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 21 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 31 57
Rank change year-on-year 0 +26 -26
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,122 1,489 1,379
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.07% 5.76% 3.63%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.83% 38.03% 29.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,452 1,035 1,011
10th Percentile £399 £409 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £590 £570
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% +3.51% -8.80%
75th Percentile £635 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -8.70% +2.22% -9.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 6 28
10th Percentile £51.25 £25.88 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £62.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -5.62% -2.73%
75th Percentile £78.75 £66.13 £76.77
90th Percentile £89.00 £71.31 £77.65
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £62.25
% change year-on-year +2.13% -5.62% -2.73%

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 5,327 3,915 4,647
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.25% 15.14% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,678 2,567 3,384
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% +2.10% -9.87%
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 120 42 149
10th Percentile £18.65 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.17 £21.01 £20.00
Median hourly rate £53.25 £26.00 £40.31
Median % change year-on-year +104.81% -35.50% -16.02%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.06 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.63 £77.19 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £25.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +111.76% -44.78% -2.78%

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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 -4 995 £550 -8.33% 272
North of England +10 436 £487 -7.24% 131
Midlands +60 275 £525 - 46
West Midlands +46 245 £525 - 35
Yorkshire +13 227 £482 -16.17% 46
South East +2 184 £483 -12.27% 143
North West +13 168 £500 - 69
South West +4 142 £575 -4.17% 77
North East -10 45 £520 - 16
East of England -4 39 £606 +10.23% 18
East Midlands -2 29 £442 -3.65% 11
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 94 (4.43%) Confluence
2 71 (3.35%) SAS
3 54 (2.54%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.79%) Apache
5 34 (1.60%) nginx
6 28 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
6 28 (1.32%) OpenStack
7 17 (0.80%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.52%) Camunda
9 10 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 8 (0.38%) Appian
10 8 (0.38%) SharePoint
11 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.24%) Ethereum
12 5 (0.24%) Hyperledger
13 4 (0.19%) Drupal
13 4 (0.19%) IIS
13 4 (0.19%) Traefik
14 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.14%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.24%) Weka
3 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.094%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.047%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.047%) Maya
5 1 (0.047%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (0.42%) Maximo
2 2 (0.094%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.047%) Actimize
3 1 (0.047%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.047%) Endur
3 1 (0.047%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.047%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,099 (51.79%) AWS
2 804 (37.89%) Azure
3 523 (24.65%) GCP
4 473 (22.29%) GitHub
5 296 (13.95%) OpenShift
6 270 (12.72%) GitHub Actions
7 233 (10.98%) Serverless
8 192 (9.05%) Azure DevOps
9 163 (7.68%) Amazon EKS
10 148 (6.97%) Azure AKS
11 142 (6.69%) AWS CloudFormation
12 141 (6.64%) Amazon S3
13 136 (6.41%) AWS Lambda
14 100 (4.71%) Amazon EC2
14 100 (4.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 97 (4.57%) Amazon ECS
16 71 (3.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 67 (3.16%) Datadog
18 61 (2.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 55 (2.59%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 105 (4.95%) Firewall
2 76 (3.58%) DNS
3 46 (2.17%) Network Security
4 42 (1.98%) VPN
5 39 (1.84%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.90%) HTTP
6 19 (0.90%) SSL
7 16 (0.75%) DHCP
7 16 (0.75%) SAN
8 12 (0.57%) Reverse Proxy
9 11 (0.52%) NAS
10 8 (0.38%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.33%) Fibre Channel
11 7 (0.33%) iSCSI
11 7 (0.33%) OpenVPN
12 6 (0.28%) BGP
12 6 (0.28%) VLAN
13 5 (0.24%) HTTPS
13 5 (0.24%) InfiniBand
13 5 (0.24%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (12.39%) PostgreSQL
2 189 (8.91%) NoSQL
3 134 (6.31%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.24%) Relational Database
5 85 (4.01%) Apache Cassandra
6 80 (3.77%) Elasticsearch
7 70 (3.30%) Amazon RDS
7 70 (3.30%) SQL Server
8 47 (2.21%) Redis
9 44 (2.07%) MySQL
10 39 (1.84%) Big Data
11 37 (1.74%) Power BI
12 35 (1.65%) BigQuery
13 32 (1.51%) Pentaho
14 30 (1.41%) DynamoDB
15 29 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
16 28 (1.32%) Data Lake
17 27 (1.27%) Oracle Database
18 21 (0.99%) Hadoop
19 20 (0.94%) Flink
Development Applications
1 533 (25.12%) Jenkins
2 418 (19.70%) GitLab
3 374 (17.62%) Git
4 186 (8.77%) JIRA
5 93 (4.38%) JUnit
6 58 (2.73%) Selenium
7 50 (2.36%) SonarQube
8 49 (2.31%) Cucumber
9 43 (2.03%) Sonatype Nexus
10 42 (1.98%) Gradle
10 42 (1.98%) MLflow
11 39 (1.84%) Artifactory
11 39 (1.84%) Bitbucket
12 38 (1.79%) Maven
13 33 (1.56%) Mockito
14 32 (1.51%) JMeter
15 26 (1.23%) Postman
16 25 (1.18%) CircleCI
17 24 (1.13%) Liquibase
18 17 (0.80%) Gatling
General
1 578 (27.24%) Social Skills
2 359 (16.92%) Finance
3 259 (12.21%) Public Sector
4 189 (8.91%) Banking
5 169 (7.96%) Analytical Skills
6 57 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.79%) Financial Institution
8 26 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
9 25 (1.18%) Front Office
10 22 (1.04%) Investment Banking
11 18 (0.85%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (0.71%) Retail
14 12 (0.57%) Military
15 10 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
16 9 (0.42%) Aerospace
17 8 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
18 7 (0.33%) Law
19 6 (0.28%) Games
Job Titles
1 468 (22.05%) Developer
2 330 (15.55%) Senior
3 306 (14.42%) DevOps Engineer
4 188 (8.86%) Architect
5 144 (6.79%) Java Developer
6 138 (6.50%) Software Engineer
7 109 (5.14%) Lead
8 107 (5.04%) Senior Developer
9 104 (4.90%) AWS Engineer
10 103 (4.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 102 (4.81%) Cloud Engineer
12 96 (4.52%) Platform Engineer
13 88 (4.15%) Data Engineer
14 84 (3.96%) Python Developer
15 80 (3.77%) Full-Stack Developer
16 76 (3.58%) Java Engineer
16 76 (3.58%) Site Engineer
17 75 (3.53%) Azure Engineer
18 71 (3.35%) AWS DevOps
19 67 (3.16%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 350 (16.49%) Kafka
2 292 (13.76%) Spring
3 257 (12.11%) Spring Boot
4 218 (10.27%) REST
5 211 (9.94%) RESTful
6 187 (8.81%) React
7 164 (7.73%) Node.js
8 140 (6.60%) Elastic Stack
9 111 (5.23%) AngularJS
10 106 (5.00%) OpenTelemetry
11 98 (4.62%) .NET
12 83 (3.91%) gRPC
12 83 (3.91%) PyTorch
13 80 (3.77%) FastAPI
14 67 (3.16%) GraphQL
14 67 (3.16%) HTML
15 66 (3.11%) OAuth
16 65 (3.06%) TensorFlow
17 61 (2.87%) Playwright
18 56 (2.64%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 422 (19.89%) Cloud Native
2 173 (8.15%) Distributed Systems
3 81 (3.82%) Hybrid Cloud
4 75 (3.53%) Public Cloud
5 63 (2.97%) Product Ownership
6 60 (2.83%) Onboarding
7 41 (1.93%) Private Cloud
8 39 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
9 35 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
9 35 (1.65%) Management Information System
10 34 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.27%) PKI
11 27 (1.27%) Security Posture
12 26 (1.23%) AI Agents
12 26 (1.23%) Algorithms
12 26 (1.23%) Data Centre
13 23 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
13 23 (1.08%) Virtual Team
14 20 (0.94%) Data Structures
14 20 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 435 (20.50%) Linux
2 107 (5.04%) Windows
3 71 (3.35%) Unix
4 65 (3.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 41 (1.93%) VMS
6 26 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 24 (1.13%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.57%) CentOS
9 5 (0.24%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.19%) Android
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Rocky
11 3 (0.14%) Solaris
12 2 (0.094%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.094%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.094%) Debian
13 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,399 (65.93%) CI/CD
2 1,149 (54.15%) DevOps
3 933 (43.97%) Containerisation
4 686 (32.33%) Agile
5 628 (29.59%) Infrastructure as Code
6 569 (26.81%) Microservices
7 470 (22.15%) Problem-Solving
8 416 (19.60%) Observability
9 369 (17.39%) Software Engineering
10 311 (14.66%) Test Automation
11 249 (11.73%) AI
12 228 (10.74%) Migration
13 218 (10.27%) Analytics
14 210 (9.90%) Continuous Improvement
14 210 (9.90%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 188 (8.86%) DevSecOps
16 183 (8.62%) Machine Learning
17 182 (8.58%) Data Pipeline
17 182 (8.58%) Full-Stack Development
18 180 (8.48%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 919 (43.31%) Python
2 545 (25.68%) Java
3 382 (18.00%) SQL
4 275 (12.96%) Bash
5 218 (10.27%) Go
6 170 (8.01%) JavaScript
7 163 (7.68%) TypeScript
8 125 (5.89%) PowerShell
9 89 (4.19%) C#
10 66 (3.11%) Bicep
11 59 (2.78%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.36%) Ruby
13 32 (1.51%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.51%) Scala
14 31 (1.46%) C++
15 28 (1.32%) Rust
16 17 (0.80%) Groovy
17 16 (0.75%) PHP
18 15 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
18 15 (0.71%) Perl
Qualifications
1 736 (34.68%) Security Cleared
2 607 (28.61%) SC Cleared
3 168 (7.92%) Degree
4 125 (5.89%) Computer Science Degree
4 125 (5.89%) DV Cleared
5 98 (4.62%) Azure Certification
6 95 (4.48%) AWS Certification
7 55 (2.59%) Master's Degree
8 54 (2.54%) CISSP
9 43 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
10 35 (1.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 33 (1.56%) CISM
12 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 22 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
15 16 (0.75%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 15 (0.71%) OCP
16 15 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
17 14 (0.66%) CCSP
18 13 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (5.23%) QA
2 66 (3.11%) Data Quality
3 64 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.02%) NIST
4 47 (2.21%) NCSC
5 46 (2.17%) GDPR
6 40 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.51%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
8 16 (0.75%) WCAG
9 15 (0.71%) PSD2
10 11 (0.52%) NIST 800
11 10 (0.47%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.47%) SEPA
11 10 (0.47%) SLA
12 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.33%) JSP 440
14 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 6 (0.28%) GRC
System Software
1 1,316 (62.02%) Docker
2 68 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 51 (2.40%) vSphere
4 47 (2.21%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (1.98%) Active Directory
6 28 (1.32%) VMware NSX
7 22 (1.04%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 14 (0.66%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.52%) Squid
10 9 (0.42%) Lustre
11 8 (0.38%) NFS
12 7 (0.33%) GPFS
12 7 (0.33%) KVM
12 7 (0.33%) Snort
12 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
13 6 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
14 4 (0.19%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.19%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 799 (37.65%) Terraform
2 361 (17.01%) Ansible
3 358 (16.87%) Grafana
4 322 (15.17%) Prometheus
5 116 (5.47%) Argo
6 54 (2.54%) Kibana
7 53 (2.50%) Istio
8 50 (2.36%) Puppet
9 40 (1.89%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.56%) Nessus
11 27 (1.27%) Packer
11 27 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (1.27%) vCenter Server
12 26 (1.23%) Podman
13 22 (1.04%) Consul
14 21 (0.99%) Control-M
14 21 (0.99%) IBM Guardium
14 21 (0.99%) logstash
15 16 (0.75%) Rancher
16 13 (0.61%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 223 (10.51%) Microsoft
2 196 (9.24%) Splunk
3 170 (8.01%) Google
4 147 (6.93%) Red Hat
5 119 (5.61%) Oracle
6 103 (4.85%) VMware
7 63 (2.97%) Databricks
8 54 (2.54%) Dynatrace
9 47 (2.21%) OpenAI
10 32 (1.51%) Denodo
10 32 (1.51%) Talend
11 28 (1.32%) Tenable
12 24 (1.13%) IBM
12 24 (1.13%) Pure Storage
13 23 (1.08%) Atlassian
14 18 (0.85%) AppDynamics
15 17 (0.80%) CyberArk
16 15 (0.71%) Foundry
17 14 (0.66%) NVIDIA
17 14 (0.66%) ServiceNow