Observability Contracts

Observability
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Observability skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Observability over the 6 months leading up to 30 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 242 378 459
Rank change year-on-year +136 +81 +145
Contract jobs citing Observability 319 213 241
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.10% 0.50% 0.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.21% 0.58% 0.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 146 139
10th Percentile £400 £467 £452
25th Percentile £462 £512 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £555 £625
Median % change year-on-year -0.90% -11.20% -7.41%
75th Percentile £638 £716 £825
90th Percentile £742 £825 £1,000
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £506
% change year-on-year -4.76% +3.70% -15.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 6
10th Percentile £44.90 - £74.25
25th Percentile £53.38 £58.75 £78.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £60.00 £84.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% -28.57% -
75th Percentile £78.50 £61.25 £90.00
90th Percentile £82.10 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.00 £60.00 £78.00
% change year-on-year +31.67% -23.08% -

All Process and 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 26,331 36,749 50,370
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 91.02% 85.64% 89.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,815 23,629 34,859
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £408 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +2.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,103 2,511 1,675
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £10.63
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.00 £15.75
Median hourly rate £27.50 £36.50 £37.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.66% -1.35% +44.08%
75th Percentile £56.88 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £35.00
% change year-on-year -34.02% +8.91% +75.00%

Observability
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Observability as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Observability in the UK

Observability
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Observability.

Daily rate trend for Observability in the UK

Observability
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Observability over the 6 months to 30 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Observability in the UK

Observability
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Observability.

Hourly rate trend for Observability in the UK

Observability
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Observability over the 6 months to 30 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Observability in the UK

Observability
Top 15 Contract 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 30 May 2025. 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 +133 267 £570 +1.33% 2,946
London +80 160 £573 -4.58% 413
Work from Home +78 100 £556 -7.33% 1,930
UK excluding London +83 98 £500 -4.76% 2,916
North of England +15 32 £618 +17.62% 661
Scotland +10 24 £474 -8.89% 110
Yorkshire +24 21 £700 +33.33% 258
South East +71 15 £459 -14.60% 850
Midlands - 15 £537 - 525
West Midlands - 13 £550 - 275
North West +8 11 £402 -23.43% 331
East of England - 6 £690 - 417
South West +33 5 £619 +12.50% 341
East Midlands - 2 £429 - 215
Wales - 1 £586 - 78

Observability
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 23 (7.21%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.88%) Apache
2 6 (1.88%) Confluence
3 4 (1.25%) Alfresco
3 4 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (1.25%) Camunda
3 4 (1.25%) JBoss
3 4 (1.25%) SAS
4 3 (0.94%) nginx
5 2 (0.63%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.63%) Traefik
6 1 (0.31%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.31%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 1 (0.31%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.25%) Shopify
2 3 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.63%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.63%) SAP PM
4 1 (0.31%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 137 (42.95%) AWS
2 79 (24.76%) Azure
3 47 (14.73%) GitHub
4 44 (13.79%) Serverless
5 39 (12.23%) GCP
6 38 (11.91%) Datadog
7 33 (10.34%) AWS CloudFormation
8 31 (9.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 31 (9.72%) AWS Lambda
9 30 (9.40%) GitHub Actions
10 28 (8.78%) Amazon S3
11 27 (8.46%) OpenShift
12 26 (8.15%) Azure DevOps
13 25 (7.84%) Azure AKS
14 19 (5.96%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 19 (5.96%) SaaS
15 18 (5.64%) Azure Monitor
16 17 (5.33%) PaaS
17 13 (4.08%) Amazon ECS
18 12 (3.76%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.33%) DNS
1 17 (5.33%) Firewall
2 12 (3.76%) SAN
3 11 (3.45%) NAS
4 9 (2.82%) TCP/IP
5 7 (2.19%) Network Security
6 6 (1.88%) HTTP
7 5 (1.57%) LAN
7 5 (1.57%) SSL
8 4 (1.25%) Internet
8 4 (1.25%) SNMP
9 3 (0.94%) MQTT
9 3 (0.94%) SMS
9 3 (0.94%) VPN
9 3 (0.94%) Wireless
9 3 (0.94%) WLAN
10 2 (0.63%) HTTPS
10 2 (0.63%) SSH
10 2 (0.63%) VLAN
10 2 (0.63%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (9.09%) Elasticsearch
2 25 (7.84%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (6.27%) Hadoop
3 20 (6.27%) NoSQL
4 19 (5.96%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.64%) Big Data
6 14 (4.39%) MongoDB
7 13 (4.08%) MySQL
8 10 (3.13%) SQL Server
9 7 (2.19%) Data Lake
9 7 (2.19%) Data Warehouse
9 7 (2.19%) DynamoDB
9 7 (2.19%) Power BI
10 6 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
10 6 (1.88%) Azure SQL Database
11 5 (1.57%) OLTP
11 5 (1.57%) Oracle Database
12 4 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
12 4 (1.25%) BigQuery
12 4 (1.25%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 80 (25.08%) Jenkins
2 43 (13.48%) GitLab
3 37 (11.60%) Git
4 21 (6.58%) JIRA
5 11 (3.45%) Bitbucket
6 10 (3.13%) CircleCI
7 9 (2.82%) JUnit
8 7 (2.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 7 (2.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (1.88%) Artifactory
10 5 (1.57%) Gradle
10 5 (1.57%) SonarQube
10 5 (1.57%) TeamCity
10 5 (1.57%) Terragrunt
11 4 (1.25%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (1.25%) CA Release Automation
11 4 (1.25%) Cypress.io
11 4 (1.25%) Maven
12 3 (0.94%) Jaeger
13 2 (0.63%) Vite
General
1 86 (26.96%) Social Skills
2 62 (19.44%) Finance
3 52 (16.30%) Banking
4 31 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (6.27%) Public Sector
6 9 (2.82%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (2.51%) Retail
8 7 (2.19%) Investment Banking
8 7 (2.19%) Marketing
8 7 (2.19%) Telecoms
9 5 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.57%) Electronics
9 5 (1.57%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.25%) Military
11 2 (0.63%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.63%) Games
11 2 (0.63%) Tech for Good
11 2 (0.63%) Wholesale Banking
12 1 (0.31%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 57 (17.87%) Architect
2 55 (17.24%) Senior
3 44 (13.79%) DevOps Engineer
4 33 (10.34%) Developer
5 23 (7.21%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 21 (6.58%) Site Engineer
7 18 (5.64%) AWS Engineer
8 16 (5.02%) Kubernetes Engineer
8 16 (5.02%) Lead
8 16 (5.02%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.70%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.76%) AWS DevOps
10 12 (3.76%) Python Engineer
10 12 (3.76%) Software Engineer
10 12 (3.76%) Splunk Engineer
11 11 (3.45%) Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.45%) Senior DevOps
11 11 (3.45%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 9 (2.82%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 8 (2.51%) AWS Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (17.55%) OpenTelemetry
2 36 (11.29%) Kafka
3 30 (9.40%) REST
4 24 (7.52%) Spring
5 21 (6.58%) Elastic Stack
5 21 (6.58%) Spring Boot
6 19 (5.96%) AngularJS
7 17 (5.33%) JSON
8 16 (5.02%) GraphQL
8 16 (5.02%) React
9 15 (4.70%) Node.js
10 13 (4.08%) .NET
10 13 (4.08%) HTML
11 11 (3.45%) AWS CDK
11 11 (3.45%) XML
12 10 (3.13%) Hibernate
12 10 (3.13%) JPA
13 8 (2.51%) YAML
14 7 (2.19%) OAuth
14 7 (2.19%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 44 (13.79%) Cloud Native
2 23 (7.21%) Distributed Systems
3 18 (5.64%) Onboarding
4 15 (4.70%) Public Cloud
5 11 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (3.45%) Product Ownership
6 9 (2.82%) PKI
7 6 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.88%) Mobile App
8 5 (1.57%) Data Centre
8 5 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 4 (1.25%) EMC VMAX
9 4 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.25%) Enterprise Storage
9 4 (1.25%) Legacy Applications
9 4 (1.25%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.25%) Private Cloud
9 4 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.94%) Enterprise Cloud
10 3 (0.94%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 67 (21.00%) Linux
2 30 (9.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 25 (7.84%) Unix
4 24 (7.52%) Windows
5 8 (2.51%) Android
5 8 (2.51%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.63%) CentOS
6 2 (0.63%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.31%) AIX
7 1 (0.31%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.31%) Debian
7 1 (0.31%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.31%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (53.92%) CI/CD
2 151 (47.34%) DevOps
3 109 (34.17%) Infrastructure as Code
4 79 (24.76%) Agile
4 79 (24.76%) Microservices
5 67 (21.00%) Problem-Solving
6 66 (20.69%) Containerisation
7 64 (20.06%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 53 (16.61%) Test Automation
9 43 (13.48%) Migration
10 40 (12.54%) Analytics
11 39 (12.23%) Software Engineering
12 32 (10.03%) Event-Driven
12 32 (10.03%) Incident Response
12 32 (10.03%) Stakeholder Management
13 30 (9.40%) High Availability
14 29 (9.09%) Artificial Intelligence
15 27 (8.46%) Deployment Automation
15 27 (8.46%) Mentoring
16 25 (7.84%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 115 (36.05%) Python
2 52 (16.30%) Java
3 41 (12.85%) SQL
4 25 (7.84%) Bash
4 25 (7.84%) Go
5 22 (6.90%) TypeScript
6 19 (5.96%) Bicep
6 19 (5.96%) JavaScript
7 18 (5.64%) PowerShell
8 11 (3.45%) C#
9 9 (2.82%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (2.51%) Kotlin
10 8 (2.51%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.57%) Perl
12 4 (1.25%) Groovy
13 3 (0.94%) CodeQL
13 3 (0.94%) Scala
14 2 (0.63%) C
14 2 (0.63%) C++
14 2 (0.63%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 53 (16.61%) Security Cleared
2 44 (13.79%) SC Cleared
3 21 (6.58%) AWS Certification
4 15 (4.70%) Degree
5 10 (3.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 5 (1.57%) Azure Certification
6 5 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.57%) OCP
6 5 (1.57%) Oracle Certification
7 4 (1.25%) CCNP
7 4 (1.25%) DV Cleared
8 3 (0.94%) CCIE
8 3 (0.94%) CISSP
8 3 (0.94%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.63%) APMG
9 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.63%) CISM
9 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.31%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.76%) QA
2 9 (2.82%) Accessibility
3 8 (2.51%) GDPR
4 7 (2.19%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (1.25%) SLA
6 3 (0.94%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.63%) GRC
7 2 (0.63%) NCSC
7 2 (0.63%) NIST
7 2 (0.63%) WCAG
8 1 (0.31%) COBIT
8 1 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.31%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.31%) HL7
8 1 (0.31%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 72 (22.57%) Docker
2 8 (2.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.19%) Active Directory
4 6 (1.88%) Veritas Cluster Server
5 3 (0.94%) Lustre
6 2 (0.63%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.63%) FreeRADIUS
6 2 (0.63%) HDFS
6 2 (0.63%) iptables
6 2 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.31%) GPFS
7 1 (0.31%) NFS
Systems Management
1 151 (47.34%) Kubernetes
2 126 (39.50%) Terraform
3 94 (29.47%) Grafana
4 71 (22.26%) Prometheus
5 69 (21.63%) Ansible
6 22 (6.90%) Argo
7 10 (3.13%) Kibana
7 10 (3.13%) Puppet
8 7 (2.19%) NetBackup
8 7 (2.19%) Oracle RMAN
8 7 (2.19%) Progress Chef
9 5 (1.57%) Consul
9 5 (1.57%) Istio
9 5 (1.57%) Podman
10 4 (1.25%) linkerd
10 4 (1.25%) logstash
10 4 (1.25%) Packer
10 4 (1.25%) ZABBIX
11 3 (0.94%) HAProxy
11 3 (0.94%) Nagios
Vendors
1 77 (24.14%) Splunk
2 27 (8.46%) Dynatrace
3 23 (7.21%) Microsoft
4 19 (5.96%) AppDynamics
5 18 (5.64%) Google
6 17 (5.33%) Red Hat
6 17 (5.33%) SAP
7 15 (4.70%) Oracle
7 15 (4.70%) ServiceNow
8 14 (4.39%) Veritas
9 12 (3.76%) VMware
10 7 (2.19%) Cisco
11 5 (1.57%) EMC
11 5 (1.57%) Fortinet
11 5 (1.57%) IBM
11 5 (1.57%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.57%) NetApp
11 5 (1.57%) PagerDuty
12 4 (1.25%) LogRhythm
12 4 (1.25%) New Relic