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 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 20 28
Rank change year-on-year +8 +8 -8
Contract jobs citing CI/CD 4,262 2,742 2,590
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.49% 8.27% 6.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.05% 9.36% 6.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,989 1,899 1,903
10th Percentile £363 £385 £413
25th Percentile £423 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £553
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% -0.45% -7.92%
75th Percentile £600 £656 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 22 22
10th Percentile £47.00 £26.34 £56.43
25th Percentile £61.75 £61.25 £61.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year - -13.33% +14.32%
75th Percentile £67.00 £74.86 £77.50
90th Percentile £86.45 £95.73 £78.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -3.70% -10.00% +14.32%

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 32,670 29,303 37,803
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.06% 88.34% 87.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,630 17,837 25,180
10th Percentile £304 £308 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,024 946 1,523
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.98
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +27.14%
75th Percentile £52.72 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.25 £74.60 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £30.45 £45.21
% change year-on-year -22.58% -32.65% +44.86%

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 1 January 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 1 January 2026.

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 1 January 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 +10 3,537 £518 -5.91% 2,729
London +5 1,850 £525 -11.58% 1,240
UK excluding London +9 1,787 £500 - 1,723
Work from Home +10 1,354 £513 -2.38% 1,515
North of England +8 625 £488 -0.26% 547
Midlands +19 358 £515 +3.00% 230
South East +7 340 £500 -9.09% 423
Yorkshire +3 311 £500 +2.04% 206
West Midlands +17 297 £520 +2.47% 140
North West +11 246 £471 -0.84% 295
Scotland +10 226 £465 -1.27% 84
South West +18 167 £550 -8.33% 214
East of England +10 97 £573 +30.86% 170
North East +13 72 £500 -9.09% 48
East Midlands +15 61 £418 -16.50% 84
Wales -1 29 £469 -14.77% 42
Northern Ireland -9 11 - - 39

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
1 165 (3.87%) Confluence
2 122 (2.86%) Apache Airflow
3 113 (2.65%) Apache Spark
4 102 (2.39%) Apache
5 87 (2.04%) SAS
6 44 (1.03%) SharePoint
7 33 (0.77%) nginx
8 26 (0.61%) WebLogic
9 21 (0.49%) JBoss
10 20 (0.47%) OpenStack
11 18 (0.42%) CMS
12 16 (0.38%) IIS
13 15 (0.35%) Anypoint
13 15 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
14 13 (0.31%) Mule
14 13 (0.31%) WebSphere
15 10 (0.23%) SugarCRM
16 9 (0.21%) Appian
16 9 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
17 8 (0.19%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 46 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.23%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 9 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.12%) Adobe XD
5 5 (0.12%) Sketch
6 3 (0.070%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.023%) Revit
7 1 (0.023%) Simulink
7 1 (0.023%) Trello
Business Applications
1 27 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 10 (0.23%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.094%) Endur
3 4 (0.094%) Fidessa
3 4 (0.094%) Maximo
3 4 (0.094%) Payment Gateway
3 4 (0.094%) thinkFolio
4 3 (0.070%) Magento
4 3 (0.070%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.070%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.070%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.047%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.047%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.047%) Shopify
6 1 (0.023%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.023%) Cerner Millennium
6 1 (0.023%) Finacle
6 1 (0.023%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 1,991 (46.72%) AWS
2 1,778 (41.72%) Azure
3 953 (22.36%) GitHub
4 716 (16.80%) GCP
5 644 (15.11%) GitHub Actions
6 640 (15.02%) Azure DevOps
7 590 (13.84%) Serverless
8 355 (8.33%) Amazon S3
9 334 (7.84%) AWS Lambda
10 329 (7.72%) AWS CloudFormation
11 245 (5.75%) OpenShift
12 241 (5.65%) Amazon EKS
13 223 (5.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 221 (5.19%) Amazon ECS
15 212 (4.97%) Amazon EC2
16 209 (4.90%) Power Platform
17 175 (4.11%) Azure AKS
18 152 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
19 138 (3.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 123 (2.89%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 185 (4.34%) Firewall
2 127 (2.98%) DNS
3 77 (1.81%) Network Security
4 71 (1.67%) VPN
5 70 (1.64%) TCP/IP
6 45 (1.06%) SSL
7 44 (1.03%) HTTP
8 28 (0.66%) SSH
9 21 (0.49%) Kerberos
10 19 (0.45%) DHCP
11 16 (0.38%) WAN
11 16 (0.38%) Wireshark
12 15 (0.35%) Ethernet
12 15 (0.35%) HTTPS
12 15 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
13 11 (0.26%) FTP
13 11 (0.26%) SD-WAN
13 11 (0.26%) SMTP
14 10 (0.23%) IMAP
15 9 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 365 (8.56%) PostgreSQL
2 260 (6.10%) NoSQL
3 185 (4.34%) Amazon RDS
4 182 (4.27%) MongoDB
4 182 (4.27%) SQL Server
5 151 (3.54%) Power BI
5 151 (3.54%) Relational Database
6 144 (3.38%) Data Lake
7 137 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
8 112 (2.63%) MySQL
9 93 (2.18%) Azure SQL Database
10 91 (2.14%) DynamoDB
11 76 (1.78%) Redis
12 72 (1.69%) Delta Lake
13 68 (1.60%) Oracle Database
14 62 (1.45%) Big Data
14 62 (1.45%) BigQuery
15 53 (1.24%) Amazon Aurora
15 53 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 971 (22.78%) Jenkins
2 871 (20.44%) Git
3 729 (17.10%) GitLab
4 421 (9.88%) JIRA
5 188 (4.41%) Selenium
6 146 (3.43%) Cucumber
7 142 (3.33%) JUnit
8 114 (2.67%) Postman
9 109 (2.56%) Cypress.io
10 97 (2.28%) SonarQube
11 91 (2.14%) Sonatype Nexus
12 79 (1.85%) Bitbucket
13 75 (1.76%) JMeter
14 69 (1.62%) CircleCI
15 68 (1.60%) Artifactory
16 60 (1.41%) Maven
17 59 (1.38%) REST Assured
18 57 (1.34%) MLflow
19 56 (1.31%) Gradle
20 51 (1.20%) Liquibase
General
1 1,224 (28.72%) Social Skills
2 747 (17.53%) Finance
3 562 (13.19%) Public Sector
4 365 (8.56%) Banking
5 339 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
6 99 (2.32%) Documentation Skills
7 69 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 62 (1.45%) Financial Institution
9 60 (1.41%) Investment Banking
10 57 (1.34%) Military
11 52 (1.22%) Marketing
12 49 (1.15%) Front Office
13 47 (1.10%) Telecoms
14 34 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 33 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
16 28 (0.66%) Manufacturing
16 28 (0.66%) Retail
17 22 (0.52%) Legal
18 21 (0.49%) Law
19 20 (0.47%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,007 (23.63%) Developer
2 580 (13.61%) Senior
3 562 (13.19%) DevOps Engineer
4 336 (7.88%) Architect
5 281 (6.59%) Data Engineer
5 281 (6.59%) Lead
6 260 (6.10%) AWS Engineer
7 250 (5.87%) Software Engineer
8 232 (5.44%) Java Developer
9 201 (4.72%) Azure Engineer
10 199 (4.67%) Platform Engineer
11 168 (3.94%) Full-Stack Developer
12 164 (3.85%) Senior Developer
13 148 (3.47%) AWS DevOps
13 148 (3.47%) Cloud Engineer
14 126 (2.96%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 119 (2.79%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 107 (2.51%) Python Engineer
17 105 (2.46%) Python Developer
18 100 (2.35%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 519 (12.18%) REST
2 442 (10.37%) React
3 430 (10.09%) Node.js
3 430 (10.09%) RESTful
4 361 (8.47%) Kafka
5 343 (8.05%) .NET
6 342 (8.02%) Spring
7 296 (6.95%) Spring Boot
8 225 (5.28%) AngularJS
9 211 (4.95%) HTML
10 183 (4.29%) CSS
11 170 (3.99%) JSON
12 162 (3.80%) OAuth
13 156 (3.66%) Elastic Stack
14 147 (3.45%) Playwright
15 124 (2.91%) PySpark
16 123 (2.89%) YAML
17 119 (2.79%) GraphQL
18 115 (2.70%) SOAP
19 109 (2.56%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 671 (15.74%) Cloud Native
2 273 (6.41%) Distributed Systems
3 193 (4.53%) Product Ownership
4 108 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 89 (2.09%) Public Cloud
6 88 (2.06%) Mobile App
7 80 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
8 72 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
9 67 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
10 66 (1.55%) Algorithms
11 64 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 53 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
13 51 (1.20%) AI Agents
13 51 (1.20%) Replication
13 51 (1.20%) Security Posture
13 51 (1.20%) Virtual Team
14 47 (1.10%) Data Centre
15 42 (0.99%) NHS
15 42 (0.99%) Private Cloud
16 39 (0.92%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 595 (13.96%) Linux
2 215 (5.04%) Windows
3 99 (2.32%) Unix
4 78 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 66 (1.55%) Android
6 64 (1.50%) Apple iOS
7 49 (1.15%) Windows Server
8 48 (1.13%) VMS
9 29 (0.68%) Ubuntu
10 23 (0.54%) CentOS
11 13 (0.31%) Solaris
12 11 (0.26%) Mac OS
13 10 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
14 4 (0.094%) zOS
15 3 (0.070%) Windows Server 2016
16 2 (0.047%) Oracle Linux
16 2 (0.047%) Robot Operating System
16 2 (0.047%) SUSE
17 1 (0.023%) MVS
17 1 (0.023%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,460 (57.72%) DevOps
2 1,559 (36.58%) Agile
3 1,365 (32.03%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1,096 (25.72%) Containerisation
5 934 (21.91%) Problem-Solving
6 863 (20.25%) Test Automation
7 834 (19.57%) Microservices
8 591 (13.87%) Software Engineering
9 572 (13.42%) Observability
10 485 (11.38%) Analytics
11 474 (11.12%) AI
12 435 (10.21%) Continuous Improvement
13 409 (9.60%) Migration
14 387 (9.08%) Data Pipeline
15 385 (9.03%) Full-Stack Development
16 368 (8.63%) Scrum
17 362 (8.49%) DevSecOps
18 357 (8.38%) Mentoring
19 317 (7.44%) Platform Engineering
20 316 (7.41%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,640 (38.48%) Python
2 897 (21.05%) Java
3 885 (20.76%) SQL
4 576 (13.51%) JavaScript
5 481 (11.29%) TypeScript
6 428 (10.04%) Bash
7 398 (9.34%) C#
8 314 (7.37%) PowerShell
9 221 (5.19%) Go
10 115 (2.70%) Bicep
11 113 (2.65%) Shell Script
12 106 (2.49%) C++
13 74 (1.74%) Scala
14 62 (1.45%) Ruby
15 56 (1.31%) PL/SQL
16 55 (1.29%) PHP
17 48 (1.13%) Kotlin
18 46 (1.08%) Groovy
19 45 (1.06%) Perl
19 45 (1.06%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,109 (26.02%) Security Cleared
2 892 (20.93%) SC Cleared
3 285 (6.69%) Degree
4 187 (4.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 171 (4.01%) AWS Certification
6 130 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 125 (2.93%) Azure Certification
8 118 (2.77%) DV Cleared
9 77 (1.81%) Master's Degree
10 73 (1.71%) CISSP
11 57 (1.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 54 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
13 51 (1.20%) CISM
14 35 (0.82%) ISTQB
15 27 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 27 (0.63%) MCP
16 25 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
16 25 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
17 18 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 16 (0.38%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (9.71%) QA
2 192 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 183 (4.29%) Accessibility
4 160 (3.75%) GDPR
5 136 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 117 (2.75%) NIST
7 71 (1.67%) WCAG
8 51 (1.20%) NCSC
9 49 (1.15%) PCI DSS
10 22 (0.52%) HIPAA
11 21 (0.49%) PSD2
12 20 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.40%) SLA
14 16 (0.38%) SOC 2
15 15 (0.35%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.35%) ISO 20022
16 13 (0.31%) MiFID
16 13 (0.31%) SEPA
17 11 (0.26%) HL7
18 7 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,389 (32.59%) Docker
2 130 (3.05%) Active Directory
3 74 (1.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 56 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
5 38 (0.89%) vSphere
6 15 (0.35%) VMware NSX
7 12 (0.28%) HDFS
7 12 (0.28%) Squid
8 10 (0.23%) DFS Replication
8 10 (0.23%) Dovecot
8 10 (0.23%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.23%) KVM
8 10 (0.23%) NFS
8 10 (0.23%) Postfix
9 9 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
10 8 (0.19%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 8 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.19%) zsh
11 4 (0.094%) Veritas File System
11 4 (0.094%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 1,545 (36.25%) Kubernetes
2 1,490 (34.96%) Terraform
3 587 (13.77%) Ansible
4 492 (11.54%) Grafana
5 429 (10.07%) Prometheus
6 126 (2.96%) Argo
7 70 (1.64%) Progress Chef
8 66 (1.55%) Puppet
9 58 (1.36%) Istio
10 47 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
11 40 (0.94%) Kibana
12 24 (0.56%) Nessus
13 23 (0.54%) Podman
14 22 (0.52%) Packer
15 19 (0.45%) Proxmox
16 16 (0.38%) ITRS Geneos
17 15 (0.35%) NetBackup
17 15 (0.35%) vRealize
18 14 (0.33%) logstash
18 14 (0.33%) Rancher
Vendors
1 585 (13.73%) Microsoft
2 290 (6.80%) Databricks
3 264 (6.19%) Oracle
4 240 (5.63%) Google
5 216 (5.07%) Splunk
6 143 (3.36%) Red Hat
7 115 (2.70%) VMware
8 104 (2.44%) ServiceNow
9 83 (1.95%) Salesforce
10 69 (1.62%) Dynatrace
10 69 (1.62%) OpenAI
11 53 (1.24%) SAP
12 45 (1.06%) IBM
12 45 (1.06%) MuleSoft
13 42 (0.99%) Talend
14 41 (0.96%) CyberArk
15 40 (0.94%) F5
16 32 (0.75%) Cisco
17 31 (0.73%) Denodo
18 30 (0.70%) Atlassian