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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 31 57
Rank change year-on-year +1 +26 -26
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,090 1,482 1,366
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.02% 5.78% 3.61%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.66% 38.14% 29.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,436 1,024 1,003
10th Percentile £400 £407 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £586 £568
Median % change year-on-year -10.33% +3.17% -9.20%
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% -9.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 6 24
10th Percentile £51.25 £25.88 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -6.25%
75th Percentile £78.75 £66.13 £76.53
90th Percentile £89.00 £71.31 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -6.25%

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 5,270 3,886 4,649
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.19% 15.14% 12.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,649 2,537 3,388
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
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 120 41 142
10th Percentile £18.65 £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% -16.67%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.25 £59.69
90th Percentile £77.63 £77.50 £76.50
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £25.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +111.76% -36.25% -16.67%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -6 975 £550 -8.33% 278
North of England +10 432 £487 -6.35% 132
Midlands +53 273 £525 - 44
West Midlands +43 244 £525 - 33
Yorkshire +12 226 £482 -16.17% 45
South East +3 183 £483 -12.27% 145
North West +15 165 £491 -1.88% 68
South West +2 141 £575 -4.17% 73
North East -8 45 £520 - 19
East of England -13 37 £606 +10.23% 19
East Midlands -8 28 £438 -4.68% 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 (4.50%) Confluence
2 71 (3.40%) SAS
3 54 (2.58%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.82%) Apache
5 34 (1.63%) nginx
6 28 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
6 28 (1.34%) OpenStack
7 17 (0.81%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.53%) Camunda
9 10 (0.48%) WebLogic
10 8 (0.38%) Appian
10 8 (0.38%) SharePoint
11 6 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.24%) Ethereum
12 5 (0.24%) Hyperledger
13 4 (0.19%) Drupal
13 4 (0.19%) Traefik
14 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.14%) CMS
14 3 (0.14%) IIS
Applications
1 6 (0.29%) 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 (0.096%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.048%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.048%) Maya
5 1 (0.048%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.048%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (0.43%) Maximo
2 2 (0.096%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.048%) Actimize
3 1 (0.048%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.048%) Endur
3 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.048%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,081 (51.72%) AWS
2 798 (38.18%) Azure
3 516 (24.69%) GCP
4 468 (22.39%) GitHub
5 295 (14.11%) OpenShift
6 266 (12.73%) GitHub Actions
7 229 (10.96%) Serverless
8 193 (9.23%) Azure DevOps
9 161 (7.70%) Amazon EKS
10 145 (6.94%) Azure AKS
11 141 (6.75%) AWS CloudFormation
12 138 (6.60%) Amazon S3
13 132 (6.32%) AWS Lambda
14 100 (4.78%) Amazon EC2
15 99 (4.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 94 (4.50%) Amazon ECS
17 65 (3.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 65 (3.11%) Datadog
18 60 (2.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 54 (2.58%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 103 (4.93%) Firewall
2 76 (3.64%) DNS
3 46 (2.20%) Network Security
4 41 (1.96%) VPN
5 38 (1.82%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.91%) HTTP
7 18 (0.86%) SSL
8 16 (0.77%) DHCP
8 16 (0.77%) SAN
9 12 (0.57%) Reverse Proxy
10 11 (0.53%) NAS
11 8 (0.38%) Kerberos
12 7 (0.33%) Fibre Channel
12 7 (0.33%) iSCSI
12 7 (0.33%) OpenVPN
13 5 (0.24%) 5G
13 5 (0.24%) HTTPS
13 5 (0.24%) InfiniBand
13 5 (0.24%) Software-Defined Networking
13 5 (0.24%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (12.44%) PostgreSQL
2 189 (9.04%) NoSQL
3 132 (6.32%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.31%) Relational Database
5 80 (3.83%) Elasticsearch
6 79 (3.78%) Apache Cassandra
7 70 (3.35%) SQL Server
8 68 (3.25%) Amazon RDS
9 47 (2.25%) Redis
10 42 (2.01%) MySQL
11 39 (1.87%) Big Data
12 37 (1.77%) Power BI
13 34 (1.63%) BigQuery
14 32 (1.53%) Pentaho
15 30 (1.44%) DynamoDB
16 29 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
17 27 (1.29%) Data Lake
17 27 (1.29%) Oracle Database
18 21 (1.00%) Hadoop
19 20 (0.96%) Flink
Development Applications
1 525 (25.12%) Jenkins
2 412 (19.71%) GitLab
3 372 (17.80%) Git
4 184 (8.80%) JIRA
5 93 (4.45%) JUnit
6 58 (2.78%) Selenium
7 49 (2.34%) Cucumber
8 48 (2.30%) SonarQube
9 42 (2.01%) Gradle
9 42 (2.01%) MLflow
10 40 (1.91%) Sonatype Nexus
11 39 (1.87%) Artifactory
11 39 (1.87%) Bitbucket
12 37 (1.77%) Maven
13 32 (1.53%) JMeter
14 31 (1.48%) Mockito
15 26 (1.24%) Postman
16 25 (1.20%) CircleCI
17 24 (1.15%) Liquibase
18 17 (0.81%) Gatling
General
1 574 (27.46%) Social Skills
2 358 (17.13%) Finance
3 253 (12.11%) Public Sector
4 186 (8.90%) Banking
5 168 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
6 57 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.82%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.20%) Front Office
8 25 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
9 22 (1.05%) Investment Banking
10 18 (0.86%) Telecoms
11 17 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (0.72%) Retail
13 12 (0.57%) Military
14 10 (0.48%) Pharmaceutical
15 9 (0.43%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.33%) Law
18 6 (0.29%) Games
Job Titles
1 460 (22.01%) Developer
2 326 (15.60%) Senior
3 298 (14.26%) DevOps Engineer
4 187 (8.95%) Architect
5 142 (6.79%) Java Developer
6 137 (6.56%) Software Engineer
7 109 (5.22%) Lead
8 105 (5.02%) Senior Developer
9 102 (4.88%) AWS Engineer
9 102 (4.88%) Cloud Engineer
10 100 (4.78%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 91 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
12 88 (4.21%) Data Engineer
13 84 (4.02%) Python Developer
14 77 (3.68%) Full-Stack Developer
15 76 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
15 76 (3.64%) Java Engineer
16 75 (3.59%) Site Engineer
17 69 (3.30%) AWS DevOps
18 67 (3.21%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (15.98%) Kafka
2 288 (13.78%) Spring
3 254 (12.15%) Spring Boot
4 218 (10.43%) REST
5 209 (10.00%) RESTful
6 186 (8.90%) React
7 160 (7.66%) Node.js
8 140 (6.70%) Elastic Stack
9 111 (5.31%) AngularJS
10 106 (5.07%) OpenTelemetry
11 98 (4.69%) .NET
12 82 (3.92%) PyTorch
13 79 (3.78%) FastAPI
14 77 (3.68%) gRPC
15 67 (3.21%) HTML
16 66 (3.16%) OAuth
17 65 (3.11%) GraphQL
18 64 (3.06%) TensorFlow
19 59 (2.82%) Playwright
20 55 (2.63%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 418 (20.00%) Cloud Native
2 167 (7.99%) Distributed Systems
3 81 (3.88%) Hybrid Cloud
4 75 (3.59%) Public Cloud
5 63 (3.01%) Product Ownership
6 58 (2.78%) Onboarding
7 41 (1.96%) Private Cloud
8 37 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
9 35 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
9 35 (1.67%) Management Information System
10 34 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.29%) PKI
12 26 (1.24%) Algorithms
12 26 (1.24%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.15%) AI Agents
13 24 (1.15%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.10%) Virtual Team
15 22 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (0.96%) Data Structures
16 20 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 432 (20.67%) Linux
2 107 (5.12%) Windows
3 68 (3.25%) Unix
4 63 (3.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 41 (1.96%) VMS
6 26 (1.24%) Windows Server
7 24 (1.15%) 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 (0.096%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.096%) Debian
13 1 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,381 (66.08%) CI/CD
2 1,134 (54.26%) DevOps
3 927 (44.35%) Containerisation
4 681 (32.58%) Agile
5 619 (29.62%) Infrastructure as Code
6 557 (26.65%) Microservices
7 467 (22.34%) Problem-Solving
8 412 (19.71%) Observability
9 358 (17.13%) Software Engineering
10 310 (14.83%) Test Automation
11 244 (11.67%) AI
12 224 (10.72%) Migration
13 217 (10.38%) Analytics
14 210 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
15 207 (9.90%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 185 (8.85%) DevSecOps
17 181 (8.66%) Data Pipeline
18 178 (8.52%) Machine Learning
19 176 (8.42%) Full-Stack Development
19 176 (8.42%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 910 (43.54%) Python
2 538 (25.74%) Java
3 379 (18.13%) SQL
4 273 (13.06%) Bash
5 214 (10.24%) Go
6 169 (8.09%) JavaScript
7 161 (7.70%) TypeScript
8 125 (5.98%) PowerShell
9 88 (4.21%) C#
10 66 (3.16%) Bicep
11 57 (2.73%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.39%) Ruby
13 32 (1.53%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.53%) Scala
14 29 (1.39%) C++
15 28 (1.34%) Rust
16 17 (0.81%) Groovy
17 16 (0.77%) PHP
18 15 (0.72%) Perl
19 14 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 726 (34.74%) Security Cleared
2 601 (28.76%) SC Cleared
3 168 (8.04%) Degree
4 125 (5.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 122 (5.84%) DV Cleared
6 98 (4.69%) Azure Certification
7 95 (4.55%) AWS Certification
8 55 (2.63%) Master's Degree
9 54 (2.58%) CISSP
10 43 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
11 35 (1.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 33 (1.58%) CISM
13 26 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
15 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 15 (0.72%) OCP
16 15 (0.72%) Oracle Certification
17 14 (0.67%) CCSP
18 13 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (5.31%) QA
2 66 (3.16%) Data Quality
3 63 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 63 (3.01%) NIST
4 47 (2.25%) NCSC
5 45 (2.15%) GDPR
6 40 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 30 (1.44%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
8 16 (0.77%) WCAG
9 15 (0.72%) PSD2
10 11 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 10 (0.48%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.48%) SEPA
12 9 (0.43%) SLA
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.33%) JSP 440
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
15 6 (0.29%) GRC
System Software
1 1,295 (61.96%) Docker
2 65 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 50 (2.39%) vSphere
4 47 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
5 41 (1.96%) Active Directory
6 26 (1.24%) VMware NSX
7 22 (1.05%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 12 (0.57%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.53%) Squid
10 9 (0.43%) Lustre
11 8 (0.38%) NFS
12 7 (0.33%) GPFS
12 7 (0.33%) Snort
12 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
13 6 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.24%) KVM
15 4 (0.19%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.19%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 787 (37.66%) Terraform
2 357 (17.08%) Ansible
3 353 (16.89%) Grafana
4 317 (15.17%) Prometheus
5 116 (5.55%) Argo
6 54 (2.58%) Kibana
7 52 (2.49%) Istio
8 50 (2.39%) Puppet
9 40 (1.91%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.58%) Nessus
11 27 (1.29%) Packer
11 27 (1.29%) vCenter Server
12 26 (1.24%) Podman
13 25 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
14 22 (1.05%) Consul
15 21 (1.00%) Control-M
15 21 (1.00%) IBM Guardium
15 21 (1.00%) logstash
16 16 (0.77%) Rancher
17 13 (0.62%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 222 (10.62%) Microsoft
2 194 (9.28%) Splunk
3 167 (7.99%) Google
4 145 (6.94%) Red Hat
5 119 (5.69%) Oracle
6 100 (4.78%) VMware
7 63 (3.01%) Databricks
8 53 (2.54%) Dynatrace
9 46 (2.20%) OpenAI
10 32 (1.53%) Denodo
10 32 (1.53%) Talend
11 28 (1.34%) Tenable
12 24 (1.15%) Pure Storage
13 23 (1.10%) Atlassian
13 23 (1.10%) IBM
14 18 (0.86%) AppDynamics
15 17 (0.81%) CyberArk
16 15 (0.72%) Foundry
17 14 (0.67%) ServiceNow
18 13 (0.62%) NVIDIA