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

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 110 142 234
Rank change year-on-year +32 +92 -54
Contract jobs citing GitLab 887 594 440
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.42% 1.86% 1.04%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.45% 13.99% 8.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 667 405 335
10th Percentile £375 £363 £406
25th Percentile £425 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £588 £663 £638
90th Percentile £673 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 5 1
10th Percentile £43.42 £65.60 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £74.00 £58.75
Median hourly rate £57.50 £74.44 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.76% +24.07% +9.09%
75th Percentile £65.50 £87.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £80.65 £92.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £74.44 £60.00
% change year-on-year -22.76% +24.07% +9.09%

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 5,392 4,247 5,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.69% 13.29% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,703 2,668 3,714
10th Percentile £338 £331 £363
25th Percentile £406 £412 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -5.12% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £638
90th Percentile £692 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £513
% change year-on-year -1.09% -6.29% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 72 197
10th Percentile £39.00 £28.88 £43.26
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.25 £50.00
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 £77.50
90th Percentile £84.80 £76.15 £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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +10 724 £520 -8.41% 599
UK excluding London +39 446 £500 - 578
London +1 289 £525 -12.50% 75
Work from Home +14 238 £500 -8.59% 236
North of England +1 201 £488 -2.50% 118
Midlands +26 87 £525 +10.06% 81
Yorkshire +4 86 £500 - 59
North West -6 86 £405 -16.92% 42
West Midlands +24 79 £525 +7.36% 28
South East -10 57 £500 - 152
South West +17 45 £525 -27.34% 90
Scotland +14 38 £411 -6.00% 17
North East -10 33 £508 -3.33% 17
East of England -7 26 £478 +27.47% 96
East Midlands -17 8 £400 +30.08% 48
Wales -2 5 £435 -18.12% 26
Northern Ireland -3 5 - - 15

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 59 (6.65%) Confluence
2 35 (3.95%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (3.16%) SAS
4 23 (2.59%) Apache
5 19 (2.14%) Apache Spark
6 14 (1.58%) OpenStack
7 13 (1.47%) nginx
8 7 (0.79%) Appian
9 6 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.45%) CMS
10 4 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.34%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.34%) Ethereum
11 3 (0.34%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.34%) Mule
12 2 (0.23%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.23%) SharePoint
13 1 (0.11%) CICS
13 1 (0.11%) Documentum
13 1 (0.11%) FileNet
Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.11%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 3 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
1 3 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
2 2 (0.23%) 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
1 543 (61.22%) AWS
2 250 (28.18%) GitHub
3 245 (27.62%) Azure
4 172 (19.39%) GCP
5 170 (19.17%) GitHub Actions
6 155 (17.47%) Serverless
7 127 (14.32%) Amazon S3
8 126 (14.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 117 (13.19%) AWS CloudFormation
10 116 (13.08%) Amazon EKS
11 113 (12.74%) Amazon EC2
12 109 (12.29%) AWS Lambda
13 88 (9.92%) Azure DevOps
14 87 (9.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 85 (9.58%) OpenShift
16 80 (9.02%) Amazon ECS
17 37 (4.17%) Azure AKS
18 31 (3.49%) Datadog
19 26 (2.93%) Route 53
20 24 (2.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 62 (6.99%) Firewall
2 49 (5.52%) DNS
3 43 (4.85%) VPN
4 33 (3.72%) TCP/IP
5 22 (2.48%) Network Security
6 20 (2.25%) SSL
7 6 (0.68%) Kerberos
8 5 (0.56%) BGP
8 5 (0.56%) OpenLDAP
8 5 (0.56%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.56%) WAN
9 4 (0.45%) HTTP
9 4 (0.45%) VXLAN
10 3 (0.34%) AMQP
10 3 (0.34%) DSL
10 3 (0.34%) Ethernet VPN
10 3 (0.34%) Multicast
10 3 (0.34%) OSPF
10 3 (0.34%) Reverse Proxy
10 3 (0.34%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (10.82%) PostgreSQL
2 81 (9.13%) MongoDB
3 79 (8.91%) NoSQL
4 78 (8.79%) Amazon RDS
5 32 (3.61%) Data Lake
6 27 (3.04%) DynamoDB
7 24 (2.71%) Redis
8 23 (2.59%) Amazon Athena
8 23 (2.59%) MySQL
9 21 (2.37%) Relational Database
10 20 (2.25%) SQL Server
11 17 (1.92%) Big Data
12 15 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
13 14 (1.58%) Apache Cassandra
14 13 (1.47%) Oracle Database
15 12 (1.35%) Power BI
16 11 (1.24%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 10 (1.13%) BigQuery
18 8 (0.90%) Delta Lake
19 7 (0.79%) Aerospike
Development Applications
1 432 (48.70%) Jenkins
2 221 (24.92%) Git
3 125 (14.09%) JIRA
4 82 (9.24%) Selenium
5 59 (6.65%) Cucumber
6 56 (6.31%) JUnit
7 38 (4.28%) SonarQube
8 37 (4.17%) Maven
9 36 (4.06%) Postman
10 35 (3.95%) Artifactory
11 31 (3.49%) Cypress.io
11 31 (3.49%) Gradle
12 30 (3.38%) Bitbucket
13 28 (3.16%) JMeter
13 28 (3.16%) Sonatype Nexus
14 27 (3.04%) Liquibase
15 24 (2.71%) REST Assured
16 23 (2.59%) CircleCI
17 20 (2.25%) Gatling
18 14 (1.58%) MLflow
General
1 228 (25.70%) Social Skills
2 146 (16.46%) Finance
3 119 (13.42%) Public Sector
4 98 (11.05%) Banking
5 62 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
6 26 (2.93%) Financial Institution
7 22 (2.48%) Telecoms
8 19 (2.14%) Aerospace
9 17 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
10 13 (1.47%) Military
11 9 (1.01%) Investment Banking
12 8 (0.90%) Games
13 7 (0.79%) Retail
13 7 (0.79%) Retail Banking
14 6 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
15 4 (0.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.34%) Front Office
16 3 (0.34%) Law
16 3 (0.34%) Local Government
16 3 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 215 (24.24%) DevOps Engineer
2 167 (18.83%) Developer
3 150 (16.91%) Senior
4 99 (11.16%) AWS Engineer
5 70 (7.89%) Lead
6 69 (7.78%) AWS DevOps
7 62 (6.99%) Software Engineer
8 58 (6.54%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 55 (6.20%) Java Developer
10 45 (5.07%) Cloud Engineer
11 44 (4.96%) Senior DevOps
11 44 (4.96%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 41 (4.62%) Test Engineer
13 39 (4.40%) Architect
14 38 (4.28%) Data Engineer
15 34 (3.83%) Automation Engineer
15 34 (3.83%) Senior Developer
16 31 (3.49%) GCP Engineer
17 29 (3.27%) Platform Engineer
18 24 (2.71%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (16.69%) REST
2 132 (14.88%) Kafka
3 105 (11.84%) Elastic Stack
4 97 (10.94%) Spring
5 92 (10.37%) Node.js
5 92 (10.37%) Spring Boot
6 91 (10.26%) RESTful
7 52 (5.86%) React
8 41 (4.62%) Playwright
9 37 (4.17%) JSON
10 33 (3.72%) PySpark
11 32 (3.61%) RabbitMQ
12 31 (3.49%) pytest
13 30 (3.38%) HTML
13 30 (3.38%) OpenTelemetry
14 24 (2.71%) Jest
14 24 (2.71%) OAuth
15 23 (2.59%) OpenID
16 22 (2.48%) .NET
17 21 (2.37%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 131 (14.77%) Cloud Native
2 74 (8.34%) Distributed Systems
3 46 (5.19%) Public Cloud
4 45 (5.07%) Product Ownership
5 24 (2.71%) Onboarding
6 15 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 15 (1.69%) Private Cloud
7 14 (1.58%) Data Centre
7 14 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
7 14 (1.58%) PKI
8 13 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
9 12 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (1.24%) Algorithms
11 9 (1.01%) Synthetic Data
12 8 (0.90%) Distributed Computing
12 8 (0.90%) Legacy Applications
12 8 (0.90%) Security Posture
13 7 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (0.68%) Mobile App
14 6 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 183 (20.63%) Linux
2 56 (6.31%) Windows
3 28 (3.16%) Unix
4 23 (2.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (1.92%) Windows Server
6 11 (1.24%) CentOS
7 10 (1.13%) Android
7 10 (1.13%) Apple iOS
8 7 (0.79%) VMS
9 3 (0.34%) Solaris
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.23%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.11%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 709 (79.93%) CI/CD
2 563 (63.47%) DevOps
3 376 (42.39%) Infrastructure as Code
4 342 (38.56%) Containerisation
5 323 (36.41%) Agile
6 245 (27.62%) Test Automation
7 198 (22.32%) Microservices
8 161 (18.15%) Problem-Solving
9 152 (17.14%) Observability
10 139 (15.67%) Software Engineering
11 105 (11.84%) Scrum
12 96 (10.82%) Infrastructure Automation
13 89 (10.03%) Continuous Improvement
14 86 (9.70%) DevSecOps
15 83 (9.36%) Migration
16 82 (9.24%) Analytics
17 79 (8.91%) High Availability
18 71 (8.00%) Continuous Integration
18 71 (8.00%) Data Pipeline
19 69 (7.78%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 429 (48.37%) Python
2 245 (27.62%) Java
3 178 (20.07%) Bash
4 137 (15.45%) SQL
5 102 (11.50%) JavaScript
6 101 (11.39%) Go
7 81 (9.13%) PowerShell
8 68 (7.67%) TypeScript
9 43 (4.85%) Shell Script
10 21 (2.37%) C#
11 15 (1.69%) Kotlin
11 15 (1.69%) Ruby
12 14 (1.58%) PL/SQL
13 12 (1.35%) Perl
14 10 (1.13%) Rust
15 9 (1.01%) C
15 9 (1.01%) C++
15 9 (1.01%) Groovy
16 7 (0.79%) Korn
17 6 (0.68%) PHP
Qualifications
1 300 (33.82%) Security Cleared
2 239 (26.94%) SC Cleared
3 67 (7.55%) Degree
4 60 (6.76%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (5.52%) AWS Certification
6 39 (4.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 38 (4.28%) Master's Degree
8 36 (4.06%) DV Cleared
9 31 (3.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 14 (1.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 12 (1.35%) CISSP
12 10 (1.13%) CISM
12 10 (1.13%) OCA
12 10 (1.13%) Oracle Certification
13 7 (0.79%) Azure Certification
14 6 (0.68%) AWS Certified Developer
15 5 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
16 3 (0.34%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
16 3 (0.34%) CCNP
16 3 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (13.64%) QA
2 43 (4.85%) Accessibility
3 22 (2.48%) GDPR
4 20 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 18 (2.03%) WCAG
6 17 (1.92%) NIST
7 16 (1.80%) NCSC
8 13 (1.47%) SLA
9 12 (1.35%) Data Quality
9 12 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.79%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.45%) Def Stans
12 2 (0.23%) HL7
12 2 (0.23%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.11%) EU AI Act
13 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.11%) MiFID
13 1 (0.11%) MISRA
13 1 (0.11%) MISRA C
13 1 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 398 (44.87%) Docker
2 24 (2.71%) Active Directory
3 15 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.90%) Virtual Servers
5 7 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.34%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.34%) vSphere
7 2 (0.23%) HDFS
8 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.11%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.11%) KVM
8 1 (0.11%) Squid
Systems Management
1 474 (53.44%) Kubernetes
2 447 (50.39%) Terraform
3 248 (27.96%) Ansible
4 238 (26.83%) Grafana
5 191 (21.53%) Prometheus
6 47 (5.30%) Argo
7 23 (2.59%) Istio
8 22 (2.48%) Puppet
9 19 (2.14%) Podman
10 17 (1.92%) Progress Chef
11 15 (1.69%) Packer
12 13 (1.47%) Fluentd
12 13 (1.47%) Kibana
13 10 (1.13%) linkerd
13 10 (1.13%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.79%) Karpenter
14 7 (0.79%) Rancher
14 7 (0.79%) Sysdig
15 6 (0.68%) Jamf Pro
15 6 (0.68%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 114 (12.85%) Splunk
2 75 (8.46%) Microsoft
3 65 (7.33%) Oracle
4 49 (5.52%) Google
4 49 (5.52%) Red Hat
5 35 (3.95%) VMware
6 28 (3.16%) Dynatrace
7 23 (2.59%) Databricks
8 21 (2.37%) Palo Alto
9 20 (2.25%) CheckPoint
10 19 (2.14%) F5
11 18 (2.03%) Atlassian
11 18 (2.03%) ServiceNow
12 16 (1.80%) Cisco
13 15 (1.69%) IBM
14 13 (1.47%) Cribl.io
15 11 (1.24%) Commvault
15 11 (1.24%) Veritas
16 8 (0.90%) Veracode
17 7 (0.79%) Okta