Senior Linux Engineer Job Trends

Senior Linux Engineer
UK

The median Senior Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 22 February 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 590 669 731
Rank change year-on-year +79 +62 +168
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Linux Engineer 80 24 73
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.050% 0.097%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.13% 0.054% 0.10%
Number of salaries quoted 50 18 64
10th Percentile £58,891 £48,132 £41,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £56,250 £51,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% - +6.12%
75th Percentile £100,000 £130,000 £80,000
90th Percentile - £158,500 £90,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £55,000 £61,250
% change year-on-year +27.27% -10.20% +23.12%

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 62,995 44,279 71,484
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.34% 91.43% 94.80%
Number of salaries quoted 39,740 23,369 55,764
10th Percentile £29,000 £32,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,268
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%

Senior Linux Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Senior Linux Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Senior Linux Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Linux Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Senior Linux Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Senior Linux Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Linux Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Linux Engineer over the 6 months to 22 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Linux Engineer in the UK

Senior Linux Engineer
Top 12 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Linux Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 22 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
UK excluding London +32 52 £70,000 +27.27% 13
England +54 50 £70,000 +7.69% 13
Work from Home +73 32 £80,000 +67.56% 5
Scotland - 18 £100,000 - 1
London +49 16 £100,000 -23.08% 2
South East +10 12 £65,000 +8.33% 10
East of England +20 8 £65,000 +22.64% 1
South West -16 6 £80,000 +49.53%
North of England - 5 £70,000 -
North East - 5 £70,000 -
Midlands - 3 £52,500 - 1
West Midlands - 3 £52,500 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 22 February 2026, Senior 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 Senior Linux Engineer in the job title.

1 80 (100.00%) Linux
2 19 (23.75%) Software Engineering
3 14 (17.50%) Embedded Linux
3 14 (17.50%) Security Cleared
4 13 (16.25%) Platform Engineering
5 11 (13.75%) DevOps
5 11 (13.75%) Microsoft
6 9 (11.25%) High Availability
6 9 (11.25%) VMware
7 8 (10.00%) AWS
7 8 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 8 (10.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 8 (10.00%) Red Hat
7 8 (10.00%) Stakeholder Management
8 7 (8.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 6 (7.50%) Ansible
9 6 (7.50%) Python
10 5 (6.25%) Bash
10 5 (6.25%) Customer Requirements
10 5 (6.25%) Presales
11 4 (5.00%) Docker
11 4 (5.00%) Kubernetes
11 4 (5.00%) Perl
11 4 (5.00%) Windows
12 3 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
12 3 (3.75%) Change Control
12 3 (3.75%) Change Management
12 3 (3.75%) CI/CD
12 3 (3.75%) Degree
12 3 (3.75%) Dell

Senior 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 3 (3.75%) OpenStack
2 2 (2.50%) Apache
2 2 (2.50%) nginx
3 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
Cloud Services
1 8 (10.00%) AWS
2 3 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
2 3 (3.75%) Route 53
3 1 (1.25%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.75%) SAN
2 2 (2.50%) Bluetooth
2 2 (2.50%) DHCP
2 2 (2.50%) DNS
2 2 (2.50%) LAN
2 2 (2.50%) NAS
2 2 (2.50%) RFID
2 2 (2.50%) SNMP
2 2 (2.50%) TCP/IP
2 2 (2.50%) WAN
2 2 (2.50%) Wi-Fi
2 2 (2.50%) Wireless
3 1 (1.25%) Ethernet
3 1 (1.25%) Firewall
3 1 (1.25%) InfiniBand
3 1 (1.25%) iSCSI
3 1 (1.25%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.25%) MySQL
1 1 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.25%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (3.75%) GitLab
2 2 (2.50%) JIRA
2 2 (2.50%) Visual Studio
General
1 14 (17.50%) Public Sector
2 10 (12.50%) Finance
3 3 (3.75%) Social Skills
4 2 (2.50%) Electronics
4 2 (2.50%) Manufacturing
4 2 (2.50%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.50%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 11 (13.75%) Data Centre
2 8 (10.00%) Hedge funds
3 4 (5.00%) FPGA
4 3 (3.75%) Clustering
5 2 (2.50%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (2.50%) PCIe
5 2 (2.50%) Photography
5 2 (2.50%) Raspberry Pi
6 1 (1.25%) Cloud Native
6 1 (1.25%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 80 (100.00%) Linux
2 14 (17.50%) Embedded Linux
3 4 (5.00%) Windows
4 3 (3.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (2.50%) CentOS
5 2 (2.50%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (23.75%) Software Engineering
2 13 (16.25%) Platform Engineering
3 11 (13.75%) DevOps
4 9 (11.25%) High Availability
5 8 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
5 8 (10.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 8 (10.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 7 (8.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 5 (6.25%) Customer Requirements
7 5 (6.25%) Presales
8 3 (3.75%) Change Control
8 3 (3.75%) Change Management
8 3 (3.75%) ITIL
8 3 (3.75%) Mentoring
8 3 (3.75%) Migration
8 3 (3.75%) Problem-Solving
8 3 (3.75%) Root Cause Analysis
8 3 (3.75%) Service Delivery
8 3 (3.75%) Systematic Trading
8 3 (3.75%) Trend Analysis
Programming Languages
1 6 (7.50%) Python
2 5 (6.25%) Bash
3 4 (5.00%) Perl
4 2 (2.50%) C
4 2 (2.50%) C++
4 2 (2.50%) Java
4 2 (2.50%) SQL
5 1 (1.25%) Korn
5 1 (1.25%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 14 (17.50%) Security Cleared
2 3 (3.75%) Degree
2 3 (3.75%) SC Cleared
3 2 (2.50%) Linux+ Certification
3 2 (2.50%) LPIC
4 1 (1.25%) RHCE
System Software
1 4 (5.00%) Docker
2 2 (2.50%) Active Directory
2 2 (2.50%) Embedded Firmware
2 2 (2.50%) Firmware
3 1 (1.25%) Citrix Hypervisor
3 1 (1.25%) Lustre
3 1 (1.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 6 (7.50%) Ansible
2 4 (5.00%) Kubernetes
3 3 (3.75%) Terraform
4 2 (2.50%) Puppet
4 2 (2.50%) Red Hat Satellite
4 2 (2.50%) Red Hat Spacewalk
Vendors
1 11 (13.75%) Microsoft
2 9 (11.25%) VMware
3 8 (10.00%) Red Hat
4 3 (3.75%) Dell
5 2 (2.50%) HP
5 2 (2.50%) Oracle
6 1 (1.25%) EMC
6 1 (1.25%) IBM
6 1 (1.25%) Mellanox
6 1 (1.25%) NetApp