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 18 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 141 227
Rank change year-on-year +23 +86 -28
Contract jobs citing GitLab 957 586 447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.21% 2.00% 1.00%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.45% 14.48% 8.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 698 390 324
10th Percentile £381 £363 £400
25th Percentile £417 £436 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £527 £556
Median % change year-on-year -5.12% -5.26% -7.29%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £650
90th Percentile £659 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £500 £522
% change year-on-year -2.60% -4.21% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 4 7
10th Percentile £39.53 £66.75 £40.00
25th Percentile £52.50 £76.88 £48.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £83.98 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.51% +35.45% +27.18%
75th Percentile £65.00 £89.38 £75.97
90th Percentile £82.60 £92.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £83.98 £74.44
% change year-on-year -34.51% +12.82% +41.79%

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 5,819 4,048 5,205
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.45% 13.81% 11.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,919 2,684 3,558
10th Percentile £340 £335 £356
25th Percentile £405 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £630
90th Percentile £688 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 67 197
10th Percentile £35.00 £23.34 £37.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £47.50 £46.18
Median hourly rate £66.50 £62.50 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.40% +0.81% +0.81%
75th Percentile £80.00 £71.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £80.00 £81.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +6.40% - +1.63%

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 18 March 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 18 March 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 18 March 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 +8 796 £500 -7.41% 216
UK excluding London +39 484 £487 -2.60% 155
London -11 330 £525 -4.55% 72
Work from Home +11 261 £475 -6.86% 106
North of England +4 220 £500 -4.76% 52
Midlands +25 110 £478 +2.08% 14
North West -1 108 £449 -10.30% 17
West Midlands +18 98 £481 +0.89% 8
Yorkshire -4 83 £500 -13.04% 14
South East -25 58 £500 -21.57% 40
South West +5 46 £525 -4.55% 27
Scotland +23 41 £418 -1.18% 7
North East 0 38 £515 +2.74% 21
East of England -11 19 £478 +6.22% 15
East Midlands -28 12 £402 +29.99% 6
Wales -4 4 £495 +16.47% 4
Northern Ireland -1 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 71 (7.42%) Confluence
2 39 (4.08%) SAS
3 31 (3.24%) Apache Airflow
4 26 (2.72%) Apache
5 18 (1.88%) Apache Spark
5 18 (1.88%) nginx
6 16 (1.67%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.42%) CMS
7 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.31%) Appian
8 3 (0.31%) CICS
8 3 (0.31%) Ethereum
8 3 (0.31%) Hyperledger
9 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.10%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.10%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.10%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.10%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.10%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Oracle Applications
1 3 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
1 3 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.10%) Actimize
2 1 (0.10%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.10%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.10%) SAP CO
2 1 (0.10%) SAP FS
2 1 (0.10%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 587 (61.34%) AWS
2 305 (31.87%) GitHub
3 271 (28.32%) Azure
4 203 (21.21%) GitHub Actions
5 177 (18.50%) GCP
6 172 (17.97%) Serverless
7 137 (14.32%) Amazon S3
8 136 (14.21%) Amazon EKS
9 131 (13.69%) AWS Lambda
10 119 (12.43%) AWS CloudFormation
11 116 (12.12%) Amazon EC2
12 106 (11.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 95 (9.93%) Azure DevOps
14 89 (9.30%) OpenShift
15 84 (8.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 77 (8.05%) Amazon ECS
17 29 (3.03%) Azure AKS
18 26 (2.72%) Datadog
18 26 (2.72%) Snowflake
19 24 (2.51%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 53 (5.54%) Firewall
2 36 (3.76%) DNS
3 29 (3.03%) VPN
4 22 (2.30%) TCP/IP
5 19 (1.99%) Network Security
6 8 (0.84%) HTTP
6 8 (0.84%) Reverse Proxy
7 7 (0.73%) WAN
8 6 (0.63%) Kerberos
8 6 (0.63%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.63%) SSL
9 5 (0.52%) BGP
9 5 (0.52%) Multicast
10 4 (0.42%) SAN
10 4 (0.42%) VSAN
11 3 (0.31%) DHCP
11 3 (0.31%) Ethernet VPN
11 3 (0.31%) NAS
11 3 (0.31%) OSPF
11 3 (0.31%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (11.39%) PostgreSQL
2 75 (7.84%) MongoDB
3 73 (7.63%) NoSQL
4 65 (6.79%) Amazon RDS
5 35 (3.66%) Relational Database
6 34 (3.55%) DynamoDB
7 32 (3.34%) Data Lake
8 28 (2.93%) MySQL
9 27 (2.82%) Amazon Athena
9 27 (2.82%) Redis
10 25 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
11 24 (2.51%) SQL Server
12 21 (2.19%) Big Data
13 19 (1.99%) Power BI
14 18 (1.88%) Oracle Database
15 16 (1.67%) Amazon Redshift
15 16 (1.67%) Apache Cassandra
16 12 (1.25%) Delta Lake
17 11 (1.15%) BigQuery
17 11 (1.15%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 480 (50.16%) Jenkins
2 233 (24.35%) Git
3 143 (14.94%) JIRA
4 101 (10.55%) Selenium
5 81 (8.46%) JUnit
6 69 (7.21%) Cucumber
7 49 (5.12%) Postman
8 42 (4.39%) JMeter
9 41 (4.28%) Bitbucket
10 39 (4.08%) REST Assured
11 29 (3.03%) Artifactory
11 29 (3.03%) Gatling
12 26 (2.72%) Maven
12 26 (2.72%) Mockito
12 26 (2.72%) SonarQube
13 25 (2.61%) CircleCI
14 24 (2.51%) Gradle
14 24 (2.51%) Sonatype Nexus
15 22 (2.30%) Cypress.io
16 17 (1.78%) WebDriver
General
1 246 (25.71%) Social Skills
2 154 (16.09%) Public Sector
3 151 (15.78%) Finance
4 104 (10.87%) Banking
5 70 (7.31%) Analytical Skills
6 22 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
7 19 (1.99%) Financial Institution
8 13 (1.36%) Investment Banking
9 11 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 11 (1.15%) Military
10 10 (1.04%) Retail
11 9 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (0.94%) Telecoms
12 8 (0.84%) Retail Banking
13 6 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.52%) Games
14 5 (0.52%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.42%) Law
16 3 (0.31%) Legal
Job Titles
1 205 (21.42%) DevOps Engineer
2 182 (19.02%) Developer
3 144 (15.05%) Senior
4 104 (10.87%) AWS Engineer
5 77 (8.05%) AWS DevOps
5 77 (8.05%) Lead
6 63 (6.58%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 59 (6.17%) Data Engineer
8 56 (5.85%) Software Engineer
9 54 (5.64%) Java Developer
10 52 (5.43%) Architect
11 49 (5.12%) Test Engineer
12 46 (4.81%) Cloud Engineer
13 39 (4.08%) Senior DevOps
13 39 (4.08%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 38 (3.97%) Platform Engineer
15 31 (3.24%) GCP Engineer
16 29 (3.03%) Java Engineer
16 29 (3.03%) Senior Developer
17 25 (2.61%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (16.20%) REST
2 141 (14.73%) Kafka
3 131 (13.69%) Spring
4 115 (12.02%) Spring Boot
5 96 (10.03%) Node.js
6 91 (9.51%) RESTful
7 90 (9.40%) Elastic Stack
8 69 (7.21%) React
9 61 (6.37%) Playwright
10 41 (4.28%) PySpark
11 37 (3.87%) HTML
11 37 (3.87%) pytest
12 34 (3.55%) OpenTelemetry
12 34 (3.55%) RabbitMQ
13 32 (3.34%) Jest
14 30 (3.13%) OpenID
14 30 (3.13%) YAML
15 29 (3.03%) CSS
15 29 (3.03%) JSON
15 29 (3.03%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 143 (14.94%) Cloud Native
2 74 (7.73%) Distributed Systems
3 54 (5.64%) Product Ownership
4 42 (4.39%) Public Cloud
5 28 (2.93%) Onboarding
6 16 (1.67%) Data Centre
7 14 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
7 14 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
8 13 (1.36%) Private Cloud
9 9 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
9 9 (0.94%) Mainframe
9 9 (0.94%) Management Information System
9 9 (0.94%) PKI
10 8 (0.84%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (0.84%) Distributed Architecture
10 8 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
10 8 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
11 7 (0.73%) Algorithms
11 7 (0.73%) Mobile App
11 7 (0.73%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 190 (19.85%) Linux
2 65 (6.79%) Windows
3 37 (3.87%) Unix
4 27 (2.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.57%) Windows Server
6 11 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 10 (1.04%) Android
8 9 (0.94%) CentOS
9 8 (0.84%) VMS
10 6 (0.63%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.52%) zOS
12 3 (0.31%) Debian
12 3 (0.31%) Rocky
12 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.10%) AIX
13 1 (0.10%) Amazon Linux
13 1 (0.10%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.10%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.10%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 761 (79.52%) CI/CD
2 558 (58.31%) DevOps
3 365 (38.14%) Agile
4 349 (36.47%) Infrastructure as Code
5 347 (36.26%) Containerisation
6 295 (30.83%) Test Automation
7 201 (21.00%) Microservices
8 179 (18.70%) Problem-Solving
9 171 (17.87%) Observability
10 132 (13.79%) Continuous Improvement
11 127 (13.27%) Scrum
11 127 (13.27%) Software Engineering
12 104 (10.87%) Analytics
13 92 (9.61%) Platform Engineering
14 89 (9.30%) TDD
15 78 (8.15%) DevSecOps
16 77 (8.05%) Data Pipeline
16 77 (8.05%) Test Strategy
17 72 (7.52%) Stakeholder Management
18 68 (7.11%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 417 (43.57%) Python
2 290 (30.30%) Java
3 181 (18.91%) SQL
4 147 (15.36%) Bash
5 109 (11.39%) JavaScript
6 89 (9.30%) TypeScript
7 75 (7.84%) PowerShell
8 72 (7.52%) Go
9 47 (4.91%) Shell Script
10 19 (1.99%) Ruby
11 18 (1.88%) Kotlin
12 17 (1.78%) C#
13 15 (1.57%) PL/SQL
14 12 (1.25%) Bicep
15 10 (1.04%) Perl
15 10 (1.04%) Scala
16 9 (0.94%) Groovy
17 8 (0.84%) C++
17 8 (0.84%) Rust
18 7 (0.73%) PHP
Qualifications
1 355 (37.10%) Security Cleared
2 293 (30.62%) SC Cleared
3 60 (6.27%) Degree
4 50 (5.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 48 (5.02%) BPSS Clearance
6 40 (4.18%) AWS Certification
7 28 (2.93%) DV Cleared
8 22 (2.30%) Master's Degree
9 19 (1.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (1.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 11 (1.15%) CISSP
12 10 (1.04%) CISM
13 9 (0.94%) Azure Certification
14 8 (0.84%) Oracle Certification
15 7 (0.73%) OCA
16 4 (0.42%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
16 4 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
17 3 (0.31%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 3 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 123 (12.85%) QA
2 61 (6.37%) Accessibility
3 29 (3.03%) Data Quality
4 22 (2.30%) WCAG
5 21 (2.19%) GDPR
6 16 (1.67%) NIST
6 16 (1.67%) SLA
7 14 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 14 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (1.04%) NCSC
9 6 (0.63%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.42%) Def Stans
11 2 (0.21%) HL7
11 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.10%) IEC 61508
12 1 (0.10%) ISO 20022
12 1 (0.10%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.10%) MiFID
System Software
1 419 (43.78%) Docker
2 25 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 13 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.84%) Virtual Servers
6 5 (0.52%) HDFS
7 4 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 3 (0.31%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.21%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.21%) vSphere
10 1 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.10%) Squid
10 1 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.10%) zsh
Systems Management
1 494 (51.62%) Kubernetes
2 433 (45.25%) Terraform
3 243 (25.39%) Grafana
4 204 (21.32%) Ansible
5 198 (20.69%) Prometheus
6 54 (5.64%) Argo
7 22 (2.30%) Istio
8 18 (1.88%) Podman
9 17 (1.78%) Kibana
10 15 (1.57%) Puppet
11 13 (1.36%) Progress Chef
12 11 (1.15%) Packer
13 9 (0.94%) linkerd
13 9 (0.94%) Red Hat Satellite
14 8 (0.84%) Fluentd
14 8 (0.84%) Karpenter
15 7 (0.73%) Check_MK
15 7 (0.73%) Sysdig
16 6 (0.63%) Nagios
17 5 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 94 (9.82%) Splunk
2 76 (7.94%) Oracle
3 71 (7.42%) Microsoft
4 47 (4.91%) Google
5 43 (4.49%) Red Hat
6 34 (3.55%) VMware
7 32 (3.34%) ServiceNow
8 27 (2.82%) Databricks
9 19 (1.99%) Dynatrace
10 18 (1.88%) Salesforce
11 17 (1.78%) Informatica
12 15 (1.57%) Atlassian
13 14 (1.46%) Talend
13 14 (1.46%) Veracode
14 12 (1.25%) IBM
15 11 (1.15%) Cisco
16 10 (1.04%) Cribl.io
17 9 (0.94%) SAP
18 8 (0.84%) Adobe
19 7 (0.73%) F5