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 22 July 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 529 523 498
Rank change year-on-year -6 -25 +53
Permanent jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 230 168 381
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.23% 0.34% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.24% 0.38% 0.43%
Number of salaries quoted 217 150 325
10th Percentile £39,500 £34,875 £31,700
25th Percentile £45,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £47,500 £42,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +13.10% -9.68%
75th Percentile £58,750 £52,500 £50,250
90th Percentile £62,500 £60,125 £53,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £47,500 £42,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% +13.10% -6.67%

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 94,464 44,263 88,687
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.30% 90.01% 94.75%
Number of salaries quoted 64,822 26,191 62,318
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year - +1.85% -10.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,183
90th Percentile £96,000 £96,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -5.66%

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 22 July 2026.

Salary histogram for 3rd Line Engineer in the UK

3rd Line Engineer
Top 13 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 22 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 -22 209 £52,500 +10.53% 34
UK excluding London -30 192 £50,000 +5.26% 33
South East +27 88 £52,500 +3.45% 16
Work from Home -14 62 £55,000 +10.00% 7
London -18 38 £55,000 - 6
Midlands -26 31 £50,000 - 4
East of England -13 21 £49,000 +3.16% 4
East Midlands -22 21 £50,000 - 1
Wales -38 21 £45,000 - 3
Yorkshire -28 18 £47,500 +35.71% 1
North of England -39 18 £47,500 +18.75% 7
South West -64 13 £50,000 +17.65%
West Midlands -21 10 £45,000 -10.00% 3

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

For the 6 months to 22 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.

1 114 (49.57%) Azure
1 114 (49.57%) Microsoft
2 100 (43.48%) Microsoft 365
3 87 (37.83%) Active Directory
3 87 (37.83%) Windows
4 70 (30.43%) Entra ID
4 70 (30.43%) Microsoft Exchange
5 59 (25.65%) DNS
5 59 (25.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 57 (24.78%) SharePoint
7 53 (23.04%) Microsoft Intune
8 52 (22.61%) Firewall
9 50 (21.74%) Windows Server
10 49 (21.30%) PowerShell
10 49 (21.30%) Root Cause Analysis
11 48 (20.87%) VMware
12 47 (20.43%) SaaS
13 42 (18.26%) Hyper-V
14 40 (17.39%) VMware Infrastructure
15 36 (15.65%) Technical Leadership
16 35 (15.22%) Azure Certification
16 35 (15.22%) Security Cleared
17 31 (13.48%) IaaS
18 29 (12.61%) High Availability
18 29 (12.61%) Mac OS
19 28 (12.17%) Agile
19 28 (12.17%) Azure AKS
19 28 (12.17%) Azure ExpressRoute
19 28 (12.17%) Azure Key Vault
19 28 (12.17%) Azure Storage

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 70 (30.43%) Microsoft Exchange
2 57 (24.78%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.74%) Exchange Server 2007
3 4 (1.74%) Exchange Server 2010
3 4 (1.74%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 4 (1.74%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.30%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.43%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 114 (49.57%) Azure
2 100 (43.48%) Microsoft 365
3 70 (30.43%) Entra ID
4 47 (20.43%) SaaS
5 31 (13.48%) IaaS
6 28 (12.17%) Azure AKS
6 28 (12.17%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 28 (12.17%) Azure Key Vault
6 28 (12.17%) Azure Storage
7 24 (10.43%) Mimecast
8 11 (4.78%) Google Workspace
9 8 (3.48%) AWS
10 7 (3.04%) OneDrive
11 4 (1.74%) Power Automate
12 3 (1.30%) Power Platform
13 1 (0.43%) Azure Sentinel
13 1 (0.43%) GCP
13 1 (0.43%) Google Docs
13 1 (0.43%) PaaS
13 1 (0.43%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 59 (25.65%) DNS
2 52 (22.61%) Firewall
3 25 (10.87%) DHCP
4 24 (10.43%) VPN
5 21 (9.13%) VLAN
6 15 (6.52%) Wi-Fi
7 13 (5.65%) Wireless
8 11 (4.78%) TCP/IP
9 10 (4.35%) LAN
10 9 (3.91%) SAN
10 9 (3.91%) WAN
11 6 (2.61%) Network Security
12 4 (1.74%) DMZ
12 4 (1.74%) Wireshark
13 3 (1.30%) Remote Desktop
14 2 (0.87%) BGP
15 1 (0.43%) Internet
15 1 (0.43%) IPsec
15 1 (0.43%) OSPF
15 1 (0.43%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.48%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 22 (9.57%) JIRA
2 1 (0.43%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 44 (19.13%) Social Skills
2 30 (13.04%) Law
3 22 (9.57%) Legal
4 13 (5.65%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (2.17%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.17%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (0.87%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (0.87%) Finance
7 2 (0.87%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.61%) .NET
2 3 (1.30%) 802.1X
2 3 (1.30%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 10 (4.35%) Video Conferencing
2 9 (3.91%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.04%) Clustering
3 7 (3.04%) Enterprise Software
3 7 (3.04%) Onboarding
4 6 (2.61%) PKI
5 4 (1.74%) Cyber Threat
5 4 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (0.87%) Data Centre
7 2 (0.87%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.43%) CMDB
8 1 (0.43%) Life Science
8 1 (0.43%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 87 (37.83%) Windows
2 50 (21.74%) Windows Server
3 29 (12.61%) Mac OS
4 25 (10.87%) Linux
5 16 (6.96%) Windows Server 2016
6 13 (5.65%) Windows Server 2012
7 11 (4.78%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (2.61%) Apple iOS
9 5 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (1.74%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.87%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.43%) Android
12 1 (0.43%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (25.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 49 (21.30%) Root Cause Analysis
3 36 (15.65%) Technical Leadership
4 29 (12.61%) High Availability
5 28 (12.17%) Agile
5 28 (12.17%) Containerisation
5 28 (12.17%) ITIL
5 28 (12.17%) Load Balancing
5 28 (12.17%) Mentoring
6 27 (11.74%) Change Management
7 26 (11.30%) Incident Management
8 24 (10.43%) Identity Management
8 24 (10.43%) Problem-Solving
9 22 (9.57%) Workflow
10 19 (8.26%) Project Delivery
11 16 (6.96%) Kalman Filter
11 16 (6.96%) Problem Management
12 15 (6.52%) Continuous Improvement
12 15 (6.52%) Remote Monitoring and Management
13 14 (6.09%) Web Filtering
Programming Languages
1 49 (21.30%) PowerShell
2 22 (9.57%) SQL
3 21 (9.13%) R
4 7 (3.04%) Bash
4 7 (3.04%) T-SQL
5 6 (2.61%) C#
6 5 (2.17%) Python
7 3 (1.30%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.87%) Bicep
9 1 (0.43%) Google Apps Script
Qualifications
1 35 (15.22%) Azure Certification
1 35 (15.22%) Security Cleared
2 28 (12.17%) SC Cleared
3 12 (5.22%) CCNA
3 12 (5.22%) Cisco Certification
4 10 (4.35%) Microsoft Certification
5 7 (3.04%) Degree
5 7 (3.04%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.74%) AWS Certification
6 4 (1.74%) DBS Check
6 4 (1.74%) MCSA
6 4 (1.74%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 2 (0.87%) CCNP
8 1 (0.43%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (10.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (4.78%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (1.30%) SLA
4 2 (0.87%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 87 (37.83%) Active Directory
2 42 (18.26%) Hyper-V
3 40 (17.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (5.22%) Virtual Desktop
5 8 (3.48%) vSphere
6 6 (2.61%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (1.74%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (1.30%) Docker
9 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 1 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 53 (23.04%) Microsoft Intune
2 28 (12.17%) Kubernetes
3 16 (6.96%) Jamf Pro
4 14 (6.09%) Autotask
5 12 (5.22%) Proxmox
5 12 (5.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 6 (2.61%) Failover Clustering
6 6 (2.61%) Microsoft Clustering
6 6 (2.61%) WSUS
7 4 (1.74%) Iperf
8 3 (1.30%) Terraform
8 3 (1.30%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.43%) Ansible
9 1 (0.43%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.43%) MaaS360
9 1 (0.43%) SCCM
9 1 (0.43%) SCOM
9 1 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 114 (49.57%) Microsoft
2 48 (20.87%) VMware
3 28 (12.17%) Cisco
4 21 (9.13%) CrowdStrike
5 16 (6.96%) Fortinet
6 15 (6.52%) HP
6 15 (6.52%) SonicWALL
7 12 (5.22%) Google
7 12 (5.22%) Veeam
8 11 (4.78%) Datto
8 11 (4.78%) Meraki
9 10 (4.35%) Aruba
9 10 (4.35%) Ubiquiti
10 7 (3.04%) Apple
11 6 (2.61%) ConnectWise
12 5 (2.17%) McAfee
13 4 (1.74%) Dell
13 4 (1.74%) Ruckus Wireless
13 4 (1.74%) ServiceNow
14 3 (1.30%) Remedy