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 29 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 31 54
Rank change year-on-year -1 +23 -22
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,001 1,476 1,387
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.09% 5.55% 3.73%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.92% 37.73% 29.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,378 1,013 1,035
10th Percentile £400 £413 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £590 £575
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% +2.61% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 8 33
10th Percentile £48.75 £26.13 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £41.26 £46.18
Median hourly rate £58.75 £58.75 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year - +2.17% -16.06%
75th Percentile £79.25 £69.63 £76.53
90th Percentile £101.25 £74.13 £77.90
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £57.50
% change year-on-year +2.13% +2.17% -14.18%

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 5,141 3,912 4,705
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.64% 14.70% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,565 2,535 3,443
10th Percentile £311 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.10% +1.43% -10.26%
75th Percentile £600 £645 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 113 48 150
10th Percentile £17.67 £14.40 £14.68
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.74 £21.44
Median hourly rate £48.72 £26.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +87.38% -43.70% +0.16%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.50 £75.36 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £25.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +105.88% -44.78% +16.80%

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 29 January 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 29 January 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 29 January 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 -4 959 £550 -8.33% 313
North of England +10 405 £487 -7.24% 163
Midlands +57 250 £530 -1.40% 85
West Midlands +53 227 £537 -2.36% 41
Yorkshire +4 186 £482 -16.17% 63
North West +17 175 £479 -8.69% 83
South East -4 168 £485 -11.82% 270
South West +5 134 £613 +2.08% 117
North East -2 48 £520 -0.95% 17
East of England +3 35 £613 +11.36% 69
East Midlands -7 23 £438 -12.50% 41
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 (4.00%) Confluence
2 73 (3.65%) SAS
3 42 (2.10%) Apache Spark
4 36 (1.80%) Apache
5 31 (1.55%) nginx
5 31 (1.55%) OpenStack
6 30 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
7 13 (0.65%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.55%) Camunda
9 8 (0.40%) SharePoint
10 7 (0.35%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.30%) Appian
11 6 (0.30%) Drupal
11 6 (0.30%) Tomcat
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%) Mule
13 4 (0.20%) WordPress
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 Project
3 2 (0.100%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.100%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.050%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 8 (0.40%) Maximo
2 1 (0.050%) Actimize
2 1 (0.050%) Endur
2 1 (0.050%) Finacle
2 1 (0.050%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,050 (52.47%) AWS
2 757 (37.83%) Azure
3 500 (24.99%) GCP
4 449 (22.44%) GitHub
5 271 (13.54%) OpenShift
6 263 (13.14%) GitHub Actions
7 225 (11.24%) Serverless
8 185 (9.25%) Azure DevOps
9 144 (7.20%) Amazon EKS
10 143 (7.15%) AWS CloudFormation
10 143 (7.15%) Azure AKS
11 133 (6.65%) AWS Lambda
12 131 (6.55%) Amazon S3
13 99 (4.95%) Amazon ECS
14 95 (4.75%) Amazon EC2
15 93 (4.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 78 (3.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 68 (3.40%) Datadog
18 56 (2.80%) SaaS
19 54 (2.70%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 98 (4.90%) Firewall
2 59 (2.95%) DNS
3 38 (1.90%) Network Security
4 34 (1.70%) VPN
5 32 (1.60%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.95%) SSL
7 17 (0.85%) HTTP
8 13 (0.65%) DHCP
8 13 (0.65%) SAN
9 11 (0.55%) NAS
9 11 (0.55%) Reverse Proxy
10 8 (0.40%) Fibre Channel
10 8 (0.40%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.35%) iSCSI
12 6 (0.30%) BGP
12 6 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
12 6 (0.30%) VLAN
13 5 (0.25%) HTTPS
13 5 (0.25%) InfiniBand
13 5 (0.25%) OpenVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 256 (12.79%) PostgreSQL
2 189 (9.45%) NoSQL
3 125 (6.25%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.50%) Relational Database
5 79 (3.95%) Apache Cassandra
6 76 (3.80%) Amazon RDS
7 74 (3.70%) Elasticsearch
8 60 (3.00%) SQL Server
9 56 (2.80%) Redis
10 48 (2.40%) MySQL
11 39 (1.95%) Big Data
12 38 (1.90%) Pentaho
13 37 (1.85%) BigQuery
13 37 (1.85%) Power BI
14 35 (1.75%) DynamoDB
15 27 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
16 26 (1.30%) Data Lake
17 24 (1.20%) Oracle Database
18 21 (1.05%) Tableau
19 19 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 511 (25.54%) Jenkins
2 401 (20.04%) GitLab
3 381 (19.04%) Git
4 172 (8.60%) JIRA
5 77 (3.85%) JUnit
6 57 (2.85%) SonarQube
7 50 (2.50%) Gradle
8 49 (2.45%) Maven
8 49 (2.45%) Sonatype Nexus
9 45 (2.25%) Selenium
10 39 (1.95%) Bitbucket
11 38 (1.90%) Artifactory
12 37 (1.85%) Cucumber
13 32 (1.60%) Mockito
14 30 (1.50%) CircleCI
14 30 (1.50%) MLflow
15 29 (1.45%) Postman
16 23 (1.15%) JMeter
16 23 (1.15%) Liquibase
17 17 (0.85%) Cypress.io
General
1 537 (26.84%) Social Skills
2 337 (16.84%) Finance
3 247 (12.34%) Public Sector
4 195 (9.75%) Banking
5 158 (7.90%) Analytical Skills
6 56 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.95%) Financial Institution
8 25 (1.25%) Front Office
8 25 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
8 25 (1.25%) Investment Banking
9 18 (0.90%) Telecoms
10 17 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
11 14 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
12 12 (0.60%) Retail
13 11 (0.55%) Military
14 9 (0.45%) Aerospace
14 9 (0.45%) Law
15 7 (0.35%) Games
16 6 (0.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 454 (22.69%) Developer
2 310 (15.49%) Senior
3 298 (14.89%) DevOps Engineer
4 170 (8.50%) Architect
5 137 (6.85%) Java Developer
6 133 (6.65%) Software Engineer
7 109 (5.45%) AWS Engineer
8 106 (5.30%) Senior Developer
9 98 (4.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 95 (4.75%) Cloud Engineer
11 91 (4.55%) Lead
12 86 (4.30%) Platform Engineer
13 82 (4.10%) Python Developer
14 77 (3.85%) Full-Stack Developer
15 76 (3.80%) Data Engineer
16 75 (3.75%) AWS DevOps
17 73 (3.65%) Site Engineer
18 71 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
19 65 (3.25%) Java Engineer
20 62 (3.10%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 317 (15.84%) Kafka
2 266 (13.29%) Spring
3 248 (12.39%) Spring Boot
4 216 (10.79%) RESTful
5 211 (10.54%) REST
6 183 (9.15%) React
7 169 (8.45%) Node.js
8 139 (6.95%) Elastic Stack
9 113 (5.65%) AngularJS
10 92 (4.60%) .NET
11 84 (4.20%) gRPC
12 77 (3.85%) OpenTelemetry
13 76 (3.80%) FastAPI
13 76 (3.80%) PyTorch
14 74 (3.70%) GraphQL
15 65 (3.25%) HTML
16 62 (3.10%) TensorFlow
17 61 (3.05%) OAuth
18 57 (2.85%) Playwright
19 55 (2.75%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 391 (19.54%) Cloud Native
2 165 (8.25%) Distributed Systems
3 70 (3.50%) Public Cloud
4 62 (3.10%) Product Ownership
5 61 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
6 58 (2.90%) Onboarding
7 40 (2.00%) Private Cloud
8 34 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
9 29 (1.45%) Management Information System
10 28 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
11 27 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
12 26 (1.30%) Replication
13 25 (1.25%) PKI
14 24 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
15 23 (1.15%) Algorithms
16 22 (1.10%) AI Agents
16 22 (1.10%) Virtual Team
17 20 (1.00%) Security Posture
18 19 (0.95%) Data Centre
19 18 (0.90%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 403 (20.14%) Linux
2 91 (4.55%) Windows
3 69 (3.45%) Unix
4 53 (2.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 37 (1.85%) VMS
6 25 (1.25%) Windows Server
7 23 (1.15%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.65%) CentOS
9 5 (0.25%) Solaris
10 3 (0.15%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.100%) Android
11 2 (0.100%) Rocky
11 2 (0.100%) zOS
12 1 (0.050%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.050%) Debian
12 1 (0.050%) MVS
12 1 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,327 (66.32%) CI/CD
2 1,098 (54.87%) DevOps
3 888 (44.38%) Containerisation
4 666 (33.28%) Agile
5 594 (29.69%) Infrastructure as Code
6 546 (27.29%) Microservices
7 458 (22.89%) Problem-Solving
8 355 (17.74%) Software Engineering
9 350 (17.49%) Observability
10 298 (14.89%) Test Automation
11 227 (11.34%) AI
12 211 (10.54%) Migration
13 193 (9.65%) Analytics
14 191 (9.55%) DevSecOps
15 188 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
16 184 (9.20%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 178 (8.90%) Full-Stack Development
18 170 (8.50%) Machine Learning
19 164 (8.20%) Platform Engineering
20 158 (7.90%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 867 (43.33%) Python
2 529 (26.44%) Java
3 379 (18.94%) SQL
4 268 (13.39%) Bash
5 215 (10.74%) Go
6 170 (8.50%) JavaScript
7 164 (8.20%) TypeScript
8 117 (5.85%) PowerShell
9 90 (4.50%) C#
10 61 (3.05%) Bicep
11 60 (3.00%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.50%) Ruby
13 33 (1.65%) C++
14 32 (1.60%) Scala
15 31 (1.55%) Kotlin
15 31 (1.55%) Rust
16 21 (1.05%) PHP
17 18 (0.90%) Groovy
18 14 (0.70%) Perl
19 13 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 702 (35.08%) Security Cleared
2 577 (28.84%) SC Cleared
3 155 (7.75%) Degree
4 117 (5.85%) DV Cleared
5 115 (5.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 88 (4.40%) Azure Certification
7 81 (4.05%) AWS Certification
8 52 (2.60%) Master's Degree
9 47 (2.35%) CISSP
10 39 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (1.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 31 (1.55%) CISM
12 23 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
13 17 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
14 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 14 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
16 11 (0.55%) OCP
16 11 (0.55%) Oracle Certification
17 10 (0.50%) CCSP
18 9 (0.45%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (4.85%) QA
2 67 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.20%) Data Quality
3 64 (3.20%) NIST
4 52 (2.60%) NCSC
5 41 (2.05%) GDPR
6 34 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 28 (1.40%) PCI DSS
8 18 (0.90%) PSD2
9 17 (0.85%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.75%) SEPA
11 13 (0.65%) WCAG
12 11 (0.55%) SLA
13 10 (0.50%) NIST 800
14 9 (0.45%) SOC 2
15 8 (0.40%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
16 7 (0.35%) EU AI Act
17 6 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,284 (64.17%) Docker
2 61 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (2.20%) Active Directory
4 35 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (1.70%) vSphere
6 17 (0.85%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 16 (0.80%) VMware NSX
8 15 (0.75%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.50%) Squid
10 9 (0.45%) KVM
10 9 (0.45%) Lustre
11 7 (0.35%) GPFS
11 7 (0.35%) NFS
12 5 (0.25%) Snort
12 5 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
13 4 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.15%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.15%) Ceph
14 3 (0.15%) Firmware
14 3 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 757 (37.83%) Terraform
2 345 (17.24%) Ansible
3 333 (16.64%) Grafana
4 287 (14.34%) Prometheus
5 110 (5.50%) Argo
6 55 (2.75%) Kibana
7 52 (2.60%) Puppet
8 50 (2.50%) Istio
9 40 (2.00%) Progress Chef
10 28 (1.40%) Nessus
11 25 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
12 24 (1.20%) Packer
12 24 (1.20%) Podman
13 22 (1.10%) logstash
14 20 (1.00%) Consul
15 16 (0.80%) Control-M
15 16 (0.80%) IBM Guardium
15 16 (0.80%) Rancher
16 14 (0.70%) Kustomize
16 14 (0.70%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 213 (10.64%) Microsoft
2 181 (9.05%) Splunk
3 173 (8.65%) Google
4 134 (6.70%) Oracle
5 128 (6.40%) Red Hat
6 90 (4.50%) VMware
7 50 (2.50%) Databricks
8 48 (2.40%) Dynatrace
9 46 (2.30%) OpenAI
10 38 (1.90%) Denodo
10 38 (1.90%) Talend
11 24 (1.20%) AppDynamics
12 21 (1.05%) Atlassian
12 21 (1.05%) IBM
12 21 (1.05%) Tenable
13 17 (0.85%) CyberArk
14 16 (0.80%) Cisco
15 15 (0.75%) Foundry
16 14 (0.70%) NVIDIA
17 12 (0.60%) Pure Storage