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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 34 38 34
Rank change year-on-year +4 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 1,547 1,590 2,226
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 5.56% 4.83% 5.27%
As % of the Systems Management category 35.36% 35.24% 35.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,030 1,109 1,648
10th Percentile £394 £400 £450
25th Percentile £448 £481 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £567 £600
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -5.50% -4.00%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £702
90th Percentile £700 £763 £800
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -4.55% -8.33% -2.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 13 59
10th Percentile £61.75 £38.64 -
25th Percentile £66.25 £46.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £67.00 £55.00 £73.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.82% -24.66% -6.56%
75th Percentile £79.38 £74.00 £78.00
90th Percentile £84.50 £74.44 £90.00
UK median hourly rate £67.00 £62.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year +7.20% -13.79% +2.75%

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 4,375 4,512 6,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.73% 13.69% 14.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,900 3,076 4,476
10th Percentile £300 £310 £325
25th Percentile £408 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £675
90th Percentile £688 £713 £760
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 53 160
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.10 £18.48
25th Percentile £21.37 £24.18 £26.69
Median hourly rate £36.75 £40.00 £49.87
Median % change year-on-year -8.13% -19.78% +108.55%
75th Percentile £63.49 £62.50 £75.13
90th Percentile £76.48 £74.00 £78.79
UK median hourly rate £28.25 £38.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -26.62% -30.00% +130.03%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Kubernetes as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Kubernetes 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 19 September 2025.

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 19 September 2025.

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 19 September 2025. 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 -1 849 £550 -4.76% 479
North of England +7 248 £493 -4.50% 150
South East +15 145 £500 -4.76% 225
Midlands +49 125 £537 -8.60% 61
North West +15 114 £475 -9.52% 96
Yorkshire -8 112 £500 +0.50% 36
West Midlands +45 100 £550 -6.38% 33
South West -22 61 £550 - 66
East of England +9 39 £525 -4.55% 21
East Midlands +17 25 £430 -23.64% 28
North East +5 22 £520 -15.79% 19
Kubernetes
UK

Kubernetes
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 61 (3.94%) Confluence
2 32 (2.07%) Apache Spark
3 31 (2.00%) Apache
4 29 (1.87%) Apache Airflow
5 27 (1.75%) SAS
6 23 (1.49%) nginx
7 20 (1.29%) OpenStack
8 10 (0.65%) JBoss
8 10 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
8 10 (0.65%) Mule
9 8 (0.52%) Jupyter
9 8 (0.52%) WebLogic
9 8 (0.52%) WebSphere
10 7 (0.45%) Tomcat
11 6 (0.39%) WebSphere Application Server
12 5 (0.32%) Camunda
12 5 (0.32%) SharePoint
13 4 (0.26%) MQSeries
13 4 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.26%) Traefik
Applications
1 8 (0.52%) MS Visio
2 5 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.26%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.065%) InVision
5 1 (0.065%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 5 (0.32%) Maximo
2 3 (0.19%) Endur
2 3 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.13%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.065%) Distributed Ledger
4 1 (0.065%) Finacle
4 1 (0.065%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.065%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 855 (55.27%) AWS
2 529 (34.20%) Azure
3 361 (23.34%) GCP
4 261 (16.87%) GitHub
5 181 (11.70%) GitHub Actions
6 153 (9.89%) Serverless
7 145 (9.37%) Azure DevOps
8 130 (8.40%) OpenShift
9 126 (8.14%) Azure AKS
10 119 (7.69%) AWS CloudFormation
11 110 (7.11%) Amazon EKS
12 89 (5.75%) Amazon S3
13 82 (5.30%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (4.52%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 68 (4.40%) SaaS
16 67 (4.33%) PaaS
17 64 (4.14%) IaaS
18 63 (4.07%) Amazon EC2
19 62 (4.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 62 (4.01%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 83 (5.37%) Firewall
2 57 (3.68%) DNS
3 43 (2.78%) VPN
4 29 (1.87%) HTTP
5 25 (1.62%) SSL
6 21 (1.36%) TCP/IP
7 18 (1.16%) Network Security
8 13 (0.84%) DHCP
9 12 (0.78%) SMTP
10 9 (0.58%) HTTPS
11 8 (0.52%) Internet
12 7 (0.45%) 5G
13 6 (0.39%) BGP
13 6 (0.39%) MPLS
14 5 (0.32%) 4G
14 5 (0.32%) Ethernet VPN
14 5 (0.32%) OpenLDAP
15 4 (0.26%) MQTT
15 4 (0.26%) Radio Access Network
15 4 (0.26%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (11.96%) PostgreSQL
2 119 (7.69%) NoSQL
3 82 (5.30%) MongoDB
4 61 (3.94%) Amazon RDS
5 58 (3.75%) Elasticsearch
6 57 (3.68%) Apache Cassandra
7 53 (3.43%) Relational Database
8 49 (3.17%) SQL Server
9 41 (2.65%) Redis
10 40 (2.59%) Big Data
11 30 (1.94%) Data Lake
12 27 (1.75%) MySQL
13 23 (1.49%) Hadoop
14 22 (1.42%) Azure SQL Database
14 22 (1.42%) BigQuery
14 22 (1.42%) DynamoDB
14 22 (1.42%) Oracle Database
15 19 (1.23%) Amazon Aurora
15 19 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
16 18 (1.16%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 379 (24.50%) Jenkins
2 267 (17.26%) Git
3 235 (15.19%) GitLab
4 161 (10.41%) JIRA
5 70 (4.52%) SonarQube
6 44 (2.84%) Maven
7 40 (2.59%) Sonatype Nexus
8 38 (2.46%) CircleCI
9 32 (2.07%) Artifactory
10 31 (2.00%) Liquibase
10 31 (2.00%) Selenium
11 28 (1.81%) Gradle
11 28 (1.81%) JUnit
12 24 (1.55%) Bitbucket
12 24 (1.55%) Cucumber
13 21 (1.36%) MLflow
13 21 (1.36%) REST Assured
14 18 (1.16%) Cypress.io
15 17 (1.10%) Postman
16 15 (0.97%) Mockito
General
1 372 (24.05%) Social Skills
2 255 (16.48%) Finance
3 169 (10.92%) Banking
4 168 (10.86%) Public Sector
5 122 (7.89%) Analytical Skills
6 38 (2.46%) Investment Banking
6 38 (2.46%) Telecoms
7 29 (1.87%) Financial Institution
8 24 (1.55%) Pharmaceutical
9 23 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (1.16%) Retail
11 16 (1.03%) Law
12 14 (0.90%) Legal
13 13 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
14 12 (0.78%) Marketing
15 10 (0.65%) Front Office
15 10 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.58%) Manufacturing
17 7 (0.45%) Military
18 6 (0.39%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 344 (22.24%) Developer
2 276 (17.84%) DevOps Engineer
3 225 (14.54%) Senior
4 159 (10.28%) Architect
5 115 (7.43%) Java Developer
6 100 (6.46%) AWS Engineer
7 95 (6.14%) Platform Engineer
8 93 (6.01%) Lead
9 82 (5.30%) Software Engineer
10 68 (4.40%) Cloud Engineer
11 67 (4.33%) AWS DevOps
11 67 (4.33%) Senior Developer
12 62 (4.01%) Python Developer
13 58 (3.75%) Azure Engineer
13 58 (3.75%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 51 (3.30%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 48 (3.10%) Site Engineer
16 45 (2.91%) Data Engineer
17 44 (2.84%) Full-Stack Developer
17 44 (2.84%) Kubernetes Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (15.38%) Kafka
2 161 (10.41%) React
3 136 (8.79%) RESTful
4 134 (8.66%) Spring
5 133 (8.60%) Node.js
6 123 (7.95%) REST
7 117 (7.56%) Spring Boot
8 103 (6.66%) Elastic Stack
9 93 (6.01%) AngularJS
10 87 (5.62%) .NET
11 76 (4.91%) gRPC
12 58 (3.75%) GraphQL
13 55 (3.56%) FastAPI
13 55 (3.56%) HTML
14 54 (3.49%) YAML
15 47 (3.04%) OAuth
16 44 (2.84%) ARM Templates
17 43 (2.78%) CSS
18 40 (2.59%) Vue
19 39 (2.52%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 268 (17.32%) Cloud Native
2 165 (10.67%) Distributed Systems
3 54 (3.49%) Public Cloud
4 43 (2.78%) Onboarding
5 40 (2.59%) Product Ownership
6 36 (2.33%) Algorithms
7 32 (2.07%) Data Centre
8 31 (2.00%) Hybrid Cloud
8 31 (2.00%) Private Cloud
9 30 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
10 29 (1.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 27 (1.75%) PKI
12 22 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
13 21 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.36%) Hedge funds
13 21 (1.36%) Security Posture
14 18 (1.16%) Replication
15 17 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 15 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
17 14 (0.90%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 313 (20.23%) Linux
2 72 (4.65%) Windows
3 61 (3.94%) Unix
4 45 (2.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 25 (1.62%) Windows Server
6 20 (1.29%) CentOS
7 10 (0.65%) VMS
8 9 (0.58%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.52%) Solaris
10 5 (0.32%) Android
11 4 (0.26%) Apple iOS
11 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (0.13%) Debian
12 2 (0.13%) SUSE
12 2 (0.13%) zOS
13 1 (0.065%) AIX
13 1 (0.065%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.065%) MVS
13 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 928 (59.99%) CI/CD
2 833 (53.85%) DevOps
3 594 (38.40%) Containerisation
4 494 (31.93%) Infrastructure as Code
5 451 (29.15%) Agile
6 424 (27.41%) Microservices
7 328 (21.20%) Problem-Solving
8 267 (17.26%) Software Engineering
9 208 (13.45%) Observability
10 177 (11.44%) Migration
11 173 (11.18%) Test Automation
12 167 (10.80%) Artificial Intelligence
13 134 (8.66%) Platform Engineering
14 133 (8.60%) Machine Learning
15 120 (7.76%) Continuous Integration
15 120 (7.76%) Scrum
16 119 (7.69%) Full-Stack Development
17 118 (7.63%) Mentoring
18 113 (7.30%) Analytics
19 111 (7.18%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 693 (44.80%) Python
2 404 (26.12%) Java
3 239 (15.45%) SQL
4 227 (14.67%) Bash
5 213 (13.77%) Go
6 176 (11.38%) JavaScript
7 128 (8.27%) TypeScript
8 121 (7.82%) C#
8 121 (7.82%) PowerShell
9 70 (4.52%) C++
10 61 (3.94%) Bicep
11 55 (3.56%) Shell Script
12 30 (1.94%) Groovy
13 26 (1.68%) Perl
14 25 (1.62%) Rust
15 23 (1.49%) Kotlin
16 21 (1.36%) PHP
17 18 (1.16%) Scala
18 14 (0.90%) PL/SQL
18 14 (0.90%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 442 (28.57%) Security Cleared
2 357 (23.08%) SC Cleared
3 111 (7.18%) Degree
4 78 (5.04%) AWS Certification
5 77 (4.98%) DV Cleared
6 65 (4.20%) Computer Science Degree
7 54 (3.49%) Azure Certification
8 33 (2.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 32 (2.07%) Master's Degree
10 23 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
11 17 (1.10%) BPSS Clearance
12 15 (0.97%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 14 (0.90%) CISSP
14 11 (0.71%) AWS Certified Developer
15 10 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
16 7 (0.45%) CISM
16 7 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
17 5 (0.32%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 5 (0.32%) CCSP
17 5 (0.32%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (5.04%) QA
2 42 (2.71%) GDPR
3 41 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 33 (2.13%) NIST
5 32 (2.07%) Data Quality
6 18 (1.16%) HIPAA
7 17 (1.10%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.97%) NCSC
9 13 (0.84%) Accessibility
10 11 (0.71%) SOC 2
11 9 (0.58%) EU AI Act
11 9 (0.58%) PSD2
12 6 (0.39%) ISO 20022
12 6 (0.39%) SEPA
12 6 (0.39%) SLA
13 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
15 2 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
15 2 (0.13%) NIST 800
15 2 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 923 (59.66%) Docker
2 63 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 32 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (1.03%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.90%) Hyper-V
6 13 (0.84%) vSphere
7 11 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.58%) BitLocker
8 9 (0.58%) Microsoft App-V
8 9 (0.58%) Terminal Services
9 7 (0.45%) KVM
10 5 (0.32%) VMware NSX
11 3 (0.19%) Snort
11 3 (0.19%) Squid
12 2 (0.13%) NDS
12 2 (0.13%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 2 (0.13%) vCloud
12 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.065%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 630 (40.72%) Terraform
2 304 (19.65%) Ansible
3 221 (14.29%) Grafana
4 210 (13.57%) Prometheus
5 60 (3.88%) Puppet
6 57 (3.68%) Argo
7 46 (2.97%) Kibana
8 44 (2.84%) Progress Chef
9 35 (2.26%) Istio
10 28 (1.81%) Packer
11 27 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
12 24 (1.55%) Podman
13 18 (1.16%) Nessus
14 17 (1.10%) logstash
15 16 (1.03%) Docker Swarm
16 15 (0.97%) Consul
17 14 (0.90%) Nagios
18 13 (0.84%) Rancher
19 12 (0.78%) Control-M
20 11 (0.71%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 172 (11.12%) Microsoft
2 132 (8.53%) Google
3 129 (8.34%) Splunk
4 93 (6.01%) Oracle
5 82 (5.30%) Red Hat
6 41 (2.65%) Dynatrace
6 41 (2.65%) VMware
7 28 (1.81%) IBM
8 27 (1.75%) AppDynamics
9 23 (1.49%) Databricks
10 18 (1.16%) Denodo
10 18 (1.16%) Talend
11 17 (1.10%) Atlassian
11 17 (1.10%) OpenAI
12 16 (1.03%) Cisco
13 12 (0.78%) SAP
13 12 (0.78%) Solace
14 11 (0.71%) Citrix
15 10 (0.65%) HP
15 10 (0.65%) Salesforce