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 13 February 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 454 542 517
Rank change year-on-year +88 -25 +55
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 213 154 278
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.31% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.34% 0.39%
Number of salaries quoted 155 109 241
10th Percentile £41,750 £42,608 £42,500
25th Percentile £46,250 £52,554 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £62,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,000 £78,750
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 60,794 45,662 70,425
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.17% 91.74% 94.90%
Number of salaries quoted 38,174 23,853 55,156
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,280
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 13 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Linux Engineer in the UK

Linux Engineer
Top 14 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 13 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 +74 183 £55,000 -9.84% 34
UK excluding London +85 152 £50,000 -9.09% 31
Work from Home +88 65 £72,500 +31.06% 18
South East +58 53 £50,000 -9.09% 12
London +13 48 £85,000 +13.33% 8
East of England +20 31 £50,000 -9.62% 2
North of England +12 20 £35,000 -36.36% 5
South West +2 20 £55,000 +2.80% 7
Scotland +2 19 £100,000 +100.00% 2
Midlands +10 10 £55,000 +69.23% 3
West Midlands +19 9 £55,000 +69.23% 2
Yorkshire -28 9 £32,500 -31.58%
North West +14 6 £50,000 -20.00% 4
North East - 5 £70,000 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 13 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.

1 213 (100.00%) Linux
2 51 (23.94%) AWS
3 49 (23.00%) Python
4 47 (22.07%) Ansible
5 44 (20.66%) Bash
6 40 (18.78%) DevOps
6 40 (18.78%) Security Cleared
7 39 (18.31%) Red Hat
7 39 (18.31%) Software Engineering
8 33 (15.49%) Terraform
9 31 (14.55%) Windows
10 30 (14.08%) Degree
10 30 (14.08%) Problem-Solving
11 28 (13.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 27 (12.68%) SaaS
13 26 (12.21%) Platform Engineering
14 24 (11.27%) Azure
15 23 (10.80%) Embedded Linux
16 22 (10.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 21 (9.86%) C++
17 21 (9.86%) Infrastructure as Code
17 21 (9.86%) Kubernetes
17 21 (9.86%) SQL
17 21 (9.86%) VMware
18 20 (9.39%) C
19 18 (8.45%) CentOS
19 18 (8.45%) CI/CD
19 18 (8.45%) High Availability
19 18 (8.45%) Microsoft
19 18 (8.45%) 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 5 (2.35%) WebSphere
2 4 (1.88%) Tomcat
2 4 (1.88%) WebSphere Application Server
3 3 (1.41%) Apache
3 3 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.41%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.41%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.94%) nginx
5 1 (0.47%) JBoss
Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 51 (23.94%) AWS
2 27 (12.68%) SaaS
3 24 (11.27%) Azure
4 13 (6.10%) Amazon EC2
5 12 (5.63%) GCP
6 10 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (4.23%) Amazon EKS
7 9 (4.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 8 (3.76%) Microsoft 365
9 7 (3.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 7 (3.29%) Route 53
10 5 (2.35%) Amazon ECR
10 5 (2.35%) Amazon ElastiCache
10 5 (2.35%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 5 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (2.35%) CloudFront
10 5 (2.35%) GitHub
10 5 (2.35%) Google Workspace
10 5 (2.35%) IaaS
10 5 (2.35%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (7.51%) DNS
2 10 (4.69%) Firewall
3 9 (4.23%) DHCP
4 8 (3.76%) SAN
5 6 (2.82%) SSL
5 6 (2.82%) TCP/IP
6 5 (2.35%) PuTTY
6 5 (2.35%) SSH
7 4 (1.88%) HTTP
7 4 (1.88%) LAN
7 4 (1.88%) WAN
8 3 (1.41%) Ethernet
8 3 (1.41%) InfiniBand
8 3 (1.41%) SNMP
9 2 (0.94%) 3G
9 2 (0.94%) Fibre Channel
9 2 (0.94%) NAS
9 2 (0.94%) Network Security
9 2 (0.94%) RS-232
9 2 (0.94%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.23%) Amazon RDS
2 7 (3.29%) MySQL
2 7 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (3.29%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.35%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (1.88%) DB2
5 1 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.47%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (2.82%) GitLab
2 4 (1.88%) Git
3 3 (1.41%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.41%) JIRA
4 1 (0.47%) Ant
4 1 (0.47%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.47%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.47%) Maven
4 1 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (0.47%) Testinfra
4 1 (0.47%) Visual Studio
General
1 34 (15.96%) Social Skills
2 25 (11.74%) Finance
3 14 (6.57%) Public Sector
4 10 (4.69%) Manufacturing
5 9 (4.23%) Retail
6 8 (3.76%) Pharmaceutical
7 5 (2.35%) Banking
8 3 (1.41%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.94%) Analytical Skills
9 2 (0.94%) Electronics
9 2 (0.94%) Military
9 2 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.47%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.47%) German Language
10 1 (0.47%) Legal
10 1 (0.47%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.82%) LAMP
1 6 (2.82%) LDAP
2 5 (2.35%) Loki
3 4 (1.88%) LAPP Stack
3 4 (1.88%) WebSphere MQ
4 3 (1.41%) Middleware
5 2 (0.94%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.47%) JSON
6 1 (0.47%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 13 (6.10%) Data Centre
2 8 (3.76%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.29%) Hedge funds
4 6 (2.82%) Linux Command Line
5 4 (1.88%) Onboarding
5 4 (1.88%) Video on Demand
5 4 (1.88%) Video\Live Streaming
6 3 (1.41%) Clustering
6 3 (1.41%) FPGA
6 3 (1.41%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.41%) PKI
7 2 (0.94%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.47%) Embedded Systems
8 1 (0.47%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.47%) PCIe
8 1 (0.47%) Photography
8 1 (0.47%) Raspberry Pi
8 1 (0.47%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 213 (100.00%) Linux
2 31 (14.55%) Windows
3 28 (13.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (10.80%) Embedded Linux
5 18 (8.45%) CentOS
5 18 (8.45%) Unix
6 15 (7.04%) Ubuntu
7 6 (2.82%) Debian
8 5 (2.35%) Solaris
8 5 (2.35%) VMS
8 5 (2.35%) Windows Server
9 4 (1.88%) Rocky
10 2 (0.94%) FreeRTOS
10 2 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.47%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (18.78%) DevOps
2 39 (18.31%) Software Engineering
3 30 (14.08%) Problem-Solving
4 26 (12.21%) Platform Engineering
5 22 (10.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 21 (9.86%) Infrastructure as Code
7 18 (8.45%) CI/CD
7 18 (8.45%) High Availability
8 15 (7.04%) Disaster Recovery
9 13 (6.10%) Continuous Improvement
10 12 (5.63%) Computer Science
10 12 (5.63%) Stakeholder Management
11 11 (5.16%) Customer Service
12 10 (4.69%) Containerisation
12 10 (4.69%) Logistics
13 9 (4.23%) E-Commerce
13 9 (4.23%) Migration
14 8 (3.76%) Presales
14 8 (3.76%) Root Cause Analysis
14 8 (3.76%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 49 (23.00%) Python
2 44 (20.66%) Bash
3 21 (9.86%) C++
3 21 (9.86%) SQL
4 20 (9.39%) C
5 17 (7.98%) Perl
6 10 (4.69%) Java
7 8 (3.76%) PL/SQL
7 8 (3.76%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.29%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.82%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.35%) DCL
10 5 (2.35%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.35%) Tcl
11 4 (1.88%) PHP
12 3 (1.41%) Korn
13 1 (0.47%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 40 (18.78%) Security Cleared
2 30 (14.08%) Degree
3 14 (6.57%) SC Cleared
4 11 (5.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.69%) DV Cleared
6 9 (4.23%) RHCE
7 6 (2.82%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.88%) ITIL Certification
9 3 (1.41%) LPIC
10 2 (0.94%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
10 2 (0.94%) Linux+ Certification
10 2 (0.94%) RHCSA
11 1 (0.47%) CISA
11 1 (0.47%) CISSP
11 1 (0.47%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.29%) SLA
2 4 (1.88%) GDPR
2 4 (1.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (0.94%) MISRA
4 1 (0.47%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.47%) NIST
4 1 (0.47%) QA
System Software
1 15 (7.04%) Active Directory
2 10 (4.69%) Docker
2 10 (4.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.82%) vSphere
4 5 (2.35%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 4 (1.88%) Firmware
6 3 (1.41%) Embedded Firmware
6 3 (1.41%) Lustre
6 3 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.94%) NFS
8 1 (0.47%) vCloud
8 1 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 47 (22.07%) Ansible
2 33 (15.49%) Terraform
3 21 (9.86%) Kubernetes
4 7 (3.29%) Grafana
5 6 (2.82%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.82%) Red Hat Satellite
6 4 (1.88%) Nagios
6 4 (1.88%) Puppet
7 3 (1.41%) WSUS
8 2 (0.94%) Podman
8 2 (0.94%) Red Hat Spacewalk
9 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.47%) Packer
9 1 (0.47%) Proxmox
9 1 (0.47%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 39 (18.31%) Red Hat
2 21 (9.86%) VMware
3 18 (8.45%) Microsoft
4 9 (4.23%) IBM
5 7 (3.29%) Google
6 6 (2.82%) NetApp
7 5 (2.35%) Atlassian
8 4 (1.88%) Cisco
9 3 (1.41%) Dell
9 3 (1.41%) EMC
9 3 (1.41%) McAfee
9 3 (1.41%) Mellanox
10 2 (0.94%) Commvault
10 2 (0.94%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.94%) HP
10 2 (0.94%) Oracle
10 2 (0.94%) Pure Storage
10 2 (0.94%) Splunk
11 1 (0.47%) Meraki
11 1 (0.47%) Rapid7