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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 19 28
Rank change year-on-year +7 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing CI/CD 4,230 2,671 2,546
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.44% 8.48% 5.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.06% 9.54% 6.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,971 1,844 1,892
10th Percentile £363 £390 £413
25th Percentile £418 £456 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.45% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £656 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £507 £550
% change year-on-year -1.47% -7.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 24 21
10th Percentile £39.81 £26.27 £56.25
25th Percentile £61.25 £27.41 £60.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +2.89%
75th Percentile £74.26 £74.58 £76.53
90th Percentile £88.10 £93.90 £77.50
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 32,398 27,994 37,832
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.63% 88.92% 87.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,495 16,988 25,007
10th Percentile £305 £307 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £645
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,977 897 1,738
10th Percentile £14.52 £15.62 £14.02
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £17.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.85
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -16.34% +19.54%
75th Percentile £57.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £69.25 £74.92 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £30.83 £40.28
% change year-on-year -22.15% -23.46% +54.90%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +8 3,540 £515 -8.04% 2,889
London +6 1,854 £525 -12.34% 539
UK excluding London +8 1,765 £500 -1.47% 2,702
Work from Home +8 1,322 £511 -2.62% 1,394
North of England +8 639 £500 - 559
Midlands +16 359 £515 +3.00% 354
South East +9 347 £500 -11.11% 810
Yorkshire +4 323 £500 - 236
West Midlands +16 303 £525 +1.70% 140
North West +10 246 £453 -9.40% 247
Scotland +9 201 £465 -1.85% 115
South West +13 163 £538 -10.42% 353
East of England +3 83 £625 +42.86% 371
North East +8 73 £488 -11.36% 77
East Midlands +8 56 £418 -16.50% 207
Wales -7 25 £450 -18.18% 130
Northern Ireland -6 13 - - 72

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
1 164 (3.88%) Confluence
2 116 (2.74%) Apache Airflow
3 113 (2.67%) Apache Spark
4 105 (2.48%) Apache
5 92 (2.17%) SAS
6 53 (1.25%) SharePoint
7 32 (0.76%) nginx
8 20 (0.47%) CMS
8 20 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
8 20 (0.47%) OpenStack
9 18 (0.43%) JBoss
10 17 (0.40%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.35%) IIS
12 12 (0.28%) Appian
12 12 (0.28%) WebSphere
13 11 (0.26%) Anypoint
14 10 (0.24%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.24%) Mule
14 10 (0.24%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 47 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.24%) Chatbot
3 10 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 7 (0.17%) Adobe XD
6 5 (0.12%) Sketch
7 3 (0.071%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
8 1 (0.024%) Revit
8 1 (0.024%) Simulink
8 1 (0.024%) Trello
Business Applications
1 26 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.12%) Aladdin
3 4 (0.095%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.071%) Magento
4 3 (0.071%) Maximo
4 3 (0.071%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.047%) Endur
5 2 (0.047%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.047%) Shopify
6 1 (0.024%) Cerner Millennium
6 1 (0.024%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.024%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.024%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.024%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.024%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.024%) thinkFolio
6 1 (0.024%) TrackWise
Cloud Services
1 1,937 (45.79%) AWS
2 1,774 (41.94%) Azure
3 947 (22.39%) GitHub
4 719 (17.00%) GCP
5 641 (15.15%) Azure DevOps
6 621 (14.68%) GitHub Actions
7 600 (14.18%) Serverless
8 351 (8.30%) Amazon S3
9 343 (8.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 336 (7.94%) AWS Lambda
11 242 (5.72%) OpenShift
12 230 (5.44%) Amazon ECS
12 230 (5.44%) Amazon EKS
13 227 (5.37%) Power Platform
14 208 (4.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 203 (4.80%) Amazon EC2
16 179 (4.23%) Azure AKS
17 166 (3.92%) Azure Data Factory
18 131 (3.10%) Entra ID
18 131 (3.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 188 (4.44%) Firewall
2 116 (2.74%) DNS
3 89 (2.10%) Network Security
4 68 (1.61%) VPN
5 64 (1.51%) TCP/IP
6 45 (1.06%) SSL
7 44 (1.04%) HTTP
8 27 (0.64%) SSH
9 20 (0.47%) Kerberos
10 18 (0.43%) DHCP
11 17 (0.40%) WAN
12 15 (0.35%) Wireshark
13 14 (0.33%) Ethernet
13 14 (0.33%) HTTPS
14 12 (0.28%) Reverse Proxy
14 12 (0.28%) SD-WAN
15 10 (0.24%) FTP
15 10 (0.24%) SMTP
16 9 (0.21%) BGP
16 9 (0.21%) IMAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (8.18%) PostgreSQL
2 255 (6.03%) NoSQL
3 179 (4.23%) Amazon RDS
4 176 (4.16%) MongoDB
5 174 (4.11%) SQL Server
6 166 (3.92%) Power BI
7 156 (3.69%) Relational Database
8 147 (3.48%) Data Lake
9 137 (3.24%) Data Warehouse
10 106 (2.51%) MySQL
11 102 (2.41%) Azure SQL Database
12 97 (2.29%) DynamoDB
13 73 (1.73%) Redis
14 72 (1.70%) Delta Lake
15 61 (1.44%) Big Data
15 61 (1.44%) BigQuery
16 58 (1.37%) Oracle Database
17 55 (1.30%) Amazon Athena
17 55 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
18 52 (1.23%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 955 (22.58%) Jenkins
2 823 (19.46%) Git
3 721 (17.04%) GitLab
4 397 (9.39%) JIRA
5 188 (4.44%) Selenium
6 149 (3.52%) Cucumber
7 148 (3.50%) JUnit
8 110 (2.60%) Postman
9 105 (2.48%) Cypress.io
10 89 (2.10%) Sonatype Nexus
11 86 (2.03%) SonarQube
12 76 (1.80%) JMeter
13 72 (1.70%) Bitbucket
14 61 (1.44%) Maven
14 61 (1.44%) REST Assured
15 59 (1.39%) Artifactory
15 59 (1.39%) MLflow
16 58 (1.37%) Gradle
17 43 (1.02%) CircleCI
17 43 (1.02%) Liquibase
General
1 1,204 (28.46%) Social Skills
2 752 (17.78%) Finance
3 549 (12.98%) Public Sector
4 360 (8.51%) Banking
5 343 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
6 100 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 63 (1.49%) Financial Institution
9 56 (1.32%) Military
10 51 (1.21%) Marketing
11 49 (1.16%) Investment Banking
12 46 (1.09%) Front Office
12 46 (1.09%) Telecoms
13 39 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
14 38 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
15 27 (0.64%) Legal
16 26 (0.61%) Manufacturing
17 25 (0.59%) Retail
18 21 (0.50%) Billing
18 21 (0.50%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 989 (23.38%) Developer
2 572 (13.52%) Senior
3 553 (13.07%) DevOps Engineer
4 329 (7.78%) Architect
5 301 (7.12%) Data Engineer
6 279 (6.60%) Lead
7 256 (6.05%) AWS Engineer
8 237 (5.60%) Software Engineer
9 225 (5.32%) Java Developer
10 204 (4.82%) Azure Engineer
11 186 (4.40%) Platform Engineer
12 166 (3.92%) Full-Stack Developer
13 162 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
14 150 (3.55%) Senior Developer
15 144 (3.40%) AWS DevOps
16 125 (2.96%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 124 (2.93%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 107 (2.53%) Python Developer
19 103 (2.43%) Test Engineer
20 97 (2.29%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 524 (12.39%) REST
2 426 (10.07%) React
3 409 (9.67%) Node.js
3 409 (9.67%) RESTful
4 359 (8.49%) Kafka
5 352 (8.32%) Spring
6 334 (7.90%) .NET
7 299 (7.07%) Spring Boot
8 206 (4.87%) AngularJS
9 199 (4.70%) HTML
10 170 (4.02%) CSS
11 163 (3.85%) OAuth
12 162 (3.83%) JSON
13 157 (3.71%) Playwright
14 140 (3.31%) Elastic Stack
15 139 (3.29%) PySpark
16 124 (2.93%) YAML
17 122 (2.88%) GraphQL
18 109 (2.58%) SOAP
19 104 (2.46%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 690 (16.31%) Cloud Native
2 265 (6.26%) Distributed Systems
3 196 (4.63%) Product Ownership
4 108 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 88 (2.08%) Public Cloud
6 76 (1.80%) Mobile App
7 74 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
8 69 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
9 64 (1.51%) Hybrid Cloud
10 59 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
11 57 (1.35%) Algorithms
12 53 (1.25%) AI Agents
13 51 (1.21%) Virtual Team
14 50 (1.18%) Security Posture
15 49 (1.16%) Data Centre
16 48 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (1.13%) Replication
17 45 (1.06%) NHS
18 40 (0.95%) Private Cloud
19 35 (0.83%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 578 (13.66%) Linux
2 217 (5.13%) Windows
3 104 (2.46%) Unix
4 78 (1.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 61 (1.44%) Android
6 59 (1.39%) Apple iOS
7 48 (1.13%) VMS
8 46 (1.09%) Windows Server
9 30 (0.71%) Ubuntu
10 24 (0.57%) CentOS
11 12 (0.28%) Solaris
12 9 (0.21%) Amazon Linux
12 9 (0.21%) Mac OS
13 6 (0.14%) zOS
14 3 (0.071%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.047%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.047%) SUSE
16 1 (0.024%) Debian
16 1 (0.024%) Embedded Linux
16 1 (0.024%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,433 (57.52%) DevOps
2 1,487 (35.15%) Agile
3 1,333 (31.51%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1,100 (26.00%) Containerisation
5 944 (22.32%) Problem-Solving
6 873 (20.64%) Test Automation
7 794 (18.77%) Microservices
8 582 (13.76%) Observability
9 566 (13.38%) Software Engineering
10 509 (12.03%) Analytics
11 487 (11.51%) AI
12 456 (10.78%) Continuous Improvement
13 398 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
14 393 (9.29%) Migration
15 382 (9.03%) Full-Stack Development
16 358 (8.46%) Mentoring
17 352 (8.32%) DevSecOps
18 348 (8.23%) Scrum
19 328 (7.75%) Data Modelling
20 326 (7.71%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,635 (38.65%) Python
2 910 (21.51%) SQL
3 895 (21.16%) Java
4 562 (13.29%) JavaScript
5 448 (10.59%) TypeScript
6 398 (9.41%) Bash
7 381 (9.01%) C#
8 303 (7.16%) PowerShell
9 204 (4.82%) Go
10 120 (2.84%) Bicep
11 116 (2.74%) Shell Script
12 95 (2.25%) C++
13 86 (2.03%) Scala
14 67 (1.58%) Ruby
15 51 (1.21%) PL/SQL
16 50 (1.18%) T-SQL
17 49 (1.16%) PHP
18 44 (1.04%) Perl
19 42 (0.99%) Groovy
20 41 (0.97%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,118 (26.43%) Security Cleared
2 901 (21.30%) SC Cleared
3 275 (6.50%) Degree
4 172 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 160 (3.78%) AWS Certification
6 130 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
7 120 (2.84%) Azure Certification
7 120 (2.84%) DV Cleared
8 71 (1.68%) Master's Degree
9 63 (1.49%) CISSP
10 53 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
11 48 (1.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 44 (1.04%) CISM
13 31 (0.73%) MCP
14 30 (0.71%) ISTQB
15 25 (0.59%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 25 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
15 25 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
16 18 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 16 (0.38%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 393 (9.29%) QA
2 206 (4.87%) Data Quality
3 180 (4.26%) Accessibility
4 159 (3.76%) GDPR
5 121 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 108 (2.55%) NIST
7 72 (1.70%) WCAG
8 54 (1.28%) NCSC
9 49 (1.16%) PCI DSS
10 24 (0.57%) HIPAA
10 24 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 23 (0.54%) PSD2
12 19 (0.45%) SLA
13 17 (0.40%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.40%) SOC 2
14 15 (0.35%) SEPA
15 12 (0.28%) EU AI Act
15 12 (0.28%) MiFID
16 11 (0.26%) HL7
17 7 (0.17%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,375 (32.51%) Docker
2 123 (2.91%) Active Directory
3 75 (1.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 58 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
5 40 (0.95%) vSphere
6 15 (0.35%) VMware NSX
7 12 (0.28%) HDFS
8 11 (0.26%) Squid
9 10 (0.24%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.24%) KVM
9 10 (0.24%) NFS
9 10 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (0.21%) DFS Replication
10 9 (0.21%) Dovecot
10 9 (0.21%) Postfix
11 8 (0.19%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 7 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.17%) zsh
13 4 (0.095%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 4 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,509 (35.67%) Kubernetes
2 1,442 (34.09%) Terraform
3 568 (13.43%) Ansible
4 451 (10.66%) Grafana
5 390 (9.22%) Prometheus
6 115 (2.72%) Argo
7 69 (1.63%) Puppet
8 65 (1.54%) Progress Chef
9 54 (1.28%) Istio
10 50 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
11 36 (0.85%) Kibana
12 22 (0.52%) Nessus
13 21 (0.50%) Podman
14 19 (0.45%) Packer
15 18 (0.43%) Proxmox
16 16 (0.38%) NetBackup
17 15 (0.35%) Rancher
17 15 (0.35%) vRealize
18 13 (0.31%) ITRS Geneos
18 13 (0.31%) logstash
Vendors
1 596 (14.09%) Microsoft
2 299 (7.07%) Databricks
3 244 (5.77%) Oracle
4 235 (5.56%) Google
5 209 (4.94%) Splunk
6 140 (3.31%) Red Hat
7 113 (2.67%) VMware
8 110 (2.60%) ServiceNow
9 77 (1.82%) Salesforce
10 76 (1.80%) OpenAI
11 67 (1.58%) Dynatrace
12 52 (1.23%) SAP
13 46 (1.09%) Talend
14 41 (0.97%) IBM
14 41 (0.97%) MuleSoft
15 40 (0.95%) F5
16 37 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 34 (0.80%) Denodo
18 32 (0.76%) Cisco
19 28 (0.66%) Atlassian