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 6 March 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 473 529 534
Rank change year-on-year +56 +5 +45
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 221 143 293
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 161 108 256
10th Percentile £32,500 £44,282 £41,250
25th Percentile £46,250 £52,554 £47,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% - +4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £76,875
90th Percentile £100,000 £88,875 £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 66,132 41,732 74,862
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.60% 91.05% 94.66%
Number of salaries quoted 41,854 22,904 57,825
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,472 £45,000 £39,000
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 £72,557
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% -5.36%

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 6 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 6 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 +30 191 £55,000 -12.70% 42
UK excluding London +73 166 £50,000 -9.09% 36
Work from Home +62 61 £70,000 +26.54% 19
South East +22 59 £50,000 -9.09% 15
London -4 42 £97,500 +25.81% 10
East of England +10 30 £55,000 -0.58% 9
South West +1 24 £51,000 -1.92% 6
North of England -19 22 £47,500 -13.64% 5
Scotland +8 19 £100,000 +66.67% 1
Midlands -7 13 £52,500 +61.54% 1
West Midlands +5 10 £53,750 +65.38%
Yorkshire -33 10 £33,250 -30.00% 2
North East -6 6 £70,000 +16.67% 1
North West -6 6 £50,000 -9.09% 2
East Midlands -28 3 £26,265 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 6 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 42 (19.00%) Security Cleared
3 42 (19.00%) Software Engineering
4 41 (18.55%) Bash
5 40 (18.10%) Ansible
6 38 (17.19%) DevOps
6 38 (17.19%) Red Hat
7 35 (15.84%) Problem-Solving
8 32 (14.48%) Windows
9 31 (14.03%) Degree
10 30 (13.57%) SaaS
11 28 (12.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 27 (12.22%) Platform Engineering
13 26 (11.76%) Embedded Linux
14 25 (11.31%) Azure
14 25 (11.31%) High Availability
14 25 (11.31%) Terraform
15 24 (10.86%) CentOS
16 23 (10.41%) SQL
17 22 (9.95%) C
17 22 (9.95%) DNS
17 22 (9.95%) Infrastructure as Code
18 21 (9.50%) C++
18 21 (9.50%) Microsoft
19 20 (9.05%) Active Directory
19 20 (9.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
20 19 (8.60%) Kubernetes
20 19 (8.60%) 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 (3.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (2.26%) Apache
2 5 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.81%) WebSphere
4 3 (1.36%) OpenStack
4 3 (1.36%) Tomcat
4 3 (1.36%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.90%) nginx
6 1 (0.45%) JBoss
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 13 (5.88%) GCP
5 11 (4.98%) Amazon EC2
5 11 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
5 11 (4.98%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (3.62%) Amazon EKS
6 8 (3.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 7 (3.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 6 (2.71%) Route 53
9 5 (2.26%) Amazon ElastiCache
9 5 (2.26%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 5 (2.26%) CloudFront
9 5 (2.26%) Google Workspace
9 5 (2.26%) IaaS
9 5 (2.26%) PaaS
10 4 (1.81%) Amazon ECR
10 4 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.81%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 22 (9.95%) DNS
2 10 (4.52%) Firewall
2 10 (4.52%) SAN
3 9 (4.07%) DHCP
4 8 (3.62%) HTTP
5 5 (2.26%) PuTTY
5 5 (2.26%) SSH
5 5 (2.26%) SSL
5 5 (2.26%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.81%) VPN
7 3 (1.36%) Ethernet
7 3 (1.36%) InfiniBand
7 3 (1.36%) iSCSI
7 3 (1.36%) Remote Desktop
7 3 (1.36%) SNMP
8 2 (0.90%) 3G
8 2 (0.90%) Modbus
8 2 (0.90%) NAS
8 2 (0.90%) RS-232
8 2 (0.90%) RS-485
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
2 3 (1.36%) JIRA
3 2 (0.90%) Git
3 2 (0.90%) 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 40 (18.10%) Social Skills
2 23 (10.41%) 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%) Military
10 2 (0.90%) 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 (2.71%) 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%) Middleware
3 3 (1.36%) WebSphere MQ
4 1 (0.45%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 14 (6.33%) Data Centre
2 10 (4.52%) Hedge funds
3 8 (3.62%) Driving Licence
4 7 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 5 (2.26%) Linux Command Line
5 5 (2.26%) PKI
6 4 (1.81%) Embedded Systems
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%) Clustering
8 2 (0.90%) Device Driver
8 2 (0.90%) IoT
8 2 (0.90%) PCIe
8 2 (0.90%) Photography
8 2 (0.90%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.90%) Raspberry Pi
8 2 (0.90%) Robotics
9 1 (0.45%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 221 (100.00%) Linux
2 32 (14.48%) Windows
3 28 (12.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 26 (11.76%) Embedded Linux
5 24 (10.86%) CentOS
6 18 (8.14%) 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 42 (19.00%) Software Engineering
2 38 (17.19%) DevOps
3 35 (15.84%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (12.22%) Platform Engineering
5 25 (11.31%) High Availability
6 22 (9.95%) Infrastructure as Code
7 20 (9.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 16 (7.24%) CI/CD
9 15 (6.79%) Computer Science
10 14 (6.33%) Disaster Recovery
11 12 (5.43%) Migration
11 12 (5.43%) Stakeholder Management
12 11 (4.98%) Continuous Improvement
12 11 (4.98%) Customer Service
13 10 (4.52%) Logistics
14 9 (4.07%) Containerisation
14 9 (4.07%) E-Commerce
14 9 (4.07%) ITIL
14 9 (4.07%) Mathematics
15 8 (3.62%) Presales
Programming Languages
1 46 (20.81%) Python
2 41 (18.55%) Bash
3 23 (10.41%) SQL
4 22 (9.95%) C
5 21 (9.50%) C++
6 19 (8.60%) 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 1 (0.45%) Go
12 1 (0.45%) Groovy
12 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%) GDPR
2 2 (0.90%) MISRA
2 2 (0.90%) 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 (9.05%) Active Directory
2 10 (4.52%) 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
6 3 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.90%) Samba
Systems Management
1 40 (18.10%) Ansible
2 25 (11.31%) Terraform
3 19 (8.60%) Kubernetes
4 8 (3.62%) Grafana
5 7 (3.17%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.71%) Puppet
7 5 (2.26%) WSUS
8 4 (1.81%) Nagios
8 4 (1.81%) Red Hat Satellite
9 2 (0.90%) Podman
9 2 (0.90%) Red Hat Spacewalk
10 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.45%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 38 (17.19%) Red Hat
2 21 (9.50%) Microsoft
3 17 (7.69%) 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