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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 16 26
Rank change year-on-year +5 +10 0
Contract jobs citing CI/CD 6,103 3,431 2,719
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.22% 10.41% 7.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.28% 11.50% 8.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,127 2,317 1,834
10th Percentile £377 £362 £388
25th Percentile £436 £423 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -7.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £613 £649
90th Percentile £700 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £515
% change year-on-year - -2.91% -6.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 129 47 69
10th Percentile £45.20 £50.75 £62.40
25th Percentile £60.81 £60.38 £65.00
Median hourly rate £68.22 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.95% -3.70% -10.00%
75th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £94.00 £69.10 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.70 £65.00 £68.75
% change year-on-year +4.15% -5.45% -8.33%

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 45,960 29,830 33,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.53% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,897 18,534 20,247
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 £625 £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 3,123 1,812 1,459
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.23 £14.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.69% -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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +6 5,099 £525 +2.44% 6,009
London +4 2,693 £538 +2.38% 3,380
UK excluding London +7 2,598 £500 - 3,259
Work from Home +6 1,873 £525 +5.00% 2,697
North of England +4 977 £500 +5.26% 911
Yorkshire +7 499 £500 +2.56% 256
South East +2 471 £533 +6.50% 709
Midlands -5 378 £490 -2.00% 321
North West +2 360 £530 +11.58% 511
West Midlands 0 319 £490 -6.67% 202
South West +9 292 £546 -0.73% 403
Scotland -2 284 £425 -15.00% 412
East of England +5 157 £505 +1.00% 247
North East -4 129 £425 -6.59% 147
East Midlands -23 55 £488 +13.37% 119
Wales +3 47 £419 -6.94% 77
Northern Ireland +20 23 £591 +18.25% 186
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 (4.54%) Confluence
2 229 (3.75%) Apache Airflow
3 200 (3.28%) Apache Spark
4 163 (2.67%) Apache
5 94 (1.54%) SharePoint
6 64 (1.05%) SAS
7 35 (0.57%) Jupyter
8 28 (0.46%) CMS
9 24 (0.39%) nginx
10 19 (0.31%) OpenStack
11 18 (0.29%) Camunda
12 15 (0.25%) Anypoint
13 14 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
14 12 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.15%) Mule
15 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.15%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.15%) WordPress
16 6 (0.098%) Microsoft Exchange
16 6 (0.098%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 23 (0.38%) 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 (0.066%) Trello
6 3 (0.049%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.049%) Sketch
6 3 (0.049%) Windchill
7 2 (0.033%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.033%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.033%) Simulink
7 2 (0.033%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.016%) EngageOne
8 1 (0.016%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 52 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 23 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
3 22 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
4 12 (0.20%) SAP CRM
5 11 (0.18%) Aladdin
6 10 (0.16%) SAP MDG
7 9 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.098%) Magento
9 6 (0.098%) Shopify
10 5 (0.082%) Temenos T24
11 4 (0.066%) Oracle ERP
11 4 (0.066%) Sage X3
12 3 (0.049%) Endur
12 3 (0.049%) Finacle
12 3 (0.049%) FLEXCUBE
12 3 (0.049%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 2 (0.033%) Oracle EBS R12
13 2 (0.033%) Remedy ITSM
13 2 (0.033%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,701 (44.26%) AWS
2 2,645 (43.34%) Azure
3 1,294 (21.20%) GitHub
4 1,022 (16.75%) GCP
5 992 (16.25%) Azure DevOps
6 845 (13.85%) GitHub Actions
7 648 (10.62%) Serverless
8 448 (7.34%) Amazon S3
9 436 (7.14%) AWS Lambda
10 432 (7.08%) Power Platform
11 333 (5.46%) Amazon EKS
12 308 (5.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 279 (4.57%) AWS CloudFormation
14 256 (4.19%) Entra ID
15 239 (3.92%) Azure AKS
15 239 (3.92%) Snowflake
16 223 (3.65%) Amazon EC2
17 199 (3.26%) Amazon ECS
18 190 (3.11%) Azure Monitor
19 187 (3.06%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 239 (3.92%) Firewall
2 160 (2.62%) DNS
3 131 (2.15%) Network Security
4 92 (1.51%) VPN
5 89 (1.46%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.87%) HTTP
7 51 (0.84%) WAN
8 43 (0.70%) BGP
8 43 (0.70%) SD-WAN
9 39 (0.64%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 38 (0.62%) BIG-IP
10 38 (0.62%) VXLAN
11 36 (0.59%) Ethernet VPN
12 34 (0.56%) SSL
13 33 (0.54%) DHCP
14 30 (0.49%) Internet
15 27 (0.44%) 5G
16 26 (0.43%) OSPF
17 22 (0.36%) VLAN
18 20 (0.33%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 427 (7.00%) PostgreSQL
2 324 (5.31%) Power BI
3 297 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 282 (4.62%) SQL Server
5 274 (4.49%) Relational Database
6 256 (4.19%) MongoDB
7 254 (4.16%) NoSQL
8 228 (3.74%) Data Lake
9 195 (3.20%) Amazon RDS
10 179 (2.93%) Metadata
11 142 (2.33%) DynamoDB
12 141 (2.31%) MySQL
13 129 (2.11%) BigQuery
14 126 (2.06%) Amazon Redshift
15 122 (2.00%) Delta Lake
16 109 (1.79%) Redis
17 95 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
18 93 (1.52%) Amazon Aurora
19 89 (1.46%) Big Data
20 87 (1.43%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 1,227 (20.10%) Git
2 1,018 (16.68%) Jenkins
3 918 (15.04%) GitLab
4 519 (8.50%) JIRA
5 240 (3.93%) Selenium
6 189 (3.10%) JUnit
7 142 (2.33%) Cucumber
8 139 (2.28%) Maven
9 126 (2.06%) SonarQube
10 119 (1.95%) Gradle
11 111 (1.82%) Postman
12 108 (1.77%) Bitbucket
13 103 (1.69%) JMeter
14 98 (1.61%) Cypress.io
15 95 (1.56%) REST Assured
16 86 (1.41%) Gatling
17 82 (1.34%) Mockito
18 74 (1.21%) Claude Code
19 48 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
20 44 (0.72%) WebDriver
General
1 1,595 (26.13%) Social Skills
2 1,135 (18.60%) Finance
3 874 (14.32%) Public Sector
4 536 (8.78%) Analytical Skills
5 526 (8.62%) Banking
6 163 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 121 (1.98%) Retail
8 105 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
9 90 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 86 (1.41%) Front Office
11 82 (1.34%) Military
12 69 (1.13%) Telecoms
13 55 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 54 (0.88%) Law
15 51 (0.84%) Legal
16 47 (0.77%) Marketing
17 46 (0.75%) Publishing
18 45 (0.74%) Financial Institution
19 43 (0.70%) Aerospace
20 42 (0.69%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,372 (22.48%) Developer
2 1,096 (17.96%) Senior
3 783 (12.83%) DevOps Engineer
4 620 (10.16%) Architect
5 559 (9.16%) Lead
6 453 (7.42%) Data Engineer
7 343 (5.62%) Java Developer
8 325 (5.33%) Software Engineer
9 320 (5.24%) AWS Engineer
10 300 (4.92%) Azure Engineer
11 294 (4.82%) Senior Developer
12 270 (4.42%) Cloud Engineer
13 251 (4.11%) Platform Engineer
14 177 (2.90%) Full-Stack Developer
15 164 (2.69%) Python Developer
16 159 (2.61%) Solutions Architect
17 155 (2.54%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 150 (2.46%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 149 (2.44%) AWS DevOps
20 143 (2.34%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,974 (32.34%) Terraform
2 925 (15.16%) REST
3 590 (9.67%) Kafka
4 545 (8.93%) React
5 540 (8.85%) Spring
6 525 (8.60%) RESTful
7 516 (8.45%) .NET
8 490 (8.03%) Spring Boot
9 364 (5.96%) Node.js
10 258 (4.23%) HTML
11 250 (4.10%) Playwright
12 236 (3.87%) CSS
13 231 (3.79%) JSON
14 223 (3.65%) OAuth
15 217 (3.56%) PySpark
16 174 (2.85%) AngularJS
17 170 (2.79%) OAuth2
18 140 (2.29%) SOAP
19 130 (2.13%) YAML
20 122 (2.00%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,290 (21.14%) Cloud Native
2 473 (7.75%) Distributed Systems
3 413 (6.77%) Product Ownership
4 252 (4.13%) Onboarding
5 228 (3.74%) Enterprise Software
6 216 (3.54%) AI Agents
7 158 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (2.15%) Hybrid Cloud
9 111 (1.82%) Security Posture
10 104 (1.70%) Data Centre
11 95 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
12 90 (1.47%) Public Cloud
13 81 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 78 (1.28%) Management Information System
15 75 (1.23%) Virtual Team
16 74 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
17 72 (1.18%) Enterprise Cloud
17 72 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
18 70 (1.15%) NHS
19 69 (1.13%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 641 (10.50%) Linux
2 281 (4.60%) Windows
3 163 (2.67%) Unix
4 127 (2.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 66 (1.08%) Windows Server
6 53 (0.87%) Android
7 45 (0.74%) Apple iOS
8 31 (0.51%) VMS
9 24 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 15 (0.25%) AIX
10 15 (0.25%) CentOS
11 14 (0.23%) Mac OS
12 12 (0.20%) 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 (0.098%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.082%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.033%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,414 (55.94%) DevOps
2 2,343 (38.39%) Agile
3 2,115 (34.66%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1,465 (24.00%) Test Automation
5 1,306 (21.40%) Containerisation
6 1,235 (20.24%) Microservices
7 1,180 (19.33%) Observability
8 1,177 (19.29%) AI
9 1,090 (17.86%) Software Engineering
10 975 (15.98%) Problem-Solving
11 937 (15.35%) Continuous Improvement
12 824 (13.50%) Platform Engineering
13 759 (12.44%) Stakeholder Management
14 736 (12.06%) Analytics
15 700 (11.47%) Event-Driven
16 683 (11.19%) Data Pipeline
16 683 (11.19%) Technical Leadership
17 670 (10.98%) Scrum
18 650 (10.65%) Data Modelling
19 632 (10.36%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 2,324 (38.08%) Python
2 1,388 (22.74%) SQL
3 1,312 (21.50%) Java
4 683 (11.19%) JavaScript
5 550 (9.01%) C#
6 540 (8.85%) Bash
7 537 (8.80%) TypeScript
8 479 (7.85%) PowerShell
9 257 (4.21%) Bicep
10 177 (2.90%) Go
11 127 (2.08%) Shell Script
12 119 (1.95%) Scala
13 105 (1.72%) Kotlin
14 79 (1.29%) Apex Code
15 78 (1.28%) C++
16 74 (1.21%) Groovy
17 59 (0.97%) PL/SQL
18 51 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 49 (0.80%) T-SQL
20 46 (0.75%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,789 (29.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,472 (24.12%) SC Cleared
3 320 (5.24%) Degree
4 275 (4.51%) BPSS Clearance
5 264 (4.33%) DV Cleared
6 216 (3.54%) Azure Certification
7 191 (3.13%) AWS Certification
8 157 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
9 106 (1.74%) CISSP
10 72 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 61 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
12 55 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 54 (0.88%) ISTQB
14 48 (0.79%) CISM
15 44 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 39 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 30 (0.49%) CCSP
18 24 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
19 23 (0.38%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
20 19 (0.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 571 (9.36%) QA
2 449 (7.36%) Data Quality
3 333 (5.46%) Accessibility
4 136 (2.23%) WCAG
5 124 (2.03%) GDPR
6 90 (1.47%) NIST
7 81 (1.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 73 (1.20%) NCSC
9 31 (0.51%) PCI DSS
10 29 (0.48%) SLA
11 27 (0.44%) GRC
12 25 (0.41%) ISO 20022
13 22 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
14 15 (0.25%) SOC 2
15 14 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 12 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
16 12 (0.20%) HL7
17 11 (0.18%) EU AI Act
17 11 (0.18%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,624 (26.61%) Docker
2 160 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 115 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
5 31 (0.51%) VMware NSX
6 27 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (0.44%) vSphere
7 19 (0.31%) Hyper-V
8 18 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 15 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
9 15 (0.25%) Squid
10 9 (0.15%) KVM
11 8 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.098%) Ceph
13 4 (0.066%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 4 (0.066%) HDFS
13 4 (0.066%) NFS
13 4 (0.066%) Postfix
13 4 (0.066%) RACF
14 3 (0.049%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 1,993 (32.66%) Kubernetes
2 582 (9.54%) Ansible
3 493 (8.08%) Grafana
4 391 (6.41%) Prometheus
5 113 (1.85%) Argo
6 64 (1.05%) Puppet
7 57 (0.93%) Progress Chef
8 49 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 46 (0.75%) Istio
10 45 (0.74%) Kibana
11 37 (0.61%) Packer
12 26 (0.43%) Kustomize
13 25 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
14 22 (0.36%) Control-M
15 18 (0.29%) Podman
16 15 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
16 15 (0.25%) SCCM
17 13 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
17 13 (0.21%) vCenter Server
18 12 (0.20%) Karpenter
Vendors
1 945 (15.48%) Microsoft
2 437 (7.16%) Databricks
3 377 (6.18%) Google
4 329 (5.39%) Oracle
5 221 (3.62%) Splunk
6 188 (3.08%) Salesforce
7 157 (2.57%) VMware
8 155 (2.54%) Dynatrace
9 148 (2.43%) ServiceNow
10 101 (1.65%) Red Hat
11 100 (1.64%) OpenAI
12 96 (1.57%) MuleSoft
13 92 (1.51%) IBM
14 73 (1.20%) SAP
15 68 (1.11%) Informatica
16 62 (1.02%) Cisco
17 61 (1.00%) Foundry
18 53 (0.87%) F5
19 42 (0.69%) Talend
20 40 (0.66%) New Relic