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 23 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 142 219
Rank change year-on-year +8 +77 +13
Contract jobs citing GitLab 943 576 464
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.01% 1.09%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.13% 13.95% 9.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 656 364 333
10th Percentile £386 £370 £375
25th Percentile £425 £439 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -5.38%
75th Percentile £575 £595 £650
90th Percentile £667 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -2.80% -9.09% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 1 8
10th Percentile £43.42 - £40.00
25th Percentile £52.50 - £52.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £82.96 £68.22
Median % change year-on-year -24.66% +21.61% +72.27%
75th Percentile £65.00 - £75.21
90th Percentile £80.65 - £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.75 £82.96 £74.44
% change year-on-year -25.57% +11.45% +87.98%

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 5,845 4,130 5,105
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.03% 14.44% 12.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,823 2,783 3,439
10th Percentile £350 £338 £355
25th Percentile £409 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £594 £625
90th Percentile £688 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 70 210
10th Percentile £34.74 £24.59 £32.87
25th Percentile £54.06 £47.07 £47.06
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.63 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.80% -11.35% +5.69%
75th Percentile £71.94 £74.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £83.04 £78.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.00 £60.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +11.20% -7.31% +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 23 May 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 23 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for GitLab in the UK

GitLab
Top 16 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 23 May 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 +10 793 £500 -4.76% 225
UK excluding London +23 472 £486 -2.80% 170
London -11 322 £525 -0.94% 67
Work from Home +12 284 £475 -5.00% 107
North of England -3 193 £500 - 69
Midlands +5 113 £463 -6.09% 20
West Midlands +6 101 £469 -10.67% 12
North West +2 94 £500 - 32
Yorkshire -24 69 £494 -6.00% 14
South East -43 63 £550 +9.89% 43
South West +4 58 £500 +8.70% 20
North East -4 43 £450 -14.29% 23
East of England -8 34 £483 +7.22% 8
Scotland -7 24 £401 -7.93% 7
East Midlands -23 12 £436 +40.19% 8
Northern Ireland +2 2 - - 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 74 (7.85%) Confluence
2 35 (3.71%) SAS
3 27 (2.86%) Apache Airflow
3 27 (2.86%) Apache Spark
4 25 (2.65%) Apache
5 14 (1.48%) nginx
6 12 (1.27%) OpenStack
7 11 (1.17%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.53%) CICS
9 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.32%) Camunda
10 3 (0.32%) CMS
10 3 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
11 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
11 2 (0.21%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.11%) Actimize
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
2 1 (0.11%) SAP Hybris
2 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.11%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 566 (60.02%) AWS
2 316 (33.51%) Azure
2 316 (33.51%) GitHub
3 224 (23.75%) GitHub Actions
4 159 (16.86%) GCP
5 139 (14.74%) Serverless
6 129 (13.68%) Amazon S3
7 118 (12.51%) Amazon EKS
8 115 (12.20%) AWS Lambda
9 113 (11.98%) Azure DevOps
10 98 (10.39%) Amazon EC2
11 94 (9.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 92 (9.76%) AWS CloudFormation
13 69 (7.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 65 (6.89%) OpenShift
15 48 (5.09%) Amazon ECS
16 38 (4.03%) Amazon SQS
16 38 (4.03%) Azure AKS
17 28 (2.97%) Power Platform
18 27 (2.86%) AWS CodePipeline
Communications & Networking
1 44 (4.67%) Firewall
2 31 (3.29%) DNS
3 23 (2.44%) TCP/IP
4 20 (2.12%) Network Security
5 19 (2.01%) BGP
6 18 (1.91%) OSPF
7 17 (1.80%) Ethernet VPN
7 17 (1.80%) VXLAN
7 17 (1.80%) WAN
8 15 (1.59%) BIG-IP
8 15 (1.59%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 15 (1.59%) SD-WAN
8 15 (1.59%) VPN
9 11 (1.17%) HTTP
9 11 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (1.06%) Reverse Proxy
11 7 (0.74%) WLAN
12 4 (0.42%) Multicast
12 4 (0.42%) SAN
12 4 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 80 (8.48%) PostgreSQL
2 62 (6.57%) MongoDB
3 44 (4.67%) NoSQL
3 44 (4.67%) Relational Database
4 42 (4.45%) Amazon RDS
5 39 (4.14%) DynamoDB
6 34 (3.61%) Amazon Athena
7 33 (3.50%) Amazon Redshift
7 33 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
7 33 (3.50%) MySQL
8 27 (2.86%) Data Lake
8 27 (2.86%) Power BI
8 27 (2.86%) Redis
9 25 (2.65%) SQL Server
10 24 (2.55%) Big Data
10 24 (2.55%) Pentaho
11 16 (1.70%) Oracle Database
12 14 (1.48%) DocumentDB
13 12 (1.27%) BigQuery
13 12 (1.27%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 420 (44.54%) Jenkins
2 205 (21.74%) Git
3 134 (14.21%) JIRA
4 89 (9.44%) Selenium
5 67 (7.10%) JUnit
6 52 (5.51%) Cucumber
7 46 (4.88%) Postman
8 45 (4.77%) REST Assured
9 38 (4.03%) JMeter
10 36 (3.82%) Gradle
11 32 (3.39%) Artifactory
11 32 (3.39%) SonarQube
12 31 (3.29%) Bitbucket
13 29 (3.08%) Gatling
14 26 (2.76%) Mockito
15 23 (2.44%) CircleCI
16 20 (2.12%) WebDriver
17 17 (1.80%) Snyk
17 17 (1.80%) Sonatype Nexus
18 16 (1.70%) Cypress.io
General
1 185 (19.62%) Social Skills
2 171 (18.13%) Public Sector
3 96 (10.18%) Finance
4 63 (6.68%) Banking
5 55 (5.83%) Analytical Skills
6 25 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (1.48%) Military
8 12 (1.27%) Aerospace
9 11 (1.17%) Retail
10 10 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (0.95%) Investment Banking
12 8 (0.85%) Financial Institution
12 8 (0.85%) Law
13 7 (0.74%) Legal
14 4 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (0.42%) Police
14 4 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.32%) Local Government
15 3 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 194 (20.57%) DevOps Engineer
2 161 (17.07%) Developer
3 148 (15.69%) Senior
4 94 (9.97%) AWS Engineer
5 83 (8.80%) Data Engineer
6 64 (6.79%) Lead
7 61 (6.47%) AWS DevOps
7 61 (6.47%) Software Engineer
8 55 (5.83%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 53 (5.62%) Java Developer
10 49 (5.20%) Architect
11 47 (4.98%) Cloud Engineer
12 42 (4.45%) Test Engineer
13 41 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
14 30 (3.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 29 (3.08%) Senior DevOps
16 28 (2.97%) Full-Stack Developer
16 28 (2.97%) Senior DevOps Engineer
17 27 (2.86%) GCP Engineer
17 27 (2.86%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (14.00%) Spring
2 130 (13.79%) Kafka
3 115 (12.20%) Spring Boot
4 113 (11.98%) REST
5 77 (8.17%) RESTful
6 73 (7.74%) Node.js
7 64 (6.79%) React
8 51 (5.41%) Elastic Stack
9 45 (4.77%) Playwright
10 37 (3.92%) OpenTelemetry
10 37 (3.92%) PySpark
11 33 (3.50%) LDAP
12 31 (3.29%) OAuth
13 30 (3.18%) YAML
14 27 (2.86%) Jest
14 27 (2.86%) JSON
14 27 (2.86%) RabbitMQ
15 26 (2.76%) HTML
15 26 (2.76%) OpenID
15 26 (2.76%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 153 (16.22%) Cloud Native
2 56 (5.94%) Distributed Systems
2 56 (5.94%) Product Ownership
3 37 (3.92%) Data Centre
4 32 (3.39%) Onboarding
5 20 (2.12%) Hybrid Cloud
6 17 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
6 17 (1.80%) Public Cloud
7 15 (1.59%) Private Cloud
8 12 (1.27%) Algorithms
8 12 (1.27%) Management Information System
9 11 (1.17%) Distributed Architecture
9 11 (1.17%) NHS
10 10 (1.06%) PKI
11 8 (0.85%) Distributed Computing
12 7 (0.74%) Linux Command Line
12 7 (0.74%) Mainframe
13 6 (0.64%) Data Protection Act
13 6 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
14 5 (0.53%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 169 (17.92%) Linux
2 47 (4.98%) Windows
3 45 (4.77%) Unix
4 44 (4.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.59%) CentOS
6 9 (0.95%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.74%) Apple iOS
7 7 (0.74%) VMS
7 7 (0.74%) zOS
8 5 (0.53%) Android
9 4 (0.42%) Debian
9 4 (0.42%) Rocky
9 4 (0.42%) Windows Server
10 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.11%) AIX
11 1 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 755 (80.06%) CI/CD
2 531 (56.31%) DevOps
3 351 (37.22%) Infrastructure as Code
4 328 (34.78%) Agile
5 310 (32.87%) Containerisation
6 281 (29.80%) Test Automation
7 180 (19.09%) Microservices
8 174 (18.45%) Observability
9 143 (15.16%) Software Engineering
10 135 (14.32%) Scrum
11 126 (13.36%) Problem-Solving
12 125 (13.26%) Continuous Improvement
13 122 (12.94%) Platform Engineering
14 92 (9.76%) ETL
15 91 (9.65%) DevSecOps
16 82 (8.70%) TDD
17 77 (8.17%) Analytics
18 75 (7.95%) AI
18 75 (7.95%) Migration
19 72 (7.64%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 359 (38.07%) Python
2 256 (27.15%) Java
3 211 (22.38%) SQL
4 142 (15.06%) Bash
5 91 (9.65%) JavaScript
6 77 (8.17%) TypeScript
7 64 (6.79%) PowerShell
8 45 (4.77%) Shell Script
9 40 (4.24%) Go
10 36 (3.82%) C#
11 22 (2.33%) PL/SQL
12 20 (2.12%) Bicep
13 19 (2.01%) Kotlin
14 15 (1.59%) C++
15 12 (1.27%) Scala
16 11 (1.17%) MATLAB
16 11 (1.17%) Ruby
17 9 (0.95%) C
18 8 (0.85%) Groovy
18 8 (0.85%) PHP
Qualifications
1 415 (44.01%) Security Cleared
2 349 (37.01%) SC Cleared
3 47 (4.98%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (4.24%) Degree
5 35 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 30 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
7 23 (2.44%) AWS Certification
8 11 (1.17%) Azure Certification
9 10 (1.06%) ISTQB
9 10 (1.06%) SAFe Agilist
10 9 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 8 (0.85%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 8 (0.85%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 5 (0.53%) CISSP
13 4 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (0.42%) CSSLP
13 4 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
13 4 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
14 3 (0.32%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (10.60%) QA
2 53 (5.62%) Accessibility
3 31 (3.29%) Data Quality
4 22 (2.33%) SLA
5 16 (1.70%) GDPR
6 14 (1.48%) WCAG
7 11 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (1.06%) NIST
8 10 (1.06%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.64%) NCSC
10 5 (0.53%) FATCA
11 4 (0.42%) ISO 20022
12 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.11%) Def Stans
13 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.11%) GRC
13 1 (0.11%) HL7
13 1 (0.11%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 381 (40.40%) Docker
2 24 (2.55%) Active Directory
3 17 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.64%) HDFS
5 6 (0.64%) Squid
6 4 (0.42%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 3 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.32%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.21%) iptables
8 2 (0.21%) vSphere
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.11%) VirtualBox
9 1 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.11%) zsh
Systems Management
1 425 (45.07%) Kubernetes
2 419 (44.43%) Terraform
3 203 (21.53%) Ansible
3 203 (21.53%) Grafana
4 170 (18.03%) Prometheus
5 56 (5.94%) Argo
6 29 (3.08%) Puppet
7 22 (2.33%) Istio
8 17 (1.80%) Progress Chef
9 16 (1.70%) Podman
10 14 (1.48%) Red Hat Satellite
11 11 (1.17%) Check_MK
12 10 (1.06%) Kibana
13 9 (0.95%) linkerd
14 8 (0.85%) Packer
15 7 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
16 6 (0.64%) Cilium
16 6 (0.64%) Karpenter
17 4 (0.42%) Salt
17 4 (0.42%) Suricata
Vendors
1 97 (10.29%) Oracle
2 68 (7.21%) Splunk
3 61 (6.47%) Microsoft
4 47 (4.98%) Red Hat
5 46 (4.88%) Google
6 42 (4.45%) Talend
7 38 (4.03%) VMware
8 37 (3.92%) ServiceNow
9 36 (3.82%) Informatica
10 29 (3.08%) Databricks
11 25 (2.65%) Dynatrace
12 24 (2.55%) Denodo
13 20 (2.12%) Salesforce
14 18 (1.91%) Arista
14 18 (1.91%) F5
15 16 (1.70%) Palo Alto
16 14 (1.48%) Aruba
17 10 (1.06%) Tenable
17 10 (1.06%) Veracode
18 8 (0.85%) IBM