Site Reliability Engineer Job Trends

Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
UK

The median Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) salary in the UK is £76,661 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 7 August 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 635 585 640
Rank change year-on-year -50 +55 -46
Permanent jobs requiring a Site Reliability Engineer 153 97 191
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.20% 0.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.15% 0.22% 0.24%
Number of salaries quoted 118 70 169
10th Percentile £60,875 £52,500 £62,500
25th Percentile £67,500 £63,660 £72,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £76,661 £72,500 £87,500
Median % change year-on-year +5.74% -17.14% +20.69%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £118,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £99,125 £143,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £67,626 £75,000
% change year-on-year +10.90% -9.83% +15.38%

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 98,814 44,648 79,271
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.12% 90.01% 94.96%
Number of salaries quoted 67,613 26,525 53,451
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £49,600 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.85% -0.80% -6.54%

Site Reliability Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Site Reliability Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Site Reliability Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Site Reliability Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Site Reliability Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Site Reliability Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Site Reliability Engineer over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Site Reliability Engineer in the UK

Site Reliability 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 Site Reliability Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 7 August 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 -50 122 £75,823 +4.58% 140
UK excluding London -23 108 £75,000 +10.90% 84
Work from Home -3 56 £71,991 -0.70% 59
London -36 39 £85,000 - 95
North of England -25 37 £71,991 +3.76% 14
North West +8 23 £70,000 +14.17% 4
South East -7 20 £71,250 -3.39% 8
Scotland +21 17 £77,500 +29.17% 20
East of England -20 10 £100,000 +48.15% 9
Yorkshire -19 8 £75,000 +3.45% 3
South West -62 8 £75,000 -20.75% 12
West Midlands -39 6 £75,996 +26.66% 6
Midlands -41 6 £75,996 +26.66% 7
North East -49 6 £80,000 +15.30% 7
Wales -55 6 £75,996 +12.38% 6
Northern Ireland - 4 £80,000 - 8

Site Reliability Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 7 August 2026, Site Reliability 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 Site Reliability Engineer in the job title.

1 148 (96.73%) Site Reliability Engineering
2 98 (64.05%) Observability
3 92 (60.13%) Python
4 79 (51.63%) Azure
5 66 (43.14%) Infrastructure as Code
6 62 (40.52%) CI/CD
6 62 (40.52%) Terraform
7 61 (39.87%) AWS
8 57 (37.25%) DevOps
9 46 (30.07%) Software Engineering
10 45 (29.41%) GCP
11 42 (27.45%) Continuous Improvement
12 38 (24.84%) Linux
13 37 (24.18%) Security Cleared
14 36 (23.53%) Ansible
15 35 (22.88%) Kubernetes
16 32 (20.92%) Grafana
16 32 (20.92%) Problem-Solving
17 31 (20.26%) Incident Response
18 30 (19.61%) PowerShell
18 30 (19.61%) Root Cause Analysis
19 28 (18.30%) SC Cleared
20 26 (16.99%) Agile
20 26 (16.99%) Datadog
20 26 (16.99%) Mentoring
20 26 (16.99%) Service-Level Objective
21 24 (15.69%) Docker
22 22 (14.38%) Bash
23 21 (13.73%) Deployment Automation
23 21 (13.73%) Task Automation

Site Reliability 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 5 (3.27%) Confluence
2 1 (0.65%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 79 (51.63%) Azure
2 61 (39.87%) AWS
3 45 (29.41%) GCP
4 26 (16.99%) Datadog
5 15 (9.80%) AWS CloudFormation
6 14 (9.15%) dbt
7 11 (7.19%) SaaS
8 10 (6.54%) GitHub
9 7 (4.58%) Azure Stack
9 7 (4.58%) OpenShift
10 6 (3.92%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (3.27%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (3.27%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (2.61%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (2.61%) Azure Monitor
12 4 (2.61%) Snowflake
13 3 (1.96%) Amazon OpenSearch
13 3 (1.96%) Cloud Computing
14 2 (1.31%) Azure Functions
14 2 (1.31%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 16 (10.46%) TCP/IP
2 4 (2.61%) ATM
3 3 (1.96%) Broadband
4 2 (1.31%) DNS
5 1 (0.65%) DHCP
5 1 (0.65%) Firewall
5 1 (0.65%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.23%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (3.27%) KDB
3 3 (1.96%) NonStop SQL
3 3 (1.96%) SQL Server
4 2 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (1.31%) MongoDB
4 2 (1.31%) Power BI
5 1 (0.65%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.65%) InfluxDB
5 1 (0.65%) MySQL
5 1 (0.65%) Redis
5 1 (0.65%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 11 (7.19%) Git
2 8 (5.23%) GitLab
3 7 (4.58%) JIRA
4 5 (3.27%) Jenkins
5 2 (1.31%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 1 (0.65%) TeamCity
General
1 36 (23.53%) Social Skills
2 30 (19.61%) Finance
3 27 (17.65%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (7.19%) Banking
5 8 (5.23%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (3.92%) Digital Economy
6 6 (3.92%) Financial Institution
7 5 (3.27%) Front Office
8 2 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.65%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.65%) Local Government
9 1 (0.65%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (7.19%) ARM Templates
2 7 (4.58%) Loki
3 5 (3.27%) FIX Protocol
4 3 (1.96%) .NET
5 2 (1.31%) .NET Core
5 2 (1.31%) AWS CDK
6 1 (0.65%) Django
6 1 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.65%) LDAP
6 1 (0.65%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 28 (18.30%) Distributed Systems
2 19 (12.42%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.58%) Public Cloud
4 5 (3.27%) Fixed Income
5 4 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.96%) EMV
7 2 (1.31%) Hackathon
7 2 (1.31%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.31%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.65%) Clustering
8 1 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
8 1 (0.65%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.65%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.65%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.65%) Hedge funds
8 1 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.65%) NHS
8 1 (0.65%) Replication
8 1 (0.65%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 38 (24.84%) Linux
2 16 (10.46%) Unix
3 13 (8.50%) Windows
4 11 (7.19%) Windows Server
5 9 (5.88%) Ubuntu
6 7 (4.58%) CentOS
6 7 (4.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (3.27%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (1.31%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 148 (96.73%) Site Reliability Engineering
2 98 (64.05%) Observability
3 66 (43.14%) Infrastructure as Code
4 62 (40.52%) CI/CD
5 57 (37.25%) DevOps
6 46 (30.07%) Software Engineering
7 42 (27.45%) Continuous Improvement
8 32 (20.92%) Problem-Solving
9 31 (20.26%) Incident Response
10 30 (19.61%) Root Cause Analysis
11 26 (16.99%) Agile
11 26 (16.99%) Mentoring
11 26 (16.99%) Service-Level Objective
12 21 (13.73%) Deployment Automation
12 21 (13.73%) Task Automation
13 20 (13.07%) GitOps
13 20 (13.07%) Incident Management
14 19 (12.42%) Collaborative Culture
14 19 (12.42%) Platform Engineering
15 18 (11.76%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 92 (60.13%) Python
2 30 (19.61%) PowerShell
3 22 (14.38%) Bash
4 9 (5.88%) Java
5 6 (3.92%) PHP
6 5 (3.27%) Shell Script
6 5 (3.27%) SQL
7 3 (1.96%) C#
7 3 (1.96%) COBOL
7 3 (1.96%) Go
7 3 (1.96%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.96%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.31%) Bicep
8 2 (1.31%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.65%) C
9 1 (0.65%) Erlang
9 1 (0.65%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 37 (24.18%) Security Cleared
2 28 (18.30%) SC Cleared
3 8 (5.23%) DV Cleared
4 6 (3.92%) AWS Certification
5 3 (1.96%) Degree
6 2 (1.31%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 2 (1.31%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.65%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.65%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.92%) SLA
2 3 (1.96%) ISO 8583
2 3 (1.96%) QA
3 1 (0.65%) Data Quality
System Software
1 24 (15.69%) Docker
2 2 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.65%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
3 1 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 62 (40.52%) Terraform
2 36 (23.53%) Ansible
3 35 (22.88%) Kubernetes
4 32 (20.92%) Grafana
5 17 (11.11%) Prometheus
6 9 (5.88%) Nagios
7 7 (4.58%) Argo
8 6 (3.92%) Kustomize
9 5 (3.27%) Docker Swarm
9 5 (3.27%) Istio
9 5 (3.27%) Podman
10 1 (0.65%) ITRS Geneos
10 1 (0.65%) logstash
10 1 (0.65%) Netcool
Vendors
1 19 (12.42%) Dynatrace
2 16 (10.46%) Google
3 11 (7.19%) Splunk
4 6 (3.92%) Oracle
4 6 (3.92%) Red Hat
5 4 (2.61%) VocaLink
6 3 (1.96%) Databricks
6 3 (1.96%) HP
7 2 (1.31%) Microsoft
8 1 (0.65%) AppDynamics
8 1 (0.65%) New Relic
8 1 (0.65%) PagerDuty
8 1 (0.65%) Sybase
8 1 (0.65%) VMware