Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £59,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 18 April 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 469 533 543
Rank change year-on-year +64 +10 +5
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 250 103 358
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.25% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.28% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 182 89 296
10th Percentile £39,350 £40,000 £41,000
25th Percentile £46,250 £45,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,500 £62,500 £63,750
Median % change year-on-year -4.80% -1.96% +6.25%
75th Percentile £76,875 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £86,250 £102,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £52,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +5.77% -9.57% +4.55%

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 80,276 37,162 89,418
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 89.30% 94.57%
Number of salaries quoted 51,387 23,373 66,316
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 £53,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +12.15% -10.83%
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 18 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 18 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 +56 220 £57,500 -5.74% 46
UK excluding London +80 192 £55,000 +5.77% 39
South East +26 69 £50,000 -23.08% 15
Work from Home +40 63 £70,000 +30.84% 16
London -3 45 £98,750 +36.21% 11
East of England -2 37 £57,500 +4.55% 13
North of England -42 29 £57,000 +26.67% 6
South West -26 28 £55,000 - 1
Scotland -10 18 £100,000 +81.82%
North West -20 13 £59,000 +34.86% 4
Midlands -35 11 £52,500 +31.25% 4
Yorkshire -56 11 £34,000 -28.42% 2
West Midlands -20 8 £53,750 +13.16% 4
North East -27 5 £70,000 +16.67%
East Midlands -50 3 £26,265 -34.34%

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 250 (100.00%) Linux
2 53 (21.20%) Python
3 50 (20.00%) Security Cleared
4 48 (19.20%) Ansible
4 48 (19.20%) Bash
4 48 (19.20%) Software Engineering
5 47 (18.80%) AWS
6 45 (18.00%) DevOps
6 45 (18.00%) Red Hat
7 40 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
8 35 (14.00%) High Availability
9 33 (13.20%) Terraform
10 32 (12.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 31 (12.40%) SaaS
12 29 (11.60%) CentOS
12 29 (11.60%) Degree
12 29 (11.60%) Infrastructure as Code
12 29 (11.60%) Platform Engineering
13 27 (10.80%) Azure
13 27 (10.80%) Embedded Linux
13 27 (10.80%) Kubernetes
14 24 (9.60%) Windows
15 23 (9.20%) DNS
16 22 (8.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 22 (8.80%) Perl
17 21 (8.40%) Active Directory
17 21 (8.40%) Docker
17 21 (8.40%) SQL
17 21 (8.40%) Ubuntu
18 20 (8.00%) C++

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 11 (4.40%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (2.00%) OpenStack
2 5 (2.00%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.60%) Apache
4 2 (0.80%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 47 (18.80%) AWS
2 31 (12.40%) SaaS
3 27 (10.80%) Azure
4 15 (6.00%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (5.20%) GCP
6 12 (4.80%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (3.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 8 (3.20%) Amazon EC2
9 5 (2.00%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (2.00%) Amazon ElastiCache
9 5 (2.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 5 (2.00%) CloudFront
9 5 (2.00%) GitHub
9 5 (2.00%) IaaS
9 5 (2.00%) PaaS
9 5 (2.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 4 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (1.20%) Amazon ECR
11 3 (1.20%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (1.20%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 23 (9.20%) DNS
2 13 (5.20%) Firewall
2 13 (5.20%) SAN
3 10 (4.00%) HTTP
4 7 (2.80%) DHCP
5 6 (2.40%) iSCSI
5 6 (2.40%) Remote Desktop
6 5 (2.00%) PuTTY
6 5 (2.00%) SSH
6 5 (2.00%) TCP/IP
7 4 (1.60%) VPN
8 3 (1.20%) Ethernet
8 3 (1.20%) InfiniBand
8 3 (1.20%) LAN
8 3 (1.20%) SNMP
8 3 (1.20%) WAN
9 2 (0.80%) Bluetooth
9 2 (0.80%) NAS
9 2 (0.80%) Network Security
9 2 (0.80%) PBX
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (5.20%) MySQL
2 7 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.40%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.00%) Amazon Aurora
4 5 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.40%) InfluxDB
6 1 (0.40%) KDB
6 1 (0.40%) MariaDB
6 1 (0.40%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.40%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 7 (2.80%) GitLab
2 4 (1.60%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.20%) Git
3 3 (1.20%) Visual Studio
4 2 (0.80%) JIRA
5 1 (0.40%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.40%) GDB
5 1 (0.40%) WinDbg
General
1 45 (18.00%) Social Skills
2 21 (8.40%) Finance
3 14 (5.60%) Public Sector
4 8 (3.20%) Manufacturing
5 7 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
5 7 (2.80%) Retail
5 7 (2.80%) Telecoms
6 6 (2.40%) Pharmaceutical
7 4 (1.60%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.20%) Banking
8 3 (1.20%) Electronics
9 2 (0.80%) Analytical Skills
9 2 (0.80%) Law
9 2 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.40%) Front Office
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 (2.40%) LAMP
2 5 (2.00%) Loki
3 3 (1.20%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (0.80%) LDAP
4 2 (0.80%) Middleware
5 1 (0.40%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.40%) FIX Protocol
5 1 (0.40%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.40%) Data Centre
2 12 (4.80%) Hedge funds
3 9 (3.60%) Management Information System
4 7 (2.80%) Embedded Systems
5 6 (2.40%) Driving Licence
6 5 (2.00%) PKI
7 4 (1.60%) Cloud Native
7 4 (1.60%) Clustering
7 4 (1.60%) Device Driver
7 4 (1.60%) FPGA
7 4 (1.60%) IoT
7 4 (1.60%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.60%) Robotics
7 4 (1.60%) Video on Demand
7 4 (1.60%) Video\Live Streaming
8 2 (0.80%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.80%) PCIe
8 2 (0.80%) Photography
8 2 (0.80%) Raspberry Pi
9 1 (0.40%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 250 (100.00%) Linux
2 32 (12.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 29 (11.60%) CentOS
4 27 (10.80%) Embedded Linux
5 24 (9.60%) Windows
6 21 (8.40%) Ubuntu
7 18 (7.20%) Unix
8 7 (2.80%) Windows Server
9 5 (2.00%) VMS
10 4 (1.60%) Rocky
10 4 (1.60%) Solaris
10 4 (1.60%) SUSE
11 2 (0.80%) AIX
11 2 (0.80%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.40%) Debian
12 1 (0.40%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (19.20%) Software Engineering
2 45 (18.00%) DevOps
3 40 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
4 35 (14.00%) High Availability
5 29 (11.60%) Infrastructure as Code
5 29 (11.60%) Platform Engineering
6 22 (8.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 20 (8.00%) CI/CD
8 14 (5.60%) Continuous Improvement
9 13 (5.20%) Containerisation
9 13 (5.20%) Migration
10 12 (4.80%) Computer Science
10 12 (4.80%) Disaster Recovery
10 12 (4.80%) Stakeholder Management
11 9 (3.60%) Customer Service
11 9 (3.60%) Deployment Automation
11 9 (3.60%) ITIL
11 9 (3.60%) Mathematics
11 9 (3.60%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 8 (3.20%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 53 (21.20%) Python
2 48 (19.20%) Bash
3 22 (8.80%) Perl
4 21 (8.40%) SQL
5 20 (8.00%) C++
6 19 (7.60%) C
7 12 (4.80%) PowerShell
8 9 (3.60%) Shell Script
9 8 (3.20%) Java
9 8 (3.20%) PHP
10 6 (2.40%) PL/SQL
11 5 (2.00%) DCL
11 5 (2.00%) Embedded C
11 5 (2.00%) Embedded C++
11 5 (2.00%) Tcl
12 4 (1.60%) Korn
13 2 (0.80%) Go
14 1 (0.40%) C#
Qualifications
1 50 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 29 (11.60%) Degree
3 19 (7.60%) DV Cleared
4 17 (6.80%) SC Cleared
5 8 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.20%) RHCE
6 3 (1.20%) LPIC
7 2 (0.80%) Linux+ Certification
7 2 (0.80%) 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 (1.20%) QA
2 2 (0.80%) SLA
3 1 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.40%) NIST
System Software
1 21 (8.40%) Active Directory
1 21 (8.40%) Docker
2 8 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.80%) Citrix Hypervisor
3 7 (2.80%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (2.00%) Firmware
4 5 (2.00%) vSphere
5 3 (1.20%) Lustre
6 2 (0.80%) Embedded Firmware
6 2 (0.80%) Samba
7 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 48 (19.20%) Ansible
2 33 (13.20%) Terraform
3 27 (10.80%) Kubernetes
4 11 (4.40%) Grafana
5 8 (3.20%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.40%) Nagios
6 6 (2.40%) Puppet
7 5 (2.00%) WSUS
8 4 (1.60%) Podman
9 2 (0.80%) Red Hat Satellite
9 2 (0.80%) Red Hat Spacewalk
Vendors
1 45 (18.00%) Red Hat
2 20 (8.00%) Microsoft
3 17 (6.80%) VMware
4 11 (4.40%) Dell
5 5 (2.00%) IBM
5 5 (2.00%) McAfee
6 4 (1.60%) Cisco
6 4 (1.60%) Google
6 4 (1.60%) Oracle
6 4 (1.60%) Splunk
7 3 (1.20%) Atlassian
7 3 (1.20%) EMC
7 3 (1.20%) Mellanox
7 3 (1.20%) Mirantis
7 3 (1.20%) NetApp
7 3 (1.20%) Rapid7
8 2 (0.80%) D-Link
8 2 (0.80%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.80%) HP
9 1 (0.40%) Juniper