Hiring managers: “A good Linux-head is hard to find”

A new report shows Linux experience is in greater demand — and, hiring managers say, harder to find — than in past years.

The 2013 Linux Jobs Report, released today by the Linux Foundation, surveyed 850 hiring managers and 2,600 Linus pros and found that Linux might be a good area of focus for aspiring techsters.

Dice’s annual salary survey shows that salaries for Linux folks are rising at double the rate of other tech salaries. Yet the number of practicing Linux pros seems to be dwindling.

Hiring managers in the Linux survey said they were finding it difficult to source good Linux talent — 90 percent said so this year as opposed to 80 percent last year. And 93 percent of those 850 hiring managers said they will be hiring a Linux person before Q3 rolls around, a 4 percent increase from last year’s survey.

Of course, with all that demand, currently employed Linux professionals are feeling like the belles of the ball, with 75 percent fielding cold calls from recruiters in the past six months. Linux pros told the foundation that when considering a move, they do take into account work-life balance (read: a normal, 40-hour work week would be nice) and work-from-home options, but the biggest pull is all about the Benjamins, i.e., extremely competitive salaries.

And the Linux job title hiring companies are most eager to fill? The humble and infinitely flexible sysadmin. The Linux Foundation says this is representative of “the growth of Linux in the enterprise to support cloud computing and big data.”

Here’s an infographic the foundation whipped up to show off other survey results: