Linux Job Trends in the North West

Linux
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Linux skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 53 49
Rank change year-on-year -53 -4 +15
Permanent jobs citing Linux 89 212 227
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.37% 4.18% 4.73%
As % of the Operating Systems category 23.12% 33.28% 40.54%
Number of salaries quoted 68 121 155
10th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £38,084
25th Percentile £43,563 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,250 £52,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £68,438 £67,500 £69,800
90th Percentile £85,000 £74,144 £80,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - - -7.69%

All Operating Systems
North West

Linux falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring operating system skills in the North West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 385 637 560
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 5.93% 12.57% 11.67%
Number of salaries quoted 332 344 444
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,288 £26,226
25th Percentile £29,000 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,500 £42,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.71% -5.56% +5.88%
75th Percentile £57,500 £57,500 £60,000
90th Percentile £65,807 £74,067 £75,000
England median annual salary £44,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -12.00% - -4.76%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Linux relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Linux job vacancy trend in the North West

Linux
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Linux.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Linux

Linux
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Linux in the North West over the 6 months to 17 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Linux in the North West

Linux
Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Linux within the North West region 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
Manchester -38 52 £55,000 - 44
Cumbria +22 12 £85,000 +209.09% 5
Cheshire -42 9 £62,500 +33.97% 20
Merseyside +2 8 £47,500 +36.69% 5
Lancashire -7 7 £45,497 +7.05% 20
Linux
England

Linux
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 6 (6.74%) Apache
2 4 (4.49%) Apache Spark
3 2 (2.25%) Apache Solr
3 2 (2.25%) nginx
4 1 (1.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.12%) CMS
4 1 (1.12%) JBoss
4 1 (1.12%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (1.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 1 (1.12%) Loan IQ
1 1 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 44 (49.44%) AWS
2 26 (29.21%) Azure
3 14 (15.73%) GCP
4 12 (13.48%) AWS CloudFormation
5 10 (11.24%) OpenShift
6 8 (8.99%) Amazon EC2
7 7 (7.87%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (6.74%) Microsoft 365
9 5 (5.62%) Amazon S3
9 5 (5.62%) IaaS
10 4 (4.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (4.49%) AWS CodeBuild
10 4 (4.49%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (4.49%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 4 (4.49%) Serverless
10 4 (4.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 3 (3.37%) Azure AKS
11 3 (3.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 3 (3.37%) Route 53
12 2 (2.25%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (10.11%) Internet
2 8 (8.99%) Ethernet
3 6 (6.74%) DNS
3 6 (6.74%) Firewall
3 6 (6.74%) HTTP
3 6 (6.74%) SSL
4 4 (4.49%) AMQP
4 4 (4.49%) DMZ
4 4 (4.49%) SSH
4 4 (4.49%) STUN
4 4 (4.49%) VLAN
4 4 (4.49%) VoIP
4 4 (4.49%) VPN
5 3 (3.37%) TCP/IP
6 2 (2.25%) OpenVPN
7 1 (1.12%) ATM
7 1 (1.12%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (15.73%) MongoDB
2 13 (14.61%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (11.24%) MySQL
4 8 (8.99%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (5.62%) Big Data
5 5 (5.62%) Hadoop
5 5 (5.62%) SQL Server
6 4 (4.49%) Cloudera CDH
6 4 (4.49%) NoSQL
7 3 (3.37%) DynamoDB
7 3 (3.37%) Redis
8 2 (2.25%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (1.12%) Oracle Database
9 1 (1.12%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 21 (23.60%) Git
2 10 (11.24%) GitLab
3 7 (7.87%) Jenkins
4 3 (3.37%) Bitbucket
4 3 (3.37%) CircleCI
5 2 (2.25%) JIRA
5 2 (2.25%) Maven
5 2 (2.25%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (2.25%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.12%) Ant
6 1 (1.12%) Artifactory
6 1 (1.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (1.12%) CA Release Automation
6 1 (1.12%) git-flow
6 1 (1.12%) JUnit
6 1 (1.12%) PHPUnit
6 1 (1.12%) Selenium
General
1 21 (23.60%) Social Skills
2 9 (10.11%) Finance
3 5 (5.62%) Aerospace
4 4 (4.49%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (2.25%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (2.25%) Banking
5 2 (2.25%) Electronics
5 2 (2.25%) Manufacturing
5 2 (2.25%) Military
5 2 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
5 2 (2.25%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.12%) Advertising
6 1 (1.12%) Games
6 1 (1.12%) Marketing
6 1 (1.12%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (1.12%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.12%) Publishing
6 1 (1.12%) Retail
Job Titles
1 14 (15.73%) Senior
2 8 (8.99%) Site Engineer
2 8 (8.99%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 7 (7.87%) Applications Engineer
3 7 (7.87%) Cloud Engineer
3 7 (7.87%) Developer
3 7 (7.87%) Platform Engineer
3 7 (7.87%) Support Engineer
4 6 (6.74%) DevOps Engineer
4 6 (6.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 6 (6.74%) Junior
5 5 (5.62%) Help Desk Manager
5 5 (5.62%) Infrastructure Manager
5 5 (5.62%) Infrastructure Support
5 5 (5.62%) IT Infrastructure Manager
5 5 (5.62%) IT Manager
5 5 (5.62%) Linux Engineer
6 4 (4.49%) Applications Support
6 4 (4.49%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
6 4 (4.49%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (12.36%) Node.js
2 7 (7.87%) RabbitMQ
3 6 (6.74%) .NET
3 6 (6.74%) AngularJS
3 6 (6.74%) React
4 5 (5.62%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (4.49%) FreeSWITCH
5 4 (4.49%) gRPC
5 4 (4.49%) Material-UI
5 4 (4.49%) OpenAPI
5 4 (4.49%) REST
5 4 (4.49%) RESTful
5 4 (4.49%) Spring
5 4 (4.49%) Spring Boot
5 4 (4.49%) Swagger
6 3 (3.37%) CSS
6 3 (3.37%) HTML
7 2 (2.25%) Django
7 2 (2.25%) Middleware
7 2 (2.25%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 8 (8.99%) Cloud Native
1 8 (8.99%) Embedded Systems
1 8 (8.99%) FPGA
2 6 (6.74%) Management Information System
3 4 (4.49%) Driving Licence
3 4 (4.49%) Public Cloud
4 3 (3.37%) Linux Command Line
4 3 (3.37%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.25%) Cyberattack
5 2 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.12%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.12%) Digital Signage
6 1 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.12%) e-Learning
6 1 (1.12%) IoT
6 1 (1.12%) Life Science
6 1 (1.12%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.12%) Smart City
Operating Systems
1 40 (44.94%) Windows
2 17 (19.10%) Windows Server
3 11 (12.36%) Debian
4 8 (8.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (7.87%) Ubuntu
6 6 (6.74%) CentOS
6 6 (6.74%) Unix
7 3 (3.37%) VMS
8 1 (1.12%) Solaris
8 1 (1.12%) SUSE
8 1 (1.12%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (1.12%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (1.12%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (30.34%) Infrastructure as Code
2 26 (29.21%) DevOps
3 25 (28.09%) CI/CD
3 25 (28.09%) Containerisation
4 21 (23.60%) Problem-Solving
5 16 (17.98%) Agile
6 14 (15.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 13 (14.61%) Microservices
8 11 (12.36%) ITIL
8 11 (12.36%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 10 (11.24%) Platform Engineering
10 9 (10.11%) Coaching
10 9 (10.11%) Configuration Management
11 8 (8.99%) Mentoring
12 7 (7.87%) Cybersecurity
12 7 (7.87%) Observability
12 7 (7.87%) Server Management
12 7 (7.87%) Service Delivery
12 7 (7.87%) Software Engineering
13 6 (6.74%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 30 (33.71%) Python
2 14 (15.73%) Bash
3 13 (14.61%) Java
3 13 (14.61%) JavaScript
4 11 (12.36%) Go
5 10 (11.24%) C
5 10 (11.24%) TypeScript
6 9 (10.11%) SQL
7 5 (5.62%) PHP
8 3 (3.37%) C#
8 3 (3.37%) PowerShell
8 3 (3.37%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.12%) ABAP
9 1 (1.12%) Groovy
9 1 (1.12%) Scala
Qualifications
1 11 (12.36%) Security Cleared
2 8 (8.99%) DV Cleared
2 8 (8.99%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.62%) BPSS Clearance
3 5 (5.62%) DBS Check
4 2 (2.25%) CISSP
4 2 (2.25%) CompTIA Security+
4 2 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (2.25%) Degree
5 1 (1.12%) CEH
5 1 (1.12%) GCIA
5 1 (1.12%) GCIH
5 1 (1.12%) PhD
5 1 (1.12%) Postgraduate
5 1 (1.12%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.49%) Cyber Essentials
1 4 (4.49%) ISO 9001
1 4 (4.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.12%) GDPR
2 1 (1.12%) QA
System Software
1 19 (21.35%) Docker
2 7 (7.87%) Active Directory
3 5 (5.62%) Firmware
3 5 (5.62%) vSphere
4 4 (4.49%) Kamailio
4 4 (4.49%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (4.49%) VMware NSX
5 3 (3.37%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (1.12%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 30 (33.71%) Ansible
1 30 (33.71%) Kubernetes
2 29 (32.58%) Terraform
3 13 (14.61%) Grafana
4 11 (12.36%) Prometheus
5 6 (6.74%) Puppet
6 3 (3.37%) Rancher
7 2 (2.25%) Argo
7 2 (2.25%) Nagios
7 2 (2.25%) Podman
8 1 (1.12%) AWS Copilot
8 1 (1.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 15 (16.85%) VMware
2 10 (11.24%) Splunk
3 9 (10.11%) Red Hat
4 7 (7.87%) Google
5 6 (6.74%) Microsoft
5 6 (6.74%) SolarWinds
6 5 (5.62%) Cisco
7 4 (4.49%) Salesforce
7 4 (4.49%) SaltStack
8 2 (2.25%) Adobe
8 2 (2.25%) MuleSoft
8 2 (2.25%) Oracle
8 2 (2.25%) Rapid7
9 1 (1.12%) AppDynamics
9 1 (1.12%) Dell
9 1 (1.12%) F5
9 1 (1.12%) Mirantis
9 1 (1.12%) Palo Alto
9 1 (1.12%) SAP