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

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 31 55
Rank change year-on-year -1 +24 -23
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 1,988 1,462 1,404
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.06% 5.57% 3.67%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.11% 37.87% 29.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,363 1,003 1,045
10th Percentile £400 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £573
% change year-on-year -8.70% +0.44% -7.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 7 31
10th Percentile £48.75 £26.00 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £36.34 £46.18
Median hourly rate £58.75 £57.50 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% -0.86% -7.20%
75th Percentile £79.25 £64.09 £77.02
90th Percentile £101.25 £70.68 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £58.00
% change year-on-year +4.35% -0.86% -7.20%

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 5,083 3,861 4,776
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.49% 14.71% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,524 2,498 3,489
10th Percentile £312 £313 £252
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -9.95%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 47 157
10th Percentile £17.67 £14.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.49 £20.00
Median hourly rate £48.00 £26.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +81.13% -39.43% -5.11%
75th Percentile £63.32 £61.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.50 £75.66 £76.92
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £25.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +100.98% -44.78% +11.18%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -4 942 £550 -8.33% 336
North of England +13 405 £486 -7.43% 121
Midlands +62 253 £528 +0.48% 46
West Midlands +54 229 £537 -0.09% 33
Yorkshire +7 186 £482 -16.72% 41
North West +17 179 £487 -6.33% 70
South East 0 168 £480 -12.73% 163
South West +6 135 £619 +3.13% 85
North East -4 44 £530 +0.95% 10
East of England -5 36 £616 +12.05% 22
East Midlands -1 24 £438 -12.50% 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 77 (3.87%) Confluence
2 73 (3.67%) SAS
3 44 (2.21%) Apache Spark
4 36 (1.81%) Apache
5 31 (1.56%) nginx
5 31 (1.56%) OpenStack
6 30 (1.51%) Apache Airflow
7 14 (0.70%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.55%) Camunda
9 8 (0.40%) SharePoint
10 6 (0.30%) Appian
10 6 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.25%) Drupal
11 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
11 5 (0.25%) Hyperledger
11 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.20%) IIS
12 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.15%) CMS
Applications
1 5 (0.25%) Chatbot
1 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
1 5 (0.25%) Weka
2 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.10%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.050%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 8 (0.40%) Maximo
2 1 (0.050%) Actimize
2 1 (0.050%) Endur
2 1 (0.050%) Finacle
2 1 (0.050%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,036 (52.11%) AWS
2 748 (37.63%) Azure
3 491 (24.70%) GCP
4 444 (22.33%) GitHub
5 271 (13.63%) OpenShift
6 257 (12.93%) GitHub Actions
7 227 (11.42%) Serverless
8 185 (9.31%) Azure DevOps
9 145 (7.29%) Amazon EKS
10 141 (7.09%) Azure AKS
11 140 (7.04%) AWS CloudFormation
12 135 (6.79%) AWS Lambda
13 132 (6.64%) Amazon S3
14 98 (4.93%) Amazon ECS
15 97 (4.88%) Amazon EC2
16 92 (4.63%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 78 (3.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 67 (3.37%) Datadog
19 53 (2.67%) IaaS
19 53 (2.67%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 97 (4.88%) Firewall
2 63 (3.17%) DNS
3 40 (2.01%) Network Security
4 36 (1.81%) VPN
5 34 (1.71%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.96%) SSL
7 17 (0.86%) HTTP
8 14 (0.70%) DHCP
9 12 (0.60%) SAN
10 11 (0.55%) Reverse Proxy
11 10 (0.50%) NAS
12 8 (0.40%) Kerberos
13 7 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
14 6 (0.30%) BGP
14 6 (0.30%) iSCSI
14 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
14 6 (0.30%) VLAN
15 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
15 5 (0.25%) InfiniBand
15 5 (0.25%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 249 (12.53%) PostgreSQL
2 188 (9.46%) NoSQL
3 124 (6.24%) MongoDB
4 91 (4.58%) Relational Database
5 78 (3.92%) Apache Cassandra
6 77 (3.87%) Elasticsearch
7 75 (3.77%) Amazon RDS
8 59 (2.97%) SQL Server
9 55 (2.77%) Redis
10 48 (2.41%) MySQL
11 40 (2.01%) Big Data
12 38 (1.91%) Pentaho
13 37 (1.86%) Power BI
14 36 (1.81%) BigQuery
14 36 (1.81%) DynamoDB
15 28 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
16 27 (1.36%) Oracle Database
17 26 (1.31%) Data Lake
18 21 (1.06%) Tableau
19 19 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 508 (25.55%) Jenkins
2 404 (20.32%) GitLab
3 374 (18.81%) Git
4 168 (8.45%) JIRA
5 74 (3.72%) JUnit
6 55 (2.77%) SonarQube
7 49 (2.46%) Gradle
8 45 (2.26%) Maven
9 44 (2.21%) Sonatype Nexus
10 43 (2.16%) Selenium
11 38 (1.91%) Bitbucket
12 37 (1.86%) Artifactory
13 35 (1.76%) Cucumber
14 32 (1.61%) MLflow
14 32 (1.61%) Mockito
15 28 (1.41%) Postman
16 27 (1.36%) CircleCI
17 22 (1.11%) JMeter
17 22 (1.11%) Liquibase
18 16 (0.80%) Cypress.io
General
1 538 (27.06%) Social Skills
2 336 (16.90%) Finance
3 246 (12.37%) Public Sector
4 189 (9.51%) Banking
5 154 (7.75%) Analytical Skills
6 55 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.96%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.26%) Front Office
9 24 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
9 24 (1.21%) Investment Banking
10 17 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
11 16 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 16 (0.80%) Telecoms
12 12 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
12 12 (0.60%) Retail
13 11 (0.55%) Military
14 9 (0.45%) Law
15 8 (0.40%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.35%) Games
17 6 (0.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 452 (22.74%) Developer
2 309 (15.54%) Senior
3 295 (14.84%) DevOps Engineer
4 166 (8.35%) Architect
5 136 (6.84%) Java Developer
6 129 (6.49%) Software Engineer
7 107 (5.38%) AWS Engineer
8 106 (5.33%) Senior Developer
9 97 (4.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 94 (4.73%) Cloud Engineer
11 93 (4.68%) Lead
12 88 (4.43%) Platform Engineer
13 80 (4.02%) Python Developer
14 78 (3.92%) Data Engineer
14 78 (3.92%) Full-Stack Developer
15 72 (3.62%) AWS DevOps
15 72 (3.62%) Azure Engineer
15 72 (3.62%) Site Engineer
16 67 (3.37%) Java Engineer
17 60 (3.02%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (15.85%) Kafka
2 264 (13.28%) Spring
3 247 (12.42%) Spring Boot
4 213 (10.71%) RESTful
5 212 (10.66%) REST
6 183 (9.21%) React
7 169 (8.50%) Node.js
8 140 (7.04%) Elastic Stack
9 112 (5.63%) AngularJS
10 93 (4.68%) .NET
11 82 (4.12%) gRPC
12 81 (4.07%) OpenTelemetry
13 78 (3.92%) PyTorch
14 75 (3.77%) GraphQL
15 74 (3.72%) FastAPI
16 65 (3.27%) HTML
17 62 (3.12%) OAuth
17 62 (3.12%) TensorFlow
18 57 (2.87%) Playwright
19 55 (2.77%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 391 (19.67%) Cloud Native
2 163 (8.20%) Distributed Systems
3 69 (3.47%) Public Cloud
4 64 (3.22%) Hybrid Cloud
5 63 (3.17%) Product Ownership
6 62 (3.12%) Onboarding
7 40 (2.01%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
9 29 (1.46%) Management Information System
10 28 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
11 26 (1.31%) PKI
12 25 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
13 24 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
14 23 (1.16%) AI Agents
14 23 (1.16%) Algorithms
15 22 (1.11%) Replication
15 22 (1.11%) Virtual Team
16 20 (1.01%) Security Posture
17 19 (0.96%) NHS
18 17 (0.86%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 404 (20.32%) Linux
2 95 (4.78%) Windows
3 69 (3.47%) Unix
4 54 (2.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 37 (1.86%) VMS
6 25 (1.26%) Windows Server
7 23 (1.16%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.65%) CentOS
9 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.15%) Solaris
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.10%) Android
11 2 (0.10%) Rocky
12 1 (0.050%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.050%) Debian
12 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,318 (66.30%) CI/CD
2 1,102 (55.43%) DevOps
3 891 (44.82%) Containerisation
4 658 (33.10%) Agile
5 590 (29.68%) Infrastructure as Code
6 540 (27.16%) Microservices
7 453 (22.79%) Problem-Solving
8 355 (17.86%) Observability
9 347 (17.45%) Software Engineering
10 295 (14.84%) Test Automation
11 225 (11.32%) AI
12 212 (10.66%) Migration
13 196 (9.86%) Analytics
14 187 (9.41%) DevSecOps
14 187 (9.41%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 184 (9.26%) Continuous Improvement
16 181 (9.10%) Full-Stack Development
17 168 (8.45%) Machine Learning
18 166 (8.35%) Platform Engineering
19 160 (8.05%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 855 (43.01%) Python
2 523 (26.31%) Java
3 376 (18.91%) SQL
4 260 (13.08%) Bash
5 207 (10.41%) Go
6 165 (8.30%) JavaScript
6 165 (8.30%) TypeScript
7 117 (5.89%) PowerShell
8 88 (4.43%) C#
9 62 (3.12%) Bicep
10 59 (2.97%) Shell Script
11 49 (2.46%) Ruby
12 32 (1.61%) C++
13 31 (1.56%) Scala
14 30 (1.51%) Kotlin
14 30 (1.51%) Rust
15 21 (1.06%) PHP
16 17 (0.86%) Groovy
17 13 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
18 12 (0.60%) Perl
Qualifications
1 700 (35.21%) Security Cleared
2 574 (28.87%) SC Cleared
3 153 (7.70%) Degree
4 116 (5.84%) DV Cleared
5 115 (5.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 90 (4.53%) Azure Certification
7 80 (4.02%) AWS Certification
8 54 (2.72%) Master's Degree
9 47 (2.36%) CISSP
10 39 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (1.56%) CISM
12 30 (1.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 24 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 17 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
15 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 14 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
17 11 (0.55%) OCP
17 11 (0.55%) Oracle Certification
18 9 (0.45%) CCSP
18 9 (0.45%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (4.78%) QA
2 65 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.22%) Data Quality
4 63 (3.17%) NIST
5 52 (2.62%) NCSC
6 40 (2.01%) GDPR
7 34 (1.71%) Accessibility
8 29 (1.46%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.91%) PSD2
10 17 (0.86%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.75%) SEPA
12 13 (0.65%) WCAG
13 11 (0.55%) SLA
14 10 (0.50%) NIST 800
15 9 (0.45%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.40%) HIPAA
16 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 7 (0.35%) EU AI Act
18 6 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
18 6 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,278 (64.29%) Docker
2 61 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (2.11%) Active Directory
4 37 (1.86%) vSphere
5 36 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
6 18 (0.91%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 18 (0.91%) VMware NSX
7 13 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.50%) Squid
9 9 (0.45%) Lustre
10 7 (0.35%) GPFS
10 7 (0.35%) KVM
11 6 (0.30%) NFS
12 5 (0.25%) Snort
12 5 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
13 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.15%) Ceph
14 3 (0.15%) Firmware
14 3 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 757 (38.08%) Terraform
2 342 (17.20%) Ansible
3 335 (16.85%) Grafana
4 289 (14.54%) Prometheus
5 108 (5.43%) Argo
6 56 (2.82%) Kibana
7 49 (2.46%) Istio
7 49 (2.46%) Puppet
8 39 (1.96%) Progress Chef
9 28 (1.41%) Nessus
10 25 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (1.21%) Packer
11 24 (1.21%) Podman
12 23 (1.16%) logstash
13 20 (1.01%) Consul
14 16 (0.80%) Control-M
14 16 (0.80%) IBM Guardium
14 16 (0.80%) Rancher
14 16 (0.80%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.70%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 212 (10.66%) Microsoft
2 182 (9.15%) Splunk
3 168 (8.45%) Google
4 134 (6.74%) Oracle
5 128 (6.44%) Red Hat
6 91 (4.58%) VMware
7 52 (2.62%) Databricks
8 47 (2.36%) Dynatrace
9 45 (2.26%) OpenAI
10 38 (1.91%) Denodo
10 38 (1.91%) Talend
11 23 (1.16%) AppDynamics
12 21 (1.06%) Atlassian
13 20 (1.01%) IBM
13 20 (1.01%) Tenable
14 17 (0.86%) CyberArk
15 15 (0.75%) Foundry
16 14 (0.70%) Cisco
16 14 (0.70%) NVIDIA
17 13 (0.65%) Pure Storage