Kubernetes Contract Job Trends in England

Kubernetes (k8s)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Kubernetes skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 27 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 31 35 45
Rank change year-on-year +4 +10 -13
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 1,866 1,661 1,736
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.07% 5.32% 4.51%
As % of the Systems Management category 37.69% 37.43% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,278 1,109 1,302
10th Percentile £393 £406 £425
25th Percentile £450 £493 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £588 £585
Median % change year-on-year -9.79% +0.43% -6.40%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £688
90th Percentile £700 £788 £775
UK median daily rate £531 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -7.61% - -7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 14 52
10th Percentile £51.48 £29.43 -
25th Percentile £61.38 £46.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £67.00 £51.84 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -18.68% -1.16%
75th Percentile £84.50 £72.54 £77.50
90th Percentile £118.45 £74.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £67.00 £51.84 £63.75
% change year-on-year +29.24% -18.68% +1.19%

All Systems Management Skills
England

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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 4,951 4,438 5,424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 16.10% 14.22% 14.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,335 2,847 3,947
10th Percentile £310 £313 £307
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -6.38%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £650
90th Percentile £695 £730 £744
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.67% -5.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 60 159
10th Percentile £18.87 £15.05 £17.74
25th Percentile £20.82 £23.80 £24.00
Median hourly rate £38.00 £35.08 £47.83
Median % change year-on-year +8.32% -26.65% +79.34%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.63 £72.20
90th Percentile £80.60 £74.75 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £32.32 £27.00 £49.00
% change year-on-year +19.69% -44.90% +87.09%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in England

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in England over the 6 months to 27 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in England

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in England over the 6 months to 27 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Kubernetes in England

Kubernetes
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 within the England region over the 6 months to 27 November 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 -1 939 £550 -8.33% 361
North of England +7 338 £500 - 230
Midlands +62 208 £537 -6.61% 179
West Midlands +46 185 £540 -10.00% 109
South East +2 162 £485 -10.19% 397
Yorkshire -7 151 £500 +1.27% 77
North West +14 149 £475 -13.64% 132
South West -2 104 £637 +6.21% 155
East of England -2 46 £550 +4.76% 107
North East +4 40 £550 +22.22% 21
East Midlands +8 23 £430 -16.20% 62
Kubernetes
UK

Kubernetes
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 79 (4.23%) Confluence
2 67 (3.59%) SAS
3 35 (1.88%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.82%) nginx
5 33 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
6 29 (1.55%) Apache
7 26 (1.39%) OpenStack
8 10 (0.54%) Mule
9 7 (0.38%) JBoss
9 7 (0.38%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.32%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.32%) SharePoint
10 6 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.32%) WebSphere
11 5 (0.27%) Camunda
11 5 (0.27%) Ethereum
11 5 (0.27%) Hyperledger
12 4 (0.21%) Drupal
12 4 (0.21%) Traefik
12 4 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 6 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (0.32%) MS Visio
2 5 (0.27%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.27%) Weka
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.38%) Maximo
2 4 (0.21%) Endur
3 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.054%) Actimize
4 1 (0.054%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.054%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 1,025 (54.93%) AWS
2 679 (36.39%) Azure
3 462 (24.76%) GCP
4 412 (22.08%) GitHub
5 250 (13.40%) GitHub Actions
6 210 (11.25%) OpenShift
7 202 (10.83%) Serverless
8 171 (9.16%) Azure DevOps
9 138 (7.40%) AWS CloudFormation
10 136 (7.29%) Azure AKS
11 131 (7.02%) Amazon EKS
12 108 (5.79%) Amazon S3
13 107 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
14 90 (4.82%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 79 (4.23%) Amazon EC2
16 77 (4.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 75 (4.02%) Amazon ECS
18 71 (3.80%) SaaS
19 60 (3.22%) Entra ID
20 58 (3.11%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 75 (4.02%) Firewall
2 48 (2.57%) DNS
3 29 (1.55%) Network Security
4 25 (1.34%) VPN
5 20 (1.07%) TCP/IP
6 16 (0.86%) SSL
7 15 (0.80%) HTTP
8 10 (0.54%) BGP
9 8 (0.43%) DHCP
10 7 (0.38%) HTTPS
11 6 (0.32%) Ethernet VPN
11 6 (0.32%) Software-Defined Networking
11 6 (0.32%) VLAN
11 6 (0.32%) VXLAN
12 5 (0.27%) Kerberos
12 5 (0.27%) MQTT
12 5 (0.27%) OpenLDAP
13 4 (0.21%) SSH
14 3 (0.16%) Reverse Proxy
14 3 (0.16%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (13.50%) PostgreSQL
2 176 (9.43%) NoSQL
3 121 (6.48%) MongoDB
4 78 (4.18%) Relational Database
5 71 (3.80%) Apache Cassandra
6 66 (3.54%) Amazon RDS
7 57 (3.05%) Elasticsearch
8 54 (2.89%) Redis
9 41 (2.20%) SQL Server
10 40 (2.14%) MySQL
11 35 (1.88%) Big Data
12 34 (1.82%) Pentaho
13 29 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
14 28 (1.50%) DynamoDB
14 28 (1.50%) Oracle Database
15 27 (1.45%) Data Lake
16 24 (1.29%) Hadoop
17 23 (1.23%) BigQuery
18 21 (1.13%) Azure SQL Database
19 20 (1.07%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 504 (27.01%) Jenkins
2 391 (20.95%) Git
3 351 (18.81%) GitLab
4 185 (9.91%) JIRA
5 70 (3.75%) JUnit
6 65 (3.48%) SonarQube
7 57 (3.05%) Sonatype Nexus
8 55 (2.95%) Artifactory
9 54 (2.89%) Maven
10 44 (2.36%) Selenium
11 42 (2.25%) Bitbucket
11 42 (2.25%) Gradle
12 41 (2.20%) CircleCI
13 39 (2.09%) Liquibase
14 33 (1.77%) Cucumber
15 27 (1.45%) Mockito
16 26 (1.39%) MLflow
17 25 (1.34%) Postman
18 21 (1.13%) JMeter
19 19 (1.02%) Cypress.io
General
1 508 (27.22%) Social Skills
2 309 (16.56%) Finance
3 222 (11.90%) Public Sector
4 201 (10.77%) Banking
5 146 (7.82%) Analytical Skills
6 41 (2.20%) Financial Institution
7 39 (2.09%) Investment Banking
8 37 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
9 27 (1.45%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.07%) Front Office
11 19 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 17 (0.91%) Retail
13 11 (0.59%) Aerospace
13 11 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
15 9 (0.48%) Military
16 7 (0.38%) Law
17 6 (0.32%) Games
17 6 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 440 (23.58%) Developer
2 291 (15.59%) DevOps Engineer
3 287 (15.38%) Senior
4 158 (8.47%) Architect
5 145 (7.77%) Java Developer
6 106 (5.68%) AWS Engineer
6 106 (5.68%) Software Engineer
7 99 (5.31%) Platform Engineer
8 96 (5.14%) Lead
9 92 (4.93%) Senior Developer
10 87 (4.66%) Cloud Engineer
11 78 (4.18%) AWS DevOps
11 78 (4.18%) Python Developer
12 76 (4.07%) Full-Stack Developer
13 72 (3.86%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 66 (3.54%) Data Engineer
15 58 (3.11%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 53 (2.84%) Azure Engineer
16 53 (2.84%) Site Engineer
17 47 (2.52%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (16.29%) Kafka
2 207 (11.09%) Spring
3 199 (10.66%) RESTful
4 193 (10.34%) React
4 193 (10.34%) REST
5 177 (9.49%) Node.js
5 177 (9.49%) Spring Boot
6 142 (7.61%) Elastic Stack
7 125 (6.70%) AngularJS
8 90 (4.82%) .NET
9 88 (4.72%) gRPC
10 72 (3.86%) GraphQL
11 71 (3.80%) HTML
12 70 (3.75%) FastAPI
13 64 (3.43%) YAML
14 60 (3.22%) Vue
15 58 (3.11%) PyTorch
16 55 (2.95%) CSS
16 55 (2.95%) RabbitMQ
17 52 (2.79%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 339 (18.17%) Cloud Native
2 179 (9.59%) Distributed Systems
3 71 (3.80%) Public Cloud
4 57 (3.05%) Onboarding
5 55 (2.95%) Product Ownership
6 48 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
7 39 (2.09%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.93%) Algorithms
9 35 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
10 29 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
10 29 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
11 25 (1.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 25 (1.34%) Security Posture
12 24 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 23 (1.23%) PKI
13 23 (1.23%) Virtual Team
14 22 (1.18%) Replication
15 21 (1.13%) Hedge funds
16 20 (1.07%) Data Centre
16 20 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 383 (20.53%) Linux
2 73 (3.91%) Windows
3 64 (3.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 61 (3.27%) Unix
5 21 (1.13%) Ubuntu
5 21 (1.13%) VMS
6 18 (0.96%) CentOS
7 16 (0.86%) Windows Server
8 7 (0.38%) Solaris
9 2 (0.11%) Android
9 2 (0.11%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.11%) zOS
10 1 (0.054%) Alpine Linux
10 1 (0.054%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.054%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,246 (66.77%) CI/CD
2 1,012 (54.23%) DevOps
3 804 (43.09%) Containerisation
4 628 (33.65%) Agile
5 575 (30.81%) Infrastructure as Code
6 531 (28.46%) Microservices
7 440 (23.58%) Problem-Solving
8 332 (17.79%) Software Engineering
9 293 (15.70%) Observability
10 267 (14.31%) Test Automation
11 199 (10.66%) Migration
12 184 (9.86%) AI
13 165 (8.84%) Analytics
14 163 (8.74%) Full-Stack Development
15 161 (8.63%) Scrum
16 157 (8.41%) DevSecOps
17 156 (8.36%) Platform Engineering
18 153 (8.20%) Machine Learning
19 152 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
20 141 (7.56%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 881 (47.21%) Python
2 515 (27.60%) Java
3 320 (17.15%) SQL
4 278 (14.90%) Bash
5 250 (13.40%) Go
6 187 (10.02%) JavaScript
7 180 (9.65%) TypeScript
8 120 (6.43%) C#
9 109 (5.84%) PowerShell
10 69 (3.70%) C++
11 56 (3.00%) Bicep
12 52 (2.79%) Shell Script
13 35 (1.88%) Ruby
14 29 (1.55%) Kotlin
15 28 (1.50%) PHP
16 27 (1.45%) Groovy
16 27 (1.45%) Perl
16 27 (1.45%) Rust
17 18 (0.96%) Scala
18 16 (0.86%) C
Qualifications
1 621 (33.28%) Security Cleared
2 514 (27.55%) SC Cleared
3 129 (6.91%) Degree
4 100 (5.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (5.31%) DV Cleared
6 89 (4.77%) AWS Certification
7 73 (3.91%) Azure Certification
8 50 (2.68%) Master's Degree
9 37 (1.98%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 32 (1.71%) CISSP
11 30 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
12 25 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
14 17 (0.91%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 17 (0.91%) CISM
15 11 (0.59%) OCP
15 11 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 10 (0.54%) CCSP
17 7 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (5.31%) QA
2 55 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 52 (2.79%) Data Quality
4 48 (2.57%) NIST
5 40 (2.14%) GDPR
6 31 (1.66%) NCSC
7 24 (1.29%) Accessibility
8 17 (0.91%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.75%) HIPAA
9 14 (0.75%) PSD2
10 12 (0.64%) EU AI Act
11 11 (0.59%) WCAG
12 9 (0.48%) ISO 20022
12 9 (0.48%) SEPA
13 7 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
14 6 (0.32%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 5 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 5 (0.27%) JSP 440
15 5 (0.27%) SLA
System Software
1 1,200 (64.31%) Docker
2 55 (2.95%) Active Directory
3 49 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (1.66%) vSphere
5 27 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.75%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.54%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.54%) KVM
8 7 (0.38%) Lustre
8 7 (0.38%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 6 (0.32%) GPFS
10 5 (0.27%) Snort
10 5 (0.27%) Squid
11 4 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.11%) NDS
12 2 (0.11%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 2 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
13 1 (0.054%) QEMU
13 1 (0.054%) SRDF
13 1 (0.054%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 726 (38.91%) Terraform
2 320 (17.15%) Ansible
3 301 (16.13%) Grafana
4 272 (14.58%) Prometheus
5 103 (5.52%) Argo
6 51 (2.73%) Kibana
7 46 (2.47%) Puppet
8 43 (2.30%) Progress Chef
9 41 (2.20%) Istio
10 40 (2.14%) Packer
11 27 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
12 23 (1.23%) Consul
13 20 (1.07%) logstash
13 20 (1.07%) Nessus
14 16 (0.86%) Podman
15 13 (0.70%) Rancher
16 12 (0.64%) Control-M
16 12 (0.64%) ITRS Geneos
17 11 (0.59%) SCOM
17 11 (0.59%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 196 (10.50%) Microsoft
2 178 (9.54%) Splunk
3 152 (8.15%) Google
4 120 (6.43%) Oracle
5 118 (6.32%) Red Hat
6 66 (3.54%) VMware
7 45 (2.41%) Databricks
7 45 (2.41%) Dynatrace
8 34 (1.82%) Denodo
8 34 (1.82%) Talend
9 33 (1.77%) OpenAI
10 28 (1.50%) Atlassian
11 24 (1.29%) AppDynamics
11 24 (1.29%) IBM
12 18 (0.96%) Cisco
13 13 (0.70%) Palo Alto
14 12 (0.64%) Confluent
14 12 (0.64%) Foundry
14 12 (0.64%) Solace
14 12 (0.64%) Tenable