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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 47 65
Rank change year-on-year +8 +18 -21
Contract jobs citing Docker 1,979 1,317 1,373
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.33% 4.14% 3.25%
As % of the System Software category 43.67% 34.68% 26.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,352 888 998
10th Percentile £375 £400 £413
25th Percentile £447 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £566 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.16% +2.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £650
90th Percentile £725 £796 £727
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% -1.80%
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 - - +7.62%

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 4,532 3,798 5,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.22% 11.93% 12.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,065 2,454 3,498
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 £710 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £455
% change year-on-year +4.40% - -1.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 90 209
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.86 £14.45
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.10 £18.95
Median hourly rate £47.50 £27.96 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.92% -49.17% +61.76%
75th Percentile £74.26 £62.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.90 £75.00 £84.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.50 £35.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +72.86% -36.36% +165.06%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 1,700 £525 -8.70% 1,143
London +7 888 £550 -8.33% 305
UK excluding London +15 813 £510 +2.00% 989
Work from Home +5 614 £525 -4.55% 559
North of England +23 332 £475 -5.00% 188
Midlands +54 216 £525 -2.33% 127
West Midlands +48 203 £532 -7.48% 56
North West +26 157 £450 -11.55% 89
Yorkshire +7 143 £500 -1.23% 71
South East -4 97 £513 +13.89% 335
South West -11 94 £648 +8.00% 143
Scotland +8 71 £475 +5.56% 34
North East +2 39 £475 -9.74% 28
East of England -6 34 £594 -1.04% 122
East Midlands -19 13 £413 -6.98% 70
Wales -2 12 £520 -5.45% 38
Northern Ireland -4 6 - - 20

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 84 (4.24%) Confluence
2 70 (3.54%) SAS
3 65 (3.28%) Apache Airflow
4 54 (2.73%) Apache Spark
5 51 (2.58%) Apache
6 44 (2.22%) nginx
7 23 (1.16%) OpenStack
8 18 (0.91%) JBoss
9 13 (0.66%) IIS
10 11 (0.56%) Appian
10 11 (0.56%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.51%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
12 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.40%) iPlanet
13 8 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
14 7 (0.35%) Drupal
15 5 (0.25%) Camunda
15 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
15 5 (0.25%) Hyperledger
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 XD
6 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Excel
6 1 (0.051%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) 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 1,163 (58.77%) AWS
2 778 (39.31%) Azure
3 461 (23.29%) GitHub
4 429 (21.68%) GCP
5 294 (14.86%) GitHub Actions
6 291 (14.70%) Serverless
7 228 (11.52%) Amazon S3
8 226 (11.42%) Azure DevOps
9 197 (9.95%) AWS CloudFormation
10 196 (9.90%) Amazon EC2
11 192 (9.70%) AWS Lambda
12 180 (9.10%) Amazon EKS
13 171 (8.64%) Amazon ECS
14 162 (8.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 127 (6.42%) OpenShift
16 118 (5.96%) Azure AKS
17 107 (5.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 66 (3.34%) Datadog
19 62 (3.13%) Google Kubernetes Engine
20 49 (2.48%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 138 (6.97%) Firewall
2 93 (4.70%) DNS
3 53 (2.68%) TCP/IP
4 47 (2.37%) VPN
5 42 (2.12%) SSL
6 38 (1.92%) HTTP
6 38 (1.92%) Network Security
7 19 (0.96%) SMTP
8 17 (0.86%) SSH
9 16 (0.81%) FTP
10 15 (0.76%) DHCP
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
1 279 (14.10%) PostgreSQL
2 215 (10.86%) NoSQL
3 136 (6.87%) MongoDB
4 133 (6.72%) Amazon RDS
5 125 (6.32%) Relational Database
6 96 (4.85%) SQL Server
7 86 (4.35%) Apache Cassandra
8 69 (3.49%) MySQL
9 67 (3.39%) Elasticsearch
10 62 (3.13%) DynamoDB
11 59 (2.98%) Redis
12 50 (2.53%) Amazon Aurora
13 40 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
14 38 (1.92%) Big Data
15 37 (1.87%) Pentaho
16 36 (1.82%) BigQuery
17 34 (1.72%) Data Lake
18 32 (1.62%) Power BI
19 30 (1.52%) Oracle Database
20 26 (1.31%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 587 (29.66%) Jenkins
2 523 (26.43%) Git
3 404 (20.41%) GitLab
4 209 (10.56%) JIRA
5 88 (4.45%) JUnit
6 77 (3.89%) SonarQube
7 76 (3.84%) Selenium
8 49 (2.48%) Cypress.io
9 47 (2.37%) Bitbucket
9 47 (2.37%) Maven
10 43 (2.17%) Cucumber
11 42 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
12 38 (1.92%) Postman
13 37 (1.87%) Liquibase
14 35 (1.77%) CircleCI
14 35 (1.77%) Mockito
15 34 (1.72%) Gradle
16 33 (1.67%) MLflow
17 28 (1.41%) Snyk
18 27 (1.36%) JMeter
General
1 513 (25.92%) Social Skills
2 322 (16.27%) Finance
3 280 (14.15%) Public Sector
4 206 (10.41%) Banking
5 145 (7.33%) Analytical Skills
6 40 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.77%) Financial Institution
8 29 (1.47%) Investment Banking
9 28 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
10 24 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
11 22 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 20 (1.01%) Front Office
13 19 (0.96%) Telecoms
14 17 (0.86%) Military
15 13 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (0.56%) Retail
17 10 (0.51%) Law
18 7 (0.35%) Health Technology
19 6 (0.30%) Digital Healthcare
19 6 (0.30%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 529 (26.73%) Developer
2 357 (18.04%) Senior
3 278 (14.05%) DevOps Engineer
4 160 (8.08%) Software Engineer
5 149 (7.53%) Java Developer
6 133 (6.72%) AWS Engineer
7 125 (6.32%) Senior Developer
8 118 (5.96%) Architect
9 117 (5.91%) Lead
10 105 (5.31%) Python Developer
11 90 (4.55%) Full-Stack Developer
12 86 (4.35%) AWS DevOps
13 85 (4.30%) Platform Engineer
14 79 (3.99%) Data Engineer
15 77 (3.89%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 75 (3.79%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 67 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
18 60 (3.03%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 59 (2.98%) Site Reliability Engineer
20 51 (2.58%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (15.87%) Kafka
2 273 (13.79%) REST
3 265 (13.39%) Spring
4 262 (13.24%) RESTful
5 246 (12.43%) Node.js
6 245 (12.38%) React
7 239 (12.08%) Spring Boot
8 137 (6.92%) .NET
9 126 (6.37%) Elastic Stack
10 118 (5.96%) AngularJS
11 113 (5.71%) FastAPI
12 105 (5.31%) HTML
13 91 (4.60%) gRPC
14 89 (4.50%) OAuth
15 85 (4.30%) GraphQL
16 83 (4.19%) JSON
17 82 (4.14%) PyTorch
18 79 (3.99%) CSS
19 72 (3.64%) YAML
20 68 (3.44%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 376 (19.00%) Cloud Native
2 176 (8.89%) Distributed Systems
3 58 (2.93%) Public Cloud
4 55 (2.78%) Product Ownership
5 36 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 34 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (1.67%) Replication
8 31 (1.57%) Algorithms
9 30 (1.52%) AI Agents
10 29 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
10 29 (1.47%) Management Information System
11 27 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
11 27 (1.36%) Onboarding
12 24 (1.21%) Data Centre
13 22 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
14 20 (1.01%) Hedge funds
14 20 (1.01%) Life Science
14 20 (1.01%) PKI
15 19 (0.96%) Genomics
16 18 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 398 (20.11%) Linux
2 114 (5.76%) Windows
3 90 (4.55%) Unix
4 36 (1.82%) Windows Server
5 33 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 28 (1.41%) VMS
7 22 (1.11%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.91%) Amazon Linux
9 9 (0.45%) CentOS
10 3 (0.15%) Android
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
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 1,383 (69.88%) CI/CD
2 1,115 (56.34%) DevOps
3 1,030 (52.05%) Containerisation
4 759 (38.35%) Agile
5 647 (32.69%) Microservices
6 610 (30.82%) Infrastructure as Code
7 483 (24.41%) Problem-Solving
8 405 (20.46%) Software Engineering
9 372 (18.80%) Test Automation
10 306 (15.46%) Observability
11 268 (13.54%) AI
12 221 (11.17%) Full-Stack Development
13 207 (10.46%) Mentoring
14 204 (10.31%) Machine Learning
15 203 (10.26%) Continuous Improvement
16 195 (9.85%) Analytics
17 193 (9.75%) Scrum
18 182 (9.20%) Data Pipeline
19 178 (8.99%) DevSecOps
20 163 (8.24%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 952 (48.11%) Python
2 552 (27.89%) Java
3 456 (23.04%) SQL
4 282 (14.25%) Bash
5 231 (11.67%) JavaScript
6 215 (10.86%) TypeScript
7 201 (10.16%) Go
8 149 (7.53%) C#
8 149 (7.53%) PowerShell
9 63 (3.18%) Shell Script
10 62 (3.13%) Bicep
11 53 (2.68%) C++
12 46 (2.32%) Groovy
13 44 (2.22%) Ruby
13 44 (2.22%) Scala
14 35 (1.77%) Perl
15 34 (1.72%) Rust
16 32 (1.62%) PHP
17 18 (0.91%) Kotlin
18 17 (0.86%) C
Qualifications
1 613 (30.98%) Security Cleared
2 500 (25.27%) SC Cleared
3 188 (9.50%) Degree
4 122 (6.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 93 (4.70%) AWS Certification
6 77 (3.89%) DV Cleared
7 72 (3.64%) Azure Certification
8 52 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 46 (2.32%) Master's Degree
10 36 (1.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 16 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.66%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 13 (0.66%) CISSP
13 13 (0.66%) ISTQB
14 10 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 10 (0.51%) CCSP
14 10 (0.51%) MCP
15 9 (0.45%) AWS Certified Developer
16 8 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (5.76%) QA
2 67 (3.39%) Accessibility
3 65 (3.28%) Data Quality
4 38 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 37 (1.87%) GDPR
6 28 (1.41%) NIST
7 27 (1.36%) WCAG
8 21 (1.06%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.91%) ISO 20022
9 18 (0.91%) NCSC
10 17 (0.86%) PSD2
11 11 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 11 (0.56%) SEPA
12 9 (0.45%) HL7
12 9 (0.45%) SLA
13 8 (0.40%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 5 (0.25%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.20%) EU AI Act
16 3 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 60 (3.03%) Active Directory
2 52 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.96%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 19 (0.96%) vSphere
4 15 (0.76%) DFS Replication
4 15 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
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 1,444 (72.97%) Kubernetes
2 717 (36.23%) Terraform
3 308 (15.56%) Ansible
4 305 (15.41%) Grafana
5 270 (13.64%) Prometheus
6 73 (3.69%) Puppet
7 62 (3.13%) Argo
8 50 (2.53%) Progress Chef
9 49 (2.48%) Kibana
10 32 (1.62%) Podman
11 24 (1.21%) Nessus
12 22 (1.11%) Istio
12 22 (1.11%) Packer
13 19 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
14 16 (0.81%) Proxmox
15 15 (0.76%) Consul
16 13 (0.66%) Control-M
16 13 (0.66%) Docker Swarm
16 13 (0.66%) logstash
17 11 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 194 (9.80%) Microsoft
2 152 (7.68%) Google
3 142 (7.18%) Oracle
4 134 (6.77%) Splunk
5 61 (3.08%) Databricks
6 58 (2.93%) VMware
7 52 (2.63%) Red Hat
8 44 (2.22%) OpenAI
9 38 (1.92%) Dynatrace
10 36 (1.82%) Denodo
10 36 (1.82%) Talend
11 34 (1.72%) Palo Alto
12 31 (1.57%) F5
13 29 (1.47%) AppDynamics
13 29 (1.47%) ServiceNow
14 25 (1.26%) CheckPoint
15 18 (0.91%) Atlassian
15 18 (0.91%) Cisco
16 15 (0.76%) IBM
17 14 (0.71%) Confluent