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

6 months to
10 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 48 64
Rank change year-on-year +9 +16 -19
Contract jobs citing Docker 1,952 1,299 1,413
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.33% 4.07% 3.30%
As % of the System Software category 43.78% 34.39% 27.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,334 871 1,032
10th Percentile £375 £400 £413
25th Percentile £447 £475 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% +2.73% -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £650
90th Percentile £722 £800 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 3 19
10th Percentile £50.45 £31.70 £56.18
25th Percentile £61.25 £41.38 £61.63
Median hourly rate £67.00 £60.00 £67.27
Median % change year-on-year +11.67% -10.80% -3.91%
75th Percentile £79.50 £78.75 £76.53
90th Percentile £91.40 £88.50 £77.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.00 - £67.27
% change year-on-year - - +4.69%

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 4,459 3,777 5,216
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.18% 11.84% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,007 2,446 3,571
10th Percentile £213 £201 £190
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £700 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £459 £463
% change year-on-year +3.54% -0.81% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 90 215
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.86 £15.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.10 £19.04
Median hourly rate £47.50 £27.96 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.92% -46.75% +96.26%
75th Percentile £74.26 £64.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.85 £75.25 £82.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.50 £35.00 £53.50
% change year-on-year +72.86% -34.58% +167.50%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +12 1,667 £525 -8.70% 1,213
London +6 856 £550 -8.33% 316
UK excluding London +24 815 £510 +2.00% 1,059
Work from Home +8 614 £525 -4.55% 669
North of England +22 328 £475 -6.17% 204
Midlands +54 218 £525 -4.55% 133
West Midlands +47 204 £530 -13.40% 55
North West +20 155 £450 -10.00% 89
Yorkshire +12 141 £500 -2.44% 79
South East -8 99 £511 +13.50% 348
South West +1 97 £625 +4.17% 156
Scotland +9 73 £475 +5.56% 34
North East +5 37 £475 -15.93% 36
East of England -8 33 £575 -4.17% 137
East Midlands -11 14 £432 -2.82% 76
Wales -2 10 £560 +1.82% 46
Northern Ireland -5 6 - - 22

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 86 (4.41%) Confluence
2 69 (3.53%) SAS
3 67 (3.43%) Apache Airflow
4 52 (2.66%) Apache Spark
5 48 (2.46%) Apache
6 45 (2.31%) nginx
7 23 (1.18%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.97%) JBoss
9 13 (0.67%) IIS
10 11 (0.56%) Appian
10 11 (0.56%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.46%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.41%) iPlanet
12 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
12 8 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
13 7 (0.36%) Drupal
13 7 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
14 5 (0.26%) Camunda
14 5 (0.26%) Ethereum
14 5 (0.26%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 10 (0.51%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 5 (0.26%) 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%) Microsoft Excel
6 1 (0.051%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.051%) Actimize
3 1 (0.051%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.051%) Endur
3 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.051%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,144 (58.61%) AWS
2 767 (39.29%) Azure
3 462 (23.67%) GitHub
4 428 (21.93%) GCP
5 299 (15.32%) GitHub Actions
6 293 (15.01%) Serverless
7 229 (11.73%) Amazon S3
8 224 (11.48%) Azure DevOps
9 198 (10.14%) Amazon EC2
10 192 (9.84%) AWS Lambda
11 189 (9.68%) AWS CloudFormation
12 185 (9.48%) Amazon EKS
13 167 (8.56%) Amazon ECS
14 164 (8.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 127 (6.51%) OpenShift
16 117 (5.99%) Azure AKS
17 110 (5.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 65 (3.33%) Datadog
19 60 (3.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
20 49 (2.51%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 139 (7.12%) Firewall
2 96 (4.92%) DNS
3 56 (2.87%) TCP/IP
4 47 (2.41%) VPN
5 45 (2.31%) SSL
6 38 (1.95%) Network Security
7 37 (1.90%) HTTP
8 21 (1.08%) SSH
9 20 (1.02%) SMTP
10 17 (0.87%) FTP
11 15 (0.77%) DHCP
12 13 (0.67%) Kerberos
13 10 (0.51%) IMAP
13 10 (0.51%) OpenLDAP
13 10 (0.51%) VLAN
14 9 (0.46%) BGP
15 8 (0.41%) HTTPS
15 8 (0.41%) SNMP
16 7 (0.36%) AMQP
17 6 (0.31%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (14.34%) PostgreSQL
2 213 (10.91%) NoSQL
3 137 (7.02%) Amazon RDS
4 132 (6.76%) MongoDB
5 119 (6.10%) Relational Database
6 96 (4.92%) SQL Server
7 83 (4.25%) Apache Cassandra
8 67 (3.43%) Elasticsearch
9 65 (3.33%) MySQL
10 61 (3.13%) Redis
11 60 (3.07%) DynamoDB
12 51 (2.61%) Amazon Aurora
13 39 (2.00%) Big Data
13 39 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
14 36 (1.84%) Pentaho
15 35 (1.79%) BigQuery
16 33 (1.69%) Data Lake
17 31 (1.59%) Oracle Database
18 29 (1.49%) Power BI
19 24 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 593 (30.38%) Jenkins
2 526 (26.95%) Git
3 401 (20.54%) GitLab
4 213 (10.91%) JIRA
5 86 (4.41%) JUnit
5 86 (4.41%) SonarQube
6 76 (3.89%) Selenium
7 49 (2.51%) Bitbucket
7 49 (2.51%) Cypress.io
8 47 (2.41%) Maven
9 45 (2.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 43 (2.20%) Cucumber
11 39 (2.00%) Liquibase
11 39 (2.00%) Postman
12 35 (1.79%) Gradle
12 35 (1.79%) MLflow
12 35 (1.79%) Mockito
13 34 (1.74%) CircleCI
14 28 (1.43%) Snyk
15 27 (1.38%) JMeter
General
1 510 (26.13%) Social Skills
2 320 (16.39%) Finance
3 277 (14.19%) Public Sector
4 202 (10.35%) Banking
5 141 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
6 38 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.90%) Financial Institution
8 29 (1.49%) Investment Banking
9 28 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
10 23 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 21 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
12 20 (1.02%) Telecoms
13 19 (0.97%) Front Office
14 16 (0.82%) Military
15 13 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (0.56%) Retail
17 10 (0.51%) Law
18 8 (0.41%) Aerospace
19 7 (0.36%) Health Technology
20 6 (0.31%) Digital Healthcare
Job Titles
1 522 (26.74%) Developer
2 354 (18.14%) Senior
3 278 (14.24%) DevOps Engineer
4 158 (8.09%) Software Engineer
5 144 (7.38%) Java Developer
6 131 (6.71%) AWS Engineer
7 124 (6.35%) Senior Developer
8 115 (5.89%) Architect
9 114 (5.84%) Lead
10 101 (5.17%) Python Developer
11 88 (4.51%) Full-Stack Developer
12 86 (4.41%) Platform Engineer
13 85 (4.35%) AWS DevOps
14 77 (3.94%) Data Engineer
15 76 (3.89%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 75 (3.84%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 61 (3.13%) Cloud Engineer
18 59 (3.02%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 55 (2.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
20 52 (2.66%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (15.88%) Kafka
2 272 (13.93%) REST
3 259 (13.27%) RESTful
4 252 (12.91%) Spring
5 242 (12.40%) React
6 240 (12.30%) Node.js
7 230 (11.78%) Spring Boot
8 137 (7.02%) .NET
9 136 (6.97%) Elastic Stack
10 118 (6.05%) AngularJS
11 114 (5.84%) FastAPI
12 101 (5.17%) HTML
13 91 (4.66%) OAuth
14 90 (4.61%) gRPC
15 84 (4.30%) GraphQL
16 83 (4.25%) JSON
17 79 (4.05%) PyTorch
18 75 (3.84%) CSS
19 71 (3.64%) YAML
20 67 (3.43%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 370 (18.95%) Cloud Native
2 179 (9.17%) Distributed Systems
3 59 (3.02%) Public Cloud
4 55 (2.82%) Product Ownership
5 36 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
6 34 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
6 34 (1.74%) Replication
7 31 (1.59%) Algorithms
8 30 (1.54%) AI Agents
9 28 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
10 27 (1.38%) Management Information System
10 27 (1.38%) Onboarding
11 26 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
12 25 (1.28%) Data Centre
13 22 (1.13%) Hedge funds
14 21 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
15 20 (1.02%) Life Science
15 20 (1.02%) PKI
16 19 (0.97%) Genomics
17 18 (0.92%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 402 (20.59%) Linux
2 117 (5.99%) Windows
3 89 (4.56%) Unix
4 37 (1.90%) Windows Server
5 35 (1.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 29 (1.49%) VMS
7 23 (1.18%) Ubuntu
8 19 (0.97%) Amazon Linux
9 9 (0.46%) CentOS
10 4 (0.20%) Android
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.10%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.051%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
13 1 (0.051%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,369 (70.13%) CI/CD
2 1,107 (56.71%) DevOps
3 1,017 (52.10%) Containerisation
4 760 (38.93%) Agile
5 639 (32.74%) Microservices
6 611 (31.30%) Infrastructure as Code
7 477 (24.44%) Problem-Solving
8 405 (20.75%) Software Engineering
9 370 (18.95%) Test Automation
10 301 (15.42%) Observability
11 258 (13.22%) AI
12 217 (11.12%) Full-Stack Development
13 205 (10.50%) Mentoring
14 202 (10.35%) Machine Learning
15 197 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
16 193 (9.89%) Scrum
17 184 (9.43%) Analytics
18 179 (9.17%) Data Pipeline
19 177 (9.07%) DevSecOps
20 162 (8.30%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 946 (48.46%) Python
2 537 (27.51%) Java
3 444 (22.75%) SQL
4 288 (14.75%) Bash
5 224 (11.48%) JavaScript
6 215 (11.01%) TypeScript
7 200 (10.25%) Go
8 153 (7.84%) PowerShell
9 152 (7.79%) C#
10 63 (3.23%) Shell Script
11 58 (2.97%) Bicep
12 56 (2.87%) C++
13 50 (2.56%) Groovy
14 41 (2.10%) Ruby
14 41 (2.10%) Scala
15 36 (1.84%) Perl
16 35 (1.79%) Rust
17 34 (1.74%) PHP
18 18 (0.92%) C
18 18 (0.92%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 600 (30.74%) Security Cleared
2 489 (25.05%) SC Cleared
3 188 (9.63%) Degree
4 120 (6.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (5.07%) AWS Certification
6 76 (3.89%) DV Cleared
7 72 (3.69%) Azure Certification
8 53 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
9 47 (2.41%) Master's Degree
10 41 (2.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 15 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 15 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
12 13 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
12 13 (0.67%) ISTQB
13 12 (0.61%) CISSP
14 10 (0.51%) MCP
15 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
15 8 (0.41%) CCSP
15 8 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 8 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (5.94%) QA
2 68 (3.48%) Accessibility
3 62 (3.18%) Data Quality
4 41 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 35 (1.79%) GDPR
6 27 (1.38%) NIST
6 27 (1.38%) WCAG
7 20 (1.02%) NCSC
7 20 (1.02%) PCI DSS
8 18 (0.92%) ISO 20022
9 17 (0.87%) PSD2
10 11 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (0.56%) SEPA
11 9 (0.46%) HL7
12 8 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.41%) SLA
13 6 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 4 (0.20%) EU AI Act
16 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 59 (3.02%) Active Directory
2 52 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.97%) vSphere
4 17 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 16 (0.82%) DFS Replication
6 15 (0.77%) Squid
6 15 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.51%) Dovecot
7 10 (0.51%) KVM
7 10 (0.51%) Postfix
8 9 (0.46%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.46%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.41%) Lustre
9 8 (0.41%) Tivoli Directory Server
9 8 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.26%) GPFS
10 5 (0.26%) HDFS
10 5 (0.26%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 5 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 1,418 (72.64%) Kubernetes
2 713 (36.53%) Terraform
3 313 (16.03%) Grafana
4 309 (15.83%) Ansible
5 274 (14.04%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.64%) Puppet
7 67 (3.43%) Argo
8 50 (2.56%) Kibana
9 48 (2.46%) Progress Chef
10 30 (1.54%) Podman
11 25 (1.28%) Istio
11 25 (1.28%) Nessus
12 23 (1.18%) Packer
13 19 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
14 17 (0.87%) Proxmox
15 16 (0.82%) Consul
16 14 (0.72%) Control-M
17 13 (0.67%) Docker Swarm
17 13 (0.67%) logstash
18 11 (0.56%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 190 (9.73%) Microsoft
2 152 (7.79%) Google
3 146 (7.48%) Oracle
4 139 (7.12%) Splunk
5 60 (3.07%) Databricks
6 58 (2.97%) VMware
7 57 (2.92%) Red Hat
8 43 (2.20%) OpenAI
9 40 (2.05%) Dynatrace
10 35 (1.79%) Denodo
10 35 (1.79%) Talend
11 34 (1.74%) Palo Alto
12 31 (1.59%) F5
13 30 (1.54%) AppDynamics
13 30 (1.54%) ServiceNow
14 25 (1.28%) CheckPoint
15 18 (0.92%) Atlassian
15 18 (0.92%) Cisco
16 15 (0.77%) IBM
17 14 (0.72%) Confluent