Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £60,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 April 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 473 537 548
Rank change year-on-year +64 +11 +3
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 252 101 359
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.24% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.27% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 184 87 297
10th Percentile £40,050 £40,000 £40,600
25th Percentile £46,250 £45,375 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £61,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.64% +1.67% -
75th Percentile £78,125 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £86,250 £102,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,000 £56,000
% change year-on-year +5.77% -7.14% +2.75%

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 80,885 37,363 89,466
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.69% 89.33% 94.57%
Number of salaries quoted 51,875 23,453 66,238
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +13.21% -11.67%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%

Linux Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Linux Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Linux Engineer
Salary Trend

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

Salary distribution trend for Linux Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Linux Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Linux Engineer over the 6 months to 20 April 2026.

Salary histogram for Linux Engineer in the UK

Linux Engineer
Top 15 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Linux Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 20 April 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 +49 222 £57,500 -5.74% 44
UK excluding London +54 193 £55,000 +5.77% 37
South East +25 70 £50,000 -23.08% 12
Work from Home +45 63 £70,000 +30.84% 16
London -7 46 £97,500 +34.48% 12
East of England -3 37 £57,500 +4.55% 13
North of England -39 29 £57,000 +26.67% 6
South West -25 28 £55,000 - 1
Scotland -6 18 £100,000 +81.82%
North West -22 13 £59,000 +34.86% 4
Midlands -35 11 £52,500 +31.25% 3
Yorkshire -49 11 £34,000 -28.42% 2
West Midlands -28 8 £53,750 +13.16% 2
North East -34 5 £70,000 +16.67%
East Midlands -54 3 £26,265 -34.34% 1

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

For the 6 months to 20 April 2026, Linux 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 Linux Engineer in the job title.

1 252 (100.00%) Linux
2 54 (21.43%) Python
3 50 (19.84%) Security Cleared
4 49 (19.44%) Bash
5 48 (19.05%) Ansible
5 48 (19.05%) AWS
5 48 (19.05%) Software Engineering
6 46 (18.25%) Red Hat
7 45 (17.86%) DevOps
8 40 (15.87%) Problem-Solving
9 36 (14.29%) High Availability
10 33 (13.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 33 (13.10%) Terraform
11 31 (12.30%) SaaS
12 30 (11.90%) Degree
13 29 (11.51%) CentOS
13 29 (11.51%) Infrastructure as Code
13 29 (11.51%) Platform Engineering
14 28 (11.11%) Kubernetes
15 27 (10.71%) Azure
15 27 (10.71%) Embedded Linux
16 24 (9.52%) Windows
17 23 (9.13%) DNS
18 22 (8.73%) Active Directory
18 22 (8.73%) Docker
18 22 (8.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 22 (8.73%) Perl
19 21 (8.33%) Microsoft
19 21 (8.33%) SQL
19 21 (8.33%) Ubuntu

Linux 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 12 (4.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.98%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.98%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.59%) Apache
4 2 (0.79%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 48 (19.05%) AWS
2 31 (12.30%) SaaS
3 27 (10.71%) Azure
4 15 (5.95%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (5.16%) GCP
5 13 (5.16%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (3.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 8 (3.17%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (1.98%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (1.98%) Amazon ElastiCache
8 5 (1.98%) Amazon OpenSearch
8 5 (1.98%) CloudFront
8 5 (1.98%) GitHub
8 5 (1.98%) IaaS
8 5 (1.98%) PaaS
8 5 (1.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 4 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (1.19%) Amazon ECR
10 3 (1.19%) Amazon ECS
10 3 (1.19%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 23 (9.13%) DNS
2 14 (5.56%) Firewall
2 14 (5.56%) SAN
3 10 (3.97%) HTTP
4 7 (2.78%) DHCP
4 7 (2.78%) iSCSI
4 7 (2.78%) Remote Desktop
5 5 (1.98%) PuTTY
5 5 (1.98%) SSH
5 5 (1.98%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.59%) VPN
7 3 (1.19%) Ethernet
7 3 (1.19%) InfiniBand
7 3 (1.19%) LAN
7 3 (1.19%) SNMP
7 3 (1.19%) WAN
8 2 (0.79%) Bluetooth
8 2 (0.79%) NAS
8 2 (0.79%) Network Security
8 2 (0.79%) PBX
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (5.56%) MySQL
2 8 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.78%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.98%) Amazon Aurora
4 5 (1.98%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.79%) KDB
7 1 (0.40%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.40%) MariaDB
7 1 (0.40%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.40%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 7 (2.78%) GitLab
2 4 (1.59%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.19%) Git
3 3 (1.19%) Visual Studio
4 2 (0.79%) JIRA
5 1 (0.40%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.40%) GDB
5 1 (0.40%) WinDbg
General
1 46 (18.25%) Social Skills
2 21 (8.33%) Finance
3 14 (5.56%) Public Sector
4 8 (3.17%) Manufacturing
4 8 (3.17%) Organisational Skills
5 7 (2.78%) Retail
5 7 (2.78%) Telecoms
6 6 (2.38%) Pharmaceutical
7 4 (1.59%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.19%) Banking
8 3 (1.19%) Electronics
9 2 (0.79%) Analytical Skills
9 2 (0.79%) Front Office
9 2 (0.79%) Law
9 2 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.40%) German Language
10 1 (0.40%) Legal
10 1 (0.40%) Military
10 1 (0.40%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.38%) LAMP
2 5 (1.98%) Loki
3 3 (1.19%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (0.79%) FIX Protocol
4 2 (0.79%) LDAP
4 2 (0.79%) Middleware
5 1 (0.40%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.40%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.33%) Data Centre
2 12 (4.76%) Hedge funds
3 10 (3.97%) Management Information System
4 7 (2.78%) Embedded Systems
5 6 (2.38%) Driving Licence
6 5 (1.98%) Cloud Native
6 5 (1.98%) PKI
7 4 (1.59%) Clustering
7 4 (1.59%) Device Driver
7 4 (1.59%) FPGA
7 4 (1.59%) IoT
7 4 (1.59%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.59%) Robotics
7 4 (1.59%) Video on Demand
7 4 (1.59%) Video\Live Streaming
8 2 (0.79%) Fixed Income
8 2 (0.79%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.79%) PCIe
8 2 (0.79%) Photography
8 2 (0.79%) Raspberry Pi
Operating Systems
1 252 (100.00%) Linux
2 33 (13.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 29 (11.51%) CentOS
4 27 (10.71%) Embedded Linux
5 24 (9.52%) Windows
6 21 (8.33%) Ubuntu
7 18 (7.14%) Unix
8 7 (2.78%) Windows Server
9 5 (1.98%) VMS
10 4 (1.59%) Rocky
10 4 (1.59%) Solaris
10 4 (1.59%) SUSE
11 2 (0.79%) AIX
11 2 (0.79%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.79%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.40%) Debian
12 1 (0.40%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (19.05%) Software Engineering
2 45 (17.86%) DevOps
3 40 (15.87%) Problem-Solving
4 36 (14.29%) High Availability
5 29 (11.51%) Infrastructure as Code
5 29 (11.51%) Platform Engineering
6 22 (8.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 20 (7.94%) CI/CD
8 14 (5.56%) Continuous Improvement
9 13 (5.16%) Containerisation
9 13 (5.16%) Migration
10 12 (4.76%) Computer Science
10 12 (4.76%) Disaster Recovery
10 12 (4.76%) Stakeholder Management
11 10 (3.97%) ITIL
11 10 (3.97%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 9 (3.57%) Customer Service
12 9 (3.57%) Deployment Automation
12 9 (3.57%) Mathematics
13 8 (3.17%) Logistics
Programming Languages
1 54 (21.43%) Python
2 49 (19.44%) Bash
3 22 (8.73%) Perl
4 21 (8.33%) SQL
5 20 (7.94%) C++
6 19 (7.54%) C
7 13 (5.16%) PowerShell
8 10 (3.97%) Shell Script
9 8 (3.17%) Java
9 8 (3.17%) PHP
10 6 (2.38%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.98%) DCL
11 5 (1.98%) Embedded C
11 5 (1.98%) Embedded C++
11 5 (1.98%) Korn
11 5 (1.98%) Tcl
12 2 (0.79%) Go
13 1 (0.40%) C#
Qualifications
1 50 (19.84%) Security Cleared
2 30 (11.90%) Degree
3 19 (7.54%) DV Cleared
4 17 (6.75%) SC Cleared
5 8 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.17%) RHCE
6 3 (1.19%) LPIC
7 2 (0.79%) Linux+ Certification
7 2 (0.79%) RHCSA
8 1 (0.40%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.40%) CISA
8 1 (0.40%) CISSP
8 1 (0.40%) CompTIA CySA+
8 1 (0.40%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (1.19%) QA
2 2 (0.79%) SLA
3 1 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.40%) NIST
System Software
1 22 (8.73%) Active Directory
1 22 (8.73%) Docker
2 8 (3.17%) Citrix Hypervisor
2 8 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (1.98%) Firmware
4 5 (1.98%) vSphere
5 3 (1.19%) Lustre
6 2 (0.79%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.79%) Samba
7 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 48 (19.05%) Ansible
2 33 (13.10%) Terraform
3 28 (11.11%) Kubernetes
4 11 (4.37%) Grafana
5 8 (3.17%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.38%) Nagios
6 6 (2.38%) Puppet
7 5 (1.98%) WSUS
8 4 (1.59%) Podman
9 2 (0.79%) Red Hat Satellite
9 2 (0.79%) Red Hat Spacewalk
Vendors
1 46 (18.25%) Red Hat
2 21 (8.33%) Microsoft
3 17 (6.75%) VMware
4 12 (4.76%) Dell
5 5 (1.98%) IBM
5 5 (1.98%) McAfee
5 5 (1.98%) Oracle
6 4 (1.59%) Cisco
6 4 (1.59%) Google
6 4 (1.59%) Splunk
7 3 (1.19%) Atlassian
7 3 (1.19%) EMC
7 3 (1.19%) Mellanox
7 3 (1.19%) Mirantis
7 3 (1.19%) NetApp
7 3 (1.19%) Rapid7
8 2 (0.79%) D-Link
8 2 (0.79%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.79%) HP
9 1 (0.40%) Juniper