Operations Engineer Job Trends

Operations Engineer
UK

The median Operations Engineer salary in the UK is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 16 May 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 547 591 679
Rank change year-on-year +44 +88 +95
Permanent jobs requiring an Operations Engineer 169 63 218
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.14% 0.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.20% 0.16% 0.24%
Number of salaries quoted 121 44 168
10th Percentile £40,000 £36,200 £30,500
25th Percentile £46,250 £42,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £50,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -13.04% -1.71%
75th Percentile £85,000 £64,063 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £76,750 £77,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,750 £47,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +23.68% -13.64% +15.79%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

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

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 85,212 39,160 91,339
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.30% 89.49% 94.62%
Number of salaries quoted 56,182 22,791 67,021
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,344 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.48% +4.69% -5.66%

Operations Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Operations Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Operations Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Operations Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Operations Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Operations Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Operations Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Operations Engineer over the 6 months to 16 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Operations Engineer in the UK

Operations Engineer
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Operations Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 16 May 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
England +35 149 £65,000 +30.00% 46
London +51 89 £70,000 - 16
Work from Home +72 80 £55,000 +7.72% 16
UK excluding London -22 65 £58,750 +23.68% 41
South West -39 21 £66,250 +29.75% 9
Midlands -18 13 £52,500 +10.53% 7
North of England -22 13 £58,750 +30.56% 10
South East -14 12 £70,000 +100.00% 6
West Midlands -35 10 £52,500 +10.53% 6
North West +8 8 £65,000 +44.44% 3
Yorkshire -52 5 £42,410 - 4
East Midlands - 3 £85,000 - 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £32,824 - 1
Scotland - 2 £48,000 - 2
East of England -12 1 £70,000 +77.22% 2
Wales -27 1 - - 4

Operations Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 May 2026, Operations Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Operations Engineer in the job title.

1 88 (52.07%) Azure
2 44 (26.04%) Microsoft
3 40 (23.67%) Observability
4 39 (23.08%) DevOps
5 38 (22.49%) CI/CD
6 29 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
7 28 (16.57%) Infrastructure as Code
8 27 (15.98%) Cloud Security
8 27 (15.98%) VPN
9 26 (15.38%) Python
9 26 (15.38%) Security Cleared
9 26 (15.38%) Terraform
10 25 (14.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 24 (14.20%) AWS
11 24 (14.20%) Cost Optimisation
11 24 (14.20%) WAN
12 23 (13.61%) Analytics
12 23 (13.61%) Cisco
13 22 (13.02%) Cloud Operations
13 22 (13.02%) Incident Response
13 22 (13.02%) Power BI
13 22 (13.02%) Power Platform
14 21 (12.43%) Cost Management
14 21 (12.43%) LAN
15 20 (11.83%) Cybersecurity
16 19 (11.24%) Incident Management
16 19 (11.24%) Security Operations
17 18 (10.65%) Degree
17 18 (10.65%) Disaster Recovery
17 18 (10.65%) Docker

Operations Engineer Skill Set
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 12 (7.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (4.73%) SharePoint
3 6 (3.55%) Confluence
4 1 (0.59%) SAS
4 1 (0.59%) Skype for Business
Cloud Services
1 88 (52.07%) Azure
2 24 (14.20%) AWS
3 22 (13.02%) Power Platform
4 12 (7.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 12 (7.10%) Entra ID
4 12 (7.10%) Microsoft 365
4 12 (7.10%) SaaS
5 10 (5.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 9 (5.33%) AWS Direct Connect
6 9 (5.33%) Azure Machine Learning
7 8 (4.73%) PaaS
8 7 (4.14%) AWS CloudFormation
8 7 (4.14%) Datadog
8 7 (4.14%) GitHub
8 7 (4.14%) IaaS
9 5 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (2.37%) Azure AKS
10 4 (2.37%) Azure Monitor
10 4 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (1.78%) Azure Pipelines
Communications & Networking
1 27 (15.98%) VPN
2 24 (14.20%) WAN
3 21 (12.43%) LAN
4 18 (10.65%) Firewall
4 18 (10.65%) Wi-Fi
5 12 (7.10%) Cisco Firepower
5 12 (7.10%) DNS
5 12 (7.10%) MPLS
5 12 (7.10%) SD-WAN
5 12 (7.10%) WLAN
6 10 (5.92%) VXLAN
7 9 (5.33%) BGP
7 9 (5.33%) Cisco ASA
7 9 (5.33%) Cisco ISE
7 9 (5.33%) IPsec
7 9 (5.33%) NetScaler
7 9 (5.33%) NX-OS
7 9 (5.33%) OSPF
8 8 (4.73%) DHCP
8 8 (4.73%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (13.02%) Power BI
2 12 (7.10%) Big Data
3 4 (2.37%) Elasticsearch
4 3 (1.78%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (1.78%) NoSQL
4 3 (1.78%) RDBMS
4 3 (1.78%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.59%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (4.73%) JIRA
2 6 (3.55%) Git
3 4 (2.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 3 (1.78%) Jaeger
5 1 (0.59%) Balsamiq
5 1 (0.59%) GitLab
5 1 (0.59%) Jenkins
General
1 28 (16.57%) Social Skills
2 26 (15.38%) Finance
3 11 (6.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 10 (5.92%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (3.55%) Billing
6 5 (2.96%) Law
6 5 (2.96%) Telecoms
7 4 (2.37%) Mandarin Language
7 4 (2.37%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.18%) Aeronautics
9 1 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.59%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.59%) Military
9 1 (0.59%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (2.37%) ARM Templates
1 4 (2.37%) OAuth
1 4 (2.37%) SAML
1 4 (2.37%) web3js
2 3 (1.78%) ADO
2 3 (1.78%) Elastic Stack
2 3 (1.78%) OpenTelemetry
2 3 (1.78%) YAML
3 2 (1.18%) .NET
4 1 (0.59%) OpenID
4 1 (0.59%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 14 (8.28%) Management Information System
2 10 (5.92%) Data Centre
3 9 (5.33%) Algorithms
4 8 (4.73%) Driving Licence
5 7 (4.14%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.96%) IoT
7 4 (2.37%) Blockchain
7 4 (2.37%) MPEG
7 4 (2.37%) Web3
8 2 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.18%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.18%) Security Operations Centre
9 1 (0.59%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.59%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.59%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 10 (5.92%) Windows
2 8 (4.73%) Linux
2 8 (4.73%) Windows Server
3 4 (2.37%) CentOS
3 4 (2.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (2.37%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.78%) Unix
4 3 (1.78%) VMS
5 1 (0.59%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (23.67%) Observability
2 39 (23.08%) DevOps
3 38 (22.49%) CI/CD
4 29 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
5 28 (16.57%) Infrastructure as Code
6 27 (15.98%) Cloud Security
7 25 (14.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 24 (14.20%) Cost Optimisation
9 23 (13.61%) Analytics
10 22 (13.02%) Cloud Operations
10 22 (13.02%) Incident Response
11 21 (12.43%) Cost Management
12 20 (11.83%) Cybersecurity
13 19 (11.24%) Incident Management
13 19 (11.24%) Security Operations
14 18 (10.65%) Disaster Recovery
15 17 (10.06%) Containerisation
15 17 (10.06%) FinOps
15 17 (10.06%) Machine Learning
16 16 (9.47%) DataOps
Programming Languages
1 26 (15.38%) Python
2 15 (8.88%) SQL
3 12 (7.10%) PowerShell
4 6 (3.55%) Bicep
5 5 (2.96%) Bash
6 4 (2.37%) Go
6 4 (2.37%) Java
7 3 (1.78%) C#
7 3 (1.78%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.78%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.59%) C
8 1 (0.59%) R
8 1 (0.59%) VB
Qualifications
1 26 (15.38%) Security Cleared
2 18 (10.65%) Degree
2 18 (10.65%) SC Cleared
3 10 (5.92%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (5.33%) Microsoft Certification
5 5 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.37%) Postgraduate
7 3 (1.78%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.78%) CCNP
7 3 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (1.18%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.59%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (7.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 12 (7.10%) SLA
3 9 (5.33%) Data Quality
4 8 (4.73%) Cyber Essentials
4 8 (4.73%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 5 (2.96%) GDPR
6 4 (2.37%) Accessibility
6 4 (2.37%) SOC 2
7 3 (1.78%) NIST
7 3 (1.78%) PCI DSS
8 2 (1.18%) QA
9 1 (0.59%) GRC
System Software
1 18 (10.65%) Docker
2 5 (2.96%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.59%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 26 (15.38%) Terraform
2 18 (10.65%) Kubernetes
3 12 (7.10%) Ansible
4 10 (5.92%) Microsoft Intune
5 7 (4.14%) Argo
6 5 (2.96%) Prometheus
7 3 (1.78%) Kustomize
8 2 (1.18%) Grafana
8 2 (1.18%) QRadar
9 1 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 44 (26.04%) Microsoft
2 23 (13.61%) Cisco
3 17 (10.06%) Meraki
4 12 (7.10%) CheckPoint
4 12 (7.10%) Databricks
4 12 (7.10%) Fortinet
5 10 (5.92%) ServiceNow
6 9 (5.33%) Dynatrace
6 9 (5.33%) SolarWinds
7 6 (3.55%) Palo Alto
8 3 (1.78%) Google
8 3 (1.78%) Zscaler
9 2 (1.18%) CyberArk
9 2 (1.18%) Qualys
9 2 (1.18%) VMware
10 1 (0.59%) Cognizant
10 1 (0.59%) CrowdStrike
10 1 (0.59%) SAP
10 1 (0.59%) Sophos
10 1 (0.59%) Splunk