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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 133 176
Rank change year-on-year -9 +43 +66
Contract jobs citing GitLab 1,086 698 539
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.12% 1.40%
As % of the Development Applications category 17.23% 13.96% 10.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 761 468 366
10th Percentile £381 £375 £353
25th Percentile £425 £447 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.36% -1.23%
75th Percentile £594 £603 £650
90th Percentile £688 £695 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £514
% change year-on-year - -2.68% -4.86%
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 6,302 4,999 5,103
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.55% 15.19% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,018 3,365 3,256
10th Percentile £355 £325 £350
25th Percentile £414 £406 £420
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 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 110 177
10th Percentile £24.13 £30.58 £29.14
25th Percentile £51.25 £50.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £80.30 £73.85
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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -1 914 £500 -4.76% 692
UK excluding London -8 521 £500 - 403
London +12 392 £513 -3.30% 332
Work from Home 0 377 £490 -6.67% 311
North of England -42 181 £475 -1.04% 113
Midlands +35 142 £473 -12.50% 44
West Midlands +36 133 £475 -13.64% 36
South East -22 84 £550 +9.89% 61
North East +2 77 £413 -14.06% 29
North West -31 75 £569 +21.32% 60
South West -11 63 £550 -8.33% 83
Yorkshire -64 40 £550 +10.00% 24
East of England -19 39 £463 -5.13% 46
Scotland -22 25 £424 +0.95% 41
East Midlands -15 9 £405 +50.00% 8
Wales -11 2 - - 7
Northern Ireland +1 1 - - 11

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 (9.30%) Confluence
2 78 (7.18%) Apache Spark
3 73 (6.72%) Apache Airflow
4 58 (5.34%) Apache
5 35 (3.22%) Jupyter
6 30 (2.76%) SAS
7 12 (1.10%) Camunda
8 6 (0.55%) nginx
9 5 (0.46%) OpenStack
9 5 (0.46%) Palantir Foundry
10 4 (0.37%) CICS
11 3 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.18%) CMS
12 2 (0.18%) PowerExchange
12 2 (0.18%) Traefik
12 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
13 1 (0.092%) FactoryTalk
13 1 (0.092%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.092%) WebSphere Portal
13 1 (0.092%) WordPress
Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Trello
2 1 (0.092%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.092%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.092%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 2 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.092%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 713 (65.65%) AWS
2 374 (34.44%) Azure
3 358 (32.97%) GitHub
4 250 (23.02%) GitHub Actions
5 181 (16.67%) Azure DevOps
6 173 (15.93%) GCP
7 146 (13.44%) Amazon S3
8 140 (12.89%) Serverless
9 132 (12.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 131 (12.06%) Amazon EKS
11 130 (11.97%) AWS Lambda
12 105 (9.67%) Amazon EC2
13 78 (7.18%) AWS CloudFormation
14 67 (6.17%) Amazon ECS
14 67 (6.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 58 (5.34%) OpenShift
16 56 (5.16%) Amazon EMR
17 46 (4.24%) Amazon SQS
18 38 (3.50%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 37 (3.41%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 46 (4.24%) Firewall
2 37 (3.41%) DNS
3 30 (2.76%) Network Security
4 29 (2.67%) BGP
4 29 (2.67%) Ethernet VPN
4 29 (2.67%) VXLAN
5 26 (2.39%) TCP/IP
6 23 (2.12%) Wi-Fi
7 22 (2.03%) WAN
8 21 (1.93%) SD-WAN
9 20 (1.84%) OSPF
10 19 (1.75%) BIG-IP
10 19 (1.75%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 13 (1.20%) VPN
12 12 (1.10%) HTTP
13 11 (1.01%) WLAN
14 10 (0.92%) 5G
14 10 (0.92%) NX-OS
15 9 (0.83%) 4G
15 9 (0.83%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (9.02%) PostgreSQL
2 89 (8.20%) MongoDB
3 56 (5.16%) Amazon Athena
3 56 (5.16%) Relational Database
4 54 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
5 50 (4.60%) Amazon RDS
6 47 (4.33%) NoSQL
7 46 (4.24%) Amazon Redshift
8 42 (3.87%) DynamoDB
9 41 (3.78%) Data Lake
10 37 (3.41%) SQL Server
11 36 (3.31%) Oracle Database
12 35 (3.22%) Redis
13 33 (3.04%) Big Data
13 33 (3.04%) MySQL
13 33 (3.04%) Power BI
14 30 (2.76%) Pentaho
15 27 (2.49%) RDBMS
16 15 (1.38%) BigQuery
16 15 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 431 (39.69%) Jenkins
2 266 (24.49%) Git
3 145 (13.35%) JIRA
4 90 (8.29%) Selenium
5 85 (7.83%) JUnit
6 64 (5.89%) Cucumber
6 64 (5.89%) SonarQube
7 54 (4.97%) Maven
8 41 (3.78%) Mockito
9 40 (3.68%) Gradle
10 39 (3.59%) Gatling
11 36 (3.31%) Bitbucket
12 33 (3.04%) REST Assured
13 30 (2.76%) Artifactory
13 30 (2.76%) JMeter
14 27 (2.49%) Sonatype Nexus
15 23 (2.12%) Postman
16 19 (1.75%) WebDriver
17 17 (1.57%) Cypress.io
18 16 (1.47%) Snyk
General
1 211 (19.43%) Social Skills
2 201 (18.51%) Public Sector
3 111 (10.22%) Finance
4 72 (6.63%) Analytical Skills
5 67 (6.17%) Banking
6 32 (2.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (2.12%) Military
8 18 (1.66%) Telecoms
9 16 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
10 14 (1.29%) Law
11 11 (1.01%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.01%) Legal
12 7 (0.64%) Publishing
13 6 (0.55%) Back Office
13 6 (0.55%) Investment Banking
13 6 (0.55%) Police
14 4 (0.37%) Local Government
14 4 (0.37%) Marketing
14 4 (0.37%) Retail
15 3 (0.28%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 244 (22.47%) DevOps Engineer
2 191 (17.59%) Developer
3 183 (16.85%) Senior
4 128 (11.79%) AWS Engineer
5 100 (9.21%) Data Engineer
6 80 (7.37%) AWS DevOps
7 73 (6.72%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 71 (6.54%) Lead
9 60 (5.52%) Java Developer
10 56 (5.16%) Cloud Engineer
11 52 (4.79%) Software Engineer
12 49 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 48 (4.42%) Platform Engineer
14 47 (4.33%) Test Engineer
15 46 (4.24%) Architect
16 45 (4.14%) Software Developer
17 36 (3.31%) Full-Stack Developer
18 31 (2.85%) Java Engineer
19 30 (2.76%) Azure Engineer
19 30 (2.76%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 533 (49.08%) Terraform
2 162 (14.92%) Kafka
3 146 (13.44%) Spring
4 131 (12.06%) Spring Boot
5 125 (11.51%) REST
6 76 (7.00%) React
6 76 (7.00%) RESTful
7 73 (6.72%) Playwright
8 55 (5.06%) PySpark
8 55 (5.06%) RabbitMQ
9 54 (4.97%) Node.js
10 53 (4.88%) JSON
11 41 (3.78%) HTML
12 36 (3.31%) CSS
12 36 (3.31%) YAML
13 34 (3.13%) JPA
13 34 (3.13%) OAuth
14 32 (2.95%) OpenAPI
15 30 (2.76%) Keycloak
15 30 (2.76%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 216 (19.89%) Cloud Native
2 58 (5.34%) Distributed Systems
3 53 (4.88%) Product Ownership
4 38 (3.50%) Data Centre
5 36 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
6 31 (2.85%) Data Structures
6 31 (2.85%) Onboarding
7 28 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
8 21 (1.93%) AI Agents
9 17 (1.57%) Algorithms
10 16 (1.47%) PKI
11 15 (1.38%) Public Cloud
12 14 (1.29%) Distributed Architecture
12 14 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.20%) Mainframe
14 12 (1.10%) Private Cloud
15 10 (0.92%) Replication
15 10 (0.92%) Security Posture
16 9 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
17 8 (0.74%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 217 (19.98%) Linux
2 52 (4.79%) Unix
3 49 (4.51%) Windows
4 44 (4.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (1.57%) CentOS
6 15 (1.38%) Ubuntu
7 12 (1.10%) AIX
7 12 (1.10%) VMS
8 11 (1.01%) zOS
9 10 (0.92%) Windows Server
10 2 (0.18%) Debian
10 2 (0.18%) Rocky
10 2 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.092%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.092%) Android
11 1 (0.092%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.092%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.092%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 918 (84.53%) CI/CD
2 648 (59.67%) DevOps
3 505 (46.50%) Infrastructure as Code
4 437 (40.24%) Agile
5 371 (34.16%) Containerisation
6 330 (30.39%) Test Automation
7 217 (19.98%) Microservices
8 198 (18.23%) Observability
9 185 (17.03%) Scrum
10 176 (16.21%) Software Engineering
11 160 (14.73%) Continuous Improvement
12 159 (14.64%) Platform Engineering
13 147 (13.54%) AI
14 146 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
15 113 (10.41%) Mentoring
15 113 (10.41%) Migration
16 111 (10.22%) DevSecOps
17 109 (10.04%) Deployment Automation
18 108 (9.94%) ETL
19 107 (9.85%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 479 (44.11%) Python
2 273 (25.14%) Java
3 252 (23.20%) SQL
4 191 (17.59%) Bash
5 100 (9.21%) JavaScript
6 91 (8.38%) PowerShell
7 68 (6.26%) C#
8 65 (5.99%) TypeScript
9 47 (4.33%) Go
10 42 (3.87%) Shell Script
11 22 (2.03%) Bicep
12 21 (1.93%) PL/SQL
13 14 (1.29%) C++
13 14 (1.29%) Groovy
14 12 (1.10%) Scala
15 10 (0.92%) Kotlin
16 7 (0.64%) R
17 6 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
18 5 (0.46%) Ruby
18 5 (0.46%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 524 (48.25%) Security Cleared
2 423 (38.95%) SC Cleared
3 87 (8.01%) BPSS Clearance
4 79 (7.27%) DV Cleared
5 53 (4.88%) Degree
6 52 (4.79%) AWS Certification
7 39 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.84%) Azure Certification
9 16 (1.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 16 (1.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 16 (1.47%) CISSP
10 15 (1.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 13 (1.20%) ISTQB
12 9 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
13 8 (0.74%) SAFe Agilist
14 7 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 5 (0.46%) CSSLP
15 5 (0.46%) GCFA
15 5 (0.46%) GCIH
15 5 (0.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 138 (12.71%) QA
2 60 (5.52%) Accessibility
3 48 (4.42%) Data Quality
4 26 (2.39%) WCAG
5 18 (1.66%) NIST
6 14 (1.29%) GDPR
7 13 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (1.01%) NCSC
9 10 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.64%) SLA
12 6 (0.55%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.46%) FATCA
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 1 (0.092%) GRC
15 1 (0.092%) MIL-STD-1553
15 1 (0.092%) NIST 800
15 1 (0.092%) OpenSCAP
15 1 (0.092%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 454 (41.80%) Docker
2 26 (2.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (2.21%) Active Directory
4 13 (1.20%) Oracle RAC
5 10 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.74%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.46%) Squid
8 4 (0.37%) HDFS
9 3 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.28%) VirtualBox
10 2 (0.18%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 2 (0.18%) Firmware
10 2 (0.18%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.18%) iptables
10 2 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.092%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.092%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 497 (45.76%) Kubernetes
2 263 (24.22%) Ansible
3 181 (16.67%) Grafana
4 157 (14.46%) Prometheus
5 49 (4.51%) Argo
6 42 (3.87%) Puppet
7 31 (2.85%) Progress Chef
8 24 (2.21%) Kibana
9 15 (1.38%) Istio
10 14 (1.29%) Packer
11 13 (1.20%) Data Guard
11 13 (1.20%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.92%) Podman
12 10 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
13 9 (0.83%) Cilium
13 9 (0.83%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.46%) CASB
14 5 (0.46%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.46%) Red Hat Satellite
15 4 (0.37%) Control-M
Vendors
1 124 (11.42%) Oracle
2 76 (7.00%) Google
3 72 (6.63%) Microsoft
4 59 (5.43%) Splunk
5 55 (5.06%) Talend
6 50 (4.60%) Informatica
7 46 (4.24%) VMware
8 40 (3.68%) Databricks
9 38 (3.50%) Dynatrace
10 26 (2.39%) Denodo
10 26 (2.39%) Red Hat
11 24 (2.21%) ServiceNow
12 23 (2.12%) IBM
13 21 (1.93%) Palo Alto
14 20 (1.84%) F5
15 18 (1.66%) Arista
15 18 (1.66%) Aruba
15 18 (1.66%) Trend Micro
16 14 (1.29%) Cisco
17 13 (1.20%) Veracode