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

6 months to
22 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 6,125 3,406 2,702
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.22% 10.49% 7.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.31% 11.59% 8.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,151 2,300 1,821
10th Percentile £376 £363 £388
25th Percentile £435 £423 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -7.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £615 £610 £650
90th Percentile £700 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £518
% change year-on-year - -3.38% -5.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 46 70
10th Percentile £45.20 £50.63 £62.45
25th Percentile £60.81 £61.25 £65.00
Median hourly rate £68.61 £65.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year +5.55% -5.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £93.88 £69.25 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.96 £65.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +4.55% -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 46,027 29,389 32,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.49% 85.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,906 18,237 19,938
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 £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,152 1,808 1,420
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.69
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.09% -1.10%
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.08 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.61% -48.10% +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 22 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 22 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 22 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 5,114 £525 +2.44% 5,325
London +4 2,708 £538 +2.38% 2,925
UK excluding London +7 2,595 £500 - 2,960
Work from Home +6 1,880 £525 +5.00% 2,519
North of England +4 975 £500 +4.06% 845
Yorkshire +7 494 £500 +2.30% 253
South East +2 467 £536 +7.20% 643
Midlands -5 374 £488 -2.50% 308
North West +1 362 £530 +11.58% 467
West Midlands -3 318 £488 -7.14% 201
South West +6 293 £534 -2.95% 377
Scotland -1 284 £425 -15.00% 336
East of England +6 162 £505 +1.00% 210
North East -1 130 £425 -12.82% 128
East Midlands -23 53 £488 +13.50% 107
Wales +1 48 £413 -8.33% 72
Northern Ireland +22 23 £591 +18.25% 177
Channel Islands - 2 £475 -

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 (4.52%) Confluence
2 230 (3.76%) Apache Airflow
3 201 (3.28%) Apache Spark
4 164 (2.68%) Apache
5 92 (1.50%) SharePoint
6 64 (1.04%) SAS
7 37 (0.60%) Jupyter
8 29 (0.47%) CMS
9 24 (0.39%) nginx
10 20 (0.33%) Camunda
10 20 (0.33%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.24%) Anypoint
12 14 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
14 10 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.15%) Mule
15 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.15%) WordPress
16 6 (0.098%) JBoss
16 6 (0.098%) Microsoft Exchange
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 (0.065%) Trello
5 4 (0.065%) Windchill
6 3 (0.049%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.049%) Sketch
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
2 23 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) SAP CRM
4 11 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.16%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.098%) Magento
8 6 (0.098%) Shopify
9 5 (0.082%) Temenos T24
10 4 (0.065%) Oracle ERP
10 4 (0.065%) Sage X3
11 3 (0.049%) Endur
11 3 (0.049%) Finacle
11 3 (0.049%) FLEXCUBE
11 3 (0.049%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 2 (0.033%) Distributed Ledger
12 2 (0.033%) Oracle EBS R12
12 2 (0.033%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,714 (44.31%) AWS
2 2,650 (43.27%) Azure
3 1,292 (21.09%) GitHub
4 1,036 (16.91%) GCP
5 990 (16.16%) Azure DevOps
6 845 (13.80%) GitHub Actions
7 652 (10.64%) Serverless
8 446 (7.28%) Amazon S3
9 440 (7.18%) AWS Lambda
10 430 (7.02%) Power Platform
11 338 (5.52%) Amazon EKS
12 313 (5.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 287 (4.69%) AWS CloudFormation
14 264 (4.31%) Entra ID
15 238 (3.89%) Snowflake
16 237 (3.87%) Azure AKS
17 225 (3.67%) Amazon EC2
18 201 (3.28%) Amazon ECS
19 190 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
20 184 (3.00%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 241 (3.93%) Firewall
2 163 (2.66%) DNS
3 134 (2.19%) Network Security
4 94 (1.53%) VPN
5 90 (1.47%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.87%) WAN
7 52 (0.85%) HTTP
8 45 (0.73%) BGP
8 45 (0.73%) SD-WAN
9 40 (0.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 39 (0.64%) BIG-IP
11 38 (0.62%) VXLAN
12 36 (0.59%) Ethernet VPN
13 35 (0.57%) SSL
14 34 (0.56%) DHCP
15 31 (0.51%) Internet
16 27 (0.44%) 5G
16 27 (0.44%) OSPF
17 23 (0.38%) VLAN
18 20 (0.33%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 425 (6.94%) PostgreSQL
2 322 (5.26%) Power BI
3 294 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
4 278 (4.54%) Relational Database
4 278 (4.54%) SQL Server
5 260 (4.24%) MongoDB
6 250 (4.08%) NoSQL
7 231 (3.77%) Data Lake
8 196 (3.20%) Amazon RDS
9 175 (2.86%) Metadata
10 145 (2.37%) DynamoDB
11 141 (2.30%) MySQL
12 131 (2.14%) BigQuery
13 123 (2.01%) Amazon Redshift
14 121 (1.98%) Delta Lake
15 109 (1.78%) Redis
16 96 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
17 93 (1.52%) Amazon Aurora
18 90 (1.47%) Big Data
19 88 (1.44%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 1,240 (20.24%) Git
2 1,017 (16.60%) Jenkins
3 914 (14.92%) GitLab
4 518 (8.46%) JIRA
5 248 (4.05%) Selenium
6 195 (3.18%) JUnit
7 149 (2.43%) Cucumber
8 139 (2.27%) Maven
9 127 (2.07%) SonarQube
10 118 (1.93%) Gradle
11 111 (1.81%) Postman
12 107 (1.75%) Bitbucket
13 104 (1.70%) JMeter
14 98 (1.60%) Cypress.io
15 95 (1.55%) REST Assured
16 87 (1.42%) Gatling
17 84 (1.37%) Mockito
18 77 (1.26%) Claude Code
19 47 (0.77%) Sonatype Nexus
20 45 (0.73%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,594 (26.02%) Social Skills
2 1,138 (18.58%) Finance
3 871 (14.22%) Public Sector
4 542 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
5 532 (8.69%) Banking
6 165 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 123 (2.01%) Retail
8 104 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
9 90 (1.47%) Investment Banking
10 86 (1.40%) Front Office
11 83 (1.36%) Military
12 70 (1.14%) Telecoms
13 56 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
14 54 (0.88%) Law
15 51 (0.83%) Legal
16 47 (0.77%) Marketing
17 46 (0.75%) Publishing
18 45 (0.73%) Financial Institution
19 44 (0.72%) Aerospace
19 44 (0.72%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,376 (22.47%) Developer
2 1,102 (17.99%) Senior
3 779 (12.72%) DevOps Engineer
4 621 (10.14%) Architect
5 564 (9.21%) Lead
6 449 (7.33%) Data Engineer
7 342 (5.58%) Java Developer
8 320 (5.22%) AWS Engineer
9 319 (5.21%) Software Engineer
10 301 (4.91%) Azure Engineer
11 296 (4.83%) Senior Developer
12 272 (4.44%) Cloud Engineer
13 247 (4.03%) Platform Engineer
14 176 (2.87%) Full-Stack Developer
15 164 (2.68%) Python Developer
16 159 (2.60%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 157 (2.56%) Solutions Architect
18 151 (2.47%) AWS DevOps
19 150 (2.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 147 (2.40%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,982 (32.36%) Terraform
2 930 (15.18%) REST
3 592 (9.67%) Kafka
4 542 (8.85%) React
5 540 (8.82%) Spring
6 525 (8.57%) RESTful
7 517 (8.44%) .NET
8 489 (7.98%) Spring Boot
9 365 (5.96%) Node.js
10 257 (4.20%) HTML
11 249 (4.07%) Playwright
12 234 (3.82%) CSS
13 233 (3.80%) JSON
14 232 (3.79%) OAuth
15 215 (3.51%) PySpark
16 176 (2.87%) OAuth2
17 174 (2.84%) AngularJS
18 146 (2.38%) SOAP
19 129 (2.11%) YAML
20 128 (2.09%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,294 (21.13%) Cloud Native
2 473 (7.72%) Distributed Systems
3 406 (6.63%) Product Ownership
4 257 (4.20%) Onboarding
5 230 (3.76%) Enterprise Software
6 219 (3.58%) AI Agents
7 157 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (2.14%) Hybrid Cloud
9 112 (1.83%) Security Posture
10 106 (1.73%) Data Centre
11 96 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
12 94 (1.53%) Public Cloud
13 80 (1.31%) Data Structures
14 77 (1.26%) Management Information System
14 77 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
15 76 (1.24%) Virtual Team
16 74 (1.21%) Enterprise Cloud
16 74 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
16 74 (1.21%) Private Cloud
17 69 (1.13%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 644 (10.51%) Linux
2 283 (4.62%) Windows
3 164 (2.68%) Unix
4 126 (2.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 67 (1.09%) Windows Server
6 53 (0.87%) Android
7 44 (0.72%) Apple iOS
8 31 (0.51%) VMS
9 24 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 15 (0.24%) AIX
10 15 (0.24%) CentOS
11 14 (0.23%) 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 (0.098%) Windows Server 2016
16 5 (0.082%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.033%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,421 (55.85%) DevOps
2 2,358 (38.50%) Agile
3 2,121 (34.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1,484 (24.23%) Test Automation
5 1,307 (21.34%) Containerisation
6 1,233 (20.13%) Microservices
7 1,191 (19.44%) AI
8 1,187 (19.38%) Observability
9 1,089 (17.78%) Software Engineering
10 984 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
11 945 (15.43%) Continuous Improvement
12 823 (13.44%) Platform Engineering
13 771 (12.59%) Stakeholder Management
14 732 (11.95%) Analytics
15 708 (11.56%) Event-Driven
16 690 (11.27%) Technical Leadership
17 686 (11.20%) Data Pipeline
18 670 (10.94%) Scrum
19 650 (10.61%) Data Modelling
20 633 (10.33%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 2,342 (38.24%) Python
2 1,391 (22.71%) SQL
3 1,312 (21.42%) Java
4 688 (11.23%) JavaScript
5 555 (9.06%) C#
6 540 (8.82%) TypeScript
7 535 (8.73%) Bash
8 477 (7.79%) PowerShell
9 256 (4.18%) Bicep
10 187 (3.05%) Go
11 130 (2.12%) Shell Script
12 118 (1.93%) Scala
13 105 (1.71%) Kotlin
14 78 (1.27%) Apex Code
14 78 (1.27%) C++
15 75 (1.22%) Groovy
16 58 (0.95%) PL/SQL
17 52 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 50 (0.82%) T-SQL
19 48 (0.78%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,791 (29.24%) Security Cleared
2 1,477 (24.11%) SC Cleared
3 325 (5.31%) Degree
4 278 (4.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 266 (4.34%) DV Cleared
6 216 (3.53%) Azure Certification
7 195 (3.18%) AWS Certification
8 160 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
9 107 (1.75%) CISSP
10 72 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 61 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
12 56 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 54 (0.88%) ISTQB
14 48 (0.78%) CISM
15 44 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 40 (0.65%) Master's Degree
17 30 (0.49%) CCSP
18 24 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
19 22 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
20 20 (0.33%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 578 (9.44%) QA
2 446 (7.28%) Data Quality
3 334 (5.45%) Accessibility
4 134 (2.19%) WCAG
5 120 (1.96%) GDPR
6 92 (1.50%) NIST
7 85 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 74 (1.21%) NCSC
9 32 (0.52%) PCI DSS
10 29 (0.47%) SLA
11 28 (0.46%) GRC
12 24 (0.39%) ISO 20022
13 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
14 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
15 14 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
16 13 (0.21%) HL7
17 12 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
18 11 (0.18%) EU AI Act
19 10 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 1,620 (26.45%) Docker
2 163 (2.66%) Active Directory
3 116 (1.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
5 30 (0.49%) VMware NSX
6 28 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
7 27 (0.44%) vSphere
8 19 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 17 (0.28%) 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 (0.098%) Ceph
14 5 (0.082%) RACF
15 4 (0.065%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 4 (0.065%) HDFS
15 4 (0.065%) NFS
15 4 (0.065%) Postfix
15 4 (0.065%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 1,993 (32.54%) Kubernetes
2 584 (9.53%) Ansible
3 491 (8.02%) Grafana
4 388 (6.33%) Prometheus
5 113 (1.84%) Argo
6 59 (0.96%) Puppet
7 53 (0.87%) Progress Chef
8 50 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
9 46 (0.75%) Kibana
10 44 (0.72%) Istio
11 36 (0.59%) Packer
12 26 (0.42%) Kustomize
12 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
13 23 (0.38%) Control-M
14 18 (0.29%) Podman
15 15 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
15 15 (0.24%) SCCM
16 13 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
16 13 (0.21%) vCenter Server
17 12 (0.20%) Karpenter
Vendors
1 952 (15.54%) Microsoft
2 437 (7.13%) Databricks
3 385 (6.29%) Google
4 330 (5.39%) Oracle
5 223 (3.64%) Splunk
6 184 (3.00%) Salesforce
7 158 (2.58%) VMware
8 155 (2.53%) Dynatrace
9 148 (2.42%) ServiceNow
10 103 (1.68%) OpenAI
11 101 (1.65%) Red Hat
12 97 (1.58%) IBM
13 95 (1.55%) MuleSoft
14 73 (1.19%) SAP
15 64 (1.04%) Foundry
15 64 (1.04%) Informatica
16 62 (1.01%) Cisco
17 54 (0.88%) F5
18 42 (0.69%) New Relic
18 42 (0.69%) Talend