Kubernetes Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Kubernetes Engineer (K8s Engineer)
UK > England

The median Kubernetes Engineer (K8s Engineer) daily rate in England is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

 6 months to
4 Dec 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 516 473 519
Rank change year-on-year -43 +46 +41
Contract jobs requiring a Kubernetes Engineer 32 46 50
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.10% 0.15% 0.13%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.11% 0.16% 0.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 33 38
10th Percentile £400 £426 £471
25th Percentile £508 £560 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £635 £628
Median % change year-on-year -13.39% +1.20% +0.40%
75th Percentile £625 £788 £763
90th Percentile £655 £838 £798
UK median daily rate £550 £628 £625
% change year-on-year -12.35% +0.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £59.39 £61.25
Median hourly rate - £63.79 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +2.06% -
75th Percentile - £68.18 £63.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate - £63.79 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +2.06% -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in England with a recognized job title 28,419 28,414 35,414
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.22% 92.93% 93.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,221 17,533 24,351
10th Percentile £285 £300 £290
25th Percentile £403 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,705 993 1,381
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.36 £15.33
25th Percentile £17.88 £21.05 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.47 £37.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.08% -16.67% +36.36%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.80 £74.69 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +44.15%

Kubernetes Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Kubernetes Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Kubernetes Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Kubernetes Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Kubernetes Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Kubernetes Engineer job vacancies in England

Kubernetes Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer in England over the 6 months to 4 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes Engineer in England

Kubernetes Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Kubernetes Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Kubernetes Engineer job vacancies in England

Kubernetes Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 4 December 2025. 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
London -18 24 £550 -16.67% 6
South East -5 2 - - 3
North of England -44 2 £600 +66.67%
North West -23 1 - -
North East - 1 £600 -
Kubernetes Engineer
UK

Kubernetes Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 4 December 2025, Kubernetes Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Kubernetes Engineer in the job title.

1 32 (100.00%) Kubernetes
2 28 (87.50%) CI/CD
3 20 (62.50%) DevOps
4 19 (59.38%) Terraform
5 15 (46.88%) Infrastructure as Code
5 15 (46.88%) Python
6 13 (40.63%) AWS
6 13 (40.63%) Azure
6 13 (40.63%) SC Cleared
6 13 (40.63%) Security Cleared
7 12 (37.50%) GCP
7 12 (37.50%) Jenkins
8 11 (34.38%) Agile
8 11 (34.38%) Ansible
9 10 (31.25%) Containerisation
9 10 (31.25%) Docker
10 9 (28.13%) GitHub
10 9 (28.13%) Java
10 9 (28.13%) PostgreSQL
11 8 (25.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 7 (21.88%) Argo
12 7 (21.88%) Bash
12 7 (21.88%) Linux
12 7 (21.88%) Observability
12 7 (21.88%) Platform Engineering
13 6 (18.75%) Continuous Deployment
13 6 (18.75%) Continuous Integration
13 6 (18.75%) Go
13 6 (18.75%) Grafana
13 6 (18.75%) Kafka

Kubernetes Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 3 (9.38%) Apache Spark
2 1 (3.13%) CMS
2 1 (3.13%) Headless CMS
Cloud Services
1 13 (40.63%) AWS
1 13 (40.63%) Azure
2 12 (37.50%) GCP
3 9 (28.13%) GitHub
4 8 (25.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 5 (15.63%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (12.50%) Amazon EKS
6 4 (12.50%) OpenShift
7 3 (9.38%) Amazon S3
8 2 (6.25%) Amazon ECR
8 2 (6.25%) Power Automate
8 2 (6.25%) Power Platform
8 2 (6.25%) PowerApps
9 1 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (3.13%) Contentful
9 1 (3.13%) Contentstack
9 1 (3.13%) Storyblok
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.13%) Firewall
1 1 (3.13%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (28.13%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (9.38%) Big Data
2 3 (9.38%) Data Lake
2 3 (9.38%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (9.38%) Elasticsearch
2 3 (9.38%) Hadoop
3 2 (6.25%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 12 (37.50%) Jenkins
2 6 (18.75%) Liquibase
3 3 (9.38%) RStudio
4 2 (6.25%) GitLab
5 1 (3.13%) Artifactory
5 1 (3.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 12 (37.50%) Social Skills
2 4 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (9.38%) Finance
3 3 (9.38%) Social Science
4 2 (6.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (3.13%) Banking
5 1 (3.13%) Investment Banking
5 1 (3.13%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (18.75%) Kafka
2 3 (9.38%) OpenTelemetry
2 3 (9.38%) React
3 2 (6.25%) FastAPI
3 2 (6.25%) Middleware
4 1 (3.13%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (3.13%) Fastify
4 1 (3.13%) MACH
4 1 (3.13%) Next.js
4 1 (3.13%) Node.js
4 1 (3.13%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 7 (21.88%) Private Cloud
2 4 (12.50%) Cloud Native
3 1 (3.13%) Data Centre
3 1 (3.13%) Distributed Applications
Operating Systems
1 7 (21.88%) Linux
2 4 (12.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (3.13%) Mac OS
3 1 (3.13%) Ubuntu
3 1 (3.13%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (87.50%) CI/CD
2 20 (62.50%) DevOps
3 15 (46.88%) Infrastructure as Code
4 11 (34.38%) Agile
5 10 (31.25%) Containerisation
6 7 (21.88%) Observability
6 7 (21.88%) Platform Engineering
7 6 (18.75%) Continuous Deployment
7 6 (18.75%) Continuous Integration
7 6 (18.75%) TDD
8 5 (15.63%) Microservices
8 5 (15.63%) Migration
8 5 (15.63%) Test Automation
9 4 (12.50%) Analytics
10 3 (9.38%) Batch Processing
10 3 (9.38%) GitOps
10 3 (9.38%) Problem-Solving
10 3 (9.38%) Stakeholder Management
11 2 (6.25%) Deployment Automation
11 2 (6.25%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 15 (46.88%) Python
2 9 (28.13%) Java
3 7 (21.88%) Bash
4 6 (18.75%) Go
4 6 (18.75%) Perl
5 3 (9.38%) C#
5 3 (9.38%) JavaScript
5 3 (9.38%) PowerShell
6 2 (6.25%) SQL
7 1 (3.13%) Groovy
7 1 (3.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 13 (40.63%) SC Cleared
1 13 (40.63%) Security Cleared
2 2 (6.25%) AWS Certification
3 1 (3.13%) CISM
3 1 (3.13%) CISSP
3 1 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (3.13%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (3.13%) NIST
System Software
1 10 (31.25%) Docker
2 5 (15.63%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (9.38%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 32 (100.00%) Kubernetes
2 19 (59.38%) Terraform
3 11 (34.38%) Ansible
4 7 (21.88%) Argo
5 6 (18.75%) Grafana
6 3 (9.38%) Prometheus
6 3 (9.38%) Rancher
7 1 (3.13%) Fluentd
7 1 (3.13%) Istio
Vendors
1 3 (9.38%) Red Hat
1 3 (9.38%) VMware
2 1 (3.13%) Cribl.io
2 1 (3.13%) Google
2 1 (3.13%) Microsoft
2 1 (3.13%) Splunk
2 1 (3.13%) Zscaler
7 Kubernetes Engineer jobs Nationwide