Kubernetes Contract Job Trends in Birmingham

Kubernetes (k8s)
West Midlands > Birmingham

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Birmingham requiring Kubernetes skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 37 60
Rank change year-on-year +14 +23 -17
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 61 14 5
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 6.59% 2.76% 0.67%
As % of the Systems Management category 47.66% 22.95% 7.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 8 4
10th Percentile £362 £280 -
25th Percentile £425 £301 £238
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £338
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +33.33% -51.79%
75th Percentile £550 £566 £553
90th Percentile £598 £800 £716
West Midlands median daily rate £515 £539 £500
% change year-on-year -4.47% +7.82% -28.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £65.00 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile £75.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
West Midlands median hourly rate £63.14 - -

All Systems Management Skills
Birmingham

Kubernetes falls under the Systems Management category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring systems management skills in Birmingham.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 128 61 69
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 13.84% 12.01% 9.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 44 59
10th Percentile £281 £263 £230
25th Percentile £413 £369 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £468 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% +10.00% -32.00%
75th Percentile £550 £593 £613
90th Percentile £607 £700 £660
West Midlands median daily rate £482 £475 £413
% change year-on-year +1.47% +15.15% -21.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 1
10th Percentile £30.17 - -
25th Percentile £35.98 - -
Median hourly rate £48.30 - £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - - +180.58%
75th Percentile £62.98 - -
90th Percentile £70.19 - -
West Midlands median hourly rate £63.14 £16.19 £35.33
% change year-on-year +289.96% -54.17% +90.95%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in Birmingham

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Kubernetes relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham.

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in Birmingham

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Kubernetes.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Histogram in Birmingham

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in Birmingham over the 6 months to 13 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in Birmingham

Kubernetes
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Birmingham 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 15 (24.59%) Confluence
2 9 (14.75%) OpenStack
3 2 (3.28%) Apache
4 1 (1.64%) CloudStack
4 1 (1.64%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 21 (34.43%) AWS
2 20 (32.79%) Azure
3 19 (31.15%) GitHub
4 17 (27.87%) GCP
5 15 (24.59%) GitHub Actions
6 13 (21.31%) OpenShift
7 3 (4.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 2 (3.28%) Azure AKS
8 2 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (3.28%) IaaS
9 1 (1.64%) PaaS
9 1 (1.64%) SaaS
9 1 (1.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.56%) DNS
2 2 (3.28%) NAS
2 2 (3.28%) SAN
2 2 (3.28%) SSL
3 1 (1.64%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (1.64%) Firewall
3 1 (1.64%) iSCSI
3 1 (1.64%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (29.51%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (26.23%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 22 (36.07%) JIRA
2 21 (34.43%) Jenkins
3 16 (26.23%) Git
4 13 (21.31%) Cucumber
4 13 (21.31%) GitLab
4 13 (21.31%) JMeter
4 13 (21.31%) JUnit
4 13 (21.31%) Selenium
4 13 (21.31%) WebDriver
5 2 (3.28%) CircleCI
6 1 (1.64%) Liquibase
General
1 30 (49.18%) Social Skills
2 15 (24.59%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (14.75%) Finance
4 6 (9.84%) Organisational Skills
5 5 (8.20%) Public Sector
6 4 (6.56%) Banking
7 3 (4.92%) Telecoms
8 1 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.64%) Military
Job Titles
1 11 (18.03%) Senior
2 10 (16.39%) Tester
3 8 (13.11%) Automation Tester
3 8 (13.11%) Site Engineer
3 8 (13.11%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 8 (13.11%) Splunk Engineer
4 7 (11.48%) DevOps Engineer
4 7 (11.48%) Senior Automation Tester
4 7 (11.48%) Senior Tester
5 5 (8.20%) Architect
6 4 (6.56%) Lead
6 4 (6.56%) SIEM Engineer
7 3 (4.92%) Automation Test Lead
7 3 (4.92%) Cybersecurity Specialist
7 3 (4.92%) Elasticsearch Engineer
7 3 (4.92%) GCP DevOps
7 3 (4.92%) GCP DevOps Engineer
7 3 (4.92%) GCP Engineer
7 3 (4.92%) Security Specialist
7 3 (4.92%) Systems Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (34.43%) Elastic Stack
2 13 (21.31%) Spring
2 13 (21.31%) WireMock
3 12 (19.67%) OpenTelemetry
4 7 (11.48%) Kafka
5 3 (4.92%) FastAPI
5 3 (4.92%) RabbitMQ
6 2 (3.28%) .NET
6 2 (3.28%) Fluent Bit
7 1 (1.64%) ADO
7 1 (1.64%) ARM Templates
7 1 (1.64%) Loki
7 1 (1.64%) Middleware
7 1 (1.64%) OpenCV
7 1 (1.64%) PyTorch
7 1 (1.64%) Regular Expression
7 1 (1.64%) REST
7 1 (1.64%) SpaCy
7 1 (1.64%) TensorFlow
7 1 (1.64%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (16.39%) Distributed Architecture
1 10 (16.39%) Distributed Systems
2 8 (13.11%) Cloud Native
2 8 (13.11%) Management Information System
3 5 (8.20%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (6.56%) PKI
5 3 (4.92%) Distributed Applications
5 3 (4.92%) Onboarding
5 3 (4.92%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.28%) CMDB
6 2 (3.28%) Public Cloud
6 2 (3.28%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.64%) Data Centre
7 1 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.64%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (1.64%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 14 (22.95%) Linux
2 9 (14.75%) Unix
3 7 (11.48%) Windows
4 1 (1.64%) Ubuntu
4 1 (1.64%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (55.74%) Observability
2 33 (54.10%) DevOps
3 32 (52.46%) CI/CD
4 31 (50.82%) Containerisation
5 23 (37.70%) Validation
6 22 (36.07%) Agile
7 21 (34.43%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (32.79%) Migration
9 19 (31.15%) Incident Response
10 16 (26.23%) Continuous Improvement
11 15 (24.59%) Microservices
11 15 (24.59%) Test Automation
12 14 (22.95%) Change Management
13 13 (21.31%) BDD
13 13 (21.31%) Digital Transformation Programme
13 13 (21.31%) End-to-End Testing
13 13 (21.31%) Load Testing
13 13 (21.31%) TDD
13 13 (21.31%) Test Strategy
14 10 (16.39%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 25 (40.98%) Python
2 14 (22.95%) Bash
3 5 (8.20%) Go
4 4 (6.56%) JavaScript
5 3 (4.92%) SQL
6 2 (3.28%) Bicep
6 2 (3.28%) Search Processing Language
7 1 (1.64%) Groovy
7 1 (1.64%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 17 (27.87%) Security Cleared
2 14 (22.95%) SC Cleared
3 12 (19.67%) Degree
4 10 (16.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (6.56%) CISM
5 4 (6.56%) CISSP
6 2 (3.28%) Master's Degree
7 1 (1.64%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 1 (1.64%) CCNP
7 1 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (1.64%) PMI Certification
7 1 (1.64%) PMP
7 1 (1.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.28%) Data Quality
1 2 (3.28%) GDPR
1 2 (3.28%) PCI DSS
1 2 (3.28%) QA
2 1 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 36 (59.02%) Docker
2 5 (8.20%) VMware Infrastructure
2 5 (8.20%) vSphere
3 4 (6.56%) VMware NSX
4 2 (3.28%) etcd
5 1 (1.64%) NFS
5 1 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 32 (52.46%) Grafana
2 26 (42.62%) Ansible
2 26 (42.62%) Prometheus
3 23 (37.70%) Terraform
4 15 (24.59%) Kibana
5 8 (13.11%) Puppet
6 7 (11.48%) Argo
6 7 (11.48%) logstash
7 4 (6.56%) vCenter Server
8 3 (4.92%) Control-M
8 3 (4.92%) IBM Guardium
8 3 (4.92%) Nessus
9 2 (3.28%) Fluentd
10 1 (1.64%) Check_MK
Vendors
1 15 (24.59%) Splunk
2 9 (14.75%) Microsoft
3 5 (8.20%) Red Hat
3 5 (8.20%) VMware
4 4 (6.56%) Pure Storage
5 3 (4.92%) Tenable
6 2 (3.28%) Cisco
6 2 (3.28%) Veeam
7 1 (1.64%) Brocade
7 1 (1.64%) Commvault
7 1 (1.64%) Dell
7 1 (1.64%) Dynatrace
7 1 (1.64%) Fortinet
7 1 (1.64%) Google
7 1 (1.64%) New Relic
7 1 (1.64%) Oracle