Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £67,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 16 August 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 562 560 478
Rank change year-on-year -2 -82 +2
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 223 130 339
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.26% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.22% 0.29% 0.43%
Number of salaries quoted 170 105 258
10th Percentile £40,000 £38,500 £37,380
25th Percentile £57,500 £40,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +22.73% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £85,000 £76,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £83,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £63,451 £42,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +49.30% -19.05% +0.48%

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 100,469 44,986 78,750
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.01% 89.94% 95.03%
Number of salaries quoted 68,644 26,650 52,502
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,400 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £72,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +9.38% -4.00% -6.54%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 +2 213 £67,500 +28.57% 86
UK excluding London -2 170 £63,451 +49.30% 57
London -56 49 £95,000 +31.03% 43
East of England 0 46 £77,500 +96.20% 13
Work from Home -23 46 £62,500 - 32
North of England -29 43 £60,000 +41.18% 7
South East -17 39 £70,000 - 14
North West +10 34 £60,000 +41.18% 6
Midlands -20 19 £45,000 +12.50% 1
South West -62 17 £60,000 -29.41% 7
East Midlands -13 15 £40,000 -
Yorkshire - 7 £80,000 - 1
Scotland +1 6 £64,226 +28.45% 11
West Midlands -33 4 £56,250 -13.46% 1
North East -62 2 £47,500 -20.83%

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

For the 6 months to 16 August 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.

1 223 (100.00%) Linux
2 73 (32.74%) Software Engineering
3 55 (24.66%) Python
3 55 (24.66%) Red Hat
4 46 (20.63%) Bash
5 44 (19.73%) Embedded Linux
6 40 (17.94%) AWS
7 38 (17.04%) Ansible
8 36 (16.14%) Docker
8 36 (16.14%) Kubernetes
9 35 (15.70%) Terraform
10 34 (15.25%) DevOps
10 34 (15.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 33 (14.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (14.35%) Security Cleared
13 31 (13.90%) Azure
14 30 (13.45%) CI/CD
15 27 (12.11%) CentOS
16 25 (11.21%) Infrastructure as Code
17 24 (10.76%) Containerisation
18 23 (10.31%) C
19 22 (9.87%) C++
19 22 (9.87%) Problem-Solving
19 22 (9.87%) Ubuntu
20 21 (9.42%) High Availability
21 20 (8.97%) MySQL
22 19 (8.52%) Degree
23 18 (8.07%) Firewall
23 18 (8.07%) Git
23 18 (8.07%) Unix

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 9 (4.04%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.79%) Apache
3 3 (1.35%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.35%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.90%) IIS
4 2 (0.90%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 40 (17.94%) AWS
2 31 (13.90%) Azure
3 15 (6.73%) GCP
3 15 (6.73%) SaaS
4 13 (5.83%) Azure DevOps
5 11 (4.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 11 (4.93%) Amazon ECR
5 11 (4.93%) Amazon ECS
5 11 (4.93%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (3.59%) OpenShift
7 3 (1.35%) GitHub
7 3 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (0.90%) Entra ID
8 2 (0.90%) Google Workspace
8 2 (0.90%) IaaS
8 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Copilot
8 2 (0.90%) PaaS
8 2 (0.90%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 18 (8.07%) Firewall
2 15 (6.73%) DNS
3 12 (5.38%) TCP/IP
4 10 (4.48%) SAN
5 9 (4.04%) iSCSI
6 8 (3.59%) Remote Desktop
7 7 (3.14%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (3.14%) Wireless
8 6 (2.69%) HTTP
9 4 (1.79%) VPN
10 3 (1.35%) Intrusion Detection
10 3 (1.35%) VoIP
11 2 (0.90%) DHCP
11 2 (0.90%) Network Security
11 2 (0.90%) PBX
12 1 (0.45%) LTE
12 1 (0.45%) RFID
12 1 (0.45%) VLAN
12 1 (0.45%) WAN
12 1 (0.45%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (8.97%) MySQL
2 11 (4.93%) Elasticsearch
3 9 (4.04%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (3.59%) SQL Server
5 5 (2.24%) KDB
6 1 (0.45%) InfluxDB
6 1 (0.45%) MariaDB
6 1 (0.45%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 18 (8.07%) Git
2 12 (5.38%) GitLab
3 3 (1.35%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.35%) PetaLinux
4 2 (0.90%) GDB
4 2 (0.90%) JIRA
4 2 (0.90%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.45%) CMake
5 1 (0.45%) WinDbg
General
1 42 (18.83%) Social Skills
2 19 (8.52%) Finance
3 13 (5.83%) Banking
4 11 (4.93%) Telecoms
5 8 (3.59%) Organisational Skills
6 5 (2.24%) Electronics
6 5 (2.24%) Front Office
7 4 (1.79%) Aerospace
7 4 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.79%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.35%) Legal
8 3 (1.35%) Pharmaceutical
8 3 (1.35%) Retail
9 2 (0.90%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (5.83%) Yocto
2 5 (2.24%) FIX Protocol
3 2 (0.90%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (0.45%) Apache NiFi
4 1 (0.45%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 23 (10.31%) Embedded Systems
2 14 (6.28%) Data Centre
3 12 (5.38%) Device Driver
3 12 (5.38%) IoT
4 10 (4.48%) Management Information System
5 9 (4.04%) FPGA
5 9 (4.04%) Robotics
6 6 (2.69%) Cloud Native
6 6 (2.69%) Hedge funds
7 5 (2.24%) Algorithms
7 5 (2.24%) Fixed Income
7 5 (2.24%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (1.35%) Driving Licence
10 2 (0.90%) Clustering
10 2 (0.90%) Product Ownership
10 2 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
11 1 (0.45%) Photography
11 1 (0.45%) PKI
11 1 (0.45%) Raspberry Pi
Operating Systems
1 223 (100.00%) Linux
2 44 (19.73%) Embedded Linux
3 33 (14.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 27 (12.11%) CentOS
5 22 (9.87%) Ubuntu
6 18 (8.07%) Unix
7 10 (4.48%) Windows
8 8 (3.59%) AIX
9 6 (2.69%) Windows Server
10 5 (2.24%) Rocky
10 5 (2.24%) Solaris
11 3 (1.35%) Mac OS
11 3 (1.35%) Robot Operating System
11 3 (1.35%) SUSE
12 1 (0.45%) Debian
12 1 (0.45%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (32.74%) Software Engineering
2 34 (15.25%) DevOps
2 34 (15.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 30 (13.45%) CI/CD
4 25 (11.21%) Infrastructure as Code
5 24 (10.76%) Containerisation
6 22 (9.87%) Problem-Solving
7 21 (9.42%) High Availability
8 15 (6.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 15 (6.73%) Low Latency
9 14 (6.28%) Configuration Management
10 12 (5.38%) ITIL
11 11 (4.93%) Architectural Design
11 11 (4.93%) Capacity Planning
11 11 (4.93%) Deployment Automation
11 11 (4.93%) Platform Engineering
11 11 (4.93%) Virtual Environments
12 10 (4.48%) Computer Science
13 9 (4.04%) Agile
13 9 (4.04%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 55 (24.66%) Python
2 46 (20.63%) Bash
3 23 (10.31%) C
4 22 (9.87%) C++
5 12 (5.38%) Shell Script
6 11 (4.93%) PowerShell
7 10 (4.48%) Perl
8 8 (3.59%) Embedded C
8 8 (3.59%) Korn
9 4 (1.79%) PHP
9 4 (1.79%) SQL
10 3 (1.35%) Embedded C++
10 3 (1.35%) Java
10 3 (1.35%) MATLAB
10 3 (1.35%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.90%) Go
12 1 (0.45%) C#
12 1 (0.45%) Rust
Qualifications
1 32 (14.35%) Security Cleared
2 19 (8.52%) Degree
3 15 (6.73%) DV Cleared
4 7 (3.14%) SC Cleared
5 6 (2.69%) RHCE
6 5 (2.24%) RHCSA
7 3 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.35%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.90%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.90%) IBM AIX Certification
8 2 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.45%) CCNA
9 1 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.45%) Linux+ Certification
9 1 (0.45%) MCSE
9 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.28%) QA
2 5 (2.24%) SLA
System Software
1 36 (16.14%) Docker
2 9 (4.04%) Active Directory
2 9 (4.04%) Citrix Hypervisor
3 8 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.35%) Firmware
5 2 (0.90%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.90%) KVM
5 2 (0.90%) Samba
5 2 (0.90%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.90%) vSphere
6 1 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 38 (17.04%) Ansible
2 36 (16.14%) Kubernetes
3 35 (15.70%) Terraform
4 13 (5.83%) Grafana
5 11 (4.93%) Nagios
6 7 (3.14%) Puppet
7 6 (2.69%) Podman
8 2 (0.90%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.45%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.45%) WSUS
Vendors
1 55 (24.66%) Red Hat
2 12 (5.38%) Microsoft
3 11 (4.93%) Rapid7
3 11 (4.93%) Splunk
4 10 (4.48%) Dell
4 10 (4.48%) VMware
5 6 (2.69%) Oracle
6 3 (1.35%) Cisco
6 3 (1.35%) YouTube
7 2 (0.90%) Atlassian
7 2 (0.90%) Citrix
7 2 (0.90%) D-Link
7 2 (0.90%) Google
7 2 (0.90%) IBM
7 2 (0.90%) Mirantis
7 2 (0.90%) SonicWALL
8 1 (0.45%) Apple
8 1 (0.45%) Fortinet
8 1 (0.45%) Juniper
8 1 (0.45%) McAfee