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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 32 48
Rank change year-on-year +1 +16 -16
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 1,946 1,527 1,517
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.14% 5.43% 4.18%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.97% 37.44% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,333 1,038 1,122
10th Percentile £400 £407 £425
25th Percentile £450 £498 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £698 £688
90th Percentile £700 £800 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 10 43
10th Percentile £49.75 £26.38 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £66.50 £51.84 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.28% -5.75% -18.22%
75th Percentile £78.94 £66.13 £77.02
90th Percentile £96.35 £74.04 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £67.00 £51.84 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.24% -5.75% -14.73%

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 4,993 4,078 4,916
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.75% 14.51% 13.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,427 2,644 3,552
10th Percentile £310 £313 £273
25th Percentile £413 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.78% -8.05%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £508 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.19% -2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 51 152
10th Percentile £18.72 £15.22 £16.59
25th Percentile £21.30 £21.02 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.61 £26.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +90.98% -42.62% +27.89%
75th Percentile £66.19 £61.25 £67.13
90th Percentile £80.20 £77.50 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £24.84 £46.18
% change year-on-year +93.24% -46.21% +31.94%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -5 923 £563 -6.25% 399
North of England +11 389 £487 -7.24% 146
Midlands +57 226 £525 -13.37% 48
West Midlands +51 208 £530 -13.40% 32
Yorkshire +3 186 £487 -14.93% 47
South East +13 180 £500 -4.76% 183
North West +19 163 £484 -5.66% 81
South West -1 118 £625 +4.17% 90
East of England +6 46 £550 +22.22% 33
North East 0 42 £550 +4.76% 19
East Midlands -3 18 £466 -6.75% 16
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 (3.96%) Confluence
2 70 (3.60%) SAS
3 38 (1.95%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
5 32 (1.64%) Apache
6 30 (1.54%) OpenStack
7 25 (1.28%) nginx
8 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.41%) Mule
9 6 (0.31%) SharePoint
9 6 (0.31%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.26%) Ethereum
10 5 (0.26%) Hyperledger
11 4 (0.21%) Camunda
11 4 (0.21%) CMS
11 4 (0.21%) Drupal
11 4 (0.21%) IIS
11 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.26%) Weka
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (0.51%) Maximo
2 2 (0.10%) Endur
2 2 (0.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.051%) Actimize
3 1 (0.051%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.051%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 1,024 (52.62%) AWS
2 736 (37.82%) Azure
3 487 (25.03%) GCP
4 443 (22.76%) GitHub
5 271 (13.93%) GitHub Actions
6 251 (12.90%) OpenShift
7 215 (11.05%) Serverless
8 193 (9.92%) Azure DevOps
9 138 (7.09%) Azure AKS
10 135 (6.94%) Amazon EKS
11 127 (6.53%) AWS CloudFormation
12 122 (6.27%) Amazon S3
13 120 (6.17%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (4.47%) Amazon EC2
15 85 (4.37%) Amazon ECS
16 84 (4.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 82 (4.21%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 68 (3.49%) Datadog
19 53 (2.72%) Entra ID
19 53 (2.72%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 89 (4.57%) Firewall
2 61 (3.13%) DNS
3 31 (1.59%) Network Security
4 29 (1.49%) TCP/IP
5 28 (1.44%) VPN
6 21 (1.08%) SSL
7 17 (0.87%) HTTP
8 11 (0.57%) DHCP
9 9 (0.46%) SAN
10 8 (0.41%) BGP
10 8 (0.41%) Fibre Channel
10 8 (0.41%) NAS
11 7 (0.36%) iSCSI
11 7 (0.36%) Software-Defined Networking
12 6 (0.31%) HTTPS
12 6 (0.31%) Kerberos
12 6 (0.31%) VLAN
12 6 (0.31%) VXLAN
13 5 (0.26%) OpenLDAP
13 5 (0.26%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (13.41%) PostgreSQL
2 192 (9.87%) NoSQL
3 125 (6.42%) MongoDB
4 81 (4.16%) Relational Database
5 79 (4.06%) Apache Cassandra
6 71 (3.65%) Amazon RDS
7 66 (3.39%) Elasticsearch
8 60 (3.08%) Redis
9 56 (2.88%) SQL Server
10 45 (2.31%) MySQL
11 36 (1.85%) Big Data
12 35 (1.80%) Pentaho
13 31 (1.59%) BigQuery
14 30 (1.54%) Power BI
15 29 (1.49%) DynamoDB
16 28 (1.44%) Data Lake
17 26 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
17 26 (1.34%) Oracle Database
18 20 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
19 19 (0.98%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 512 (26.31%) Jenkins
2 391 (20.09%) Git
3 390 (20.04%) GitLab
4 184 (9.46%) JIRA
5 73 (3.75%) JUnit
6 64 (3.29%) SonarQube
7 53 (2.72%) Sonatype Nexus
8 52 (2.67%) Gradle
8 52 (2.67%) Maven
9 48 (2.47%) Artifactory
9 48 (2.47%) Selenium
10 39 (2.00%) CircleCI
11 38 (1.95%) Bitbucket
12 36 (1.85%) Cucumber
13 34 (1.75%) Liquibase
14 30 (1.54%) Mockito
15 29 (1.49%) MLflow
16 28 (1.44%) Postman
17 21 (1.08%) JMeter
18 19 (0.98%) Cypress.io
General
1 524 (26.93%) Social Skills
2 327 (16.80%) Finance
3 232 (11.92%) Public Sector
4 211 (10.84%) Banking
5 151 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
6 41 (2.11%) Financial Institution
7 39 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
8 33 (1.70%) Investment Banking
9 25 (1.28%) Front Office
10 21 (1.08%) Telecoms
11 19 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
12 18 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
13 12 (0.62%) Military
13 12 (0.62%) Retail
14 11 (0.57%) Aerospace
15 10 (0.51%) Law
15 10 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.36%) Billing
16 7 (0.36%) Games
Job Titles
1 457 (23.48%) Developer
2 310 (15.93%) Senior
3 284 (14.59%) DevOps Engineer
4 148 (7.61%) Architect
5 140 (7.19%) Java Developer
6 134 (6.89%) Software Engineer
7 106 (5.45%) Senior Developer
8 102 (5.24%) AWS Engineer
9 96 (4.93%) Lead
10 91 (4.68%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 89 (4.57%) Platform Engineer
12 86 (4.42%) Cloud Engineer
13 80 (4.11%) Full-Stack Developer
14 79 (4.06%) Python Developer
15 71 (3.65%) Data Engineer
16 70 (3.60%) AWS DevOps
17 68 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
18 65 (3.34%) Site Engineer
19 54 (2.77%) AWS DevOps Engineer
20 53 (2.72%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (16.03%) Kafka
2 230 (11.82%) Spring
3 216 (11.10%) Spring Boot
4 215 (11.05%) REST
5 206 (10.59%) RESTful
6 201 (10.33%) React
7 176 (9.04%) Node.js
8 147 (7.55%) Elastic Stack
9 127 (6.53%) AngularJS
10 101 (5.19%) .NET
11 89 (4.57%) gRPC
12 76 (3.91%) GraphQL
13 74 (3.80%) HTML
14 69 (3.55%) FastAPI
15 65 (3.34%) PyTorch
16 61 (3.13%) OpenTelemetry
17 60 (3.08%) Vue
17 60 (3.08%) YAML
18 58 (2.98%) CSS
19 57 (2.93%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 369 (18.96%) Cloud Native
2 178 (9.15%) Distributed Systems
3 70 (3.60%) Public Cloud
4 62 (3.19%) Hybrid Cloud
5 57 (2.93%) Product Ownership
6 56 (2.88%) Onboarding
7 39 (2.00%) Private Cloud
8 38 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
9 34 (1.75%) Algorithms
10 30 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
11 27 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
11 27 (1.39%) PKI
12 25 (1.28%) Data Structures
12 25 (1.28%) Replication
12 25 (1.28%) Security Posture
13 23 (1.18%) Management Information System
14 22 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
15 20 (1.03%) Data Centre
15 20 (1.03%) Virtual Team
16 19 (0.98%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 399 (20.50%) Linux
2 80 (4.11%) Windows
3 62 (3.19%) Unix
4 56 (2.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 37 (1.90%) VMS
6 23 (1.18%) Ubuntu
7 22 (1.13%) Windows Server
8 15 (0.77%) CentOS
9 5 (0.26%) Solaris
10 3 (0.15%) Android
10 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.10%) zOS
12 1 (0.051%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.051%) MVS
12 1 (0.051%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,292 (66.39%) CI/CD
2 1,083 (55.65%) DevOps
3 848 (43.58%) Containerisation
4 652 (33.50%) Agile
5 583 (29.96%) Infrastructure as Code
6 559 (28.73%) Microservices
7 449 (23.07%) Problem-Solving
8 366 (18.81%) Software Engineering
9 332 (17.06%) Observability
10 280 (14.39%) Test Automation
11 219 (11.25%) Migration
12 214 (11.00%) AI
13 180 (9.25%) DevSecOps
13 180 (9.25%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 178 (9.15%) Full-Stack Development
15 174 (8.94%) Analytics
16 166 (8.53%) Continuous Improvement
17 163 (8.38%) Machine Learning
18 153 (7.86%) Platform Engineering
19 151 (7.76%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 887 (45.58%) Python
2 523 (26.88%) Java
3 353 (18.14%) SQL
4 287 (14.75%) Bash
5 237 (12.18%) Go
6 182 (9.35%) JavaScript
7 178 (9.15%) TypeScript
8 119 (6.12%) PowerShell
9 109 (5.60%) C#
10 59 (3.03%) Bicep
11 56 (2.88%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.57%) C++
13 45 (2.31%) Ruby
14 32 (1.64%) Kotlin
15 30 (1.54%) Rust
16 26 (1.34%) Scala
17 24 (1.23%) Groovy
17 24 (1.23%) PHP
18 20 (1.03%) Perl
19 16 (0.82%) C
Qualifications
1 652 (33.50%) Security Cleared
2 536 (27.54%) SC Cleared
3 149 (7.66%) Degree
4 110 (5.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 104 (5.34%) DV Cleared
6 86 (4.42%) Azure Certification
7 83 (4.27%) AWS Certification
8 53 (2.72%) Master's Degree
9 44 (2.26%) CISSP
10 34 (1.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 32 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
12 28 (1.44%) CISM
13 22 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
15 15 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 11 (0.57%) CCSP
16 11 (0.57%) OCP
16 11 (0.57%) Oracle Certification
17 10 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 10 (0.51%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (5.55%) QA
2 58 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.88%) Data Quality
4 55 (2.83%) NIST
5 38 (1.95%) NCSC
6 37 (1.90%) GDPR
7 32 (1.64%) Accessibility
8 23 (1.18%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.87%) PSD2
10 13 (0.67%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.62%) WCAG
12 11 (0.57%) SEPA
13 10 (0.51%) EU AI Act
13 10 (0.51%) SLA
14 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 7 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
15 7 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.31%) JSP 440
17 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,247 (64.08%) Docker
2 56 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 49 (2.52%) Active Directory
4 33 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
4 33 (1.70%) vSphere
5 16 (0.82%) VMware NSX
6 13 (0.67%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 9 (0.46%) KVM
8 9 (0.46%) Lustre
9 7 (0.36%) NFS
10 6 (0.31%) GPFS
11 5 (0.26%) Squid
12 4 (0.21%) Snort
12 4 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.15%) Ceph
13 3 (0.15%) Firmware
13 3 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 2 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.10%) NDS
Systems Management
1 741 (38.08%) Terraform
2 356 (18.29%) Ansible
3 329 (16.91%) Grafana
4 286 (14.70%) Prometheus
5 114 (5.86%) Argo
6 55 (2.83%) Kibana
7 54 (2.77%) Istio
8 52 (2.67%) Puppet
9 40 (2.06%) Progress Chef
10 25 (1.28%) Packer
11 22 (1.13%) Nessus
12 21 (1.08%) logstash
12 21 (1.08%) Podman
13 15 (0.77%) Rancher
13 15 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
14 13 (0.67%) Consul
14 13 (0.67%) vCenter Server
15 12 (0.62%) Control-M
15 12 (0.62%) Docker Swarm
16 11 (0.57%) SCOM
Vendors
1 212 (10.89%) Microsoft
2 181 (9.30%) Splunk
3 163 (8.38%) Google
4 128 (6.58%) Red Hat
5 127 (6.53%) Oracle
6 83 (4.27%) VMware
7 50 (2.57%) Databricks
8 48 (2.47%) Dynatrace
9 38 (1.95%) OpenAI
10 35 (1.80%) Denodo
10 35 (1.80%) Talend
11 26 (1.34%) AppDynamics
12 24 (1.23%) IBM
13 23 (1.18%) Atlassian
14 16 (0.82%) Cisco
14 16 (0.82%) Tenable
15 15 (0.77%) NVIDIA
16 12 (0.62%) Foundry
16 12 (0.62%) Palo Alto
16 12 (0.62%) ServiceNow