Docker Contract Job Trends

Docker
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Docker skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 47 68
Rank change year-on-year +7 +21 -25
Contract jobs citing Docker 2,001 1,343 1,358
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.16% 4.27% 3.04%
As % of the System Software category 42.77% 35.01% 25.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,373 912 995
10th Percentile £375 £402 £413
25th Percentile £431 £480 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £569 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% +3.41% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £650
90th Percentile £722 £810 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -0.05% -2.81% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 18
10th Percentile £52.55 - £56.03
25th Percentile £61.25 £25.25 £62.13
Median hourly rate £74.26 £27.50 £66.88
Median % change year-on-year +170.04% -58.88% -4.45%
75th Percentile £86.00 £62.50 £76.53
90th Percentile £95.00 £82.00 £76.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.63 - £68.63
% change year-on-year - - +9.81%

All System Software Skills
UK

Docker falls under the System Software category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring system software skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 4,678 3,836 5,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.07% 12.20% 11.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,186 2,480 3,599
10th Percentile £206 £200 £190
25th Percentile £400 £375 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £493
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +4.06% -6.19%
75th Percentile £594 £625 £600
90th Percentile £694 £720 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £450
% change year-on-year +2.21% +3.28% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 91 242
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.15 £17.84
Median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.62% -37.20% +25.66%
75th Percentile £74.26 £64.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £91.70 £75.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.50 £37.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +56.00% -21.05% +115.91%

Docker
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Docker relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Docker job vacancy trend in the UK

Docker
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Docker.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Docker

Docker
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Docker over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Docker in the UK

Docker
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Docker.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Docker

Docker
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Docker over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Docker in the UK

Docker
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 Docker within the UK over the 6 months to 31 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 +9 1,731 £525 -8.70% 885
London +3 888 £550 -8.33% 296
UK excluding London +15 834 £510 -0.05% 710
Work from Home +3 625 £525 -4.55% 468
North of England +16 356 £476 -7.12% 142
Midlands +57 229 £530 +6.00% 93
West Midlands +46 213 £537 +2.29% 46
North West +15 175 £450 -11.24% 80
Yorkshire +5 145 £500 -4.76% 45
South West -2 104 £625 +4.17% 123
South East -14 91 £513 +13.89% 243
Scotland -1 59 £470 +5.62% 22
North East +2 43 £475 -9.74% 17
East of England -7 30 £594 +18.75% 67
East Midlands -11 16 £424 -4.59% 45
Wales -4 10 £511 -9.16% 22
Northern Ireland +1 7 - - 9

Docker
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 88 (4.40%) Confluence
2 70 (3.50%) SAS
3 60 (3.00%) Apache Airflow
4 56 (2.80%) Apache Spark
5 51 (2.55%) Apache
6 50 (2.50%) nginx
7 23 (1.15%) OpenStack
8 18 (0.90%) JBoss
9 13 (0.65%) Appian
9 13 (0.65%) IIS
10 12 (0.60%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.55%) Camunda
11 11 (0.55%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.40%) iPlanet
13 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
13 8 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
14 6 (0.30%) Drupal
14 6 (0.30%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
Applications
1 7 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 6 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.25%) Weka
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.100%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.050%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.050%) Notion
6 1 (0.050%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.050%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.050%) Actimize
2 1 (0.050%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.050%) Endur
2 1 (0.050%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.050%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,158 (57.87%) AWS
2 762 (38.08%) Azure
3 469 (23.44%) GitHub
4 425 (21.24%) GCP
5 308 (15.39%) Serverless
6 289 (14.44%) GitHub Actions
7 225 (11.24%) Amazon S3
8 223 (11.14%) Azure DevOps
9 207 (10.34%) AWS CloudFormation
10 206 (10.29%) AWS Lambda
11 192 (9.60%) Amazon EC2
12 183 (9.15%) Amazon EKS
13 181 (9.05%) Amazon ECS
14 157 (7.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 127 (6.35%) OpenShift
16 113 (5.65%) Azure AKS
17 93 (4.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 63 (3.15%) Datadog
18 63 (3.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 52 (2.60%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 125 (6.25%) Firewall
2 81 (4.05%) DNS
3 47 (2.35%) TCP/IP
4 44 (2.20%) VPN
5 37 (1.85%) SSL
6 34 (1.70%) HTTP
6 34 (1.70%) Network Security
7 17 (0.85%) DHCP
8 15 (0.75%) Kerberos
9 14 (0.70%) SMTP
10 12 (0.60%) SSH
11 11 (0.55%) FTP
12 10 (0.50%) VLAN
13 8 (0.40%) BGP
13 8 (0.40%) SNMP
14 7 (0.35%) IMAP
14 7 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
15 6 (0.30%) HTTPS
15 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
16 5 (0.25%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (13.94%) PostgreSQL
2 206 (10.29%) NoSQL
3 137 (6.85%) Relational Database
4 136 (6.80%) MongoDB
5 135 (6.75%) Amazon RDS
6 105 (5.25%) SQL Server
7 84 (4.20%) Apache Cassandra
8 70 (3.50%) MySQL
9 68 (3.40%) Elasticsearch
10 62 (3.10%) DynamoDB
11 61 (3.05%) Redis
12 42 (2.10%) Amazon Aurora
12 42 (2.10%) Big Data
13 39 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
13 39 (1.95%) Pentaho
14 38 (1.90%) BigQuery
15 35 (1.75%) Data Lake
16 33 (1.65%) Power BI
17 32 (1.60%) Oracle Database
18 29 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 581 (29.04%) Jenkins
2 507 (25.34%) Git
3 426 (21.29%) GitLab
4 216 (10.79%) JIRA
5 87 (4.35%) JUnit
6 76 (3.80%) Selenium
7 70 (3.50%) SonarQube
8 49 (2.45%) Bitbucket
8 49 (2.45%) Maven
9 43 (2.15%) Cucumber
10 42 (2.10%) Cypress.io
11 40 (2.00%) Postman
12 38 (1.90%) Sonatype Nexus
13 37 (1.85%) MLflow
14 36 (1.80%) Gradle
15 32 (1.60%) Mockito
16 30 (1.50%) Liquibase
17 26 (1.30%) REST Assured
18 25 (1.25%) CircleCI
19 24 (1.20%) Gatling
General
1 524 (26.19%) Social Skills
2 337 (16.84%) Finance
3 287 (14.34%) Public Sector
4 204 (10.19%) Banking
5 160 (8.00%) Analytical Skills
6 39 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (1.65%) Financial Institution
8 28 (1.40%) Investment Banking
9 25 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
10 22 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (1.10%) Pharmaceutical
11 21 (1.05%) Front Office
12 17 (0.85%) Telecoms
13 15 (0.75%) Military
14 14 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
15 12 (0.60%) Retail
16 10 (0.50%) Law
17 8 (0.40%) Marketing
18 6 (0.30%) Games
18 6 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 555 (27.74%) Developer
2 350 (17.49%) Senior
3 274 (13.69%) DevOps Engineer
4 151 (7.55%) Java Developer
5 149 (7.45%) Software Engineer
6 133 (6.65%) AWS Engineer
7 124 (6.20%) Senior Developer
8 123 (6.15%) Architect
9 117 (5.85%) Lead
10 114 (5.70%) Python Developer
11 100 (5.00%) Full-Stack Developer
12 83 (4.15%) AWS DevOps
13 82 (4.10%) Data Engineer
14 81 (4.05%) Platform Engineer
15 75 (3.75%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 69 (3.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 68 (3.40%) Cloud Engineer
18 58 (2.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
19 55 (2.75%) Full-Stack Engineer
20 52 (2.60%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (15.59%) Kafka
2 281 (14.04%) Spring
3 279 (13.94%) REST
4 268 (13.39%) RESTful
5 256 (12.79%) Spring Boot
6 246 (12.29%) React
7 241 (12.04%) Node.js
8 136 (6.80%) .NET
9 127 (6.35%) Elastic Stack
10 121 (6.05%) AngularJS
11 112 (5.60%) FastAPI
12 101 (5.05%) HTML
13 95 (4.75%) OAuth
14 89 (4.45%) GraphQL
15 87 (4.35%) gRPC
16 86 (4.30%) PyTorch
17 79 (3.95%) JSON
18 74 (3.70%) CSS
19 72 (3.60%) Playwright
20 70 (3.50%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 380 (18.99%) Cloud Native
2 175 (8.75%) Distributed Systems
3 62 (3.10%) Product Ownership
4 54 (2.70%) Public Cloud
5 38 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
6 34 (1.70%) Algorithms
6 34 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 31 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
7 31 (1.55%) Management Information System
8 28 (1.40%) AI Agents
8 28 (1.40%) Replication
9 27 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
9 27 (1.35%) Onboarding
10 25 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
11 20 (1.00%) PKI
12 19 (0.95%) Distributed Computing
12 19 (0.95%) NHS
12 19 (0.95%) Virtual Team
13 18 (0.90%) Data Centre
13 18 (0.90%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 412 (20.59%) Linux
2 122 (6.10%) Windows
3 86 (4.30%) Unix
4 41 (2.05%) Windows Server
5 32 (1.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 26 (1.30%) VMS
7 20 (1.00%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.65%) Amazon Linux
9 10 (0.50%) CentOS
10 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.20%) Solaris
12 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.15%) Android
13 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.100%) Rocky
15 1 (0.050%) Alpine Linux
15 1 (0.050%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,423 (71.11%) CI/CD
2 1,114 (55.67%) DevOps
3 1,073 (53.62%) Containerisation
4 766 (38.28%) Agile
5 665 (33.23%) Microservices
6 601 (30.03%) Infrastructure as Code
7 499 (24.94%) Problem-Solving
8 393 (19.64%) Test Automation
9 386 (19.29%) Software Engineering
10 325 (16.24%) Observability
11 270 (13.49%) AI
12 235 (11.74%) Full-Stack Development
13 213 (10.64%) Mentoring
14 207 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
15 204 (10.19%) Machine Learning
16 203 (10.14%) Analytics
17 193 (9.65%) Scrum
18 191 (9.55%) Data Pipeline
19 167 (8.35%) DevSecOps
20 165 (8.25%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 950 (47.48%) Python
2 561 (28.04%) Java
3 476 (23.79%) SQL
4 265 (13.24%) Bash
5 226 (11.29%) JavaScript
6 213 (10.64%) TypeScript
7 198 (9.90%) Go
8 150 (7.50%) C#
8 150 (7.50%) PowerShell
9 64 (3.20%) Shell Script
10 59 (2.95%) Bicep
11 48 (2.40%) C++
12 47 (2.35%) Scala
13 43 (2.15%) Groovy
14 42 (2.10%) Ruby
15 35 (1.75%) Rust
16 31 (1.55%) PHP
17 24 (1.20%) Perl
18 17 (0.85%) C
18 17 (0.85%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 625 (31.23%) Security Cleared
2 502 (25.09%) SC Cleared
3 197 (9.85%) Degree
4 128 (6.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 97 (4.85%) AWS Certification
6 85 (4.25%) DV Cleared
7 72 (3.60%) Azure Certification
8 55 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
9 52 (2.60%) Master's Degree
10 39 (1.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 18 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
12 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 14 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
14 13 (0.65%) ISTQB
15 11 (0.55%) CISSP
16 10 (0.50%) AWS Certified Developer
17 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 8 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
18 7 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 7 (0.35%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 110 (5.50%) QA
2 67 (3.35%) Accessibility
2 67 (3.35%) Data Quality
3 36 (1.80%) GDPR
4 25 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 24 (1.20%) WCAG
6 22 (1.10%) ISO 20022
7 20 (1.00%) NIST
8 19 (0.95%) NCSC
8 19 (0.95%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.90%) PSD2
10 15 (0.75%) SEPA
11 11 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.45%) SLA
13 8 (0.40%) HIPAA
14 7 (0.35%) HL7
15 6 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 4 (0.20%) EU AI Act
16 4 (0.20%) SOC 2
17 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 61 (3.05%) Active Directory
2 57 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.05%) vSphere
4 19 (0.95%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 17 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
6 12 (0.60%) Squid
7 10 (0.50%) DFS Replication
8 9 (0.45%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.45%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.40%) Lustre
9 8 (0.40%) Tivoli Directory Server
9 8 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
10 7 (0.35%) Dovecot
10 7 (0.35%) Postfix
10 7 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.30%) GPFS
11 6 (0.30%) KVM
12 5 (0.25%) HDFS
12 5 (0.25%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 1,467 (73.31%) Kubernetes
2 708 (35.38%) Terraform
3 310 (15.49%) Grafana
4 284 (14.19%) Ansible
5 271 (13.54%) Prometheus
6 68 (3.40%) Puppet
7 65 (3.25%) Argo
8 49 (2.45%) Progress Chef
9 46 (2.30%) Kibana
10 31 (1.55%) Podman
11 27 (1.35%) Nessus
12 22 (1.10%) Packer
13 21 (1.05%) Istio
14 19 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
15 18 (0.90%) Control-M
16 17 (0.85%) Consul
17 16 (0.80%) Docker Swarm
17 16 (0.80%) IBM Guardium
18 14 (0.70%) logstash
18 14 (0.70%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 204 (10.19%) Microsoft
2 147 (7.35%) Google
2 147 (7.35%) Oracle
3 139 (6.95%) Splunk
4 64 (3.20%) Databricks
4 64 (3.20%) VMware
5 47 (2.35%) Red Hat
6 44 (2.20%) OpenAI
7 38 (1.90%) Denodo
7 38 (1.90%) Talend
8 36 (1.80%) Dynatrace
9 29 (1.45%) AppDynamics
10 28 (1.40%) F5
10 28 (1.40%) Palo Alto
11 23 (1.15%) ServiceNow
12 20 (1.00%) CheckPoint
13 18 (0.90%) Atlassian
13 18 (0.90%) Cisco
13 18 (0.90%) IBM
13 18 (0.90%) Tenable