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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 38 53
Rank change year-on-year +7 +15 -9
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 42 20 8
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 4.61% 3.62% 1.18%
As % of the Systems Management category 40.38% 25.00% 17.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 13 5
10th Percentile £410 £298 £273
25th Percentile £419 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +5.88% -39.29%
75th Percentile £526 £613 £738
90th Percentile £600 £764 -
West Midlands median daily rate £514 £540 £600
% change year-on-year -4.81% -10.00% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £65.00 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
75th Percentile £75.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
West Midlands median hourly rate £70.00 - £70.00

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 104 80 47
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 11.40% 14.47% 6.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 50 35
10th Percentile £256 £263 £350
25th Percentile £371 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £468 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.74% -6.50% +16.28%
75th Percentile £575 £500 £616
90th Percentile £688 £579 £671
West Midlands median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £65.00 - -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £36.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +94.44% -34.55% +197.30%
75th Percentile £75.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
West Midlands median hourly rate £65.45 £36.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +81.81% -42.40% +47.93%

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 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in Birmingham

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Trend in Birmingham

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Kubernetes

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 14 (33.33%) Confluence
2 2 (4.76%) Apache
2 2 (4.76%) CloudStack
3 1 (2.38%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 27 (64.29%) AWS
2 21 (50.00%) Azure
3 18 (42.86%) GCP
3 18 (42.86%) GitHub
4 17 (40.48%) GitHub Actions
5 7 (16.67%) OpenShift
6 5 (11.90%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (7.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 2 (4.76%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (4.76%) IaaS
8 2 (4.76%) OCI
9 1 (2.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 1 (2.38%) Amazon ECS
9 1 (2.38%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (2.38%) Amazon S3
9 1 (2.38%) Amazon SQS
9 1 (2.38%) Azure AKS
9 1 (2.38%) Azure API Management
9 1 (2.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 1 (2.38%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (9.52%) NAS
1 4 (9.52%) SAN
2 3 (7.14%) Firewall
3 2 (4.76%) DNS
3 2 (4.76%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (2.38%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (2.38%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (35.71%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (4.76%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (4.76%) Metadata
3 1 (2.38%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 21 (50.00%) Jenkins
2 15 (35.71%) Git
3 14 (33.33%) Cucumber
3 14 (33.33%) GitLab
3 14 (33.33%) JIRA
3 14 (33.33%) JMeter
3 14 (33.33%) JUnit
3 14 (33.33%) Selenium
3 14 (33.33%) WebDriver
4 2 (4.76%) Maven
4 2 (4.76%) SonarQube
General
1 17 (40.48%) Social Skills
2 7 (16.67%) Public Sector
3 6 (14.29%) Organisational Skills
4 3 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (7.14%) Finance
5 2 (4.76%) Banking
5 2 (4.76%) Legal
5 2 (4.76%) Publishing
6 1 (2.38%) Military
Job Titles
1 10 (23.81%) Tester
2 9 (21.43%) DevOps Engineer
2 9 (21.43%) Senior
3 8 (19.05%) Automation Tester
4 7 (16.67%) Senior Automation Tester
4 7 (16.67%) Senior Tester
5 6 (14.29%) Lead
6 3 (7.14%) Automation Test Lead
6 3 (7.14%) AWS DevOps
6 3 (7.14%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 3 (7.14%) AWS Engineer
6 3 (7.14%) Consultant
6 3 (7.14%) Systems Tester
6 3 (7.14%) Test Leader
6 3 (7.14%) VMware Consultant
7 2 (4.76%) Architect
7 2 (4.76%) Data Centre Engineer
7 2 (4.76%) Data Centre Infrastructure Engineer
7 2 (4.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 2 (4.76%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (35.71%) Spring
2 14 (33.33%) WireMock
3 6 (14.29%) Elastic Stack
4 5 (11.90%) Kafka
5 4 (9.52%) OpenTelemetry
6 3 (7.14%) Node.js
7 2 (4.76%) Fluent Bit
7 2 (4.76%) JSON
7 2 (4.76%) SLSA
7 2 (4.76%) YAML
8 1 (2.38%) .NET
8 1 (2.38%) ADO
8 1 (2.38%) ARM Templates
8 1 (2.38%) ASP.NET
8 1 (2.38%) Loki
8 1 (2.38%) Mustache
8 1 (2.38%) React
8 1 (2.38%) REST
8 1 (2.38%) Spring Boot
8 1 (2.38%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 12 (28.57%) Distributed Systems
2 11 (26.19%) Distributed Architecture
3 10 (23.81%) Cloud Native
4 4 (9.52%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (7.14%) Data Centre
5 3 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (7.14%) Distributed Applications
5 3 (7.14%) Onboarding
6 2 (4.76%) CMDB
6 2 (4.76%) Enterprise Storage
6 2 (4.76%) Public Cloud
7 1 (2.38%) Blog
7 1 (2.38%) Private Cloud
7 1 (2.38%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 5 (11.90%) Windows
2 4 (9.52%) Linux
3 3 (7.14%) Windows Server
4 2 (4.76%) Ubuntu
5 1 (2.38%) Unix
5 1 (2.38%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (69.05%) CI/CD
2 26 (61.90%) Observability
3 20 (47.62%) Agile
4 18 (42.86%) Continuous Improvement
5 17 (40.48%) Test Automation
6 16 (38.10%) DevOps
6 16 (38.10%) Validation
7 15 (35.71%) Microservices
7 15 (35.71%) TDD
8 14 (33.33%) BDD
8 14 (33.33%) Digital Transformation Programme
8 14 (33.33%) Test Strategy
9 13 (30.95%) End-to-End Testing
9 13 (30.95%) Load Testing
10 12 (28.57%) Containerisation
11 11 (26.19%) Infrastructure as Code
12 10 (23.81%) Workshop Facilitation
13 8 (19.05%) Data Validation
13 8 (19.05%) Stress Testing
14 7 (16.67%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 9 (21.43%) Python
2 5 (11.90%) Bash
3 3 (7.14%) Go
3 3 (7.14%) Java
3 3 (7.14%) PowerShell
4 2 (4.76%) Bicep
4 2 (4.76%) Groovy
4 2 (4.76%) Search Processing Language
5 1 (2.38%) C#
5 1 (2.38%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 22 (52.38%) Security Cleared
2 18 (42.86%) SC Cleared
3 2 (4.76%) AWS Certification
3 2 (4.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 2 (4.76%) Azure Certification
3 2 (4.76%) CCNP
3 2 (4.76%) Cisco Certification
3 2 (4.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 1 (2.38%) Degree
4 1 (2.38%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (4.76%) Data Quality
2 1 (2.38%) QA
System Software
1 24 (57.14%) Docker
2 7 (16.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (14.29%) vSphere
4 4 (9.52%) VMware NSX
5 3 (7.14%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (4.76%) etcd
7 1 (2.38%) NFS
7 1 (2.38%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 27 (64.29%) Grafana
1 27 (64.29%) Prometheus
2 15 (35.71%) Terraform
3 7 (16.67%) Ansible
4 4 (9.52%) Argo
4 4 (9.52%) vCenter Server
5 2 (4.76%) Check_MK
5 2 (4.76%) Fluentd
5 2 (4.76%) Kibana
5 2 (4.76%) Kustomize
5 2 (4.76%) logstash
6 1 (2.38%) Progress Chef
6 1 (2.38%) Puppet
Vendors
1 7 (16.67%) VMware
2 6 (14.29%) Microsoft
3 5 (11.90%) Splunk
3 5 (11.90%) Veeam
4 3 (7.14%) Cisco
5 2 (4.76%) Commvault
5 2 (4.76%) Fortinet
5 2 (4.76%) Pure Storage
5 2 (4.76%) Red Hat
5 2 (4.76%) Sonatype
6 1 (2.38%) Brocade
6 1 (2.38%) Dell
6 1 (2.38%) New Relic