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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 31 54
Rank change year-on-year 0 +23 -23
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,026 1,466 1,411
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.08% 5.60% 3.68%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.39% 37.50% 29.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,390 1,011 1,052
10th Percentile £394 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £590 £573
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% +3.06% -8.40%
75th Percentile £635 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £568
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.32% -8.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 6 29
10th Percentile £49.75 £25.88 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.18
Median hourly rate £58.88 £58.75 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.23% +1.29% -7.20%
75th Percentile £78.94 £66.13 £76.53
90th Percentile £96.35 £71.31 £77.60
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year +2.13% +1.29% -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 5,144 3,909 4,761
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.45% 14.92% 12.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,560 2,533 3,489
10th Percentile £313 £313 £252
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -9.68%
75th Percentile £600 £649 £638
90th Percentile £700 £749 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 47 153
10th Percentile £18.12 £14.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.49 £20.00
Median hourly rate £48.36 £26.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +82.49% -33.75% -19.70%
75th Percentile £63.32 £62.88 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.13 £75.66 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £25.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +105.88% -44.78% +8.66%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -2 970 £550 -8.33% 329
North of England +10 413 £482 -8.19% 139
Midlands +64 241 £525 - 42
West Midlands +52 216 £537 +2.29% 29
Yorkshire +16 204 £482 -18.48% 48
South East 0 178 £483 -12.27% 144
North West +17 171 £475 -7.59% 81
South West +5 136 £600 - 89
North East -4 42 £530 +1.92% 10
East of England -4 40 £600 +9.09% 17
East Midlands -5 25 £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 82 (4.05%) Confluence
2 58 (2.86%) SAS
3 45 (2.22%) Apache Spark
4 36 (1.78%) Apache
5 32 (1.58%) nginx
6 31 (1.53%) OpenStack
7 28 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
8 15 (0.74%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.54%) Camunda
10 9 (0.44%) SharePoint
11 7 (0.35%) Appian
11 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
12 5 (0.25%) Drupal
12 5 (0.25%) Ethereum
12 5 (0.25%) Hyperledger
12 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
13 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.20%) IIS
14 3 (0.15%) CMS
14 3 (0.15%) Tomcat
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 2 (0.099%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.049%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 9 (0.44%) Maximo
2 2 (0.099%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.049%) Actimize
3 1 (0.049%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.049%) Endur
3 1 (0.049%) Finacle
3 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.049%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,053 (51.97%) AWS
2 763 (37.66%) Azure
3 492 (24.28%) GCP
4 448 (22.11%) GitHub
5 283 (13.97%) OpenShift
6 258 (12.73%) GitHub Actions
7 223 (11.01%) Serverless
8 185 (9.13%) Azure DevOps
9 155 (7.65%) Amazon EKS
10 150 (7.40%) Azure AKS
11 142 (7.01%) AWS CloudFormation
12 136 (6.71%) Amazon S3
13 130 (6.42%) AWS Lambda
14 95 (4.69%) Amazon EC2
15 91 (4.49%) Amazon ECS
15 91 (4.49%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 72 (3.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 64 (3.16%) Datadog
18 57 (2.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 54 (2.67%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 100 (4.94%) Firewall
2 71 (3.50%) DNS
3 40 (1.97%) Network Security
4 38 (1.88%) VPN
5 37 (1.83%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.94%) HTTP
6 19 (0.94%) SSL
7 15 (0.74%) SAN
8 14 (0.69%) DHCP
9 11 (0.54%) NAS
9 11 (0.54%) Reverse Proxy
10 8 (0.39%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
12 6 (0.30%) BGP
12 6 (0.30%) iSCSI
12 6 (0.30%) OpenVPN
12 6 (0.30%) VLAN
13 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
13 5 (0.25%) InfiniBand
13 5 (0.25%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 248 (12.24%) PostgreSQL
2 184 (9.08%) NoSQL
3 128 (6.32%) MongoDB
4 88 (4.34%) Relational Database
5 80 (3.95%) Apache Cassandra
6 78 (3.85%) Elasticsearch
7 69 (3.41%) Amazon RDS
8 62 (3.06%) SQL Server
9 51 (2.52%) Redis
10 43 (2.12%) MySQL
11 39 (1.92%) Big Data
12 37 (1.83%) Power BI
13 32 (1.58%) BigQuery
14 29 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
14 29 (1.43%) DynamoDB
15 28 (1.38%) Oracle Database
16 26 (1.28%) Data Lake
16 26 (1.28%) Pentaho
17 20 (0.99%) Tableau
18 19 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 510 (25.17%) Jenkins
2 408 (20.14%) GitLab
3 356 (17.57%) Git
4 161 (7.95%) JIRA
5 74 (3.65%) JUnit
6 48 (2.37%) SonarQube
7 46 (2.27%) Selenium
8 43 (2.12%) Gradle
8 43 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
9 40 (1.97%) Maven
10 39 (1.92%) Bitbucket
10 39 (1.92%) MLflow
11 37 (1.83%) Artifactory
12 36 (1.78%) Cucumber
13 33 (1.63%) Mockito
14 28 (1.38%) Postman
15 27 (1.33%) CircleCI
16 23 (1.14%) JMeter
17 22 (1.09%) Liquibase
18 15 (0.74%) Gatling
General
1 545 (26.90%) Social Skills
2 348 (17.18%) Finance
3 247 (12.19%) Public Sector
4 194 (9.58%) Banking
5 154 (7.60%) Analytical Skills
6 54 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.92%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.23%) Front Office
8 25 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
9 24 (1.18%) Investment Banking
10 18 (0.89%) Telecoms
11 17 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
12 16 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (0.59%) Pharmaceutical
13 12 (0.59%) Retail
14 11 (0.54%) Military
15 9 (0.44%) Law
16 8 (0.39%) Aerospace
17 7 (0.35%) Games
18 6 (0.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 459 (22.66%) Developer
2 311 (15.35%) Senior
3 303 (14.96%) DevOps Engineer
4 166 (8.19%) Architect
5 139 (6.86%) Java Developer
6 132 (6.52%) Software Engineer
7 108 (5.33%) AWS Engineer
8 105 (5.18%) Senior Developer
9 101 (4.99%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 98 (4.84%) Lead
11 94 (4.64%) Cloud Engineer
12 93 (4.59%) Platform Engineer
13 80 (3.95%) Full-Stack Developer
13 80 (3.95%) Python Developer
14 76 (3.75%) Site Engineer
15 75 (3.70%) Data Engineer
16 74 (3.65%) AWS DevOps
16 74 (3.65%) Azure Engineer
17 68 (3.36%) Java Engineer
18 61 (3.01%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (16.34%) Kafka
2 272 (13.43%) Spring
3 250 (12.34%) Spring Boot
4 213 (10.51%) REST
5 210 (10.37%) RESTful
6 185 (9.13%) React
7 173 (8.54%) Node.js
8 141 (6.96%) Elastic Stack
9 114 (5.63%) AngularJS
10 91 (4.49%) .NET
10 91 (4.49%) OpenTelemetry
11 83 (4.10%) gRPC
12 82 (4.05%) PyTorch
13 74 (3.65%) FastAPI
14 68 (3.36%) GraphQL
14 68 (3.36%) HTML
15 64 (3.16%) OAuth
15 64 (3.16%) TensorFlow
16 57 (2.81%) Playwright
16 57 (2.81%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 402 (19.84%) Cloud Native
2 171 (8.44%) Distributed Systems
3 74 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
4 69 (3.41%) Public Cloud
5 62 (3.06%) Onboarding
6 58 (2.86%) Product Ownership
7 40 (1.97%) Private Cloud
8 39 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
9 29 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (1.43%) Management Information System
10 28 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
10 28 (1.38%) PKI
11 26 (1.28%) AI Agents
12 25 (1.23%) Algorithms
12 25 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
13 24 (1.18%) Virtual Team
14 22 (1.09%) Replication
15 20 (0.99%) NHS
15 20 (0.99%) Security Posture
16 19 (0.94%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 422 (20.83%) Linux
2 102 (5.03%) Windows
3 70 (3.46%) Unix
4 58 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 40 (1.97%) VMS
6 25 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 23 (1.14%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.64%) CentOS
9 4 (0.20%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.15%) Android
10 3 (0.15%) Solaris
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.099%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.099%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.099%) Rocky
12 1 (0.049%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.049%) Debian
12 1 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,339 (66.09%) CI/CD
2 1,110 (54.79%) DevOps
3 901 (44.47%) Containerisation
4 651 (32.13%) Agile
5 604 (29.81%) Infrastructure as Code
6 547 (27.00%) Microservices
7 451 (22.26%) Problem-Solving
8 379 (18.71%) Observability
9 355 (17.52%) Software Engineering
10 287 (14.17%) Test Automation
11 230 (11.35%) AI
12 216 (10.66%) Migration
13 199 (9.82%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 189 (9.33%) Analytics
15 187 (9.23%) DevSecOps
16 186 (9.18%) Continuous Improvement
17 182 (8.98%) Full-Stack Development
18 179 (8.84%) Machine Learning
19 176 (8.69%) Platform Engineering
20 154 (7.60%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 885 (43.68%) Python
2 523 (25.81%) Java
3 366 (18.07%) SQL
4 267 (13.18%) Bash
5 217 (10.71%) Go
6 168 (8.29%) JavaScript
7 163 (8.05%) TypeScript
8 119 (5.87%) PowerShell
9 86 (4.24%) C#
10 64 (3.16%) Bicep
11 60 (2.96%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.47%) Ruby
13 33 (1.63%) C++
14 32 (1.58%) Kotlin
15 31 (1.53%) Scala
16 30 (1.48%) Rust
17 21 (1.04%) PHP
18 18 (0.89%) Groovy
19 13 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
20 12 (0.59%) C
Qualifications
1 697 (34.40%) Security Cleared
2 568 (28.04%) SC Cleared
3 160 (7.90%) Degree
4 121 (5.97%) Computer Science Degree
5 120 (5.92%) DV Cleared
6 92 (4.54%) Azure Certification
7 81 (4.00%) AWS Certification
8 55 (2.71%) Master's Degree
9 47 (2.32%) CISSP
10 42 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (1.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 31 (1.53%) CISM
12 24 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
13 17 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
14 16 (0.79%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 14 (0.69%) OCP
15 14 (0.69%) Oracle Certification
15 14 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
16 9 (0.44%) CCSP
16 9 (0.44%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (4.89%) QA
2 65 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.16%) NIST
4 54 (2.67%) Data Quality
5 51 (2.52%) NCSC
6 41 (2.02%) GDPR
7 35 (1.73%) Accessibility
8 31 (1.53%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.79%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.79%) PSD2
10 14 (0.69%) WCAG
11 13 (0.64%) SEPA
12 11 (0.54%) NIST 800
12 11 (0.54%) SLA
13 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
14 8 (0.39%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.35%) EU AI Act
16 6 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
16 6 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,271 (62.73%) Docker
2 66 (3.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 46 (2.27%) vSphere
4 44 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (2.07%) Active Directory
6 23 (1.14%) VMware NSX
7 19 (0.94%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 13 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.54%) Squid
10 9 (0.44%) Lustre
11 8 (0.39%) NFS
12 7 (0.35%) GPFS
12 7 (0.35%) KVM
13 5 (0.25%) Snort
13 5 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
14 4 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.15%) Ceph
15 3 (0.15%) Firmware
15 3 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 769 (37.96%) Terraform
2 352 (17.37%) Ansible
3 350 (17.28%) Grafana
4 305 (15.05%) Prometheus
5 112 (5.53%) Argo
6 59 (2.91%) Kibana
7 49 (2.42%) Istio
7 49 (2.42%) Puppet
8 38 (1.88%) Progress Chef
9 28 (1.38%) Nessus
10 26 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (1.23%) Podman
12 24 (1.18%) Packer
13 23 (1.14%) logstash
14 21 (1.04%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.99%) Consul
16 17 (0.84%) Rancher
17 16 (0.79%) Control-M
17 16 (0.79%) IBM Guardium
18 14 (0.69%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 212 (10.46%) Microsoft
2 188 (9.28%) Splunk
3 168 (8.29%) Google
4 135 (6.66%) Red Hat
5 119 (5.87%) Oracle
6 98 (4.84%) VMware
7 58 (2.86%) Databricks
8 51 (2.52%) Dynatrace
9 46 (2.27%) OpenAI
10 26 (1.28%) Denodo
10 26 (1.28%) Talend
11 24 (1.18%) Atlassian
12 23 (1.14%) AppDynamics
13 22 (1.09%) IBM
14 20 (0.99%) Tenable
15 19 (0.94%) Pure Storage
16 17 (0.84%) CyberArk
17 15 (0.74%) Foundry
18 14 (0.69%) Cisco
18 14 (0.69%) NVIDIA