3rd Line Engineer Job Trends

Third Line Engineer
UK

The median Third Line Engineer salary in the UK is £50,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 31 July 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 554 512 501
Rank change year-on-year -42 -11 +40
Permanent jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 220 169 343
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.34% 0.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.23% 0.38% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 209 151 291
10th Percentile £38,650 £35,000 £32,000
25th Percentile £45,000 £39,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £47,500 £42,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +13.10% -8.70%
75th Percentile £58,750 £52,500 £50,250
90th Percentile £62,500 £58,750 £55,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £47,500 £41,750
% change year-on-year +5.26% +13.77% -7.22%

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 96,998 44,483 82,509
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.27% 90.02% 94.82%
Number of salaries quoted 66,411 26,428 56,723
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £96,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -6.54%

3rd Line Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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.

3rd Line Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

3rd Line Engineer
Salary Trend

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

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

3rd Line Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer over the 6 months to 31 July 2026.

Salary histogram for 3rd Line Engineer in the UK

3rd Line Engineer
Top 14 Job Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 31 July 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 -51 198 £52,500 +10.53% 34
UK excluding London -31 185 £50,000 +5.26% 31
South East +9 83 £52,500 +5.00% 17
Work from Home -33 53 £53,750 +11.98% 12
London -30 35 £55,000 +3.29% 7
Midlands -40 32 £49,000 -2.00% 4
East Midlands -17 22 £50,000 - 1
Wales -38 22 £45,000 - 2
East of England -27 21 £49,000 +3.16% 6
North of England -40 16 £48,750 +21.88% 4
Yorkshire -25 15 £47,500 +35.71%
South West -63 11 £50,000 +17.65% 1
West Midlands -26 10 £45,000 -10.00% 3
North West -16 1 £52,500 +31.25% 3

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 31 July 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 featuring 3rd Line Engineer in the job title.

1 111 (50.45%) Microsoft
2 108 (49.09%) Azure
3 98 (44.55%) Microsoft 365
4 87 (39.55%) Windows
5 84 (38.18%) Active Directory
6 71 (32.27%) Entra ID
7 66 (30.00%) Microsoft Exchange
8 58 (26.36%) DNS
9 54 (24.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 53 (24.09%) Firewall
10 53 (24.09%) SharePoint
11 50 (22.73%) Microsoft Intune
12 49 (22.27%) Root Cause Analysis
12 49 (22.27%) Windows Server
13 48 (21.82%) PowerShell
14 47 (21.36%) VMware
15 45 (20.45%) SaaS
16 43 (19.55%) Hyper-V
17 40 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
18 35 (15.91%) Azure Certification
19 34 (15.45%) Security Cleared
20 32 (14.55%) IaaS
20 32 (14.55%) Technical Leadership
21 30 (13.64%) Cisco
21 30 (13.64%) Mentoring
22 29 (13.18%) High Availability
22 29 (13.18%) Mac OS
23 28 (12.73%) Agile
23 28 (12.73%) Azure AKS
23 28 (12.73%) Azure ExpressRoute

3rd Line 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 66 (30.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 53 (24.09%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.82%) Exchange Server 2007
3 4 (1.82%) Exchange Server 2010
3 4 (1.82%) Exchange Server 2013
4 1 (0.45%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.36%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 3 (1.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.45%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 108 (49.09%) Azure
2 98 (44.55%) Microsoft 365
3 71 (32.27%) Entra ID
4 45 (20.45%) SaaS
5 32 (14.55%) IaaS
6 28 (12.73%) Azure AKS
6 28 (12.73%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 28 (12.73%) Azure Key Vault
6 28 (12.73%) Azure Storage
7 20 (9.09%) Mimecast
8 11 (5.00%) Google Workspace
9 9 (4.09%) AWS
10 7 (3.18%) OneDrive
11 4 (1.82%) Power Automate
12 3 (1.36%) Power Platform
13 2 (0.91%) Azure Sentinel
14 1 (0.45%) GCP
14 1 (0.45%) Google Docs
14 1 (0.45%) PaaS
14 1 (0.45%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 58 (26.36%) DNS
2 53 (24.09%) Firewall
3 25 (11.36%) DHCP
4 24 (10.91%) VPN
5 22 (10.00%) VLAN
6 15 (6.82%) Wi-Fi
7 12 (5.45%) Wireless
8 11 (5.00%) TCP/IP
9 10 (4.55%) LAN
10 9 (4.09%) WAN
11 8 (3.64%) SAN
12 7 (3.18%) Network Security
13 4 (1.82%) DMZ
13 4 (1.82%) Wireshark
14 3 (1.36%) Remote Desktop
15 2 (0.91%) BGP
16 1 (0.45%) Internet
16 1 (0.45%) IPsec
16 1 (0.45%) OSPF
16 1 (0.45%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (3.18%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 20 (9.09%) JIRA
2 1 (0.45%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 42 (19.09%) Social Skills
2 31 (14.09%) Law
3 19 (8.64%) Legal
4 13 (5.91%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.73%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (2.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 4 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (0.91%) Finance
8 1 (0.45%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.73%) .NET
2 3 (1.36%) 802.1X
2 3 (1.36%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 10 (4.55%) Video Conferencing
2 8 (3.64%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.18%) Clustering
3 7 (3.18%) Enterprise Software
3 7 (3.18%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.27%) PKI
4 5 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (1.82%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (0.91%) Data Centre
6 2 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (0.91%) Management Information System
6 2 (0.91%) Security Posture
7 1 (0.45%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 87 (39.55%) Windows
2 49 (22.27%) Windows Server
3 29 (13.18%) Mac OS
4 25 (11.36%) Linux
5 16 (7.27%) Windows Server 2016
6 13 (5.91%) Windows Server 2012
7 11 (5.00%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (2.73%) Apple iOS
9 4 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (1.82%) Windows Server 2008
10 2 (0.91%) VMS
10 2 (0.91%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.45%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (24.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 49 (22.27%) Root Cause Analysis
3 32 (14.55%) Technical Leadership
4 30 (13.64%) Mentoring
5 29 (13.18%) High Availability
6 28 (12.73%) Agile
6 28 (12.73%) Containerisation
6 28 (12.73%) Load Balancing
7 27 (12.27%) ITIL
8 24 (10.91%) Change Management
8 24 (10.91%) Incident Management
9 22 (10.00%) Identity Management
10 21 (9.55%) Problem-Solving
11 18 (8.18%) Project Delivery
11 18 (8.18%) Workflow
12 17 (7.73%) Kalman Filter
13 16 (7.27%) Continuous Improvement
13 16 (7.27%) Problem Management
14 15 (6.82%) Remote Monitoring and Management
15 14 (6.36%) Security Management
Programming Languages
1 48 (21.82%) PowerShell
2 21 (9.55%) SQL
3 18 (8.18%) R
4 7 (3.18%) T-SQL
5 6 (2.73%) Bash
5 6 (2.73%) C#
6 4 (1.82%) Python
7 3 (1.36%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.45%) Bicep
8 1 (0.45%) Google Apps Script
Qualifications
1 35 (15.91%) Azure Certification
2 34 (15.45%) Security Cleared
3 28 (12.73%) SC Cleared
4 13 (5.91%) CCNA
4 13 (5.91%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (5.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (3.64%) Degree
7 6 (2.73%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.82%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.82%) MCSA
8 4 (1.82%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (0.91%) CCNP
9 2 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.45%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (10.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (5.91%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (1.36%) SLA
4 2 (0.91%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 84 (38.18%) Active Directory
2 43 (19.55%) Hyper-V
3 40 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (5.45%) Virtual Desktop
5 7 (3.18%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (2.73%) vSphere
7 3 (1.36%) Docker
7 3 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.45%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 50 (22.73%) Microsoft Intune
2 28 (12.73%) Kubernetes
3 16 (7.27%) Jamf Pro
4 14 (6.36%) Autotask
5 12 (5.45%) Proxmox
5 12 (5.45%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 6 (2.73%) Failover Clustering
6 6 (2.73%) Microsoft Clustering
7 5 (2.27%) WSUS
8 4 (1.82%) Iperf
9 2 (0.91%) MaaS360
9 2 (0.91%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.45%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.45%) SCCM
10 1 (0.45%) SCOM
10 1 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.45%) Terraform
Vendors
1 111 (50.45%) Microsoft
2 47 (21.36%) VMware
3 30 (13.64%) Cisco
4 18 (8.18%) CrowdStrike
5 17 (7.73%) Fortinet
6 16 (7.27%) SonicWALL
7 15 (6.82%) HP
8 12 (5.45%) Google
8 12 (5.45%) Meraki
8 12 (5.45%) Veeam
9 11 (5.00%) Datto
10 10 (4.55%) Aruba
10 10 (4.55%) Ubiquiti
11 8 (3.64%) Apple
12 6 (2.73%) ConnectWise
13 4 (1.82%) Dell
13 4 (1.82%) McAfee
13 4 (1.82%) Palo Alto
13 4 (1.82%) Ruckus Wireless
13 4 (1.82%) ServiceNow