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 8 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 138 242
Rank change year-on-year +25 +104 -51
Contract jobs citing GitLab 944 594 448
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.41% 1.91% 0.99%
As % of the Development Applications category 17.25% 14.04% 8.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 708 394 339
10th Percentile £380 £364 £404
25th Percentile £420 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £558
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -1.35% -6.11%
75th Percentile £575 £656 £648
90th Percentile £670 £734 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 4 3
10th Percentile £39.53 £64.33 £43.75
25th Percentile £52.50 £70.83 £49.38
Median hourly rate £55.00 £79.72 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.01% +32.87% -7.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £89.38 £69.38
90th Percentile £82.60 £92.75 £74.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £79.72 £67.50
% change year-on-year -31.01% +18.10% +3.85%

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 5,471 4,232 5,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.99% 13.61% 12.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,753 2,670 3,808
10th Percentile £343 £340 £363
25th Percentile £406 £409 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £630
90th Percentile £692 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 63 212
10th Percentile £34.85 £26.30 £40.00
25th Percentile £52.50 £47.50 £49.62
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 £75.25
90th Percentile £83.40 £77.25 £88.75
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 8 February 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 8 February 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 8 February 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 +11 781 £511 -9.51% 198
UK excluding London +45 483 £500 - 147
London -9 313 £525 -10.41% 73
Work from Home +23 252 £476 -11.90% 102
North of England +7 242 £488 -7.14% 43
North West +17 117 £431 -13.80% 29
Yorkshire +6 94 £513 -10.87% 11
Midlands +18 90 £500 +4.82% 10
West Midlands +15 81 £525 +7.36% 7
South East -18 53 £500 -9.09% 57
South West +11 46 £520 -16.80% 23
Scotland +19 38 £447 +4.26% 3
North East -7 38 £488 -6.25% 3
East of England -4 22 £485 +3.47% 8
East Midlands -17 9 £400 +20.57% 3
Northern Ireland +4 6 - - 1
Wales +2 5 £435 -16.35% 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 59 (6.25%) Confluence
2 31 (3.28%) Apache Airflow
3 29 (3.07%) SAS
4 21 (2.22%) Apache
5 18 (1.91%) OpenStack
6 17 (1.80%) nginx
7 15 (1.59%) Apache Spark
8 7 (0.74%) Appian
9 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.32%) CMS
10 3 (0.32%) Ethereum
10 3 (0.32%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.11%) CICS
12 1 (0.11%) Cloud Foundry
12 1 (0.11%) Documentum
12 1 (0.11%) FileNet
12 1 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
1 3 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
2 2 (0.21%) 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
1 574 (60.81%) AWS
2 266 (28.18%) GitHub
3 256 (27.12%) Azure
4 181 (19.17%) GitHub Actions
5 171 (18.11%) GCP
6 160 (16.95%) Serverless
7 127 (13.45%) Amazon S3
8 118 (12.50%) Amazon EKS
9 115 (12.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 114 (12.08%) AWS Lambda
11 113 (11.97%) Amazon EC2
12 110 (11.65%) AWS CloudFormation
13 90 (9.53%) OpenShift
14 87 (9.22%) Azure DevOps
15 81 (8.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 78 (8.26%) Amazon ECS
17 32 (3.39%) Azure AKS
18 28 (2.97%) Datadog
19 23 (2.44%) Route 53
20 22 (2.33%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 61 (6.46%) Firewall
2 43 (4.56%) DNS
3 41 (4.34%) VPN
4 30 (3.18%) TCP/IP
5 24 (2.54%) Network Security
6 15 (1.59%) SSL
7 7 (0.74%) Reverse Proxy
8 6 (0.64%) Kerberos
8 6 (0.64%) WAN
9 5 (0.53%) HTTP
9 5 (0.53%) Multicast
9 5 (0.53%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.42%) BGP
10 4 (0.42%) SAN
11 3 (0.32%) DHCP
11 3 (0.32%) Ethernet VPN
11 3 (0.32%) FTP
11 3 (0.32%) NAS
11 3 (0.32%) VSAN
11 3 (0.32%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (10.28%) PostgreSQL
2 79 (8.37%) MongoDB
3 76 (8.05%) NoSQL
4 69 (7.31%) Amazon RDS
5 31 (3.28%) Data Lake
6 30 (3.18%) Relational Database
7 29 (3.07%) DynamoDB
8 26 (2.75%) MySQL
9 24 (2.54%) Redis
10 23 (2.44%) Amazon Athena
11 20 (2.12%) Big Data
12 19 (2.01%) SQL Server
13 18 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
14 17 (1.80%) Oracle Database
15 14 (1.48%) Apache Cassandra
16 12 (1.27%) Power BI
17 11 (1.17%) DocumentDB
18 10 (1.06%) BigQuery
18 10 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
19 8 (0.85%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 461 (48.83%) Jenkins
2 216 (22.88%) Git
3 136 (14.41%) JIRA
4 95 (10.06%) Selenium
5 69 (7.31%) Cucumber
6 66 (6.99%) JUnit
7 49 (5.19%) Postman
8 37 (3.92%) REST Assured
9 35 (3.71%) JMeter
10 34 (3.60%) Maven
11 32 (3.39%) SonarQube
12 31 (3.28%) Artifactory
13 29 (3.07%) Gatling
14 28 (2.97%) Bitbucket
14 28 (2.97%) Cypress.io
14 28 (2.97%) Gradle
15 27 (2.86%) CircleCI
16 26 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
17 22 (2.33%) Liquibase
18 21 (2.22%) Mockito
General
1 233 (24.68%) Social Skills
2 153 (16.21%) Finance
3 146 (15.47%) Public Sector
4 102 (10.81%) Banking
5 71 (7.52%) Analytical Skills
6 26 (2.75%) Financial Institution
7 20 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
8 18 (1.91%) Telecoms
9 14 (1.48%) Military
10 10 (1.06%) Aerospace
10 10 (1.06%) Investment Banking
10 10 (1.06%) Retail
11 8 (0.85%) Retail Banking
12 7 (0.74%) Games
12 7 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.32%) Corporate Banking
15 3 (0.32%) Law
15 3 (0.32%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 226 (23.94%) DevOps Engineer
2 194 (20.55%) Developer
3 148 (15.68%) Senior
4 103 (10.91%) AWS Engineer
5 80 (8.47%) AWS DevOps
6 76 (8.05%) Lead
7 67 (7.10%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 59 (6.25%) Java Developer
9 53 (5.61%) Software Engineer
10 49 (5.19%) Test Engineer
11 46 (4.87%) Architect
11 46 (4.87%) Cloud Engineer
12 44 (4.66%) Senior DevOps
12 44 (4.66%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 43 (4.56%) Data Engineer
14 33 (3.50%) Senior Developer
15 32 (3.39%) Platform Engineer
16 31 (3.28%) Automation Engineer
17 30 (3.18%) Full-Stack Developer
18 28 (2.97%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 152 (16.10%) REST
2 134 (14.19%) Kafka
3 125 (13.24%) Spring
4 116 (12.29%) Spring Boot
5 103 (10.91%) RESTful
6 102 (10.81%) Elastic Stack
7 97 (10.28%) Node.js
8 64 (6.78%) React
9 56 (5.93%) Playwright
10 36 (3.81%) HTML
10 36 (3.81%) OpenTelemetry
11 33 (3.50%) JSON
11 33 (3.50%) PySpark
12 32 (3.39%) RabbitMQ
13 31 (3.28%) OpenID
14 29 (3.07%) Jest
14 29 (3.07%) LDAP
15 28 (2.97%) pytest
15 28 (2.97%) YAML
16 25 (2.65%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 145 (15.36%) Cloud Native
2 72 (7.63%) Distributed Systems
3 50 (5.30%) Product Ownership
4 47 (4.98%) Public Cloud
5 26 (2.75%) Onboarding
6 16 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 16 (1.69%) Private Cloud
7 15 (1.59%) Data Centre
8 13 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
9 12 (1.27%) PKI
10 11 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
10 11 (1.17%) Linux Command Line
11 10 (1.06%) Security Posture
12 9 (0.95%) Management Information System
12 9 (0.95%) Synthetic Data
13 8 (0.85%) Algorithms
13 8 (0.85%) Virtual Team
14 7 (0.74%) Data Protection Act
14 7 (0.74%) Distributed Computing
14 7 (0.74%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 203 (21.50%) Linux
2 61 (6.46%) Windows
3 32 (3.39%) Unix
4 28 (2.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (1.69%) Windows Server
6 11 (1.17%) CentOS
7 10 (1.06%) Android
7 10 (1.06%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.85%) VMS
9 4 (0.42%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.32%) Solaris
10 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.32%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Debian
11 1 (0.11%) Rocky
11 1 (0.11%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 760 (80.51%) CI/CD
2 579 (61.33%) DevOps
3 365 (38.67%) Infrastructure as Code
4 345 (36.55%) Containerisation
5 340 (36.02%) Agile
6 273 (28.92%) Test Automation
7 204 (21.61%) Microservices
8 177 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
9 163 (17.27%) Observability
10 129 (13.67%) Software Engineering
11 113 (11.97%) Scrum
12 107 (11.33%) Continuous Improvement
13 93 (9.85%) Analytics
14 84 (8.90%) DevSecOps
15 77 (8.16%) Infrastructure Automation
16 76 (8.05%) Platform Engineering
17 75 (7.94%) TDD
18 71 (7.52%) Migration
19 69 (7.31%) Data Pipeline
20 67 (7.10%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 419 (44.39%) Python
2 290 (30.72%) Java
3 171 (18.11%) Bash
4 150 (15.89%) SQL
5 113 (11.97%) JavaScript
6 95 (10.06%) Go
7 82 (8.69%) TypeScript
8 80 (8.47%) PowerShell
9 49 (5.19%) Shell Script
10 20 (2.12%) C#
11 18 (1.91%) Ruby
12 16 (1.69%) Kotlin
13 14 (1.48%) PL/SQL
14 10 (1.06%) Perl
14 10 (1.06%) Rust
15 9 (0.95%) Groovy
16 8 (0.85%) Scala
17 7 (0.74%) C++
17 7 (0.74%) Korn
17 7 (0.74%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 336 (35.59%) Security Cleared
2 269 (28.50%) SC Cleared
3 60 (6.36%) Degree
4 51 (5.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 44 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
6 41 (4.34%) AWS Certification
7 32 (3.39%) DV Cleared
7 32 (3.39%) Master's Degree
8 21 (2.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 14 (1.48%) CISSP
10 13 (1.38%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 13 (1.38%) CISM
11 11 (1.17%) Oracle Certification
12 10 (1.06%) OCA
13 7 (0.74%) AWS Certified Developer
14 5 (0.53%) Azure Certification
14 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
15 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
15 3 (0.32%) ISTQB
15 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (12.82%) QA
2 56 (5.93%) Accessibility
3 22 (2.33%) GDPR
4 20 (2.12%) NIST
4 20 (2.12%) WCAG
5 17 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (1.69%) Data Quality
7 14 (1.48%) SLA
8 13 (1.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (1.27%) NCSC
10 6 (0.64%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.42%) Def Stans
12 2 (0.21%) HL7
13 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.11%) IEC 61508
13 1 (0.11%) ISO 20022
13 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 417 (44.17%) Docker
2 23 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 16 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.85%) Virtual Servers
6 4 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 3 (0.32%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.32%) vSphere
8 2 (0.21%) HDFS
8 2 (0.21%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.11%) Squid
9 1 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 497 (52.65%) Kubernetes
2 439 (46.50%) Terraform
3 242 (25.64%) Grafana
4 228 (24.15%) Ansible
5 196 (20.76%) Prometheus
6 50 (5.30%) Argo
7 20 (2.12%) Istio
7 20 (2.12%) Podman
8 18 (1.91%) Puppet
9 17 (1.80%) Progress Chef
10 16 (1.69%) Kibana
11 12 (1.27%) Fluentd
12 11 (1.17%) Packer
13 9 (0.95%) Red Hat Satellite
14 8 (0.85%) Karpenter
14 8 (0.85%) linkerd
15 7 (0.74%) Check_MK
15 7 (0.74%) NetBackup
15 7 (0.74%) Rancher
15 7 (0.74%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 104 (11.02%) Splunk
2 71 (7.52%) Microsoft
3 68 (7.20%) Oracle
4 52 (5.51%) Red Hat
5 45 (4.77%) Google
6 38 (4.03%) VMware
7 27 (2.86%) ServiceNow
8 23 (2.44%) Databricks
9 19 (2.01%) Dynatrace
10 17 (1.80%) F5
11 16 (1.69%) CheckPoint
11 16 (1.69%) Cisco
11 16 (1.69%) Palo Alto
11 16 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 16 (1.69%) Veracode
12 15 (1.59%) Atlassian
13 14 (1.48%) Cribl.io
14 10 (1.06%) IBM
15 8 (0.85%) Veritas
16 7 (0.74%) SAP