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

6 months to
13 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 4,061 2,757 2,905
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.44% 7.56% 6.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.71% 8.77% 7.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,799 1,870 2,128
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 49 48 29
10th Percentile £55.00 £50.88 £50.84
25th Percentile - £65.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £66.25 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -11.67% +14.32%
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £77.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £74.61 £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 31,942 31,430 40,933
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.97% 86.20% 88.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,014 18,916 27,596
10th Percentile £295 £310 £308
25th Percentile £403 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,079 1,112 1,584
10th Percentile £14.48 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -19.38% +24.04%
75th Percentile £43.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.73 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -31.42% -24.83% +51.80%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 3,371 £515 -6.36% 3,045
London +6 1,773 £525 -8.70% 1,673
UK excluding London +11 1,739 £500 - 1,608
Work from Home +12 1,355 £510 -2.86% 1,786
North of England +11 578 £500 +6.95% 464
Midlands +21 330 £515 -0.96% 196
South East +15 328 £500 -9.09% 495
Yorkshire +2 285 £500 +8.70% 112
West Midlands +18 259 £525 -0.76% 133
Scotland +12 252 £500 +11.11% 85
North West +14 232 £475 - 319
South West +13 156 £550 -4.35% 200
East of England +11 117 £500 - 105
East Midlands +28 71 £420 -15.15% 62
North East +15 63 £488 +14.71% 34
Wales -5 26 £456 -13.18% 43
Northern Ireland -7 9 - - 43

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 (3.82%) Confluence
2 135 (3.32%) Apache Airflow
3 103 (2.54%) Apache Spark
4 101 (2.49%) Apache
5 79 (1.95%) SAS
6 32 (0.79%) WebLogic
7 30 (0.74%) SharePoint
8 29 (0.71%) nginx
9 28 (0.69%) JBoss
9 28 (0.69%) WebSphere
10 20 (0.49%) Anypoint
10 20 (0.49%) IIS
11 19 (0.47%) Mule
12 17 (0.42%) CMS
13 16 (0.39%) OpenStack
14 15 (0.37%) WebSphere Application Server
15 10 (0.25%) SugarCRM
16 9 (0.22%) Tomcat
17 8 (0.20%) iPlanet
17 8 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 40 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.30%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 8 (0.20%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.17%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.15%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.025%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.025%) Revit
7 1 (0.025%) Simulink
7 1 (0.025%) Stateflow
7 1 (0.025%) Trello
Business Applications
1 31 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.30%) Aladdin
3 10 (0.25%) Maximo
3 10 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 7 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
5 6 (0.15%) Endur
5 6 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 4 (0.098%) Fidessa
6 4 (0.098%) Magento
6 4 (0.098%) SAP S/4HANA
6 4 (0.098%) thinkFolio
7 2 (0.049%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.049%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.049%) Orchestrade
7 2 (0.049%) Shopify
8 1 (0.025%) Finacle
8 1 (0.025%) ION Anvil
8 1 (0.025%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.025%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,893 (46.61%) AWS
2 1,610 (39.65%) Azure
3 841 (20.71%) GitHub
4 681 (16.77%) GCP
5 583 (14.36%) Azure DevOps
6 551 (13.57%) GitHub Actions
7 492 (12.12%) Serverless
8 338 (8.32%) Amazon S3
9 289 (7.12%) AWS Lambda
10 275 (6.77%) AWS CloudFormation
11 211 (5.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 206 (5.07%) Amazon EC2
12 206 (5.07%) OpenShift
13 188 (4.63%) Amazon EKS
14 186 (4.58%) Amazon ECS
15 164 (4.04%) Power Platform
16 135 (3.32%) Azure AKS
17 133 (3.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 111 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
19 109 (2.68%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 163 (4.01%) Firewall
2 122 (3.00%) DNS
3 79 (1.95%) TCP/IP
4 78 (1.92%) VPN
5 68 (1.67%) Network Security
6 45 (1.11%) SSL
7 43 (1.06%) HTTP
8 22 (0.54%) SSH
9 21 (0.52%) Ethernet
10 19 (0.47%) DHCP
11 17 (0.42%) Kerberos
11 17 (0.42%) OpenLDAP
12 16 (0.39%) Wireshark
13 15 (0.37%) BGP
14 14 (0.34%) WAN
15 13 (0.32%) HTTPS
15 13 (0.32%) SMTP
16 12 (0.30%) AMQP
16 12 (0.30%) IMAP
17 11 (0.27%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 363 (8.94%) PostgreSQL
2 247 (6.08%) NoSQL
3 181 (4.46%) Amazon RDS
4 165 (4.06%) MongoDB
5 163 (4.01%) SQL Server
6 144 (3.55%) Relational Database
7 136 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
8 113 (2.78%) Power BI
9 107 (2.63%) Data Lake
10 102 (2.51%) MySQL
11 93 (2.29%) DynamoDB
12 76 (1.87%) Azure SQL Database
13 74 (1.82%) BigQuery
14 65 (1.60%) Redis
15 64 (1.58%) Oracle Database
16 63 (1.55%) Big Data
17 55 (1.35%) Delta Lake
18 50 (1.23%) Amazon Aurora
19 49 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
20 39 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 953 (23.47%) Jenkins
2 863 (21.25%) Git
3 626 (15.41%) GitLab
4 411 (10.12%) JIRA
5 198 (4.88%) Selenium
6 165 (4.06%) JUnit
7 142 (3.50%) Cucumber
8 132 (3.25%) SonarQube
9 118 (2.91%) Cypress.io
10 104 (2.56%) Sonatype Nexus
11 99 (2.44%) Postman
12 88 (2.17%) Bitbucket
13 86 (2.12%) Maven
14 82 (2.02%) Artifactory
15 69 (1.70%) JMeter
16 68 (1.67%) CircleCI
17 62 (1.53%) Gradle
18 60 (1.48%) Liquibase
19 54 (1.33%) REST Assured
20 50 (1.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,166 (28.71%) Social Skills
2 730 (17.98%) Finance
3 506 (12.46%) Public Sector
4 356 (8.77%) Analytical Skills
5 355 (8.74%) Banking
6 97 (2.39%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 63 (1.55%) Financial Institution
8 63 (1.55%) Investment Banking
9 61 (1.50%) Marketing
9 61 (1.50%) Military
10 55 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 47 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
12 42 (1.03%) Front Office
13 37 (0.91%) Retail
14 31 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
14 31 (0.76%) Manufacturing
15 23 (0.57%) Law
16 21 (0.52%) Legal
17 19 (0.47%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 979 (24.11%) Developer
2 551 (13.57%) DevOps Engineer
3 541 (13.32%) Senior
4 355 (8.74%) Architect
5 266 (6.55%) AWS Engineer
6 265 (6.53%) Lead
7 252 (6.21%) Data Engineer
8 250 (6.16%) Java Developer
9 230 (5.66%) Software Engineer
10 195 (4.80%) Platform Engineer
11 174 (4.28%) Azure Engineer
12 168 (4.14%) Full-Stack Developer
13 154 (3.79%) Senior Developer
14 147 (3.62%) AWS DevOps
14 147 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
15 124 (3.05%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 120 (2.95%) Python Developer
17 103 (2.54%) Python Engineer
18 93 (2.29%) Consultant
19 90 (2.22%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 483 (11.89%) REST
2 437 (10.76%) RESTful
3 433 (10.66%) React
4 384 (9.46%) Node.js
5 334 (8.22%) Kafka
6 323 (7.95%) Spring
7 303 (7.46%) .NET
8 267 (6.57%) Spring Boot
9 221 (5.44%) HTML
10 211 (5.20%) AngularJS
11 196 (4.83%) CSS
12 172 (4.24%) JSON
13 148 (3.64%) OAuth
14 143 (3.52%) SOAP
15 139 (3.42%) Elastic Stack
16 129 (3.18%) Playwright
17 117 (2.88%) GraphQL
18 107 (2.63%) FastAPI
18 107 (2.63%) Jest
19 104 (2.56%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 576 (14.18%) Cloud Native
2 232 (5.71%) Distributed Systems
3 196 (4.83%) Product Ownership
4 101 (2.49%) Public Cloud
5 99 (2.44%) Onboarding
6 98 (2.41%) Mobile App
7 87 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
8 82 (2.02%) Algorithms
9 74 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
10 69 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
11 63 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
11 63 (1.55%) Virtual Team
12 61 (1.50%) Greenfield Project
13 54 (1.33%) Replication
14 47 (1.16%) Security Posture
15 45 (1.11%) AI Agents
16 44 (1.08%) Data Structures
17 42 (1.03%) Data Centre
18 41 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 41 (1.01%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 571 (14.06%) Linux
2 198 (4.88%) Windows
3 124 (3.05%) Unix
4 85 (2.09%) Android
4 85 (2.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 79 (1.95%) Apple iOS
6 51 (1.26%) Windows Server
7 32 (0.79%) VMS
8 27 (0.66%) Ubuntu
9 24 (0.59%) CentOS
10 15 (0.37%) Solaris
11 12 (0.30%) Amazon Linux
12 11 (0.27%) Mac OS
13 3 (0.074%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.074%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.074%) zOS
14 2 (0.049%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.049%) Robot Operating System
15 1 (0.025%) FreeRTOS
15 1 (0.025%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,309 (56.86%) DevOps
2 1,594 (39.25%) Agile
3 1,250 (30.78%) Infrastructure as Code
4 969 (23.86%) Containerisation
5 892 (21.97%) Problem-Solving
6 832 (20.49%) Test Automation
7 774 (19.06%) Microservices
8 569 (14.01%) Software Engineering
9 465 (11.45%) Observability
10 434 (10.69%) Analytics
11 401 (9.87%) Migration
12 395 (9.73%) Scrum
13 391 (9.63%) AI
13 391 (9.63%) Continuous Improvement
14 366 (9.01%) Full-Stack Development
15 352 (8.67%) TDD
16 349 (8.59%) Data Pipeline
17 343 (8.45%) Continuous Integration
17 343 (8.45%) Mentoring
18 341 (8.40%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 1,564 (38.51%) Python
2 932 (22.95%) Java
3 806 (19.85%) SQL
4 576 (14.18%) JavaScript
5 446 (10.98%) Bash
6 444 (10.93%) TypeScript
7 394 (9.70%) C#
8 293 (7.21%) PowerShell
9 239 (5.89%) Go
10 122 (3.00%) C++
11 102 (2.51%) Bicep
12 100 (2.46%) Shell Script
13 74 (1.82%) Scala
14 64 (1.58%) Kotlin
15 57 (1.40%) Groovy
16 49 (1.21%) Perl
17 47 (1.16%) PHP
17 47 (1.16%) PL/SQL
18 38 (0.94%) Rust
19 34 (0.84%) Swift
Qualifications
1 976 (24.03%) Security Cleared
2 790 (19.45%) SC Cleared
3 258 (6.35%) Degree
4 163 (4.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 156 (3.84%) AWS Certification
6 107 (2.63%) DV Cleared
7 106 (2.61%) Azure Certification
8 93 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (1.67%) Master's Degree
10 67 (1.65%) CISSP
11 52 (1.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 48 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
13 45 (1.11%) CISM
14 31 (0.76%) ISTQB
15 30 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
16 24 (0.59%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 23 (0.57%) CREST Certified
18 22 (0.54%) OSCP
19 18 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 16 (0.39%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (9.41%) QA
2 174 (4.28%) Accessibility
3 168 (4.14%) Data Quality
4 144 (3.55%) GDPR
5 127 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 111 (2.73%) NIST
7 58 (1.43%) WCAG
8 54 (1.33%) NCSC
9 51 (1.26%) PCI DSS
10 28 (0.69%) HIPAA
11 23 (0.57%) SOC 2
12 15 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
12 15 (0.37%) EU AI Act
12 15 (0.37%) PSD2
12 15 (0.37%) SEPA
12 15 (0.37%) SLA
13 12 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 10 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 9 (0.22%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,271 (31.30%) Docker
2 120 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 69 (1.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
5 41 (1.01%) vSphere
6 13 (0.32%) Squid
6 13 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.30%) Dovecot
7 12 (0.30%) Postfix
7 12 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
8 11 (0.27%) KVM
8 11 (0.27%) NFS
8 11 (0.27%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.25%) DFS Replication
9 10 (0.25%) HDFS
9 10 (0.25%) zsh
10 8 (0.20%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 7 (0.17%) Firmware
12 4 (0.098%) Hyper-V
12 4 (0.098%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 1,430 (35.21%) Kubernetes
2 1,344 (33.10%) Terraform
3 535 (13.17%) Ansible
4 441 (10.86%) Grafana
5 391 (9.63%) Prometheus
6 114 (2.81%) Argo
7 70 (1.72%) Progress Chef
8 69 (1.70%) Puppet
9 50 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
10 41 (1.01%) Istio
11 34 (0.84%) Kibana
12 30 (0.74%) Packer
13 26 (0.64%) Nessus
14 21 (0.52%) Podman
15 19 (0.47%) Proxmox
16 18 (0.44%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.42%) Kustomize
18 16 (0.39%) Control-M
19 15 (0.37%) ITRS Geneos
19 15 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 519 (12.78%) Microsoft
2 247 (6.08%) Oracle
3 241 (5.93%) Google
4 220 (5.42%) Databricks
5 216 (5.32%) Splunk
6 130 (3.20%) Red Hat
7 100 (2.46%) VMware
8 95 (2.34%) ServiceNow
9 94 (2.31%) Salesforce
10 58 (1.43%) IBM
11 54 (1.33%) Dynatrace
12 53 (1.31%) SAP
13 52 (1.28%) OpenAI
14 43 (1.06%) F5
14 43 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 39 (0.96%) Talend
16 34 (0.84%) Cisco
17 33 (0.81%) CyberArk
18 32 (0.79%) Atlassian
18 32 (0.79%) Veracode