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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 30 35 43
Rank change year-on-year +5 +8 -11
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 1,873 1,652 1,749
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.09% 5.31% 4.52%
As % of the Systems Management category 37.82% 37.49% 32.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,285 1,103 1,312
10th Percentile £393 £406 £425
25th Percentile £450 £493 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £590 £585
Median % change year-on-year -10.17% +0.85% -6.40%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £688
90th Percentile £700 £788 £775
UK median daily rate £530 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -7.83% - -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% -

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 4,952 4,406 5,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 16.11% 14.15% 14.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,343 2,819 3,970
10th Percentile £310 £313 £306
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 £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £734 £744
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.67% -5.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 60 161
10th Percentile £18.87 £15.05 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.66 £23.80 £24.00
Median hourly rate £37.00 £35.08 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.47% -26.14% +78.10%
75th Percentile £66.63 £60.63 £71.90
90th Percentile £80.90 £74.75 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £31.86 £27.00 £48.40
% change year-on-year +18.00% -44.21% +88.25%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -2 940 £550 -8.33% 337
North of England +9 341 £500 - 120
Midlands +62 210 £537 -6.61% 75
West Midlands +42 187 £540 -10.00% 54
South East -1 164 £489 -8.22% 259
North West +18 152 £475 -13.64% 70
Yorkshire -9 151 £500 +1.27% 34
South West -4 105 £637 +6.21% 100
East of England -5 46 £550 +4.76% 27
North East +4 40 £550 +17.33% 16
East Midlands +8 23 £430 -16.20% 20
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 81 (4.32%) Confluence
2 68 (3.63%) SAS
3 35 (1.87%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.82%) nginx
5 33 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
6 29 (1.55%) Apache
7 26 (1.39%) OpenStack
8 10 (0.53%) Mule
9 7 (0.37%) JBoss
9 7 (0.37%) 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%) Ethereum
11 5 (0.27%) Hyperledger
12 4 (0.21%) Camunda
12 4 (0.21%) CMS
12 4 (0.21%) Drupal
12 4 (0.21%) Traefik
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 (0.37%) Maximo
2 4 (0.21%) Endur
3 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.053%) Actimize
4 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.053%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 1,029 (54.94%) AWS
2 681 (36.36%) Azure
3 462 (24.67%) GCP
4 415 (22.16%) GitHub
5 249 (13.29%) GitHub Actions
6 212 (11.32%) OpenShift
7 204 (10.89%) Serverless
8 170 (9.08%) Azure DevOps
9 140 (7.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 135 (7.21%) Azure AKS
11 134 (7.15%) Amazon EKS
12 110 (5.87%) Amazon S3
13 108 (5.77%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (4.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 81 (4.32%) Amazon EC2
16 77 (4.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 76 (4.06%) Amazon ECS
18 70 (3.74%) SaaS
19 61 (3.26%) Entra ID
20 58 (3.10%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 76 (4.06%) Firewall
2 49 (2.62%) DNS
3 29 (1.55%) Network Security
4 26 (1.39%) VPN
5 21 (1.12%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.91%) SSL
7 16 (0.85%) HTTP
8 10 (0.53%) BGP
9 8 (0.43%) DHCP
10 7 (0.37%) HTTPS
10 7 (0.37%) Software-Defined Networking
11 6 (0.32%) Ethernet VPN
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%) Internet
13 4 (0.21%) SSH
14 3 (0.16%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (13.51%) PostgreSQL
2 178 (9.50%) NoSQL
3 122 (6.51%) MongoDB
4 78 (4.16%) Relational Database
5 69 (3.68%) Apache Cassandra
6 67 (3.58%) Amazon RDS
7 57 (3.04%) Elasticsearch
8 55 (2.94%) Redis
9 41 (2.19%) SQL Server
10 40 (2.14%) MySQL
11 35 (1.87%) Big Data
12 34 (1.82%) Pentaho
13 29 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
14 28 (1.49%) DynamoDB
14 28 (1.49%) Oracle Database
15 27 (1.44%) Data Lake
16 24 (1.28%) Hadoop
17 22 (1.17%) BigQuery
18 19 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
18 19 (1.01%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 504 (26.91%) Jenkins
2 394 (21.04%) Git
3 353 (18.85%) GitLab
4 187 (9.98%) JIRA
5 69 (3.68%) JUnit
6 65 (3.47%) SonarQube
7 57 (3.04%) Sonatype Nexus
8 55 (2.94%) Artifactory
9 54 (2.88%) Maven
10 44 (2.35%) Selenium
11 42 (2.24%) Bitbucket
11 42 (2.24%) Gradle
12 41 (2.19%) CircleCI
13 39 (2.08%) Liquibase
14 33 (1.76%) Cucumber
15 27 (1.44%) Mockito
16 26 (1.39%) MLflow
17 25 (1.33%) Postman
18 21 (1.12%) JMeter
19 19 (1.01%) TeamCity
General
1 511 (27.28%) Social Skills
2 310 (16.55%) Finance
3 225 (12.01%) Public Sector
4 203 (10.84%) Banking
5 147 (7.85%) Analytical Skills
6 41 (2.19%) Financial Institution
7 39 (2.08%) Investment Banking
8 37 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
9 27 (1.44%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.07%) Front Office
11 19 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 17 (0.91%) Retail
13 12 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
14 11 (0.59%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
15 9 (0.48%) Military
16 7 (0.37%) Games
16 7 (0.37%) Law
17 6 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 441 (23.55%) Developer
2 291 (15.54%) DevOps Engineer
3 286 (15.27%) Senior
4 160 (8.54%) Architect
5 145 (7.74%) Java Developer
6 106 (5.66%) AWS Engineer
6 106 (5.66%) Software Engineer
7 100 (5.34%) Platform Engineer
8 96 (5.13%) Lead
9 91 (4.86%) Senior Developer
10 86 (4.59%) Cloud Engineer
11 78 (4.16%) AWS DevOps
11 78 (4.16%) Python Developer
12 76 (4.06%) Full-Stack Developer
13 72 (3.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 67 (3.58%) Data Engineer
15 58 (3.10%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 53 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
17 52 (2.78%) Site Engineer
18 47 (2.51%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (16.18%) Kafka
2 209 (11.16%) Spring
3 202 (10.78%) RESTful
4 195 (10.41%) REST
5 193 (10.30%) React
6 179 (9.56%) Spring Boot
7 176 (9.40%) Node.js
8 143 (7.63%) Elastic Stack
9 124 (6.62%) AngularJS
10 89 (4.75%) .NET
11 86 (4.59%) gRPC
12 72 (3.84%) GraphQL
13 70 (3.74%) FastAPI
13 70 (3.74%) HTML
14 64 (3.42%) YAML
15 60 (3.20%) Vue
16 58 (3.10%) PyTorch
17 55 (2.94%) CSS
17 55 (2.94%) RabbitMQ
18 52 (2.78%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 343 (18.31%) Cloud Native
2 178 (9.50%) Distributed Systems
3 71 (3.79%) Public Cloud
4 58 (3.10%) Onboarding
5 57 (3.04%) Product Ownership
6 49 (2.62%) Hybrid Cloud
7 39 (2.08%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.92%) Algorithms
9 35 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
10 30 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
12 25 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 25 (1.33%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.28%) Data Structures
14 23 (1.23%) Virtual Team
15 22 (1.17%) PKI
15 22 (1.17%) Replication
16 21 (1.12%) Hedge funds
17 20 (1.07%) Data Centre
17 20 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 388 (20.72%) Linux
2 75 (4.00%) Windows
3 64 (3.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 61 (3.26%) Unix
5 22 (1.17%) VMS
6 21 (1.12%) Ubuntu
7 18 (0.96%) CentOS
8 17 (0.91%) Windows Server
9 7 (0.37%) Solaris
10 2 (0.11%) Android
10 2 (0.11%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.11%) zOS
11 1 (0.053%) Alpine Linux
11 1 (0.053%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.053%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,251 (66.79%) CI/CD
2 1,014 (54.14%) DevOps
3 812 (43.35%) Containerisation
4 633 (33.80%) Agile
5 575 (30.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 533 (28.46%) Microservices
7 440 (23.49%) Problem-Solving
8 333 (17.78%) Software Engineering
9 292 (15.59%) Observability
10 267 (14.26%) Test Automation
11 201 (10.73%) Migration
12 186 (9.93%) AI
13 164 (8.76%) Analytics
14 163 (8.70%) Full-Stack Development
15 162 (8.65%) Scrum
16 158 (8.44%) DevSecOps
17 157 (8.38%) Platform Engineering
18 154 (8.22%) Continuous Improvement
18 154 (8.22%) Machine Learning
19 141 (7.53%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 881 (47.04%) Python
2 518 (27.66%) Java
3 320 (17.08%) SQL
4 276 (14.74%) Bash
5 249 (13.29%) Go
6 187 (9.98%) JavaScript
7 180 (9.61%) TypeScript
8 119 (6.35%) C#
9 109 (5.82%) PowerShell
10 69 (3.68%) C++
11 54 (2.88%) Bicep
12 52 (2.78%) Shell Script
13 35 (1.87%) Ruby
14 29 (1.55%) Kotlin
15 28 (1.49%) PHP
16 27 (1.44%) Groovy
16 27 (1.44%) Perl
16 27 (1.44%) Rust
17 18 (0.96%) Scala
18 16 (0.85%) C
Qualifications
1 627 (33.48%) Security Cleared
2 519 (27.71%) SC Cleared
3 129 (6.89%) Degree
4 100 (5.34%) DV Cleared
5 99 (5.29%) Computer Science Degree
6 89 (4.75%) AWS Certification
7 73 (3.90%) Azure Certification
8 50 (2.67%) Master's Degree
9 37 (1.98%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 32 (1.71%) CISSP
11 30 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
12 24 (1.28%) 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 (0.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 10 (0.53%) CCSP
17 8 (0.43%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (5.34%) QA
2 55 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 52 (2.78%) Data Quality
4 49 (2.62%) NIST
5 40 (2.14%) GDPR
6 32 (1.71%) NCSC
7 24 (1.28%) 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 (0.37%) 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 1,201 (64.12%) Docker
2 55 (2.94%) Active Directory
3 49 (2.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (1.66%) vSphere
5 27 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.75%) VMware NSX
7 10 (0.53%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.53%) KVM
8 7 (0.37%) Lustre
8 7 (0.37%) 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 (0.053%) GridGain
13 1 (0.053%) QEMU
13 1 (0.053%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 728 (38.87%) Terraform
2 323 (17.25%) Ansible
3 301 (16.07%) Grafana
4 272 (14.52%) Prometheus
5 101 (5.39%) Argo
6 51 (2.72%) Kibana
7 49 (2.62%) Puppet
8 44 (2.35%) Progress Chef
9 40 (2.14%) Istio
9 40 (2.14%) Packer
10 27 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
11 23 (1.23%) Consul
12 20 (1.07%) logstash
12 20 (1.07%) Nessus
13 17 (0.91%) Podman
14 13 (0.69%) Rancher
15 12 (0.64%) Control-M
15 12 (0.64%) ITRS Geneos
16 11 (0.59%) IBM Guardium
16 11 (0.59%) SCOM
Vendors
1 195 (10.41%) Microsoft
2 179 (9.56%) Splunk
3 150 (8.01%) Google
4 121 (6.46%) Oracle
5 120 (6.41%) Red Hat
6 67 (3.58%) VMware
7 45 (2.40%) Databricks
7 45 (2.40%) Dynatrace
8 34 (1.82%) Denodo
8 34 (1.82%) Talend
9 33 (1.76%) OpenAI
10 28 (1.49%) Atlassian
11 24 (1.28%) AppDynamics
11 24 (1.28%) IBM
12 18 (0.96%) Cisco
13 13 (0.69%) Palo Alto
13 13 (0.69%) Tenable
14 12 (0.64%) Confluent
14 12 (0.64%) Foundry
14 12 (0.64%) Solace