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 4 September 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 575 545 495
Rank change year-on-year -30 -50 -25
Permanent jobs requiring a Linux Engineer 230 136 318
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.28% 0.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.22% 0.31% 0.42%
Number of salaries quoted 171 110 236
10th Percentile £46,250 £38,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £60,000 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £53,750 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +25.58% -2.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £85,000 £76,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £85,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £42,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +52.94% -19.05% +2.94%

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 103,497 43,997 75,693
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.82% 89.68% 95.22%
Number of salaries quoted 71,228 25,950 47,905
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,169 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £74,258 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £92,159
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 4 September 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 4 September 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 -6 220 £67,500 +28.57% 140
UK excluding London -1 177 £65,000 +52.94% 53
East of England +8 50 £85,000 +106.06% 10
North of England -21 50 £60,000 +41.18% 8
London -66 48 £90,000 +24.14% 97
North West +12 44 £60,000 +41.18% 7
Work from Home -61 38 £62,500 -10.71% 39
South East -24 34 £70,000 - 19
South West -57 19 £80,000 -5.88% 6
Midlands -32 18 £60,000 +29.73% 2
East Midlands -24 14 £53,750 +34.38%
Scotland +6 6 £64,226 +38.87% 6
Yorkshire - 6 £56,250 -
West Midlands -31 4 £60,000 -7.69% 2

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

For the 6 months to 4 September 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.

1 230 (100.00%) Linux
2 86 (37.39%) Software Engineering
3 52 (22.61%) Python
4 51 (22.17%) Red Hat
5 50 (21.74%) Embedded Linux
6 43 (18.70%) Bash
7 39 (16.96%) Ansible
8 37 (16.09%) AWS
9 36 (15.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 36 (15.65%) Terraform
10 35 (15.22%) Docker
10 35 (15.22%) Kubernetes
11 34 (14.78%) CI/CD
12 31 (13.48%) DevOps
12 31 (13.48%) Security Cleared
13 30 (13.04%) Azure
14 27 (11.74%) C++
14 27 (11.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 25 (10.87%) C
15 25 (10.87%) Containerisation
16 24 (10.43%) Infrastructure as Code
17 21 (9.13%) Ubuntu
18 20 (8.70%) CentOS
19 19 (8.26%) Git
19 19 (8.26%) Windows
20 18 (7.83%) Degree
20 18 (7.83%) Unix
21 17 (7.39%) Continuous Improvement
21 17 (7.39%) Firewall
21 17 (7.39%) MySQL

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 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.74%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.30%) Apache
3 3 (1.30%) IIS
3 3 (1.30%) nginx
3 3 (1.30%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 37 (16.09%) AWS
2 30 (13.04%) Azure
3 13 (5.65%) GCP
4 12 (5.22%) SaaS
5 11 (4.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 11 (4.78%) Amazon ECR
5 11 (4.78%) Amazon ECS
5 11 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
6 9 (3.91%) Microsoft 365
7 8 (3.48%) OpenShift
8 3 (1.30%) Entra ID
8 3 (1.30%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (1.30%) Power Automate
9 2 (0.87%) Google Workspace
9 2 (0.87%) IaaS
9 2 (0.87%) PaaS
10 1 (0.43%) GitHub
10 1 (0.43%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 17 (7.39%) Firewall
2 13 (5.65%) DNS
3 11 (4.78%) TCP/IP
4 9 (3.91%) Wi-Fi
5 8 (3.48%) Wireless
6 6 (2.61%) iSCSI
6 6 (2.61%) SAN
7 5 (2.17%) DHCP
7 5 (2.17%) Remote Desktop
7 5 (2.17%) VPN
8 4 (1.74%) Intrusion Detection
9 3 (1.30%) VoIP
10 2 (0.87%) LTE
10 2 (0.87%) VLAN
11 1 (0.43%) 5G
11 1 (0.43%) Ethernet
11 1 (0.43%) NGN
11 1 (0.43%) WAN
11 1 (0.43%) WireGuard
11 1 (0.43%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (7.39%) MySQL
2 11 (4.78%) Elasticsearch
3 6 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (2.17%) KDB
4 5 (2.17%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.43%) InfluxDB
5 1 (0.43%) MariaDB
5 1 (0.43%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 19 (8.26%) Git
2 14 (6.09%) GitLab
3 3 (1.30%) PetaLinux
4 2 (0.87%) GDB
4 2 (0.87%) JIRA
5 1 (0.43%) CMake
5 1 (0.43%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.43%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.43%) WinDbg
General
1 40 (17.39%) Social Skills
2 16 (6.96%) Finance
3 13 (5.65%) Banking
4 9 (3.91%) Telecoms
5 5 (2.17%) Front Office
5 5 (2.17%) Organisational Skills
6 4 (1.74%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (1.74%) Electronics
7 3 (1.30%) Legal
7 3 (1.30%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.30%) Pharmaceutical
7 3 (1.30%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (15.65%) Terraform
2 15 (6.52%) Yocto
3 5 (2.17%) FIX Protocol
4 1 (0.43%) Apache NiFi
4 1 (0.43%) ARM Templates
4 1 (0.43%) QML
4 1 (0.43%) Qt
4 1 (0.43%) Qt Quick
Miscellaneous
1 23 (10.00%) Embedded Systems
2 12 (5.22%) Data Centre
3 11 (4.78%) Device Driver
3 11 (4.78%) IoT
4 8 (3.48%) FPGA
5 7 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (3.04%) Robotics
6 6 (2.61%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (2.17%) Algorithms
7 5 (2.17%) Cloud Native
7 5 (2.17%) Fixed Income
7 5 (2.17%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.30%) Clustering
8 3 (1.30%) Driving Licence
8 3 (1.30%) Hedge funds
9 2 (0.87%) Product Ownership
9 2 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.43%) Distributed Computing
10 1 (0.43%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (0.43%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 230 (100.00%) Linux
2 50 (21.74%) Embedded Linux
3 27 (11.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 21 (9.13%) Ubuntu
5 20 (8.70%) CentOS
6 19 (8.26%) Windows
7 18 (7.83%) Unix
8 8 (3.48%) AIX
9 6 (2.61%) Windows Server
10 5 (2.17%) Rocky
10 5 (2.17%) Solaris
11 3 (1.30%) Mac OS
11 3 (1.30%) Robot Operating System
12 2 (0.87%) Debian
13 1 (0.43%) OpenWrt
13 1 (0.43%) SUSE
13 1 (0.43%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (37.39%) Software Engineering
2 36 (15.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 34 (14.78%) CI/CD
4 31 (13.48%) DevOps
5 25 (10.87%) Containerisation
6 24 (10.43%) Infrastructure as Code
7 17 (7.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 17 (7.39%) Problem-Solving
8 16 (6.96%) Configuration Management
9 15 (6.52%) Low Latency
10 14 (6.09%) Migration
11 13 (5.65%) High Availability
11 13 (5.65%) Open Source
12 11 (4.78%) Architectural Design
12 11 (4.78%) Capacity Planning
12 11 (4.78%) Deployment Automation
12 11 (4.78%) ITIL
12 11 (4.78%) Virtual Environments
13 10 (4.35%) Collaborative Culture
14 9 (3.91%) Collaborative Engineering
Programming Languages
1 52 (22.61%) Python
2 43 (18.70%) Bash
3 27 (11.74%) C++
4 25 (10.87%) C
5 14 (6.09%) Shell Script
6 9 (3.91%) Embedded C
6 9 (3.91%) PowerShell
7 8 (3.48%) Perl
8 7 (3.04%) Korn
9 3 (1.30%) Embedded C++
9 3 (1.30%) Java
9 3 (1.30%) MATLAB
9 3 (1.30%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.30%) SQL
10 2 (0.87%) Rust
11 1 (0.43%) C#
11 1 (0.43%) Go
11 1 (0.43%) PHP
Qualifications
1 31 (13.48%) Security Cleared
2 18 (7.83%) Degree
3 12 (5.22%) DV Cleared
4 5 (2.17%) SC Cleared
5 4 (1.74%) ITIL Certification
5 4 (1.74%) RHCE
6 3 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.30%) Master's Degree
6 3 (1.30%) RHCSA
7 2 (0.87%) Azure Certification
7 2 (0.87%) IBM AIX Certification
8 1 (0.43%) CCNA
8 1 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.43%) Linux+ Certification
8 1 (0.43%) MCSE
8 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.09%) QA
2 4 (1.74%) SLA
3 1 (0.43%) JTAG
System Software
1 35 (15.22%) Docker
2 8 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.61%) Citrix Hypervisor
4 5 (2.17%) Active Directory
5 3 (1.30%) vSphere
6 2 (0.87%) Firmware
6 2 (0.87%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.87%) KVM
6 2 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.43%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 39 (16.96%) Ansible
2 35 (15.22%) Kubernetes
3 11 (4.78%) Grafana
3 11 (4.78%) Nagios
4 6 (2.61%) Podman
4 6 (2.61%) Puppet
5 3 (1.30%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 51 (22.17%) Red Hat
2 12 (5.22%) VMware
3 11 (4.78%) Microsoft
3 11 (4.78%) Rapid7
3 11 (4.78%) Splunk
4 6 (2.61%) Oracle
5 5 (2.17%) Dell
6 3 (1.30%) Citrix
6 3 (1.30%) SonicWALL
6 3 (1.30%) YouTube
7 2 (0.87%) Atlassian
7 2 (0.87%) Google
7 2 (0.87%) IBM
7 2 (0.87%) Mirantis
8 1 (0.43%) Apple
8 1 (0.43%) Cisco
8 1 (0.43%) Fortinet
8 1 (0.43%) Juniper
8 1 (0.43%) SAP
8 1 (0.43%) Veeam