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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 31 50
Rank change year-on-year -1 +19 -19
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 1,993 1,490 1,431
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.14% 5.56% 3.87%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.09% 38.01% 30.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,381 1,018 1,064
10th Percentile £400 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £486
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 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 9 36
10th Percentile £48.75 £26.25 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £58.75 £57.50 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% +2.22% -17.88%
75th Percentile £79.25 £68.18 £76.53
90th Percentile £101.25 £74.09 £77.75
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +4.35% +2.22% -16.04%

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 5,099 3,920 4,758
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.71% 14.63% 12.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,546 2,537 3,467
10th Percentile £311 £313 £258
25th Percentile £413 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £526 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.75% -9.79%
75th Percentile £600 £640 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -9.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 52 157
10th Percentile £18.87 £15.22 £14.55
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.03 £21.25
Median hourly rate £48.00 £26.88 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +78.60% -41.80% +13.81%
75th Percentile £62.25 £63.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £78.50 £77.19 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £26.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +93.40% -42.62% +19.95%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -3 953 £550 -8.33% 298
North of England +13 403 £487 -7.24% 229
Midlands +59 242 £530 -3.64% 145
West Midlands +44 222 £537 -6.61% 53
Yorkshire +8 185 £487 -15.30% 95
South East +2 175 £486 -11.59% 348
North West +12 173 £487 -5.33% 102
South West +6 129 £625 +4.17% 187
North East -3 48 £520 -0.95% 32
East of England -3 38 £575 +15.00% 126
East Midlands -10 20 £418 -16.50% 86
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 83 (4.16%) Confluence
2 73 (3.66%) SAS
3 41 (2.06%) Apache Spark
4 37 (1.86%) Apache
5 31 (1.56%) nginx
5 31 (1.56%) OpenStack
6 30 (1.51%) Apache Airflow
7 12 (0.60%) Jupyter
8 10 (0.50%) Camunda
9 8 (0.40%) Mule
9 8 (0.40%) SharePoint
10 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.30%) Tomcat
12 5 (0.25%) Appian
12 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
12 5 (0.25%) Hyperledger
12 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
13 4 (0.20%) CMS
13 4 (0.20%) IIS
13 4 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
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 PowerPoint
2 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.050%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 12 (0.60%) 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 1,053 (52.83%) AWS
2 755 (37.88%) Azure
3 511 (25.64%) GCP
4 446 (22.38%) GitHub
5 266 (13.35%) OpenShift
6 261 (13.10%) GitHub Actions
7 229 (11.49%) Serverless
8 190 (9.53%) Azure DevOps
9 143 (7.18%) AWS CloudFormation
10 140 (7.02%) Azure AKS
11 139 (6.97%) Amazon EKS
12 132 (6.62%) AWS Lambda
13 131 (6.57%) Amazon S3
14 99 (4.97%) Amazon ECS
15 94 (4.72%) Amazon EC2
16 93 (4.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 80 (4.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 71 (3.56%) Datadog
19 57 (2.86%) Entra ID
20 55 (2.76%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 98 (4.92%) Firewall
2 60 (3.01%) DNS
3 39 (1.96%) Network Security
4 34 (1.71%) VPN
5 31 (1.56%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.95%) SSL
7 18 (0.90%) HTTP
8 12 (0.60%) DHCP
9 10 (0.50%) Reverse Proxy
9 10 (0.50%) SAN
10 9 (0.45%) NAS
11 8 (0.40%) Fibre Channel
11 8 (0.40%) Kerberos
12 7 (0.35%) BGP
12 7 (0.35%) iSCSI
13 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
13 6 (0.30%) VLAN
14 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
14 5 (0.25%) OpenVPN
14 5 (0.25%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (12.79%) PostgreSQL
2 192 (9.63%) NoSQL
3 125 (6.27%) MongoDB
4 88 (4.42%) Relational Database
5 79 (3.96%) Apache Cassandra
6 76 (3.81%) Amazon RDS
7 74 (3.71%) Elasticsearch
8 60 (3.01%) SQL Server
9 57 (2.86%) Redis
10 47 (2.36%) MySQL
11 38 (1.91%) Pentaho
12 37 (1.86%) Big Data
12 37 (1.86%) Power BI
13 36 (1.81%) BigQuery
14 35 (1.76%) DynamoDB
15 28 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
16 26 (1.30%) Data Lake
17 22 (1.10%) Oracle Database
18 21 (1.05%) Tableau
19 19 (0.95%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 514 (25.79%) Jenkins
2 407 (20.42%) GitLab
3 382 (19.17%) Git
4 174 (8.73%) JIRA
5 78 (3.91%) JUnit
6 58 (2.91%) SonarQube
7 52 (2.61%) Gradle
7 52 (2.61%) Sonatype Nexus
8 51 (2.56%) Maven
9 47 (2.36%) Selenium
10 40 (2.01%) Bitbucket
11 38 (1.91%) Artifactory
11 38 (1.91%) Cucumber
12 32 (1.61%) Mockito
13 30 (1.51%) CircleCI
13 30 (1.51%) MLflow
14 26 (1.30%) Liquibase
14 26 (1.30%) Postman
15 21 (1.05%) Cypress.io
15 21 (1.05%) JMeter
General
1 544 (27.30%) Social Skills
2 334 (16.76%) Finance
3 245 (12.29%) Public Sector
4 202 (10.14%) Banking
5 153 (7.68%) Analytical Skills
6 53 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (2.06%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.25%) Front Office
8 25 (1.25%) Investment Banking
9 22 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
10 18 (0.90%) Telecoms
11 17 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
11 17 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (0.55%) Military
12 11 (0.55%) Retail
13 9 (0.45%) Aerospace
13 9 (0.45%) Law
14 7 (0.35%) Games
15 6 (0.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 455 (22.83%) Developer
2 312 (15.65%) Senior
3 298 (14.95%) DevOps Engineer
4 170 (8.53%) Architect
5 141 (7.07%) Java Developer
6 133 (6.67%) Software Engineer
7 105 (5.27%) AWS Engineer
8 104 (5.22%) Senior Developer
9 99 (4.97%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 93 (4.67%) Cloud Engineer
10 93 (4.67%) Lead
11 85 (4.26%) Platform Engineer
12 79 (3.96%) Python Developer
13 78 (3.91%) Full-Stack Developer
14 75 (3.76%) Data Engineer
15 73 (3.66%) AWS DevOps
15 73 (3.66%) Azure Engineer
15 73 (3.66%) Site Engineer
16 62 (3.11%) Java Engineer
17 59 (2.96%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (15.81%) Kafka
2 263 (13.20%) Spring
3 243 (12.19%) Spring Boot
4 216 (10.84%) RESTful
5 210 (10.54%) REST
6 183 (9.18%) React
7 171 (8.58%) Node.js
8 142 (7.12%) Elastic Stack
9 113 (5.67%) AngularJS
10 90 (4.52%) .NET
11 84 (4.21%) gRPC
12 77 (3.86%) GraphQL
13 75 (3.76%) PyTorch
14 72 (3.61%) FastAPI
15 71 (3.56%) OpenTelemetry
16 66 (3.31%) HTML
17 61 (3.06%) TensorFlow
18 59 (2.96%) OAuth
18 59 (2.96%) Playwright
19 57 (2.86%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 392 (19.67%) Cloud Native
2 169 (8.48%) Distributed Systems
3 73 (3.66%) Public Cloud
4 66 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
5 61 (3.06%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.91%) Product Ownership
7 40 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
8 39 (1.96%) Private Cloud
9 29 (1.46%) Management Information System
10 27 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
10 27 (1.35%) PKI
11 25 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
11 25 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
11 25 (1.25%) Replication
12 23 (1.15%) Algorithms
12 23 (1.15%) Security Posture
13 22 (1.10%) AI Agents
14 21 (1.05%) Data Centre
14 21 (1.05%) Virtual Team
15 17 (0.85%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 404 (20.27%) Linux
2 89 (4.47%) Windows
3 68 (3.41%) Unix
4 53 (2.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 37 (1.86%) VMS
6 24 (1.20%) Windows Server
7 22 (1.10%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.65%) CentOS
9 5 (0.25%) Solaris
10 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.10%) Android
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.10%) zOS
12 1 (0.050%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.050%) Debian
12 1 (0.050%) MVS
12 1 (0.050%) Rocky
12 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,326 (66.53%) CI/CD
2 1,096 (54.99%) DevOps
3 883 (44.31%) Containerisation
4 661 (33.17%) Agile
5 594 (29.80%) Infrastructure as Code
6 550 (27.60%) Microservices
7 455 (22.83%) Problem-Solving
8 360 (18.06%) Software Engineering
9 340 (17.06%) Observability
10 300 (15.05%) Test Automation
11 228 (11.44%) AI
12 207 (10.39%) Migration
13 191 (9.58%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 189 (9.48%) Analytics
15 188 (9.43%) DevSecOps
16 180 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
17 176 (8.83%) Full-Stack Development
18 169 (8.48%) Machine Learning
19 157 (7.88%) Platform Engineering
20 156 (7.83%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 873 (43.80%) Python
2 536 (26.89%) Java
3 376 (18.87%) SQL
4 271 (13.60%) Bash
5 224 (11.24%) Go
6 170 (8.53%) JavaScript
7 161 (8.08%) TypeScript
8 114 (5.72%) PowerShell
9 88 (4.42%) C#
10 60 (3.01%) Bicep
11 59 (2.96%) Shell Script
12 48 (2.41%) Ruby
13 35 (1.76%) C++
14 32 (1.61%) Scala
15 31 (1.56%) Kotlin
16 30 (1.51%) Rust
17 19 (0.95%) PHP
18 18 (0.90%) Groovy
19 16 (0.80%) Perl
20 12 (0.60%) C
Qualifications
1 698 (35.02%) Security Cleared
2 574 (28.80%) SC Cleared
3 155 (7.78%) Degree
4 116 (5.82%) DV Cleared
5 114 (5.72%) Computer Science Degree
6 90 (4.52%) Azure Certification
7 81 (4.06%) AWS Certification
8 51 (2.56%) Master's Degree
9 49 (2.46%) CISSP
10 37 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (1.56%) CISM
12 29 (1.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 23 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
14 20 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
15 15 (0.75%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 13 (0.65%) CCSP
16 13 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 12 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 10 (0.50%) OCP
18 10 (0.50%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (5.07%) QA
2 64 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 63 (3.16%) Data Quality
4 61 (3.06%) NIST
5 49 (2.46%) NCSC
6 40 (2.01%) GDPR
7 33 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 31 (1.56%) PCI DSS
9 19 (0.95%) PSD2
10 15 (0.75%) ISO 20022
11 13 (0.65%) SEPA
12 12 (0.60%) WCAG
13 11 (0.55%) SLA
14 10 (0.50%) NIST 800
15 8 (0.40%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.40%) SOC 2
16 7 (0.35%) EU AI Act
17 6 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
17 6 (0.30%) JSP 440
System Software
1 1,283 (64.38%) Docker
2 59 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 43 (2.16%) Active Directory
4 33 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
4 33 (1.66%) vSphere
5 16 (0.80%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 16 (0.80%) VMware NSX
6 15 (0.75%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.50%) Squid
8 9 (0.45%) KVM
8 9 (0.45%) Lustre
9 7 (0.35%) NFS
10 6 (0.30%) GPFS
11 5 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
12 4 (0.20%) Snort
12 4 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.15%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.15%) Ceph
13 3 (0.15%) Firmware
13 3 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 752 (37.73%) Terraform
2 349 (17.51%) Ansible
3 329 (16.51%) Grafana
4 281 (14.10%) Prometheus
5 108 (5.42%) Argo
6 56 (2.81%) Puppet
7 55 (2.76%) Kibana
8 50 (2.51%) Istio
9 42 (2.11%) Progress Chef
10 26 (1.30%) Packer
11 24 (1.20%) Podman
12 23 (1.15%) Nessus
12 23 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
13 21 (1.05%) logstash
14 20 (1.00%) Consul
15 16 (0.80%) Rancher
16 14 (0.70%) vCenter Server
17 13 (0.65%) Docker Swarm
18 12 (0.60%) IBM Guardium
18 12 (0.60%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 213 (10.69%) Microsoft
2 181 (9.08%) Splunk
3 179 (8.98%) Google
4 128 (6.42%) Oracle
5 127 (6.37%) Red Hat
6 87 (4.37%) VMware
7 50 (2.51%) Dynatrace
8 49 (2.46%) Databricks
9 45 (2.26%) OpenAI
10 38 (1.91%) Denodo
10 38 (1.91%) Talend
11 25 (1.25%) IBM
12 24 (1.20%) AppDynamics
13 23 (1.15%) Atlassian
14 17 (0.85%) Tenable
15 16 (0.80%) Cisco
16 15 (0.75%) Foundry
17 14 (0.70%) CyberArk
17 14 (0.70%) NVIDIA
18 12 (0.60%) Okta