3rd Line Engineer Job Trends in the South East

Third Line Engineer
England > South East

The median Third Line Engineer salary in the South East is £50,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 30 September 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 282 259 277
Rank change year-on-year -23 +18 -82
Permanent jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 60 30 57
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 0.32% 0.34% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.34% 0.38% 0.47%
Number of salaries quoted 53 29 54
10th Percentile £40,250 £42,500 -
25th Percentile £46,250 £43,750 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £50,000 £42,000
Median % change year-on-year - +19.05% -6.67%
75th Percentile £58,750 £53,750 £55,000
90th Percentile £62,500 £57,500 £56,400
England median annual salary £50,000 £47,500 £42,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% +13.10% -6.67%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the South East. 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 South East with a recognized job title 17,793 7,976 12,090
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.92% 89.50% 96.20%
Number of salaries quoted 12,601 4,393 6,839
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £33,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,250 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £81,250 £82,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%

3rd Line Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring '3rd Line Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South East.

3rd Line Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

3rd Line Engineer
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for 3rd Line Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Salary distribution trend for 3rd Line Engineer job vacancies in the South East

3rd Line Engineer
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 30 September 2026.

Salary histogram for 3rd Line Engineer in the South East

3rd Line Engineer
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer within the South East region over the 6 months to 30 September 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
Thames Valley +10 29 £52,500 - 2
Surrey -2 26 £50,000 +5.26% 4
Buckinghamshire - 22 £55,000 -
Berkshire -5 4 £47,500 -9.52%
Oxfordshire -26 3 £40,000 -1.23% 2
Sussex - 2 £45,000 - 1
Kent - 2 £42,500 - 1
Hampshire -60 1 £50,000 - 9
3rd Line Engineer
England

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 30 September 2026, 3rd Line 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 across the South East region featuring 3rd Line Engineer in the job title.

1 29 (48.33%) Azure
2 27 (45.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 22 (36.67%) Microsoft
4 18 (30.00%) SaaS
5 16 (26.67%) Active Directory
5 16 (26.67%) Microsoft Exchange
6 15 (25.00%) Microsoft 365
6 15 (25.00%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (23.33%) Entra ID
7 14 (23.33%) SharePoint
8 13 (21.67%) Root Cause Analysis
9 12 (20.00%) DNS
9 12 (20.00%) PowerShell
10 11 (18.33%) Cisco
10 11 (18.33%) Fortinet
10 11 (18.33%) Identity Management
10 11 (18.33%) Windows
11 10 (16.67%) Firewall
11 10 (16.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 8 (13.33%) Change Management
12 8 (13.33%) CrowdStrike
12 8 (13.33%) Incident Management
12 8 (13.33%) JIRA
12 8 (13.33%) Mimecast
12 8 (13.33%) R
12 8 (13.33%) SQL
12 8 (13.33%) Technical Leadership
12 8 (13.33%) Workflow
13 7 (11.67%) Agile
13 7 (11.67%) Azure AKS

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 16 (26.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (23.33%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 1 (1.67%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 29 (48.33%) Azure
2 18 (30.00%) SaaS
3 15 (25.00%) Microsoft 365
4 14 (23.33%) Entra ID
5 8 (13.33%) Mimecast
6 7 (11.67%) Azure AKS
6 7 (11.67%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 7 (11.67%) Azure Key Vault
6 7 (11.67%) Azure Storage
6 7 (11.67%) IaaS
7 4 (6.67%) Power Automate
8 1 (1.67%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 12 (20.00%) DNS
2 10 (16.67%) Firewall
3 6 (10.00%) TCP/IP
4 5 (8.33%) VPN
5 4 (6.67%) DHCP
5 4 (6.67%) VLAN
5 4 (6.67%) Wireless
6 2 (3.33%) SAN
7 1 (1.67%) BGP
7 1 (1.67%) IPsec
7 1 (1.67%) LAN
7 1 (1.67%) OSPF
7 1 (1.67%) VoIP
7 1 (1.67%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (10.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 8 (13.33%) JIRA
General
1 8 (13.33%) Legal
1 8 (13.33%) Social Skills
2 7 (11.67%) Law
3 3 (5.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 2 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (1.67%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (10.00%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 6 (10.00%) Enterprise Software
2 3 (5.00%) Driving Licence
3 1 (1.67%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 11 (18.33%) Windows
2 7 (11.67%) Windows Server
3 4 (6.67%) Linux
4 1 (1.67%) Apple iOS
4 1 (1.67%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (45.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 13 (21.67%) Root Cause Analysis
3 11 (18.33%) Identity Management
4 8 (13.33%) Change Management
4 8 (13.33%) Incident Management
4 8 (13.33%) Technical Leadership
4 8 (13.33%) Workflow
5 7 (11.67%) Agile
5 7 (11.67%) Containerisation
5 7 (11.67%) High Availability
5 7 (11.67%) Load Balancing
6 6 (10.00%) Mentoring
6 6 (10.00%) Performance Tuning
6 6 (10.00%) Software Engineering
7 4 (6.67%) Disaster Recovery
7 4 (6.67%) ITIL
7 4 (6.67%) Proactive Monitoring
7 4 (6.67%) Remote Monitoring and Management
8 3 (5.00%) Customer Service
8 3 (5.00%) Server Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (20.00%) PowerShell
2 8 (13.33%) R
2 8 (13.33%) SQL
3 6 (10.00%) C#
3 6 (10.00%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (11.67%) Azure Certification
2 6 (10.00%) Security Cleared
3 5 (8.33%) CCNA
3 5 (8.33%) Cisco Certification
3 5 (8.33%) SC Cleared
4 4 (6.67%) Degree
4 4 (6.67%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (1.67%) CCNP
5 1 (1.67%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (16.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (6.67%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (3.33%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 16 (26.67%) Active Directory
2 4 (6.67%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (3.33%) Hyper-V
4 1 (1.67%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (25.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 7 (11.67%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.67%) SCCM
3 1 (1.67%) vCenter Server
3 1 (1.67%) WSUS
Vendors
1 22 (36.67%) Microsoft
2 11 (18.33%) Cisco
2 11 (18.33%) Fortinet
3 8 (13.33%) CrowdStrike
4 3 (5.00%) Veeam
5 2 (3.33%) Palo Alto
6 1 (1.67%) Apple
6 1 (1.67%) Citrix
6 1 (1.67%) HP
6 1 (1.67%) Juniper
6 1 (1.67%) VMware