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 25 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 48 66
Rank change year-on-year +8 +18 -22
Contract jobs citing Docker 1,988 1,332 1,366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.25% 4.22% 3.08%
As % of the System Software category 43.43% 34.97% 26.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,377 904 998
10th Percentile £376 £400 £413
25th Percentile £440 £480 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £571 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.10% +3.86% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £650
90th Percentile £721 £810 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £511 £510 £513
% change year-on-year +0.25% -0.63% -10.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 5 18
10th Percentile £49.40 - £46.60
25th Percentile £61.25 £25.25 £61.44
Median hourly rate £66.50 £27.50 £66.88
Median % change year-on-year +141.82% -58.88% -4.45%
75th Percentile £79.75 £62.50 £76.53
90th Percentile £92.30 £82.00 £76.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £67.27
% change year-on-year - - +5.51%

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 4,578 3,809 5,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.08% 12.08% 11.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,125 2,459 3,583
10th Percentile £213 £200 £190
25th Percentile £400 £363 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £495
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +3.54% -5.71%
75th Percentile £596 £625 £600
90th Percentile £695 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £450
% change year-on-year +2.26% +3.22% -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 91 231
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.36 £18.39
Median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £49.88
Median % change year-on-year +44.62% -41.86% +35.73%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £67.38
90th Percentile £90.95 £75.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.50 £37.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +56.00% -25.00% +127.27%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +8 1,717 £525 -8.70% 1,377
London +4 896 £550 -8.33% 300
UK excluding London +17 821 £511 +0.25% 1,251
Work from Home +7 621 £525 -4.55% 589
North of England +15 342 £478 -4.50% 242
Midlands +54 222 £530 +6.00% 159
West Midlands +45 209 £537 +2.29% 58
North West +21 163 £450 -10.00% 115
Yorkshire +2 142 £500 -4.76% 92
South West -1 98 £650 +8.33% 200
South East -9 93 £513 +13.89% 393
Scotland +12 69 £475 +5.56% 40
North East +1 43 £475 -9.74% 35
East of England -6 31 £575 +4.55% 161
East Midlands -18 13 £413 -6.98% 98
Wales -6 10 £511 -9.16% 56
Northern Ireland -2 7 - - 27

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 (4.48%) Confluence
2 70 (3.52%) SAS
3 59 (2.97%) Apache Airflow
4 55 (2.77%) Apache Spark
5 51 (2.57%) Apache
6 48 (2.41%) nginx
7 23 (1.16%) OpenStack
8 18 (0.91%) JBoss
9 13 (0.65%) IIS
10 12 (0.60%) Appian
10 12 (0.60%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.55%) Jupyter
12 10 (0.50%) Camunda
13 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.40%) iPlanet
14 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
14 8 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.25%) Drupal
15 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
15 5 (0.25%) SharePoint
Applications
1 8 (0.40%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Weka
3 3 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.050%) Photoshop
5 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 1,160 (58.35%) AWS
2 765 (38.48%) Azure
3 461 (23.19%) GitHub
4 435 (21.88%) GCP
5 303 (15.24%) Serverless
6 285 (14.34%) GitHub Actions
7 228 (11.47%) Amazon S3
8 224 (11.27%) Azure DevOps
9 207 (10.41%) AWS CloudFormation
10 199 (10.01%) AWS Lambda
11 197 (9.91%) Amazon EC2
12 182 (9.15%) Amazon EKS
13 174 (8.75%) Amazon ECS
14 162 (8.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 132 (6.64%) OpenShift
16 114 (5.73%) Azure AKS
17 104 (5.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 67 (3.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 65 (3.27%) Datadog
20 50 (2.52%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 136 (6.84%) Firewall
2 88 (4.43%) DNS
3 51 (2.57%) TCP/IP
4 47 (2.36%) VPN
5 42 (2.11%) SSL
6 38 (1.91%) Network Security
7 36 (1.81%) HTTP
8 16 (0.80%) DHCP
8 16 (0.80%) SMTP
9 15 (0.75%) Kerberos
10 14 (0.70%) SSH
11 13 (0.65%) FTP
12 10 (0.50%) VLAN
13 9 (0.45%) BGP
14 8 (0.40%) IMAP
14 8 (0.40%) OpenLDAP
14 8 (0.40%) SNMP
15 6 (0.30%) HTTPS
15 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
16 5 (0.25%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 274 (13.78%) PostgreSQL
2 209 (10.51%) NoSQL
3 134 (6.74%) MongoDB
4 132 (6.64%) Amazon RDS
5 127 (6.39%) Relational Database
6 104 (5.23%) SQL Server
7 82 (4.12%) Apache Cassandra
8 71 (3.57%) MySQL
9 68 (3.42%) Elasticsearch
10 61 (3.07%) DynamoDB
11 60 (3.02%) Redis
12 46 (2.31%) Amazon Aurora
13 41 (2.06%) Big Data
14 39 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
14 39 (1.96%) Pentaho
15 38 (1.91%) BigQuery
16 35 (1.76%) Data Lake
17 33 (1.66%) Power BI
18 30 (1.51%) Oracle Database
19 28 (1.41%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 584 (29.38%) Jenkins
2 513 (25.80%) Git
3 416 (20.93%) GitLab
4 212 (10.66%) JIRA
5 85 (4.28%) JUnit
6 74 (3.72%) Selenium
7 73 (3.67%) SonarQube
8 48 (2.41%) Bitbucket
9 47 (2.36%) Maven
10 45 (2.26%) Cypress.io
11 42 (2.11%) Cucumber
12 41 (2.06%) Sonatype Nexus
13 39 (1.96%) Postman
14 35 (1.76%) Gradle
15 34 (1.71%) Mockito
16 33 (1.66%) Liquibase
16 33 (1.66%) MLflow
17 26 (1.31%) CircleCI
18 25 (1.26%) JMeter
19 22 (1.11%) REST Assured
General
1 517 (26.01%) Social Skills
2 332 (16.70%) Finance
3 288 (14.49%) Public Sector
4 207 (10.41%) Banking
5 154 (7.75%) Analytical Skills
6 39 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (1.71%) Financial Institution
8 28 (1.41%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.31%) Pharmaceutical
9 26 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.06%) Front Office
10 21 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 18 (0.91%) Telecoms
12 15 (0.75%) Military
13 14 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
14 11 (0.55%) Retail
15 10 (0.50%) Law
16 6 (0.30%) Digital Healthcare
16 6 (0.30%) Games
16 6 (0.30%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 546 (27.46%) Developer
2 343 (17.25%) Senior
3 276 (13.88%) DevOps Engineer
4 151 (7.60%) Java Developer
4 151 (7.60%) Software Engineer
5 132 (6.64%) AWS Engineer
6 122 (6.14%) Architect
6 122 (6.14%) Senior Developer
7 110 (5.53%) Lead
8 109 (5.48%) Python Developer
9 97 (4.88%) Full-Stack Developer
10 84 (4.23%) AWS DevOps
11 81 (4.07%) Data Engineer
11 81 (4.07%) Platform Engineer
12 76 (3.82%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 70 (3.52%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 68 (3.42%) Cloud Engineer
15 63 (3.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 54 (2.72%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 52 (2.62%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (15.44%) Kafka
2 275 (13.83%) REST
3 273 (13.73%) Spring
4 267 (13.43%) RESTful
5 249 (12.53%) Spring Boot
6 242 (12.17%) Node.js
6 242 (12.17%) React
7 133 (6.69%) .NET
8 127 (6.39%) Elastic Stack
9 121 (6.09%) AngularJS
10 109 (5.48%) FastAPI
11 103 (5.18%) HTML
12 96 (4.83%) OAuth
13 86 (4.33%) GraphQL
13 86 (4.33%) PyTorch
14 85 (4.28%) gRPC
15 79 (3.97%) JSON
16 76 (3.82%) CSS
17 70 (3.52%) TensorFlow
18 68 (3.42%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 380 (19.11%) Cloud Native
2 172 (8.65%) Distributed Systems
3 58 (2.92%) Public Cloud
4 54 (2.72%) Product Ownership
5 36 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
5 36 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
6 33 (1.66%) Algorithms
7 32 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
8 30 (1.51%) Management Information System
8 30 (1.51%) Replication
9 29 (1.46%) AI Agents
10 27 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
11 25 (1.26%) Onboarding
12 24 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
13 23 (1.16%) Data Centre
14 20 (1.01%) PKI
15 19 (0.96%) Life Science
16 18 (0.91%) Genomics
16 18 (0.91%) Hedge funds
16 18 (0.91%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 410 (20.62%) Linux
2 120 (6.04%) Windows
3 92 (4.63%) Unix
4 40 (2.01%) Windows Server
5 35 (1.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 26 (1.31%) VMS
7 21 (1.06%) Ubuntu
8 15 (0.75%) Amazon Linux
9 10 (0.50%) CentOS
10 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.15%) Android
11 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.15%) Solaris
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.10%) Rocky
12 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.050%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,401 (70.47%) CI/CD
2 1,105 (55.58%) DevOps
3 1,050 (52.82%) Containerisation
4 772 (38.83%) Agile
5 654 (32.90%) Microservices
6 607 (30.53%) Infrastructure as Code
7 491 (24.70%) Problem-Solving
8 387 (19.47%) Test Automation
9 386 (19.42%) Software Engineering
10 316 (15.90%) Observability
11 267 (13.43%) AI
12 228 (11.47%) Full-Stack Development
13 210 (10.56%) Mentoring
14 205 (10.31%) Continuous Improvement
15 202 (10.16%) Machine Learning
16 197 (9.91%) Analytics
17 193 (9.71%) Scrum
18 186 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
19 170 (8.55%) DevSecOps
20 167 (8.40%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 962 (48.39%) Python
2 553 (27.82%) Java
3 469 (23.59%) SQL
4 279 (14.03%) Bash
5 229 (11.52%) JavaScript
6 212 (10.66%) TypeScript
7 198 (9.96%) Go
8 152 (7.65%) PowerShell
9 146 (7.34%) C#
10 66 (3.32%) Shell Script
11 58 (2.92%) Bicep
12 48 (2.41%) C++
13 47 (2.36%) Scala
14 45 (2.26%) Groovy
15 43 (2.16%) Ruby
16 34 (1.71%) Rust
17 31 (1.56%) Perl
18 29 (1.46%) PHP
19 17 (0.86%) C
19 17 (0.86%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 615 (30.94%) Security Cleared
2 496 (24.95%) SC Cleared
3 195 (9.81%) Degree
4 127 (6.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 101 (5.08%) AWS Certification
6 82 (4.12%) DV Cleared
7 74 (3.72%) Azure Certification
8 54 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
9 48 (2.41%) Master's Degree
10 40 (2.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 16 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
11 16 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
12 14 (0.70%) CISSP
13 13 (0.65%) ISTQB
14 10 (0.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 10 (0.50%) CCSP
15 9 (0.45%) AWS Certified Developer
16 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 8 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (5.48%) QA
2 66 (3.32%) Data Quality
3 65 (3.27%) Accessibility
4 36 (1.81%) GDPR
5 29 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (1.26%) WCAG
7 23 (1.16%) NIST
7 23 (1.16%) PCI DSS
8 20 (1.01%) ISO 20022
9 19 (0.96%) NCSC
9 19 (0.96%) PSD2
10 13 (0.65%) 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 60 (3.02%) Active Directory
2 55 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 20 (1.01%) vSphere
5 15 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.65%) Squid
7 12 (0.60%) DFS Replication
8 10 (0.50%) KVM
9 9 (0.45%) Hyper-V
9 9 (0.45%) Lustre
9 9 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.40%) Dovecot
10 8 (0.40%) Postfix
10 8 (0.40%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 8 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
10 8 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
11 6 (0.30%) GPFS
11 6 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.25%) HDFS
12 5 (0.25%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 1,459 (73.39%) Kubernetes
2 714 (35.92%) Terraform
3 305 (15.34%) Ansible
3 305 (15.34%) Grafana
4 265 (13.33%) Prometheus
5 70 (3.52%) Puppet
6 63 (3.17%) Argo
7 49 (2.46%) Progress Chef
8 46 (2.31%) Kibana
9 30 (1.51%) Podman
10 24 (1.21%) Nessus
10 24 (1.21%) Packer
11 22 (1.11%) Istio
12 18 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
13 17 (0.86%) Consul
14 16 (0.80%) Docker Swarm
15 15 (0.75%) Proxmox
16 14 (0.70%) Control-M
16 14 (0.70%) logstash
17 12 (0.60%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 196 (9.86%) Microsoft
2 155 (7.80%) Google
3 147 (7.39%) Oracle
4 137 (6.89%) Splunk
5 62 (3.12%) Databricks
5 62 (3.12%) VMware
6 49 (2.46%) Red Hat
7 46 (2.31%) OpenAI
8 38 (1.91%) Denodo
8 38 (1.91%) Talend
9 36 (1.81%) Dynatrace
10 34 (1.71%) Palo Alto
11 32 (1.61%) F5
12 29 (1.46%) AppDynamics
13 25 (1.26%) CheckPoint
13 25 (1.26%) ServiceNow
14 19 (0.96%) Atlassian
14 19 (0.96%) Cisco
15 17 (0.86%) IBM
16 14 (0.70%) Confluent