Linux Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Linux
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Linux skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 31 36
Rank change year-on-year -58 +5 +5
Permanent jobs citing Linux 956 2,246 2,079
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.24% 6.24% 6.05%
As % of the Operating Systems category 28.66% 40.56% 37.64%
Number of salaries quoted 572 1,178 1,543
10th Percentile £32,000 £32,500 £33,800
25th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £82,500
UK median annual salary £62,500 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +4.17% - -4.00%

All Operating Systems
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 3,336 5,538 5,524
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 7.83% 15.39% 16.07%
Number of salaries quoted 2,443 2,930 4,547
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,250 £26,236
25th Percentile £30,000 £32,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £38,000 £45,819 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.06% +1.82% -
75th Percentile £53,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £70,000 £75,000 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -10.00% - -4.76%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Linux relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Linux job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Linux
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Linux.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Linux

Linux
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Linux in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Linux in the UK excluding London

Linux
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Linux within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 15 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
South West -3 256 £60,000 +14.29% 136
South East -74 205 £52,500 -8.70% 348
North of England -48 185 £50,625 -3.57% 154
Midlands -80 136 £47,500 +5.56% 120
East of England -41 95 £45,000 -18.18% 129
West Midlands -68 92 £52,500 +27.27% 45
North West -47 86 £57,500 +9.52% 69
Yorkshire -28 63 £34,000 -28.42% 57
Scotland -55 48 £62,000 +12.73% 61
East Midlands -73 43 £37,500 -28.57% 73
North East +12 36 £51,500 -8.44% 29
Wales +8 31 £67,500 +37.46% 30
Northern Ireland -32 5 £73,801 -18.00% 16
Linux
UK

Linux
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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
1 127 (13.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (3.14%) IIS
3 20 (2.09%) Apache
4 18 (1.88%) Confluence
5 16 (1.67%) SharePoint
6 10 (1.05%) nginx
7 7 (0.73%) CMS
8 6 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
9 5 (0.52%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.42%) Apache Solr
10 4 (0.42%) Apache Spark
10 4 (0.42%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.31%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.31%) Skype for Business
11 3 (0.31%) WebLogic Portal
12 2 (0.21%) JBoss
12 2 (0.21%) WordPress
13 1 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 25 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.42%) Adobe Illustrator
3 4 (0.42%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 4 (0.42%) Photoshop
3 4 (0.42%) Weka
4 3 (0.31%) Simulink
5 1 (0.10%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.10%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (0.52%) Shopify
2 4 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.31%) Primavera
4 2 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.10%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.10%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.10%) SAP IBP
5 1 (0.10%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 316 (33.05%) Azure
2 251 (26.26%) AWS
3 207 (21.65%) Microsoft 365
4 63 (6.59%) GCP
5 62 (6.49%) SaaS
6 41 (4.29%) Amazon EC2
7 35 (3.66%) AWS CloudFormation
7 35 (3.66%) Entra ID
8 31 (3.24%) Amazon S3
9 29 (3.03%) Amazon ECS
10 28 (2.93%) Azure DevOps
10 28 (2.93%) OpenShift
11 25 (2.62%) PaaS
12 24 (2.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 24 (2.51%) IaaS
13 23 (2.41%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (2.41%) Serverless
14 20 (2.09%) Amazon ECR
14 20 (2.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 18 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 213 (22.28%) DNS
2 159 (16.63%) DHCP
3 103 (10.77%) Firewall
4 82 (8.58%) TCP/IP
5 56 (5.86%) VPN
6 48 (5.02%) Ethernet
7 45 (4.71%) VLAN
8 29 (3.03%) VoIP
9 28 (2.93%) HTTP
9 28 (2.93%) SAN
9 28 (2.93%) Wireless
10 24 (2.51%) LAN
10 24 (2.51%) WAN
11 23 (2.41%) SSH
12 20 (2.09%) Network Security
13 19 (1.99%) Wi-Fi
14 16 (1.67%) SSL
15 13 (1.36%) Modbus
15 13 (1.36%) SMTP
16 12 (1.26%) Software-Defined Radio
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (14.85%) Amazon RDS
2 62 (6.49%) SQL Server
3 56 (5.86%) PostgreSQL
4 47 (4.92%) MySQL
5 29 (3.03%) Elasticsearch
6 21 (2.20%) MongoDB
7 17 (1.78%) Redis
8 16 (1.67%) Relational Database
9 13 (1.36%) Oracle Database
10 9 (0.94%) NoSQL
11 8 (0.84%) Amazon Aurora
12 7 (0.73%) InfluxDB
13 6 (0.63%) Big Data
14 5 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 4 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
15 4 (0.42%) BusinessObjects
15 4 (0.42%) Hadoop
15 4 (0.42%) RDBMS
15 4 (0.42%) SAP HANA
16 3 (0.31%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 100 (10.46%) Git
2 66 (6.90%) JIRA
3 56 (5.86%) Jenkins
4 47 (4.92%) GitLab
5 22 (2.30%) Bitbucket
6 20 (2.09%) JUnit
7 14 (1.46%) Robot Framework
7 14 (1.46%) Selenium
8 12 (1.26%) Snyk
9 10 (1.05%) Maven
10 9 (0.94%) Subversion
10 9 (0.94%) Vagrant
11 7 (0.73%) CircleCI
11 7 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.63%) Mockito
13 5 (0.52%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.52%) Browser DevTools
13 5 (0.52%) Burp Suite
13 5 (0.52%) Metasploit
14 4 (0.42%) IDA Disassembler
General
1 350 (36.61%) Social Skills
2 166 (17.36%) Analytical Skills
3 111 (11.61%) Finance
4 48 (5.02%) Manufacturing
5 38 (3.97%) Public Sector
6 32 (3.35%) Aerospace
7 31 (3.24%) Telecoms
8 25 (2.62%) Electronics
8 25 (2.62%) Marketing
9 20 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
9 20 (2.09%) Organisational Skills
10 19 (1.99%) Retail
11 16 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (1.57%) Advertising
12 15 (1.57%) Law
13 12 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (1.26%) Military
14 11 (1.15%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.52%) Games
16 4 (0.42%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 163 (17.05%) Senior
2 140 (14.64%) Linux Engineer
3 110 (11.51%) Systems Engineer
4 108 (11.30%) Support Engineer
5 98 (10.25%) Software Engineer
6 66 (6.90%) Administrator
6 66 (6.90%) Technical Support
7 58 (6.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 52 (5.44%) DevOps Engineer
9 47 (4.92%) IT Support
9 47 (4.92%) Systems Administrator
10 44 (4.60%) Lead
11 41 (4.29%) Senior Linux Engineer
12 37 (3.87%) Platform Engineer
12 37 (3.87%) Technical Engineer
13 36 (3.77%) Applications Support
13 36 (3.77%) Embedded Engineer
13 36 (3.77%) Technical Support Engineer
14 35 (3.66%) Developer
14 35 (3.66%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (2.41%) REST
2 22 (2.30%) React
3 17 (1.78%) CSS
3 17 (1.78%) Django
4 16 (1.67%) Node.js
4 16 (1.67%) Qt
5 15 (1.57%) .NET
6 14 (1.46%) Elastic Stack
7 13 (1.36%) LAMP
8 12 (1.26%) HTML
8 12 (1.26%) SOAP
9 11 (1.15%) RabbitMQ
9 11 (1.15%) Spring
10 10 (1.05%) Middleware
11 9 (0.94%) Hibernate
11 9 (0.94%) LDAP
11 9 (0.94%) YAML
12 8 (0.84%) Laravel
12 8 (0.84%) RESTful
13 7 (0.73%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 102 (10.67%) Legacy Systems
2 58 (6.07%) Embedded Systems
3 45 (4.71%) Linux Command Line
4 43 (4.50%) Data Centre
5 39 (4.08%) e-Learning
5 39 (4.08%) FPGA
6 38 (3.97%) Driving Licence
7 27 (2.82%) Self-Motivation
8 26 (2.72%) Onboarding
9 23 (2.41%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.09%) Cloud Native
10 20 (2.09%) Clustering
11 15 (1.57%) Replication
12 13 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
13 12 (1.26%) Raspberry Pi
13 12 (1.26%) Satnav
14 11 (1.15%) IoT
14 11 (1.15%) Product Ownership
15 10 (1.05%) MicroBlaze
15 10 (1.05%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 450 (47.07%) Windows
2 219 (22.91%) Windows Server
3 109 (11.40%) Windows Server 2016
4 107 (11.19%) Unix
5 43 (4.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (4.18%) Mac OS
7 38 (3.97%) Embedded Linux
8 33 (3.45%) Ubuntu
9 29 (3.03%) Debian
10 23 (2.41%) Windows 10
11 22 (2.30%) VMS
12 21 (2.20%) CentOS
13 14 (1.46%) Android
14 13 (1.36%) Solaris
15 7 (0.73%) Amazon Linux
15 7 (0.73%) Apple iOS
15 7 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
16 6 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.52%) Mac OS X
18 4 (0.42%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 319 (33.37%) Problem-Solving
2 157 (16.42%) DevOps
3 154 (16.11%) Customer Service
4 138 (14.44%) CI/CD
4 138 (14.44%) Migration
5 121 (12.66%) Software Engineering
6 119 (12.45%) Agile
7 117 (12.24%) Infrastructure as Code
8 113 (11.82%) Customer Experience
9 107 (11.19%) ITIL
10 103 (10.77%) Vulnerability Scanning
11 101 (10.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 100 (10.46%) Kalman Filter
13 98 (10.25%) Vulnerability Remediation
14 96 (10.04%) Email Filtering
14 96 (10.04%) Web Filtering
15 93 (9.73%) Computer Science
16 90 (9.41%) Containerisation
17 78 (8.16%) Mentoring
18 71 (7.43%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 240 (25.10%) Python
2 124 (12.97%) Bash
3 117 (12.24%) SQL
4 100 (10.46%) C++
5 93 (9.73%) PowerShell
6 92 (9.62%) C
7 90 (9.41%) Java
8 65 (6.80%) JavaScript
9 34 (3.56%) PHP
10 30 (3.14%) Perl
11 29 (3.03%) TypeScript
12 24 (2.51%) Shell Script
13 23 (2.41%) Go
14 20 (2.09%) C#
15 18 (1.88%) PL/SQL
16 17 (1.78%) Embedded C++
17 10 (1.05%) DCL
17 10 (1.05%) Embedded C
17 10 (1.05%) Groovy
17 10 (1.05%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 337 (35.25%) Security Cleared
2 244 (25.52%) SC Cleared
3 154 (16.11%) Degree
4 114 (11.92%) DV Cleared
5 55 (5.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 44 (4.60%) Cisco Certification
7 35 (3.66%) CCNP
8 34 (3.56%) CCNA
9 32 (3.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 28 (2.93%) HND
11 22 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
12 20 (2.09%) AWS Certification
13 15 (1.57%) Azure Certification
13 15 (1.57%) Master's Degree
14 14 (1.46%) MCP
15 12 (1.26%) DBS Check
16 11 (1.15%) MCSE
17 10 (1.05%) A+ Certification
17 10 (1.05%) MCSA
17 10 (1.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (12.03%) Cyber Essentials
2 102 (10.67%) PCI DSS
3 22 (2.30%) QA
4 17 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (1.78%) SLA
5 13 (1.36%) GDPR
6 5 (0.52%) ISO 9001
6 5 (0.52%) MISRA
7 4 (0.42%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.31%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.31%) NIST
9 2 (0.21%) ECSS
9 2 (0.21%) GxP
9 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.10%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.10%) GRC
System Software
1 211 (22.07%) Active Directory
2 156 (16.32%) Hyper-V
3 121 (12.66%) Docker
4 96 (10.04%) Terminal Server
5 64 (6.69%) VMware Infrastructure
6 33 (3.45%) Firmware
7 29 (3.03%) vSphere
8 19 (1.99%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (1.46%) Embedded Firmware
10 9 (0.94%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
12 5 (0.52%) KVM
12 5 (0.52%) Lustre
12 5 (0.52%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 4 (0.42%) DFS Replication
13 4 (0.42%) Dovecot
13 4 (0.42%) iptables
13 4 (0.42%) Kamailio
13 4 (0.42%) Postfix
13 4 (0.42%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 145 (15.17%) Ansible
2 139 (14.54%) Kubernetes
3 138 (14.44%) Terraform
4 53 (5.54%) Grafana
5 47 (4.92%) Prometheus
6 28 (2.93%) Microsoft Intune
7 19 (1.99%) ZABBIX
8 18 (1.88%) vCenter Server
9 16 (1.67%) Argo
9 16 (1.67%) Puppet
10 15 (1.57%) Nagios
11 14 (1.46%) Nessus
12 13 (1.36%) Control-M
13 10 (1.05%) AWS Copilot
13 10 (1.05%) Progress Chef
14 7 (0.73%) Docker Swarm
14 7 (0.73%) Rancher
14 7 (0.73%) SCCM
14 7 (0.73%) WSUS
15 6 (0.63%) SCOM
Vendors
1 246 (25.73%) Microsoft
2 215 (22.49%) VMware
3 128 (13.39%) Splunk
4 114 (11.92%) Veeam
5 103 (10.77%) SolarWinds
6 97 (10.15%) Nimble Storage
7 96 (10.04%) Brocade
7 96 (10.04%) Tanium
8 61 (6.38%) Cisco
8 61 (6.38%) Oracle
9 54 (5.65%) Red Hat
10 37 (3.87%) Google
11 22 (2.30%) Salesforce
12 20 (2.09%) Dell
13 18 (1.88%) Fortinet
13 18 (1.88%) SAP
14 17 (1.78%) ServiceNow
15 15 (1.57%) HP
16 14 (1.46%) Atlassian
16 14 (1.46%) NetApp