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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 31 56
Rank change year-on-year 0 +25 -25
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,164 1,504 1,307
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.96% 5.93% 3.49%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.50% 38.61% 28.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,486 1,037 946
10th Percentile £400 £409 £420
25th Percentile £450 £495 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £586 £563
Median % change year-on-year -10.41% +4.18% -10.00%
75th Percentile £630 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £813 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £558
% change year-on-year -8.70% +3.14% -9.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 6 26
10th Percentile £51.25 £25.88 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.20
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £64.75
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -9.27% +1.17%
75th Percentile £78.75 £66.13 £76.53
90th Percentile £89.00 £71.31 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £64.75
% change year-on-year +2.13% -9.27% +1.17%

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 5,478 3,895 4,511
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.08% 15.36% 12.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,779 2,570 3,278
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -9.48%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 41 139
10th Percentile £18.74 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.17 £21.05 £20.00
Median hourly rate £53.25 £26.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +100.94% -33.75% -24.16%
75th Percentile £63.32 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.43 £85.25 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £53.25 £25.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +108.82% -36.25% -23.27%

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 5 March 2026.

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 5 March 2026.

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 5 March 2026. 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 -5 1,012 £550 -8.33% 354
North of England +12 451 £490 -7.76% 199
Midlands +49 283 £525 - 76
West Midlands +46 254 £525 - 48
Yorkshire +7 236 £485 -15.65% 72
South East -4 186 £485 -11.82% 197
North West +18 173 £522 -0.62% 99
South West -1 144 £573 -4.58% 129
North East -3 46 £520 - 28
East of England -14 37 £606 +15.48% 60
East Midlands -13 28 £438 -8.76% 26
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
1 105 (4.85%) Confluence
2 76 (3.51%) SAS
3 55 (2.54%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.80%) Apache
5 35 (1.62%) nginx
6 30 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
7 28 (1.29%) OpenStack
8 17 (0.79%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.51%) Camunda
10 10 (0.46%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.37%) Appian
12 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
12 7 (0.32%) SharePoint
13 5 (0.23%) Ethereum
13 5 (0.23%) Hyperledger
14 4 (0.18%) Drupal
14 4 (0.18%) Traefik
15 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.14%) CMS
15 3 (0.14%) IIS
Applications
1 7 (0.32%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.23%) Weka
3 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.092%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.046%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.046%) Maya
5 1 (0.046%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (0.37%) Maximo
2 2 (0.092%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.046%) Actimize
3 1 (0.046%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.046%) Endur
3 1 (0.046%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.046%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,123 (51.89%) AWS
2 847 (39.14%) Azure
3 533 (24.63%) GCP
4 490 (22.64%) GitHub
5 307 (14.19%) OpenShift
6 282 (13.03%) GitHub Actions
7 229 (10.58%) Serverless
8 195 (9.01%) Azure DevOps
9 171 (7.90%) Amazon EKS
10 161 (7.44%) Azure AKS
11 145 (6.70%) AWS CloudFormation
12 142 (6.56%) Amazon S3
13 132 (6.10%) AWS Lambda
14 107 (4.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 105 (4.85%) Amazon EC2
16 91 (4.21%) Amazon ECS
17 69 (3.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 66 (3.05%) Datadog
19 63 (2.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 60 (2.77%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 112 (5.18%) Firewall
2 79 (3.65%) DNS
3 47 (2.17%) Network Security
4 42 (1.94%) VPN
5 39 (1.80%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.92%) HTTP
7 19 (0.88%) SAN
8 17 (0.79%) DHCP
8 17 (0.79%) SSL
9 14 (0.65%) Reverse Proxy
10 11 (0.51%) NAS
11 10 (0.46%) OpenVPN
12 8 (0.37%) Kerberos
13 7 (0.32%) Fibre Channel
13 7 (0.32%) iSCSI
14 6 (0.28%) BGP
15 5 (0.23%) 4G
15 5 (0.23%) HTTPS
15 5 (0.23%) SMTP
15 5 (0.23%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 278 (12.85%) PostgreSQL
2 197 (9.10%) NoSQL
3 139 (6.42%) MongoDB
4 94 (4.34%) Relational Database
5 84 (3.88%) Apache Cassandra
6 81 (3.74%) Elasticsearch
7 80 (3.70%) SQL Server
8 70 (3.23%) Amazon RDS
9 47 (2.17%) Redis
10 41 (1.89%) MySQL
11 40 (1.85%) Big Data
12 36 (1.66%) Pentaho
12 36 (1.66%) Power BI
13 35 (1.62%) BigQuery
14 32 (1.48%) Data Warehouse
15 31 (1.43%) DynamoDB
16 28 (1.29%) Data Lake
17 27 (1.25%) Oracle Database
18 22 (1.02%) Hadoop
19 19 (0.88%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 543 (25.09%) Jenkins
2 418 (19.32%) GitLab
3 391 (18.07%) Git
4 200 (9.24%) JIRA
5 98 (4.53%) JUnit
6 62 (2.87%) Selenium
7 54 (2.50%) Cucumber
8 51 (2.36%) SonarQube
9 42 (1.94%) MLflow
10 41 (1.89%) Artifactory
11 40 (1.85%) Gradle
12 39 (1.80%) Bitbucket
13 37 (1.71%) Maven
13 37 (1.71%) Sonatype Nexus
14 34 (1.57%) Mockito
15 33 (1.52%) JMeter
16 26 (1.20%) Postman
17 24 (1.11%) CircleCI
18 20 (0.92%) Liquibase
19 18 (0.83%) Gatling
General
1 576 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 370 (17.10%) Finance
3 273 (12.62%) Public Sector
4 190 (8.78%) Banking
5 173 (7.99%) Analytical Skills
6 61 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.62%) Financial Institution
8 27 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
9 25 (1.16%) Front Office
10 20 (0.92%) Investment Banking
10 20 (0.92%) Telecoms
11 19 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
12 16 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (0.69%) Retail
14 13 (0.60%) Military
15 11 (0.51%) Organisational Skills
16 9 (0.42%) Aerospace
16 9 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.32%) Law
18 5 (0.23%) Games
Job Titles
1 479 (22.13%) Developer
2 334 (15.43%) Senior
3 305 (14.09%) DevOps Engineer
4 196 (9.06%) Architect
5 147 (6.79%) Java Developer
6 133 (6.15%) Software Engineer
7 115 (5.31%) Lead
8 111 (5.13%) Cloud Engineer
9 110 (5.08%) Senior Developer
10 106 (4.90%) AWS Engineer
11 100 (4.62%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 99 (4.57%) Data Engineer
13 96 (4.44%) Platform Engineer
14 87 (4.02%) Python Developer
15 78 (3.60%) Azure Engineer
16 77 (3.56%) Full-Stack Developer
17 76 (3.51%) AWS DevOps
18 75 (3.47%) Java Engineer
19 74 (3.42%) Site Engineer
20 69 (3.19%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (15.90%) Kafka
2 295 (13.63%) Spring
3 256 (11.83%) Spring Boot
4 222 (10.26%) REST
5 210 (9.70%) RESTful
6 190 (8.78%) React
7 162 (7.49%) Node.js
8 135 (6.24%) Elastic Stack
9 117 (5.41%) OpenTelemetry
10 115 (5.31%) AngularJS
11 108 (4.99%) .NET
12 82 (3.79%) FastAPI
12 82 (3.79%) PyTorch
13 81 (3.74%) gRPC
14 70 (3.23%) OAuth
15 67 (3.10%) HTML
16 65 (3.00%) GraphQL
17 64 (2.96%) TensorFlow
18 58 (2.68%) Playwright
19 56 (2.59%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 425 (19.64%) Cloud Native
2 169 (7.81%) Distributed Systems
3 88 (4.07%) Hybrid Cloud
4 74 (3.42%) Public Cloud
5 64 (2.96%) Product Ownership
6 58 (2.68%) Onboarding
7 41 (1.89%) Private Cloud
8 38 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
9 37 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
10 36 (1.66%) Enterprise Software
11 35 (1.62%) Management Information System
12 31 (1.43%) Security Posture
13 30 (1.39%) PKI
14 28 (1.29%) Data Centre
15 26 (1.20%) Algorithms
16 25 (1.16%) AI Agents
16 25 (1.16%) Virtual Team
17 22 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
18 21 (0.97%) Data Structures
18 21 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 440 (20.33%) Linux
2 118 (5.45%) Windows
3 70 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 68 (3.14%) Unix
5 45 (2.08%) VMS
6 29 (1.34%) Windows Server
7 24 (1.11%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.55%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.23%) CoreOS
9 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.18%) Android
10 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Rocky
12 2 (0.092%) Debian
12 2 (0.092%) Solaris
13 1 (0.046%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,427 (65.94%) CI/CD
2 1,160 (53.60%) DevOps
3 950 (43.90%) Containerisation
4 710 (32.81%) Agile
5 639 (29.53%) Infrastructure as Code
6 567 (26.20%) Microservices
7 475 (21.95%) Problem-Solving
8 431 (19.92%) Observability
9 361 (16.68%) Software Engineering
10 330 (15.25%) Test Automation
11 251 (11.60%) AI
12 230 (10.63%) Continuous Improvement
13 227 (10.49%) Migration
14 224 (10.35%) Analytics
15 209 (9.66%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 193 (8.92%) DevSecOps
17 191 (8.83%) Platform Engineering
18 189 (8.73%) Data Pipeline
19 188 (8.69%) Machine Learning
20 182 (8.41%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 934 (43.16%) Python
2 547 (25.28%) Java
3 405 (18.72%) SQL
4 286 (13.22%) Bash
5 214 (9.89%) Go
6 171 (7.90%) JavaScript
7 167 (7.72%) TypeScript
8 140 (6.47%) PowerShell
9 96 (4.44%) C#
10 67 (3.10%) Bicep
11 61 (2.82%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.31%) Ruby
13 32 (1.48%) Kotlin
14 31 (1.43%) Scala
15 27 (1.25%) C++
15 27 (1.25%) Rust
16 18 (0.83%) Groovy
17 16 (0.74%) PHP
18 15 (0.69%) Perl
19 13 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 764 (35.30%) Security Cleared
2 631 (29.16%) SC Cleared
3 166 (7.67%) Degree
4 127 (5.87%) DV Cleared
5 119 (5.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 108 (4.99%) Azure Certification
7 101 (4.67%) AWS Certification
8 55 (2.54%) CISSP
9 54 (2.50%) Master's Degree
10 44 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
11 35 (1.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 33 (1.52%) CISM
13 27 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
14 24 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
15 21 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
16 19 (0.88%) OCP
16 19 (0.88%) Oracle Certification
17 18 (0.83%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 14 (0.65%) CCSP
19 13 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (5.31%) QA
2 72 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 65 (3.00%) NIST
4 62 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 48 (2.22%) GDPR
6 47 (2.17%) NCSC
7 45 (2.08%) Accessibility
8 32 (1.48%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.83%) WCAG
10 16 (0.74%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.69%) PSD2
12 12 (0.55%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.51%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.46%) SEPA
15 9 (0.42%) SLA
16 8 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 7 (0.32%) GRC
17 7 (0.32%) JSP 440
18 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
18 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,333 (61.60%) Docker
2 70 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 54 (2.50%) vSphere
4 53 (2.45%) Virtual Machines
5 44 (2.03%) Active Directory
6 27 (1.25%) VMware NSX
7 22 (1.02%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 14 (0.65%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.55%) Squid
10 11 (0.51%) NFS
11 9 (0.42%) Lustre
12 8 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.32%) GPFS
13 7 (0.32%) Snort
13 7 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
14 6 (0.28%) KVM
15 5 (0.23%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
17 3 (0.14%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 811 (37.48%) Terraform
2 369 (17.05%) Grafana
3 365 (16.87%) Ansible
4 332 (15.34%) Prometheus
5 122 (5.64%) Argo
6 58 (2.68%) Istio
7 53 (2.45%) Kibana
8 50 (2.31%) Puppet
9 40 (1.85%) Progress Chef
10 35 (1.62%) Nessus
11 28 (1.29%) Packer
11 28 (1.29%) vCenter Server
12 26 (1.20%) Podman
12 26 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
13 23 (1.06%) Consul
13 23 (1.06%) Control-M
13 23 (1.06%) IBM Guardium
14 21 (0.97%) logstash
15 20 (0.92%) Rancher
16 14 (0.65%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 239 (11.04%) Microsoft
2 190 (8.78%) Splunk
3 168 (7.76%) Google
4 154 (7.12%) Red Hat
5 120 (5.55%) Oracle
6 106 (4.90%) VMware
7 62 (2.87%) Databricks
8 54 (2.50%) Dynatrace
9 47 (2.17%) OpenAI
10 36 (1.66%) Denodo
10 36 (1.66%) Talend
11 30 (1.39%) Tenable
12 24 (1.11%) Atlassian
12 24 (1.11%) Pure Storage
13 21 (0.97%) IBM
14 19 (0.88%) AppDynamics
15 18 (0.83%) CyberArk
16 17 (0.79%) Foundry
16 17 (0.79%) ServiceNow
17 16 (0.74%) NetApp