Observability Job Trends in the North West

Observability
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Observability skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 153 194
Rank change year-on-year +13 +41 +85
Permanent jobs citing Observability 44 56 4
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 0.69% 1.11% 0.090%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.21% 0.10%
Number of salaries quoted 31 17 3
10th Percentile £52,500 £49,750 -
25th Percentile £62,500 £64,471 £60,200
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £73,801 £75,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% +15.38% -2.67%
75th Percentile £91,250 £77,500 £74,275
90th Percentile £105,000 £80,200 £76,960
England median annual salary £80,000 £75,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year +6.67% - -6.25%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

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

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,198 4,623 3,899
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 81.05% 91.29% 87.56%
Number of salaries quoted 2,569 2,267 3,029
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,114 £30,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £66,445 £68,750
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

Observability
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Observability relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Observability job vacancy trend in the North West

Observability
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Observability.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Observability

Observability
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Observability in the North West over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Observability in the North West

Observability
Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Observability within the North West region over the 6 months to 15 January 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
Manchester +3 28 £75,000 - 35
Cheshire -8 10 £72,500 -2.68% 19
Merseyside - 3 £77,500 - 6
Lancashire - 2 £65,000 - 18
Observability
England

Observability
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 (18.18%) SharePoint
2 3 (6.82%) nginx
3 1 (2.27%) Apache Solr
3 1 (2.27%) IIS
3 1 (2.27%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (2.27%) OpenStack
Business Applications
1 1 (2.27%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 27 (61.36%) AWS
2 26 (59.09%) Azure
3 11 (25.00%) Azure Monitor
4 10 (22.73%) Entra ID
4 10 (22.73%) SaaS
5 9 (20.45%) GCP
5 9 (20.45%) Serverless
6 8 (18.18%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (18.18%) Microsoft Purview
6 8 (18.18%) OneDrive
6 8 (18.18%) Power Platform
7 7 (15.91%) GitHub
8 6 (13.64%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (13.64%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (11.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (9.09%) Amazon ECS
10 4 (9.09%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 4 (9.09%) Azure AKS
10 4 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (9.09%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (4.55%) Firewall
1 2 (4.55%) TCP/IP
2 1 (2.27%) DNS
2 1 (2.27%) Network Security
2 1 (2.27%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (11.36%) MongoDB
1 5 (11.36%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (9.09%) Redis
3 3 (6.82%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (6.82%) SQL Server
4 2 (4.55%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (4.55%) NoSQL
4 2 (4.55%) PostHog
5 1 (2.27%) DocumentDB
5 1 (2.27%) DynamoDB
5 1 (2.27%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 7 (15.91%) GitLab
2 6 (13.64%) Git
2 6 (13.64%) Jenkins
3 2 (4.55%) SonarQube
3 2 (4.55%) TeamCity
4 1 (2.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 1 (2.27%) CA Release Automation
4 1 (2.27%) Cucumber
4 1 (2.27%) git-flow
4 1 (2.27%) JMeter
4 1 (2.27%) Locust
4 1 (2.27%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 20 (45.45%) Social Skills
2 10 (22.73%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (18.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (6.82%) Finance
4 3 (6.82%) Retail
5 2 (4.55%) Banking
5 2 (4.55%) Telecoms
6 1 (2.27%) Legal
Job Titles
1 12 (27.27%) DevOps Engineer
2 10 (22.73%) Platform Engineer
2 10 (22.73%) Senior
3 5 (11.36%) Cloud Engineer
3 5 (11.36%) Lead
4 3 (6.82%) Operations Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) AWS DevOps
5 2 (4.55%) AWS DevOps Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) AWS Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Azure Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Monitoring Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Python Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Senior Cloud Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Senior Software Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Site Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Software Engineer
5 2 (4.55%) Technical Engineer
6 1 (2.27%) Senior DevOps
6 1 (2.27%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (13.64%) RabbitMQ
2 5 (11.36%) React
3 4 (9.09%) .NET
3 4 (9.09%) Django
3 4 (9.09%) Node.js
4 3 (6.82%) ARM Templates
5 2 (4.55%) .NET Framework
5 2 (4.55%) Entity Framework
5 2 (4.55%) FastAPI
5 2 (4.55%) Loki
5 2 (4.55%) MassTransit
5 2 (4.55%) Next.js
6 1 (2.27%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (2.27%) Gherkin
6 1 (2.27%) JSON
6 1 (2.27%) OpenID
6 1 (2.27%) REST
6 1 (2.27%) SAML
6 1 (2.27%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (22.73%) Cloud Native
2 8 (18.18%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (4.55%) Driving Licence
4 1 (2.27%) Cyber Threat
4 1 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (2.27%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (2.27%) Onboarding
4 1 (2.27%) Private Cloud
4 1 (2.27%) Security Posture
4 1 (2.27%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 7 (15.91%) Linux
2 3 (6.82%) Windows
3 2 (4.55%) Unix
4 1 (2.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (81.82%) DevOps
2 28 (63.64%) CI/CD
3 21 (47.73%) Agile
4 20 (45.45%) Infrastructure as Code
5 19 (43.18%) Problem-Solving
6 15 (34.09%) Incident Response
7 14 (31.82%) Containerisation
8 13 (29.55%) AI
9 12 (27.27%) Platform Engineering
10 11 (25.00%) Cost Optimisation
11 10 (22.73%) Identity Access Management
11 10 (22.73%) User Experience
12 9 (20.45%) Proactive Monitoring
12 9 (20.45%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 8 (18.18%) BPR
13 8 (18.18%) Change Management
13 8 (18.18%) Data Loss Prevention
13 8 (18.18%) E-Discovery
13 8 (18.18%) Mentoring
13 8 (18.18%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 11 (25.00%) Python
2 6 (13.64%) TypeScript
3 4 (9.09%) Bash
3 4 (9.09%) Go
3 4 (9.09%) Java
3 4 (9.09%) PowerShell
4 3 (6.82%) Bicep
4 3 (6.82%) C#
4 3 (6.82%) SQL
5 1 (2.27%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 5 (11.36%) Security Cleared
2 4 (9.09%) SC Cleared
3 2 (4.55%) Azure Certification
4 1 (2.27%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.27%) CISM
4 1 (2.27%) CISSP
4 1 (2.27%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (6.82%) QA
2 2 (4.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (4.55%) NIST
3 1 (2.27%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.27%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (2.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (45.45%) Docker
2 11 (25.00%) Active Directory
3 2 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (2.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (2.27%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 29 (65.91%) Terraform
2 21 (47.73%) Kubernetes
3 12 (27.27%) Grafana
4 9 (20.45%) Single Sign-On
5 8 (18.18%) Microsoft Intune
5 8 (18.18%) Prometheus
6 4 (9.09%) Ansible
7 2 (4.55%) Argo
8 1 (2.27%) AWS Copilot
8 1 (2.27%) Fluentd
8 1 (2.27%) Nagios
Vendors
1 12 (27.27%) Microsoft
2 10 (22.73%) Splunk
3 8 (18.18%) New Relic
4 2 (4.55%) AppDynamics
4 2 (4.55%) Google
5 1 (2.27%) Cribl.io
5 1 (2.27%) Dynatrace
5 1 (2.27%) F5
5 1 (2.27%) Palo Alto
5 1 (2.27%) VMware