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 25 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 16 26
Rank change year-on-year +6 +10 0
Contract jobs citing CI/CD 6,199 3,469 2,736
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.30% 10.51% 7.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.39% 11.61% 8.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,198 2,352 1,835
10th Percentile £375 £363 £388
25th Percentile £432 £421 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -7.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £610 £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 46,295 29,870 32,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,040 18,573 20,019
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
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 £627 £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 3,185 1,844 1,407
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +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 25 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 25 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 25 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 5,169 £525 +2.44% 5,946
London +4 2,727 £536 +2.02% 3,358
UK excluding London +7 2,634 £500 - 3,194
Work from Home +6 1,893 £525 +5.00% 2,647
North of England +3 995 £500 +4.06% 884
Yorkshire +7 501 £500 +2.30% 275
South East +1 468 £525 +5.00% 684
Midlands -4 379 £488 -2.50% 332
North West +4 372 £530 +11.58% 490
West Midlands -3 326 £488 -7.58% 220
South West +9 294 £525 -4.55% 430
Scotland -3 293 £431 -13.75% 387
East of England +5 166 £505 +1.00% 244
North East -3 133 £425 -10.53% 124
East Midlands -22 50 £463 +7.68% 112
Wales +1 48 £413 -9.59% 83
Northern Ireland +20 23 £591 +18.25% 163
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 (4.47%) Confluence
2 235 (3.79%) Apache Airflow
3 202 (3.26%) Apache Spark
4 173 (2.79%) Apache
5 92 (1.48%) SharePoint
6 64 (1.03%) SAS
7 37 (0.60%) Jupyter
8 29 (0.47%) CMS
9 26 (0.42%) nginx
10 21 (0.34%) Camunda
11 20 (0.32%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.24%) Anypoint
13 14 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
14 11 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.15%) Mule
15 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.15%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.15%) WordPress
16 6 (0.097%) IIS
16 6 (0.097%) JBoss
Applications
1 25 (0.40%) 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 (0.048%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.048%) 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 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.44%) 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 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 8 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.097%) Magento
8 6 (0.097%) Shopify
8 6 (0.097%) Temenos T24
9 4 (0.065%) Oracle ERP
9 4 (0.065%) Sage X3
9 4 (0.065%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 3 (0.048%) Endur
10 3 (0.048%) Finacle
10 3 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
11 2 (0.032%) Distributed Ledger
11 2 (0.032%) Oracle EBS R12
11 2 (0.032%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,753 (44.41%) AWS
2 2,676 (43.17%) Azure
3 1,312 (21.16%) GitHub
4 1,048 (16.91%) GCP
5 996 (16.07%) Azure DevOps
6 851 (13.73%) GitHub Actions
7 662 (10.68%) Serverless
8 454 (7.32%) Amazon S3
9 447 (7.21%) AWS Lambda
10 433 (6.98%) Power Platform
11 344 (5.55%) Amazon EKS
12 318 (5.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 290 (4.68%) AWS CloudFormation
14 265 (4.27%) Entra ID
15 242 (3.90%) Snowflake
16 237 (3.82%) Azure AKS
17 223 (3.60%) Amazon EC2
18 207 (3.34%) Amazon ECS
19 191 (3.08%) Azure Monitor
20 186 (3.00%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 244 (3.94%) Firewall
2 165 (2.66%) DNS
3 136 (2.19%) Network Security
4 96 (1.55%) VPN
5 89 (1.44%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.85%) HTTP
7 52 (0.84%) WAN
8 46 (0.74%) BGP
9 44 (0.71%) 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 35 (0.56%) SSL
14 34 (0.55%) DHCP
15 31 (0.50%) Internet
16 27 (0.44%) OSPF
17 26 (0.42%) 5G
18 23 (0.37%) VLAN
19 21 (0.34%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 431 (6.95%) PostgreSQL
2 322 (5.19%) Power BI
3 304 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 280 (4.52%) SQL Server
5 275 (4.44%) Relational Database
6 269 (4.34%) MongoDB
7 252 (4.07%) NoSQL
8 238 (3.84%) Data Lake
9 195 (3.15%) Amazon RDS
10 181 (2.92%) Metadata
11 146 (2.36%) DynamoDB
12 145 (2.34%) MySQL
13 134 (2.16%) BigQuery
14 125 (2.02%) Amazon Redshift
15 124 (2.00%) Delta Lake
16 112 (1.81%) Redis
17 98 (1.58%) Amazon Athena
18 94 (1.52%) Amazon Aurora
19 89 (1.44%) Big Data
20 88 (1.42%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 1,256 (20.26%) Git
2 1,019 (16.44%) Jenkins
3 932 (15.03%) GitLab
4 520 (8.39%) JIRA
5 255 (4.11%) Selenium
6 201 (3.24%) JUnit
7 157 (2.53%) Cucumber
8 140 (2.26%) Maven
9 131 (2.11%) SonarQube
10 121 (1.95%) Gradle
11 116 (1.87%) Postman
12 108 (1.74%) Bitbucket
13 107 (1.73%) JMeter
14 98 (1.58%) REST Assured
15 97 (1.56%) Cypress.io
16 95 (1.53%) Gatling
17 84 (1.36%) Mockito
18 77 (1.24%) Claude Code
19 50 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
20 46 (0.74%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,606 (25.91%) Social Skills
2 1,159 (18.70%) Finance
3 883 (14.24%) Public Sector
4 547 (8.82%) Analytical Skills
5 546 (8.81%) Banking
6 168 (2.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 124 (2.00%) Retail
8 102 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
9 91 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 85 (1.37%) Front Office
11 83 (1.34%) Military
12 71 (1.15%) Telecoms
13 55 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
14 53 (0.85%) Law
15 50 (0.81%) Legal
16 47 (0.76%) Publishing
17 46 (0.74%) Aerospace
17 46 (0.74%) Financial Institution
17 46 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 45 (0.73%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,384 (22.33%) Developer
2 1,119 (18.05%) Senior
3 785 (12.66%) DevOps Engineer
4 624 (10.07%) Architect
5 571 (9.21%) Lead
6 456 (7.36%) Data Engineer
7 342 (5.52%) Java Developer
8 325 (5.24%) Software Engineer
9 323 (5.21%) AWS Engineer
10 303 (4.89%) Azure Engineer
11 299 (4.82%) Senior Developer
12 270 (4.36%) Cloud Engineer
13 250 (4.03%) Platform Engineer
14 181 (2.92%) Full-Stack Developer
15 163 (2.63%) Python Developer
16 161 (2.60%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 160 (2.58%) Solutions Architect
18 152 (2.45%) AWS DevOps
19 150 (2.42%) Test Engineer
20 149 (2.40%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2,007 (32.38%) Terraform
2 956 (15.42%) REST
3 612 (9.87%) Kafka
4 553 (8.92%) React
5 552 (8.90%) Spring
6 533 (8.60%) RESTful
7 521 (8.40%) .NET
8 499 (8.05%) Spring Boot
9 367 (5.92%) Node.js
10 259 (4.18%) HTML
11 256 (4.13%) Playwright
12 242 (3.90%) OAuth
13 236 (3.81%) JSON
14 235 (3.79%) CSS
15 217 (3.50%) PySpark
16 179 (2.89%) OAuth2
17 172 (2.77%) AngularJS
18 148 (2.39%) SOAP
19 131 (2.11%) YAML
20 130 (2.10%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,322 (21.33%) Cloud Native
2 478 (7.71%) Distributed Systems
3 415 (6.69%) Product Ownership
4 269 (4.34%) Onboarding
5 238 (3.84%) Enterprise Software
6 228 (3.68%) AI Agents
7 158 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 133 (2.15%) Hybrid Cloud
9 110 (1.77%) Security Posture
10 108 (1.74%) Data Centre
11 97 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
11 97 (1.56%) Public Cloud
12 84 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 78 (1.26%) Management Information System
14 77 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
15 76 (1.23%) Enterprise Cloud
15 76 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
15 76 (1.23%) Private Cloud
16 75 (1.21%) Virtual Team
17 68 (1.10%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 655 (10.57%) Linux
2 291 (4.69%) Windows
3 164 (2.65%) Unix
4 126 (2.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 67 (1.08%) Windows Server
6 54 (0.87%) Android
7 44 (0.71%) Apple iOS
8 30 (0.48%) VMS
9 24 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 17 (0.27%) CentOS
11 15 (0.24%) AIX
11 15 (0.24%) Mac OS
12 13 (0.21%) zOS
13 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
14 7 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.11%) Rocky
14 7 (0.11%) Solaris
15 6 (0.097%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.081%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.032%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,455 (55.73%) DevOps
2 2,379 (38.38%) Agile
3 2,141 (34.54%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1,517 (24.47%) Test Automation
5 1,310 (21.13%) Containerisation
6 1,246 (20.10%) Microservices
7 1,220 (19.68%) AI
8 1,207 (19.47%) Observability
9 1,097 (17.70%) Software Engineering
10 992 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
11 964 (15.55%) Continuous Improvement
12 833 (13.44%) Platform Engineering
13 794 (12.81%) Stakeholder Management
14 741 (11.95%) Analytics
15 721 (11.63%) Event-Driven
16 707 (11.41%) Technical Leadership
17 693 (11.18%) Data Pipeline
18 681 (10.99%) Scrum
19 656 (10.58%) Data Modelling
20 642 (10.36%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 2,373 (38.28%) Python
2 1,405 (22.66%) SQL
3 1,325 (21.37%) Java
4 699 (11.28%) JavaScript
5 560 (9.03%) C#
6 549 (8.86%) TypeScript
7 543 (8.76%) Bash
8 484 (7.81%) PowerShell
9 262 (4.23%) Bicep
10 191 (3.08%) Go
11 130 (2.10%) Shell Script
12 121 (1.95%) Scala
13 107 (1.73%) Kotlin
14 80 (1.29%) C++
15 76 (1.23%) Apex Code
16 75 (1.21%) Groovy
17 58 (0.94%) PL/SQL
18 51 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 51 (0.82%) T-SQL
19 48 (0.77%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,808 (29.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,492 (24.07%) SC Cleared
3 329 (5.31%) Degree
4 285 (4.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 266 (4.29%) DV Cleared
6 217 (3.50%) Azure Certification
7 198 (3.19%) AWS Certification
8 163 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
9 110 (1.77%) CISSP
10 71 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
11 62 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
12 57 (0.92%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 55 (0.89%) ISTQB
14 49 (0.79%) CISM
15 46 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 41 (0.66%) Master's Degree
17 31 (0.50%) CCSP
18 24 (0.39%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 24 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
19 22 (0.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 590 (9.52%) QA
2 454 (7.32%) Data Quality
3 339 (5.47%) Accessibility
4 137 (2.21%) WCAG
5 123 (1.98%) GDPR
6 87 (1.40%) NIST
7 86 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 72 (1.16%) NCSC
9 32 (0.52%) PCI DSS
10 30 (0.48%) SLA
11 29 (0.47%) GRC
12 25 (0.40%) ISO 20022
13 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
14 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
15 14 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
17 12 (0.19%) HL7
18 10 (0.16%) EU AI Act
18 10 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,645 (26.54%) Docker
2 163 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 118 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (0.48%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
7 27 (0.44%) vSphere
8 19 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 17 (0.27%) 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 2,024 (32.65%) Kubernetes
2 589 (9.50%) Ansible
3 497 (8.02%) Grafana
4 393 (6.34%) Prometheus
5 114 (1.84%) Argo
6 60 (0.97%) Puppet
7 52 (0.84%) Progress Chef
7 52 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.79%) Kibana
9 46 (0.74%) Istio
10 36 (0.58%) Packer
11 26 (0.42%) Kustomize
11 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
12 23 (0.37%) Control-M
13 18 (0.29%) Podman
14 15 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
14 15 (0.24%) SCCM
15 13 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
15 13 (0.21%) vCenter Server
16 12 (0.19%) Karpenter
Vendors
1 965 (15.57%) Microsoft
2 442 (7.13%) Databricks
3 396 (6.39%) Google
4 326 (5.26%) Oracle
5 223 (3.60%) Splunk
6 180 (2.90%) Salesforce
7 160 (2.58%) Dynatrace
8 159 (2.56%) VMware
9 147 (2.37%) ServiceNow
10 106 (1.71%) OpenAI
11 100 (1.61%) Red Hat
12 99 (1.60%) IBM
13 96 (1.55%) MuleSoft
14 75 (1.21%) SAP
15 64 (1.03%) 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