Senior Linux Engineer Job Trends

Senior Linux Engineer
UK

The median Senior Linux Engineer salary in the UK is £75,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 3 May 2026.

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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 631 632 780
Rank change year-on-year +1 +148 +111
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Linux Engineer 99 8 93
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.019% 0.097%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.12% 0.021% 0.10%
Number of salaries quoted 69 7 72
10th Percentile £65,000 £53,200 £39,001
25th Percentile £67,500 £58,125 £45,938
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £62,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £100,000 £162,500 £79,438
90th Percentile - £225,000 £81,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £53,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +30.84% -10.83% +21.21%

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 83,975 37,966 90,660
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.94% 89.30% 94.56%
Number of salaries quoted 54,064 23,403 66,761
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £59,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.78% +11.32% -11.67%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £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% -5.21%

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 3 May 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 3 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 +20 75 £75,000 -25.00% 10
UK excluding London -2 73 £70,000 +30.84% 10
Work from Home +47 38 £80,000 +28.00% 3
South East - 27 £70,000 - 1
London +9 20 £100,000 -55.56%
Scotland - 18 £100,000 -
East of England - 16 £85,000 - 6
South West -51 6 £80,000 +49.53% 2
Midlands - 3 £52,500 -
North West - 3 £70,000 -
West Midlands - 3 £52,500 -
North of England - 3 £70,000 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 3 May 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 99 (100.00%) Linux
2 29 (29.29%) Software Engineering
3 20 (20.20%) High Availability
4 17 (17.17%) Platform Engineering
5 15 (15.15%) Red Hat
6 14 (14.14%) Embedded Linux
7 13 (13.13%) Bash
7 13 (13.13%) Microsoft
8 12 (12.12%) AWS
8 12 (12.12%) Docker
8 12 (12.12%) Kubernetes
9 11 (11.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (11.11%) Security Cleared
10 10 (10.10%) Dell
10 10 (10.10%) DevOps
10 10 (10.10%) ITIL
10 10 (10.10%) SAN
11 9 (9.09%) Active Directory
12 8 (8.08%) Ansible
12 8 (8.08%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 8 (8.08%) Degree
12 8 (8.08%) Firewall
12 8 (8.08%) iSCSI
12 8 (8.08%) Linux Kernel Development
12 8 (8.08%) Microsoft 365
12 8 (8.08%) Microsoft Exchange
12 8 (8.08%) MySQL
12 8 (8.08%) PostgreSQL
12 8 (8.08%) PowerShell
12 8 (8.08%) Remote Desktop

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 8 (8.08%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (4.04%) Apache
2 4 (4.04%) OpenStack
3 2 (2.02%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 12 (12.12%) AWS
2 8 (8.08%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (1.01%) Azure
3 1 (1.01%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (1.01%) GitHub
3 1 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 10 (10.10%) SAN
2 8 (8.08%) Firewall
2 8 (8.08%) iSCSI
2 8 (8.08%) Remote Desktop
3 2 (2.02%) Bluetooth
3 2 (2.02%) DHCP
3 2 (2.02%) DNS
3 2 (2.02%) LAN
3 2 (2.02%) NAS
3 2 (2.02%) Network Security
3 2 (2.02%) PBX
3 2 (2.02%) RFID
3 2 (2.02%) SNMP
3 2 (2.02%) TCP/IP
3 2 (2.02%) VPN
3 2 (2.02%) WAN
3 2 (2.02%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (2.02%) Wireless
4 1 (1.01%) Ethernet
4 1 (1.01%) InfiniBand
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.08%) MySQL
1 8 (8.08%) PostgreSQL
1 8 (8.08%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (3.03%) GitLab
1 3 (3.03%) Visual Studio
2 2 (2.02%) JIRA
3 1 (1.01%) GDB
3 1 (1.01%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.01%) WinDbg
General
1 14 (14.14%) Finance
2 11 (11.11%) Public Sector
3 10 (10.10%) Social Skills
4 8 (8.08%) Organisational Skills
4 8 (8.08%) Telecoms
5 2 (2.02%) Electronics
5 2 (2.02%) Manufacturing
5 2 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.02%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 18 (18.18%) Data Centre
2 12 (12.12%) Hedge funds
3 8 (8.08%) Management Information System
4 6 (6.06%) Cloud Native
5 4 (4.04%) Clustering
5 4 (4.04%) FPGA
6 2 (2.02%) Embedded Systems
6 2 (2.02%) PCIe
6 2 (2.02%) Photography
6 2 (2.02%) Raspberry Pi
7 1 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 99 (100.00%) Linux
2 14 (14.14%) Embedded Linux
3 11 (11.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (5.05%) CentOS
5 2 (2.02%) Oracle Linux
5 2 (2.02%) Windows
6 1 (1.01%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (29.29%) Software Engineering
2 20 (20.20%) High Availability
3 17 (17.17%) Platform Engineering
4 10 (10.10%) DevOps
4 10 (10.10%) ITIL
5 8 (8.08%) Linux Kernel Development
5 8 (8.08%) Time Management
6 6 (6.06%) Infrastructure as Code
6 6 (6.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 5 (5.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 5 (5.05%) Presales
7 5 (5.05%) Stakeholder Management
8 4 (4.04%) CI/CD
9 3 (3.03%) Agile
9 3 (3.03%) Cybersecurity
9 3 (3.03%) Problem-Solving
9 3 (3.03%) Systematic Trading
10 2 (2.02%) ITSM
10 2 (2.02%) Vulnerability Assessment
10 2 (2.02%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 13 (13.13%) Bash
2 8 (8.08%) PowerShell
3 7 (7.07%) Python
4 6 (6.06%) Korn
5 5 (5.05%) C++
6 4 (4.04%) C
6 4 (4.04%) Perl
7 2 (2.02%) Java
7 2 (2.02%) SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (11.11%) Security Cleared
2 8 (8.08%) Degree
3 3 (3.03%) RHCE
3 3 (3.03%) SC Cleared
4 2 (2.02%) Linux+ Certification
4 2 (2.02%) LPIC
4 2 (2.02%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.02%) SLA
System Software
1 12 (12.12%) Docker
2 9 (9.09%) Active Directory
3 8 (8.08%) Citrix Hypervisor
4 2 (2.02%) Embedded Firmware
4 2 (2.02%) Firmware
4 2 (2.02%) Samba
4 2 (2.02%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 1 (1.01%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 12 (12.12%) Kubernetes
2 8 (8.08%) Ansible
3 4 (4.04%) Terraform
4 3 (3.03%) Puppet
5 2 (2.02%) Red Hat Satellite
5 2 (2.02%) Red Hat Spacewalk
Vendors
1 15 (15.15%) Red Hat
2 13 (13.13%) Microsoft
3 10 (10.10%) Dell
4 4 (4.04%) VMware
5 2 (2.02%) D-Link
5 2 (2.02%) HP
5 2 (2.02%) Oracle
6 1 (1.01%) Apple
6 1 (1.01%) EMC
6 1 (1.01%) IBM
6 1 (1.01%) Mellanox
6 1 (1.01%) NetApp