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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 36 56
Rank change year-on-year +17 +20 -18
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 61 15 5
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 6.64% 2.91% 0.68%
As % of the Systems Management category 47.66% 24.19% 7.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 8 4
10th Percentile £350 £280 -
25th Percentile £425 £301 £238
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £450 £338
Median % change year-on-year +8.89% +33.33% -51.79%
75th Percentile £550 £566 £553
90th Percentile £600 £800 £716
West Midlands median daily rate £514 £545 £500
% change year-on-year -5.61% +8.91% -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 62 67
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 13.93% 12.04% 9.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 89 44 58
10th Percentile £263 £263 £226
25th Percentile £410 £369 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £468 £431
Median % change year-on-year +1.60% +8.41% -31.00%
75th Percentile £542 £593 £625
90th Percentile £600 £700 £662
West Midlands median daily rate £481 £475 £425
% change year-on-year +1.26% +11.76% -19.05%
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 20 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 6 (9.84%) OpenStack
3 3 (4.92%) Apache
4 2 (3.28%) CloudStack
5 1 (1.64%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 21 (34.43%) AWS
2 20 (32.79%) Azure
3 17 (27.87%) GCP
4 15 (24.59%) GitHub
5 14 (22.95%) OpenShift
6 11 (18.03%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (4.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 3 (4.92%) IaaS
7 3 (4.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 2 (3.28%) Azure AKS
8 2 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (1.64%) PaaS
9 1 (1.64%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.56%) DNS
1 4 (6.56%) NAS
1 4 (6.56%) SAN
2 2 (3.28%) Firewall
2 2 (3.28%) SSL
2 2 (3.28%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (1.64%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (1.64%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (29.51%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (26.23%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 18 (29.51%) Jenkins
1 18 (29.51%) JIRA
2 16 (26.23%) Git
3 13 (21.31%) Cucumber
3 13 (21.31%) JMeter
3 13 (21.31%) JUnit
3 13 (21.31%) Selenium
3 13 (21.31%) WebDriver
4 9 (14.75%) GitLab
5 1 (1.64%) Liquibase
General
1 26 (42.62%) 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 1 (1.64%) Military
Job Titles
1 10 (16.39%) Senior
1 10 (16.39%) Tester
2 8 (13.11%) Automation Tester
2 8 (13.11%) Site Engineer
2 8 (13.11%) Site Reliability Engineer
2 8 (13.11%) Splunk Engineer
3 7 (11.48%) Senior Automation Tester
3 7 (11.48%) Senior Tester
4 6 (9.84%) DevOps Engineer
5 5 (8.20%) Architect
6 3 (4.92%) Automation Test Lead
6 3 (4.92%) Consultant
6 3 (4.92%) Cybersecurity Specialist
6 3 (4.92%) Developer
6 3 (4.92%) Elasticsearch Engineer
6 3 (4.92%) Python Developer
6 3 (4.92%) Security Specialist
6 3 (4.92%) SIEM Engineer
6 3 (4.92%) Systems Tester
6 3 (4.92%) VMware Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (31.15%) Elastic Stack
2 13 (21.31%) Spring
2 13 (21.31%) WireMock
3 12 (19.67%) OpenTelemetry
4 4 (6.56%) Kafka
5 3 (4.92%) FastAPI
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%) Hugging Face
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 6 (9.84%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (6.56%) PKI
5 3 (4.92%) Data Centre
5 3 (4.92%) Distributed Applications
5 3 (4.92%) Onboarding
5 3 (4.92%) Public Cloud
6 2 (3.28%) CMDB
6 2 (3.28%) Enterprise Storage
6 2 (3.28%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.64%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 14 (22.95%) Linux
2 10 (16.39%) Unix
3 7 (11.48%) Windows
4 3 (4.92%) Windows Server
5 2 (3.28%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (57.38%) Observability
2 31 (50.82%) DevOps
3 28 (45.90%) CI/CD
3 28 (45.90%) Containerisation
4 24 (39.34%) Validation
5 22 (36.07%) Migration
6 19 (31.15%) Incident Response
7 18 (29.51%) Agile
7 18 (29.51%) Continuous Improvement
7 18 (29.51%) Problem-Solving
8 15 (24.59%) Test Automation
9 14 (22.95%) Change Management
10 13 (21.31%) BDD
10 13 (21.31%) Digital Transformation Programme
10 13 (21.31%) End-to-End Testing
10 13 (21.31%) Load Testing
10 13 (21.31%) Microservices
10 13 (21.31%) TDD
10 13 (21.31%) Test Strategy
11 10 (16.39%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 21 (34.43%) Python
2 14 (22.95%) Bash
3 3 (4.92%) SQL
4 2 (3.28%) Bicep
4 2 (3.28%) Search Processing Language
5 1 (1.64%) Go
5 1 (1.64%) Groovy
5 1 (1.64%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 19 (31.15%) Security Cleared
2 15 (24.59%) 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%) AWS Certification
6 2 (3.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (3.28%) Azure Certification
6 2 (3.28%) CCNP
6 2 (3.28%) Cisco Certification
6 2 (3.28%) Master's Degree
6 2 (3.28%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 1 (1.64%) PMI Certification
7 1 (1.64%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.28%) Data Quality
1 2 (3.28%) GDPR
1 2 (3.28%) PCI DSS
2 1 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 32 (52.46%) Docker
2 9 (14.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (13.11%) vSphere
4 6 (9.84%) VMware NSX
5 3 (4.92%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (3.28%) etcd
7 1 (1.64%) NFS
7 1 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (1.64%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 29 (47.54%) Grafana
2 27 (44.26%) Prometheus
3 23 (37.70%) Ansible
4 20 (32.79%) Terraform
5 15 (24.59%) Kibana
6 8 (13.11%) Puppet
7 7 (11.48%) logstash
8 6 (9.84%) vCenter Server
9 4 (6.56%) Argo
10 3 (4.92%) Control-M
10 3 (4.92%) IBM Guardium
10 3 (4.92%) Nessus
11 2 (3.28%) Check_MK
11 2 (3.28%) Fluentd
Vendors
1 15 (24.59%) Splunk
2 10 (16.39%) Microsoft
3 9 (14.75%) VMware
4 5 (8.20%) Red Hat
4 5 (8.20%) Veeam
5 4 (6.56%) Pure Storage
6 3 (4.92%) Cisco
6 3 (4.92%) Tenable
7 2 (3.28%) Commvault
7 2 (3.28%) Fortinet
8 1 (1.64%) Brocade
8 1 (1.64%) Dell
8 1 (1.64%) Dynatrace
8 1 (1.64%) Google
8 1 (1.64%) New Relic
8 1 (1.64%) Oracle