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

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 31 55
Rank change year-on-year 0 +24 -23
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,035 1,467 1,388
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.09% 5.58% 3.68%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.31% 37.85% 29.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,399 1,009 1,034
10th Percentile £396 £416 £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 £637 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £570
% change year-on-year -8.70% +0.88% -8.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 7 30
10th Percentile £48.75 £26.00 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £36.34 £46.18
Median hourly rate £58.75 £57.50 £57.75
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% -0.43% -7.60%
75th Percentile £79.25 £64.09 £76.53
90th Percentile £101.25 £70.68 £77.55
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £57.75
% change year-on-year +4.35% -0.43% -7.60%

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 5,177 3,876 4,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.50% 14.75% 12.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,587 2,517 3,434
10th Percentile £313 £315 £252
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -9.87%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £739 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 47 155
10th Percentile £17.97 £14.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.49 £20.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £26.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +79.25% -39.43% -6.52%
75th Percentile £62.28 £61.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.66 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £49.36 £25.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +93.57% -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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -4 966 £550 -8.33% 336
North of England +11 422 £486 -7.43% 148
Midlands +64 252 £525 - 44
West Midlands +52 228 £530 +0.95% 31
Yorkshire +10 203 £482 -17.25% 48
North West +19 181 £487 -7.31% 86
South East +1 176 £483 -12.27% 151
South West +5 136 £613 +2.08% 93
North East -4 42 £515 -1.90% 14
East of England -5 36 £613 +11.36% 21
East Midlands -2 24 £438 -12.50% 13
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 80 (3.93%) Confluence
2 70 (3.44%) SAS
3 45 (2.21%) Apache Spark
4 36 (1.77%) Apache
5 31 (1.52%) nginx
5 31 (1.52%) OpenStack
6 30 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
7 14 (0.69%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.54%) Camunda
9 9 (0.44%) SharePoint
10 7 (0.34%) Appian
11 6 (0.29%) 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 1 (0.049%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 8 (0.39%) Maximo
2 2 (0.098%) 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 1,057 (51.94%) AWS
2 767 (37.69%) Azure
3 504 (24.77%) GCP
4 457 (22.46%) GitHub
5 284 (13.96%) OpenShift
6 262 (12.87%) GitHub Actions
7 228 (11.20%) Serverless
8 185 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
9 150 (7.37%) Amazon EKS
10 145 (7.13%) Azure AKS
11 142 (6.98%) AWS CloudFormation
12 134 (6.58%) AWS Lambda
13 132 (6.49%) Amazon S3
14 97 (4.77%) Amazon EC2
14 97 (4.77%) Amazon ECS
15 94 (4.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 78 (3.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 68 (3.34%) Datadog
18 54 (2.65%) SaaS
18 54 (2.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 98 (4.82%) Firewall
2 68 (3.34%) DNS
3 40 (1.97%) Network Security
4 37 (1.82%) VPN
5 34 (1.67%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.93%) HTTP
6 19 (0.93%) SSL
7 14 (0.69%) DHCP
8 13 (0.64%) SAN
9 11 (0.54%) NAS
9 11 (0.54%) Reverse Proxy
10 8 (0.39%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
12 6 (0.29%) BGP
12 6 (0.29%) iSCSI
12 6 (0.29%) VLAN
13 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
13 5 (0.25%) InfiniBand
13 5 (0.25%) OpenVPN
13 5 (0.25%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (12.43%) PostgreSQL
2 190 (9.34%) NoSQL
3 125 (6.14%) MongoDB
4 93 (4.57%) Relational Database
5 80 (3.93%) Apache Cassandra
6 78 (3.83%) Elasticsearch
7 74 (3.64%) Amazon RDS
8 63 (3.10%) SQL Server
9 56 (2.75%) Redis
10 48 (2.36%) MySQL
11 40 (1.97%) Big Data
12 37 (1.82%) DynamoDB
12 37 (1.82%) Power BI
13 36 (1.77%) BigQuery
14 35 (1.72%) Pentaho
15 29 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
16 28 (1.38%) Oracle Database
17 26 (1.28%) Data Lake
18 20 (0.98%) Tableau
19 19 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 524 (25.75%) Jenkins
2 411 (20.20%) GitLab
3 372 (18.28%) Git
4 170 (8.35%) JIRA
5 76 (3.73%) JUnit
6 55 (2.70%) SonarQube
7 49 (2.41%) Gradle
8 47 (2.31%) Selenium
9 46 (2.26%) Maven
10 44 (2.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 39 (1.92%) Bitbucket
12 37 (1.82%) Artifactory
13 36 (1.77%) Cucumber
13 36 (1.77%) MLflow
14 33 (1.62%) Mockito
15 30 (1.47%) Postman
16 28 (1.38%) CircleCI
17 24 (1.18%) JMeter
18 22 (1.08%) Liquibase
19 16 (0.79%) Cypress.io
General
1 549 (26.98%) Social Skills
2 348 (17.10%) Finance
3 254 (12.48%) Public Sector
4 194 (9.53%) Banking
5 155 (7.62%) Analytical Skills
6 54 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.92%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.23%) Front Office
9 24 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
9 24 (1.18%) Investment Banking
10 18 (0.88%) 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 (0.34%) Games
18 6 (0.29%) Billing
Job Titles
1 460 (22.60%) Developer
2 312 (15.33%) Senior
3 302 (14.84%) DevOps Engineer
4 172 (8.45%) Architect
5 141 (6.93%) Java Developer
6 132 (6.49%) Software Engineer
7 108 (5.31%) AWS Engineer
8 107 (5.26%) Senior Developer
9 101 (4.96%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 96 (4.72%) Lead
11 95 (4.67%) Cloud Engineer
12 92 (4.52%) Platform Engineer
13 79 (3.88%) Full-Stack Developer
13 79 (3.88%) Python Developer
14 77 (3.78%) Data Engineer
15 75 (3.69%) Site Engineer
16 74 (3.64%) AWS DevOps
17 73 (3.59%) Azure Engineer
18 67 (3.29%) Java Engineer
19 61 (3.00%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (16.02%) Kafka
2 270 (13.27%) Spring
3 254 (12.48%) Spring Boot
4 216 (10.61%) RESTful
5 215 (10.57%) REST
6 186 (9.14%) React
7 173 (8.50%) Node.js
8 142 (6.98%) Elastic Stack
9 113 (5.55%) AngularJS
10 94 (4.62%) .NET
11 89 (4.37%) OpenTelemetry
12 83 (4.08%) gRPC
13 80 (3.93%) PyTorch
14 74 (3.64%) FastAPI
15 73 (3.59%) GraphQL
16 67 (3.29%) HTML
17 66 (3.24%) OAuth
18 64 (3.14%) TensorFlow
19 58 (2.85%) Playwright
20 55 (2.70%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 409 (20.10%) Cloud Native
2 170 (8.35%) Distributed Systems
3 71 (3.49%) Hybrid Cloud
4 70 (3.44%) Public Cloud
5 63 (3.10%) Onboarding
6 62 (3.05%) Product Ownership
7 40 (1.97%) Private Cloud
8 38 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
9 29 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (1.43%) Management Information System
10 27 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
10 27 (1.33%) PKI
11 25 (1.23%) AI Agents
11 25 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
12 24 (1.18%) Algorithms
12 24 (1.18%) Virtual Team
13 22 (1.08%) Replication
14 20 (0.98%) NHS
14 20 (0.98%) Security Posture
15 18 (0.88%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 414 (20.34%) Linux
2 99 (4.86%) Windows
3 70 (3.44%) Unix
4 54 (2.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 37 (1.82%) VMS
6 25 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 23 (1.13%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.64%) 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 (0.098%) Android
11 2 (0.098%) Rocky
12 1 (0.049%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.049%) Debian
12 1 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,352 (66.44%) CI/CD
2 1,125 (55.28%) DevOps
3 909 (44.67%) Containerisation
4 668 (32.83%) Agile
5 602 (29.58%) Infrastructure as Code
6 555 (27.27%) Microservices
7 460 (22.60%) Problem-Solving
8 373 (18.33%) Observability
9 356 (17.49%) Software Engineering
10 300 (14.74%) Test Automation
11 231 (11.35%) AI
12 220 (10.81%) Migration
13 198 (9.73%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 197 (9.68%) Analytics
15 191 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
16 187 (9.19%) DevSecOps
17 182 (8.94%) Full-Stack Development
18 177 (8.70%) Platform Engineering
19 175 (8.60%) Machine Learning
20 163 (8.01%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 883 (43.39%) Python
2 532 (26.14%) Java
3 374 (18.38%) SQL
4 268 (13.17%) Bash
5 218 (10.71%) Go
6 169 (8.30%) JavaScript
7 164 (8.06%) TypeScript
8 118 (5.80%) PowerShell
9 89 (4.37%) C#
10 63 (3.10%) Bicep
11 60 (2.95%) Shell Script
12 51 (2.51%) Ruby
13 33 (1.62%) C++
14 32 (1.57%) Kotlin
15 31 (1.52%) Scala
16 30 (1.47%) Rust
17 21 (1.03%) PHP
18 18 (0.88%) Groovy
19 13 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
20 12 (0.59%) C
Qualifications
1 704 (34.59%) Security Cleared
2 572 (28.11%) SC Cleared
3 156 (7.67%) Degree
4 119 (5.85%) DV Cleared
5 117 (5.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 91 (4.47%) Azure Certification
7 82 (4.03%) AWS Certification
8 54 (2.65%) Master's Degree
9 47 (2.31%) CISSP
10 42 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (1.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 31 (1.52%) CISM
12 24 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (0.79%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 16 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
14 14 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
15 12 (0.59%) OCP
15 12 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
16 9 (0.44%) CCSP
16 9 (0.44%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (4.91%) QA
2 65 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.14%) NIST
4 62 (3.05%) Data Quality
5 52 (2.56%) NCSC
6 41 (2.01%) GDPR
7 36 (1.77%) Accessibility
8 31 (1.52%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.84%) ISO 20022
9 17 (0.84%) PSD2
10 14 (0.69%) SEPA
10 14 (0.69%) WCAG
11 11 (0.54%) NIST 800
11 11 (0.54%) SLA
12 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.39%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.34%) EU AI Act
15 6 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
15 6 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,294 (63.59%) Docker
2 64 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (2.16%) vSphere
4 42 (2.06%) Active Directory
5 41 (2.01%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (1.13%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.88%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 13 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.49%) Squid
10 9 (0.44%) Lustre
11 7 (0.34%) GPFS
11 7 (0.34%) KVM
12 6 (0.29%) NFS
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%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.15%) Ceph
15 3 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 776 (38.13%) Terraform
2 349 (17.15%) Ansible
3 346 (17.00%) Grafana
4 299 (14.69%) Prometheus
5 112 (5.50%) Argo
6 58 (2.85%) Kibana
7 50 (2.46%) Istio
8 49 (2.41%) Puppet
9 39 (1.92%) Progress Chef
10 28 (1.38%) Nessus
11 25 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
12 24 (1.18%) Packer
12 24 (1.18%) Podman
13 23 (1.13%) logstash
14 21 (1.03%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.98%) Consul
16 17 (0.84%) Rancher
17 16 (0.79%) Control-M
17 16 (0.79%) IBM Guardium
18 14 (0.69%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 214 (10.52%) Microsoft
2 188 (9.24%) Splunk
3 171 (8.40%) Google
4 132 (6.49%) Red Hat
5 131 (6.44%) Oracle
6 96 (4.72%) VMware
7 54 (2.65%) Databricks
8 50 (2.46%) Dynatrace
9 48 (2.36%) OpenAI
10 35 (1.72%) Denodo
10 35 (1.72%) Talend
11 24 (1.18%) Atlassian
12 23 (1.13%) AppDynamics
13 21 (1.03%) IBM
14 20 (0.98%) Tenable
15 19 (0.93%) Pure Storage
16 17 (0.84%) CyberArk
17 15 (0.74%) Foundry
18 14 (0.69%) Cisco
18 14 (0.69%) NVIDIA