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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 134 183
Rank change year-on-year -5 +49 +64
Contract jobs citing GitLab 1,053 690 521
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.95% 2.11% 1.36%
As % of the Development Applications category 16.96% 13.86% 10.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 734 461 355
10th Percentile £381 £375 £358
25th Percentile £425 £449 £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 £518
% change year-on-year - -3.38% -1.43%
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 6,210 4,977 5,094
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.47% 15.23% 13.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,976 3,351 3,272
10th Percentile £355 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £599 £600 £625
90th Percentile £688 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 111 177
10th Percentile £25.40 £30.75 £29.14
25th Percentile £51.25 £50.50 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.50 £87.50 £72.63
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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -5 889 £500 -4.76% 787
UK excluding London -16 508 £500 - 474
London +10 378 £513 -3.30% 382
Work from Home -5 363 £487 -7.26% 385
North of England -37 180 £475 -1.81% 143
Midlands +25 135 £475 -12.04% 40
West Midlands +28 128 £475 -13.64% 33
South East -15 82 £546 +7.85% 83
North East +6 76 £413 -11.29% 29
North West -37 75 £569 +18.54% 76
South West -21 65 £550 -8.33% 96
Yorkshire -55 40 £550 +10.00% 39
East of England -25 37 £463 -5.13% 48
Scotland -24 23 £423 +3.17% 46
East Midlands -15 7 £425 +57.41% 7
Northern Ireland +1 1 - - 12
Wales -12 1 - - 7

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 (9.69%) Confluence
2 71 (6.74%) Apache Spark
3 70 (6.65%) Apache Airflow
4 55 (5.22%) Apache
5 34 (3.23%) Jupyter
6 30 (2.85%) SAS
7 12 (1.14%) Camunda
8 5 (0.47%) nginx
8 5 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.38%) CICS
9 4 (0.38%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.19%) CMS
11 2 (0.19%) PowerExchange
11 2 (0.19%) SharePoint
11 2 (0.19%) Traefik
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
12 1 (0.095%) FactoryTalk
12 1 (0.095%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 1 (0.095%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 4 (0.38%) Trello
2 1 (0.095%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.095%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.095%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.095%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 693 (65.81%) AWS
2 362 (34.38%) Azure
3 351 (33.33%) GitHub
4 252 (23.93%) GitHub Actions
5 177 (16.81%) Azure DevOps
6 168 (15.95%) GCP
7 142 (13.49%) Serverless
8 139 (13.20%) Amazon S3
9 131 (12.44%) AWS Lambda
10 129 (12.25%) Amazon EKS
11 128 (12.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 99 (9.40%) Amazon EC2
13 81 (7.69%) AWS CloudFormation
14 69 (6.55%) Amazon ECS
15 67 (6.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 53 (5.03%) OpenShift
17 48 (4.56%) Amazon EMR
18 46 (4.37%) Amazon SQS
19 36 (3.42%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 36 (3.42%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 46 (4.37%) Firewall
2 36 (3.42%) DNS
3 30 (2.85%) Network Security
4 27 (2.56%) BGP
4 27 (2.56%) Ethernet VPN
4 27 (2.56%) VXLAN
5 24 (2.28%) TCP/IP
6 22 (2.09%) WAN
7 21 (1.99%) SD-WAN
8 20 (1.90%) OSPF
8 20 (1.90%) Wi-Fi
9 19 (1.80%) BIG-IP
9 19 (1.80%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 12 (1.14%) VPN
11 11 (1.04%) HTTP
11 11 (1.04%) WLAN
12 9 (0.85%) SSL
13 8 (0.76%) DHCP
13 8 (0.76%) NX-OS
14 7 (0.66%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 94 (8.93%) PostgreSQL
2 85 (8.07%) MongoDB
3 56 (5.32%) Relational Database
4 53 (5.03%) Amazon Athena
5 48 (4.56%) Data Warehouse
6 46 (4.37%) Amazon RDS
7 45 (4.27%) NoSQL
8 44 (4.18%) Amazon Redshift
9 41 (3.89%) DynamoDB
10 36 (3.42%) SQL Server
11 35 (3.32%) Oracle Database
12 34 (3.23%) Data Lake
13 33 (3.13%) MySQL
14 32 (3.04%) Big Data
14 32 (3.04%) Power BI
14 32 (3.04%) Redis
15 30 (2.85%) Pentaho
16 27 (2.56%) RDBMS
17 14 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
17 14 (1.33%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 427 (40.55%) Jenkins
2 252 (23.93%) Git
3 144 (13.68%) JIRA
4 83 (7.88%) Selenium
5 77 (7.31%) JUnit
6 60 (5.70%) SonarQube
7 57 (5.41%) Cucumber
8 50 (4.75%) Maven
9 39 (3.70%) Gradle
10 37 (3.51%) Mockito
11 36 (3.42%) Bitbucket
12 34 (3.23%) Gatling
13 33 (3.13%) REST Assured
14 31 (2.94%) Artifactory
14 31 (2.94%) JMeter
15 26 (2.47%) Sonatype Nexus
16 23 (2.18%) Postman
17 20 (1.90%) WebDriver
18 17 (1.61%) Cypress.io
19 16 (1.52%) Snyk
General
1 204 (19.37%) Social Skills
2 198 (18.80%) Public Sector
3 104 (9.88%) Finance
4 67 (6.36%) Analytical Skills
5 65 (6.17%) Banking
6 30 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 23 (2.18%) Military
8 16 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (1.33%) Law
10 13 (1.23%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.04%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.04%) Legal
12 7 (0.66%) Publishing
13 6 (0.57%) Police
14 4 (0.38%) Back Office
14 4 (0.38%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.38%) Marketing
14 4 (0.38%) Retail
15 3 (0.28%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.28%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 239 (22.70%) DevOps Engineer
2 187 (17.76%) Developer
3 183 (17.38%) Senior
4 124 (11.78%) AWS Engineer
5 95 (9.02%) Data Engineer
6 78 (7.41%) AWS DevOps
7 71 (6.74%) Lead
8 70 (6.65%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 60 (5.70%) Java Developer
10 55 (5.22%) Cloud Engineer
11 54 (5.13%) Software Engineer
12 48 (4.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 47 (4.46%) Platform Engineer
14 46 (4.37%) Test Engineer
15 43 (4.08%) Software Developer
16 39 (3.70%) Architect
17 36 (3.42%) Full-Stack Developer
18 31 (2.94%) Senior DevOps
19 30 (2.85%) Senior DevOps Engineer
20 29 (2.75%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 517 (49.10%) Terraform
2 158 (15.00%) Kafka
3 139 (13.20%) Spring
4 128 (12.16%) Spring Boot
5 121 (11.49%) REST
6 76 (7.22%) RESTful
7 74 (7.03%) React
8 67 (6.36%) Playwright
9 55 (5.22%) Node.js
10 51 (4.84%) RabbitMQ
11 50 (4.75%) JSON
11 50 (4.75%) PySpark
12 40 (3.80%) HTML
13 35 (3.32%) CSS
14 34 (3.23%) OAuth
14 34 (3.23%) YAML
15 30 (2.85%) JPA
15 30 (2.85%) Keycloak
16 29 (2.75%) pytest
17 27 (2.56%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 213 (20.23%) Cloud Native
2 60 (5.70%) Distributed Systems
3 57 (5.41%) Product Ownership
4 36 (3.42%) Data Centre
4 36 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
5 29 (2.75%) Data Structures
5 29 (2.75%) Onboarding
6 26 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
7 20 (1.90%) AI Agents
8 17 (1.61%) Algorithms
9 16 (1.52%) PKI
10 15 (1.42%) Distributed Architecture
10 15 (1.42%) Public Cloud
11 13 (1.23%) Mainframe
12 11 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.04%) Private Cloud
13 10 (0.95%) Security Posture
14 9 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
15 8 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
16 7 (0.66%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 207 (19.66%) Linux
2 52 (4.94%) Unix
3 45 (4.27%) Windows
4 42 (3.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (1.33%) CentOS
5 14 (1.33%) Ubuntu
6 12 (1.14%) AIX
7 11 (1.04%) zOS
8 10 (0.95%) Windows Server
9 9 (0.85%) VMS
10 3 (0.28%) Debian
10 3 (0.28%) Rocky
11 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.095%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.095%) Android
12 1 (0.095%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.095%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.095%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 891 (84.62%) CI/CD
2 636 (60.40%) DevOps
3 487 (46.25%) Infrastructure as Code
4 426 (40.46%) Agile
5 360 (34.19%) Containerisation
6 322 (30.58%) Test Automation
7 212 (20.13%) Microservices
8 189 (17.95%) Observability
9 178 (16.90%) Scrum
10 176 (16.71%) Software Engineering
11 159 (15.10%) Platform Engineering
12 156 (14.81%) Continuous Improvement
13 141 (13.39%) AI
14 140 (13.30%) Problem-Solving
15 113 (10.73%) DevSecOps
16 106 (10.07%) Mentoring
17 104 (9.88%) Migration
18 103 (9.78%) Event-Driven
19 102 (9.69%) ETL
20 100 (9.50%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 459 (43.59%) Python
2 262 (24.88%) Java
3 240 (22.79%) SQL
4 185 (17.57%) Bash
5 99 (9.40%) JavaScript
6 92 (8.74%) PowerShell
7 66 (6.27%) C#
8 65 (6.17%) TypeScript
9 45 (4.27%) Go
10 37 (3.51%) Shell Script
11 22 (2.09%) Bicep
12 21 (1.99%) PL/SQL
13 14 (1.33%) C++
14 11 (1.04%) Groovy
15 10 (0.95%) Scala
16 9 (0.85%) Kotlin
17 6 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.57%) R
18 5 (0.47%) Cypher
18 5 (0.47%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 519 (49.29%) Security Cleared
2 420 (39.89%) SC Cleared
3 78 (7.41%) DV Cleared
4 77 (7.31%) BPSS Clearance
5 52 (4.94%) Degree
6 47 (4.46%) AWS Certification
7 39 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.90%) Azure Certification
9 19 (1.80%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 16 (1.52%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 16 (1.52%) CISSP
11 13 (1.23%) ISTQB
12 12 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 11 (1.04%) SAFe Agilist
14 9 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
15 7 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 6 (0.57%) CSSLP
17 5 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
17 5 (0.47%) GCFA
17 5 (0.47%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (12.16%) QA
2 55 (5.22%) Accessibility
3 44 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 21 (1.99%) WCAG
5 16 (1.52%) NIST
6 13 (1.23%) GDPR
7 12 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.95%) NCSC
9 9 (0.85%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.66%) SLA
12 6 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 5 (0.47%) FATCA
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 1 (0.095%) Disclosure Scotland
15 1 (0.095%) JSP 440
15 1 (0.095%) MIL-STD-1553
15 1 (0.095%) NIST 800
15 1 (0.095%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 437 (41.50%) Docker
2 24 (2.28%) Active Directory
2 24 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (1.23%) Oracle RAC
4 9 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.57%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.47%) Squid
7 4 (0.38%) HDFS
8 3 (0.28%) VirtualBox
9 2 (0.19%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.19%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.19%) iptables
9 2 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.095%) Firmware
10 1 (0.095%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.095%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.095%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 483 (45.87%) Kubernetes
2 254 (24.12%) Ansible
3 175 (16.62%) Grafana
4 151 (14.34%) Prometheus
5 50 (4.75%) Argo
6 42 (3.99%) Puppet
7 31 (2.94%) Progress Chef
8 17 (1.61%) Kibana
9 14 (1.33%) Istio
9 14 (1.33%) Packer
10 13 (1.23%) Data Guard
10 13 (1.23%) Oracle RMAN
11 10 (0.95%) Podman
11 10 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.85%) Cilium
12 9 (0.85%) Kustomize
13 5 (0.47%) CASB
13 5 (0.47%) Red Hat Satellite
14 4 (0.38%) HP Fortify
14 4 (0.38%) Salt
Vendors
1 120 (11.40%) Oracle
2 71 (6.74%) Google
2 71 (6.74%) Microsoft
3 54 (5.13%) Splunk
3 54 (5.13%) Talend
4 50 (4.75%) Informatica
5 43 (4.08%) VMware
6 40 (3.80%) Databricks
7 35 (3.32%) Dynatrace
8 26 (2.47%) Denodo
8 26 (2.47%) Red Hat
9 23 (2.18%) IBM
10 22 (2.09%) ServiceNow
11 21 (1.99%) Palo Alto
12 20 (1.90%) F5
13 18 (1.71%) Arista
13 18 (1.71%) Aruba
13 18 (1.71%) Trend Micro
14 14 (1.33%) Veracode
15 12 (1.14%) Cisco