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 21 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 136 242
Rank change year-on-year +30 +106 -59
Contract jobs citing GitLab 930 596 454
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.47% 1.89% 1.05%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.98% 14.06% 8.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 700 397 342
10th Percentile £380 £363 £405
25th Percentile £426 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £554
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -0.77% -7.63%
75th Percentile £578 £675 £638
90th Percentile £666 £734 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £545
% change year-on-year - -8.26% +0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 5 1
10th Percentile £39.53 £65.60 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £74.00 £58.75
Median hourly rate £56.25 £74.44 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.44% +24.07% -7.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £87.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £82.50 £92.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £74.44 £60.00
% change year-on-year -26.11% +24.07% -7.69%

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 5,477 4,238 5,358
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.54% 13.46% 12.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,783 2,660 3,753
10th Percentile £343 £331 £363
25th Percentile £406 £410 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -6.19% -4.82%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £506
% change year-on-year -0.42% -5.64% -3.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 73 210
10th Percentile £39.00 £26.70 £44.26
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.25 £51.56
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 £77.26
90th Percentile £81.75 £76.05 £90.00
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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 +16 768 £513 -9.93% 316
UK excluding London +43 472 £500 - 295
London -1 311 £525 -12.50% 62
Work from Home +17 246 £500 -8.59% 203
North of England +7 222 £488 -3.94% 61
North West -4 98 £420 -16.00% 34
Yorkshire +4 93 £513 -2.38% 22
Midlands +18 90 £525 +8.70% 28
West Midlands +23 82 £525 +7.25% 13
South East -20 53 £500 -2.44% 92
South West +18 49 £523 -22.45% 40
Scotland +24 40 £436 +0.23% 23
North East -8 37 £488 -7.14% 5
East of England -2 25 £478 +9.26% 37
East Midlands -23 8 £400 +20.57% 15
Northern Ireland +2 6 - - 5
Wales -1 5 £435 -19.07% 14

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 55 (5.91%) Confluence
2 34 (3.66%) Apache Airflow
3 31 (3.33%) SAS
4 24 (2.58%) Apache
5 18 (1.94%) Apache Spark
6 15 (1.61%) OpenStack
7 14 (1.51%) nginx
8 7 (0.75%) Appian
9 5 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.43%) CMS
10 4 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.32%) Ethereum
11 3 (0.32%) Hyperledger
12 2 (0.22%) SharePoint
13 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 1 (0.11%) Documentum
13 1 (0.11%) FileNet
13 1 (0.11%) Headless CMS
13 1 (0.11%) Mule
Applications
1 2 (0.22%) 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 (0.22%) 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
1 569 (61.18%) AWS
2 259 (27.85%) Azure
3 254 (27.31%) GitHub
4 174 (18.71%) GitHub Actions
5 171 (18.39%) GCP
6 154 (16.56%) Serverless
7 127 (13.66%) Amazon S3
8 123 (13.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 120 (12.90%) Amazon EKS
10 118 (12.69%) AWS CloudFormation
11 114 (12.26%) Amazon EC2
12 110 (11.83%) AWS Lambda
13 90 (9.68%) OpenShift
14 89 (9.57%) Azure DevOps
15 85 (9.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 80 (8.60%) Amazon ECS
17 38 (4.09%) Azure AKS
18 33 (3.55%) Datadog
19 24 (2.58%) Route 53
20 23 (2.47%) Amazon ELB
Communications & Networking
1 64 (6.88%) Firewall
2 49 (5.27%) DNS
3 43 (4.62%) VPN
4 34 (3.66%) TCP/IP
5 25 (2.69%) Network Security
6 20 (2.15%) SSL
7 6 (0.65%) Kerberos
7 6 (0.65%) WAN
8 5 (0.54%) BGP
8 5 (0.54%) HTTP
8 5 (0.54%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.43%) Multicast
9 4 (0.43%) Reverse Proxy
9 4 (0.43%) VXLAN
10 3 (0.32%) DHCP
10 3 (0.32%) Ethernet VPN
10 3 (0.32%) FTP
10 3 (0.32%) OSPF
10 3 (0.32%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.32%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (10.00%) PostgreSQL
2 81 (8.71%) MongoDB
3 79 (8.49%) NoSQL
4 71 (7.63%) Amazon RDS
5 32 (3.44%) Data Lake
6 30 (3.23%) DynamoDB
7 25 (2.69%) MySQL
7 25 (2.69%) Redis
8 23 (2.47%) Amazon Athena
9 21 (2.26%) Relational Database
10 18 (1.94%) Big Data
10 18 (1.94%) SQL Server
11 15 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
12 14 (1.51%) Apache Cassandra
12 14 (1.51%) Oracle Database
13 12 (1.29%) Power BI
14 11 (1.18%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 10 (1.08%) BigQuery
16 8 (0.86%) Delta Lake
16 8 (0.86%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 454 (48.82%) Jenkins
2 221 (23.76%) Git
3 130 (13.98%) JIRA
4 88 (9.46%) Selenium
5 64 (6.88%) Cucumber
6 61 (6.56%) JUnit
7 43 (4.62%) Postman
8 40 (4.30%) Maven
9 33 (3.55%) Artifactory
9 33 (3.55%) SonarQube
10 32 (3.44%) Cypress.io
11 31 (3.33%) Gradle
12 30 (3.23%) Bitbucket
12 30 (3.23%) JMeter
12 30 (3.23%) Sonatype Nexus
13 28 (3.01%) REST Assured
14 27 (2.90%) CircleCI
15 23 (2.47%) Gatling
16 22 (2.37%) Liquibase
17 18 (1.94%) Mockito
General
1 230 (24.73%) Social Skills
2 151 (16.24%) Finance
3 134 (14.41%) Public Sector
4 100 (10.75%) Banking
5 66 (7.10%) Analytical Skills
6 24 (2.58%) Financial Institution
7 21 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (2.15%) Telecoms
9 14 (1.51%) Military
10 12 (1.29%) Aerospace
11 10 (1.08%) Investment Banking
12 8 (0.86%) Games
12 8 (0.86%) Retail
12 8 (0.86%) Retail Banking
13 7 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.32%) Corporate Banking
15 3 (0.32%) Local Government
15 3 (0.32%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 225 (24.19%) DevOps Engineer
2 185 (19.89%) Developer
3 150 (16.13%) Senior
4 100 (10.75%) AWS Engineer
5 74 (7.96%) AWS DevOps
6 72 (7.74%) Lead
7 63 (6.77%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 61 (6.56%) Java Developer
9 58 (6.24%) Software Engineer
10 46 (4.95%) Data Engineer
11 45 (4.84%) Senior DevOps
11 45 (4.84%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 44 (4.73%) Cloud Engineer
13 43 (4.62%) Test Engineer
14 42 (4.52%) Architect
15 35 (3.76%) Automation Engineer
16 34 (3.66%) Senior Developer
17 30 (3.23%) Platform Engineer
18 28 (3.01%) GCP Engineer
19 26 (2.80%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (16.24%) REST
2 134 (14.41%) Kafka
3 115 (12.37%) Spring
4 107 (11.51%) Spring Boot
5 101 (10.86%) Elastic Stack
6 100 (10.75%) Node.js
7 93 (10.00%) RESTful
8 57 (6.13%) React
9 50 (5.38%) Playwright
10 35 (3.76%) JSON
11 34 (3.66%) HTML
12 33 (3.55%) PySpark
13 32 (3.44%) OpenID
13 32 (3.44%) OpenTelemetry
14 31 (3.33%) RabbitMQ
15 28 (3.01%) pytest
16 27 (2.90%) Jest
16 27 (2.90%) LDAP
17 23 (2.47%) OAuth
18 22 (2.37%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 143 (15.38%) Cloud Native
2 69 (7.42%) Distributed Systems
3 50 (5.38%) Product Ownership
4 45 (4.84%) Public Cloud
5 26 (2.80%) Onboarding
6 17 (1.83%) Data Centre
6 17 (1.83%) Private Cloud
7 16 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
8 13 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (1.40%) Linux Command Line
8 13 (1.40%) PKI
9 9 (0.97%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
9 9 (0.97%) Management Information System
9 9 (0.97%) Security Posture
9 9 (0.97%) Synthetic Data
10 8 (0.86%) Algorithms
10 8 (0.86%) Legacy Applications
11 7 (0.75%) Distributed Computing
11 7 (0.75%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 189 (20.32%) Linux
2 59 (6.34%) Windows
3 30 (3.23%) Unix
4 27 (2.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (1.72%) Windows Server
6 12 (1.29%) CentOS
7 10 (1.08%) Android
7 10 (1.08%) Apple iOS
8 7 (0.75%) VMS
9 3 (0.32%) Solaris
9 3 (0.32%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.11%) Debian
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.11%) Rocky
10 1 (0.11%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.11%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 738 (79.35%) CI/CD
2 578 (62.15%) DevOps
3 372 (40.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 353 (37.96%) Containerisation
5 332 (35.70%) Agile
6 260 (27.96%) Test Automation
7 202 (21.72%) Microservices
8 168 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
9 157 (16.88%) Observability
10 138 (14.84%) Software Engineering
11 112 (12.04%) Scrum
12 102 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
13 93 (10.00%) Analytics
14 88 (9.46%) Infrastructure Automation
15 85 (9.14%) DevSecOps
16 80 (8.60%) Migration
17 76 (8.17%) Platform Engineering
18 75 (8.06%) High Availability
19 72 (7.74%) Data Pipeline
20 68 (7.31%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 429 (46.13%) Python
2 271 (29.14%) Java
3 179 (19.25%) Bash
4 151 (16.24%) SQL
5 109 (11.72%) JavaScript
6 93 (10.00%) Go
7 79 (8.49%) PowerShell
8 78 (8.39%) TypeScript
9 47 (5.05%) Shell Script
10 22 (2.37%) C#
11 17 (1.83%) Ruby
12 16 (1.72%) Kotlin
13 14 (1.51%) PL/SQL
14 12 (1.29%) Perl
15 10 (1.08%) Rust
16 9 (0.97%) C
16 9 (0.97%) Groovy
17 8 (0.86%) C++
17 8 (0.86%) Scala
18 7 (0.75%) Korn
Qualifications
1 328 (35.27%) Security Cleared
2 263 (28.28%) SC Cleared
3 62 (6.67%) Degree
4 52 (5.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 39 (4.19%) AWS Certification
6 38 (4.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (3.87%) DV Cleared
8 32 (3.44%) Master's Degree
9 20 (2.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (1.40%) CISSP
11 12 (1.29%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 12 (1.29%) CISM
12 11 (1.18%) Oracle Certification
13 10 (1.08%) OCA
14 6 (0.65%) AWS Certified Developer
15 5 (0.54%) Azure Certification
16 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
17 3 (0.32%) CCNP
17 3 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 123 (13.23%) QA
2 47 (5.05%) Accessibility
3 23 (2.47%) GDPR
4 19 (2.04%) NIST
4 19 (2.04%) WCAG
5 18 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (1.51%) Data Quality
6 14 (1.51%) SLA
7 13 (1.40%) NCSC
7 13 (1.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 7 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.43%) Def Stans
10 2 (0.22%) HL7
11 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.11%) IEC 61508
11 1 (0.11%) ISO 20022
11 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) MiFID
11 1 (0.11%) MISRA
11 1 (0.11%) MISRA C
System Software
1 416 (44.73%) Docker
2 22 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 16 (1.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.86%) Virtual Servers
5 7 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.43%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 3 (0.32%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.32%) vSphere
8 2 (0.22%) HDFS
8 2 (0.22%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.11%) KVM
9 1 (0.11%) Squid
9 1 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 498 (53.55%) Kubernetes
2 448 (48.17%) Terraform
3 246 (26.45%) Ansible
4 231 (24.84%) Grafana
5 187 (20.11%) Prometheus
6 48 (5.16%) Argo
7 24 (2.58%) Istio
7 24 (2.58%) Puppet
8 21 (2.26%) Podman
9 19 (2.04%) Progress Chef
10 16 (1.72%) Kibana
11 13 (1.40%) Fluentd
11 13 (1.40%) Packer
12 10 (1.08%) linkerd
12 10 (1.08%) NetBackup
13 9 (0.97%) Red Hat Satellite
14 8 (0.86%) Karpenter
15 7 (0.75%) Check_MK
15 7 (0.75%) Rancher
15 7 (0.75%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 105 (11.29%) Splunk
2 76 (8.17%) Microsoft
3 67 (7.20%) Oracle
4 55 (5.91%) Red Hat
5 46 (4.95%) Google
6 38 (4.09%) VMware
7 25 (2.69%) Dynatrace
7 25 (2.69%) ServiceNow
8 24 (2.58%) Databricks
9 21 (2.26%) F5
9 21 (2.26%) Palo Alto
10 20 (2.15%) CheckPoint
11 17 (1.83%) Cisco
12 14 (1.51%) Atlassian
13 13 (1.40%) Cribl.io
14 11 (1.18%) Commvault
14 11 (1.18%) Veritas
15 10 (1.08%) IBM
16 9 (0.97%) Veracode
17 7 (0.75%) SAP