Observability Contract Job Trends

Observability
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Observability skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 178 315
Rank change year-on-year +101 +137 +77
Contract jobs citing Observability 1,762 520 263
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.24% 1.60% 0.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.84% 1.77% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,104 331 157
10th Percentile £400 £375 £456
25th Percentile £453 £453 £508
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £573
Median % change year-on-year - -3.93% -0.43%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £688
90th Percentile £750 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £508 £538
% change year-on-year +2.96% -5.67% +4.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 5 0
10th Percentile £44.86 £33.43 -
25th Percentile £62.94 £53.00 -
Median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% - -
75th Percentile £78.60 £80.00 -
90th Percentile £90.00 £82.70 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.00 £49.88 -
% change year-on-year +42.36% - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Observability falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 45,945 29,375 32,666
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.44% 90.50% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,954 18,237 20,159
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,063 1,777 1,475
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.42 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.47 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £66.70 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.08 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.13% -47.67% +6.17%

Observability
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Observability relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Observability job vacancy trend in the UK

Observability
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Observability.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Observability

Observability
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Observability over the 6 months to 15 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Observability in the UK

Observability
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Observability.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Observability

Observability
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Observability over the 6 months to 15 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Observability in the UK

Observability
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Observability within the UK over the 6 months to 15 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +110 1,508 £550 - 3,556
London +91 825 £550 -4.35% 2,434
UK excluding London +106 726 £523 +2.96% 1,445
Work from Home +67 480 £550 +2.42% 1,491
North of England +86 342 £513 +24.24% 445
Yorkshire +69 211 £514 +2.80% 142
North West +21 109 £525 +33.59% 274
South East +20 108 £575 +16.87% 239
Midlands +14 108 £550 +1.85% 139
West Midlands +11 102 £558 +3.24% 74
Scotland +12 76 £425 -15.00% 240
South West +5 66 £575 +4.55% 164
East of England -17 29 £538 -8.12% 109
North East - 23 £425 - 30
East Midlands -9 5 £425 -15.00% 65
Wales - 3 £413 - 43
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 73

Observability
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 61 (3.46%) Confluence
2 41 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
3 37 (2.10%) Apache Spark
4 32 (1.82%) Apache
5 28 (1.59%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.45%) SAS
7 5 (0.28%) CMS
7 5 (0.28%) nginx
8 4 (0.23%) Apache Pulsar
9 3 (0.17%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.17%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.17%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.11%) Camunda
10 2 (0.11%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.057%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.057%) IIS
11 1 (0.057%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.057%) Red Hat Fuse
11 1 (0.057%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.057%) Traefik
Applications
1 3 (0.17%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.057%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.057%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.057%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 8 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (0.28%) NetSuite
2 5 (0.28%) Sage X3
2 5 (0.28%) SAP MDG
2 5 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
4 3 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.057%) Magento
5 1 (0.057%) Oracle BRM
5 1 (0.057%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.057%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.057%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.057%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.057%) SAP BRIM
5 1 (0.057%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.057%) SAP FI-CA
5 1 (0.057%) SAP FS
5 1 (0.057%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 804 (45.63%) AWS
2 633 (35.93%) Azure
3 406 (23.04%) GitHub
4 323 (18.33%) GCP
5 295 (16.74%) GitHub Actions
6 191 (10.84%) Serverless
7 167 (9.48%) Azure DevOps
8 157 (8.91%) Amazon EKS
9 139 (7.89%) AWS Lambda
10 131 (7.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 120 (6.81%) Amazon S3
12 104 (5.90%) Datadog
13 100 (5.68%) AWS CloudFormation
14 91 (5.16%) Azure Monitor
15 84 (4.77%) OpenShift
16 83 (4.71%) Azure AKS
17 78 (4.43%) Amazon ECS
18 68 (3.86%) Snowflake
19 67 (3.80%) Power Platform
20 65 (3.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 95 (5.39%) Firewall
2 91 (5.16%) DNS
3 43 (2.44%) VPN
4 39 (2.21%) Network Security
5 32 (1.82%) TCP/IP
6 27 (1.53%) WAN
7 26 (1.48%) DHCP
7 26 (1.48%) SNMP
8 25 (1.42%) HTTP
9 19 (1.08%) BGP
10 17 (0.96%) SD-WAN
11 14 (0.79%) Internet
11 14 (0.79%) SSL
11 14 (0.79%) Wireless
12 12 (0.68%) OSPF
13 10 (0.57%) LAN
14 8 (0.45%) Ethernet VPN
14 8 (0.45%) VXLAN
15 7 (0.40%) VLAN
16 6 (0.34%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (6.81%) PostgreSQL
2 79 (4.48%) MongoDB
3 71 (4.03%) Relational Database
4 62 (3.52%) NoSQL
5 60 (3.41%) DynamoDB
6 58 (3.29%) Amazon RDS
6 58 (3.29%) MySQL
7 53 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
8 49 (2.78%) Data Lake
8 49 (2.78%) Redis
9 47 (2.67%) Metadata
9 47 (2.67%) Power BI
10 43 (2.44%) BigQuery
11 39 (2.21%) SQL Server
12 35 (1.99%) Delta Lake
13 33 (1.87%) Amazon Aurora
14 29 (1.65%) Amazon Redshift
15 27 (1.53%) Tableau
16 23 (1.31%) Amazon Athena
17 21 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 250 (14.19%) Jenkins
2 239 (13.56%) Git
3 190 (10.78%) GitLab
4 82 (4.65%) JIRA
5 36 (2.04%) Claude Code
6 35 (1.99%) JMeter
7 30 (1.70%) Selenium
8 28 (1.59%) JUnit
9 24 (1.36%) Gradle
9 24 (1.36%) Maven
10 23 (1.31%) Gatling
11 19 (1.08%) Postman
12 18 (1.02%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.96%) Bitbucket
13 17 (0.96%) Cucumber
14 16 (0.91%) Mockito
15 15 (0.85%) Cypress.io
16 13 (0.74%) Sonatype Nexus
17 10 (0.57%) LoadRunner
17 10 (0.57%) REST Assured
General
1 421 (23.89%) Social Skills
2 384 (21.79%) Finance
3 151 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (8.46%) Banking
5 148 (8.40%) Public Sector
6 49 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 37 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (2.04%) Retail
9 31 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
10 29 (1.65%) Legal
11 25 (1.42%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.08%) Telecoms
13 16 (0.91%) Front Office
13 16 (0.91%) Publishing
14 13 (0.74%) Aerospace
14 13 (0.74%) Military
15 12 (0.68%) Manufacturing
16 11 (0.62%) Law
17 10 (0.57%) Billing
17 10 (0.57%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 312 (17.71%) Senior
2 232 (13.17%) Architect
3 219 (12.43%) DevOps Engineer
4 195 (11.07%) Developer
5 178 (10.10%) Lead
6 111 (6.30%) AWS Engineer
7 105 (5.96%) Platform Engineer
8 95 (5.39%) Data Engineer
9 89 (5.05%) Cloud Engineer
10 88 (4.99%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 88 (4.99%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 74 (4.20%) Software Engineer
12 68 (3.86%) Azure Engineer
13 61 (3.46%) Site Engineer
14 56 (3.18%) Java Developer
15 50 (2.84%) AWS DevOps
16 49 (2.78%) Senior Developer
17 48 (2.72%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 44 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
19 42 (2.38%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 710 (40.30%) Terraform
2 286 (16.23%) Kafka
3 217 (12.32%) REST
4 131 (7.43%) Spring
5 120 (6.81%) Spring Boot
6 119 (6.75%) OpenTelemetry
7 104 (5.90%) React
8 93 (5.28%) RESTful
9 79 (4.48%) Node.js
10 73 (4.14%) .NET
11 70 (3.97%) OAuth
12 62 (3.52%) Model Context Protocol
13 61 (3.46%) Elastic Stack
14 54 (3.06%) OAuth2
15 47 (2.67%) FastAPI
16 41 (2.33%) LangGraph
17 40 (2.27%) JSON
17 40 (2.27%) LangChain
18 35 (1.99%) OpenID
18 35 (1.99%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 492 (27.92%) Cloud Native
2 250 (14.19%) Distributed Systems
3 127 (7.21%) AI Agents
4 117 (6.64%) Onboarding
5 102 (5.79%) Product Ownership
6 48 (2.72%) Management Information System
7 46 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
8 36 (2.04%) CMDB
8 36 (2.04%) Data Centre
9 35 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
10 34 (1.93%) Security Posture
11 31 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
12 30 (1.70%) Algorithms
13 28 (1.59%) Private Cloud
13 28 (1.59%) Public Cloud
14 27 (1.53%) Distributed Architecture
14 27 (1.53%) PKI
15 25 (1.42%) Virtual Team
16 24 (1.36%) Data Structures
16 24 (1.36%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 240 (13.62%) Linux
2 81 (4.60%) Windows
3 48 (2.72%) Unix
4 42 (2.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 34 (1.93%) Windows Server
6 17 (0.96%) VMS
7 13 (0.74%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.57%) Android
9 6 (0.34%) CentOS
10 5 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (0.17%) Debian
12 2 (0.11%) AIX
12 2 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.057%) Check Point GAiA
13 1 (0.057%) CoreOS
13 1 (0.057%) Solaris
13 1 (0.057%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.057%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.057%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,153 (65.44%) CI/CD
2 770 (43.70%) Infrastructure as Code
3 761 (43.19%) DevOps
4 493 (27.98%) AI
5 460 (26.11%) Agile
6 413 (23.44%) Containerisation
7 389 (22.08%) Platform Engineering
8 376 (21.34%) Microservices
9 324 (18.39%) Software Engineering
10 315 (17.88%) Test Automation
11 308 (17.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 308 (17.48%) Event-Driven
12 299 (16.97%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 245 (13.90%) Problem-Solving
14 227 (12.88%) Stakeholder Management
15 216 (12.26%) Technical Leadership
16 213 (12.09%) Root Cause Analysis
17 212 (12.03%) Analytics
18 207 (11.75%) Roadmaps
19 201 (11.41%) LLM
Programming Languages
1 735 (41.71%) Python
2 325 (18.44%) Java
3 250 (14.19%) SQL
4 242 (13.73%) Bash
5 153 (8.68%) PowerShell
6 150 (8.51%) TypeScript
7 96 (5.45%) Go
8 90 (5.11%) Bicep
9 86 (4.88%) C#
10 84 (4.77%) JavaScript
11 35 (1.99%) Shell Script
12 32 (1.82%) Kotlin
12 32 (1.82%) Scala
13 25 (1.42%) C++
13 25 (1.42%) Groovy
14 21 (1.19%) Ruby
14 21 (1.19%) Rust
15 17 (0.96%) Search Processing Language
16 10 (0.57%) Perl
16 10 (0.57%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 434 (24.63%) Security Cleared
2 351 (19.92%) SC Cleared
3 71 (4.03%) AWS Certification
4 59 (3.35%) Degree
5 57 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 53 (3.01%) Azure Certification
7 45 (2.55%) DV Cleared
8 33 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
9 23 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
10 21 (1.19%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 19 (1.08%) CISSP
12 16 (0.91%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 12 (0.68%) CCNP
14 10 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.51%) Master's Degree
16 8 (0.45%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 8 (0.45%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 7 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
18 6 (0.34%) PMI Certification
18 6 (0.34%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 131 (7.43%) Data Quality
2 105 (5.96%) QA
3 63 (3.58%) Accessibility
4 32 (1.82%) GDPR
5 19 (1.08%) NIST
6 16 (0.91%) SLA
7 15 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 13 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.62%) NCSC
9 11 (0.62%) WCAG
10 10 (0.57%) GRC
10 10 (0.57%) ISO 20022
11 6 (0.34%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.23%) IFRS
12 4 (0.23%) IFRS 9
12 4 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 3 (0.17%) MiFID
13 3 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 432 (24.52%) Docker
2 52 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (2.04%) Active Directory
4 17 (0.96%) IAG
5 16 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
6 12 (0.68%) vSphere
7 10 (0.57%) VMware NSX
8 7 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.28%) Hyper-V
10 4 (0.23%) Ceph
10 4 (0.23%) Squid
11 3 (0.17%) Firmware
11 3 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.17%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.11%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.11%) KVM
12 2 (0.11%) NFS
12 2 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 698 (39.61%) Kubernetes
2 377 (21.40%) Grafana
3 299 (16.97%) Prometheus
4 193 (10.95%) Ansible
5 67 (3.80%) Argo
6 35 (1.99%) Istio
7 23 (1.31%) Puppet
7 23 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
8 22 (1.25%) Kibana
8 22 (1.25%) Progress Chef
9 20 (1.14%) Control-M
10 18 (1.02%) Kustomize
11 12 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
12 10 (0.57%) FortiGate
12 10 (0.57%) ZABBIX
13 9 (0.51%) Cilium
13 9 (0.51%) Consul
14 8 (0.45%) Packer
14 8 (0.45%) Rancher
15 7 (0.40%) Nessus
Vendors
1 232 (13.17%) Splunk
2 207 (11.75%) Microsoft
3 188 (10.67%) Dynatrace
4 119 (6.75%) Google
5 95 (5.39%) Oracle
6 90 (5.11%) ServiceNow
7 86 (4.88%) Databricks
8 65 (3.69%) OpenAI
9 56 (3.18%) VMware
10 45 (2.55%) Red Hat
11 38 (2.16%) AppDynamics
12 35 (1.99%) Salesforce
13 30 (1.70%) New Relic
14 28 (1.59%) Cisco
15 25 (1.42%) IBM
15 25 (1.42%) SAP
16 21 (1.19%) Foundry
17 15 (0.85%) SolarWinds
18 14 (0.79%) Informatica
19 13 (0.74%) Nexthink