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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 30 57
Rank change year-on-year -2 +27 -29
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,162 1,486 1,306
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.68% 6.12% 3.47%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.17% 38.57% 28.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,461 1,052 958
10th Percentile £400 £406 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £625 £688 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £566 £550
% change year-on-year -7.24% +2.91% -10.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 7 16
10th Percentile - £26.00 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £41.38 £50.94
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% - -14.29%
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.44 £68.81
90th Percentile £85.70 £80.40 £75.97
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% - -14.29%

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 5,519 3,853 4,505
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 14.51% 15.87% 11.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,804 2,638 3,290
10th Percentile £313 £315 £250
25th Percentile £413 £420 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £630
90th Percentile £700 £738 £710
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 39 128
10th Percentile £20.09 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £30.28 £22.32 £17.77
Median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £27.88
Median % change year-on-year +107.55% -4.96% -50.43%
75th Percentile £68.75 £61.63 £54.06
90th Percentile £76.88 £77.74 £67.65
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £26.48 £30.75
% change year-on-year +107.74% -13.90% -46.52%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -10 999 £550 -8.33% 315
North of England +8 452 £500 -4.76% 157
Midlands +35 282 £520 -0.95% 57
West Midlands +34 245 £523 -1.80% 38
Yorkshire +12 237 £487 -16.39% 47
South East -5 187 £500 -9.09% 147
North West +9 173 £537 +4.47% 85
South West 0 154 £550 -8.33% 80
North East -1 46 £475 -7.77% 25
East Midlands -15 36 £449 -5.58% 19
East of England -28 32 £613 +25.00% 32
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
1 100 (4.63%) Confluence
2 72 (3.33%) SAS
3 62 (2.87%) Apache Spark
4 50 (2.31%) Apache
5 35 (1.62%) nginx
6 30 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
6 30 (1.39%) OpenStack
7 17 (0.79%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.51%) Camunda
9 8 (0.37%) Appian
9 8 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.32%) SharePoint
11 4 (0.19%) Drupal
12 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.14%) CMS
12 3 (0.14%) IIS
13 2 (0.093%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.093%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.19%) Weka
3 3 (0.14%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.093%) Adobe XD
4 2 (0.093%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.046%) Maya
5 1 (0.046%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (0.37%) Maximo
2 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.093%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.046%) Actimize
4 1 (0.046%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.046%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.046%) SAP Hybris
4 1 (0.046%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.046%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,116 (51.62%) AWS
2 891 (41.21%) Azure
3 520 (24.05%) GCP
4 473 (21.88%) GitHub
5 321 (14.85%) OpenShift
6 278 (12.86%) GitHub Actions
7 229 (10.59%) Serverless
8 209 (9.67%) Azure DevOps
9 163 (7.54%) Amazon EKS
10 159 (7.35%) Azure AKS
11 149 (6.89%) AWS CloudFormation
12 137 (6.34%) Amazon S3
13 130 (6.01%) AWS Lambda
14 104 (4.81%) Amazon EC2
15 100 (4.63%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 84 (3.89%) Amazon ECS
17 69 (3.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 68 (3.15%) Datadog
19 63 (2.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 57 (2.64%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 108 (5.00%) Firewall
2 89 (4.12%) DNS
3 49 (2.27%) Network Security
4 48 (2.22%) VPN
5 37 (1.71%) TCP/IP
6 22 (1.02%) SAN
7 19 (0.88%) HTTP
8 16 (0.74%) DHCP
9 15 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
10 14 (0.65%) NAS
11 11 (0.51%) OpenVPN
11 11 (0.51%) SSL
12 9 (0.42%) Fibre Channel
12 9 (0.42%) iSCSI
13 7 (0.32%) 5G
13 7 (0.32%) BGP
14 6 (0.28%) 3GPP
14 6 (0.28%) 4G
14 6 (0.28%) Kerberos
14 6 (0.28%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (11.79%) PostgreSQL
2 190 (8.79%) NoSQL
3 123 (5.69%) MongoDB
4 104 (4.81%) Relational Database
5 88 (4.07%) SQL Server
6 75 (3.47%) Apache Cassandra
7 65 (3.01%) Amazon RDS
7 65 (3.01%) Elasticsearch
8 45 (2.08%) Redis
9 43 (1.99%) Big Data
10 40 (1.85%) Power BI
11 35 (1.62%) MySQL
12 34 (1.57%) Pentaho
13 32 (1.48%) Data Lake
14 31 (1.43%) BigQuery
15 27 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
15 27 (1.25%) DynamoDB
16 26 (1.20%) Flink
17 23 (1.06%) Oracle Database
18 19 (0.88%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 546 (25.25%) Jenkins
2 405 (18.73%) GitLab
3 388 (17.95%) Git
4 181 (8.37%) JIRA
5 101 (4.67%) JUnit
6 64 (2.96%) Selenium
7 57 (2.64%) SonarQube
8 54 (2.50%) Cucumber
9 43 (1.99%) Artifactory
10 41 (1.90%) MLflow
11 40 (1.85%) JMeter
12 38 (1.76%) Maven
13 36 (1.67%) Bitbucket
14 34 (1.57%) Mockito
15 33 (1.53%) Gradle
16 30 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
17 27 (1.25%) Gatling
18 22 (1.02%) Postman
19 19 (0.88%) CircleCI
20 15 (0.69%) WebDriver
General
1 568 (26.27%) Social Skills
2 361 (16.70%) Finance
3 269 (12.44%) Public Sector
4 185 (8.56%) Banking
5 153 (7.08%) Analytical Skills
6 58 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (1.57%) Financial Institution
8 28 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
9 25 (1.16%) Telecoms
10 21 (0.97%) Front Office
11 19 (0.88%) Investment Banking
11 19 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (0.69%) Retail
13 13 (0.60%) Military
14 12 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (0.51%) Legal
16 10 (0.46%) Aerospace
17 8 (0.37%) Publishing
18 6 (0.28%) Games
Job Titles
1 452 (20.91%) Developer
2 328 (15.17%) Senior
3 295 (13.64%) DevOps Engineer
4 216 (9.99%) Architect
5 150 (6.94%) Java Developer
6 139 (6.43%) Software Engineer
7 119 (5.50%) Lead
8 112 (5.18%) Platform Engineer
9 103 (4.76%) Cloud Engineer
10 102 (4.72%) Senior Developer
11 100 (4.63%) Data Engineer
11 100 (4.63%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 97 (4.49%) AWS Engineer
13 85 (3.93%) Azure Engineer
14 80 (3.70%) Java Engineer
15 78 (3.61%) Python Developer
16 74 (3.42%) Site Engineer
17 70 (3.24%) AWS DevOps
18 66 (3.05%) GCP Engineer
19 64 (2.96%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 356 (16.47%) Kafka
2 307 (14.20%) Spring
3 263 (12.16%) Spring Boot
4 225 (10.41%) REST
5 203 (9.39%) RESTful
6 164 (7.59%) React
7 157 (7.26%) Node.js
8 127 (5.87%) OpenTelemetry
9 125 (5.78%) Elastic Stack
10 117 (5.41%) AngularJS
11 101 (4.67%) .NET
12 78 (3.61%) gRPC
13 75 (3.47%) PyTorch
14 72 (3.33%) OAuth
15 63 (2.91%) FastAPI
16 58 (2.68%) TensorFlow
17 57 (2.64%) RabbitMQ
18 56 (2.59%) GraphQL
18 56 (2.59%) Playwright
19 54 (2.50%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 432 (19.98%) Cloud Native
2 193 (8.93%) Distributed Systems
3 92 (4.26%) Hybrid Cloud
4 69 (3.19%) Public Cloud
5 60 (2.78%) Onboarding
6 59 (2.73%) Product Ownership
7 37 (1.71%) Data Centre
7 37 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
8 35 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
8 35 (1.62%) Private Cloud
9 34 (1.57%) AI Agents
10 33 (1.53%) Management Information System
11 28 (1.30%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.25%) PKI
13 25 (1.16%) Virtual Team
14 24 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (0.93%) Fixed Income
15 20 (0.93%) Replication
16 19 (0.88%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 414 (19.15%) Linux
2 118 (5.46%) Windows
3 64 (2.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 59 (2.73%) Unix
5 45 (2.08%) VMS
6 27 (1.25%) Windows Server
7 20 (0.93%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
9 5 (0.23%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) CoreOS
9 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.19%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.19%) Rocky
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Android
11 3 (0.14%) Debian
12 1 (0.046%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,405 (64.99%) CI/CD
2 1,153 (53.33%) DevOps
3 924 (42.74%) Containerisation
4 701 (32.42%) Agile
5 649 (30.02%) Infrastructure as Code
6 567 (26.23%) Microservices
7 441 (20.40%) Observability
8 439 (20.31%) Problem-Solving
9 365 (16.88%) Software Engineering
10 329 (15.22%) Test Automation
11 275 (12.72%) AI
12 231 (10.68%) Continuous Improvement
13 224 (10.36%) Analytics
14 219 (10.13%) Migration
15 216 (9.99%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 215 (9.94%) Platform Engineering
17 204 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
18 196 (9.07%) DevSecOps
18 196 (9.07%) Machine Learning
18 196 (9.07%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 885 (40.93%) Python
2 542 (25.07%) Java
3 404 (18.69%) SQL
4 272 (12.58%) Bash
5 188 (8.70%) Go
6 150 (6.94%) JavaScript
7 139 (6.43%) PowerShell
8 134 (6.20%) TypeScript
9 98 (4.53%) C#
10 67 (3.10%) Bicep
11 58 (2.68%) Shell Script
12 41 (1.90%) Ruby
13 36 (1.67%) Scala
14 26 (1.20%) Kotlin
15 22 (1.02%) Rust
16 19 (0.88%) C++
16 19 (0.88%) Groovy
17 14 (0.65%) PHP
18 12 (0.56%) C
18 12 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 769 (35.57%) Security Cleared
2 623 (28.82%) SC Cleared
3 147 (6.80%) Degree
4 121 (5.60%) DV Cleared
5 107 (4.95%) Azure Certification
6 102 (4.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 83 (3.84%) AWS Certification
8 51 (2.36%) CISSP
9 48 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
10 44 (2.04%) Master's Degree
11 31 (1.43%) CISM
12 29 (1.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 22 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.88%) OCP
15 19 (0.88%) Oracle Certification
16 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
17 14 (0.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 13 (0.60%) CCSP
19 12 (0.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (5.60%) QA
2 80 (3.70%) Data Quality
3 66 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 66 (3.05%) NIST
4 59 (2.73%) GDPR
5 45 (2.08%) NCSC
6 44 (2.04%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.48%) PCI DSS
8 20 (0.93%) WCAG
9 16 (0.74%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.69%) PSD2
11 13 (0.60%) NIST 800
12 12 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 11 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 10 (0.46%) SEPA
15 9 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 9 (0.42%) HIPAA
15 9 (0.42%) SLA
16 8 (0.37%) GRC
17 7 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,282 (59.30%) Docker
2 74 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 58 (2.68%) vSphere
4 47 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
5 40 (1.85%) Active Directory
6 31 (1.43%) VMware NSX
7 23 (1.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 19 (0.88%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.60%) NFS
10 12 (0.56%) Squid
11 9 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.37%) Lustre
13 7 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
14 6 (0.28%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.28%) GPFS
14 6 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.28%) Snort
15 5 (0.23%) etcd
16 4 (0.19%) Firmware
16 4 (0.19%) KVM
Systems Management
1 805 (37.23%) Terraform
2 367 (16.98%) Grafana
3 361 (16.70%) Ansible
4 336 (15.54%) Prometheus
5 132 (6.11%) Argo
6 58 (2.68%) Istio
7 49 (2.27%) Puppet
8 41 (1.90%) Progress Chef
9 40 (1.85%) Kibana
10 34 (1.57%) vCenter Server
11 28 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
12 27 (1.25%) Packer
13 26 (1.20%) Podman
14 25 (1.16%) Nessus
15 22 (1.02%) Consul
15 22 (1.02%) Rancher
16 14 (0.65%) Control-M
16 14 (0.65%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.65%) Kustomize
17 13 (0.60%) linkerd
Vendors
1 243 (11.24%) Microsoft
2 191 (8.83%) Splunk
3 159 (7.35%) Red Hat
4 152 (7.03%) Google
5 115 (5.32%) Oracle
6 109 (5.04%) VMware
7 63 (2.91%) Databricks
8 60 (2.78%) Dynatrace
9 49 (2.27%) OpenAI
10 35 (1.62%) Talend
11 34 (1.57%) Denodo
12 31 (1.43%) Pure Storage
13 24 (1.11%) IBM
14 22 (1.02%) Tenable
15 21 (0.97%) AppDynamics
15 21 (0.97%) Atlassian
16 19 (0.88%) Foundry
17 18 (0.83%) NetApp
17 18 (0.83%) ServiceNow
18 17 (0.79%) CyberArk