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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 144 218
Rank change year-on-year +13 +74 +14
Contract jobs citing GitLab 925 569 465
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 1.96% 1.09%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.01% 13.72% 9.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 646 364 334
10th Percentile £383 £371 £387
25th Percentile £425 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £558
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -5.83% -3.04%
75th Percentile £575 £601 £645
90th Percentile £669 £688 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -3.60% -9.09% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 3 8
10th Percentile £44.72 £64.59 £40.00
25th Percentile £52.50 £71.48 £52.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £82.96 £68.22
Median % change year-on-year -24.66% +21.61% +72.27%
75th Percentile £65.00 £88.98 £75.21
90th Percentile £82.60 £92.59 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £82.96 £74.44
% change year-on-year -24.66% +11.45% +87.98%

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 5,777 4,146 5,128
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.11% 14.26% 12.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,778 2,775 3,435
10th Percentile £349 £338 £354
25th Percentile £408 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 241 72 204
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.33 £32.10
25th Percentile £59.25 £47.50 £46.25
Median hourly rate £67.00 £60.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.67% -7.69% +5.69%
75th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £83.67 £79.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £61.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +9.76% -5.38% +5.69%

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 15 May 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 15 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for GitLab in the UK

GitLab
Top 16 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 15 May 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 +6 776 £500 -4.76% 247
UK excluding London +30 461 £482 -3.60% 173
London -9 320 £525 -0.94% 74
Work from Home +11 272 £475 -8.65% 107
North of England -4 185 £500 -3.80% 73
Midlands +11 116 £469 -10.67% 27
West Midlands +8 101 £469 -11.68% 17
North West +2 95 £500 - 32
Yorkshire -18 64 £500 -11.11% 20
South West +5 56 £500 +8.70% 20
South East -38 55 £550 +4.71% 38
North East -2 37 £450 -13.46% 21
East of England -9 31 £480 +8.23% 12
Scotland -2 27 £418 -4.57% 2
East Midlands -18 15 £414 +32.96% 10
Northern Ireland 0 2 - - 3

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 68 (7.35%) Confluence
2 31 (3.35%) SAS
3 30 (3.24%) Apache Spark
4 27 (2.92%) Apache
5 26 (2.81%) Apache Airflow
6 15 (1.62%) OpenStack
7 14 (1.51%) nginx
8 9 (0.97%) Jupyter
9 5 (0.54%) CICS
10 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.32%) Camunda
11 3 (0.32%) CMS
11 3 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
12 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.22%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.22%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
13 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
1 3 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
2 1 (0.11%) Actimize
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.11%) SAP Hybris
2 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.11%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 555 (60.00%) AWS
2 310 (33.51%) GitHub
3 306 (33.08%) Azure
4 222 (24.00%) GitHub Actions
5 150 (16.22%) GCP
6 145 (15.68%) Serverless
7 133 (14.38%) Amazon S3
8 126 (13.62%) Amazon EKS
9 121 (13.08%) AWS Lambda
10 110 (11.89%) Azure DevOps
11 101 (10.92%) Amazon EC2
12 99 (10.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 99 (10.70%) AWS CloudFormation
13 74 (8.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 63 (6.81%) OpenShift
15 54 (5.84%) Amazon ECS
16 37 (4.00%) Azure AKS
17 35 (3.78%) Amazon SQS
18 28 (3.03%) AWS CodePipeline
18 28 (3.03%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 41 (4.43%) Firewall
2 29 (3.14%) DNS
3 21 (2.27%) TCP/IP
4 20 (2.16%) Network Security
5 16 (1.73%) BGP
5 16 (1.73%) VPN
6 15 (1.62%) OSPF
7 14 (1.51%) Ethernet VPN
7 14 (1.51%) VXLAN
7 14 (1.51%) WAN
8 12 (1.30%) BIG-IP
8 12 (1.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 12 (1.30%) SD-WAN
9 11 (1.19%) HTTP
10 10 (1.08%) Reverse Proxy
11 9 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
12 6 (0.65%) WLAN
13 4 (0.43%) Multicast
13 4 (0.43%) SAN
13 4 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 81 (8.76%) PostgreSQL
2 56 (6.05%) MongoDB
3 45 (4.86%) Relational Database
4 43 (4.65%) Amazon RDS
5 41 (4.43%) DynamoDB
5 41 (4.43%) NoSQL
6 35 (3.78%) Amazon Athena
7 33 (3.57%) MySQL
8 32 (3.46%) Amazon Redshift
9 31 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
10 30 (3.24%) Data Lake
11 28 (3.03%) Redis
12 27 (2.92%) Power BI
13 25 (2.70%) Big Data
13 25 (2.70%) SQL Server
14 24 (2.59%) Pentaho
15 15 (1.62%) Oracle Database
16 13 (1.41%) DocumentDB
17 12 (1.30%) Metadata
18 11 (1.19%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 415 (44.86%) Jenkins
2 200 (21.62%) Git
3 130 (14.05%) JIRA
4 82 (8.86%) Selenium
5 69 (7.46%) JUnit
6 52 (5.62%) Cucumber
7 46 (4.97%) Postman
8 41 (4.43%) REST Assured
9 39 (4.22%) JMeter
10 33 (3.57%) Gradle
11 31 (3.35%) Bitbucket
12 30 (3.24%) Artifactory
13 29 (3.14%) SonarQube
14 27 (2.92%) Gatling
15 26 (2.81%) CircleCI
15 26 (2.81%) Mockito
16 19 (2.05%) WebDriver
17 17 (1.84%) Maven
17 17 (1.84%) Snyk
18 14 (1.51%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 187 (20.22%) Social Skills
2 167 (18.05%) Public Sector
3 103 (11.14%) Finance
4 62 (6.70%) Banking
5 57 (6.16%) Analytical Skills
6 26 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (1.51%) Military
8 11 (1.19%) Aerospace
8 11 (1.19%) Retail
9 10 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (0.97%) Investment Banking
11 8 (0.86%) Financial Institution
11 8 (0.86%) Law
12 7 (0.76%) Telecoms
13 5 (0.54%) Legal
14 4 (0.43%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (0.43%) Police
14 4 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.32%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 189 (20.43%) DevOps Engineer
2 165 (17.84%) Developer
3 149 (16.11%) Senior
4 92 (9.95%) AWS Engineer
5 77 (8.32%) Data Engineer
6 66 (7.14%) Lead
7 61 (6.59%) AWS DevOps
7 61 (6.59%) Software Engineer
8 56 (6.05%) Java Developer
9 54 (5.84%) AWS DevOps Engineer
10 51 (5.51%) Architect
11 42 (4.54%) Cloud Engineer
12 40 (4.32%) Platform Engineer
12 40 (4.32%) Test Engineer
13 28 (3.03%) Full-Stack Developer
13 28 (3.03%) Senior DevOps
14 27 (2.92%) Senior Developer
14 27 (2.92%) Senior DevOps Engineer
15 25 (2.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 24 (2.59%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (14.49%) Kafka
2 133 (14.38%) Spring
3 115 (12.43%) Spring Boot
4 114 (12.32%) REST
5 80 (8.65%) RESTful
6 77 (8.32%) Node.js
7 66 (7.14%) React
8 52 (5.62%) Elastic Stack
9 43 (4.65%) Playwright
10 37 (4.00%) PySpark
11 36 (3.89%) OpenTelemetry
12 33 (3.57%) LDAP
13 32 (3.46%) RabbitMQ
14 30 (3.24%) YAML
15 29 (3.14%) Jest
15 29 (3.14%) OAuth
16 27 (2.92%) pytest
17 26 (2.81%) AngularJS
17 26 (2.81%) JSON
17 26 (2.81%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 153 (16.54%) Cloud Native
2 62 (6.70%) Distributed Systems
3 59 (6.38%) Product Ownership
4 32 (3.46%) Data Centre
5 29 (3.14%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 17 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
7 17 (1.84%) Public Cloud
8 14 (1.51%) Algorithms
9 13 (1.41%) Private Cloud
10 12 (1.30%) Management Information System
11 11 (1.19%) NHS
12 9 (0.97%) Distributed Architecture
12 9 (0.97%) Mainframe
12 9 (0.97%) PKI
13 8 (0.86%) Distributed Computing
14 7 (0.76%) Data Protection Act
14 7 (0.76%) DataPower
14 7 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
15 6 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 169 (18.27%) Linux
2 52 (5.62%) Windows
3 42 (4.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 40 (4.32%) Unix
5 14 (1.51%) CentOS
6 9 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 8 (0.86%) VMS
8 7 (0.76%) Android
8 7 (0.76%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.76%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.76%) zOS
9 4 (0.43%) Debian
9 4 (0.43%) Rocky
10 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.11%) AIX
11 1 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 741 (80.11%) CI/CD
2 514 (55.57%) DevOps
3 340 (36.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 329 (35.57%) Agile
5 311 (33.62%) Containerisation
6 280 (30.27%) Test Automation
7 182 (19.68%) Microservices
8 170 (18.38%) Observability
9 141 (15.24%) Problem-Solving
10 137 (14.81%) Software Engineering
11 133 (14.38%) Scrum
12 123 (13.30%) Continuous Improvement
13 117 (12.65%) Platform Engineering
14 88 (9.51%) ETL
15 87 (9.41%) DevSecOps
16 82 (8.86%) TDD
17 78 (8.43%) Analytics
18 73 (7.89%) Migration
19 71 (7.68%) AI
19 71 (7.68%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 357 (38.59%) Python
2 264 (28.54%) Java
3 198 (21.41%) SQL
4 143 (15.46%) Bash
5 95 (10.27%) JavaScript
6 81 (8.76%) TypeScript
7 64 (6.92%) PowerShell
8 49 (5.30%) Shell Script
9 44 (4.76%) Go
10 35 (3.78%) C#
11 21 (2.27%) Bicep
12 19 (2.05%) Kotlin
12 19 (2.05%) PL/SQL
13 15 (1.62%) C++
14 12 (1.30%) Scala
15 11 (1.19%) MATLAB
15 11 (1.19%) Ruby
16 9 (0.97%) C
17 8 (0.86%) Groovy
17 8 (0.86%) PHP
Qualifications
1 396 (42.81%) Security Cleared
2 331 (35.78%) SC Cleared
3 46 (4.97%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (4.43%) Degree
5 32 (3.46%) Computer Science Degree
6 28 (3.03%) AWS Certification
7 27 (2.92%) DV Cleared
8 13 (1.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 13 (1.41%) Azure Certification
9 10 (1.08%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 10 (1.08%) SAFe Agilist
10 8 (0.86%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.76%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.54%) CISSP
13 4 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (0.43%) CSSLP
13 4 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
13 4 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
13 4 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (10.81%) QA
2 51 (5.51%) Accessibility
3 29 (3.14%) Data Quality
4 21 (2.27%) SLA
5 16 (1.73%) GDPR
6 14 (1.51%) WCAG
7 11 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (1.08%) NIST
9 9 (0.97%) PCI DSS
10 7 (0.76%) NCSC
11 6 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 5 (0.54%) FATCA
13 4 (0.43%) ISO 20022
14 2 (0.22%) HL7
14 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
15 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
15 1 (0.11%) GRC
15 1 (0.11%) IEC 61508
15 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
15 1 (0.11%) MiFID
System Software
1 385 (41.62%) Docker
2 26 (2.81%) Active Directory
3 16 (1.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.76%) HDFS
6 6 (0.65%) Squid
7 4 (0.43%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 3 (0.32%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.22%) iptables
9 2 (0.22%) vSphere
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.11%) zsh
Systems Management
1 423 (45.73%) Kubernetes
2 408 (44.11%) Terraform
3 205 (22.16%) Grafana
4 198 (21.41%) Ansible
5 167 (18.05%) Prometheus
6 58 (6.27%) Argo
7 26 (2.81%) Puppet
8 20 (2.16%) Istio
9 17 (1.84%) Progress Chef
10 15 (1.62%) Podman
11 14 (1.51%) Red Hat Satellite
12 11 (1.19%) Check_MK
12 11 (1.19%) Kibana
13 9 (0.97%) linkerd
14 7 (0.76%) Packer
14 7 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
15 6 (0.65%) Karpenter
16 5 (0.54%) Cilium
16 5 (0.54%) Nagios
16 5 (0.54%) Rancher
Vendors
1 89 (9.62%) Oracle
2 65 (7.03%) Splunk
3 63 (6.81%) Microsoft
4 45 (4.86%) Red Hat
5 43 (4.65%) Google
6 37 (4.00%) Talend
6 37 (4.00%) VMware
7 34 (3.68%) Informatica
7 34 (3.68%) ServiceNow
8 32 (3.46%) Databricks
9 24 (2.59%) Dynatrace
10 21 (2.27%) Denodo
11 20 (2.16%) Salesforce
12 15 (1.62%) Arista
12 15 (1.62%) F5
13 13 (1.41%) Palo Alto
14 11 (1.19%) Aruba
15 10 (1.08%) IBM
15 10 (1.08%) Veracode
16 9 (0.97%) Tenable