3rd Line Engineer Job Trends in the South West

Third Line Engineer
England > South West

The median Third Line Engineer salary in the South West is £55,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 March 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 164 154 214
Rank change year-on-year -10 +60 +45
Permanent jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 30 10 55
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 0.46% 0.35% 0.72%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.50% 0.38% 0.75%
Number of salaries quoted 30 9 40
10th Percentile £39,950 £36,650 £32,375
25th Percentile £45,000 £38,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £45,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +20.88% +1.11% +7.14%
75th Percentile £57,500 £50,500 £52,500
90th Percentile £60,000 £55,200 -
England median annual salary £48,000 £50,000 £42,500
% change year-on-year -4.00% +17.65% -5.56%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
South West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the South West. 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 West with a recognized job title 6,046 2,617 7,380
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.65% 92.87% 96.04%
Number of salaries quoted 4,230 1,606 5,796
10th Percentile £28,500 £30,000 £28,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,568 £63,813
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,250 £77,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -9.19%

3rd Line Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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 West.

3rd Line Engineer job vacancy trend in the South West

3rd Line Engineer
Salary Trend in the South West

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

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

3rd Line Engineer
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer in the South West over the 6 months to 20 March 2026.

Salary histogram for 3rd Line Engineer in the South West

3rd Line Engineer
Job Locations in the South West

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 West region over the 6 months to 20 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
Bristol +13 17 £55,000 +7.32%
Wiltshire -5 9 £55,000 +24.29%
Somerset -18 2 £46,750 +14.72%
Gloucestershire +3 1 £41,000 -14.14% 1
Avon - 1 £52,500 -
3rd Line Engineer
England

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

For the 6 months to 20 March 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 West region featuring 3rd Line Engineer in the job title.

1 21 (70.00%) Azure
2 14 (46.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 13 (43.33%) Microsoft
4 10 (33.33%) ITIL
4 10 (33.33%) PowerShell
5 8 (26.67%) Active Directory
5 8 (26.67%) Customer Service
5 8 (26.67%) Project Delivery
5 8 (26.67%) Windows
5 8 (26.67%) Windows Server
6 7 (23.33%) Hyper-V
6 7 (23.33%) Security Cleared
7 6 (20.00%) DHCP
7 6 (20.00%) DNS
7 6 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
8 5 (16.67%) arcserve
8 5 (16.67%) AWS
8 5 (16.67%) Cisco
8 5 (16.67%) Degree
8 5 (16.67%) DevOps
8 5 (16.67%) Entra ID
8 5 (16.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 5 (16.67%) ITSM
8 5 (16.67%) Service Delivery
8 5 (16.67%) SLA
8 5 (16.67%) User Experience
8 5 (16.67%) Veeam
8 5 (16.67%) VMware
8 5 (16.67%) VMware Infrastructure
9 4 (13.33%) Incident Management

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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:

Applications
1 1 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 21 (70.00%) Azure
2 5 (16.67%) AWS
2 5 (16.67%) Entra ID
3 3 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 6 (20.00%) DHCP
1 6 (20.00%) DNS
2 3 (10.00%) Firewall
2 3 (10.00%) VPN
3 2 (6.67%) Network Security
4 1 (3.33%) Ethernet
4 1 (3.33%) TCP/IP
4 1 (3.33%) VLAN
4 1 (3.33%) Wireless
General
1 7 (23.33%) Social Skills
2 5 (16.67%) Finance
3 4 (13.33%) Law
Miscellaneous
1 4 (13.33%) Driving Licence
1 4 (13.33%) Enterprise Software
2 2 (6.67%) Data Centre
2 2 (6.67%) YubiKey
Operating Systems
1 8 (26.67%) Windows
1 8 (26.67%) Windows Server
2 2 (6.67%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (46.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 10 (33.33%) ITIL
3 8 (26.67%) Customer Service
3 8 (26.67%) Project Delivery
4 6 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
5 5 (16.67%) DevOps
5 5 (16.67%) ITSM
5 5 (16.67%) Service Delivery
5 5 (16.67%) User Experience
6 4 (13.33%) Incident Management
6 4 (13.33%) Root Cause Analysis
6 4 (13.33%) Server Management
7 2 (6.67%) Data Loss Prevention
7 2 (6.67%) SIEM
7 2 (6.67%) Vulnerability Assessment
7 2 (6.67%) Vulnerability Management
8 1 (3.33%) Converged Infrastructure
8 1 (3.33%) High Availability
8 1 (3.33%) Patch Management
8 1 (3.33%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 10 (33.33%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 7 (23.33%) Security Cleared
2 5 (16.67%) Degree
2 5 (16.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
3 3 (10.00%) SC Cleared
4 2 (6.67%) DV Cleared
5 1 (3.33%) Azure Certification
5 1 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (16.67%) SLA
2 2 (6.67%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (6.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (6.67%) NIST
System Software
1 8 (26.67%) Active Directory
2 7 (23.33%) Hyper-V
3 5 (16.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (13.33%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 3 (10.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (6.67%) WSUS
3 1 (3.33%) SCCM
Vendors
1 13 (43.33%) Microsoft
2 5 (16.67%) arcserve
2 5 (16.67%) Cisco
2 5 (16.67%) Veeam
2 5 (16.67%) VMware
3 2 (6.67%) NetApp
3 2 (6.67%) Tenable
3 2 (6.67%) Thales