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 6 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 30 57
Rank change year-on-year -2 +27 -28
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,166 1,487 1,281
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.60% 6.10% 3.43%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.11% 38.68% 28.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,470 1,048 941
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 £663
90th Percentile £713 £810 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £568 £550
% change year-on-year -7.49% +3.18% -10.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 7 13
10th Percentile - £26.00 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £41.38 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -17.86%
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.44 £71.25
90th Percentile £85.70 £80.40 £76.89
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -17.86%

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 5,538 3,844 4,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 14.32% 15.77% 11.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,827 2,650 3,257
10th Percentile £313 £315 £250
25th Percentile £413 £420 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% - -8.70%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £625
90th Percentile £700 £738 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £519
% change year-on-year -4.76% +1.11% -9.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 39 124
10th Percentile £20.09 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £32.52 £22.32 £17.72
Median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £25.77
Median % change year-on-year +107.55% +2.85% -55.19%
75th Percentile £68.75 £61.63 £50.06
90th Percentile £76.73 £77.74 £68.44
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £26.45 £30.00
% change year-on-year +107.94% -11.83% -47.83%

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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 -9 1,002 £550 -8.33% 315
North of England +3 447 £500 -4.76% 157
Midlands +29 283 £523 -0.48% 57
West Midlands +36 245 £523 -5.00% 38
Yorkshire +14 236 £487 -16.75% 47
South East -5 187 £500 -9.09% 147
North West +4 170 £538 +7.50% 85
South West +5 158 £550 -8.33% 80
North East -4 45 £475 -8.65% 25
East Midlands -10 37 £450 -5.26% 19
East of England -23 31 £600 +22.45% 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 (4.71%) Confluence
2 75 (3.46%) SAS
3 66 (3.05%) Apache Spark
4 48 (2.22%) Apache
5 34 (1.57%) nginx
6 31 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (1.39%) OpenStack
8 17 (0.78%) Jupyter
9 9 (0.42%) Camunda
10 8 (0.37%) Appian
10 8 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 7 (0.32%) SharePoint
12 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
13 4 (0.18%) Drupal
14 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.14%) CMS
14 3 (0.14%) IIS
14 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 2 (0.092%) ArcGIS
15 2 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.18%) Weka
3 3 (0.14%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.092%) Adobe XD
4 2 (0.092%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.046%) Maya
5 1 (0.046%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (0.37%) Maximo
2 3 (0.14%) Distributed Ledger
2 3 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.046%) Actimize
3 1 (0.046%) Cloudability
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 1,113 (51.39%) AWS
2 894 (41.27%) Azure
3 511 (23.59%) GCP
4 468 (21.61%) GitHub
5 322 (14.87%) OpenShift
6 273 (12.60%) GitHub Actions
7 235 (10.85%) Serverless
8 213 (9.83%) Azure DevOps
9 165 (7.62%) Azure AKS
10 163 (7.53%) Amazon EKS
11 152 (7.02%) AWS CloudFormation
12 145 (6.69%) Amazon S3
13 140 (6.46%) AWS Lambda
14 105 (4.85%) Amazon EC2
15 100 (4.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 86 (3.97%) Amazon ECS
17 71 (3.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 67 (3.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 65 (3.00%) Datadog
20 58 (2.68%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 108 (4.99%) Firewall
2 91 (4.20%) DNS
3 50 (2.31%) Network Security
3 50 (2.31%) VPN
4 37 (1.71%) TCP/IP
5 23 (1.06%) SAN
6 20 (0.92%) HTTP
7 17 (0.78%) DHCP
8 15 (0.69%) NAS
8 15 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
9 11 (0.51%) OpenVPN
9 11 (0.51%) SSL
10 10 (0.46%) Fibre Channel
10 10 (0.46%) iSCSI
11 8 (0.37%) 5G
12 7 (0.32%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.32%) BGP
12 7 (0.32%) SMTP
13 6 (0.28%) 4G
14 5 (0.23%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (11.77%) PostgreSQL
2 187 (8.63%) NoSQL
3 120 (5.54%) MongoDB
4 107 (4.94%) Relational Database
5 85 (3.92%) SQL Server
6 75 (3.46%) Apache Cassandra
7 67 (3.09%) Amazon RDS
8 64 (2.95%) Elasticsearch
9 44 (2.03%) Big Data
9 44 (2.03%) Redis
10 39 (1.80%) Power BI
11 36 (1.66%) MySQL
12 34 (1.57%) Pentaho
13 32 (1.48%) BigQuery
13 32 (1.48%) Data Lake
13 32 (1.48%) DynamoDB
14 26 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
15 25 (1.15%) Flink
16 22 (1.02%) Oracle Database
16 22 (1.02%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 539 (24.88%) Jenkins
2 396 (18.28%) GitLab
3 389 (17.96%) Git
4 183 (8.45%) JIRA
5 101 (4.66%) JUnit
6 65 (3.00%) Selenium
7 56 (2.59%) SonarQube
8 54 (2.49%) Cucumber
9 40 (1.85%) Artifactory
10 39 (1.80%) JMeter
11 38 (1.75%) MLflow
12 37 (1.71%) Maven
13 35 (1.62%) Mockito
14 34 (1.57%) Bitbucket
14 34 (1.57%) Gradle
15 27 (1.25%) Sonatype Nexus
16 26 (1.20%) Gatling
17 23 (1.06%) Postman
18 19 (0.88%) CircleCI
19 15 (0.69%) WebDriver
General
1 569 (26.27%) Social Skills
2 360 (16.62%) Finance
3 273 (12.60%) Public Sector
4 185 (8.54%) Banking
5 153 (7.06%) Analytical Skills
6 58 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
8 27 (1.25%) Financial Institution
9 26 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 21 (0.97%) Front Office
11 19 (0.88%) Investment Banking
11 19 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (0.60%) Military
13 13 (0.60%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (0.55%) Retail
15 11 (0.51%) Legal
16 9 (0.42%) Publishing
17 7 (0.32%) Aerospace
18 6 (0.28%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 460 (21.24%) Developer
2 326 (15.05%) Senior
3 297 (13.71%) DevOps Engineer
4 219 (10.11%) Architect
5 159 (7.34%) Java Developer
6 134 (6.19%) Software Engineer
7 116 (5.36%) Lead
8 113 (5.22%) Platform Engineer
9 107 (4.94%) Senior Developer
10 104 (4.80%) Cloud Engineer
11 100 (4.62%) Data Engineer
12 99 (4.57%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 98 (4.52%) AWS Engineer
14 89 (4.11%) Azure Engineer
15 79 (3.65%) Java Engineer
16 78 (3.60%) Python Developer
17 74 (3.42%) Site Engineer
18 71 (3.28%) AWS DevOps
19 66 (3.05%) GCP Engineer
20 64 (2.95%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 354 (16.34%) Kafka
2 312 (14.40%) Spring
3 262 (12.10%) Spring Boot
4 215 (9.93%) REST
5 205 (9.46%) RESTful
6 165 (7.62%) React
7 155 (7.16%) Node.js
8 127 (5.86%) OpenTelemetry
9 114 (5.26%) AngularJS
10 110 (5.08%) Elastic Stack
11 100 (4.62%) .NET
12 74 (3.42%) OAuth
12 74 (3.42%) PyTorch
13 73 (3.37%) gRPC
14 60 (2.77%) FastAPI
15 56 (2.59%) OpenID
15 56 (2.59%) TensorFlow
16 53 (2.45%) GraphQL
16 53 (2.45%) RabbitMQ
17 50 (2.31%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 438 (20.22%) Cloud Native
2 190 (8.77%) Distributed Systems
3 88 (4.06%) Hybrid Cloud
4 65 (3.00%) Public Cloud
5 62 (2.86%) Product Ownership
6 59 (2.72%) Onboarding
7 37 (1.71%) Data Centre
7 37 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
7 37 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
8 35 (1.62%) AI Agents
9 34 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
9 34 (1.57%) Private Cloud
10 33 (1.52%) Management Information System
11 29 (1.34%) PKI
11 29 (1.34%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.25%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (0.92%) Enterprise Storage
15 19 (0.88%) Fixed Income
15 19 (0.88%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 403 (18.61%) Linux
2 116 (5.36%) Windows
3 64 (2.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 60 (2.77%) Unix
5 45 (2.08%) VMS
6 28 (1.29%) Windows Server
7 20 (0.92%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
9 5 (0.23%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) CoreOS
9 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.18%) Rocky
10 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Android
11 3 (0.14%) Debian
12 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,413 (65.24%) CI/CD
2 1,155 (53.32%) DevOps
3 925 (42.71%) Containerisation
4 700 (32.32%) Agile
5 656 (30.29%) Infrastructure as Code
6 568 (26.22%) Microservices
7 437 (20.18%) Observability
8 434 (20.04%) Problem-Solving
9 359 (16.57%) Software Engineering
10 325 (15.00%) Test Automation
11 280 (12.93%) AI
12 234 (10.80%) Continuous Improvement
13 229 (10.57%) Migration
14 224 (10.34%) Platform Engineering
15 222 (10.25%) Analytics
16 218 (10.06%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 206 (9.51%) Data Pipeline
18 195 (9.00%) DevSecOps
18 195 (9.00%) Machine Learning
19 193 (8.91%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 872 (40.26%) Python
2 551 (25.44%) Java
3 405 (18.70%) SQL
4 267 (12.33%) Bash
5 182 (8.40%) Go
6 153 (7.06%) JavaScript
7 139 (6.42%) PowerShell
8 130 (6.00%) TypeScript
9 96 (4.43%) C#
10 70 (3.23%) Bicep
11 56 (2.59%) Shell Script
12 41 (1.89%) Ruby
13 34 (1.57%) Scala
14 26 (1.20%) Kotlin
15 22 (1.02%) Rust
16 18 (0.83%) Groovy
17 17 (0.78%) C++
18 14 (0.65%) PHP
19 12 (0.55%) C
20 10 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 780 (36.01%) Security Cleared
2 635 (29.32%) SC Cleared
3 142 (6.56%) Degree
4 122 (5.63%) DV Cleared
5 111 (5.12%) Azure Certification
6 97 (4.48%) Computer Science Degree
7 83 (3.83%) AWS Certification
8 50 (2.31%) CISSP
9 49 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
10 40 (1.85%) Master's Degree
11 31 (1.43%) CISM
12 29 (1.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 22 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
15 19 (0.88%) OCP
15 19 (0.88%) Oracle Certification
16 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
17 14 (0.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 14 (0.65%) CCSP
18 12 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (5.59%) QA
2 81 (3.74%) Data Quality
3 70 (3.23%) NIST
4 65 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 60 (2.77%) GDPR
6 48 (2.22%) NCSC
7 44 (2.03%) Accessibility
8 33 (1.52%) PCI DSS
9 20 (0.92%) WCAG
10 18 (0.83%) ISO 20022
11 16 (0.74%) NIST 800
12 15 (0.69%) PSD2
13 12 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
13 12 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 11 (0.51%) SEPA
15 10 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 9 (0.42%) HIPAA
16 9 (0.42%) SLA
17 8 (0.37%) GRC
17 8 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 1,271 (58.68%) Docker
2 74 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 57 (2.63%) vSphere
4 47 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
5 41 (1.89%) Active Directory
6 31 (1.43%) VMware NSX
7 23 (1.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 19 (0.88%) Hyper-V
9 14 (0.65%) NFS
10 11 (0.51%) Squid
11 10 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.37%) Lustre
13 7 (0.32%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
14 6 (0.28%) GPFS
15 5 (0.23%) etcd
15 5 (0.23%) Snort
16 4 (0.18%) Ceph
16 4 (0.18%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 810 (37.40%) Terraform
2 354 (16.34%) Ansible
2 354 (16.34%) Grafana
3 326 (15.05%) Prometheus
4 133 (6.14%) Argo
5 58 (2.68%) Istio
6 48 (2.22%) Puppet
7 39 (1.80%) Progress Chef
8 37 (1.71%) Kibana
9 35 (1.62%) vCenter Server
10 28 (1.29%) Packer
11 26 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
12 25 (1.15%) Podman
13 23 (1.06%) Nessus
14 22 (1.02%) Consul
14 22 (1.02%) Rancher
15 14 (0.65%) Kustomize
16 13 (0.60%) Fluentd
16 13 (0.60%) IBM Guardium
16 13 (0.60%) linkerd
Vendors
1 251 (11.59%) Microsoft
2 185 (8.54%) Splunk
3 159 (7.34%) Red Hat
4 152 (7.02%) Google
5 117 (5.40%) Oracle
6 106 (4.89%) VMware
7 65 (3.00%) Databricks
8 62 (2.86%) Dynatrace
9 48 (2.22%) OpenAI
10 35 (1.62%) Talend
11 34 (1.57%) Denodo
12 32 (1.48%) Pure Storage
13 25 (1.15%) IBM
14 22 (1.02%) AppDynamics
15 21 (0.97%) Atlassian
15 21 (0.97%) Tenable
16 19 (0.88%) NetApp
17 18 (0.83%) Foundry
17 18 (0.83%) ServiceNow
18 17 (0.78%) CyberArk