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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 30 58
Rank change year-on-year -2 +28 -27
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,156 1,482 1,304
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.75% 6.10% 3.46%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.42% 38.49% 29.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,463 1,043 949
10th Percentile £400 £406 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £625 £688 £675
90th Percentile £713 £813 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £570 £550
% change year-on-year -7.89% +3.64% -10.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 7 18
10th Percentile £52.13 £26.00 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £41.38 £47.81
Median hourly rate £63.75 £60.00 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -3.23% -9.49%
75th Percentile £71.07 £73.44 £73.64
90th Percentile £86.90 £80.40 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% -3.23% -9.49%

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 5,469 3,850 4,477
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 14.58% 15.86% 11.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,775 2,619 3,261
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £415 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -8.70%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £630
90th Percentile £700 £750 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 39 131
10th Percentile £20.09 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.68 £21.05 £18.89
Median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.55% -11.67% -45.45%
75th Percentile £68.75 £61.63 £57.75
90th Percentile £77.28 £77.74 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £25.50 £32.25
% change year-on-year +115.69% -20.93% -41.36%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 -10 1,002 £550 -8.33% 315
North of England +7 447 £490 -6.67% 157
Midlands +36 281 £525 - 57
West Midlands +42 244 £525 -2.33% 38
Yorkshire +11 232 £487 -15.30% 47
South East -4 187 £500 -9.09% 147
North West +13 172 £525 +0.02% 85
South West +3 155 £575 -4.17% 80
North East -2 47 £489 -5.10% 25
East Midlands -10 36 £447 -10.60% 19
East of England -26 32 £606 +23.72% 32
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
1 102 (4.73%) Confluence
2 67 (3.11%) SAS
3 60 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 47 (2.18%) Apache
5 35 (1.62%) nginx
6 31 (1.44%) OpenStack
7 27 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
8 17 (0.79%) Jupyter
9 10 (0.46%) Camunda
10 8 (0.37%) Appian
10 8 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 7 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
12 6 (0.28%) SharePoint
13 5 (0.23%) Ethereum
13 5 (0.23%) Hyperledger
14 4 (0.19%) CMS
14 4 (0.19%) Drupal
15 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.14%) IIS
16 2 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
1 5 (0.23%) Weka
2 3 (0.14%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.093%) Adobe XD
3 2 (0.093%) CPLEX
4 1 (0.046%) Maya
4 1 (0.046%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (0.37%) Maximo
2 2 (0.093%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.046%) Actimize
3 1 (0.046%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.046%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.046%) Endur
3 1 (0.046%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.046%) SAP Hybris
3 1 (0.046%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.046%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,119 (51.90%) AWS
2 887 (41.14%) Azure
3 523 (24.26%) GCP
4 490 (22.73%) GitHub
5 321 (14.89%) OpenShift
6 281 (13.03%) GitHub Actions
7 230 (10.67%) Serverless
8 211 (9.79%) Azure DevOps
9 167 (7.75%) Amazon EKS
10 156 (7.24%) Azure AKS
11 148 (6.86%) AWS CloudFormation
12 137 (6.35%) Amazon S3
13 131 (6.08%) AWS Lambda
14 106 (4.92%) Amazon EC2
15 103 (4.78%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 85 (3.94%) Amazon ECS
17 71 (3.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 70 (3.25%) Datadog
19 59 (2.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 55 (2.55%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 110 (5.10%) Firewall
2 87 (4.04%) DNS
3 51 (2.37%) Network Security
4 45 (2.09%) VPN
5 38 (1.76%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.93%) SAN
7 19 (0.88%) HTTP
8 16 (0.74%) DHCP
9 15 (0.70%) Reverse Proxy
10 13 (0.60%) SSL
11 12 (0.56%) NAS
12 11 (0.51%) OpenVPN
13 8 (0.37%) BGP
13 8 (0.37%) Fibre Channel
13 8 (0.37%) iSCSI
13 8 (0.37%) Kerberos
14 7 (0.32%) 5G
15 6 (0.28%) 3GPP
15 6 (0.28%) 4G
15 6 (0.28%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (12.38%) PostgreSQL
2 198 (9.18%) NoSQL
3 123 (5.71%) MongoDB
4 104 (4.82%) Relational Database
5 88 (4.08%) SQL Server
6 80 (3.71%) Apache Cassandra
7 68 (3.15%) Amazon RDS
8 65 (3.01%) Elasticsearch
9 45 (2.09%) Redis
10 43 (1.99%) Big Data
11 40 (1.86%) Power BI
12 34 (1.58%) MySQL
13 33 (1.53%) BigQuery
14 31 (1.44%) Pentaho
15 30 (1.39%) Data Lake
15 30 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
16 29 (1.35%) DynamoDB
17 23 (1.07%) Flink
17 23 (1.07%) Oracle Database
18 20 (0.93%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 546 (25.32%) Jenkins
2 407 (18.88%) GitLab
3 398 (18.46%) Git
4 184 (8.53%) JIRA
5 101 (4.68%) JUnit
6 62 (2.88%) Selenium
7 56 (2.60%) Cucumber
8 51 (2.37%) SonarQube
9 46 (2.13%) Artifactory
10 42 (1.95%) MLflow
11 39 (1.81%) JMeter
12 38 (1.76%) Bitbucket
13 37 (1.72%) Maven
14 36 (1.67%) Gradle
14 36 (1.67%) Sonatype Nexus
15 34 (1.58%) Mockito
16 27 (1.25%) Gatling
17 22 (1.02%) Postman
18 17 (0.79%) CircleCI
19 15 (0.70%) WebDriver
General
1 573 (26.58%) Social Skills
2 360 (16.70%) Finance
3 269 (12.48%) Public Sector
4 184 (8.53%) Banking
5 156 (7.24%) Analytical Skills
6 56 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (1.58%) Financial Institution
8 28 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
9 24 (1.11%) Telecoms
10 21 (0.97%) Front Office
11 19 (0.88%) Investment Banking
11 19 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (0.70%) Retail
13 14 (0.65%) Military
14 12 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
15 9 (0.42%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.37%) Legal
17 6 (0.28%) Games
17 6 (0.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 461 (21.38%) Developer
2 336 (15.58%) Senior
3 299 (13.87%) DevOps Engineer
4 212 (9.83%) Architect
5 147 (6.82%) Java Developer
6 134 (6.22%) Software Engineer
7 119 (5.52%) Lead
8 108 (5.01%) Platform Engineer
9 107 (4.96%) Cloud Engineer
9 107 (4.96%) Senior Developer
10 99 (4.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 96 (4.45%) AWS Engineer
11 96 (4.45%) Data Engineer
12 80 (3.71%) Azure Engineer
12 80 (3.71%) Java Engineer
13 77 (3.57%) Python Developer
14 74 (3.43%) Site Engineer
15 72 (3.34%) Full-Stack Developer
16 70 (3.25%) AWS DevOps
17 69 (3.20%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (16.33%) Kafka
2 309 (14.33%) Spring
3 258 (11.97%) Spring Boot
4 225 (10.44%) REST
5 204 (9.46%) RESTful
6 170 (7.88%) React
7 161 (7.47%) Node.js
8 127 (5.89%) Elastic Stack
9 125 (5.80%) OpenTelemetry
10 118 (5.47%) AngularJS
11 104 (4.82%) .NET
12 81 (3.76%) gRPC
13 74 (3.43%) PyTorch
14 72 (3.34%) OAuth
15 64 (2.97%) FastAPI
16 59 (2.74%) RabbitMQ
17 58 (2.69%) HTML
17 58 (2.69%) Playwright
18 57 (2.64%) TensorFlow
19 56 (2.60%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 431 (19.99%) Cloud Native
2 188 (8.72%) Distributed Systems
3 96 (4.45%) Hybrid Cloud
4 72 (3.34%) Public Cloud
5 61 (2.83%) Product Ownership
6 59 (2.74%) Onboarding
7 38 (1.76%) Private Cloud
8 37 (1.72%) Data Centre
8 37 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
9 35 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
9 35 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
10 33 (1.53%) Management Information System
11 31 (1.44%) AI Agents
12 30 (1.39%) PKI
13 27 (1.25%) Security Posture
14 25 (1.16%) Virtual Team
15 23 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (0.93%) Algorithms
16 20 (0.93%) Fixed Income
17 18 (0.83%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 419 (19.43%) Linux
2 119 (5.52%) Windows
3 64 (2.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 60 (2.78%) Unix
5 45 (2.09%) VMS
6 27 (1.25%) Windows Server
7 21 (0.97%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
9 5 (0.23%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) CoreOS
9 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.19%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.19%) Rocky
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Android
11 3 (0.14%) Debian
12 1 (0.046%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,409 (65.35%) CI/CD
2 1,156 (53.62%) DevOps
3 928 (43.04%) Containerisation
4 701 (32.51%) Agile
5 639 (29.64%) Infrastructure as Code
6 574 (26.62%) Microservices
7 450 (20.87%) Problem-Solving
8 432 (20.04%) Observability
9 364 (16.88%) Software Engineering
10 321 (14.89%) Test Automation
11 262 (12.15%) AI
12 231 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
13 219 (10.16%) Migration
14 216 (10.02%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 215 (9.97%) Analytics
16 210 (9.74%) Platform Engineering
17 196 (9.09%) Data Pipeline
18 195 (9.04%) DevSecOps
19 191 (8.86%) Machine Learning
20 189 (8.77%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 904 (41.93%) Python
2 548 (25.42%) Java
3 409 (18.97%) SQL
4 275 (12.76%) Bash
5 198 (9.18%) Go
6 155 (7.19%) JavaScript
7 140 (6.49%) TypeScript
8 139 (6.45%) PowerShell
9 99 (4.59%) C#
10 66 (3.06%) Bicep
11 57 (2.64%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.32%) Ruby
13 36 (1.67%) Scala
14 26 (1.21%) Kotlin
15 25 (1.16%) Rust
16 23 (1.07%) C++
17 18 (0.83%) Groovy
18 15 (0.70%) PHP
19 12 (0.56%) C
19 12 (0.56%) Perl
Qualifications
1 770 (35.71%) Security Cleared
2 626 (29.04%) SC Cleared
3 160 (7.42%) Degree
4 122 (5.66%) DV Cleared
5 113 (5.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 107 (4.96%) Azure Certification
7 88 (4.08%) AWS Certification
8 53 (2.46%) CISSP
9 49 (2.27%) Master's Degree
10 48 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (1.44%) CISM
12 29 (1.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 23 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (0.97%) OCP
14 21 (0.97%) Oracle Certification
15 20 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
17 17 (0.79%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
18 14 (0.65%) CCSP
19 13 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 120 (5.57%) QA
2 76 (3.53%) Data Quality
3 66 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 66 (3.06%) NIST
4 57 (2.64%) GDPR
5 46 (2.13%) Accessibility
5 46 (2.13%) NCSC
6 34 (1.58%) PCI DSS
7 19 (0.88%) WCAG
8 16 (0.74%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.70%) PSD2
10 14 (0.65%) NIST 800
11 12 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 11 (0.51%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.46%) SEPA
14 9 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 9 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 9 (0.42%) SLA
15 8 (0.37%) GRC
16 7 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,296 (60.11%) Docker
2 74 (3.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 58 (2.69%) vSphere
4 51 (2.37%) Virtual Machines
5 40 (1.86%) Active Directory
6 32 (1.48%) VMware NSX
7 23 (1.07%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 17 (0.79%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.56%) NFS
9 12 (0.56%) Squid
10 9 (0.42%) Lustre
10 9 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
11 7 (0.32%) GPFS
11 7 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.28%) BitLocker
12 6 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.28%) Snort
13 5 (0.23%) etcd
14 4 (0.19%) Firmware
14 4 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 803 (37.24%) Terraform
2 373 (17.30%) Grafana
3 364 (16.88%) Ansible
4 337 (15.63%) Prometheus
5 134 (6.22%) Argo
6 58 (2.69%) Istio
7 50 (2.32%) Puppet
8 41 (1.90%) Kibana
8 41 (1.90%) Progress Chef
9 34 (1.58%) vCenter Server
10 30 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (1.25%) Packer
12 26 (1.21%) Nessus
13 25 (1.16%) Podman
14 23 (1.07%) Consul
14 23 (1.07%) Rancher
15 15 (0.70%) Control-M
15 15 (0.70%) IBM Guardium
16 14 (0.65%) Kustomize
17 13 (0.60%) linkerd
Vendors
1 238 (11.04%) Microsoft
2 192 (8.91%) Splunk
3 166 (7.70%) Red Hat
4 161 (7.47%) Google
5 110 (5.10%) Oracle
6 109 (5.06%) VMware
7 63 (2.92%) Databricks
8 60 (2.78%) Dynatrace
9 49 (2.27%) OpenAI
10 31 (1.44%) Denodo
10 31 (1.44%) Talend
11 30 (1.39%) Pure Storage
12 23 (1.07%) Tenable
13 22 (1.02%) Atlassian
14 21 (0.97%) IBM
15 20 (0.93%) AppDynamics
16 19 (0.88%) Foundry
17 18 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 17 (0.79%) NetApp
18 17 (0.79%) ServiceNow