Linux Administrator Job Trends

Linux Administrator
UK

The median Linux Administrator salary in the UK is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 1 September 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 734 630 750
Rank change year-on-year -104 +120 -46
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Administrator 64 49 62
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.058% 0.098% 0.076%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.062% 0.11% 0.080%
Number of salaries quoted 48 38 46
10th Percentile £45,875 £45,125 £40,625
25th Percentile £59,688 £49,688 £44,063
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £58,750 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.64% +17.50% -6.98%
75th Percentile £96,250 £80,000 £56,000
90th Percentile £125,000 £100,000 £65,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £57,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +13.04% +15.00% -

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 103,099 44,902 77,500
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.84% 89.81% 95.18%
Number of salaries quoted 70,871 26,693 49,456
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £74,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%

Linux Administrator
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Linux Administrator' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Linux Administrator job vacancy trend in the UK

Linux Administrator
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Linux Administrator job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Linux Administrator job vacancies in the UK

Linux Administrator
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Linux Administrator over the 6 months to 1 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Linux Administrator in the UK

Linux Administrator
Top 13 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Linux Administrator within the UK over the 6 months to 1 September 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 -99 60 £65,000 -7.14% 20
UK excluding London -94 34 £65,000 +13.04% 6
London -43 26 £92,500 +15.63% 15
North of England -34 14 £65,000 +18.18% 1
Work from Home -29 10 £65,000 -16.13% 1
North West -10 9 £65,000 +18.18% 1
South East -39 9 £65,000 +13.04% 3
East of England -20 6 £75,000 +7.14% 1
North East - 5 £47,500 -
Midlands -42 3 £41,000 -28.70%
South West -79 2 £42,500 -19.05%
West Midlands - 2 - -
East Midlands -21 1 £41,000 -28.70%

Linux Administrator Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 September 2026, Linux Administrator 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 Linux Administrator in the job title.

1 64 (100.00%) Linux
2 32 (50.00%) Red Hat
3 30 (46.88%) Bash
4 28 (43.75%) DevOps
5 27 (42.19%) AWS
6 25 (39.06%) Python
7 24 (37.50%) Ansible
8 19 (29.69%) Nagios
9 18 (28.13%) Azure
9 18 (28.13%) Terraform
10 17 (26.56%) GCP
10 17 (26.56%) Git
10 17 (26.56%) Kubernetes
11 16 (25.00%) CI/CD
11 16 (25.00%) Docker
11 16 (25.00%) GitLab
11 16 (25.00%) MySQL
12 15 (23.44%) Configuration Management
12 15 (23.44%) Grafana
13 14 (21.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 14 (21.88%) CentOS
13 14 (21.88%) Infrastructure as Code
13 14 (21.88%) Software Engineering
14 13 (20.31%) Capacity Planning
14 13 (20.31%) Low Latency
14 13 (20.31%) QA
15 12 (18.75%) Containerisation
15 12 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
16 11 (17.19%) Amazon ECR
16 11 (17.19%) Amazon ECS

Linux Administrator 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 2 (3.13%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (3.13%) nginx
1 2 (3.13%) Tomcat
2 1 (1.56%) OpenStack
2 1 (1.56%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (1.56%) FLEXCUBE
Cloud Services
1 27 (42.19%) AWS
2 18 (28.13%) Azure
3 17 (26.56%) GCP
4 14 (21.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 11 (17.19%) Amazon ECR
5 11 (17.19%) Amazon ECS
6 8 (12.50%) OpenShift
7 3 (4.69%) Amazon EC2
7 3 (4.69%) Amazon S3
7 3 (4.69%) SaaS
7 3 (4.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 2 (3.13%) GitHub
8 2 (3.13%) Nutanix
9 1 (1.56%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (1.56%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.56%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (1.56%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (14.06%) DNS
1 9 (14.06%) TCP/IP
2 6 (9.38%) HTTP
2 6 (9.38%) LAN
3 5 (7.81%) Firewall
4 3 (4.69%) SAN
4 3 (4.69%) SSH
4 3 (4.69%) VLAN
5 2 (3.13%) Multicast
6 1 (1.56%) Network Security
6 1 (1.56%) VPN
6 1 (1.56%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (25.00%) MySQL
2 11 (17.19%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (4.69%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (3.13%) Big Data
5 1 (1.56%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (26.56%) Git
2 16 (25.00%) GitLab
3 1 (1.56%) Artifactory
3 1 (1.56%) Jenkins
General
1 28 (43.75%) Finance
2 23 (35.94%) Banking
3 15 (23.44%) Social Skills
4 10 (15.63%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (7.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (4.69%) Law
7 1 (1.56%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (28.13%) Terraform
2 6 (9.38%) WebSockets
3 2 (3.13%) LEMP Stack
3 2 (3.13%) Node.js
4 1 (1.56%) OpenTofu
4 1 (1.56%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 8 (12.50%) Data Centre
2 3 (4.69%) Replication
3 2 (3.13%) Educational Technology
4 1 (1.56%) Clustering
4 1 (1.56%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (1.56%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 64 (100.00%) Linux
2 14 (21.88%) CentOS
3 11 (17.19%) Ubuntu
4 10 (15.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (10.94%) Debian
5 7 (10.94%) Rocky
6 4 (6.25%) Unix
7 3 (4.69%) Windows
8 2 (3.13%) Windows Server
9 1 (1.56%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (43.75%) DevOps
2 16 (25.00%) CI/CD
3 15 (23.44%) Configuration Management
4 14 (21.88%) Infrastructure as Code
4 14 (21.88%) Software Engineering
5 13 (20.31%) Capacity Planning
5 13 (20.31%) Low Latency
6 12 (18.75%) Containerisation
6 12 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
7 11 (17.19%) Architectural Design
7 11 (17.19%) Deployment Automation
7 11 (17.19%) Virtual Environments
8 8 (12.50%) Fintech
9 7 (10.94%) Security Hardening
10 6 (9.38%) Customer-Centricity
10 6 (9.38%) Infrastructure Automation
10 6 (9.38%) Performance Monitoring
10 6 (9.38%) Virtual Infrastructure
11 5 (7.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 4 (6.25%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 30 (46.88%) Bash
2 25 (39.06%) Python
3 9 (14.06%) SQL
4 4 (6.25%) Shell Script
5 3 (4.69%) PHP
5 3 (4.69%) PowerShell
5 3 (4.69%) Ruby
6 2 (3.13%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 11 (17.19%) Security Cleared
2 10 (15.63%) DV Cleared
3 6 (9.38%) RHCSA
4 3 (4.69%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.56%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (20.31%) QA
System Software
1 16 (25.00%) Docker
2 9 (14.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (7.81%) iptables
4 2 (3.13%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (3.13%) vSphere
5 1 (1.56%) Active Directory
5 1 (1.56%) Ceph
5 1 (1.56%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (1.56%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 1 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (1.56%) Xen
Systems Management
1 24 (37.50%) Ansible
2 19 (29.69%) Nagios
3 17 (26.56%) Kubernetes
4 15 (23.44%) Grafana
5 5 (7.81%) Prometheus
6 3 (4.69%) Puppet
6 3 (4.69%) systemd
7 2 (3.13%) Podman
7 2 (3.13%) Proxmox
7 2 (3.13%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (1.56%) Argo
8 1 (1.56%) Check_MK
8 1 (1.56%) FlexNet
8 1 (1.56%) Istio
8 1 (1.56%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.56%) Rancher
8 1 (1.56%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 32 (50.00%) Red Hat
2 11 (17.19%) Rapid7
2 11 (17.19%) Splunk
3 10 (15.63%) VMware
4 8 (12.50%) SolarWinds
5 2 (3.13%) Veeam
6 1 (1.56%) Dell
6 1 (1.56%) Microsoft
6 1 (1.56%) NetApp
6 1 (1.56%) Oracle