Site Reliability Engineer Job Trends

Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
UK

The median Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 22 August 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 611 599 628
Rank change year-on-year -12 +29 -49
Permanent jobs requiring a Site Reliability Engineer 168 85 191
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.17% 0.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.17% 0.19% 0.24%
Number of salaries quoted 130 58 168
10th Percentile £62,500 £56,000 £62,500
25th Percentile £67,500 £63,660 £72,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £72,500 £87,500
Median % change year-on-year +10.34% -17.14% +25.00%
75th Percentile £82,500 £85,000 £118,750
90th Percentile £95,375 £99,875 £143,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £80,000 £67,626 £75,000
% change year-on-year +18.30% -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 101,401 44,799 79,009
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.94% 89.89% 95.10%
Number of salaries quoted 69,411 26,484 52,056
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £72,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £54,000 £47,683 £50,000
% change year-on-year +13.25% -4.63% -5.21%

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 22 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 22 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 -41 131 £80,000 +6.67% 84
UK excluding London -14 118 £80,000 +18.30% 40
Work from Home -6 56 £71,991 -0.70% 36
London -42 44 £80,000 -5.88% 54
North of England -21 42 £77,500 +10.71% 6
North West +10 25 £70,000 +3.51% 2
Scotland +18 20 £80,000 +33.33% 4
South East -12 19 £70,000 -5.08% 9
East of England -18 10 £100,000 +48.15% 4
North East -43 9 £80,000 +15.30%
Yorkshire -32 8 £75,000 +3.45% 4
South West -70 8 £75,000 -9.09% 10
Wales -51 7 £80,000 +20.64%
West Midlands -30 6 £80,000 +18.52%
Midlands -43 6 £80,000 +18.52% 4
Northern Ireland - 6 £80,000 - 3

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

For the 6 months to 22 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.

1 164 (97.62%) Site Reliability Engineering
2 112 (66.67%) Python
3 101 (60.12%) Observability
4 77 (45.83%) Azure
5 71 (42.26%) Infrastructure as Code
6 66 (39.29%) Terraform
7 64 (38.10%) AWS
8 63 (37.50%) Software Engineering
9 58 (34.52%) CI/CD
10 54 (32.14%) DevOps
11 51 (30.36%) GCP
12 45 (26.79%) Continuous Improvement
13 40 (23.81%) Ansible
14 38 (22.62%) Grafana
15 36 (21.43%) Datadog
16 35 (20.83%) Linux
17 34 (20.24%) Root Cause Analysis
18 33 (19.64%) Incident Response
18 33 (19.64%) Security Cleared
19 32 (19.05%) Kubernetes
20 31 (18.45%) PowerShell
21 30 (17.86%) Problem-Solving
22 28 (16.67%) SC Cleared
23 26 (15.48%) GitOps
23 26 (15.48%) Mentoring
24 25 (14.88%) Task Automation
25 24 (14.29%) Dynatrace
25 24 (14.29%) ITIL
25 24 (14.29%) Service-Level Objective
26 23 (13.69%) Deployment 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 4 (2.38%) Confluence
2 1 (0.60%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 77 (45.83%) Azure
2 64 (38.10%) AWS
3 51 (30.36%) GCP
4 36 (21.43%) Datadog
5 16 (9.52%) AWS CloudFormation
6 14 (8.33%) dbt
7 13 (7.74%) SaaS
8 9 (5.36%) GitHub
9 7 (4.17%) OpenShift
10 5 (2.98%) Azure DevOps
10 5 (2.98%) Azure Stack
10 5 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (2.38%) Snowflake
12 3 (1.79%) Amazon ECS
12 3 (1.79%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 3 (1.79%) Azure AKS
12 3 (1.79%) Azure Monitor
13 2 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 2 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
13 2 (1.19%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 15 (8.93%) TCP/IP
2 4 (2.38%) ATM
3 3 (1.79%) Broadband
4 1 (0.60%) DHCP
4 1 (0.60%) DNS
4 1 (0.60%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (2.98%) KDB
3 3 (1.79%) NonStop SQL
3 3 (1.79%) Redis
4 2 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (1.19%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.60%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.60%) MySQL
5 1 (0.60%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.60%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 9 (5.36%) Git
2 6 (3.57%) GitLab
3 5 (2.98%) Jenkins
3 5 (2.98%) JIRA
4 1 (0.60%) TeamCity
General
1 40 (23.81%) Social Skills
2 36 (21.43%) Finance
3 28 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (9.52%) Banking
5 6 (3.57%) Digital Economy
5 6 (3.57%) Financial Institution
6 5 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (2.98%) Front Office
7 2 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.60%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.60%) Local Government
8 1 (0.60%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (39.29%) Terraform
2 9 (5.36%) ARM Templates
3 7 (4.17%) Loki
4 5 (2.98%) FIX Protocol
5 2 (1.19%) .NET
5 2 (1.19%) AWS CDK
5 2 (1.19%) Node.js
6 1 (0.60%) Django
6 1 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.60%) LDAP
6 1 (0.60%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 27 (16.07%) Distributed Systems
2 20 (11.90%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.17%) Public Cloud
4 5 (2.98%) Fixed Income
5 4 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.79%) Clustering
6 3 (1.79%) EMV
6 3 (1.79%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.19%) Hackathon
7 2 (1.19%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.19%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
8 1 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.60%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.60%) Hedge funds
8 1 (0.60%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.60%) NHS
8 1 (0.60%) Replication
8 1 (0.60%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 35 (20.83%) Linux
2 16 (9.52%) Unix
3 11 (6.55%) Windows
4 8 (4.76%) Windows Server
5 7 (4.17%) Ubuntu
6 5 (2.98%) CentOS
6 5 (2.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (2.38%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (97.62%) Site Reliability Engineering
2 101 (60.12%) Observability
3 71 (42.26%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (37.50%) Software Engineering
5 58 (34.52%) CI/CD
6 54 (32.14%) DevOps
7 45 (26.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 34 (20.24%) Root Cause Analysis
9 33 (19.64%) Incident Response
10 30 (17.86%) Problem-Solving
11 26 (15.48%) GitOps
11 26 (15.48%) Mentoring
12 25 (14.88%) Task Automation
13 24 (14.29%) ITIL
13 24 (14.29%) Service-Level Objective
14 23 (13.69%) Deployment Automation
15 22 (13.10%) Agile
15 22 (13.10%) Incident Management
16 20 (11.90%) Platform Engineering
17 19 (11.31%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 112 (66.67%) Python
2 31 (18.45%) PowerShell
3 20 (11.90%) Bash
4 11 (6.55%) Java
5 6 (3.57%) PHP
6 5 (2.98%) Go
6 5 (2.98%) Shell Script
7 3 (1.79%) COBOL
7 3 (1.79%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.79%) SQL
7 3 (1.79%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.19%) Bicep
8 2 (1.19%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.60%) C
9 1 (0.60%) C#
9 1 (0.60%) Erlang
9 1 (0.60%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 33 (19.64%) Security Cleared
2 28 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 8 (4.76%) DV Cleared
4 7 (4.17%) AWS Certification
5 4 (2.38%) Degree
6 3 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.19%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 2 (1.19%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.60%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.76%) SLA
2 3 (1.79%) ISO 8583
3 2 (1.19%) GDPR
3 2 (1.19%) ISO 20022
3 2 (1.19%) QA
4 1 (0.60%) Data Quality
System Software
1 21 (12.50%) Docker
2 3 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.60%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.60%) Virtual Servers
3 1 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 40 (23.81%) Ansible
2 38 (22.62%) Grafana
3 32 (19.05%) Kubernetes
4 19 (11.31%) Prometheus
5 7 (4.17%) Argo
5 7 (4.17%) Nagios
6 6 (3.57%) Kustomize
7 5 (2.98%) Istio
8 4 (2.38%) Docker Swarm
8 4 (2.38%) Podman
9 1 (0.60%) ITRS Geneos
9 1 (0.60%) logstash
9 1 (0.60%) Netcool
Vendors
1 24 (14.29%) Dynatrace
2 16 (9.52%) Google
3 9 (5.36%) Splunk
4 6 (3.57%) Oracle
4 6 (3.57%) Red Hat
5 4 (2.38%) VocaLink
6 3 (1.79%) AppDynamics
6 3 (1.79%) Databricks
6 3 (1.79%) HP
7 2 (1.19%) Microsoft
8 1 (0.60%) SGI
8 1 (0.60%) Sybase
8 1 (0.60%) VMware