) Amazon S3
9 6 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (2.94%) GitHub
10 5 (2.45%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (2.45%) CloudFront
10 5 (2.45%) Cohesity
10 5 (2.45%) Google Workspace
10 5 (2.45%) IaaS
10 5 (2.45%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (6.86%) DNS
2 11 (5.39%) Firewall
3 9 (4.41%) DHCP
4 8 (3.92%) TCP/IP
5 7 (3.43%) SAN
5 7 (3.43%) SSL
6 6 (2.94%) LAN
6 6 (2.94%) SSH
6 6 (2.94%) WAN
7 5 (2.45%) HTTP
7 5 (2.45%) PuTTY
8 4 (1.96%) Fibre Channel
9 3 (1.47%) Ethernet
9 3 (1.47%) InfiniBand
10 2 (0.98%) 3G
10 2 (0.98%) GPRS
10 2 (0.98%) GSM
10 2 (0.98%) NAS
10 2 (0.98%) Network Security
10 2 (0.98%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.39%) Amazon RDS
2 10 (4.90%) SQL Server
3 9 (4.41%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (3.43%) MySQL
5 5 (2.45%) Amazon Aurora
5 5 (2.45%) DB2
6 1 (0.49%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (2.45%) Git
2 4 (1.96%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.47%) GitLab
4 2 (0.98%) JIRA
5 1 (0.49%) Ant
5 1 (0.49%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.49%) Maven
5 1 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.49%) Subversion
5 1 (0.49%) Testinfra
5 1 (0.49%) Vagrant
General
1 33 (16.18%) Social Skills
2 29 (14.22%) Finance
3 14 (6.86%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.41%) Manufacturing
4 9 (4.41%) Retail
5 8 (3.92%) Pharmaceutical
6 5 (2.45%) Banking
7 3 (1.47%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.98%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (0.98%) Military
8 2 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.49%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.49%) Electronics
9 1 (0.49%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (3.43%) LDAP
2 6 (2.94%) LAMP
3 5 (2.45%) LAPP Stack
3 5 (2.45%) Loki
3 5 (2.45%) WebSphere MQ
4 3 (1.47%) Middleware
5 2 (0.98%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.49%) JSON
6 1 (0.49%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 9 (4.41%) Data Centre
2 8 (3.92%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.43%) Hedge funds
3 7 (3.43%) Linux Command Line
4 5 (2.45%) Management Information System
5 4 (1.96%) Onboarding
5 4 (1.96%) Video on Demand
5 4 (1.96%) Video\Live Streaming
6 2 (0.98%) FPGA
6 2 (0.98%) Public Cloud
7 1 (0.49%) Clustering
7 1 (0.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (0.49%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 204 (100.00%) Linux
2 30 (14.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 30 (14.71%) Windows
3 22 (10.78%) Embedded Linux
3 22 (10.78%) Unix
4 17 (8.33%) CentOS
5 13 (6.37%) Ubuntu
6 8 (3.92%) Debian
7 7 (3.43%) Solaris
8 6 (2.94%) VMS
9 4 (1.96%) Rocky
10 2 (0.98%) FreeRTOS
10 2 (0.98%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.98%) Windows Server
11 1 (0.49%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (19.61%) DevOps
2 35 (17.16%) Software Engineering
3 30 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (13.24%) Platform Engineering
5 24 (11.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 21 (10.29%) Infrastructure as Code
7 18 (8.82%) High Availability
8 17 (8.33%) CI/CD
9 16 (7.84%) Disaster Recovery
10 13 (6.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 12 (5.88%) Computer Science
11 12 (5.88%) Stakeholder Management
12 11 (5.39%) Customer Service
13 10 (4.90%) Containerisation
13 10 (4.90%) Service Delivery
14 9 (4.41%) E-Commerce
14 9 (4.41%) Logistics
14 9 (4.41%) Migration
14 9 (4.41%) Root Cause Analysis
15 8 (3.92%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 53 (25.98%) Python
2 42 (20.59%) Bash
3 21 (10.29%) C++
4 19 (9.31%) Perl
5 18 (8.82%) C
5 18 (8.82%) SQL
6 11 (5.39%) Java
7 8 (3.92%) PL/SQL
7 8 (3.92%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.43%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.94%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.45%) DCL
10 5 (2.45%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.45%) Korn
10 5 (2.45%) Tcl
11 4 (1.96%) PHP
12 2 (0.98%) Groovy
13 1 (0.49%) C#
13 1 (0.49%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 39 (19.12%) Security Cleared
2 30 (14.71%) Degree
3 14 (6.86%) SC Cleared
4 11 (5.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (4.41%) RHCE
6 8 (3.92%) AWS Certification
7 6 (2.94%) DV Cleared
8 5 (2.45%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.98%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 2 (0.98%) RHCSA
10 1 (0.49%) CISA
10 1 (0.49%) CISSP
10 1 (0.49%) CompTIA CySA+
10 1 (0.49%) Linux+ Certification
10 1 (0.49%) LPIC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.90%) SLA
2 6 (2.94%) GDPR
2 6 (2.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (0.98%) MISRA
4 1 (0.49%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.49%) NIST
System Software
1 12 (5.88%) Active Directory
2 11 (5.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.92%) Docker
4 5 (2.45%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (2.45%) vSphere
5 4 (1.96%) NFS
6 3 (1.47%) Lustre
6 3 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.98%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.98%) Firmware
8 1 (0.49%) vCloud
8 1 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 47 (23.04%) Ansible
2 32 (15.69%) Terraform
3 21 (10.29%) Kubernetes
4 8 (3.92%) Red Hat Satellite
5 6 (2.94%) Grafana
5 6 (2.94%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.96%) Nagios
7 2 (0.98%) Podman
7 2 (0.98%) Puppet
7 2 (0.98%) 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 (19.61%) Red Hat
2 22 (10.78%) VMware
3 18 (8.82%) Microsoft
4 11 (5.39%) IBM
5 8 (3.92%) NetApp
6 7 (3.43%) Google
7 5 (2.45%) Atlassian
7 5 (2.45%) Cisco
8 4 (1.96%) Commvault
8 4 (1.96%) Pure Storage
9 3 (1.47%) EMC
9 3 (1.47%) Mellanox
9 3 (1.47%) Oracle
10 2 (0.98%) Dell
10 2 (0.98%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.98%) HP
11 1 (0.49%) Mirantis
11 1 (0.49%) Splunk
11 1 (0.49%) Ubiquiti
11 1 (0.49%) Veeam