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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 47 68
Rank change year-on-year +5 +21 -22
Contract jobs citing Docker 1,993 1,291 1,354
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.96% 4.24% 3.03%
As % of the System Software category 42.05% 34.37% 26.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,367 886 987
10th Percentile £375 £400 £406
25th Percentile £431 £475 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £570 £538
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% +6.05% -10.42%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £638
90th Percentile £716 £810 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £505 £500
% change year-on-year - +1.00% -9.09%
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 - - +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 4,740 3,756 5,076
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.79% 12.33% 11.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,239 2,448 3,449
10th Percentile £205 £200 £190
25th Percentile £400 £374 £324
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £480
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +7.29% -8.57%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £688 £721 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £467 £450
% change year-on-year +1.82% +3.67% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 87 246
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.45 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.25 £17.70
Median hourly rate £34.00 £29.00 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +17.24% -33.71% +9.38%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £83.40 £75.00 £77.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £37.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +11.84% -18.80% +90.43%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 1,721 £525 -8.70% 674
London +4 891 £550 -8.33% 277
UK excluding London +14 814 £505 - 496
Work from Home +1 621 £525 -4.55% 403
North of England +18 346 £478 -4.50% 127
Midlands +40 214 £530 +6.00% 63
West Midlands +34 196 £537 +2.29% 44
North West +20 156 £453 -9.40% 81
Yorkshire +12 154 £500 -4.76% 31
South West -10 101 £588 -2.08% 103
South East -11 99 £513 +13.89% 146
Scotland -4 55 £420 -4.55% 20
North East 0 43 £475 +3.83% 15
East of England -12 32 £551 +10.10% 25
East Midlands -14 17 £424 -4.59% 19
Wales -6 11 £511 -9.16% 15
Northern Ireland +2 7 - - 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 89 (4.47%) Confluence
2 56 (2.81%) Apache Airflow
2 56 (2.81%) Apache Spark
3 54 (2.71%) SAS
4 45 (2.26%) Apache
5 39 (1.96%) nginx
6 21 (1.05%) OpenStack
7 15 (0.75%) JBoss
8 14 (0.70%) Appian
9 13 (0.65%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.55%) Camunda
10 11 (0.55%) Jupyter
11 10 (0.50%) IIS
12 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
14 7 (0.35%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.30%) iPlanet
15 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.25%) Drupal
16 5 (0.25%) SharePoint
Applications
1 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Weka
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.10%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.050%) CPLEX
6 1 (0.050%) Maya
6 1 (0.050%) MS Visio
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%) Endur
2 1 (0.050%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,156 (58.00%) AWS
2 777 (38.99%) Azure
3 472 (23.68%) GitHub
4 429 (21.53%) GCP
5 296 (14.85%) GitHub Actions
6 293 (14.70%) Serverless
7 232 (11.64%) Azure DevOps
8 220 (11.04%) Amazon S3
9 206 (10.34%) AWS CloudFormation
10 193 (9.68%) Amazon EKS
11 187 (9.38%) AWS Lambda
12 182 (9.13%) Amazon EC2
13 171 (8.58%) Amazon ECS
14 149 (7.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 120 (6.02%) OpenShift
16 113 (5.67%) Azure AKS
17 91 (4.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 62 (3.11%) Datadog
19 58 (2.91%) Azure Monitor
20 55 (2.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 113 (5.67%) Firewall
2 78 (3.91%) DNS
3 46 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 40 (2.01%) VPN
5 34 (1.71%) SSL
6 33 (1.66%) Network Security
7 31 (1.56%) HTTP
8 18 (0.90%) DHCP
9 13 (0.65%) Kerberos
10 10 (0.50%) SMTP
10 10 (0.50%) VLAN
11 8 (0.40%) BGP
11 8 (0.40%) SNMP
12 7 (0.35%) FTP
13 6 (0.30%) HTTPS
13 6 (0.30%) Radio Access Network
13 6 (0.30%) SSH
14 5 (0.25%) AMQP
14 5 (0.25%) Software-Defined Networking
14 5 (0.25%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 287 (14.40%) PostgreSQL
2 205 (10.29%) NoSQL
3 142 (7.12%) MongoDB
4 131 (6.57%) Relational Database
5 130 (6.52%) Amazon RDS
6 107 (5.37%) SQL Server
7 85 (4.26%) Apache Cassandra
8 69 (3.46%) MySQL
9 64 (3.21%) Elasticsearch
10 61 (3.06%) DynamoDB
11 54 (2.71%) Redis
12 40 (2.01%) Big Data
13 37 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
14 36 (1.81%) Amazon Aurora
15 35 (1.76%) BigQuery
16 33 (1.66%) Azure SQL Database
16 33 (1.66%) Data Lake
17 31 (1.56%) Power BI
18 29 (1.46%) Oracle Database
19 26 (1.30%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 555 (27.85%) Jenkins
2 480 (24.08%) Git
3 423 (21.22%) GitLab
4 202 (10.14%) JIRA
5 86 (4.32%) JUnit
6 76 (3.81%) Selenium
7 57 (2.86%) SonarQube
8 50 (2.51%) Bitbucket
9 46 (2.31%) Maven
9 46 (2.31%) MLflow
10 43 (2.16%) Cucumber
11 37 (1.86%) Cypress.io
12 36 (1.81%) Mockito
12 36 (1.81%) Postman
13 33 (1.66%) Liquibase
14 31 (1.56%) Sonatype Nexus
15 28 (1.40%) Gradle
15 28 (1.40%) REST Assured
16 27 (1.35%) Gatling
17 24 (1.20%) CircleCI
General
1 518 (25.99%) Social Skills
2 339 (17.01%) Finance
3 293 (14.70%) Public Sector
4 195 (9.78%) Banking
5 173 (8.68%) Analytical Skills
6 35 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (1.66%) Financial Institution
8 26 (1.30%) Investment Banking
9 23 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
10 20 (1.00%) Front Office
11 19 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
12 15 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
12 15 (0.75%) Military
13 13 (0.65%) Retail
13 13 (0.65%) Telecoms
14 8 (0.40%) Law
14 8 (0.40%) Marketing
15 6 (0.30%) Health Technology
15 6 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 566 (28.40%) Developer
2 350 (17.56%) Senior
3 272 (13.65%) DevOps Engineer
4 158 (7.93%) Java Developer
5 147 (7.38%) Software Engineer
6 129 (6.47%) Architect
7 126 (6.32%) AWS Engineer
7 126 (6.32%) Lead
8 122 (6.12%) Python Developer
8 122 (6.12%) Senior Developer
9 104 (5.22%) Full-Stack Developer
10 79 (3.96%) Data Engineer
10 79 (3.96%) Platform Engineer
11 78 (3.91%) AWS DevOps
12 71 (3.56%) Cloud Engineer
13 70 (3.51%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 65 (3.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 58 (2.91%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 55 (2.76%) Azure Engineer
17 52 (2.61%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (15.81%) Kafka
2 284 (14.25%) Spring
3 278 (13.95%) REST
4 259 (13.00%) RESTful
5 254 (12.74%) Spring Boot
6 248 (12.44%) Node.js
7 244 (12.24%) React
8 144 (7.23%) .NET
9 121 (6.07%) Elastic Stack
10 120 (6.02%) AngularJS
10 120 (6.02%) FastAPI
11 95 (4.77%) HTML
12 91 (4.57%) OAuth
13 90 (4.52%) PyTorch
14 84 (4.21%) gRPC
15 82 (4.11%) GraphQL
16 79 (3.96%) OpenTelemetry
17 76 (3.81%) CSS
17 76 (3.81%) Playwright
18 72 (3.61%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 370 (18.56%) Cloud Native
2 177 (8.88%) Distributed Systems
3 62 (3.11%) Product Ownership
4 53 (2.66%) Public Cloud
5 44 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
6 38 (1.91%) Algorithms
7 36 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
7 36 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
8 32 (1.61%) Management Information System
9 27 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
10 26 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
10 26 (1.30%) Onboarding
11 25 (1.25%) AI Agents
12 21 (1.05%) PKI
12 21 (1.05%) Replication
13 20 (1.00%) NHS
14 19 (0.95%) Distributed Computing
15 18 (0.90%) Data Structures
15 18 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
16 17 (0.85%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 406 (20.37%) Linux
2 115 (5.77%) Windows
3 80 (4.01%) Unix
4 38 (1.91%) Windows Server
5 32 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (1.20%) VMS
7 17 (0.85%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.50%) Amazon Linux
8 10 (0.50%) CentOS
9 8 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.20%) Android
11 4 (0.20%) Solaris
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.10%) Rocky
14 1 (0.050%) Alpine Linux
14 1 (0.050%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,426 (71.55%) CI/CD
2 1,099 (55.14%) DevOps
3 1,090 (54.69%) Containerisation
4 759 (38.08%) Agile
5 676 (33.92%) Microservices
6 615 (30.86%) Infrastructure as Code
7 487 (24.44%) Problem-Solving
8 382 (19.17%) Test Automation
9 381 (19.12%) Software Engineering
10 339 (17.01%) Observability
11 272 (13.65%) AI
12 235 (11.79%) Full-Stack Development
13 211 (10.59%) Continuous Improvement
14 210 (10.54%) Machine Learning
15 207 (10.39%) Mentoring
16 201 (10.09%) Analytics
17 196 (9.83%) Scrum
18 186 (9.33%) Data Pipeline
19 164 (8.23%) Computer Science
20 157 (7.88%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 960 (48.17%) Python
2 546 (27.40%) Java
3 475 (23.83%) SQL
4 261 (13.10%) Bash
5 235 (11.79%) JavaScript
6 214 (10.74%) TypeScript
7 204 (10.24%) Go
8 153 (7.68%) C#
9 144 (7.23%) PowerShell
10 61 (3.06%) Bicep
10 61 (3.06%) Shell Script
11 45 (2.26%) C++
11 45 (2.26%) Scala
12 43 (2.16%) Ruby
13 32 (1.61%) Groovy
13 32 (1.61%) Rust
14 28 (1.40%) PHP
15 21 (1.05%) Perl
16 18 (0.90%) Kotlin
17 15 (0.75%) C
Qualifications
1 622 (31.21%) Security Cleared
2 500 (25.09%) SC Cleared
3 197 (9.88%) Degree
4 130 (6.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 103 (5.17%) AWS Certification
6 88 (4.42%) DV Cleared
7 79 (3.96%) Azure Certification
8 62 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
9 55 (2.76%) Master's Degree
10 42 (2.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 19 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (0.75%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 14 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (0.70%) ISTQB
13 14 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
14 12 (0.60%) CISSP
15 10 (0.50%) AWS Certified Developer
16 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 7 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 7 (0.35%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 110 (5.52%) QA
2 76 (3.81%) Accessibility
3 59 (2.96%) Data Quality
4 38 (1.91%) GDPR
5 29 (1.46%) WCAG
6 26 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (1.10%) ISO 20022
8 20 (1.00%) NIST
9 19 (0.95%) PCI DSS
10 18 (0.90%) PSD2
11 17 (0.85%) NCSC
12 13 (0.65%) SEPA
13 11 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 9 (0.45%) SLA
15 7 (0.35%) HL7
16 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 5 (0.25%) SOC 2
18 4 (0.20%) EU AI Act
19 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 58 (2.91%) Active Directory
1 58 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (1.05%) vSphere
3 19 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (0.90%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 11 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (0.50%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.40%) Lustre
8 8 (0.40%) Squid
8 8 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
9 7 (0.35%) Postfix
9 7 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.30%) DFS Replication
10 6 (0.30%) GPFS
10 6 (0.30%) KVM
10 6 (0.30%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 5 (0.25%) NDS
11 5 (0.25%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 4 (0.20%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 1,477 (74.11%) Kubernetes
2 711 (35.67%) Terraform
3 311 (15.60%) Grafana
4 278 (13.95%) Prometheus
5 276 (13.85%) Ansible
6 67 (3.36%) Puppet
7 65 (3.26%) Argo
8 43 (2.16%) Kibana
8 43 (2.16%) Progress Chef
9 33 (1.66%) Podman
10 28 (1.40%) Nessus
11 23 (1.15%) Control-M
12 21 (1.05%) IBM Guardium
12 21 (1.05%) Packer
12 21 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
13 19 (0.95%) Istio
14 17 (0.85%) Consul
15 16 (0.80%) Docker Swarm
16 13 (0.65%) logstash
17 12 (0.60%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 201 (10.09%) Microsoft
2 137 (6.87%) Google
3 136 (6.82%) Splunk
4 127 (6.37%) Oracle
5 71 (3.56%) Databricks
6 64 (3.21%) VMware
7 47 (2.36%) OpenAI
7 47 (2.36%) Red Hat
8 36 (1.81%) Dynatrace
9 25 (1.25%) AppDynamics
9 25 (1.25%) Denodo
9 25 (1.25%) F5
9 25 (1.25%) Talend
10 24 (1.20%) Palo Alto
11 22 (1.10%) Tenable
12 21 (1.05%) Atlassian
13 20 (1.00%) ServiceNow
14 18 (0.90%) IBM
15 17 (0.85%) CheckPoint
16 16 (0.80%) Cisco