Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £57,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 20 February 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 451 538 526
Rank change year-on-year +87 -12 +32
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 217 153 281
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.31% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.34% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 159 111 246
10th Percentile £38,950 £42,608 £41,875
25th Percentile £46,250 £52,554 £48,188
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £65,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.54% +4.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £75,625 £80,000 £75,938
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £102,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -

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 62,593 44,758 70,993
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.28% 91.51% 94.81%
Number of salaries quoted 39,515 23,479 55,477
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,250
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 £73,750
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% -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 February 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 February 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 +66 187 £55,000 -15.38% 38
UK excluding London +85 156 £50,000 -9.09% 39
Work from Home +89 67 £70,000 +26.54% 16
South East +25 56 £50,000 -9.09% 14
London +8 48 £85,000 +13.33% 7
East of England +17 29 £55,000 -0.58% 5
South West +1 22 £55,000 +2.80% 4
North of England +6 20 £35,000 -36.36% 6
Scotland +9 19 £100,000 +100.00% 7
Midlands 0 11 £52,500 +61.54% 3
West Midlands +16 10 £53,750 +65.38% 2
Yorkshire -29 9 £32,500 -31.58% 3
North West +6 6 £50,000 -16.67% 2
North East - 5 £70,000 - 1
East Midlands -16 1 £26,265 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 20 February 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.

1 217 (100.00%) Linux
2 51 (23.50%) AWS
3 47 (21.66%) Python
4 44 (20.28%) Ansible
5 42 (19.35%) Bash
6 41 (18.89%) Red Hat
7 40 (18.43%) DevOps
7 40 (18.43%) Security Cleared
7 40 (18.43%) Software Engineering
8 32 (14.75%) Degree
8 32 (14.75%) Problem-Solving
8 32 (14.75%) Terraform
8 32 (14.75%) Windows
9 29 (13.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 28 (12.90%) SaaS
11 25 (11.52%) Platform Engineering
12 24 (11.06%) Azure
12 24 (11.06%) Embedded Linux
13 22 (10.14%) Infrastructure as Code
13 22 (10.14%) SQL
14 21 (9.68%) C++
14 21 (9.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 21 (9.68%) Kubernetes
15 20 (9.22%) C
15 20 (9.22%) CentOS
16 19 (8.76%) High Availability
16 19 (8.76%) Microsoft
16 19 (8.76%) VMware
17 18 (8.29%) DNS
18 17 (7.83%) Active Directory

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 5 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (2.30%) WebSphere
2 4 (1.84%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.84%) Tomcat
2 4 (1.84%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (1.38%) Apache
3 3 (1.38%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.92%) nginx
5 1 (0.46%) JBoss
Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 51 (23.50%) AWS
2 28 (12.90%) SaaS
3 24 (11.06%) Azure
4 13 (5.99%) Amazon EC2
5 12 (5.53%) GCP
6 10 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (4.15%) Amazon EKS
7 9 (4.15%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (4.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 7 (3.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 7 (3.23%) Route 53
9 5 (2.30%) Amazon ECR
9 5 (2.30%) Amazon ElastiCache
9 5 (2.30%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 5 (2.30%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (2.30%) CloudFront
9 5 (2.30%) GitHub
9 5 (2.30%) Google Workspace
9 5 (2.30%) IaaS
9 5 (2.30%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (8.29%) DNS
2 11 (5.07%) Firewall
3 9 (4.15%) DHCP
4 8 (3.69%) SAN
5 6 (2.76%) SSL
5 6 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 5 (2.30%) HTTP
6 5 (2.30%) PuTTY
6 5 (2.30%) SSH
7 4 (1.84%) LAN
7 4 (1.84%) WAN
8 3 (1.38%) Ethernet
8 3 (1.38%) InfiniBand
8 3 (1.38%) SNMP
9 2 (0.92%) 3G
9 2 (0.92%) Bluetooth
9 2 (0.92%) GPRS
9 2 (0.92%) RS-232
9 2 (0.92%) RS-485
9 2 (0.92%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.15%) Amazon RDS
2 7 (3.23%) MySQL
2 7 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (3.23%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.30%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (1.84%) DB2
5 1 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.46%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (2.76%) GitLab
2 4 (1.84%) Git
3 3 (1.38%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.38%) JIRA
4 2 (0.92%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.46%) Ant
5 1 (0.46%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.46%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.46%) Maven
5 1 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.46%) Testinfra
General
1 36 (16.59%) Social Skills
2 24 (11.06%) Finance
3 14 (6.45%) Public Sector
4 11 (5.07%) Manufacturing
5 9 (4.15%) Retail
6 8 (3.69%) Pharmaceutical
7 5 (2.30%) Banking
8 3 (1.38%) Electronics
8 3 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (1.38%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.92%) Analytical Skills
9 2 (0.92%) Military
9 2 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.46%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.46%) German Language
10 1 (0.46%) Legal
10 1 (0.46%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.76%) LAMP
1 6 (2.76%) LDAP
2 5 (2.30%) Loki
3 4 (1.84%) LAPP Stack
3 4 (1.84%) WebSphere MQ
4 3 (1.38%) Middleware
5 2 (0.92%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.46%) JSON
6 1 (0.46%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 14 (6.45%) Data Centre
2 8 (3.69%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.23%) Hedge funds
4 6 (2.76%) Linux Command Line
5 5 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 4 (1.84%) FPGA
6 4 (1.84%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.84%) PKI
6 4 (1.84%) Video on Demand
6 4 (1.84%) Video\Live Streaming
7 3 (1.38%) Clustering
8 2 (0.92%) Embedded Systems
8 2 (0.92%) PCIe
8 2 (0.92%) Photography
8 2 (0.92%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.92%) Raspberry Pi
9 1 (0.46%) Cloud Native
9 1 (0.46%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.46%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 217 (100.00%) Linux
2 32 (14.75%) Windows
3 29 (13.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (11.06%) Embedded Linux
5 20 (9.22%) CentOS
6 16 (7.37%) Ubuntu
6 16 (7.37%) Unix
7 6 (2.76%) Windows Server
8 5 (2.30%) VMS
9 4 (1.84%) Debian
9 4 (1.84%) Rocky
10 3 (1.38%) Solaris
11 2 (0.92%) FreeRTOS
11 2 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.46%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.46%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (18.43%) DevOps
1 40 (18.43%) Software Engineering
2 32 (14.75%) Problem-Solving
3 25 (11.52%) Platform Engineering
4 22 (10.14%) Infrastructure as Code
5 21 (9.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 19 (8.76%) High Availability
7 17 (7.83%) CI/CD
8 15 (6.91%) Disaster Recovery
9 13 (5.99%) Computer Science
9 13 (5.99%) Continuous Improvement
10 12 (5.53%) Stakeholder Management
11 11 (5.07%) Customer Service
12 10 (4.61%) Containerisation
12 10 (4.61%) Logistics
12 10 (4.61%) Migration
13 9 (4.15%) E-Commerce
13 9 (4.15%) Root Cause Analysis
14 8 (3.69%) ITIL
14 8 (3.69%) Presales
Programming Languages
1 47 (21.66%) Python
2 42 (19.35%) Bash
3 22 (10.14%) SQL
4 21 (9.68%) C++
5 20 (9.22%) C
6 17 (7.83%) Perl
7 10 (4.61%) Java
8 8 (3.69%) PL/SQL
8 8 (3.69%) Shell Script
9 7 (3.23%) Embedded C++
9 7 (3.23%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.30%) DCL
10 5 (2.30%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.30%) PHP
10 5 (2.30%) Tcl
11 2 (0.92%) Korn
12 1 (0.46%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 40 (18.43%) Security Cleared
2 32 (14.75%) Degree
3 14 (6.45%) SC Cleared
4 11 (5.07%) Computer Science Degree
4 11 (5.07%) DV Cleared
5 9 (4.15%) RHCE
6 6 (2.76%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.84%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (1.38%) LPIC
9 2 (0.92%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 2 (0.92%) Linux+ Certification
9 2 (0.92%) RHCSA
10 1 (0.46%) CISA
10 1 (0.46%) CISSP
10 1 (0.46%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.30%) SLA
2 3 (1.38%) GDPR
2 3 (1.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (0.92%) MISRA
4 1 (0.46%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.46%) NIST
4 1 (0.46%) QA
System Software
1 17 (7.83%) Active Directory
2 10 (4.61%) Docker
3 9 (4.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (2.76%) Firmware
4 6 (2.76%) vSphere
5 5 (2.30%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 4 (1.84%) Embedded Firmware
7 3 (1.38%) Lustre
7 3 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.92%) NFS
9 1 (0.46%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 44 (20.28%) Ansible
2 32 (14.75%) Terraform
3 21 (9.68%) Kubernetes
4 7 (3.23%) Grafana
5 6 (2.76%) Prometheus
6 5 (2.30%) Puppet
6 5 (2.30%) Red Hat Satellite
7 4 (1.84%) Nagios
7 4 (1.84%) WSUS
8 2 (0.92%) Podman
8 2 (0.92%) Red Hat Spacewalk
9 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.46%) Packer
9 1 (0.46%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 41 (18.89%) Red Hat
2 19 (8.76%) Microsoft
2 19 (8.76%) VMware
3 9 (4.15%) IBM
4 7 (3.23%) Google
5 5 (2.30%) Atlassian
5 5 (2.30%) Cisco
5 5 (2.30%) Dell
6 4 (1.84%) McAfee
6 4 (1.84%) NetApp
7 3 (1.38%) EMC
7 3 (1.38%) Mellanox
8 2 (0.92%) Commvault
8 2 (0.92%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.92%) HP
8 2 (0.92%) Oracle
8 2 (0.92%) Pure Storage
8 2 (0.92%) Splunk
9 1 (0.46%) Meraki
9 1 (0.46%) Rapid7