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 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 30 32 49
Rank change year-on-year +2 +17 -17
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 1,931 1,568 1,593
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.18% 5.41% 4.26%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.67% 37.56% 30.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,330 1,051 1,179
10th Percentile £400 £406 £425
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £688
90th Percentile £700 £800 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -7.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 11 48
10th Percentile £47.75 £26.50 -
25th Percentile £53.56 £46.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £67.00 £57.50 £62.25
Median % change year-on-year +16.52% -7.63% -7.43%
75th Percentile £79.75 £71.09 £76.53
90th Percentile £106.15 £74.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £67.00 £57.50 £62.25
% change year-on-year +16.52% -7.63% -3.49%

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 4,994 4,175 5,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.98% 14.41% 13.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,423 2,690 3,743
10th Percentile £310 £313 £292
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £526 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.61% -4.32% -6.38%
75th Percentile £610 £639 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £744
UK median daily rate £509 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.05% -2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 52 162
10th Percentile £18.72 £15.25 £17.00
25th Percentile £21.30 £23.75 £21.44
Median hourly rate £47.50 £30.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +55.74% -33.95% +31.94%
75th Percentile £66.19 £63.00 £68.63
90th Percentile £80.20 £77.19 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £40.73 £26.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +53.68% -42.62% +34.83%

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 18 December 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 18 December 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 18 December 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 -4 934 £550 -8.33% 342
North of England +16 380 £487 -7.24% 147
Midlands +56 218 £530 -12.54% 56
West Midlands +46 200 £534 -12.75% 35
Yorkshire +9 187 £486 -11.64% 55
South East +8 177 £500 -9.09% 201
North West +22 156 £492 -9.72% 79
South West -7 115 £625 +4.17% 99
East of England -5 46 £550 - 43
North East 0 39 £550 +5.77% 15
East Midlands -1 18 £472 -5.60% 20
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 78 (4.04%) Confluence
2 69 (3.57%) SAS
3 35 (1.81%) Apache Spark
4 34 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
5 33 (1.71%) Apache
6 28 (1.45%) OpenStack
7 26 (1.35%) nginx
8 10 (0.52%) Mule
9 7 (0.36%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.26%) Ethereum
11 5 (0.26%) Hyperledger
11 5 (0.26%) JBoss
11 5 (0.26%) SharePoint
12 4 (0.21%) CMS
12 4 (0.21%) Drupal
12 4 (0.21%) IIS
12 4 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 6 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.26%) Weka
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Maximo
2 4 (0.21%) Endur
3 2 (0.10%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.052%) Actimize
4 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.052%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 1,034 (53.55%) AWS
2 713 (36.92%) Azure
3 485 (25.12%) GCP
4 438 (22.68%) GitHub
5 266 (13.78%) GitHub Actions
6 250 (12.95%) OpenShift
7 213 (11.03%) Serverless
8 184 (9.53%) Azure DevOps
9 143 (7.41%) Amazon EKS
10 134 (6.94%) AWS CloudFormation
11 133 (6.89%) Azure AKS
12 118 (6.11%) Amazon S3
13 116 (6.01%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (4.51%) Amazon EC2
15 84 (4.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 82 (4.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 82 (4.25%) Amazon ECS
17 65 (3.37%) Datadog
18 57 (2.95%) Entra ID
18 57 (2.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 85 (4.40%) Firewall
2 60 (3.11%) DNS
3 28 (1.45%) Network Security
4 26 (1.35%) TCP/IP
4 26 (1.35%) VPN
5 21 (1.09%) SSL
6 16 (0.83%) HTTP
7 9 (0.47%) DHCP
8 8 (0.41%) BGP
8 8 (0.41%) NAS
8 8 (0.41%) SAN
9 7 (0.36%) Fibre Channel
9 7 (0.36%) HTTPS
9 7 (0.36%) iSCSI
9 7 (0.36%) Software-Defined Networking
10 6 (0.31%) VLAN
10 6 (0.31%) VXLAN
11 5 (0.26%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.26%) OpenLDAP
11 5 (0.26%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (13.46%) PostgreSQL
2 185 (9.58%) NoSQL
3 127 (6.58%) MongoDB
4 78 (4.04%) Relational Database
5 73 (3.78%) Apache Cassandra
6 66 (3.42%) Amazon RDS
7 65 (3.37%) Elasticsearch
8 54 (2.80%) Redis
9 51 (2.64%) SQL Server
10 42 (2.18%) MySQL
11 35 (1.81%) Big Data
12 34 (1.76%) Pentaho
13 27 (1.40%) BigQuery
13 27 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
13 27 (1.40%) DynamoDB
13 27 (1.40%) Oracle Database
14 26 (1.35%) Power BI
15 24 (1.24%) Data Lake
16 21 (1.09%) Azure SQL Database
17 18 (0.93%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 522 (27.03%) Jenkins
2 401 (20.77%) Git
3 387 (20.04%) GitLab
4 185 (9.58%) JIRA
5 71 (3.68%) JUnit
6 66 (3.42%) SonarQube
7 54 (2.80%) Sonatype Nexus
8 52 (2.69%) Maven
9 49 (2.54%) Artifactory
9 49 (2.54%) Gradle
10 48 (2.49%) Selenium
11 40 (2.07%) Bitbucket
12 39 (2.02%) CircleCI
13 37 (1.92%) Liquibase
14 36 (1.86%) Cucumber
15 29 (1.50%) Mockito
16 28 (1.45%) MLflow
17 27 (1.40%) Postman
18 21 (1.09%) JMeter
19 20 (1.04%) TeamCity
General
1 517 (26.77%) Social Skills
2 320 (16.57%) Finance
3 223 (11.55%) Public Sector
4 213 (11.03%) Banking
5 153 (7.92%) Analytical Skills
6 40 (2.07%) Financial Institution
7 37 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.92%) Investment Banking
8 26 (1.35%) Front Office
9 23 (1.19%) Telecoms
10 19 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
11 18 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (0.78%) Retail
13 12 (0.62%) Aerospace
13 12 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (0.52%) Law
14 10 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
15 9 (0.47%) Military
16 7 (0.36%) Games
17 6 (0.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 444 (22.99%) Developer
2 301 (15.59%) DevOps Engineer
2 301 (15.59%) Senior
3 157 (8.13%) Architect
4 138 (7.15%) Java Developer
5 123 (6.37%) Software Engineer
6 108 (5.59%) AWS Engineer
7 100 (5.18%) Senior Developer
8 96 (4.97%) Platform Engineer
9 92 (4.76%) Lead
9 92 (4.76%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 86 (4.45%) Cloud Engineer
11 80 (4.14%) Full-Stack Developer
12 75 (3.88%) Python Developer
13 74 (3.83%) AWS DevOps
14 70 (3.63%) Data Engineer
15 68 (3.52%) Site Engineer
16 58 (3.00%) Azure Engineer
17 57 (2.95%) AWS DevOps Engineer
18 49 (2.54%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (16.00%) Kafka
2 222 (11.50%) Spring
3 207 (10.72%) REST
4 205 (10.62%) RESTful
4 205 (10.62%) Spring Boot
5 200 (10.36%) React
6 177 (9.17%) Node.js
7 153 (7.92%) Elastic Stack
8 121 (6.27%) AngularJS
9 96 (4.97%) .NET
10 84 (4.35%) gRPC
11 79 (4.09%) GraphQL
12 69 (3.57%) HTML
13 68 (3.52%) FastAPI
14 63 (3.26%) PyTorch
15 60 (3.11%) YAML
16 59 (3.06%) Vue
17 57 (2.95%) Playwright
17 57 (2.95%) RabbitMQ
18 53 (2.74%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 360 (18.64%) Cloud Native
2 174 (9.01%) Distributed Systems
3 68 (3.52%) Public Cloud
4 63 (3.26%) Product Ownership
5 59 (3.06%) Hybrid Cloud
6 56 (2.90%) Onboarding
7 41 (2.12%) Private Cloud
8 34 (1.76%) Algorithms
9 33 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
10 31 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 31 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
11 26 (1.35%) PKI
12 25 (1.29%) Data Structures
12 25 (1.29%) Replication
12 25 (1.29%) Security Posture
13 22 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 22 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.09%) Data Centre
15 20 (1.04%) Fixed Income
15 20 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 403 (20.87%) Linux
2 79 (4.09%) Windows
3 64 (3.31%) Unix
4 60 (3.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.61%) VMS
6 23 (1.19%) Ubuntu
7 21 (1.09%) Windows Server
8 17 (0.88%) CentOS
9 5 (0.26%) Solaris
10 3 (0.16%) Android
10 3 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.10%) zOS
12 1 (0.052%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.052%) MVS
12 1 (0.052%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.052%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,291 (66.86%) CI/CD
2 1,080 (55.93%) DevOps
3 847 (43.86%) Containerisation
4 636 (32.94%) Agile
5 587 (30.40%) Infrastructure as Code
6 551 (28.53%) Microservices
7 455 (23.56%) Problem-Solving
8 354 (18.33%) Software Engineering
9 326 (16.88%) Observability
10 280 (14.50%) Test Automation
11 228 (11.81%) Migration
12 204 (10.56%) AI
13 173 (8.96%) DevSecOps
14 171 (8.86%) Full-Stack Development
15 169 (8.75%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 168 (8.70%) Analytics
17 162 (8.39%) Platform Engineering
18 161 (8.34%) Machine Learning
19 159 (8.23%) Continuous Improvement
20 148 (7.66%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 891 (46.14%) Python
2 525 (27.19%) Java
3 337 (17.45%) SQL
4 292 (15.12%) Bash
5 246 (12.74%) Go
6 182 (9.43%) JavaScript
7 178 (9.22%) TypeScript
8 122 (6.32%) PowerShell
9 113 (5.85%) C#
10 59 (3.06%) Shell Script
11 58 (3.00%) C++
12 53 (2.74%) Bicep
13 41 (2.12%) Ruby
14 29 (1.50%) Rust
15 28 (1.45%) Kotlin
16 25 (1.29%) Groovy
16 25 (1.29%) Scala
17 24 (1.24%) Perl
17 24 (1.24%) PHP
18 18 (0.93%) C
Qualifications
1 644 (33.35%) Security Cleared
2 531 (27.50%) SC Cleared
3 145 (7.51%) Degree
4 108 (5.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 101 (5.23%) DV Cleared
6 89 (4.61%) AWS Certification
7 79 (4.09%) Azure Certification
8 54 (2.80%) Master's Degree
9 41 (2.12%) CISSP
10 35 (1.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 31 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
12 25 (1.29%) CISM
13 22 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
15 17 (0.88%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 13 (0.67%) OCP
16 13 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
17 11 (0.57%) CCSP
18 10 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 10 (0.52%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (5.23%) QA
2 55 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 51 (2.64%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.43%) NIST
5 38 (1.97%) GDPR
6 37 (1.92%) NCSC
7 28 (1.45%) Accessibility
8 20 (1.04%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.78%) PSD2
10 12 (0.62%) EU AI Act
11 11 (0.57%) ISO 20022
12 10 (0.52%) WCAG
13 9 (0.47%) SEPA
14 8 (0.41%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.41%) SLA
15 7 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
16 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 5 (0.26%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.26%) NIST 800
17 4 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1,225 (63.44%) Docker
2 54 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 52 (2.69%) Active Directory
4 31 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
4 31 (1.61%) vSphere
5 15 (0.78%) VMware NSX
6 12 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.47%) KVM
7 9 (0.47%) Lustre
7 9 (0.47%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 7 (0.36%) NFS
9 6 (0.31%) GPFS
10 5 (0.26%) Snort
10 5 (0.26%) Squid
11 4 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.16%) Ceph
13 2 (0.10%) Firmware
13 2 (0.10%) NDS
13 2 (0.10%) NetIQ eDirectory
13 2 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 751 (38.89%) Terraform
2 362 (18.75%) Ansible
3 326 (16.88%) Grafana
4 287 (14.86%) Prometheus
5 115 (5.96%) Argo
6 59 (3.06%) Kibana
7 52 (2.69%) Puppet
8 48 (2.49%) Istio
9 45 (2.33%) Progress Chef
10 29 (1.50%) Packer
11 23 (1.19%) logstash
12 21 (1.09%) Nessus
13 18 (0.93%) Podman
14 17 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
15 15 (0.78%) Rancher
16 14 (0.73%) Consul
17 12 (0.62%) Control-M
17 12 (0.62%) Docker Swarm
17 12 (0.62%) ITRS Geneos
17 12 (0.62%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 214 (11.08%) Microsoft
2 189 (9.79%) Splunk
3 156 (8.08%) Google
4 127 (6.58%) Red Hat
5 125 (6.47%) Oracle
6 81 (4.19%) VMware
7 51 (2.64%) Databricks
8 42 (2.18%) Dynatrace
9 35 (1.81%) OpenAI
10 34 (1.76%) Denodo
10 34 (1.76%) Talend
11 23 (1.19%) Atlassian
11 23 (1.19%) IBM
12 22 (1.14%) AppDynamics
13 17 (0.88%) Cisco
14 14 (0.73%) Tenable
15 13 (0.67%) NVIDIA
15 13 (0.67%) Palo Alto
16 12 (0.62%) ServiceNow
16 12 (0.62%) Solace