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 28 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 46 68
Rank change year-on-year +3 +22 -21
Contract jobs citing Docker 2,037 1,350 1,323
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.89% 4.41% 2.97%
As % of the System Software category 42.50% 34.89% 26.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,406 916 959
10th Percentile £368 £400 £412
25th Percentile £429 £474 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £543
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +1.38% -9.58%
75th Percentile £622 £675 £650
90th Percentile £713 £810 £722
UK excluding London median daily rate £511 £525 £506
% change year-on-year -2.71% +3.75% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 17
10th Percentile £43.56 - £54.70
25th Percentile £56.75 £25.25 £62.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £27.50 £66.50
Median % change year-on-year +136.36% -58.65% -5.00%
75th Percentile £79.00 £62.50 £76.53
90th Percentile £89.60 £82.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £68.63
% change year-on-year - - +7.65%

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 4,793 3,869 4,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.51% 12.64% 11.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,298 2,539 3,388
10th Percentile £205 £205 £190
25th Percentile £400 £383 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £480
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% +8.85% -8.57%
75th Percentile £594 £625 £600
90th Percentile £688 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £450
% change year-on-year - +5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 89 240
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.46 £21.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £38.47 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.37% -18.75% -
75th Percentile £70.64 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.80 £78.50 £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £37.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year +11.84% -6.83% +54.81%

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 28 February 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 28 February 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 28 February 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 1,760 £525 -8.70% 561
London +2 901 £550 -8.33% 219
UK excluding London +6 833 £511 -2.71% 403
Work from Home -1 641 £525 -4.55% 312
North of England +13 349 £492 -4.28% 109
Midlands +30 238 £525 +5.00% 45
West Midlands +36 220 £525 - 37
North West +16 162 £488 -7.11% 62
Yorkshire -2 150 £500 -4.76% 30
South West -11 101 £550 -8.33% 89
South East -22 98 £513 +13.89% 119
Scotland -5 49 £388 -12.92% 12
North East -3 44 £483 +1.58% 17
East of England -16 31 £551 +12.35% 19
East Midlands -17 17 £424 -6.17% 8
Wales -8 11 £511 -4.93% 9
Northern Ireland -1 6 - - 4

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 99 (4.86%) Confluence
2 67 (3.29%) SAS
3 62 (3.04%) Apache Airflow
4 59 (2.90%) Apache Spark
5 47 (2.31%) Apache
6 37 (1.82%) nginx
7 20 (0.98%) OpenStack
8 14 (0.69%) JBoss
8 14 (0.69%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.64%) Appian
10 12 (0.59%) Camunda
11 10 (0.49%) Jupyter
11 10 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
13 8 (0.39%) Tomcat
13 8 (0.39%) WebSphere
14 5 (0.25%) Drupal
14 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
14 5 (0.25%) Hyperledger
14 5 (0.25%) iPlanet
Applications
1 8 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Weka
3 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.098%) Adobe XD
4 2 (0.098%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 1 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.049%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.049%) Maya
5 1 (0.049%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.049%) Notion
5 1 (0.049%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.049%) Actimize
2 1 (0.049%) Endur
2 1 (0.049%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.049%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,196 (58.71%) AWS
2 803 (39.42%) Azure
3 485 (23.81%) GitHub
4 444 (21.80%) GCP
5 310 (15.22%) GitHub Actions
6 298 (14.63%) Serverless
7 235 (11.54%) Azure DevOps
8 220 (10.80%) Amazon S3
9 205 (10.06%) AWS CloudFormation
10 197 (9.67%) Amazon EKS
11 188 (9.23%) Amazon EC2
12 186 (9.13%) AWS Lambda
13 173 (8.49%) Amazon ECS
14 147 (7.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 115 (5.65%) OpenShift
16 112 (5.50%) Azure AKS
17 95 (4.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 62 (3.04%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 60 (2.95%) Datadog
20 57 (2.80%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 113 (5.55%) Firewall
2 74 (3.63%) DNS
3 46 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 40 (1.96%) VPN
5 33 (1.62%) SSL
6 32 (1.57%) Network Security
7 29 (1.42%) HTTP
8 18 (0.88%) DHCP
9 12 (0.59%) Kerberos
10 10 (0.49%) BGP
10 10 (0.49%) VLAN
11 8 (0.39%) SNMP
12 7 (0.34%) SMTP
13 6 (0.29%) HTTPS
13 6 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
14 5 (0.25%) 3GPP
14 5 (0.25%) AMQP
14 5 (0.25%) Reverse Proxy
14 5 (0.25%) Software-Defined Networking
14 5 (0.25%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (14.97%) PostgreSQL
2 212 (10.41%) NoSQL
3 145 (7.12%) MongoDB
4 135 (6.63%) Relational Database
5 133 (6.53%) Amazon RDS
6 106 (5.20%) SQL Server
7 85 (4.17%) Apache Cassandra
8 67 (3.29%) DynamoDB
8 67 (3.29%) MySQL
9 65 (3.19%) Elasticsearch
10 55 (2.70%) Redis
11 41 (2.01%) Big Data
12 38 (1.87%) BigQuery
12 38 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
13 35 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
13 35 (1.72%) Pentaho
14 34 (1.67%) Data Lake
15 33 (1.62%) Azure SQL Database
16 30 (1.47%) Power BI
17 29 (1.42%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 567 (27.84%) Jenkins
2 506 (24.84%) Git
3 434 (21.31%) GitLab
4 217 (10.65%) JIRA
5 104 (5.11%) JUnit
6 86 (4.22%) Selenium
7 60 (2.95%) SonarQube
8 54 (2.65%) Cucumber
9 50 (2.45%) Bitbucket
9 50 (2.45%) Maven
10 48 (2.36%) MLflow
11 41 (2.01%) Mockito
12 37 (1.82%) Postman
13 35 (1.72%) JMeter
14 34 (1.67%) Cypress.io
15 33 (1.62%) Liquibase
16 29 (1.42%) Gradle
16 29 (1.42%) Sonatype Nexus
17 28 (1.37%) REST Assured
18 27 (1.33%) Gatling
General
1 522 (25.63%) Social Skills
2 335 (16.45%) Finance
3 309 (15.17%) Public Sector
4 186 (9.13%) Banking
5 182 (8.93%) Analytical Skills
6 36 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (1.57%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.23%) Investment Banking
9 22 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 21 (1.03%) Front Office
10 21 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
11 19 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
12 16 (0.79%) Military
12 16 (0.79%) Retail
13 15 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
14 12 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (0.59%) Telecoms
15 8 (0.39%) Law
15 8 (0.39%) Marketing
16 7 (0.34%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 577 (28.33%) Developer
2 364 (17.87%) Senior
3 278 (13.65%) DevOps Engineer
4 164 (8.05%) Java Developer
5 148 (7.27%) Software Engineer
6 127 (6.23%) AWS Engineer
6 127 (6.23%) Lead
7 126 (6.19%) Architect
8 124 (6.09%) Senior Developer
9 123 (6.04%) Python Developer
10 108 (5.30%) Full-Stack Developer
11 98 (4.81%) Data Engineer
12 82 (4.03%) Cloud Engineer
13 79 (3.88%) AWS DevOps
14 75 (3.68%) Platform Engineer
15 71 (3.49%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 65 (3.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 61 (2.99%) Senior DevOps
17 61 (2.99%) Senior DevOps Engineer
18 56 (2.75%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (15.51%) Kafka
2 296 (14.53%) Spring
3 285 (13.99%) REST
4 263 (12.91%) RESTful
5 257 (12.62%) Spring Boot
6 256 (12.57%) Node.js
7 248 (12.17%) React
8 147 (7.22%) .NET
9 125 (6.14%) AngularJS
10 124 (6.09%) Elastic Stack
11 120 (5.89%) FastAPI
12 93 (4.57%) HTML
13 92 (4.52%) PyTorch
14 89 (4.37%) OAuth
15 84 (4.12%) gRPC
16 82 (4.03%) GraphQL
17 80 (3.93%) Playwright
18 79 (3.88%) OpenTelemetry
19 75 (3.68%) TensorFlow
20 74 (3.63%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 379 (18.61%) Cloud Native
2 185 (9.08%) Distributed Systems
3 67 (3.29%) Product Ownership
4 55 (2.70%) Public Cloud
5 43 (2.11%) Algorithms
5 43 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
6 38 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
7 36 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
7 36 (1.77%) Management Information System
8 29 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
9 25 (1.23%) AI Agents
10 23 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
10 23 (1.13%) Onboarding
11 21 (1.03%) Data Structures
11 21 (1.03%) PKI
12 20 (0.98%) NHS
13 19 (0.93%) Distributed Computing
14 18 (0.88%) Replication
14 18 (0.88%) Security Posture
14 18 (0.88%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 410 (20.13%) Linux
2 118 (5.79%) Windows
3 80 (3.93%) Unix
4 39 (1.91%) Windows Server
5 37 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 22 (1.08%) VMS
7 16 (0.79%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.49%) CentOS
9 9 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
12 6 (0.29%) Android
13 5 (0.25%) Solaris
13 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
14 4 (0.20%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.15%) Rocky
16 2 (0.098%) Debian
17 1 (0.049%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,462 (71.77%) CI/CD
2 1,120 (54.98%) DevOps
3 1,104 (54.20%) Containerisation
4 782 (38.39%) Agile
5 688 (33.78%) Microservices
6 617 (30.29%) Infrastructure as Code
7 491 (24.10%) Problem-Solving
8 406 (19.93%) Test Automation
9 376 (18.46%) Software Engineering
10 363 (17.82%) Observability
11 283 (13.89%) AI
12 244 (11.98%) Full-Stack Development
13 231 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
14 218 (10.70%) Analytics
15 214 (10.51%) Machine Learning
16 213 (10.46%) Scrum
17 208 (10.21%) Mentoring
18 205 (10.06%) Data Pipeline
19 175 (8.59%) TDD
20 170 (8.35%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 968 (47.52%) Python
2 546 (26.80%) Java
3 503 (24.69%) SQL
4 264 (12.96%) Bash
5 238 (11.68%) JavaScript
6 217 (10.65%) TypeScript
7 202 (9.92%) Go
8 157 (7.71%) C#
9 146 (7.17%) PowerShell
10 60 (2.95%) Bicep
11 58 (2.85%) Shell Script
12 46 (2.26%) Scala
13 45 (2.21%) Ruby
14 39 (1.91%) C++
15 29 (1.42%) Rust
16 28 (1.37%) Groovy
17 26 (1.28%) PHP
18 21 (1.03%) Kotlin
19 20 (0.98%) Perl
20 12 (0.59%) C
Qualifications
1 660 (32.40%) Security Cleared
2 536 (26.31%) SC Cleared
3 195 (9.57%) Degree
4 129 (6.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 108 (5.30%) AWS Certification
6 90 (4.42%) DV Cleared
7 87 (4.27%) Azure Certification
8 62 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
9 54 (2.65%) Master's Degree
10 43 (2.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 19 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (0.88%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 16 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
14 15 (0.74%) CISSP
15 14 (0.69%) ISTQB
15 14 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
16 11 (0.54%) AWS Certified Developer
17 8 (0.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 7 (0.34%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 7 (0.34%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 106 (5.20%) QA
2 76 (3.73%) Accessibility
3 72 (3.53%) Data Quality
4 39 (1.91%) GDPR
5 30 (1.47%) WCAG
6 23 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 20 (0.98%) ISO 20022
7 20 (0.98%) NIST
8 19 (0.93%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.74%) NCSC
9 15 (0.74%) PSD2
10 11 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.49%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.49%) SEPA
12 9 (0.44%) SLA
13 8 (0.39%) HL7
14 6 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 4 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 3 (0.15%) EU AI Act
16 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 60 (2.95%) Active Directory
2 56 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (1.08%) vSphere
4 20 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.88%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 13 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.54%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.49%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.39%) Lustre
9 8 (0.39%) Postfix
9 8 (0.39%) Virtual Servers
10 7 (0.34%) KVM
10 7 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.29%) GPFS
11 6 (0.29%) Squid
12 5 (0.25%) NDS
12 5 (0.25%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 5 (0.25%) Tivoli Directory Server
13 4 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.20%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 1,506 (73.93%) Kubernetes
2 713 (35.00%) Terraform
3 321 (15.76%) Grafana
4 291 (14.29%) Prometheus
5 280 (13.75%) Ansible
6 67 (3.29%) Argo
6 67 (3.29%) Puppet
7 45 (2.21%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.01%) Kibana
9 31 (1.52%) Podman
10 27 (1.33%) Nessus
11 25 (1.23%) Packer
12 24 (1.18%) Control-M
12 24 (1.18%) Istio
13 22 (1.08%) IBM Guardium
14 19 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
15 18 (0.88%) Consul
16 16 (0.79%) Docker Swarm
17 13 (0.64%) logstash
18 12 (0.59%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 213 (10.46%) Microsoft
2 137 (6.73%) Splunk
3 132 (6.48%) Google
4 126 (6.19%) Oracle
5 72 (3.53%) Databricks
6 61 (2.99%) VMware
7 50 (2.45%) Red Hat
8 46 (2.26%) OpenAI
9 39 (1.91%) Dynatrace
10 35 (1.72%) Denodo
10 35 (1.72%) Talend
11 25 (1.23%) Atlassian
12 24 (1.18%) F5
12 24 (1.18%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.13%) AppDynamics
13 23 (1.13%) Tenable
14 19 (0.93%) IBM
15 18 (0.88%) ServiceNow
16 15 (0.74%) Cisco
16 15 (0.74%) Foundry