GitLab Contract Job Trends

GitLab
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring GitLab skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 114 139 227
Rank change year-on-year +25 +88 -44
Contract jobs citing GitLab 881 593 456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.41% 1.89% 1.06%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.51% 14.14% 8.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 659 401 347
10th Percentile £375 £363 £410
25th Percentile £425 £450 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £558
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -1.35% -6.69%
75th Percentile £588 £675 £645
90th Percentile £675 £730 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 5 1
10th Percentile £46.02 £65.60 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £74.00 £58.75
Median hourly rate £57.50 £74.44 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.76% +24.07% +9.09%
75th Percentile £66.50 £87.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £82.50 £92.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £74.44 £60.00
% change year-on-year -22.76% +24.07% +9.09%

All Development Application Skills
UK

GitLab falls under the Development Applications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring development application skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for development application skills 5,335 4,195 5,351
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.58% 13.38% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,655 2,640 3,751
10th Percentile £340 £331 £363
25th Percentile £406 £410 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.25% -6.74% -4.02%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £513
% change year-on-year -0.42% -6.93% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 71 199
10th Percentile £39.00 £27.50 £43.93
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +5.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £77.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.25 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -

GitLab
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing GitLab relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

GitLab job vacancy trend in the UK

GitLab
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing GitLab.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing GitLab

GitLab
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing GitLab over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for GitLab in the UK

GitLab
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing GitLab.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing GitLab

GitLab
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing GitLab over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for GitLab in the UK

GitLab
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 GitLab within the UK over the 6 months to 13 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 +6 721 £519 -8.67% 265
UK excluding London +36 443 £500 - 230
London -14 289 £525 -12.50% 59
Work from Home +21 236 £500 -8.59% 138
North of England -3 204 £500 - 56
North West -2 88 £413 -15.38% 26
Yorkshire +5 86 £513 +2.50% 25
Midlands +20 84 £525 +10.06% 24
West Midlands +26 76 £530 +8.28% 14
South East -11 56 £500 - 66
South West +8 44 £525 -27.34% 41
Scotland +18 37 £418 -4.57% 12
North East -8 34 £500 -4.76% 5
East of England -1 26 £478 +27.47% 25
East Midlands -13 8 £400 +30.08% 9
Northern Ireland -1 5 - - 2
Wales -5 5 £435 -18.12% 8

GitLab
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 59 (6.70%) Confluence
2 35 (3.97%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (3.18%) SAS
4 24 (2.72%) Apache
5 18 (2.04%) Apache Spark
6 14 (1.59%) OpenStack
7 13 (1.48%) nginx
8 7 (0.79%) Appian
9 6 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.45%) CMS
10 4 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.34%) Ethereum
11 3 (0.34%) Hyperledger
12 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.23%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.23%) Mule
12 2 (0.23%) SharePoint
13 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.11%) CICS
13 1 (0.11%) FileNet
Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.11%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 3 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
1 3 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
2 2 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.11%) Actimize
3 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.11%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.11%) SAP CO
3 1 (0.11%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 536 (60.84%) AWS
2 248 (28.15%) GitHub
3 245 (27.81%) Azure
4 171 (19.41%) GitHub Actions
5 168 (19.07%) GCP
6 154 (17.48%) Serverless
7 126 (14.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 125 (14.19%) Amazon S3
9 116 (13.17%) Amazon EKS
10 113 (12.83%) AWS CloudFormation
11 112 (12.71%) Amazon EC2
12 109 (12.37%) AWS Lambda
13 86 (9.76%) OpenShift
13 86 (9.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 85 (9.65%) Azure DevOps
15 74 (8.40%) Amazon ECS
16 38 (4.31%) Azure AKS
17 31 (3.52%) Datadog
18 26 (2.95%) Route 53
19 23 (2.61%) Amazon ELB
Communications & Networking
1 62 (7.04%) Firewall
2 49 (5.56%) DNS
3 43 (4.88%) VPN
4 33 (3.75%) TCP/IP
5 22 (2.50%) Network Security
6 20 (2.27%) SSL
7 6 (0.68%) Kerberos
8 5 (0.57%) BGP
8 5 (0.57%) OpenLDAP
8 5 (0.57%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.57%) WAN
9 4 (0.45%) HTTP
9 4 (0.45%) VXLAN
10 3 (0.34%) DHCP
10 3 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
10 3 (0.34%) FTP
10 3 (0.34%) Multicast
10 3 (0.34%) Reverse Proxy
10 3 (0.34%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.34%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 92 (10.44%) PostgreSQL
2 79 (8.97%) MongoDB
2 79 (8.97%) NoSQL
3 72 (8.17%) Amazon RDS
4 32 (3.63%) Data Lake
5 28 (3.18%) DynamoDB
6 25 (2.84%) Redis
7 24 (2.72%) MySQL
8 21 (2.38%) Relational Database
9 19 (2.16%) Amazon Athena
9 19 (2.16%) SQL Server
10 17 (1.93%) Big Data
11 15 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
12 14 (1.59%) Apache Cassandra
13 13 (1.48%) Oracle Database
14 12 (1.36%) Power BI
15 11 (1.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 10 (1.14%) BigQuery
17 8 (0.91%) Delta Lake
18 7 (0.79%) Aerospike
Development Applications
1 429 (48.69%) Jenkins
2 220 (24.97%) Git
3 127 (14.42%) JIRA
4 84 (9.53%) Selenium
5 61 (6.92%) Cucumber
6 56 (6.36%) JUnit
7 37 (4.20%) Postman
8 36 (4.09%) Maven
9 35 (3.97%) Artifactory
10 33 (3.75%) SonarQube
11 32 (3.63%) Cypress.io
12 31 (3.52%) Bitbucket
12 31 (3.52%) Gradle
13 28 (3.18%) JMeter
13 28 (3.18%) Sonatype Nexus
14 26 (2.95%) REST Assured
15 25 (2.84%) Liquibase
16 24 (2.72%) CircleCI
17 20 (2.27%) Gatling
18 14 (1.59%) MLflow
General
1 223 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 145 (16.46%) Finance
3 120 (13.62%) Public Sector
4 97 (11.01%) Banking
5 62 (7.04%) Analytical Skills
6 24 (2.72%) Financial Institution
7 22 (2.50%) Telecoms
8 19 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (1.48%) Military
10 12 (1.36%) Aerospace
11 9 (1.02%) Investment Banking
12 8 (0.91%) Games
13 7 (0.79%) Retail
13 7 (0.79%) Retail Banking
14 6 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
15 4 (0.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.34%) Front Office
16 3 (0.34%) Law
16 3 (0.34%) Local Government
16 3 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 212 (24.06%) DevOps Engineer
2 167 (18.96%) Developer
3 149 (16.91%) Senior
4 95 (10.78%) AWS Engineer
5 69 (7.83%) AWS DevOps
6 68 (7.72%) Lead
7 63 (7.15%) Software Engineer
8 58 (6.58%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 54 (6.13%) Java Developer
10 45 (5.11%) Cloud Engineer
11 44 (4.99%) Senior DevOps
11 44 (4.99%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 42 (4.77%) Test Engineer
13 41 (4.65%) Architect
14 39 (4.43%) Data Engineer
15 35 (3.97%) Automation Engineer
16 34 (3.86%) Senior Developer
17 30 (3.41%) GCP Engineer
18 29 (3.29%) Platform Engineer
19 25 (2.84%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (17.03%) REST
2 131 (14.87%) Kafka
3 99 (11.24%) Elastic Stack
3 99 (11.24%) Spring
4 95 (10.78%) Spring Boot
5 93 (10.56%) Node.js
6 89 (10.10%) RESTful
7 52 (5.90%) React
8 42 (4.77%) Playwright
9 37 (4.20%) JSON
10 33 (3.75%) PySpark
11 32 (3.63%) OpenTelemetry
11 32 (3.63%) pytest
12 31 (3.52%) HTML
12 31 (3.52%) RabbitMQ
13 27 (3.06%) OpenID
14 25 (2.84%) Jest
14 25 (2.84%) LDAP
15 24 (2.72%) OAuth
16 22 (2.50%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 131 (14.87%) Cloud Native
2 72 (8.17%) Distributed Systems
3 48 (5.45%) Product Ownership
4 45 (5.11%) Public Cloud
5 25 (2.84%) Onboarding
6 16 (1.82%) Private Cloud
7 15 (1.70%) Data Centre
7 15 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
8 14 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
9 13 (1.48%) PKI
10 10 (1.14%) Algorithms
11 9 (1.02%) Synthetic Data
12 8 (0.91%) Legacy Applications
12 8 (0.91%) Security Posture
13 7 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
13 7 (0.79%) Distributed Computing
13 7 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (0.68%) Management Information System
14 6 (0.68%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 182 (20.66%) Linux
2 54 (6.13%) Windows
3 27 (3.06%) Unix
4 25 (2.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (1.82%) Windows Server
6 11 (1.25%) CentOS
7 10 (1.14%) Android
7 10 (1.14%) Apple iOS
8 7 (0.79%) VMS
9 3 (0.34%) Solaris
9 3 (0.34%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.23%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Debian
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.11%) Rocky
11 1 (0.11%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 706 (80.14%) CI/CD
2 555 (63.00%) DevOps
3 362 (41.09%) Infrastructure as Code
4 326 (37.00%) Containerisation
5 322 (36.55%) Agile
6 245 (27.81%) Test Automation
7 194 (22.02%) Microservices
8 158 (17.93%) Problem-Solving
9 151 (17.14%) Observability
10 137 (15.55%) Software Engineering
11 105 (11.92%) Scrum
12 91 (10.33%) Continuous Improvement
13 90 (10.22%) Infrastructure Automation
14 84 (9.53%) DevSecOps
15 83 (9.42%) Analytics
16 79 (8.97%) Migration
17 77 (8.74%) High Availability
18 70 (7.95%) Data Pipeline
19 68 (7.72%) Platform Engineering
20 66 (7.49%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 423 (48.01%) Python
2 245 (27.81%) Java
3 173 (19.64%) Bash
4 140 (15.89%) SQL
5 105 (11.92%) JavaScript
6 99 (11.24%) Go
7 79 (8.97%) PowerShell
8 69 (7.83%) TypeScript
9 45 (5.11%) Shell Script
10 21 (2.38%) C#
11 16 (1.82%) Kotlin
12 15 (1.70%) Ruby
13 14 (1.59%) PL/SQL
14 12 (1.36%) Perl
15 10 (1.14%) Rust
16 9 (1.02%) C
16 9 (1.02%) C++
16 9 (1.02%) Groovy
17 7 (0.79%) Korn
18 6 (0.68%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 299 (33.94%) Security Cleared
2 239 (27.13%) SC Cleared
3 62 (7.04%) Degree
4 55 (6.24%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (4.31%) AWS Certification
5 38 (4.31%) BPSS Clearance
6 36 (4.09%) Master's Degree
7 35 (3.97%) DV Cleared
8 22 (2.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 13 (1.48%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 11 (1.25%) CISSP
10 11 (1.25%) Oracle Certification
11 10 (1.14%) CISM
11 10 (1.14%) OCA
12 6 (0.68%) AWS Certified Developer
13 5 (0.57%) Azure Certification
14 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
15 3 (0.34%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
15 3 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.34%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (13.73%) QA
2 44 (4.99%) Accessibility
3 23 (2.61%) GDPR
4 19 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (2.16%) WCAG
5 17 (1.93%) NIST
6 14 (1.59%) NCSC
6 14 (1.59%) SLA
7 13 (1.48%) Data Quality
7 13 (1.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 7 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.45%) Def Stans
10 2 (0.23%) HL7
11 1 (0.11%) IEC 61508
11 1 (0.11%) ISO 20022
11 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) MiFID
11 1 (0.11%) MISRA
11 1 (0.11%) MISRA C
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
System Software
1 390 (44.27%) Docker
2 24 (2.72%) Active Directory
3 15 (1.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.91%) Virtual Servers
5 7 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.34%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.34%) vSphere
7 2 (0.23%) HDFS
8 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.11%) KVM
8 1 (0.11%) Squid
Systems Management
1 470 (53.35%) Kubernetes
2 436 (49.49%) Terraform
3 242 (27.47%) Ansible
4 232 (26.33%) Grafana
5 184 (20.89%) Prometheus
6 46 (5.22%) Argo
7 24 (2.72%) Istio
8 21 (2.38%) Puppet
9 20 (2.27%) Podman
10 17 (1.93%) Progress Chef
11 13 (1.48%) Fluentd
11 13 (1.48%) Kibana
11 13 (1.48%) Packer
12 10 (1.14%) linkerd
12 10 (1.14%) NetBackup
13 7 (0.79%) Karpenter
13 7 (0.79%) Rancher
13 7 (0.79%) Red Hat Satellite
13 7 (0.79%) Sysdig
14 6 (0.68%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 108 (12.26%) Splunk
2 75 (8.51%) Microsoft
3 65 (7.38%) Oracle
4 50 (5.68%) Red Hat
5 46 (5.22%) Google
6 36 (4.09%) VMware
7 28 (3.18%) Dynatrace
8 24 (2.72%) Databricks
9 21 (2.38%) Palo Alto
10 20 (2.27%) CheckPoint
10 20 (2.27%) ServiceNow
11 19 (2.16%) F5
12 18 (2.04%) Atlassian
13 16 (1.82%) Cisco
14 13 (1.48%) Cribl.io
15 11 (1.25%) Commvault
15 11 (1.25%) IBM
15 11 (1.25%) Veritas
16 8 (0.91%) Veracode
17 7 (0.79%) SAP