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

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 31 54
Rank change year-on-year 0 +23 -23
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,056 1,458 1,388
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.07% 5.63% 3.67%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.44% 37.63% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,411 1,009 1,030
10th Percentile £394 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £590 £574
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% +2.83% -8.20%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £568
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.32% -8.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 6 29
10th Percentile £50.75 £25.88 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% +1.29% -7.20%
75th Percentile £78.81 £66.13 £76.53
90th Percentile £91.45 £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 5,213 3,875 4,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.39% 14.95% 12.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,606 2,520 3,410
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% -9.48%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 46 151
10th Percentile £17.24 £13.86 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £20.23 £20.13
Median hourly rate £48.72 £26.00 £40.31
Median % change year-on-year +87.38% -35.50% -19.08%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.06 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.75 £75.97 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £25.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +105.88% -44.78% +2.79%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -4 985 £550 -8.33% 309
North of England +9 420 £487 -7.24% 142
Midlands +59 245 £530 +0.95% 40
West Midlands +49 217 £537 +2.29% 29
Yorkshire +13 212 £485 -19.17% 46
South East -1 181 £486 -11.59% 149
North West +15 169 £476 -7.34% 80
South West +4 139 £594 -1.04% 92
North East -4 43 £530 +1.92% 16
East of England 0 40 £600 +9.09% 17
East Midlands 0 28 £438 -12.50% 11
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 (4.04%) Confluence
2 57 (2.77%) SAS
3 49 (2.38%) Apache Spark
4 37 (1.80%) Apache
5 33 (1.61%) nginx
6 30 (1.46%) OpenStack
7 29 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
8 17 (0.83%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.54%) Camunda
10 9 (0.44%) SharePoint
11 8 (0.39%) Appian
12 7 (0.34%) WebLogic
13 5 (0.24%) Drupal
13 5 (0.24%) Ethereum
13 5 (0.24%) Hyperledger
13 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
14 4 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.19%) IIS
15 3 (0.15%) Tomcat
15 3 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 5 (0.24%) Chatbot
1 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
1 5 (0.24%) Weka
2 3 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.15%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.097%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.049%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 9 (0.44%) Maximo
2 2 (0.097%) 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 1,068 (51.95%) AWS
2 772 (37.55%) Azure
3 502 (24.42%) GCP
4 453 (22.03%) GitHub
5 285 (13.86%) OpenShift
6 260 (12.65%) GitHub Actions
7 224 (10.89%) Serverless
8 186 (9.05%) Azure DevOps
9 159 (7.73%) Amazon EKS
10 148 (7.20%) Azure AKS
11 144 (7.00%) AWS CloudFormation
12 139 (6.76%) Amazon S3
13 132 (6.42%) AWS Lambda
14 97 (4.72%) Amazon EC2
15 93 (4.52%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 92 (4.47%) Amazon ECS
17 73 (3.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 67 (3.26%) Datadog
19 59 (2.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 53 (2.58%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 102 (4.96%) Firewall
2 74 (3.60%) DNS
3 41 (1.99%) Network Security
4 40 (1.95%) VPN
5 38 (1.85%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.92%) HTTP
6 19 (0.92%) SSL
7 15 (0.73%) DHCP
7 15 (0.73%) SAN
8 11 (0.54%) NAS
8 11 (0.54%) Reverse Proxy
9 8 (0.39%) Kerberos
10 7 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
10 7 (0.34%) OpenVPN
11 6 (0.29%) BGP
11 6 (0.29%) iSCSI
11 6 (0.29%) VLAN
12 5 (0.24%) HTTPS
12 5 (0.24%) InfiniBand
12 5 (0.24%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (12.40%) PostgreSQL
2 185 (9.00%) NoSQL
3 131 (6.37%) MongoDB
4 87 (4.23%) Relational Database
5 82 (3.99%) Apache Cassandra
6 80 (3.89%) Elasticsearch
7 71 (3.45%) Amazon RDS
8 63 (3.06%) SQL Server
9 51 (2.48%) Redis
10 43 (2.09%) MySQL
11 40 (1.95%) Big Data
12 37 (1.80%) Power BI
13 32 (1.56%) BigQuery
14 29 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
14 29 (1.41%) DynamoDB
15 28 (1.36%) Oracle Database
16 27 (1.31%) Data Lake
17 25 (1.22%) Pentaho
18 20 (0.97%) Tableau
19 19 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 513 (24.95%) Jenkins
2 413 (20.09%) GitLab
3 355 (17.27%) Git
4 166 (8.07%) JIRA
5 73 (3.55%) JUnit
6 52 (2.53%) SonarQube
7 46 (2.24%) Selenium
8 43 (2.09%) Gradle
8 43 (2.09%) Sonatype Nexus
9 41 (1.99%) MLflow
10 40 (1.95%) Bitbucket
10 40 (1.95%) Maven
11 37 (1.80%) Artifactory
12 36 (1.75%) Cucumber
13 33 (1.61%) Mockito
14 28 (1.36%) CircleCI
15 27 (1.31%) Postman
16 24 (1.17%) JMeter
17 23 (1.12%) Liquibase
18 16 (0.78%) Gatling
General
1 558 (27.14%) Social Skills
2 353 (17.17%) Finance
3 251 (12.21%) Public Sector
4 196 (9.53%) Banking
5 160 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
6 57 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.90%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.22%) Front Office
8 25 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
9 23 (1.12%) Investment Banking
10 18 (0.88%) Telecoms
11 17 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
12 12 (0.58%) Retail
13 11 (0.54%) Military
13 11 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
14 9 (0.44%) Law
15 8 (0.39%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.34%) Games
17 6 (0.29%) Billing
Job Titles
1 464 (22.57%) Developer
2 313 (15.22%) Senior
3 309 (15.03%) DevOps Engineer
4 173 (8.41%) Architect
5 140 (6.81%) Java Developer
6 134 (6.52%) Software Engineer
7 109 (5.30%) AWS Engineer
8 103 (5.01%) Senior Developer
9 101 (4.91%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 97 (4.72%) Cloud Engineer
10 97 (4.72%) Lead
11 96 (4.67%) Platform Engineer
12 83 (4.04%) Python Developer
13 80 (3.89%) Full-Stack Developer
14 78 (3.79%) Data Engineer
15 76 (3.70%) Site Engineer
16 74 (3.60%) AWS DevOps
16 74 (3.60%) Azure Engineer
17 69 (3.36%) Java Engineer
18 61 (2.97%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (16.39%) Kafka
2 270 (13.13%) Spring
3 248 (12.06%) Spring Boot
4 217 (10.55%) REST
5 209 (10.17%) RESTful
6 185 (9.00%) React
7 170 (8.27%) Node.js
8 142 (6.91%) Elastic Stack
9 112 (5.45%) AngularJS
10 99 (4.82%) OpenTelemetry
11 93 (4.52%) .NET
12 85 (4.13%) gRPC
13 84 (4.09%) PyTorch
14 78 (3.79%) FastAPI
15 69 (3.36%) GraphQL
16 68 (3.31%) HTML
17 66 (3.21%) OAuth
17 66 (3.21%) TensorFlow
18 60 (2.92%) Playwright
19 56 (2.72%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 411 (19.99%) Cloud Native
2 175 (8.51%) Distributed Systems
3 77 (3.75%) Hybrid Cloud
4 72 (3.50%) Public Cloud
5 62 (3.02%) Onboarding
6 59 (2.87%) Product Ownership
7 42 (2.04%) Private Cloud
8 39 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
9 32 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
10 30 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (1.41%) Management Information System
11 29 (1.41%) PKI
12 28 (1.36%) Algorithms
13 26 (1.26%) AI Agents
14 25 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
15 23 (1.12%) Virtual Team
16 22 (1.07%) Replication
17 20 (0.97%) Data Centre
17 20 (0.97%) NHS
17 20 (0.97%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 421 (20.48%) Linux
2 102 (4.96%) Windows
3 70 (3.40%) Unix
4 58 (2.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 40 (1.95%) VMS
6 26 (1.26%) Windows Server
7 23 (1.12%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.63%) CentOS
9 5 (0.24%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.19%) Android
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.15%) Solaris
12 2 (0.097%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.097%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.097%) Rocky
13 1 (0.049%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.049%) Debian
13 1 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,360 (66.15%) CI/CD
2 1,124 (54.67%) DevOps
3 916 (44.55%) Containerisation
4 662 (32.20%) Agile
5 615 (29.91%) Infrastructure as Code
6 552 (26.85%) Microservices
7 458 (22.28%) Problem-Solving
8 391 (19.02%) Observability
9 361 (17.56%) Software Engineering
10 294 (14.30%) Test Automation
11 237 (11.53%) AI
12 218 (10.60%) Migration
13 203 (9.87%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 193 (9.39%) Analytics
15 190 (9.24%) DevSecOps
16 187 (9.10%) Continuous Improvement
17 183 (8.90%) Machine Learning
18 181 (8.80%) Full-Stack Development
19 179 (8.71%) Platform Engineering
20 158 (7.68%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 896 (43.58%) Python
2 526 (25.58%) Java
3 369 (17.95%) SQL
4 268 (13.04%) Bash
5 223 (10.85%) Go
6 169 (8.22%) JavaScript
7 164 (7.98%) TypeScript
8 120 (5.84%) PowerShell
9 88 (4.28%) C#
10 64 (3.11%) Bicep
11 60 (2.92%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.43%) Ruby
13 33 (1.61%) Kotlin
14 32 (1.56%) C++
14 32 (1.56%) Scala
15 29 (1.41%) Rust
16 18 (0.88%) Groovy
16 18 (0.88%) PHP
17 13 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
18 12 (0.58%) Perl
Qualifications
1 708 (34.44%) Security Cleared
2 579 (28.16%) SC Cleared
3 162 (7.88%) Degree
4 123 (5.98%) DV Cleared
5 122 (5.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 93 (4.52%) Azure Certification
7 83 (4.04%) AWS Certification
8 55 (2.68%) Master's Degree
9 48 (2.33%) CISSP
10 43 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
11 32 (1.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 31 (1.51%) CISM
13 24 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
15 15 (0.73%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 15 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
16 14 (0.68%) OCP
16 14 (0.68%) Oracle Certification
17 10 (0.49%) CCSP
18 9 (0.44%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (4.96%) QA
2 65 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.11%) NIST
4 55 (2.68%) Data Quality
5 51 (2.48%) NCSC
6 41 (1.99%) GDPR
7 34 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 31 (1.51%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.78%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.78%) PSD2
10 14 (0.68%) WCAG
11 13 (0.63%) 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 (0.34%) EU AI Act
15 7 (0.34%) JSP 440
16 6 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 1,285 (62.50%) Docker
2 67 (3.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (2.29%) vSphere
4 46 (2.24%) Virtual Machines
5 43 (2.09%) Active Directory
6 24 (1.17%) VMware NSX
7 21 (1.02%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 14 (0.68%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.58%) Squid
10 9 (0.44%) Lustre
11 8 (0.39%) NFS
12 7 (0.34%) GPFS
12 7 (0.34%) KVM
13 6 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.24%) Snort
15 4 (0.19%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.19%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 4 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.15%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 783 (38.08%) Terraform
2 355 (17.27%) Ansible
2 355 (17.27%) Grafana
3 314 (15.27%) Prometheus
4 116 (5.64%) Argo
5 59 (2.87%) Kibana
6 50 (2.43%) Puppet
7 49 (2.38%) Istio
8 38 (1.85%) Progress Chef
9 33 (1.61%) Nessus
10 27 (1.31%) Podman
10 27 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (1.17%) Packer
12 23 (1.12%) logstash
12 23 (1.12%) vCenter Server
13 21 (1.02%) Consul
14 20 (0.97%) Control-M
14 20 (0.97%) IBM Guardium
15 17 (0.83%) Rancher
16 14 (0.68%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 213 (10.36%) Microsoft
2 192 (9.34%) Splunk
3 170 (8.27%) Google
4 139 (6.76%) Red Hat
5 115 (5.59%) Oracle
6 100 (4.86%) VMware
7 60 (2.92%) Databricks
8 52 (2.53%) Dynatrace
9 49 (2.38%) OpenAI
10 25 (1.22%) Atlassian
10 25 (1.22%) Denodo
10 25 (1.22%) Talend
10 25 (1.22%) Tenable
11 22 (1.07%) IBM
12 20 (0.97%) AppDynamics
12 20 (0.97%) Pure Storage
13 16 (0.78%) CyberArk
14 15 (0.73%) Foundry
15 14 (0.68%) Cisco
15 14 (0.68%) NVIDIA