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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 112 136 232
Rank change year-on-year +24 +96 -37
Contract jobs citing GitLab 980 581 452
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.33% 1.93% 1.02%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.93% 14.26% 8.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 730 389 336
10th Percentile £381 £360 £403
25th Percentile £420 £431 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £575 £650 £646
90th Percentile £663 £727 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £520
% change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -5.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 4 5
10th Percentile £39.53 £64.33 £47.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £70.83 £58.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £79.72 £74.44
Median % change year-on-year -31.01% +7.09% +52.70%
75th Percentile £65.00 £89.38 £77.50
90th Percentile £82.60 £92.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £79.72 £74.72
% change year-on-year -31.01% +6.69% +42.32%

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 5,788 4,074 5,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.73% 13.56% 11.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,943 2,640 3,649
10th Percentile £343 £331 £358
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 £616 £630
90th Percentile £688 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £483 £500
% change year-on-year -1.66% -3.40% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 64 214
10th Percentile £32.15 £26.10 £37.50
25th Percentile £53.13 £52.19 £46.20
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.63%
75th Percentile £70.00 £71.88 £73.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £80.00 £83.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +19 814 £500 -9.09% 345
UK excluding London +39 493 £492 -1.60% 306
London -12 337 £525 -7.08% 88
Work from Home +22 269 £475 -8.65% 200
North of England +6 231 £500 -4.76% 72
North West +2 114 £447 -10.60% 33
Midlands +20 111 £491 +2.94% 25
West Midlands +15 100 £492 +3.14% 15
Yorkshire -6 88 £516 -10.22% 24
South East -15 53 £500 -20.13% 92
South West +3 48 £523 -14.69% 44
Scotland +20 41 £421 -1.75% 22
North East -6 36 £508 -2.40% 15
East of England -11 20 £478 +6.22% 37
East Midlands -21 11 £401 +29.67% 10
Wales -3 5 £435 -16.35% 19
Northern Ireland 0 4 - - 4

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 66 (6.73%) Confluence
2 39 (3.98%) SAS
3 32 (3.27%) Apache Airflow
4 24 (2.45%) Apache
5 18 (1.84%) Apache Spark
5 18 (1.84%) nginx
6 17 (1.73%) OpenStack
7 5 (0.51%) Appian
8 4 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.31%) CICS
9 3 (0.31%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.31%) Hyperledger
10 2 (0.20%) CMS
10 2 (0.20%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.10%) Cloud Foundry
11 1 (0.10%) FileNet
11 1 (0.10%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.10%) Luigi
Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
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
Cloud Services
1 593 (60.51%) AWS
2 289 (29.49%) GitHub
3 277 (28.27%) Azure
4 195 (19.90%) GitHub Actions
5 185 (18.88%) GCP
6 168 (17.14%) Serverless
7 136 (13.88%) Amazon S3
8 128 (13.06%) Amazon EKS
9 125 (12.76%) AWS Lambda
10 121 (12.35%) Amazon EC2
11 116 (11.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 116 (11.84%) AWS CloudFormation
12 98 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
13 92 (9.39%) OpenShift
14 87 (8.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 78 (7.96%) Amazon ECS
16 36 (3.67%) Azure AKS
17 27 (2.76%) Datadog
18 25 (2.55%) Snowflake
19 24 (2.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 63 (6.43%) Firewall
2 44 (4.49%) DNS
3 41 (4.18%) VPN
4 31 (3.16%) TCP/IP
5 24 (2.45%) Network Security
6 14 (1.43%) SSL
7 8 (0.82%) Reverse Proxy
8 7 (0.71%) HTTP
9 6 (0.61%) Kerberos
9 6 (0.61%) WAN
10 5 (0.51%) Multicast
10 5 (0.51%) SD-WAN
11 4 (0.41%) BGP
11 4 (0.41%) SAN
11 4 (0.41%) VSAN
12 3 (0.31%) DHCP
12 3 (0.31%) Ethernet VPN
12 3 (0.31%) FTP
12 3 (0.31%) NAS
12 3 (0.31%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (10.92%) PostgreSQL
2 80 (8.16%) MongoDB
3 75 (7.65%) NoSQL
4 66 (6.73%) Amazon RDS
5 31 (3.16%) Data Lake
5 31 (3.16%) DynamoDB
5 31 (3.16%) Relational Database
6 30 (3.06%) MySQL
7 25 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
8 24 (2.45%) Redis
9 23 (2.35%) Amazon Athena
10 22 (2.24%) SQL Server
11 20 (2.04%) Big Data
12 19 (1.94%) Power BI
13 17 (1.73%) Apache Cassandra
13 17 (1.73%) Oracle Database
14 11 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
14 11 (1.12%) BigQuery
14 11 (1.12%) Delta Lake
14 11 (1.12%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 488 (49.80%) Jenkins
2 237 (24.18%) Git
3 141 (14.39%) JIRA
4 102 (10.41%) Selenium
5 79 (8.06%) JUnit
6 72 (7.35%) Cucumber
7 50 (5.10%) Postman
8 38 (3.88%) JMeter
9 37 (3.78%) Bitbucket
9 37 (3.78%) REST Assured
10 34 (3.47%) SonarQube
11 32 (3.27%) Gatling
11 32 (3.27%) Maven
12 31 (3.16%) Artifactory
13 27 (2.76%) Cypress.io
13 27 (2.76%) Gradle
14 26 (2.65%) CircleCI
15 25 (2.55%) Mockito
15 25 (2.55%) Sonatype Nexus
16 19 (1.94%) Liquibase
General
1 246 (25.10%) Social Skills
2 155 (15.82%) Finance
3 152 (15.51%) Public Sector
4 104 (10.61%) Banking
5 71 (7.24%) Analytical Skills
6 22 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (2.14%) Financial Institution
8 16 (1.63%) Military
9 14 (1.43%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.12%) Aerospace
11 10 (1.02%) Investment Banking
12 9 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (0.92%) Retail
13 7 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.71%) Retail Banking
14 5 (0.51%) Games
14 5 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.41%) Law
16 3 (0.31%) Marketing
16 3 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 232 (23.67%) DevOps Engineer
2 186 (18.98%) Developer
3 158 (16.12%) Senior
4 107 (10.92%) AWS Engineer
5 80 (8.16%) AWS DevOps
6 74 (7.55%) Lead
7 67 (6.84%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 59 (6.02%) Data Engineer
9 58 (5.92%) Software Engineer
10 57 (5.82%) Java Developer
11 51 (5.20%) Test Engineer
12 50 (5.10%) Cloud Engineer
13 49 (5.00%) Senior DevOps
13 49 (5.00%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 48 (4.90%) Architect
15 35 (3.57%) Platform Engineer
16 33 (3.37%) GCP Engineer
17 30 (3.06%) Senior Developer
18 26 (2.65%) Java Engineer
18 26 (2.65%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 157 (16.02%) REST
2 135 (13.78%) Kafka
3 129 (13.16%) Spring
4 115 (11.73%) Spring Boot
5 101 (10.31%) Elastic Stack
6 97 (9.90%) RESTful
7 96 (9.80%) Node.js
8 71 (7.24%) React
9 62 (6.33%) Playwright
10 42 (4.29%) PySpark
11 39 (3.98%) HTML
12 35 (3.57%) pytest
13 33 (3.37%) OpenTelemetry
14 32 (3.27%) JSON
14 32 (3.27%) RabbitMQ
15 31 (3.16%) Jest
15 31 (3.16%) OpenID
16 29 (2.96%) CSS
16 29 (2.96%) LDAP
17 28 (2.86%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 152 (15.51%) Cloud Native
2 74 (7.55%) Distributed Systems
3 49 (5.00%) Product Ownership
4 46 (4.69%) Public Cloud
5 27 (2.76%) Onboarding
6 16 (1.63%) Data Centre
7 14 (1.43%) Private Cloud
8 13 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
10 10 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
10 10 (1.02%) PKI
11 9 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (0.92%) Mainframe
11 9 (0.92%) Management Information System
11 9 (0.92%) Security Posture
12 8 (0.82%) Distributed Computing
12 8 (0.82%) Virtual Team
13 7 (0.71%) Algorithms
13 7 (0.71%) Synthetic Data
Operating Systems
1 197 (20.10%) Linux
2 65 (6.63%) Windows
3 38 (3.88%) Unix
4 29 (2.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (1.73%) Windows Server
6 11 (1.12%) Apple iOS
7 10 (1.02%) Android
7 10 (1.02%) CentOS
8 8 (0.82%) VMS
9 5 (0.51%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.51%) zOS
10 3 (0.31%) Solaris
10 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.20%) Debian
11 2 (0.20%) Rocky
12 1 (0.10%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.10%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 780 (79.59%) CI/CD
2 596 (60.82%) DevOps
3 373 (38.06%) Infrastructure as Code
4 369 (37.65%) Agile
5 349 (35.61%) Containerisation
6 293 (29.90%) Test Automation
7 205 (20.92%) Microservices
8 180 (18.37%) Problem-Solving
9 171 (17.45%) Observability
10 131 (13.37%) Software Engineering
11 126 (12.86%) Scrum
12 121 (12.35%) Continuous Improvement
13 104 (10.61%) Analytics
14 87 (8.88%) DevSecOps
14 87 (8.88%) Platform Engineering
15 84 (8.57%) TDD
16 77 (7.86%) Data Pipeline
16 77 (7.86%) Test Strategy
17 75 (7.65%) Infrastructure Automation
18 71 (7.24%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 438 (44.69%) Python
2 292 (29.80%) Java
3 173 (17.65%) SQL
4 165 (16.84%) Bash
5 112 (11.43%) JavaScript
6 89 (9.08%) TypeScript
7 82 (8.37%) PowerShell
8 80 (8.16%) Go
9 51 (5.20%) Shell Script
10 20 (2.04%) C#
11 19 (1.94%) Ruby
12 17 (1.73%) Kotlin
13 15 (1.53%) PL/SQL
14 11 (1.12%) Bicep
15 10 (1.02%) Perl
16 9 (0.92%) Groovy
16 9 (0.92%) Scala
17 8 (0.82%) C++
17 8 (0.82%) Rust
18 7 (0.71%) C
Qualifications
1 360 (36.73%) Security Cleared
2 295 (30.10%) SC Cleared
3 60 (6.12%) Degree
4 51 (5.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (5.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (4.39%) AWS Certification
7 29 (2.96%) DV Cleared
8 27 (2.76%) Master's Degree
9 21 (2.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 14 (1.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 14 (1.43%) CISSP
11 13 (1.33%) CISM
12 10 (1.02%) Azure Certification
13 9 (0.92%) Oracle Certification
14 8 (0.82%) OCA
15 5 (0.51%) AWS Certified Developer
15 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
16 4 (0.41%) ISTQB
17 3 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
17 3 (0.31%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 123 (12.55%) QA
2 61 (6.22%) Accessibility
3 24 (2.45%) Data Quality
4 22 (2.24%) WCAG
5 21 (2.14%) GDPR
6 20 (2.04%) NIST
7 18 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 17 (1.73%) SLA
9 14 (1.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 11 (1.12%) NCSC
11 6 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.41%) Def Stans
13 2 (0.20%) HL7
13 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
14 1 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
14 1 (0.10%) IEC 61508
14 1 (0.10%) ISO 20022
14 1 (0.10%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.10%) MiFID
14 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
System Software
1 434 (44.29%) Docker
2 25 (2.55%) Active Directory
3 13 (1.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
6 5 (0.51%) HDFS
7 4 (0.41%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 3 (0.31%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.31%) vSphere
9 2 (0.20%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.10%) Squid
10 1 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 507 (51.73%) Kubernetes
2 452 (46.12%) Terraform
3 244 (24.90%) Grafana
4 227 (23.16%) Ansible
5 196 (20.00%) Prometheus
6 54 (5.51%) Argo
7 20 (2.04%) Istio
8 19 (1.94%) Podman
9 18 (1.84%) Puppet
10 17 (1.73%) Kibana
11 16 (1.63%) Progress Chef
12 13 (1.33%) Packer
13 11 (1.12%) Fluentd
14 9 (0.92%) Red Hat Satellite
15 8 (0.82%) Karpenter
15 8 (0.82%) linkerd
16 7 (0.71%) Check_MK
16 7 (0.71%) Sysdig
17 6 (0.61%) Nagios
18 5 (0.51%) Rancher
Vendors
1 106 (10.82%) Splunk
2 77 (7.86%) Microsoft
3 74 (7.55%) Oracle
4 48 (4.90%) Google
5 47 (4.80%) Red Hat
6 34 (3.47%) VMware
7 31 (3.16%) ServiceNow
8 23 (2.35%) Databricks
9 18 (1.84%) Dynatrace
10 17 (1.73%) Informatica
10 17 (1.73%) Salesforce
11 16 (1.63%) F5
12 15 (1.53%) Atlassian
12 15 (1.53%) Palo Alto
13 14 (1.43%) CheckPoint
13 14 (1.43%) Cribl.io
13 14 (1.43%) Talend
13 14 (1.43%) Veracode
14 13 (1.33%) Cisco
15 11 (1.12%) IBM