3rd Line Engineer Job Trends

Third Line Engineer
UK

The median Third Line Engineer salary in the UK is £47,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 6 March 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 488 519 442
Rank change year-on-year +31 -77 +166
Permanent jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 204 153 423
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.28% 0.33% 0.53%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.37% 0.57%
Number of salaries quoted 190 133 397
10th Percentile £37,750 £35,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,000 £50,000 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +17.65% -5.56%
75th Percentile £56,250 £54,500 £51,750
90th Percentile £60,000 £65,000 £55,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,000 £50,000 £42,000
% change year-on-year -6.00% +19.05% -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 66,132 41,732 74,862
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.60% 91.05% 94.66%
Number of salaries quoted 41,854 22,904 57,825
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,472 £45,000 £39,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,557
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -5.36%

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 6 March 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 6 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
England +17 192 £47,500 -5.00% 58
UK excluding London +5 162 £47,000 -6.00% 57
South East -10 56 £45,000 -12.62% 30
Work from Home +22 52 £54,709 +13.98% 26
London +50 42 £51,250 -8.07% 12
Yorkshire -4 41 £45,000 +28.57% 7
North of England -18 41 £45,000 +25.00% 9
South West +2 29 £55,000 +18.28% 2
East of England -2 13 £47,000 +10.59% 8
Midlands -28 12 £52,500 +5.00% 4
Wales - 11 £45,000 - 2
East Midlands -35 8 £52,500 -15.66% 2
West Midlands -10 4 £51,000 +2.00% 2
Scotland - 1 £55,000 - 3

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

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

1 85 (41.67%) Azure
2 82 (40.20%) Microsoft
3 73 (35.78%) Windows
4 69 (33.82%) Active Directory
4 69 (33.82%) Microsoft 365
5 55 (26.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 53 (25.98%) Windows Server
7 52 (25.49%) VMware
8 49 (24.02%) PowerShell
9 48 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
10 46 (22.55%) Microsoft Exchange
10 46 (22.55%) Security Cleared
11 41 (20.10%) Entra ID
11 41 (20.10%) ITIL
12 38 (18.63%) Microsoft Intune
12 38 (18.63%) VMware Infrastructure
13 36 (17.65%) Firewall
14 33 (16.18%) SharePoint
15 32 (15.69%) SC Cleared
16 31 (15.20%) Customer Service
17 27 (13.24%) DNS
18 24 (11.76%) Hyper-V
19 22 (10.78%) Veeam
20 20 (9.80%) ITSM
20 20 (9.80%) SQL
21 19 (9.31%) Project Delivery
22 18 (8.82%) DV Cleared
22 18 (8.82%) Incident Management
22 18 (8.82%) vSphere
23 17 (8.33%) Linux

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 46 (22.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 33 (16.18%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.49%) Confluence
3 1 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2003
3 1 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2007
3 1 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2010
3 1 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 6 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.47%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.98%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 85 (41.67%) Azure
2 69 (33.82%) Microsoft 365
3 41 (20.10%) Entra ID
4 11 (5.39%) Mimecast
5 9 (4.41%) AWS
6 8 (3.92%) SaaS
7 6 (2.94%) IaaS
8 5 (2.45%) Power Platform
9 3 (1.47%) Azure AKS
9 3 (1.47%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 3 (1.47%) Azure Key Vault
9 3 (1.47%) Azure Storage
10 2 (0.98%) Google Workspace
10 2 (0.98%) OneDrive
11 1 (0.49%) Amazon S3
11 1 (0.49%) Google Docs
11 1 (0.49%) PaaS
11 1 (0.49%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 36 (17.65%) Firewall
2 27 (13.24%) DNS
3 16 (7.84%) DHCP
4 14 (6.86%) VPN
5 8 (3.92%) TCP/IP
6 7 (3.43%) SAN
6 7 (3.43%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (3.43%) Wireless
7 6 (2.94%) VLAN
8 5 (2.45%) LAN
8 5 (2.45%) WAN
9 4 (1.96%) Ethernet
10 3 (1.47%) Network Security
10 3 (1.47%) SD-WAN
10 3 (1.47%) VoIP
11 2 (0.98%) Cisco IOS
11 2 (0.98%) Cisco ISE
11 2 (0.98%) InfiniBand
11 2 (0.98%) IP Telephony
11 2 (0.98%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.45%) Power BI
1 5 (2.45%) SQL Server
2 3 (1.47%) Data Mining
3 2 (0.98%) Oracle Database
3 2 (0.98%) Oracle Database 10g
4 1 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 10 (4.90%) JIRA
General
1 39 (19.12%) Social Skills
2 14 (6.86%) Law
3 8 (3.92%) Public Sector
4 7 (3.43%) Finance
4 7 (3.43%) Legal
5 6 (2.94%) Marketing
6 5 (2.45%) Analytical Skills
7 4 (1.96%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (1.96%) Retail
8 3 (1.47%) Advertising
8 3 (1.47%) Automotive
8 3 (1.47%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.47%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.98%) Banking
9 2 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.49%) Front Office
Miscellaneous
1 18 (8.82%) Onboarding
2 12 (5.88%) Driving Licence
3 9 (4.41%) PKI
4 4 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (1.47%) CMDB
6 2 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (0.98%) iPad
6 2 (0.98%) Replication
6 2 (0.98%) YubiKey
7 1 (0.49%) FMCG
7 1 (0.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (0.49%) Life Science
7 1 (0.49%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.49%) NHS
7 1 (0.49%) Security Posture
7 1 (0.49%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 73 (35.78%) Windows
2 53 (25.98%) Windows Server
3 17 (8.33%) Linux
4 11 (5.39%) Windows 10
5 9 (4.41%) Windows Server 2016
6 8 (3.92%) Android
6 8 (3.92%) Mac OS
7 7 (3.43%) Apple iOS
7 7 (3.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (2.94%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (1.96%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.98%) HPUX
10 2 (0.98%) Solaris
10 2 (0.98%) Unix
10 2 (0.98%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (26.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 48 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
3 41 (20.10%) ITIL
4 31 (15.20%) Customer Service
5 20 (9.80%) ITSM
6 19 (9.31%) Project Delivery
7 18 (8.82%) Incident Management
8 16 (7.84%) Root Cause Analysis
8 16 (7.84%) Service Delivery
8 16 (7.84%) Technical Leadership
9 13 (6.37%) Disaster Recovery
9 13 (6.37%) Mentoring
10 12 (5.88%) Service Management
11 11 (5.39%) Change Management
11 11 (5.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 11 (5.39%) DevOps
11 11 (5.39%) Problem Management
12 10 (4.90%) SIEM
13 9 (4.41%) Logistics
13 9 (4.41%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 49 (24.02%) PowerShell
2 20 (9.80%) SQL
3 8 (3.92%) Python
4 7 (3.43%) R
5 6 (2.94%) Bash
6 2 (0.98%) Bicep
7 1 (0.49%) Google Apps Script
Qualifications
1 46 (22.55%) Security Cleared
2 32 (15.69%) SC Cleared
3 18 (8.82%) DV Cleared
4 13 (6.37%) Degree
5 11 (5.39%) DBS Check
6 7 (3.43%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (2.94%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.94%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 5 (2.45%) CCNA
8 5 (2.45%) HND
9 3 (1.47%) CCNP
9 3 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.47%) RHCE
10 1 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (0.49%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.86%) SLA
2 10 (4.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (1.47%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (1.47%) NIST
4 1 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (0.49%) GDPR
System Software
1 69 (33.82%) Active Directory
2 38 (18.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (11.76%) Hyper-V
4 18 (8.82%) vSphere
5 9 (4.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.96%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (1.47%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 3 (1.47%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.98%) Firmware
8 2 (0.98%) Lustre
8 2 (0.98%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 2 (0.98%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.49%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 38 (18.63%) Microsoft Intune
2 10 (4.90%) SCCM
3 9 (4.41%) vCenter Server
3 9 (4.41%) WSUS
4 7 (3.43%) FortiGate
4 7 (3.43%) Jamf Pro
4 7 (3.43%) SCOM
5 6 (2.94%) Proxmox
5 6 (2.94%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 4 (1.96%) Ansible
7 3 (1.47%) Kubernetes
7 3 (1.47%) Terraform
8 2 (0.98%) SCSM
9 1 (0.49%) Avamar
9 1 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 82 (40.20%) Microsoft
2 52 (25.49%) VMware
3 22 (10.78%) Veeam
4 12 (5.88%) Cisco
5 11 (5.39%) McAfee
6 9 (4.41%) Apple
7 7 (3.43%) CrowdStrike
8 6 (2.94%) arcserve
8 6 (2.94%) SolarWinds
9 5 (2.45%) Oracle
10 4 (1.96%) ConnectWise
11 3 (1.47%) EMC
11 3 (1.47%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.47%) IFS
11 3 (1.47%) Juniper
11 3 (1.47%) Logitech
11 3 (1.47%) Red Hat
11 3 (1.47%) Trend Micro
11 3 (1.47%) Yealink
12 2 (0.98%) Tenable