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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 48 63
Rank change year-on-year +9 +15 -18
Contract jobs citing Docker 1,968 1,298 1,395
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.32% 4.11% 3.28%
As % of the System Software category 43.76% 34.52% 27.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,344 871 1,016
10th Percentile £375 £400 £413
25th Percentile £447 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £566 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.24% +2.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £650
90th Percentile £725 £800 £732
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 4,497 3,760 5,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.16% 11.90% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,036 2,429 3,544
10th Percentile £213 £200 £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 £456 £450
% change year-on-year +4.11% +1.39% -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 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% +69.23%
75th Percentile £74.26 £62.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.75 £75.00 £84.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.50 £35.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +67.14% -36.36% +175.00%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +11 1,689 £525 -8.70% 1,253
London +5 874 £550 -8.33% 344
UK excluding London +21 814 £510 +2.00% 1,079
Work from Home +6 615 £525 -4.55% 633
North of England +17 332 £475 -5.00% 208
Midlands +55 218 £525 - 131
West Midlands +48 203 £530 -10.70% 51
North West +25 157 £450 -10.00% 98
Yorkshire +6 143 £500 - 80
South East -5 97 £513 +13.89% 368
South West -7 94 £648 +8.00% 158
Scotland +3 71 £475 +5.56% 34
North East +1 39 £475 -9.74% 30
East of England -1 34 £594 -1.04% 137
East Midlands -13 15 £432 -2.82% 76
Wales -4 11 £520 -5.45% 42
Northern Ireland -4 6 - - 21

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 85 (4.32%) Confluence
2 69 (3.51%) SAS
3 66 (3.35%) Apache Airflow
4 53 (2.69%) Apache Spark
5 50 (2.54%) Apache
6 44 (2.24%) nginx
7 23 (1.17%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.97%) JBoss
9 13 (0.66%) IIS
10 11 (0.56%) Appian
10 11 (0.56%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.51%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.46%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.41%) iPlanet
13 8 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
13 8 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
14 7 (0.36%) Drupal
15 5 (0.25%) Camunda
15 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
15 5 (0.25%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 9 (0.46%) 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%) 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 1,155 (58.69%) AWS
2 770 (39.13%) Azure
3 462 (23.48%) GitHub
4 427 (21.70%) GCP
5 296 (15.04%) GitHub Actions
6 293 (14.89%) Serverless
7 230 (11.69%) Amazon S3
8 224 (11.38%) Azure DevOps
9 198 (10.06%) Amazon EC2
10 194 (9.86%) AWS Lambda
11 193 (9.81%) AWS CloudFormation
12 182 (9.25%) Amazon EKS
13 169 (8.59%) Amazon ECS
14 164 (8.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 128 (6.50%) OpenShift
16 117 (5.95%) Azure AKS
17 108 (5.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 67 (3.40%) Datadog
19 61 (3.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
20 49 (2.49%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 137 (6.96%) Firewall
2 94 (4.78%) DNS
3 54 (2.74%) TCP/IP
4 47 (2.39%) VPN
5 43 (2.18%) SSL
6 38 (1.93%) HTTP
6 38 (1.93%) Network Security
7 19 (0.97%) SMTP
8 18 (0.91%) SSH
9 16 (0.81%) FTP
10 15 (0.76%) DHCP
11 14 (0.71%) Kerberos
12 10 (0.51%) VLAN
13 9 (0.46%) BGP
13 9 (0.46%) IMAP
13 9 (0.46%) OpenLDAP
14 8 (0.41%) SNMP
15 7 (0.36%) HTTPS
16 6 (0.30%) AMQP
16 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (14.38%) PostgreSQL
2 214 (10.87%) NoSQL
3 136 (6.91%) Amazon RDS
4 134 (6.81%) MongoDB
5 126 (6.40%) Relational Database
6 96 (4.88%) SQL Server
7 86 (4.37%) Apache Cassandra
8 69 (3.51%) MySQL
9 68 (3.46%) Elasticsearch
10 62 (3.15%) DynamoDB
11 60 (3.05%) Redis
12 50 (2.54%) Amazon Aurora
13 39 (1.98%) Data Warehouse
14 38 (1.93%) Big Data
15 36 (1.83%) BigQuery
15 36 (1.83%) Pentaho
16 34 (1.73%) Data Lake
17 31 (1.58%) Oracle Database
17 31 (1.58%) Power BI
18 25 (1.27%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 586 (29.78%) Jenkins
2 523 (26.58%) Git
3 398 (20.22%) GitLab
4 212 (10.77%) JIRA
5 89 (4.52%) JUnit
6 80 (4.07%) SonarQube
7 76 (3.86%) Selenium
8 49 (2.49%) Bitbucket
8 49 (2.49%) Cypress.io
9 46 (2.34%) Maven
10 43 (2.18%) Cucumber
10 43 (2.18%) Sonatype Nexus
11 39 (1.98%) Postman
12 37 (1.88%) Liquibase
13 36 (1.83%) Mockito
14 35 (1.78%) CircleCI
15 34 (1.73%) Gradle
15 34 (1.73%) MLflow
16 28 (1.42%) Snyk
17 27 (1.37%) JMeter
General
1 515 (26.17%) Social Skills
2 321 (16.31%) Finance
3 278 (14.13%) Public Sector
4 205 (10.42%) Banking
5 142 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
6 39 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.78%) Financial Institution
8 30 (1.52%) Investment Banking
9 28 (1.42%) Pharmaceutical
10 22 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 22 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
11 20 (1.02%) Front Office
12 19 (0.97%) Telecoms
13 16 (0.81%) Military
14 13 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
15 11 (0.56%) Retail
16 10 (0.51%) Law
17 7 (0.36%) Health Technology
18 6 (0.30%) Digital Healthcare
18 6 (0.30%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 529 (26.88%) Developer
2 355 (18.04%) Senior
3 278 (14.13%) DevOps Engineer
4 160 (8.13%) Software Engineer
5 150 (7.62%) Java Developer
6 132 (6.71%) AWS Engineer
7 127 (6.45%) Senior Developer
8 117 (5.95%) Architect
9 115 (5.84%) Lead
10 105 (5.34%) Python Developer
11 87 (4.42%) Full-Stack Developer
12 86 (4.37%) AWS DevOps
13 84 (4.27%) Platform Engineer
14 77 (3.91%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 77 (3.91%) Data Engineer
15 75 (3.81%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 62 (3.15%) Cloud Engineer
17 58 (2.95%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 58 (2.95%) Site Reliability Engineer
18 51 (2.59%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (15.96%) Kafka
2 274 (13.92%) REST
3 261 (13.26%) Spring
4 260 (13.21%) RESTful
5 243 (12.35%) Node.js
6 241 (12.25%) React
7 237 (12.04%) Spring Boot
8 137 (6.96%) .NET
9 129 (6.55%) Elastic Stack
10 117 (5.95%) AngularJS
11 113 (5.74%) FastAPI
12 102 (5.18%) HTML
13 91 (4.62%) gRPC
14 89 (4.52%) OAuth
15 85 (4.32%) GraphQL
16 83 (4.22%) JSON
17 81 (4.12%) PyTorch
18 76 (3.86%) CSS
19 71 (3.61%) YAML
20 68 (3.46%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 371 (18.85%) Cloud Native
2 178 (9.04%) Distributed Systems
3 58 (2.95%) Public Cloud
4 56 (2.85%) Product Ownership
5 36 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
6 35 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (1.68%) Replication
8 31 (1.58%) Algorithms
9 30 (1.52%) AI Agents
10 29 (1.47%) Management Information System
11 28 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
12 27 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
12 27 (1.37%) Onboarding
13 24 (1.22%) Data Centre
14 22 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 21 (1.07%) Hedge funds
16 20 (1.02%) Life Science
16 20 (1.02%) PKI
17 19 (0.97%) Genomics
18 18 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 398 (20.22%) Linux
2 114 (5.79%) Windows
3 90 (4.57%) Unix
4 36 (1.83%) Windows Server
5 34 (1.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 28 (1.42%) VMS
7 22 (1.12%) Ubuntu
8 18 (0.91%) Amazon Linux
9 9 (0.46%) 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 1,372 (69.72%) CI/CD
2 1,108 (56.30%) DevOps
3 1,019 (51.78%) Containerisation
4 758 (38.52%) Agile
5 643 (32.67%) Microservices
6 604 (30.69%) Infrastructure as Code
7 479 (24.34%) Problem-Solving
8 404 (20.53%) Software Engineering
9 371 (18.85%) Test Automation
10 305 (15.50%) Observability
11 265 (13.47%) AI
12 217 (11.03%) Full-Stack Development
13 207 (10.52%) Mentoring
14 203 (10.32%) Machine Learning
15 202 (10.26%) Continuous Improvement
16 193 (9.81%) Analytics
17 190 (9.65%) Scrum
18 179 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
19 175 (8.89%) DevSecOps
20 163 (8.28%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 947 (48.12%) Python
2 546 (27.74%) Java
3 454 (23.07%) SQL
4 282 (14.33%) Bash
5 228 (11.59%) JavaScript
6 215 (10.92%) TypeScript
7 201 (10.21%) Go
8 151 (7.67%) C#
9 148 (7.52%) PowerShell
10 65 (3.30%) Shell Script
11 61 (3.10%) Bicep
12 53 (2.69%) C++
13 48 (2.44%) Groovy
14 44 (2.24%) Ruby
15 43 (2.18%) Scala
16 36 (1.83%) Perl
17 34 (1.73%) PHP
17 34 (1.73%) Rust
18 18 (0.91%) Kotlin
19 17 (0.86%) C
Qualifications
1 606 (30.79%) Security Cleared
2 495 (25.15%) SC Cleared
3 186 (9.45%) Degree
4 120 (6.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 94 (4.78%) AWS Certification
6 75 (3.81%) DV Cleared
7 70 (3.56%) Azure Certification
8 52 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
9 45 (2.29%) Master's Degree
10 37 (1.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 15 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
12 14 (0.71%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 13 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (0.66%) ISTQB
14 11 (0.56%) CISSP
15 10 (0.51%) MCP
16 9 (0.46%) AWS Certified Developer
17 8 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 8 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 8 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (5.84%) QA
2 65 (3.30%) Accessibility
3 63 (3.20%) Data Quality
4 39 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 35 (1.78%) GDPR
6 27 (1.37%) WCAG
7 26 (1.32%) NIST
8 19 (0.97%) NCSC
8 19 (0.97%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.91%) ISO 20022
10 17 (0.86%) PSD2
11 11 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 11 (0.56%) SEPA
12 9 (0.46%) HL7
12 9 (0.46%) SLA
13 8 (0.41%) 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 59 (3.00%) Active Directory
2 52 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (0.97%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 19 (0.97%) 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 (0.46%) Dovecot
7 9 (0.46%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.46%) Postfix
7 9 (0.46%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.41%) Lustre
8 8 (0.41%) Tivoli Directory Server
8 8 (0.41%) 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 1,432 (72.76%) Kubernetes
2 712 (36.18%) Terraform
3 306 (15.55%) Ansible
3 306 (15.55%) Grafana
4 271 (13.77%) Prometheus
5 73 (3.71%) Puppet
6 63 (3.20%) Argo
7 51 (2.59%) Progress Chef
8 50 (2.54%) Kibana
9 32 (1.63%) Podman
10 24 (1.22%) Nessus
11 23 (1.17%) Istio
12 22 (1.12%) Packer
13 19 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
14 16 (0.81%) Proxmox
15 15 (0.76%) Consul
16 14 (0.71%) Control-M
17 13 (0.66%) Docker Swarm
17 13 (0.66%) logstash
18 11 (0.56%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 191 (9.71%) Microsoft
2 149 (7.57%) Google
3 146 (7.42%) Oracle
4 135 (6.86%) Splunk
5 60 (3.05%) Databricks
6 58 (2.95%) VMware
7 54 (2.74%) Red Hat
8 44 (2.24%) OpenAI
9 40 (2.03%) Dynatrace
10 35 (1.78%) Denodo
10 35 (1.78%) Talend
11 34 (1.73%) Palo Alto
12 31 (1.58%) F5
13 30 (1.52%) AppDynamics
14 29 (1.47%) ServiceNow
15 25 (1.27%) CheckPoint
16 18 (0.91%) Atlassian
16 18 (0.91%) Cisco
17 15 (0.76%) IBM
18 14 (0.71%) Confluent