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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 31 56
Rank change year-on-year 0 +25 -25
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,131 1,515 1,335
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.01% 5.89% 3.56%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.62% 38.67% 29.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,469 1,043 971
10th Percentile £400 £407 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £590 £568
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% +3.96% -9.20%
75th Percentile £630 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £745
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -8.70% +2.22% -9.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 6 26
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 £76.53
90th Percentile £89.00 £71.31 £77.50
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 5,378 3,918 4,591
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.18% 15.24% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,717 2,567 3,337
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £409
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 122 41 145
10th Percentile £18.88 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.29 £21.05 £20.00
Median hourly rate £54.00 £26.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.77% -33.75% -23.27%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.48 £77.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £25.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +111.76% -36.25% -21.57%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -6 990 £550 -8.33% 258
North of England +12 444 £488 -7.14% 127
Midlands +53 281 £525 - 42
West Midlands +48 252 £525 -2.33% 30
Yorkshire +10 231 £485 -15.65% 43
South East +3 186 £480 -12.73% 138
North West +16 172 £518 +2.07% 62
South West -1 143 £575 -4.17% 81
North East -6 45 £525 +0.96% 22
East of England -16 38 £606 +15.48% 19
East Midlands -9 28 £438 -8.76% 12
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
1 103 (4.83%) Confluence
2 75 (3.52%) SAS
3 54 (2.53%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.78%) Apache
5 35 (1.64%) nginx
6 30 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (1.27%) OpenStack
8 17 (0.80%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.52%) Camunda
10 10 (0.47%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.38%) Appian
12 7 (0.33%) SharePoint
13 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
14 5 (0.23%) Ethereum
14 5 (0.23%) Hyperledger
15 4 (0.19%) Drupal
15 4 (0.19%) Traefik
16 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 3 (0.14%) CMS
16 3 (0.14%) IIS
Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.23%) 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 1,109 (52.04%) AWS
2 820 (38.48%) Azure
3 527 (24.73%) GCP
4 477 (22.38%) GitHub
5 301 (14.12%) OpenShift
6 272 (12.76%) GitHub Actions
7 231 (10.84%) Serverless
8 192 (9.01%) Azure DevOps
9 168 (7.88%) Amazon EKS
10 150 (7.04%) Azure AKS
11 143 (6.71%) AWS CloudFormation
12 140 (6.57%) Amazon S3
13 133 (6.24%) AWS Lambda
14 104 (4.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 103 (4.83%) Amazon EC2
16 92 (4.32%) Amazon ECS
17 67 (3.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 64 (3.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 63 (2.96%) Datadog
20 58 (2.72%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 110 (5.16%) Firewall
2 77 (3.61%) DNS
3 46 (2.16%) Network Security
4 43 (2.02%) VPN
5 39 (1.83%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.89%) HTTP
7 18 (0.84%) SAN
7 18 (0.84%) SSL
8 16 (0.75%) DHCP
9 14 (0.66%) Reverse Proxy
10 11 (0.52%) NAS
11 8 (0.38%) Kerberos
11 8 (0.38%) OpenVPN
12 7 (0.33%) Fibre Channel
12 7 (0.33%) iSCSI
13 6 (0.28%) BGP
14 5 (0.23%) HTTPS
14 5 (0.23%) InfiniBand
14 5 (0.23%) Software-Defined Networking
14 5 (0.23%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (12.58%) PostgreSQL
2 190 (8.92%) NoSQL
3 133 (6.24%) MongoDB
4 92 (4.32%) Relational Database
5 81 (3.80%) Apache Cassandra
5 81 (3.80%) Elasticsearch
6 71 (3.33%) SQL Server
7 68 (3.19%) Amazon RDS
8 47 (2.21%) Redis
9 41 (1.92%) MySQL
10 39 (1.83%) Big Data
11 36 (1.69%) Power BI
12 35 (1.64%) BigQuery
12 35 (1.64%) Pentaho
13 32 (1.50%) DynamoDB
14 31 (1.45%) Data Warehouse
15 27 (1.27%) Data Lake
15 27 (1.27%) Oracle Database
16 21 (0.99%) Hadoop
17 20 (0.94%) Flink
Development Applications
1 538 (25.25%) Jenkins
2 419 (19.66%) GitLab
3 383 (17.97%) Git
4 198 (9.29%) JIRA
5 96 (4.50%) JUnit
6 61 (2.86%) Selenium
7 54 (2.53%) Cucumber
8 50 (2.35%) SonarQube
9 43 (2.02%) MLflow
10 41 (1.92%) Gradle
11 39 (1.83%) Artifactory
11 39 (1.83%) Bitbucket
11 39 (1.83%) Sonatype Nexus
12 38 (1.78%) Maven
13 33 (1.55%) JMeter
14 32 (1.50%) Mockito
15 26 (1.22%) Postman
16 25 (1.17%) CircleCI
17 24 (1.13%) Liquibase
18 18 (0.84%) Gatling
General
1 579 (27.17%) Social Skills
2 361 (16.94%) Finance
3 263 (12.34%) Public Sector
4 191 (8.96%) Banking
5 171 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
6 59 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.78%) Financial Institution
8 27 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
9 25 (1.17%) Front Office
10 21 (0.99%) Investment Banking
11 18 (0.84%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
13 16 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 15 (0.70%) Retail
15 12 (0.56%) Military
16 11 (0.52%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
18 9 (0.42%) Aerospace
19 7 (0.33%) Law
20 5 (0.23%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 467 (21.91%) Developer
2 332 (15.58%) Senior
3 298 (13.98%) DevOps Engineer
4 191 (8.96%) Architect
5 143 (6.71%) Java Developer
6 137 (6.43%) Software Engineer
7 112 (5.26%) Lead
8 107 (5.02%) AWS Engineer
8 107 (5.02%) Cloud Engineer
9 106 (4.97%) Senior Developer
10 101 (4.74%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 97 (4.55%) Data Engineer
12 92 (4.32%) Platform Engineer
13 86 (4.04%) Python Developer
14 76 (3.57%) Full-Stack Developer
15 75 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
15 75 (3.52%) Java Engineer
15 75 (3.52%) Site Engineer
16 73 (3.43%) AWS DevOps
17 68 (3.19%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 343 (16.10%) Kafka
2 291 (13.66%) Spring
3 254 (11.92%) Spring Boot
4 220 (10.32%) REST
5 209 (9.81%) RESTful
6 188 (8.82%) React
7 159 (7.46%) Node.js
8 138 (6.48%) Elastic Stack
9 112 (5.26%) AngularJS
10 109 (5.11%) OpenTelemetry
11 101 (4.74%) .NET
12 82 (3.85%) PyTorch
13 81 (3.80%) FastAPI
13 81 (3.80%) gRPC
14 68 (3.19%) OAuth
15 66 (3.10%) HTML
16 65 (3.05%) GraphQL
17 64 (3.00%) TensorFlow
18 59 (2.77%) Playwright
19 55 (2.58%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 424 (19.90%) Cloud Native
2 170 (7.98%) Distributed Systems
3 87 (4.08%) Hybrid Cloud
4 78 (3.66%) Public Cloud
5 62 (2.91%) Product Ownership
6 58 (2.72%) Onboarding
7 41 (1.92%) Private Cloud
8 38 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
9 36 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
9 36 (1.69%) Management Information System
10 35 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
11 31 (1.45%) Security Posture
12 28 (1.31%) PKI
13 26 (1.22%) Algorithms
14 25 (1.17%) Data Centre
14 25 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 23 (1.08%) AI Agents
16 22 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
17 21 (0.99%) Linux Command Line
18 20 (0.94%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 439 (20.60%) Linux
2 112 (5.26%) Windows
3 70 (3.28%) Unix
4 68 (3.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (2.06%) VMS
6 27 (1.27%) Windows Server
7 24 (1.13%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.56%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.19%) Android
10 4 (0.19%) CoreOS
10 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
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%) Debian
13 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,405 (65.93%) CI/CD
2 1,146 (53.78%) DevOps
3 937 (43.97%) Containerisation
4 702 (32.94%) Agile
5 629 (29.52%) Infrastructure as Code
6 562 (26.37%) Microservices
7 470 (22.06%) Problem-Solving
8 422 (19.80%) Observability
9 366 (17.18%) Software Engineering
10 323 (15.16%) Test Automation
11 248 (11.64%) AI
12 225 (10.56%) Migration
13 224 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
14 221 (10.37%) Analytics
15 206 (9.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 189 (8.87%) DevSecOps
17 188 (8.82%) Data Pipeline
18 185 (8.68%) Machine Learning
19 182 (8.54%) Platform Engineering
20 180 (8.45%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 923 (43.31%) Python
2 542 (25.43%) Java
3 391 (18.35%) SQL
4 281 (13.19%) Bash
5 216 (10.14%) Go
6 171 (8.02%) JavaScript
7 164 (7.70%) TypeScript
8 131 (6.15%) PowerShell
9 90 (4.22%) C#
10 67 (3.14%) Bicep
11 58 (2.72%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.35%) Ruby
13 32 (1.50%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.50%) Scala
14 28 (1.31%) C++
14 28 (1.31%) Rust
15 17 (0.80%) Groovy
16 16 (0.75%) PHP
17 15 (0.70%) Perl
18 14 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 747 (35.05%) Security Cleared
2 620 (29.09%) SC Cleared
3 167 (7.84%) Degree
4 125 (5.87%) DV Cleared
5 124 (5.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 103 (4.83%) Azure Certification
7 100 (4.69%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.63%) CISSP
9 55 (2.58%) Master's Degree
10 43 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
11 36 (1.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 34 (1.60%) CISM
13 26 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
14 23 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
15 21 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
16 18 (0.84%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 17 (0.80%) OCP
17 17 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
18 14 (0.66%) CCSP
19 13 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (5.26%) QA
2 70 (3.28%) Data Quality
3 66 (3.10%) NIST
4 63 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 48 (2.25%) GDPR
5 48 (2.25%) NCSC
6 40 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 32 (1.50%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
8 16 (0.75%) WCAG
9 15 (0.70%) PSD2
10 12 (0.56%) HIPAA
10 12 (0.56%) NIST 800
11 10 (0.47%) SEPA
12 9 (0.42%) SLA
13 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.33%) GRC
14 7 (0.33%) JSP 440
15 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
15 6 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,317 (61.80%) Docker
2 67 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 52 (2.44%) vSphere
4 48 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
5 43 (2.02%) Active Directory
6 27 (1.27%) VMware NSX
7 22 (1.03%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 12 (0.56%) Hyper-V
8 12 (0.56%) Squid
9 10 (0.47%) NFS
10 9 (0.42%) Lustre
11 7 (0.33%) GPFS
11 7 (0.33%) Snort
11 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
13 5 (0.23%) KVM
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
1 801 (37.59%) Terraform
2 364 (17.08%) Grafana
3 363 (17.03%) Ansible
4 328 (15.39%) Prometheus
5 119 (5.58%) Argo
6 55 (2.58%) Istio
7 54 (2.53%) Kibana
8 50 (2.35%) Puppet
9 40 (1.88%) Progress Chef
10 34 (1.60%) Nessus
11 27 (1.27%) Packer
11 27 (1.27%) vCenter Server
12 26 (1.22%) Podman
12 26 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
13 23 (1.08%) Consul
14 22 (1.03%) Control-M
14 22 (1.03%) IBM Guardium
15 21 (0.99%) logstash
16 19 (0.89%) Rancher
17 13 (0.61%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 230 (10.79%) Microsoft
2 195 (9.15%) Splunk
3 171 (8.02%) Google
4 154 (7.23%) Red Hat
5 120 (5.63%) Oracle
6 103 (4.83%) VMware
7 63 (2.96%) Databricks
8 54 (2.53%) Dynatrace
9 45 (2.11%) OpenAI
10 35 (1.64%) Denodo
10 35 (1.64%) Talend
11 29 (1.36%) Tenable
12 24 (1.13%) Atlassian
12 24 (1.13%) Pure Storage
13 23 (1.08%) IBM
14 18 (0.84%) AppDynamics
14 18 (0.84%) CyberArk
15 16 (0.75%) Foundry
16 15 (0.70%) Okta
17 14 (0.66%) NVIDIA