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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 137 185
Rank change year-on-year -5 +48 +59
Contract jobs citing GitLab 1,077 697 526
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.97% 2.12% 1.38%
As % of the Development Applications category 17.05% 13.90% 10.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 753 467 359
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 6,318 5,013 5,075
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.56% 15.22% 13.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,049 3,372 3,242
10th Percentile £355 £325 £350
25th Percentile £414 £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 £691 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 260 112 175
10th Percentile £25.68 £31.28 £28.09
25th Percentile £51.31 £50.75 £51.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -7 908 £500 -4.76% 848
UK excluding London -20 518 £500 - 496
London +4 389 £513 -3.30% 413
Work from Home +6 373 £488 -7.14% 401
North of England -40 180 £475 -1.04% 144
Midlands +24 140 £473 -12.50% 48
West Midlands +26 132 £475 -13.64% 40
South East -32 82 £546 +9.14% 73
North East +6 76 £413 -11.29% 31
North West -31 75 £569 +21.32% 78
South West -15 66 £550 -8.33% 107
Yorkshire -68 40 £550 +10.00% 36
East of England -22 38 £450 -7.69% 51
Scotland -23 25 £423 +0.71% 47
East Midlands -5 8 £414 +53.15% 8
Wales -12 2 - - 9
Northern Ireland 0 1 - - 18

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
1 102 (9.47%) Confluence
2 76 (7.06%) Apache Spark
3 72 (6.69%) Apache Airflow
4 59 (5.48%) Apache
5 34 (3.16%) Jupyter
6 30 (2.79%) SAS
7 12 (1.11%) Camunda
8 6 (0.56%) 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 (0.19%) CMS
12 2 (0.19%) PowerExchange
12 2 (0.19%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.19%) Traefik
12 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
13 1 (0.093%) FactoryTalk
13 1 (0.093%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 1 (0.093%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Trello
2 1 (0.093%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.093%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.093%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.093%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 707 (65.65%) AWS
2 368 (34.17%) Azure
3 360 (33.43%) GitHub
4 253 (23.49%) GitHub Actions
5 179 (16.62%) Azure DevOps
6 173 (16.06%) GCP
7 144 (13.37%) Amazon S3
8 142 (13.18%) Serverless
9 131 (12.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 131 (12.16%) AWS Lambda
10 129 (11.98%) Amazon EKS
11 103 (9.56%) Amazon EC2
12 79 (7.34%) AWS CloudFormation
13 68 (6.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 67 (6.22%) Amazon ECS
15 55 (5.11%) OpenShift
16 53 (4.92%) Amazon EMR
17 46 (4.27%) Amazon SQS
18 37 (3.44%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 36 (3.34%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 46 (4.27%) Firewall
2 37 (3.44%) DNS
3 30 (2.79%) Network Security
4 29 (2.69%) BGP
4 29 (2.69%) Ethernet VPN
4 29 (2.69%) VXLAN
5 25 (2.32%) TCP/IP
6 22 (2.04%) WAN
7 21 (1.95%) SD-WAN
7 21 (1.95%) Wi-Fi
8 20 (1.86%) OSPF
9 19 (1.76%) BIG-IP
9 19 (1.76%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 13 (1.21%) VPN
11 12 (1.11%) HTTP
12 11 (1.02%) WLAN
13 10 (0.93%) NX-OS
14 9 (0.84%) 5G
14 9 (0.84%) SSL
15 8 (0.74%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (9.10%) PostgreSQL
2 88 (8.17%) MongoDB
3 56 (5.20%) Relational Database
4 55 (5.11%) Amazon Athena
5 51 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
6 49 (4.55%) Amazon RDS
7 47 (4.36%) NoSQL
8 45 (4.18%) Amazon Redshift
9 41 (3.81%) DynamoDB
10 39 (3.62%) Data Lake
11 36 (3.34%) Oracle Database
11 36 (3.34%) SQL Server
12 34 (3.16%) MySQL
12 34 (3.16%) Redis
13 33 (3.06%) Big Data
13 33 (3.06%) Power BI
14 30 (2.79%) Pentaho
15 27 (2.51%) RDBMS
16 15 (1.39%) BigQuery
17 14 (1.30%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 431 (40.02%) Jenkins
2 261 (24.23%) Git
3 145 (13.46%) JIRA
4 87 (8.08%) Selenium
5 81 (7.52%) JUnit
6 62 (5.76%) SonarQube
7 60 (5.57%) Cucumber
8 51 (4.74%) Maven
9 39 (3.62%) Gradle
10 38 (3.53%) Mockito
11 37 (3.44%) Bitbucket
11 37 (3.44%) Gatling
12 33 (3.06%) REST Assured
13 31 (2.88%) Artifactory
13 31 (2.88%) JMeter
14 27 (2.51%) Sonatype Nexus
15 23 (2.14%) Postman
16 20 (1.86%) WebDriver
17 17 (1.58%) Cypress.io
18 16 (1.49%) Snyk
General
1 211 (19.59%) Social Skills
2 202 (18.76%) Public Sector
3 108 (10.03%) Finance
4 71 (6.59%) Analytical Skills
5 68 (6.31%) Banking
6 30 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (2.14%) Military
8 16 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (1.49%) Telecoms
9 14 (1.30%) Law
10 11 (1.02%) Aerospace
10 11 (1.02%) Legal
11 7 (0.65%) Publishing
12 6 (0.56%) Back Office
12 6 (0.56%) Investment Banking
12 6 (0.56%) Police
13 4 (0.37%) Local Government
13 4 (0.37%) Marketing
13 4 (0.37%) Retail
14 3 (0.28%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 245 (22.75%) DevOps Engineer
2 189 (17.55%) Developer
3 184 (17.08%) Senior
4 126 (11.70%) AWS Engineer
5 101 (9.38%) Data Engineer
6 78 (7.24%) AWS DevOps
7 71 (6.59%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 71 (6.59%) Lead
8 60 (5.57%) Java Developer
9 56 (5.20%) Cloud Engineer
10 54 (5.01%) Software Engineer
11 48 (4.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 47 (4.36%) Platform Engineer
13 46 (4.27%) Test Engineer
14 44 (4.09%) Software Developer
15 43 (3.99%) Architect
16 36 (3.34%) Full-Stack Developer
17 31 (2.88%) Senior DevOps
18 30 (2.79%) Java Engineer
18 30 (2.79%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 527 (48.93%) Terraform
2 160 (14.86%) Kafka
3 143 (13.28%) Spring
4 129 (11.98%) Spring Boot
5 126 (11.70%) REST
6 77 (7.15%) RESTful
7 76 (7.06%) React
8 71 (6.59%) Playwright
9 55 (5.11%) Node.js
9 55 (5.11%) RabbitMQ
10 54 (5.01%) PySpark
11 53 (4.92%) JSON
12 41 (3.81%) HTML
13 36 (3.34%) CSS
13 36 (3.34%) YAML
14 34 (3.16%) OAuth
15 31 (2.88%) JPA
16 30 (2.79%) Keycloak
16 30 (2.79%) pytest
17 29 (2.69%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 218 (20.24%) Cloud Native
2 60 (5.57%) Distributed Systems
3 56 (5.20%) Product Ownership
4 38 (3.53%) Data Centre
5 36 (3.34%) Hybrid Cloud
6 31 (2.88%) Data Structures
7 29 (2.69%) Onboarding
8 27 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (1.86%) AI Agents
10 17 (1.58%) Algorithms
11 16 (1.49%) PKI
12 15 (1.39%) Distributed Architecture
12 15 (1.39%) Public Cloud
13 14 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
14 13 (1.21%) Mainframe
15 11 (1.02%) Private Cloud
16 10 (0.93%) Security Posture
17 9 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
18 8 (0.74%) Linux Command Line
18 8 (0.74%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 214 (19.87%) Linux
2 52 (4.83%) Unix
3 49 (4.55%) Windows
4 45 (4.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (1.49%) CentOS
6 15 (1.39%) Ubuntu
7 12 (1.11%) AIX
8 11 (1.02%) zOS
9 10 (0.93%) VMS
9 10 (0.93%) Windows Server
10 3 (0.28%) Debian
10 3 (0.28%) Rocky
11 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.093%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.093%) Android
12 1 (0.093%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.093%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.093%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 913 (84.77%) CI/CD
2 647 (60.07%) DevOps
3 499 (46.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 437 (40.58%) Agile
5 368 (34.17%) Containerisation
6 328 (30.45%) Test Automation
7 217 (20.15%) Microservices
8 195 (18.11%) Observability
9 182 (16.90%) Scrum
10 180 (16.71%) Software Engineering
11 162 (15.04%) Continuous Improvement
12 161 (14.95%) Platform Engineering
13 145 (13.46%) AI
14 144 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
15 113 (10.49%) DevSecOps
15 113 (10.49%) Mentoring
16 111 (10.31%) Migration
17 108 (10.03%) Deployment Automation
18 107 (9.94%) ETL
18 107 (9.94%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 477 (44.29%) Python
2 268 (24.88%) Java
3 249 (23.12%) SQL
4 190 (17.64%) Bash
5 101 (9.38%) JavaScript
6 93 (8.64%) PowerShell
7 68 (6.31%) C#
8 65 (6.04%) TypeScript
9 48 (4.46%) Go
10 39 (3.62%) Shell Script
11 22 (2.04%) Bicep
12 21 (1.95%) PL/SQL
13 14 (1.30%) C++
14 13 (1.21%) Groovy
15 11 (1.02%) Scala
16 9 (0.84%) Kotlin
17 7 (0.65%) R
18 6 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
19 5 (0.46%) Cypher
19 5 (0.46%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 525 (48.75%) Security Cleared
2 423 (39.28%) SC Cleared
3 82 (7.61%) BPSS Clearance
4 80 (7.43%) DV Cleared
5 52 (4.83%) Degree
6 50 (4.64%) AWS Certification
7 39 (3.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.86%) Azure Certification
9 17 (1.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 16 (1.49%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 16 (1.49%) CISSP
11 14 (1.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 13 (1.21%) ISTQB
13 9 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (0.84%) SAFe Agilist
14 7 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 6 (0.56%) CSSLP
16 5 (0.46%) CompTIA Security+
16 5 (0.46%) GCFA
16 5 (0.46%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 134 (12.44%) QA
2 58 (5.39%) Accessibility
3 47 (4.36%) Data Quality
4 24 (2.23%) WCAG
5 16 (1.49%) NIST
6 13 (1.21%) GDPR
7 12 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (1.02%) NCSC
9 9 (0.84%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.65%) SLA
12 6 (0.56%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.46%) FATCA
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 1 (0.093%) Disclosure Scotland
15 1 (0.093%) JSP 440
15 1 (0.093%) MIL-STD-1553
15 1 (0.093%) NIST 800
15 1 (0.093%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 450 (41.78%) Docker
2 26 (2.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (2.23%) Active Directory
4 13 (1.21%) Oracle RAC
5 9 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (0.74%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.46%) Squid
8 4 (0.37%) HDFS
9 3 (0.28%) VirtualBox
10 2 (0.19%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 2 (0.19%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.19%) iptables
10 2 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.093%) Firmware
11 1 (0.093%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.093%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 493 (45.78%) Kubernetes
2 260 (24.14%) Ansible
3 177 (16.43%) Grafana
4 153 (14.21%) Prometheus
5 50 (4.64%) Argo
6 42 (3.90%) Puppet
7 31 (2.88%) Progress Chef
8 20 (1.86%) Kibana
9 15 (1.39%) Istio
10 14 (1.30%) Packer
11 13 (1.21%) Data Guard
11 13 (1.21%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.93%) Podman
12 10 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
13 9 (0.84%) Cilium
13 9 (0.84%) Kustomize
14 5 (0.46%) CASB
14 5 (0.46%) Red Hat Satellite
15 4 (0.37%) HP Fortify
15 4 (0.37%) Salt
Vendors
1 123 (11.42%) Oracle
2 75 (6.96%) Google
3 71 (6.59%) Microsoft
4 55 (5.11%) Splunk
4 55 (5.11%) Talend
5 50 (4.64%) Informatica
6 45 (4.18%) VMware
7 40 (3.71%) Databricks
8 36 (3.34%) Dynatrace
9 28 (2.60%) Red Hat
10 26 (2.41%) Denodo
11 24 (2.23%) ServiceNow
12 23 (2.14%) IBM
13 21 (1.95%) Palo Alto
14 20 (1.86%) F5
15 18 (1.67%) Arista
15 18 (1.67%) Aruba
15 18 (1.67%) Trend Micro
16 14 (1.30%) Cisco
16 14 (1.30%) Veracode