Release Manager Contracts

Release Manager
UK

The median Release Manager daily rate in the UK is £465, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 458 523 645
Rank change year-on-year +65 +122 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Release Manager 62 59 73
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.21% 0.14% 0.12%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.23% 0.15% 0.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 46 35
10th Percentile £308 £356 £416
25th Percentile £360 £422 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £570 £530
Median % change year-on-year -18.42% +7.55% +3.92%
75th Percentile £563 £629 £575
90th Percentile £631 £630 £698
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -17.95% -2.50% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 6
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £54.00
Median hourly rate - - £59.19
75th Percentile - - £68.20
90th Percentile - - £75.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £66.56

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Release Manager
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Release Manager in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Release Manager in the UK

Release Manager
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Release Manager in the UK

Release Manager
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Release Manager over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Release Manager in the UK

Release Manager
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Release Manager in the UK

Release Manager
Top 11 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Release Manager within the UK over the 6 months to 1 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 +44 39 £520 -8.77% 52
UK excluding London +69 33 £400 -17.95% 41
Work from Home +45 22 £400 -36.20% 36
London +30 16 £515 -16.06% 21
North of England +28 14 £388 +6.90% 12
North West +27 14 £388 +6.90% 9
Scotland +25 14 £385 - 1
South West +40 3 £725 +27.19% 3
East of England +30 1 £538 +48.28% 5
Midlands +17 1 £625 +72.41% 8
West Midlands +13 1 £625 +72.41% 6

Release Manager Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Release Manager contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Release Manager in the job title.

1 45 (72.58%) Release Management
2 31 (50.00%) Agile
3 26 (41.94%) Social Skills
4 25 (40.32%) ITIL
5 22 (35.48%) DevOps
6 21 (33.87%) Service Management
7 17 (27.42%) Project Management
8 16 (25.81%) Change Management
8 16 (25.81%) Stakeholder Management
9 15 (24.19%) Analytical Skills
9 15 (24.19%) Security Cleared
9 15 (24.19%) CI/CD
10 14 (22.58%) Problem-Solving
11 13 (20.97%) SC Cleared
11 13 (20.97%) QA
11 13 (20.97%) Jenkins
12 12 (19.35%) Azure
13 11 (17.74%) Finance
13 11 (17.74%) SDLC
14 9 (14.52%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (14.52%) Public Sector
14 9 (14.52%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (14.52%) Scrum
14 9 (14.52%) Continuous Improvement
15 7 (11.29%) Continuous Delivery
15 7 (11.29%) Continuous Integration
16 6 (9.68%) Degree
16 6 (9.68%) Configuration Management
16 6 (9.68%) Oracle
17 5 (8.06%) PRINCE2

Release Manager Skill Set
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 2 (3.23%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (3.23%) Shopify
2 1 (1.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 12 (19.35%) Azure
2 9 (14.52%) Azure DevOps
3 5 (8.06%) AWS
4 2 (3.23%) BigCommerce
4 2 (3.23%) GitHub
4 2 (3.23%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
5 1 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
5 1 (1.61%) GitHub Copilot
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (1.61%) MS Access
1 1 (1.61%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 13 (20.97%) Jenkins
2 5 (8.06%) JIRA
3 3 (4.84%) Git
3 3 (4.84%) GitLab
4 2 (3.23%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.61%) GoCD
5 1 (1.61%) Octopus Deploy
5 1 (1.61%) Selenium
5 1 (1.61%) Spinnaker
5 1 (1.61%) Team Foundation Server
5 1 (1.61%) Visual Studio
General
1 26 (41.94%) Social Skills
2 15 (24.19%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (17.74%) Finance
4 9 (14.52%) Organisational Skills
4 9 (14.52%) Public Sector
5 5 (8.06%) Military
5 5 (8.06%) Presentation Skills
6 4 (6.45%) Banking
7 3 (4.84%) Retail
8 2 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.61%) Investment Banking
9 1 (1.61%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (6.45%) Oracle Fusion
2 2 (3.23%) VML
3 1 (1.61%) ARM Templates
3 1 (1.61%) Lightning Web Components
3 1 (1.61%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (3.23%) Management Information System
1 2 (3.23%) PMI
1 2 (3.23%) Product Ownership
2 1 (1.61%) Data Centre
2 1 (1.61%) Driving Licence
2 1 (1.61%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 3 (4.84%) Windows
2 1 (1.61%) Linux
2 1 (1.61%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (72.58%) Release Management
2 31 (50.00%) Agile
3 25 (40.32%) ITIL
4 22 (35.48%) DevOps
5 21 (33.87%) Service Management
6 17 (27.42%) Project Management
7 16 (25.81%) Change Management
7 16 (25.81%) Stakeholder Management
8 15 (24.19%) CI/CD
9 14 (22.58%) Problem-Solving
10 11 (17.74%) SDLC
11 9 (14.52%) Continuous Improvement
11 9 (14.52%) Scrum
12 7 (11.29%) Continuous Delivery
12 7 (11.29%) Continuous Integration
13 6 (9.68%) Configuration Management
14 5 (8.06%) Change Control
14 5 (8.06%) ERP
14 5 (8.06%) PRINCE2
14 5 (8.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 2 (3.23%) Java
1 2 (3.23%) JavaScript
1 2 (3.23%) SQL
2 1 (1.61%) Bash
2 1 (1.61%) PL/SQL
2 1 (1.61%) PowerShell
2 1 (1.61%) Python
2 1 (1.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 15 (24.19%) Security Cleared
2 13 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 6 (9.68%) Degree
4 5 (8.06%) PMI Certification
5 3 (4.84%) ISEB
5 3 (4.84%) PMP
6 1 (1.61%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.61%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (20.97%) QA
2 2 (3.23%) PMO
3 1 (1.61%) SLA
System Software
1 1 (1.61%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (8.06%) Terraform
2 3 (4.84%) Grafana
3 2 (3.23%) Kubernetes
4 1 (1.61%) Ansible
Vendors
1 6 (9.68%) Oracle
2 5 (8.06%) Microsoft
3 4 (6.45%) Salesforce
4 3 (4.84%) SAP
4 3 (4.84%) ServiceNow
4 3 (4.84%) Splunk
5 2 (3.23%) Adobe
5 2 (3.23%) Sitecore
6 1 (1.61%) Atlassian
6 1 (1.61%) Avaloq
6 1 (1.61%) Ceridian
6 1 (1.61%) Pega
6 1 (1.61%) Remedy