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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 132 176
Rank change year-on-year -6 +44 +68
Contract jobs citing GitLab 1,098 697 534
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.00% 2.13% 1.42%
As % of the Development Applications category 17.32% 13.98% 10.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 772 468 365
10th Percentile £375 £375 £356
25th Percentile £425 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.23% -1.36%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £650
90th Percentile £688 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £515
% change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 9 7
10th Percentile - £59.75 £70.40
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 - £74.72
90th Percentile £95.00 £68.10 £80.00
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 6,341 4,984 5,000
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.56% 15.24% 13.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,050 3,353 3,183
10th Percentile £354 £325 £350
25th Percentile £414 £406 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £694 £688 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 267 109 175
10th Percentile £24.11 £28.88 £28.09
25th Percentile £51.25 £50.00 £51.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £71.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £80.60 £73.90
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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +7 923 £500 -4.76% 650
UK excluding London -15 527 £500 - 403
London +17 393 £520 -1.89% 288
Work from Home +2 381 £495 -6.52% 305
North of England -48 183 £475 -2.56% 124
Midlands +37 145 £475 -12.04% 48
West Midlands +43 136 £475 -13.64% 40
South East -24 84 £550 +9.89% 65
North East -3 78 £413 -17.50% 31
North West -31 77 £569 +21.84% 71
South West -8 64 £550 -8.33% 78
East of England -21 39 £450 -7.69% 36
Yorkshire -68 39 £550 +10.00% 22
Scotland -21 25 £424 +0.95% 32
East Midlands -16 9 £405 +50.00% 8
Wales -13 2 - - 8
Northern Ireland 0 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
1 104 (9.47%) Confluence
2 80 (7.29%) Apache Spark
3 75 (6.83%) Apache Airflow
4 58 (5.28%) Apache
5 35 (3.19%) Jupyter
6 30 (2.73%) SAS
7 12 (1.09%) Camunda
8 7 (0.64%) nginx
9 5 (0.46%) OpenStack
9 5 (0.46%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.36%) CICS
11 3 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.18%) CMS
12 2 (0.18%) PowerExchange
12 2 (0.18%) Traefik
13 1 (0.091%) Appian
13 1 (0.091%) FactoryTalk
13 1 (0.091%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 1 (0.091%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (0.36%) Trello
2 1 (0.091%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.091%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.091%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 2 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.091%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 723 (65.85%) AWS
2 373 (33.97%) Azure
3 353 (32.15%) GitHub
4 247 (22.50%) GitHub Actions
5 177 (16.12%) Azure DevOps
6 172 (15.66%) GCP
7 147 (13.39%) Amazon S3
8 144 (13.11%) Serverless
9 139 (12.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 134 (12.20%) Amazon EKS
11 133 (12.11%) AWS Lambda
12 107 (9.74%) Amazon EC2
13 80 (7.29%) AWS CloudFormation
14 72 (6.56%) Amazon ECS
15 68 (6.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 58 (5.28%) OpenShift
17 55 (5.01%) Amazon EMR
18 51 (4.64%) Amazon SQS
19 37 (3.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
20 36 (3.28%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 48 (4.37%) Firewall
2 40 (3.64%) DNS
3 30 (2.73%) Network Security
4 29 (2.64%) BGP
4 29 (2.64%) Ethernet VPN
4 29 (2.64%) VXLAN
5 26 (2.37%) TCP/IP
6 24 (2.19%) Wi-Fi
7 22 (2.00%) WAN
8 21 (1.91%) SD-WAN
9 20 (1.82%) OSPF
10 19 (1.73%) BIG-IP
10 19 (1.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 13 (1.18%) VPN
12 12 (1.09%) HTTP
13 11 (1.00%) 5G
13 11 (1.00%) WLAN
14 10 (0.91%) 4G
14 10 (0.91%) NX-OS
14 10 (0.91%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (9.11%) PostgreSQL
2 95 (8.65%) MongoDB
3 57 (5.19%) Amazon Athena
4 55 (5.01%) Relational Database
5 52 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
6 51 (4.64%) Amazon RDS
7 48 (4.37%) NoSQL
8 45 (4.10%) Amazon Redshift
9 43 (3.92%) Data Lake
10 42 (3.83%) DynamoDB
11 37 (3.37%) SQL Server
12 36 (3.28%) Oracle Database
12 36 (3.28%) Redis
13 35 (3.19%) MySQL
14 34 (3.10%) Big Data
14 34 (3.10%) Power BI
15 30 (2.73%) Pentaho
16 27 (2.46%) RDBMS
17 16 (1.46%) Elasticsearch
18 15 (1.37%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 433 (39.44%) Jenkins
2 271 (24.68%) Git
3 149 (13.57%) JIRA
4 90 (8.20%) Selenium
5 86 (7.83%) JUnit
6 64 (5.83%) SonarQube
7 63 (5.74%) Cucumber
8 56 (5.10%) Maven
9 43 (3.92%) Mockito
10 40 (3.64%) Gradle
11 39 (3.55%) Gatling
12 36 (3.28%) Bitbucket
13 33 (3.01%) REST Assured
14 31 (2.82%) Artifactory
15 30 (2.73%) JMeter
16 28 (2.55%) Sonatype Nexus
17 24 (2.19%) Postman
18 18 (1.64%) WebDriver
19 17 (1.55%) Cypress.io
20 16 (1.46%) Snyk
General
1 213 (19.40%) Social Skills
2 207 (18.85%) Public Sector
3 108 (9.84%) Finance
4 72 (6.56%) Analytical Skills
5 67 (6.10%) Banking
6 33 (3.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (2.09%) Military
8 19 (1.73%) Telecoms
9 16 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
10 14 (1.28%) Law
11 11 (1.00%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.00%) Legal
12 8 (0.73%) Publishing
13 6 (0.55%) Back Office
13 6 (0.55%) Investment Banking
13 6 (0.55%) Police
14 4 (0.36%) Local Government
14 4 (0.36%) Marketing
14 4 (0.36%) Retail
15 3 (0.27%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 248 (22.59%) DevOps Engineer
2 192 (17.49%) Developer
3 185 (16.85%) Senior
4 129 (11.75%) AWS Engineer
5 98 (8.93%) Data Engineer
6 81 (7.38%) AWS DevOps
7 74 (6.74%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 71 (6.47%) Lead
9 61 (5.56%) Java Developer
10 55 (5.01%) Cloud Engineer
11 52 (4.74%) Software Engineer
12 51 (4.64%) Test Engineer
13 50 (4.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 49 (4.46%) Platform Engineer
15 47 (4.28%) Architect
16 46 (4.19%) Software Developer
17 36 (3.28%) Full-Stack Developer
18 34 (3.10%) Java Engineer
19 32 (2.91%) Senior DevOps
20 31 (2.82%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 538 (49.00%) Terraform
2 166 (15.12%) Kafka
3 150 (13.66%) Spring
4 134 (12.20%) Spring Boot
5 128 (11.66%) REST
6 77 (7.01%) React
7 76 (6.92%) RESTful
8 75 (6.83%) Playwright
9 56 (5.10%) RabbitMQ
10 55 (5.01%) Node.js
11 54 (4.92%) JSON
12 53 (4.83%) PySpark
13 41 (3.73%) HTML
14 36 (3.28%) CSS
14 36 (3.28%) JPA
14 36 (3.28%) OAuth
15 34 (3.10%) OpenAPI
16 33 (3.01%) YAML
17 31 (2.82%) Keycloak
17 31 (2.82%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 219 (19.95%) Cloud Native
2 59 (5.37%) Distributed Systems
3 52 (4.74%) Product Ownership
4 38 (3.46%) Data Centre
5 36 (3.28%) Hybrid Cloud
6 32 (2.91%) Onboarding
7 31 (2.82%) Data Structures
8 30 (2.73%) Enterprise Software
9 21 (1.91%) AI Agents
10 17 (1.55%) Algorithms
10 17 (1.55%) PKI
11 14 (1.28%) Distributed Architecture
11 14 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
11 14 (1.28%) Public Cloud
12 13 (1.18%) Mainframe
13 12 (1.09%) Private Cloud
14 10 (0.91%) Replication
14 10 (0.91%) Security Posture
15 9 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
16 8 (0.73%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 223 (20.31%) Linux
2 53 (4.83%) Unix
3 50 (4.55%) Windows
4 45 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (1.64%) CentOS
6 15 (1.37%) Ubuntu
7 12 (1.09%) AIX
7 12 (1.09%) VMS
8 11 (1.00%) zOS
9 10 (0.91%) Windows Server
10 2 (0.18%) Debian
10 2 (0.18%) Rocky
10 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.091%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.091%) Android
11 1 (0.091%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.091%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 925 (84.24%) CI/CD
2 650 (59.20%) DevOps
3 508 (46.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 444 (40.44%) Agile
5 376 (34.24%) Containerisation
6 333 (30.33%) Test Automation
7 220 (20.04%) Microservices
8 203 (18.49%) Observability
9 191 (17.40%) Scrum
10 180 (16.39%) Software Engineering
11 163 (14.85%) Continuous Improvement
12 158 (14.39%) Platform Engineering
13 151 (13.75%) AI
14 144 (13.11%) Problem-Solving
15 114 (10.38%) Mentoring
16 113 (10.29%) Deployment Automation
16 113 (10.29%) Migration
17 111 (10.11%) DevSecOps
18 109 (9.93%) Event-Driven
19 106 (9.65%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 480 (43.72%) Python
2 275 (25.05%) Java
3 254 (23.13%) SQL
4 191 (17.40%) Bash
5 102 (9.29%) JavaScript
6 89 (8.11%) PowerShell
7 67 (6.10%) C#
8 65 (5.92%) TypeScript
9 47 (4.28%) Go
10 44 (4.01%) Shell Script
11 21 (1.91%) PL/SQL
12 20 (1.82%) Bicep
13 15 (1.37%) C++
14 14 (1.28%) Groovy
15 13 (1.18%) Scala
16 9 (0.82%) Kotlin
17 7 (0.64%) R
18 6 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
19 5 (0.46%) Cypher
19 5 (0.46%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 523 (47.63%) Security Cleared
2 420 (38.25%) SC Cleared
3 92 (8.38%) BPSS Clearance
4 81 (7.38%) DV Cleared
5 53 (4.83%) AWS Certification
5 53 (4.83%) Degree
6 39 (3.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.46%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 16 (1.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 16 (1.46%) Azure Certification
7 16 (1.46%) CISSP
8 15 (1.37%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 13 (1.18%) ISTQB
10 9 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (0.73%) SAFe Agilist
12 7 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 6 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 5 (0.46%) CSSLP
14 5 (0.46%) GCFA
14 5 (0.46%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (12.93%) QA
2 60 (5.46%) Accessibility
3 46 (4.19%) Data Quality
4 26 (2.37%) WCAG
5 19 (1.73%) NIST
6 15 (1.37%) GDPR
7 14 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (1.00%) NCSC
9 10 (0.91%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.73%) SLA
11 6 (0.55%) ISO 20022
12 5 (0.46%) FATCA
13 3 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 1 (0.091%) Disclosure Scotland
14 1 (0.091%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.091%) MIL-STD-1553
14 1 (0.091%) NIST 800
14 1 (0.091%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 460 (41.89%) Docker
2 26 (2.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (2.28%) Active Directory
4 13 (1.18%) Oracle RAC
5 11 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.73%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.46%) HDFS
7 5 (0.46%) Squid
8 3 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.27%) VirtualBox
9 2 (0.18%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.18%) Firmware
9 2 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.18%) iptables
9 2 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.091%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.091%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 499 (45.45%) Kubernetes
2 263 (23.95%) Ansible
3 185 (16.85%) Grafana
4 161 (14.66%) Prometheus
5 51 (4.64%) Argo
6 40 (3.64%) Puppet
7 28 (2.55%) Progress Chef
8 27 (2.46%) Kibana
9 16 (1.46%) Istio
10 14 (1.28%) Packer
11 13 (1.18%) Data Guard
11 13 (1.18%) Oracle RMAN
12 11 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
13 10 (0.91%) Podman
14 9 (0.82%) Cilium
14 9 (0.82%) Kustomize
15 5 (0.46%) CASB
15 5 (0.46%) HP Fortify
15 5 (0.46%) Red Hat Satellite
16 4 (0.36%) Control-M
Vendors
1 126 (11.48%) Oracle
2 75 (6.83%) Google
3 73 (6.65%) Microsoft
4 60 (5.46%) Splunk
5 55 (5.01%) Talend
6 48 (4.37%) Informatica
7 46 (4.19%) VMware
8 39 (3.55%) Dynatrace
9 35 (3.19%) Databricks
10 26 (2.37%) Denodo
10 26 (2.37%) Red Hat
11 25 (2.28%) ServiceNow
12 24 (2.19%) IBM
13 21 (1.91%) Palo Alto
14 20 (1.82%) F5
15 18 (1.64%) Arista
15 18 (1.64%) Aruba
15 18 (1.64%) Trend Micro
16 14 (1.28%) Cisco
17 13 (1.18%) Veracode