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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 47 64
Rank change year-on-year +8 +17 -19
Contract jobs citing Docker 1,980 1,313 1,381
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.31% 4.20% 3.19%
As % of the System Software category 43.65% 35.10% 26.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,370 882 1,003
10th Percentile £375 £400 £413
25th Percentile £440 £480 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £650
90th Percentile £720 £810 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £511 £525
% change year-on-year -0.29% -2.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 5 17
10th Percentile £49.40 - £60.75
25th Percentile £61.25 £25.25 £62.63
Median hourly rate £66.50 £27.50 £68.63
Median % change year-on-year +141.82% -59.93% -1.96%
75th Percentile £79.75 £62.50 £76.53
90th Percentile £92.30 £82.00 £77.70
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 4,536 3,741 5,185
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.17% 11.96% 11.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,091 2,404 3,563
10th Percentile £213 £200 £190
25th Percentile £400 £363 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £511 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.12% +2.17% -4.76%
75th Percentile £599 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £723 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £450
% change year-on-year +2.15% +3.33% -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 89 218
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.73 £15.33
25th Percentile £20.89 £21.25 £18.61
Median hourly rate £42.31 £28.41 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.94% -46.90% +39.43%
75th Percentile £71.07 £62.50 £69.37
90th Percentile £90.75 £75.00 £84.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +56.00% -31.82% +150.00%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +10 1,708 £525 -9.87% 1,159
London +5 894 £550 -8.33% 289
UK excluding London +19 817 £509 -0.29% 1,010
Work from Home +6 622 £525 -4.55% 524
North of England +16 341 £475 -5.00% 209
Midlands +52 221 £530 +0.95% 128
West Midlands +49 208 £537 -2.36% 53
North West +23 161 £450 -11.24% 103
Yorkshire +8 145 £500 -2.44% 78
South East -13 94 £513 +13.89% 332
South West -2 93 £649 +8.17% 150
Scotland +7 70 £475 +4.40% 30
North East +2 42 £475 -9.74% 28
East of England -5 32 £594 +7.95% 116
East Midlands -18 13 £413 -11.56% 71
Wales -7 10 £600 +6.67% 42
Northern Ireland 0 7 - - 19

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 (4.49%) Confluence
2 72 (3.64%) SAS
3 60 (3.03%) Apache Airflow
4 54 (2.73%) Apache Spark
5 52 (2.63%) Apache
6 47 (2.37%) nginx
7 23 (1.16%) OpenStack
8 18 (0.91%) JBoss
9 13 (0.66%) IIS
10 12 (0.61%) Appian
11 11 (0.56%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.51%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
13 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.40%) Camunda
14 8 (0.40%) iPlanet
14 8 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
15 7 (0.35%) Drupal
16 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
16 5 (0.25%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (0.45%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 5 (0.25%) Weka
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.051%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Excel
6 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.051%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.051%) Actimize
2 1 (0.051%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.051%) Endur
2 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.051%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,161 (58.64%) AWS
2 764 (38.59%) Azure
3 457 (23.08%) GitHub
4 434 (21.92%) GCP
5 299 (15.10%) Serverless
6 287 (14.49%) GitHub Actions
7 230 (11.62%) Amazon S3
8 226 (11.41%) Azure DevOps
9 205 (10.35%) AWS CloudFormation
10 197 (9.95%) Amazon EC2
10 197 (9.95%) AWS Lambda
11 184 (9.29%) Amazon EKS
12 177 (8.94%) Amazon ECS
13 164 (8.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 128 (6.46%) OpenShift
15 115 (5.81%) Azure AKS
16 107 (5.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 66 (3.33%) Datadog
18 65 (3.28%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 49 (2.47%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 138 (6.97%) Firewall
2 90 (4.55%) DNS
3 51 (2.58%) TCP/IP
4 47 (2.37%) VPN
5 43 (2.17%) SSL
6 38 (1.92%) Network Security
7 36 (1.82%) HTTP
8 18 (0.91%) SMTP
9 16 (0.81%) SSH
10 15 (0.76%) DHCP
10 15 (0.76%) FTP
11 14 (0.71%) Kerberos
12 10 (0.51%) VLAN
13 9 (0.45%) BGP
13 9 (0.45%) IMAP
13 9 (0.45%) OpenLDAP
14 8 (0.40%) SNMP
15 7 (0.35%) HTTPS
16 6 (0.30%) AMQP
16 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 282 (14.24%) PostgreSQL
2 215 (10.86%) NoSQL
3 140 (7.07%) MongoDB
4 133 (6.72%) Amazon RDS
5 129 (6.52%) Relational Database
6 102 (5.15%) SQL Server
7 84 (4.24%) Apache Cassandra
8 72 (3.64%) MySQL
9 65 (3.28%) Elasticsearch
10 63 (3.18%) DynamoDB
11 60 (3.03%) Redis
12 48 (2.42%) Amazon Aurora
13 40 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
14 39 (1.97%) Big Data
14 39 (1.97%) Pentaho
15 35 (1.77%) BigQuery
15 35 (1.77%) Data Lake
16 32 (1.62%) Power BI
17 31 (1.57%) Oracle Database
18 27 (1.36%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 589 (29.75%) Jenkins
2 522 (26.36%) Git
3 413 (20.86%) GitLab
4 214 (10.81%) JIRA
5 89 (4.49%) JUnit
6 76 (3.84%) Selenium
6 76 (3.84%) SonarQube
7 49 (2.47%) Cypress.io
8 47 (2.37%) Bitbucket
8 47 (2.37%) Maven
9 42 (2.12%) Cucumber
9 42 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
10 38 (1.92%) Postman
11 35 (1.77%) Liquibase
11 35 (1.77%) Mockito
12 34 (1.72%) Gradle
12 34 (1.72%) MLflow
13 26 (1.31%) CircleCI
13 26 (1.31%) JMeter
14 22 (1.11%) REST Assured
General
1 520 (26.26%) Social Skills
2 329 (16.62%) Finance
3 291 (14.70%) Public Sector
4 205 (10.35%) Banking
5 147 (7.42%) Analytical Skills
6 40 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.77%) Financial Institution
8 28 (1.41%) Investment Banking
8 28 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
9 26 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.06%) Front Office
11 20 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 19 (0.96%) Telecoms
13 15 (0.76%) Military
14 14 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
15 11 (0.56%) Retail
16 10 (0.51%) Law
17 7 (0.35%) Health Technology
18 6 (0.30%) Digital Healthcare
18 6 (0.30%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 540 (27.27%) Developer
2 349 (17.63%) Senior
3 278 (14.04%) DevOps Engineer
4 156 (7.88%) Java Developer
5 155 (7.83%) Software Engineer
6 134 (6.77%) AWS Engineer
7 122 (6.16%) Senior Developer
8 117 (5.91%) Architect
9 111 (5.61%) Lead
10 107 (5.40%) Python Developer
11 94 (4.75%) Full-Stack Developer
12 85 (4.29%) AWS DevOps
13 82 (4.14%) Data Engineer
14 81 (4.09%) Platform Engineer
15 77 (3.89%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 71 (3.59%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 68 (3.43%) Cloud Engineer
18 61 (3.08%) Site Reliability Engineer
19 55 (2.78%) Full-Stack Engineer
20 51 (2.58%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (15.91%) Kafka
2 278 (14.04%) Spring
3 277 (13.99%) REST
4 274 (13.84%) RESTful
5 251 (12.68%) Spring Boot
6 244 (12.32%) Node.js
6 244 (12.32%) React
7 135 (6.82%) .NET
8 128 (6.46%) Elastic Stack
9 117 (5.91%) AngularJS
10 108 (5.45%) FastAPI
11 103 (5.20%) HTML
12 92 (4.65%) OAuth
13 87 (4.39%) gRPC
14 86 (4.34%) GraphQL
15 83 (4.19%) PyTorch
16 80 (4.04%) JSON
17 76 (3.84%) CSS
18 70 (3.54%) YAML
19 69 (3.48%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 381 (19.24%) Cloud Native
2 177 (8.94%) Distributed Systems
3 58 (2.93%) Public Cloud
4 55 (2.78%) Product Ownership
5 35 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
6 33 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
7 32 (1.62%) Replication
8 31 (1.57%) Management Information System
9 30 (1.52%) Algorithms
9 30 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
10 27 (1.36%) AI Agents
10 27 (1.36%) Onboarding
11 24 (1.21%) Data Centre
11 24 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
12 23 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
13 21 (1.06%) Life Science
14 20 (1.01%) PKI
15 19 (0.96%) Genomics
15 19 (0.96%) Hedge funds
15 19 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 405 (20.45%) Linux
2 115 (5.81%) Windows
3 92 (4.65%) Unix
4 36 (1.82%) Windows Server
5 33 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 27 (1.36%) VMS
7 22 (1.11%) Ubuntu
8 17 (0.86%) Amazon Linux
9 9 (0.45%) CentOS
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.10%) Android
11 2 (0.10%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.051%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.051%) Debian
12 1 (0.051%) Rocky
12 1 (0.051%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,393 (70.35%) CI/CD
2 1,112 (56.16%) DevOps
3 1,045 (52.78%) Containerisation
4 764 (38.59%) Agile
5 665 (33.59%) Microservices
6 609 (30.76%) Infrastructure as Code
7 489 (24.70%) Problem-Solving
8 397 (20.05%) Software Engineering
9 386 (19.49%) Test Automation
10 313 (15.81%) Observability
11 263 (13.28%) AI
12 225 (11.36%) Full-Stack Development
13 210 (10.61%) Continuous Improvement
14 209 (10.56%) Mentoring
15 201 (10.15%) Machine Learning
16 196 (9.90%) Scrum
17 195 (9.85%) Analytics
18 186 (9.39%) Data Pipeline
19 173 (8.74%) Event-Driven
20 171 (8.64%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 950 (47.98%) Python
2 561 (28.33%) Java
3 462 (23.33%) SQL
4 281 (14.19%) Bash
5 228 (11.52%) JavaScript
6 210 (10.61%) TypeScript
7 196 (9.90%) Go
8 149 (7.53%) PowerShell
9 145 (7.32%) C#
10 65 (3.28%) Shell Script
11 59 (2.98%) Bicep
12 49 (2.47%) C++
13 45 (2.27%) Groovy
13 45 (2.27%) Scala
14 43 (2.17%) Ruby
15 34 (1.72%) Rust
16 33 (1.67%) Perl
17 31 (1.57%) PHP
18 17 (0.86%) C
19 16 (0.81%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 609 (30.76%) Security Cleared
2 495 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 193 (9.75%) Degree
4 125 (6.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 98 (4.95%) AWS Certification
6 77 (3.89%) DV Cleared
7 73 (3.69%) Azure Certification
8 56 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
9 47 (2.37%) Master's Degree
10 40 (2.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 16 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 15 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.66%) CISSP
13 13 (0.66%) ISTQB
14 10 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 10 (0.51%) CCSP
15 9 (0.45%) AWS Certified Developer
15 9 (0.45%) MCP
16 8 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (5.66%) QA
2 67 (3.38%) Data Quality
3 65 (3.28%) Accessibility
4 37 (1.87%) GDPR
5 29 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (1.31%) WCAG
7 22 (1.11%) PCI DSS
8 21 (1.06%) NIST
9 20 (1.01%) ISO 20022
10 19 (0.96%) PSD2
11 18 (0.91%) NCSC
12 13 (0.66%) SEPA
13 11 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 9 (0.45%) HL7
14 9 (0.45%) SLA
15 8 (0.40%) HIPAA
16 5 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 4 (0.20%) EU AI Act
17 4 (0.20%) SOC 2
18 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 59 (2.98%) Active Directory
2 52 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.96%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 19 (0.96%) vSphere
4 15 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.71%) DFS Replication
5 14 (0.71%) Squid
6 10 (0.51%) KVM
7 9 (0.45%) Dovecot
7 9 (0.45%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.45%) Postfix
7 9 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.40%) Lustre
8 8 (0.40%) Tivoli Directory Server
8 8 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.25%) GPFS
9 5 (0.25%) HDFS
9 5 (0.25%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 1,451 (73.28%) Kubernetes
2 713 (36.01%) Terraform
3 306 (15.45%) Ansible
4 304 (15.35%) Grafana
5 264 (13.33%) Prometheus
6 73 (3.69%) Puppet
7 62 (3.13%) Argo
8 50 (2.53%) Progress Chef
9 46 (2.32%) Kibana
10 30 (1.52%) Podman
11 24 (1.21%) Nessus
11 24 (1.21%) Packer
12 22 (1.11%) Istio
13 18 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
14 17 (0.86%) Consul
15 16 (0.81%) Proxmox
16 14 (0.71%) Docker Swarm
17 13 (0.66%) Control-M
17 13 (0.66%) logstash
18 11 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 196 (9.90%) Microsoft
2 153 (7.73%) Google
3 144 (7.27%) Oracle
4 137 (6.92%) Splunk
5 59 (2.98%) Databricks
6 58 (2.93%) VMware
7 50 (2.53%) Red Hat
8 46 (2.32%) OpenAI
9 38 (1.92%) Denodo
9 38 (1.92%) Talend
10 37 (1.87%) Dynatrace
11 34 (1.72%) Palo Alto
12 31 (1.57%) F5
13 29 (1.46%) AppDynamics
14 27 (1.36%) ServiceNow
15 25 (1.26%) CheckPoint
16 19 (0.96%) Atlassian
17 18 (0.91%) Cisco
18 15 (0.76%) IBM
19 14 (0.71%) Confluent