CI/CD Contract Job Trends

CI/CD
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring CI/CD skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 16 26
Rank change year-on-year +5 +10 0
Contract jobs citing CI/CD 6,172 3,464 2,706
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.24% 10.51% 7.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.32% 11.61% 8.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,177 2,347 1,814
10th Percentile £375 £363 £388
25th Percentile £434 £423 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -7.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £609 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 46 70
10th Percentile £46.25 £50.63 £62.45
25th Percentile £60.91 £61.25 £65.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £65.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% -5.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £69.25 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.61 £65.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +5.55% -7.14% -6.67%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

CI/CD falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 46,342 29,835 32,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.50% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,074 18,533 19,873
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,192 1,836 1,405
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.31 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.32 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

CI/CD
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing CI/CD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

CI/CD job vacancy trend in the UK

CI/CD
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CI/CD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CI/CD

CI/CD
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing CI/CD over the 6 months to 24 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for CI/CD in the UK

CI/CD
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CI/CD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CI/CD

CI/CD
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing CI/CD over the 6 months to 24 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for CI/CD in the UK

CI/CD
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing CI/CD within the UK over the 6 months to 24 September 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +7 5,152 £525 +2.44% 6,088
London +4 2,722 £538 +2.38% 3,440
UK excluding London +7 2,621 £500 - 3,235
Work from Home +4 1,893 £525 +5.00% 2,689
North of England +3 990 £500 +4.06% 889
Yorkshire +7 499 £500 +2.56% 275
South East 0 466 £529 +5.75% 697
Midlands -4 380 £488 -2.50% 347
North West +5 369 £530 +10.42% 500
West Midlands -2 325 £488 -7.14% 229
South West +9 294 £525 -4.55% 448
Scotland -2 289 £425 -15.00% 399
East of England +2 162 £505 +1.00% 257
North East -2 133 £425 -10.53% 119
East Midlands -27 52 £475 +10.59% 118
Wales +3 49 £419 -8.22% 81
Northern Ireland +21 23 £591 +18.25% 130
Channel Islands - 2 £475 - 1

CI/CD
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
1 277 (4.49%) Confluence
2 233 (3.78%) Apache Airflow
3 199 (3.22%) Apache Spark
4 169 (2.74%) Apache
5 92 (1.49%) SharePoint
6 64 (1.04%) SAS
7 37 (0.60%) Jupyter
8 29 (0.47%) CMS
9 25 (0.41%) nginx
10 20 (0.32%) Camunda
10 20 (0.32%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.24%) Anypoint
12 14 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
14 10 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.15%) Mule
15 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.15%) WordPress
16 6 (0.097%) IIS
16 6 (0.097%) JBoss
Applications
1 23 (0.37%) Chatbot
2 19 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.11%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.065%) Trello
5 4 (0.065%) Windchill
6 3 (0.049%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.049%) Sketch
7 2 (0.032%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.032%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.032%) Simulink
7 2 (0.032%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.016%) EngageOne
8 1 (0.016%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.016%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 51 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 26 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
4 12 (0.19%) SAP CRM
5 11 (0.18%) Aladdin
6 10 (0.16%) SAP MDG
7 9 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.097%) Magento
9 6 (0.097%) Shopify
9 6 (0.097%) Temenos T24
10 4 (0.065%) Oracle ERP
10 4 (0.065%) Sage X3
10 4 (0.065%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 3 (0.049%) Endur
11 3 (0.049%) Finacle
11 3 (0.049%) FLEXCUBE
12 2 (0.032%) Oracle EBS R12
12 2 (0.032%) Remedy ITSM
12 2 (0.032%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,740 (44.39%) AWS
2 2,673 (43.31%) Azure
3 1,303 (21.11%) GitHub
4 1,042 (16.88%) GCP
5 998 (16.17%) Azure DevOps
6 848 (13.74%) GitHub Actions
7 658 (10.66%) Serverless
8 451 (7.31%) Amazon S3
9 444 (7.19%) AWS Lambda
10 434 (7.03%) Power Platform
11 344 (5.57%) Amazon EKS
12 318 (5.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 289 (4.68%) AWS CloudFormation
14 267 (4.33%) Entra ID
15 240 (3.89%) Snowflake
16 238 (3.86%) Azure AKS
17 223 (3.61%) Amazon EC2
18 206 (3.34%) Amazon ECS
19 191 (3.09%) Azure Monitor
20 186 (3.01%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 245 (3.97%) Firewall
2 165 (2.67%) DNS
3 136 (2.20%) Network Security
4 95 (1.54%) VPN
5 90 (1.46%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.86%) WAN
7 52 (0.84%) HTTP
8 46 (0.75%) BGP
9 45 (0.73%) SD-WAN
10 40 (0.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 39 (0.63%) BIG-IP
11 39 (0.63%) VXLAN
12 37 (0.60%) Ethernet VPN
13 36 (0.58%) SSL
14 34 (0.55%) DHCP
15 31 (0.50%) Internet
16 28 (0.45%) 5G
17 27 (0.44%) OSPF
18 23 (0.37%) VLAN
19 21 (0.34%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 431 (6.98%) PostgreSQL
2 323 (5.23%) Power BI
3 299 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 281 (4.55%) SQL Server
5 277 (4.49%) Relational Database
6 268 (4.34%) MongoDB
7 253 (4.10%) NoSQL
8 234 (3.79%) Data Lake
9 195 (3.16%) Amazon RDS
10 179 (2.90%) Metadata
11 144 (2.33%) DynamoDB
11 144 (2.33%) MySQL
12 131 (2.12%) BigQuery
13 123 (1.99%) Amazon Redshift
14 122 (1.98%) Delta Lake
15 112 (1.81%) Redis
16 97 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
17 94 (1.52%) Amazon Aurora
18 88 (1.43%) Big Data
18 88 (1.43%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 1,250 (20.25%) Git
2 1,019 (16.51%) Jenkins
3 930 (15.07%) GitLab
4 521 (8.44%) JIRA
5 255 (4.13%) Selenium
6 200 (3.24%) JUnit
7 155 (2.51%) Cucumber
8 139 (2.25%) Maven
9 128 (2.07%) SonarQube
10 118 (1.91%) Gradle
11 115 (1.86%) Postman
12 108 (1.75%) Bitbucket
13 104 (1.69%) JMeter
14 98 (1.59%) Cypress.io
15 97 (1.57%) REST Assured
16 91 (1.47%) Gatling
17 84 (1.36%) Mockito
18 76 (1.23%) Claude Code
19 49 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
20 46 (0.75%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,605 (26.00%) Social Skills
2 1,151 (18.65%) Finance
3 877 (14.21%) Public Sector
4 541 (8.77%) Banking
5 540 (8.75%) Analytical Skills
6 165 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 124 (2.01%) Retail
8 102 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
9 91 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 86 (1.39%) Front Office
11 83 (1.34%) Military
12 72 (1.17%) Telecoms
13 56 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
14 55 (0.89%) Law
15 48 (0.78%) Legal
16 47 (0.76%) Marketing
16 47 (0.76%) Publishing
17 46 (0.75%) Financial Institution
18 45 (0.73%) Aerospace
19 44 (0.71%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,383 (22.41%) Developer
2 1,116 (18.08%) Senior
3 784 (12.70%) DevOps Engineer
4 627 (10.16%) Architect
5 567 (9.19%) Lead
6 449 (7.27%) Data Engineer
7 343 (5.56%) Java Developer
8 322 (5.22%) AWS Engineer
9 320 (5.18%) Software Engineer
10 302 (4.89%) Azure Engineer
11 299 (4.84%) Senior Developer
12 271 (4.39%) Cloud Engineer
13 247 (4.00%) Platform Engineer
14 177 (2.87%) Full-Stack Developer
15 162 (2.62%) Python Developer
16 160 (2.59%) Solutions Architect
17 156 (2.53%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 152 (2.46%) AWS DevOps
19 150 (2.43%) Test Engineer
20 149 (2.41%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2,000 (32.40%) Terraform
2 950 (15.39%) REST
3 606 (9.82%) Kafka
4 549 (8.90%) React
4 549 (8.90%) Spring
5 535 (8.67%) RESTful
6 520 (8.43%) .NET
7 495 (8.02%) Spring Boot
8 367 (5.95%) Node.js
9 259 (4.20%) HTML
10 255 (4.13%) Playwright
11 241 (3.90%) OAuth
12 235 (3.81%) CSS
12 235 (3.81%) JSON
13 214 (3.47%) PySpark
14 179 (2.90%) OAuth2
15 172 (2.79%) AngularJS
16 149 (2.41%) SOAP
17 131 (2.12%) Middleware
18 130 (2.11%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 1,311 (21.24%) Cloud Native
2 478 (7.74%) Distributed Systems
3 415 (6.72%) Product Ownership
4 267 (4.33%) Onboarding
5 237 (3.84%) Enterprise Software
6 222 (3.60%) AI Agents
7 158 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (2.14%) Hybrid Cloud
9 110 (1.78%) Security Posture
10 108 (1.75%) Data Centre
11 97 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
12 96 (1.56%) Public Cloud
13 83 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 78 (1.26%) Management Information System
15 77 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
16 76 (1.23%) Enterprise Cloud
16 76 (1.23%) Private Cloud
16 76 (1.23%) Virtual Team
17 74 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
18 69 (1.12%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 652 (10.56%) Linux
2 290 (4.70%) Windows
3 164 (2.66%) Unix
4 126 (2.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 67 (1.09%) Windows Server
6 54 (0.87%) Android
7 45 (0.73%) Apple iOS
8 31 (0.50%) VMS
9 24 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 16 (0.26%) CentOS
11 15 (0.24%) AIX
12 14 (0.23%) Mac OS
13 13 (0.21%) zOS
14 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 7 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 7 (0.11%) Rocky
15 7 (0.11%) Solaris
16 6 (0.097%) Windows Server 2016
17 5 (0.081%) Windows Server 2008
18 2 (0.032%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,451 (55.91%) DevOps
2 2,381 (38.58%) Agile
3 2,136 (34.61%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1,510 (24.47%) Test Automation
5 1,308 (21.19%) Containerisation
6 1,243 (20.14%) Microservices
7 1,198 (19.41%) AI
8 1,196 (19.38%) Observability
9 1,092 (17.69%) Software Engineering
10 982 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
11 957 (15.51%) Continuous Improvement
12 831 (13.46%) Platform Engineering
13 786 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
14 733 (11.88%) Analytics
15 717 (11.62%) Event-Driven
16 702 (11.37%) Technical Leadership
17 688 (11.15%) Data Pipeline
18 682 (11.05%) Scrum
19 656 (10.63%) Data Modelling
20 639 (10.35%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 2,357 (38.19%) Python
2 1,398 (22.65%) SQL
3 1,323 (21.44%) Java
4 696 (11.28%) JavaScript
5 561 (9.09%) C#
6 549 (8.90%) TypeScript
7 541 (8.77%) Bash
8 483 (7.83%) PowerShell
9 257 (4.16%) Bicep
10 188 (3.05%) Go
11 128 (2.07%) Shell Script
12 122 (1.98%) Scala
13 106 (1.72%) Kotlin
14 80 (1.30%) C++
15 78 (1.26%) Apex Code
16 75 (1.22%) Groovy
17 58 (0.94%) PL/SQL
18 52 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 51 (0.83%) T-SQL
20 49 (0.79%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,804 (29.23%) Security Cleared
2 1,489 (24.13%) SC Cleared
3 326 (5.28%) Degree
4 284 (4.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 268 (4.34%) DV Cleared
6 218 (3.53%) Azure Certification
7 197 (3.19%) AWS Certification
8 160 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 109 (1.77%) CISSP
10 72 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 63 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
12 56 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 54 (0.87%) ISTQB
14 49 (0.79%) CISM
15 46 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 39 (0.63%) Master's Degree
17 31 (0.50%) CCSP
18 24 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
19 22 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
19 22 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 589 (9.54%) QA
2 450 (7.29%) Data Quality
3 339 (5.49%) Accessibility
4 137 (2.22%) WCAG
5 123 (1.99%) GDPR
6 89 (1.44%) NIST
7 86 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 73 (1.18%) NCSC
9 32 (0.52%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.49%) SLA
11 29 (0.47%) GRC
12 25 (0.41%) ISO 20022
13 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
14 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
15 14 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
16 13 (0.21%) HL7
17 12 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
18 10 (0.16%) EU AI Act
18 10 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,636 (26.51%) Docker
2 163 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 118 (1.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
5 31 (0.50%) VMware NSX
6 29 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
7 27 (0.44%) vSphere
8 19 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 17 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
10 15 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 15 (0.24%) Squid
11 9 (0.15%) KVM
12 8 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.097%) Ceph
14 5 (0.081%) HDFS
14 5 (0.081%) RACF
15 4 (0.065%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 4 (0.065%) NFS
15 4 (0.065%) Postfix
15 4 (0.065%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 2,012 (32.60%) Kubernetes
2 591 (9.58%) Ansible
3 496 (8.04%) Grafana
4 393 (6.37%) Prometheus
5 114 (1.85%) Argo
6 60 (0.97%) Puppet
7 52 (0.84%) Progress Chef
8 51 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 47 (0.76%) Kibana
10 45 (0.73%) Istio
11 36 (0.58%) Packer
12 26 (0.42%) Kustomize
12 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
13 23 (0.37%) Control-M
14 18 (0.29%) Podman
15 15 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
15 15 (0.24%) SCCM
16 13 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
16 13 (0.21%) vCenter Server
17 12 (0.19%) Karpenter
Vendors
1 961 (15.57%) Microsoft
2 435 (7.05%) Databricks
3 388 (6.29%) Google
4 329 (5.33%) Oracle
5 224 (3.63%) Splunk
6 185 (3.00%) Salesforce
7 160 (2.59%) VMware
8 159 (2.58%) Dynatrace
9 149 (2.41%) ServiceNow
10 104 (1.69%) OpenAI
11 101 (1.64%) Red Hat
12 98 (1.59%) IBM
13 96 (1.56%) MuleSoft
14 75 (1.22%) SAP
15 64 (1.04%) Foundry
16 63 (1.02%) Cisco
16 63 (1.02%) Informatica
17 54 (0.87%) F5
18 42 (0.68%) New Relic
18 42 (0.68%) Talend