Linux Engineer Job Trends

Linux Engineer
UK

The median Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 21 May 2026.

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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 499 561 546
Rank change year-on-year +62 -15 +9
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 239 101 364
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.26% 0.23% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.28% 0.26% 0.40%
Number of salaries quoted 185 83 305
10th Percentile £45,000 £38,500 £39,334
25th Percentile £50,000 £41,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £61,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.56% +1.67% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £86,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £46,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +29.03% -15.45% +4.76%

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 86,124 39,293 92,007
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.36% 89.47% 94.64%
Number of salaries quoted 56,991 22,669 67,426
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £71,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £51,729 £50,000
% change year-on-year -3.34% +3.46% -5.66%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 +68 219 £65,000 +6.56% 42
UK excluding London +80 185 £60,000 +29.03% 35
South East +34 62 £50,000 -28.57% 10
Work from Home +62 59 £70,000 +19.15% 10
East of England +30 48 £70,000 +51.35% 13
London -32 48 £91,250 +25.86% 10
South West -35 26 £57,500 -14.81% 2
North of England -26 22 £60,000 +33.33% 5
Scotland +8 15 £100,000 +100.00% 3
North West +9 14 £60,000 +37.14% 3
Midlands -25 12 £40,000 - 3
East Midlands -19 7 £40,000 - 3
Yorkshire -35 6 £80,000 +68.42% 2
West Midlands -40 5 £52,500 +10.53%
North East -38 2 £47,500 -20.83%

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

For the 6 months to 21 May 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.

1 239 (100.00%) Linux
2 55 (23.01%) Red Hat
3 52 (21.76%) Python
3 52 (21.76%) Software Engineering
4 50 (20.92%) Bash
5 47 (19.67%) Ansible
5 47 (19.67%) DevOps
6 46 (19.25%) AWS
7 41 (17.15%) Security Cleared
8 37 (15.48%) Terraform
9 35 (14.64%) Problem-Solving
10 34 (14.23%) High Availability
11 32 (13.39%) Embedded Linux
12 31 (12.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 29 (12.13%) Kubernetes
13 29 (12.13%) SaaS
14 28 (11.72%) Infrastructure as Code
15 27 (11.30%) Azure
15 27 (11.30%) Platform Engineering
16 24 (10.04%) CentOS
16 24 (10.04%) Docker
17 23 (9.62%) Ubuntu
18 22 (9.21%) Degree
19 21 (8.79%) CI/CD
20 20 (8.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
21 19 (7.95%) Active Directory
21 19 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
21 19 (7.95%) DV Cleared
22 18 (7.53%) DNS
22 18 (7.53%) Microsoft

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 13 (5.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (2.09%) OpenStack
2 5 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.26%) Apache
4 1 (0.42%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 46 (19.25%) AWS
2 29 (12.13%) SaaS
3 27 (11.30%) Azure
4 19 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
5 10 (4.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 10 (4.18%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (3.35%) GCP
7 5 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (2.09%) Amazon ECR
7 5 (2.09%) Amazon ECS
7 5 (2.09%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (2.09%) Amazon ElastiCache
7 5 (2.09%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 5 (2.09%) CloudFront
7 5 (2.09%) IaaS
7 5 (2.09%) PaaS
7 5 (2.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 4 (1.67%) GitHub
9 3 (1.26%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.42%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 18 (7.53%) DNS
2 15 (6.28%) SAN
3 13 (5.44%) Firewall
4 10 (4.18%) HTTP
5 9 (3.77%) iSCSI
6 8 (3.35%) Remote Desktop
7 5 (2.09%) PuTTY
7 5 (2.09%) SSH
8 4 (1.67%) TCP/IP
8 4 (1.67%) VPN
9 3 (1.26%) Ethernet
9 3 (1.26%) InfiniBand
10 2 (0.84%) Bluetooth
10 2 (0.84%) DHCP
10 2 (0.84%) Network Security
10 2 (0.84%) RFID
10 2 (0.84%) SNMP
10 2 (0.84%) WAN
10 2 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (0.84%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (5.86%) MySQL
2 9 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (3.35%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.09%) Amazon Aurora
4 5 (2.09%) Amazon RDS
4 5 (2.09%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (2.09%) KDB
5 1 (0.42%) InfluxDB
5 1 (0.42%) MariaDB
5 1 (0.42%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 8 (3.35%) GitLab
2 5 (2.09%) Git
3 3 (1.26%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.26%) PetaLinux
3 3 (1.26%) Visual Studio
4 2 (0.84%) JIRA
5 1 (0.42%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.42%) GDB
5 1 (0.42%) WinDbg
General
1 42 (17.57%) Social Skills
2 21 (8.79%) Finance
3 11 (4.60%) Telecoms
4 9 (3.77%) Organisational Skills
5 7 (2.93%) Banking
5 7 (2.93%) Public Sector
6 5 (2.09%) Front Office
7 4 (1.67%) Aerospace
7 4 (1.67%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.26%) Electronics
9 2 (0.84%) Law
9 2 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.84%) Retail
10 1 (0.42%) German Language
10 1 (0.42%) Military
10 1 (0.42%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (2.09%) FIX Protocol
1 5 (2.09%) Loki
2 4 (1.67%) Yocto
3 3 (1.26%) LAMP
4 2 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.42%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.42%) LDAP
5 1 (0.42%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.79%) Data Centre
2 12 (5.02%) Embedded Systems
2 12 (5.02%) Hedge funds
3 11 (4.60%) Management Information System
4 7 (2.93%) Robotics
5 6 (2.51%) Cloud Native
5 6 (2.51%) FPGA
6 5 (2.09%) Fixed Income
6 5 (2.09%) PKI
7 4 (1.67%) Clustering
7 4 (1.67%) Device Driver
7 4 (1.67%) IoT
8 3 (1.26%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.26%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.84%) Driving Licence
9 2 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.84%) PCIe
9 2 (0.84%) Photography
9 2 (0.84%) Raspberry Pi
10 1 (0.42%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 239 (100.00%) Linux
2 32 (13.39%) Embedded Linux
3 31 (12.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (10.04%) CentOS
5 23 (9.62%) Ubuntu
6 16 (6.69%) Unix
7 15 (6.28%) Windows
8 6 (2.51%) Windows Server
9 5 (2.09%) VMS
10 4 (1.67%) Solaris
10 4 (1.67%) SUSE
11 3 (1.26%) AIX
11 3 (1.26%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.42%) Debian
12 1 (0.42%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.42%) Rocky
12 1 (0.42%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (21.76%) Software Engineering
2 47 (19.67%) DevOps
3 35 (14.64%) Problem-Solving
4 34 (14.23%) High Availability
5 28 (11.72%) Infrastructure as Code
6 27 (11.30%) Platform Engineering
7 21 (8.79%) CI/CD
8 20 (8.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 13 (5.44%) Containerisation
10 12 (5.02%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 11 (4.60%) Deployment Automation
11 11 (4.60%) ITIL
11 11 (4.60%) Migration
12 10 (4.18%) Observability
13 9 (3.77%) Linux Kernel Development
13 9 (3.77%) Stakeholder Management
14 8 (3.35%) Cloud Security
14 8 (3.35%) Presales
14 8 (3.35%) Time Management
15 7 (2.93%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 52 (21.76%) Python
2 50 (20.92%) Bash
3 17 (7.11%) Perl
4 14 (5.86%) C
5 13 (5.44%) C++
5 13 (5.44%) SQL
6 9 (3.77%) PowerShell
7 8 (3.35%) PHP
8 7 (2.93%) Shell Script
9 6 (2.51%) Korn
10 5 (2.09%) DCL
10 5 (2.09%) Tcl
11 3 (1.26%) Java
11 3 (1.26%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.84%) Embedded C
12 2 (0.84%) Embedded C++
12 2 (0.84%) Go
12 2 (0.84%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.42%) C#
Qualifications
1 41 (17.15%) Security Cleared
2 22 (9.21%) Degree
3 19 (7.95%) DV Cleared
4 15 (6.28%) SC Cleared
5 8 (3.35%) RHCE
6 3 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.26%) LPIC
7 2 (0.84%) Azure Certification
7 2 (0.84%) Linux+ Certification
7 2 (0.84%) RHCSA
8 1 (0.42%) CCNA
8 1 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.42%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.42%) MCSE
8 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.09%) QA
2 3 (1.26%) SLA
System Software
1 24 (10.04%) Docker
2 19 (7.95%) Active Directory
3 9 (3.77%) Citrix Hypervisor
3 9 (3.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (2.93%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 5 (2.09%) Firmware
5 5 (2.09%) vSphere
6 3 (1.26%) Lustre
7 2 (0.84%) Embedded Firmware
7 2 (0.84%) Samba
8 1 (0.42%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 47 (19.67%) Ansible
2 37 (15.48%) Terraform
3 29 (12.13%) Kubernetes
4 12 (5.02%) Grafana
5 7 (2.93%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.51%) Puppet
7 5 (2.09%) Nagios
7 5 (2.09%) WSUS
8 4 (1.67%) Podman
9 1 (0.42%) Red Hat Satellite
9 1 (0.42%) Red Hat Spacewalk
Vendors
1 55 (23.01%) Red Hat
2 18 (7.53%) Microsoft
3 15 (6.28%) VMware
4 12 (5.02%) Dell
5 7 (2.93%) Oracle
6 5 (2.09%) McAfee
6 5 (2.09%) Rapid7
6 5 (2.09%) Splunk
7 4 (1.67%) Cisco
7 4 (1.67%) IBM
8 3 (1.26%) EMC
8 3 (1.26%) Mellanox
8 3 (1.26%) Mirantis
8 3 (1.26%) NetApp
9 2 (0.84%) D-Link
10 1 (0.42%) Apple
10 1 (0.42%) Atlassian
10 1 (0.42%) Fortinet
10 1 (0.42%) Google
10 1 (0.42%) Veeam