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 16 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 137 185
Rank change year-on-year -1 +48 +59
Contract jobs citing GitLab 1,068 697 526
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.97% 2.12% 1.38%
As % of the Development Applications category 17.08% 13.90% 10.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 748 467 359
10th Percentile £381 £375 £359
25th Percentile £425 £447 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £603 £650
90th Percentile £688 £688 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 9 6
10th Percentile - £59.75 £69.50
25th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -9.46% +86.87%
75th Percentile £75.00 - £74.44
90th Percentile £95.00 £68.10 £74.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.22 £67.00 £74.00
% change year-on-year +1.81% -9.46% +23.33%

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 6,254 5,013 5,075
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.52% 15.22% 13.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,005 3,372 3,242
10th Percentile £354 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 112 175
10th Percentile £25.54 £31.28 £28.09
25th Percentile £51.27 £50.75 £51.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.30 £87.05 £73.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 -3 900 £500 -4.76% 830
UK excluding London -15 513 £500 - 486
London +1 385 £513 -3.30% 410
Work from Home +5 372 £488 -7.14% 388
North of England -39 180 £475 -1.04% 147
Midlands +29 138 £473 -12.50% 44
West Midlands +23 130 £475 -13.64% 36
South East -30 82 £546 +9.14% 77
North East +7 76 £413 -11.29% 31
North West -33 75 £569 +21.32% 79
South West -19 65 £550 -8.33% 100
Yorkshire -67 40 £550 +10.00% 38
East of England -16 37 £463 -5.13% 49
Scotland -23 24 £413 -1.79% 50
East Midlands -8 8 £414 +53.15% 8
Wales -10 2 - - 7
Northern Ireland +1 1 - - 13

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
1 101 (9.46%) Confluence
2 75 (7.02%) Apache Spark
3 72 (6.74%) Apache Airflow
4 58 (5.43%) Apache
5 34 (3.18%) Jupyter
6 30 (2.81%) SAS
7 12 (1.12%) Camunda
8 6 (0.56%) nginx
9 5 (0.47%) OpenStack
9 5 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.37%) CICS
11 3 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.19%) CMS
12 2 (0.19%) PowerExchange
12 2 (0.19%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.19%) Traefik
12 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
13 1 (0.094%) FactoryTalk
13 1 (0.094%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 1 (0.094%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Trello
2 1 (0.094%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.094%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.094%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.094%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 702 (65.73%) AWS
2 365 (34.18%) Azure
3 356 (33.33%) GitHub
4 251 (23.50%) GitHub Actions
5 179 (16.76%) Azure DevOps
6 169 (15.82%) GCP
7 142 (13.30%) Amazon S3
8 141 (13.20%) Serverless
9 130 (12.17%) AWS Lambda
10 129 (12.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 128 (11.99%) Amazon EKS
12 101 (9.46%) Amazon EC2
13 79 (7.40%) AWS CloudFormation
14 67 (6.27%) Amazon ECS
14 67 (6.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 55 (5.15%) OpenShift
16 52 (4.87%) Amazon EMR
17 46 (4.31%) Amazon SQS
18 36 (3.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 36 (3.37%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 46 (4.31%) Firewall
2 37 (3.46%) DNS
3 30 (2.81%) Network Security
4 27 (2.53%) BGP
4 27 (2.53%) Ethernet VPN
4 27 (2.53%) VXLAN
5 25 (2.34%) TCP/IP
6 22 (2.06%) WAN
7 21 (1.97%) SD-WAN
8 20 (1.87%) OSPF
8 20 (1.87%) Wi-Fi
9 19 (1.78%) BIG-IP
9 19 (1.78%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 13 (1.22%) VPN
11 12 (1.12%) HTTP
12 11 (1.03%) WLAN
13 9 (0.84%) SSL
14 8 (0.75%) 5G
14 8 (0.75%) DHCP
14 8 (0.75%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (9.18%) PostgreSQL
2 88 (8.24%) MongoDB
3 56 (5.24%) Relational Database
4 54 (5.06%) Amazon Athena
5 51 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
6 48 (4.49%) Amazon RDS
7 47 (4.40%) NoSQL
8 45 (4.21%) Amazon Redshift
9 41 (3.84%) DynamoDB
10 38 (3.56%) Data Lake
11 36 (3.37%) Oracle Database
11 36 (3.37%) SQL Server
12 34 (3.18%) MySQL
12 34 (3.18%) Redis
13 33 (3.09%) Big Data
13 33 (3.09%) Power BI
14 30 (2.81%) Pentaho
15 27 (2.53%) RDBMS
16 15 (1.40%) BigQuery
17 14 (1.31%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 428 (40.07%) Jenkins
2 257 (24.06%) Git
3 143 (13.39%) JIRA
4 87 (8.15%) Selenium
5 81 (7.58%) JUnit
6 62 (5.81%) SonarQube
7 60 (5.62%) Cucumber
8 51 (4.78%) Maven
9 39 (3.65%) Gradle
10 38 (3.56%) Mockito
11 37 (3.46%) Gatling
12 35 (3.28%) Bitbucket
13 33 (3.09%) REST Assured
14 31 (2.90%) Artifactory
14 31 (2.90%) JMeter
15 26 (2.43%) Sonatype Nexus
16 23 (2.15%) Postman
17 20 (1.87%) WebDriver
18 17 (1.59%) Cypress.io
19 16 (1.50%) Snyk
General
1 209 (19.57%) Social Skills
2 200 (18.73%) Public Sector
3 107 (10.02%) Finance
4 70 (6.55%) Analytical Skills
5 67 (6.27%) Banking
6 30 (2.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (2.15%) Military
8 16 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (1.31%) Law
9 14 (1.31%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.03%) Aerospace
10 11 (1.03%) Legal
11 7 (0.66%) Publishing
12 6 (0.56%) Police
13 5 (0.47%) Back Office
13 5 (0.47%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.37%) Marketing
14 4 (0.37%) Retail
15 3 (0.28%) Local Government
15 3 (0.28%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 243 (22.75%) DevOps Engineer
2 188 (17.60%) Developer
3 184 (17.23%) Senior
4 125 (11.70%) AWS Engineer
5 100 (9.36%) Data Engineer
6 78 (7.30%) AWS DevOps
7 71 (6.65%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 71 (6.65%) Lead
8 60 (5.62%) Java Developer
9 56 (5.24%) Cloud Engineer
10 54 (5.06%) Software Engineer
11 48 (4.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 46 (4.31%) Platform Engineer
12 46 (4.31%) Test Engineer
13 43 (4.03%) Software Developer
14 41 (3.84%) Architect
15 36 (3.37%) Full-Stack Developer
16 31 (2.90%) Senior DevOps
17 30 (2.81%) Java Engineer
17 30 (2.81%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 523 (48.97%) Terraform
2 160 (14.98%) Kafka
3 143 (13.39%) Spring
4 129 (12.08%) Spring Boot
5 124 (11.61%) REST
6 77 (7.21%) RESTful
7 76 (7.12%) React
8 71 (6.65%) Playwright
9 55 (5.15%) Node.js
10 54 (5.06%) RabbitMQ
11 53 (4.96%) PySpark
12 51 (4.78%) JSON
13 41 (3.84%) HTML
14 36 (3.37%) CSS
15 34 (3.18%) OAuth
15 34 (3.18%) YAML
16 31 (2.90%) JPA
17 30 (2.81%) Keycloak
17 30 (2.81%) pytest
18 29 (2.72%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 216 (20.22%) Cloud Native
2 60 (5.62%) Distributed Systems
3 56 (5.24%) Product Ownership
4 36 (3.37%) Data Centre
4 36 (3.37%) Hybrid Cloud
5 29 (2.72%) Data Structures
5 29 (2.72%) Onboarding
6 26 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
7 20 (1.87%) AI Agents
8 17 (1.59%) Algorithms
9 16 (1.50%) PKI
10 15 (1.40%) Distributed Architecture
10 15 (1.40%) Public Cloud
11 13 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.22%) Mainframe
12 11 (1.03%) Private Cloud
13 10 (0.94%) Security Posture
14 9 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
15 8 (0.75%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (0.75%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 212 (19.85%) Linux
2 52 (4.87%) Unix
3 46 (4.31%) Windows
4 44 (4.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (1.50%) CentOS
6 15 (1.40%) Ubuntu
7 12 (1.12%) AIX
8 11 (1.03%) zOS
9 10 (0.94%) Windows Server
10 9 (0.84%) VMS
11 3 (0.28%) Debian
11 3 (0.28%) Rocky
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.094%) Amazon Linux
13 1 (0.094%) Android
13 1 (0.094%) Apple iOS
13 1 (0.094%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.094%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 905 (84.74%) CI/CD
2 644 (60.30%) DevOps
3 492 (46.07%) Infrastructure as Code
4 433 (40.54%) Agile
5 363 (33.99%) Containerisation
6 325 (30.43%) Test Automation
7 216 (20.22%) Microservices
8 192 (17.98%) Observability
9 181 (16.95%) Scrum
10 178 (16.67%) Software Engineering
11 159 (14.89%) Continuous Improvement
12 157 (14.70%) Platform Engineering
13 142 (13.30%) AI
14 141 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
15 112 (10.49%) DevSecOps
16 110 (10.30%) Mentoring
17 108 (10.11%) Migration
18 107 (10.02%) ETL
19 106 (9.93%) Event-Driven
20 104 (9.74%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 469 (43.91%) Python
2 266 (24.91%) Java
3 248 (23.22%) SQL
4 189 (17.70%) Bash
5 101 (9.46%) JavaScript
6 92 (8.61%) PowerShell
7 67 (6.27%) C#
8 65 (6.09%) TypeScript
9 46 (4.31%) Go
10 39 (3.65%) Shell Script
11 22 (2.06%) Bicep
12 21 (1.97%) PL/SQL
13 14 (1.31%) C++
14 12 (1.12%) Groovy
15 11 (1.03%) Scala
16 9 (0.84%) Kotlin
17 7 (0.66%) R
18 6 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
19 5 (0.47%) Cypher
19 5 (0.47%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 521 (48.78%) Security Cleared
2 421 (39.42%) SC Cleared
3 82 (7.68%) BPSS Clearance
4 79 (7.40%) DV Cleared
5 52 (4.87%) Degree
6 49 (4.59%) AWS Certification
7 39 (3.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.87%) Azure Certification
9 17 (1.59%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 16 (1.50%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 16 (1.50%) CISSP
11 13 (1.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 13 (1.22%) ISTQB
12 9 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
12 9 (0.84%) SAFe Agilist
13 7 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 6 (0.56%) CSSLP
15 5 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
15 5 (0.47%) GCFA
15 5 (0.47%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (12.36%) QA
2 58 (5.43%) Accessibility
3 47 (4.40%) Data Quality
4 24 (2.25%) WCAG
5 16 (1.50%) NIST
6 13 (1.22%) GDPR
7 12 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.94%) NCSC
9 9 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.66%) SLA
12 6 (0.56%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.47%) FATCA
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 1 (0.094%) Disclosure Scotland
15 1 (0.094%) JSP 440
15 1 (0.094%) MIL-STD-1553
15 1 (0.094%) NIST 800
15 1 (0.094%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 444 (41.57%) Docker
2 24 (2.25%) Active Directory
2 24 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (1.22%) Oracle RAC
4 9 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.56%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.47%) Squid
7 4 (0.37%) HDFS
8 3 (0.28%) VirtualBox
9 2 (0.19%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.19%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.19%) iptables
9 2 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.094%) Firmware
10 1 (0.094%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.094%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 489 (45.79%) Kubernetes
2 256 (23.97%) Ansible
3 176 (16.48%) Grafana
4 152 (14.23%) Prometheus
5 50 (4.68%) Argo
6 42 (3.93%) Puppet
7 31 (2.90%) Progress Chef
8 20 (1.87%) Kibana
9 15 (1.40%) Istio
10 14 (1.31%) Packer
11 13 (1.22%) Data Guard
11 13 (1.22%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.94%) Podman
12 10 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
13 9 (0.84%) Cilium
13 9 (0.84%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.47%) CASB
14 5 (0.47%) Red Hat Satellite
15 4 (0.37%) HP Fortify
15 4 (0.37%) Salt
Vendors
1 123 (11.52%) Oracle
2 72 (6.74%) Google
3 71 (6.65%) Microsoft
4 55 (5.15%) Talend
5 54 (5.06%) Splunk
6 50 (4.68%) Informatica
7 43 (4.03%) VMware
8 40 (3.75%) Databricks
9 35 (3.28%) Dynatrace
10 26 (2.43%) Denodo
10 26 (2.43%) Red Hat
11 23 (2.15%) IBM
12 22 (2.06%) ServiceNow
13 21 (1.97%) Palo Alto
14 20 (1.87%) F5
15 18 (1.69%) Arista
15 18 (1.69%) Aruba
15 18 (1.69%) Trend Micro
16 14 (1.31%) Veracode
17 12 (1.12%) Cisco