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 3 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 25 28
Rank change year-on-year +11 +3 -9
Contract jobs citing CI/CD 3,901 2,704 3,010
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.38% 7.45% 6.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.62% 8.65% 7.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,685 1,829 2,196
10th Percentile £363 £388 £413
25th Percentile £425 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £675
90th Percentile £688 £750 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 54 31
10th Percentile £55.00 £54.48 £51.05
25th Percentile - £65.00 £61.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.25 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.35% -10.33% +14.32%
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £77.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £74.31 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -3.70% -10.00% +14.32%

All Process and 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 30,906 31,244 41,572
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.14% 86.04% 88.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,304 18,785 28,083
10th Percentile £297 £310 £311
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,997 1,107 1,583
10th Percentile £14.39 £15.02 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.45 £20.00 £18.94
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.36 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.87% -19.64% +25.71%
75th Percentile £43.20 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £35.00 £43.95
% change year-on-year -35.34% -20.36% +51.55%

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 3 November 2025.

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 3 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for CI/CD in the UK

CI/CD
Top 17 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 3 November 2025. 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 +10 3,232 £513 -6.82% 2,321
London +5 1,685 £525 -8.70% 1,137
UK excluding London +13 1,681 £500 - 1,783
Work from Home +12 1,306 £501 -4.52% 1,342
North of England +11 563 £492 +7.54% 331
Midlands +25 323 £506 -3.62% 178
South East +16 313 £500 -9.09% 899
Yorkshire +2 275 £500 +9.29% 72
West Midlands +21 255 £525 -4.55% 113
Scotland +15 243 £500 +11.11% 84
North West +15 229 £470 -1.05% 236
South West +10 150 £550 -4.35% 178
East of England +11 112 £500 -2.44% 80
East Midlands +23 68 £415 -16.16% 62
North East +14 61 £488 +16.77% 23
Wales -1 27 £450 -14.33% 36
Northern Ireland -6 8 - - 17

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
1 155 (3.97%) Confluence
2 131 (3.36%) Apache Airflow
3 96 (2.46%) Apache Spark
4 95 (2.44%) Apache
5 79 (2.03%) SAS
6 32 (0.82%) WebLogic
7 28 (0.72%) JBoss
7 28 (0.72%) nginx
7 28 (0.72%) WebSphere
8 26 (0.67%) SharePoint
9 19 (0.49%) Anypoint
9 19 (0.49%) Mule
10 18 (0.46%) IIS
10 18 (0.46%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.38%) WebSphere Application Server
12 13 (0.33%) CMS
13 11 (0.28%) Oracle Application Server
14 10 (0.26%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.23%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.23%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (1.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.31%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 9 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
5 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.026%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.026%) Revit
8 1 (0.026%) Simulink
8 1 (0.026%) Stateflow
8 1 (0.026%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.31%) Aladdin
2 12 (0.31%) Oracle BPM
3 10 (0.26%) Maximo
4 8 (0.21%) FLEXCUBE
5 7 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
6 6 (0.15%) Endur
7 4 (0.10%) Fidessa
7 4 (0.10%) Magento
7 4 (0.10%) SAP S/4HANA
7 4 (0.10%) thinkFolio
8 2 (0.051%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.051%) Orchestrade
8 2 (0.051%) SAP PM
8 2 (0.051%) Shopify
9 1 (0.026%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.026%) OpenText MBPM
9 1 (0.026%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,797 (46.07%) AWS
2 1,535 (39.35%) Azure
3 795 (20.38%) GitHub
4 657 (16.84%) GCP
5 556 (14.25%) Azure DevOps
6 520 (13.33%) GitHub Actions
7 465 (11.92%) Serverless
8 313 (8.02%) Amazon S3
9 267 (6.84%) AWS Lambda
10 247 (6.33%) AWS CloudFormation
11 200 (5.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 197 (5.05%) OpenShift
13 192 (4.92%) Amazon EC2
14 171 (4.38%) Amazon EKS
15 166 (4.26%) Amazon ECS
16 156 (4.00%) Power Platform
17 122 (3.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 115 (2.95%) Azure AKS
19 101 (2.59%) Entra ID
19 101 (2.59%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 158 (4.05%) Firewall
2 118 (3.02%) DNS
3 77 (1.97%) VPN
4 75 (1.92%) TCP/IP
5 68 (1.74%) Network Security
6 48 (1.23%) SSL
7 44 (1.13%) HTTP
8 20 (0.51%) SSH
9 19 (0.49%) DHCP
10 17 (0.44%) Ethernet
10 17 (0.44%) OpenLDAP
11 16 (0.41%) Wireshark
12 15 (0.38%) BGP
12 15 (0.38%) HTTPS
12 15 (0.38%) Kerberos
13 14 (0.36%) WAN
14 13 (0.33%) SMTP
15 12 (0.31%) IMAP
16 11 (0.28%) AMQP
16 11 (0.28%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 348 (8.92%) PostgreSQL
2 244 (6.25%) NoSQL
3 173 (4.43%) Amazon RDS
4 161 (4.13%) MongoDB
5 156 (4.00%) SQL Server
6 140 (3.59%) Relational Database
7 128 (3.28%) Data Warehouse
8 111 (2.85%) Power BI
9 99 (2.54%) Data Lake
10 96 (2.46%) MySQL
11 86 (2.20%) DynamoDB
12 73 (1.87%) BigQuery
13 71 (1.82%) Azure SQL Database
14 68 (1.74%) Oracle Database
15 63 (1.61%) Big Data
16 62 (1.59%) Redis
17 54 (1.38%) Delta Lake
18 49 (1.26%) Amazon Aurora
19 44 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
20 36 (0.92%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 929 (23.81%) Jenkins
2 828 (21.23%) Git
3 608 (15.59%) GitLab
4 405 (10.38%) JIRA
5 193 (4.95%) Selenium
6 158 (4.05%) JUnit
7 133 (3.41%) SonarQube
8 129 (3.31%) Cucumber
9 117 (3.00%) Cypress.io
10 97 (2.49%) Sonatype Nexus
11 93 (2.38%) Postman
12 87 (2.23%) Bitbucket
13 86 (2.20%) Maven
14 74 (1.90%) Artifactory
15 67 (1.72%) CircleCI
16 63 (1.61%) JMeter
17 61 (1.56%) Gradle
18 60 (1.54%) Liquibase
19 50 (1.28%) REST Assured
19 50 (1.28%) TeamCity
General
1 1,094 (28.04%) Social Skills
2 688 (17.64%) Finance
3 475 (12.18%) Public Sector
4 343 (8.79%) Banking
5 341 (8.74%) Analytical Skills
6 88 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
7 64 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 61 (1.56%) Financial Institution
8 61 (1.56%) Investment Banking
8 61 (1.56%) Marketing
9 58 (1.49%) Military
10 55 (1.41%) Telecoms
11 46 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
12 38 (0.97%) Front Office
12 38 (0.97%) Retail
13 30 (0.77%) Manufacturing
14 29 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.46%) Law
16 17 (0.44%) Publishing
17 16 (0.41%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 957 (24.53%) Developer
2 538 (13.79%) DevOps Engineer
3 518 (13.28%) Senior
4 337 (8.64%) Architect
5 257 (6.59%) AWS Engineer
6 254 (6.51%) Lead
7 241 (6.18%) Java Developer
8 237 (6.08%) Data Engineer
9 226 (5.79%) Software Engineer
10 184 (4.72%) Platform Engineer
11 168 (4.31%) Azure Engineer
12 164 (4.20%) Full-Stack Developer
13 149 (3.82%) Senior Developer
14 143 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
15 139 (3.56%) AWS DevOps
16 122 (3.13%) Python Developer
17 119 (3.05%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 101 (2.59%) Python Engineer
19 89 (2.28%) Consultant
20 82 (2.10%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 463 (11.87%) REST
2 430 (11.02%) RESTful
3 427 (10.95%) React
4 349 (8.95%) Node.js
5 313 (8.02%) Kafka
6 300 (7.69%) Spring
7 289 (7.41%) .NET
8 254 (6.51%) Spring Boot
9 227 (5.82%) HTML
10 208 (5.33%) AngularJS
11 202 (5.18%) CSS
12 167 (4.28%) JSON
13 138 (3.54%) OAuth
14 135 (3.46%) SOAP
15 133 (3.41%) Elastic Stack
16 115 (2.95%) Playwright
17 107 (2.74%) GraphQL
18 105 (2.69%) FastAPI
18 105 (2.69%) Jest
19 104 (2.67%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 545 (13.97%) Cloud Native
2 225 (5.77%) Distributed Systems
3 186 (4.77%) Product Ownership
4 104 (2.67%) Public Cloud
5 95 (2.44%) Mobile App
6 94 (2.41%) Onboarding
7 84 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
8 82 (2.10%) Algorithms
9 73 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
10 65 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
11 64 (1.64%) Hybrid Cloud
12 63 (1.61%) Virtual Team
13 61 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
14 53 (1.36%) Replication
15 45 (1.15%) Security Posture
16 44 (1.13%) Data Structures
17 41 (1.05%) Data Centre
17 41 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 40 (1.03%) Private Cloud
19 38 (0.97%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 546 (14.00%) Linux
2 185 (4.74%) Windows
3 125 (3.20%) Unix
4 88 (2.26%) Android
5 83 (2.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 78 (2.00%) Apple iOS
7 50 (1.28%) Windows Server
8 29 (0.74%) VMS
9 27 (0.69%) Ubuntu
10 23 (0.59%) CentOS
11 15 (0.38%) Solaris
12 12 (0.31%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.077%) zOS
15 2 (0.051%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.026%) MVS
16 1 (0.026%) SUSE
16 1 (0.026%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,234 (57.27%) DevOps
2 1,529 (39.20%) Agile
3 1,191 (30.53%) Infrastructure as Code
4 920 (23.58%) Containerisation
5 850 (21.79%) Problem-Solving
6 795 (20.38%) Test Automation
7 733 (18.79%) Microservices
8 552 (14.15%) Software Engineering
9 439 (11.25%) Observability
10 408 (10.46%) Analytics
11 392 (10.05%) Scrum
12 390 (10.00%) Migration
13 375 (9.61%) AI
14 368 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
15 352 (9.02%) Full-Stack Development
16 342 (8.77%) TDD
17 331 (8.49%) Continuous Integration
18 329 (8.43%) Data Pipeline
19 323 (8.28%) Mentoring
20 313 (8.02%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 1,511 (38.73%) Python
2 892 (22.87%) Java
3 787 (20.17%) SQL
4 566 (14.51%) JavaScript
5 432 (11.07%) Bash
6 424 (10.87%) TypeScript
7 375 (9.61%) C#
8 287 (7.36%) PowerShell
9 237 (6.08%) Go
10 123 (3.15%) C++
11 100 (2.56%) Bicep
11 100 (2.56%) Shell Script
12 70 (1.79%) Scala
13 62 (1.59%) Kotlin
14 58 (1.49%) Groovy
15 51 (1.31%) PHP
16 48 (1.23%) Perl
17 47 (1.20%) PL/SQL
18 39 (1.00%) Rust
19 32 (0.82%) Swift
Qualifications
1 918 (23.53%) Security Cleared
2 738 (18.92%) SC Cleared
3 251 (6.43%) Degree
4 153 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 148 (3.79%) AWS Certification
6 101 (2.59%) DV Cleared
7 98 (2.51%) Azure Certification
8 82 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
9 66 (1.69%) Master's Degree
10 64 (1.64%) CISSP
11 49 (1.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 44 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 42 (1.08%) CISM
14 31 (0.79%) ISTQB
15 30 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 23 (0.59%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 21 (0.54%) CREST Certified
17 21 (0.54%) OSCP
18 18 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 16 (0.41%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (9.41%) QA
2 168 (4.31%) Accessibility
3 163 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 137 (3.51%) GDPR
5 114 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 104 (2.67%) NIST
7 55 (1.41%) WCAG
8 51 (1.31%) PCI DSS
9 49 (1.26%) NCSC
10 27 (0.69%) HIPAA
11 23 (0.59%) SOC 2
12 17 (0.44%) SLA
13 15 (0.38%) EU AI Act
13 15 (0.38%) PSD2
13 15 (0.38%) SEPA
14 13 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
15 10 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 8 (0.21%) ISO 20022
16 8 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 7 (0.18%) MiFID
System Software
1 1,209 (30.99%) Docker
2 113 (2.90%) Active Directory
3 63 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
5 40 (1.03%) vSphere
6 13 (0.33%) Squid
6 13 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.31%) Dovecot
7 12 (0.31%) Postfix
8 11 (0.28%) KVM
8 11 (0.28%) NFS
9 10 (0.26%) DFS Replication
9 10 (0.26%) HDFS
9 10 (0.26%) zsh
10 9 (0.23%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.21%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 7 (0.18%) Firmware
13 5 (0.13%) Hyper-V
14 4 (0.10%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 1,368 (35.07%) Kubernetes
2 1,266 (32.45%) Terraform
3 517 (13.25%) Ansible
4 413 (10.59%) Grafana
5 371 (9.51%) Prometheus
6 103 (2.64%) Argo
7 68 (1.74%) Puppet
8 67 (1.72%) Progress Chef
9 49 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
10 40 (1.03%) Istio
11 33 (0.85%) Kibana
12 28 (0.72%) Nessus
12 28 (0.72%) Packer
13 21 (0.54%) Podman
14 18 (0.46%) Proxmox
15 17 (0.44%) Kustomize
16 16 (0.41%) Control-M
16 16 (0.41%) vCenter Server
17 15 (0.38%) ITRS Geneos
18 14 (0.36%) Nmap
Vendors
1 482 (12.36%) Microsoft
2 241 (6.18%) Oracle
3 236 (6.05%) Google
4 210 (5.38%) Splunk
5 207 (5.31%) Databricks
6 127 (3.26%) Red Hat
7 91 (2.33%) ServiceNow
8 90 (2.31%) VMware
9 89 (2.28%) Salesforce
10 56 (1.44%) IBM
11 52 (1.33%) Dynatrace
11 52 (1.33%) SAP
12 44 (1.13%) OpenAI
13 42 (1.08%) F5
14 41 (1.05%) MuleSoft
15 35 (0.90%) Talend
16 33 (0.85%) Atlassian
16 33 (0.85%) Cisco
17 31 (0.79%) Veracode
18 29 (0.74%) CyberArk