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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 31 56
Rank change year-on-year +1 +25 -26
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,133 1,517 1,346
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.00% 5.91% 3.56%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.66% 38.75% 29.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,468 1,043 975
10th Percentile £400 £407 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £590 £568
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% +3.96% -9.20%
75th Percentile £630 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £813 £742
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -8.70% +2.22% -9.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 6 26
10th Percentile £51.25 £25.88 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £62.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -5.62% -2.73%
75th Percentile £78.75 £66.13 £76.53
90th Percentile £89.00 £71.31 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £62.25
% change year-on-year +2.13% -5.62% -2.73%

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 5,378 3,915 4,623
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.14% 15.24% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,723 2,569 3,354
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £410
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 122 41 145
10th Percentile £18.88 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.29 £21.05 £20.00
Median hourly rate £54.00 £26.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.77% -33.75% -23.27%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.48 £77.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £25.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +111.76% -36.25% -21.57%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -4 994 £550 -8.33% 255
North of England +10 445 £495 -5.71% 127
Midlands +47 280 £525 - 43
West Midlands +46 251 £525 -2.33% 31
Yorkshire +8 231 £487 -15.30% 45
South East +1 184 £483 -12.27% 142
North West +13 173 £518 +0.78% 61
South West 0 142 £575 -4.17% 81
North East -4 45 £525 +0.96% 21
East of England -11 37 £606 +15.48% 19
East Midlands -5 28 £438 -8.76% 12
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
1 103 (4.83%) Confluence
2 75 (3.52%) SAS
3 55 (2.58%) Apache Spark
4 39 (1.83%) Apache
5 35 (1.64%) nginx
6 31 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (1.27%) OpenStack
8 17 (0.80%) Jupyter
9 11 (0.52%) Camunda
10 10 (0.47%) WebLogic
11 8 (0.38%) Appian
12 7 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
12 7 (0.33%) SharePoint
13 5 (0.23%) Ethereum
13 5 (0.23%) Hyperledger
14 4 (0.19%) Drupal
14 4 (0.19%) Traefik
15 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.14%) CMS
15 3 (0.14%) IIS
Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.23%) Weka
3 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.094%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.047%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.047%) Maya
5 1 (0.047%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (0.42%) Maximo
2 2 (0.094%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.047%) Actimize
3 1 (0.047%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.047%) Endur
3 1 (0.047%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.047%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,114 (52.23%) AWS
2 824 (38.63%) Azure
3 532 (24.94%) GCP
4 477 (22.36%) GitHub
5 303 (14.21%) OpenShift
6 273 (12.80%) GitHub Actions
7 229 (10.74%) Serverless
8 190 (8.91%) Azure DevOps
9 172 (8.06%) Amazon EKS
10 151 (7.08%) Azure AKS
11 143 (6.70%) AWS CloudFormation
12 140 (6.56%) Amazon S3
13 132 (6.19%) AWS Lambda
14 107 (5.02%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 103 (4.83%) Amazon EC2
16 91 (4.27%) Amazon ECS
17 67 (3.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 66 (3.09%) Datadog
19 63 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 58 (2.72%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 110 (5.16%) Firewall
2 77 (3.61%) DNS
3 46 (2.16%) Network Security
4 42 (1.97%) VPN
5 39 (1.83%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.94%) HTTP
7 18 (0.84%) SAN
8 17 (0.80%) SSL
9 16 (0.75%) DHCP
10 14 (0.66%) Reverse Proxy
11 11 (0.52%) NAS
12 8 (0.38%) Kerberos
12 8 (0.38%) OpenVPN
13 7 (0.33%) Fibre Channel
13 7 (0.33%) iSCSI
14 6 (0.28%) BGP
15 5 (0.23%) HTTPS
15 5 (0.23%) InfiniBand
15 5 (0.23%) Software-Defined Networking
15 5 (0.23%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 271 (12.71%) PostgreSQL
2 191 (8.95%) NoSQL
3 135 (6.33%) MongoDB
4 93 (4.36%) Relational Database
5 81 (3.80%) Apache Cassandra
5 81 (3.80%) Elasticsearch
6 72 (3.38%) SQL Server
7 68 (3.19%) Amazon RDS
8 47 (2.20%) Redis
9 41 (1.92%) MySQL
10 40 (1.88%) Big Data
11 36 (1.69%) Power BI
12 35 (1.64%) BigQuery
12 35 (1.64%) Pentaho
13 32 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
13 32 (1.50%) DynamoDB
14 28 (1.31%) Data Lake
15 27 (1.27%) Oracle Database
16 22 (1.03%) Hadoop
17 20 (0.94%) Flink
Development Applications
1 538 (25.22%) Jenkins
2 419 (19.64%) GitLab
3 385 (18.05%) Git
4 197 (9.24%) JIRA
5 96 (4.50%) JUnit
6 61 (2.86%) Selenium
7 54 (2.53%) Cucumber
8 49 (2.30%) SonarQube
9 43 (2.02%) MLflow
10 41 (1.92%) Gradle
11 39 (1.83%) Artifactory
11 39 (1.83%) Bitbucket
12 38 (1.78%) Maven
12 38 (1.78%) Sonatype Nexus
13 33 (1.55%) JMeter
14 32 (1.50%) Mockito
15 26 (1.22%) Postman
16 25 (1.17%) CircleCI
17 23 (1.08%) Liquibase
18 18 (0.84%) Gatling
General
1 574 (26.91%) Social Skills
2 360 (16.88%) Finance
3 266 (12.47%) Public Sector
4 188 (8.81%) Banking
5 172 (8.06%) Analytical Skills
6 59 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.73%) Financial Institution
8 27 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
9 25 (1.17%) Front Office
10 20 (0.94%) Investment Banking
11 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (0.80%) Telecoms
12 16 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (0.70%) Retail
14 12 (0.56%) Military
15 11 (0.52%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
17 9 (0.42%) Aerospace
18 7 (0.33%) Law
19 5 (0.23%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 470 (22.03%) Developer
2 334 (15.66%) Senior
3 300 (14.06%) DevOps Engineer
4 191 (8.95%) Architect
5 143 (6.70%) Java Developer
6 135 (6.33%) Software Engineer
7 112 (5.25%) Lead
8 107 (5.02%) AWS Engineer
8 107 (5.02%) Cloud Engineer
9 106 (4.97%) Senior Developer
10 101 (4.74%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 100 (4.69%) Data Engineer
12 93 (4.36%) Platform Engineer
13 86 (4.03%) Python Developer
14 78 (3.66%) Full-Stack Developer
15 75 (3.52%) Site Engineer
16 74 (3.47%) Java Engineer
17 73 (3.42%) AWS DevOps
18 72 (3.38%) Azure Engineer
19 68 (3.19%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (16.13%) Kafka
2 291 (13.64%) Spring
3 254 (11.91%) Spring Boot
4 221 (10.36%) REST
5 208 (9.75%) RESTful
6 189 (8.86%) React
7 163 (7.64%) Node.js
8 137 (6.42%) Elastic Stack
9 113 (5.30%) OpenTelemetry
10 112 (5.25%) AngularJS
11 103 (4.83%) .NET
12 82 (3.84%) PyTorch
13 81 (3.80%) FastAPI
13 81 (3.80%) gRPC
14 68 (3.19%) OAuth
15 66 (3.09%) GraphQL
15 66 (3.09%) HTML
16 64 (3.00%) TensorFlow
17 60 (2.81%) Playwright
18 55 (2.58%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 426 (19.97%) Cloud Native
2 170 (7.97%) Distributed Systems
3 87 (4.08%) Hybrid Cloud
4 77 (3.61%) Public Cloud
5 64 (3.00%) Product Ownership
6 58 (2.72%) Onboarding
7 41 (1.92%) Private Cloud
8 37 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
8 37 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
9 36 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
9 36 (1.69%) Management Information System
10 31 (1.45%) Security Posture
11 28 (1.31%) PKI
12 26 (1.22%) Algorithms
13 25 (1.17%) Data Centre
13 25 (1.17%) Virtual Team
14 24 (1.13%) AI Agents
15 22 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (0.98%) Linux Command Line
17 20 (0.94%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 439 (20.58%) Linux
2 113 (5.30%) Windows
3 70 (3.28%) Unix
4 68 (3.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (2.06%) VMS
6 27 (1.27%) Windows Server
7 24 (1.13%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.56%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.19%) Android
10 4 (0.19%) CoreOS
10 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Rocky
11 3 (0.14%) Solaris
12 2 (0.094%) Debian
13 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,406 (65.92%) CI/CD
2 1,144 (53.63%) DevOps
3 939 (44.02%) Containerisation
4 702 (32.91%) Agile
5 628 (29.44%) Infrastructure as Code
6 562 (26.35%) Microservices
7 470 (22.03%) Problem-Solving
8 425 (19.92%) Observability
9 366 (17.16%) Software Engineering
10 323 (15.14%) Test Automation
11 251 (11.77%) AI
12 227 (10.64%) Continuous Improvement
13 224 (10.50%) Migration
14 222 (10.41%) Analytics
15 208 (9.75%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 189 (8.86%) Data Pipeline
16 189 (8.86%) DevSecOps
17 187 (8.77%) Machine Learning
18 183 (8.58%) Platform Engineering
19 181 (8.49%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 930 (43.60%) Python
2 542 (25.41%) Java
3 392 (18.38%) SQL
4 284 (13.31%) Bash
5 217 (10.17%) Go
6 170 (7.97%) JavaScript
7 166 (7.78%) TypeScript
8 133 (6.24%) PowerShell
9 89 (4.17%) C#
10 64 (3.00%) Bicep
11 58 (2.72%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.34%) Ruby
13 32 (1.50%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.50%) Scala
14 27 (1.27%) C++
14 27 (1.27%) Rust
15 17 (0.80%) Groovy
16 16 (0.75%) PHP
17 15 (0.70%) Perl
18 14 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 748 (35.07%) Security Cleared
2 620 (29.07%) SC Cleared
3 166 (7.78%) Degree
4 125 (5.86%) DV Cleared
5 123 (5.77%) Computer Science Degree
6 105 (4.92%) Azure Certification
7 100 (4.69%) AWS Certification
8 56 (2.63%) CISSP
9 54 (2.53%) Master's Degree
10 43 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
11 35 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 34 (1.59%) CISM
13 26 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
14 23 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
15 21 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
16 19 (0.89%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 17 (0.80%) OCP
17 17 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
18 14 (0.66%) CCSP
19 13 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (5.20%) QA
2 71 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 66 (3.09%) NIST
4 63 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 48 (2.25%) GDPR
6 47 (2.20%) NCSC
7 41 (1.92%) Accessibility
8 32 (1.50%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.75%) WCAG
10 15 (0.70%) PSD2
11 12 (0.56%) HIPAA
11 12 (0.56%) NIST 800
12 10 (0.47%) SEPA
13 9 (0.42%) SLA
14 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.33%) GRC
15 7 (0.33%) JSP 440
16 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
16 6 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,318 (61.79%) Docker
2 68 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 53 (2.48%) vSphere
4 48 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
5 43 (2.02%) Active Directory
6 27 (1.27%) VMware NSX
7 22 (1.03%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 13 (0.61%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.56%) Squid
10 10 (0.47%) NFS
11 9 (0.42%) Lustre
12 7 (0.33%) GPFS
12 7 (0.33%) Snort
12 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
12 7 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
13 6 (0.28%) KVM
14 4 (0.19%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.19%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 799 (37.46%) Terraform
2 365 (17.11%) Grafana
3 361 (16.92%) Ansible
4 328 (15.38%) Prometheus
5 120 (5.63%) Argo
6 56 (2.63%) Istio
7 54 (2.53%) Kibana
8 50 (2.34%) Puppet
9 40 (1.88%) Progress Chef
10 34 (1.59%) Nessus
11 27 (1.27%) Packer
11 27 (1.27%) vCenter Server
12 26 (1.22%) Podman
12 26 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
13 23 (1.08%) Consul
14 22 (1.03%) Control-M
14 22 (1.03%) IBM Guardium
15 21 (0.98%) logstash
16 20 (0.94%) Rancher
17 13 (0.61%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 231 (10.83%) Microsoft
2 195 (9.14%) Splunk
3 169 (7.92%) Google
4 154 (7.22%) Red Hat
5 120 (5.63%) Oracle
6 104 (4.88%) VMware
7 63 (2.95%) Databricks
8 54 (2.53%) Dynatrace
9 47 (2.20%) OpenAI
10 35 (1.64%) Denodo
10 35 (1.64%) Talend
11 29 (1.36%) Tenable
12 24 (1.13%) Atlassian
12 24 (1.13%) Pure Storage
13 22 (1.03%) IBM
14 19 (0.89%) AppDynamics
15 18 (0.84%) CyberArk
16 17 (0.80%) Foundry
17 16 (0.75%) ServiceNow
18 15 (0.70%) Okta