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 9 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 31 56
Rank change year-on-year -1 +25 -25
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,129 1,516 1,323
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.91% 6.09% 3.47%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.78% 38.82% 28.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,457 1,058 962
10th Percentile £400 £407 £419
25th Percentile £450 £494 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £579 £559
Median % change year-on-year -9.29% +3.58% -10.60%
75th Percentile £630 £693 £675
90th Percentile £713 £813 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -11.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 6 25
10th Percentile £51.25 £25.88 £46.18
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £67.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -12.31% +4.69%
75th Percentile £77.50 £66.13 £76.53
90th Percentile £89.00 £71.31 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £67.00
% change year-on-year +2.13% -12.31% +4.69%

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 5,352 3,905 4,567
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 14.87% 15.68% 12.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,687 2,611 3,307
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% +1.90% -9.48%
75th Percentile £600 £645 £638
90th Percentile £700 £750 £714
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 41 144
10th Percentile £19.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.30 £21.05 £20.00
Median hourly rate £54.00 £26.50 £34.67
Median % change year-on-year +103.77% -23.57% -36.00%
75th Percentile £63.32 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.25 £85.25 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £25.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year +111.76% -32.00% -28.90%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 9 March 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 -8 988 £550 -8.33% 285
North of England +10 444 £500 -6.98% 175
Midlands +42 279 £525 - 75
West Midlands +40 250 £525 - 41
Yorkshire +11 233 £486 -15.48% 67
South East -5 187 £485 -11.82% 214
North West +16 169 £531 +1.17% 86
South West -3 146 £573 -4.58% 124
North East -3 46 £520 +0.97% 22
East of England -24 33 £613 +16.67% 68
East Midlands -18 28 £438 -8.76% 33
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
1 101 (4.74%) Confluence
2 76 (3.57%) SAS
3 57 (2.68%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.88%) Apache
5 35 (1.64%) nginx
6 30 (1.41%) OpenStack
7 27 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
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
15 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.14%) CMS
15 3 (0.14%) IIS
16 2 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 7 (0.33%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.23%) Weka
3 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.14%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.094%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.047%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.047%) Maya
5 1 (0.047%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (0.38%) 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 1,107 (52.00%) AWS
2 844 (39.64%) Azure
3 525 (24.66%) GCP
4 484 (22.73%) GitHub
5 304 (14.28%) OpenShift
6 278 (13.06%) GitHub Actions
7 230 (10.80%) Serverless
8 196 (9.21%) Azure DevOps
9 167 (7.84%) Amazon EKS
10 157 (7.37%) Azure AKS
11 145 (6.81%) AWS CloudFormation
12 141 (6.62%) Amazon S3
13 133 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
14 107 (5.03%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 105 (4.93%) Amazon EC2
16 89 (4.18%) Amazon ECS
17 70 (3.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 68 (3.19%) Datadog
19 62 (2.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 60 (2.82%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 110 (5.17%) Firewall
2 80 (3.76%) DNS
3 47 (2.21%) Network Security
4 41 (1.93%) VPN
5 39 (1.83%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.94%) HTTP
7 19 (0.89%) SAN
8 17 (0.80%) DHCP
8 17 (0.80%) SSL
9 14 (0.66%) Reverse Proxy
10 11 (0.52%) NAS
11 10 (0.47%) OpenVPN
12 8 (0.38%) Kerberos
13 7 (0.33%) Fibre Channel
13 7 (0.33%) iSCSI
14 6 (0.28%) BGP
15 5 (0.23%) 4G
15 5 (0.23%) HTTPS
15 5 (0.23%) SMTP
15 5 (0.23%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (13.10%) PostgreSQL
2 189 (8.88%) NoSQL
3 135 (6.34%) MongoDB
4 97 (4.56%) Relational Database
5 83 (3.90%) Apache Cassandra
6 80 (3.76%) SQL Server
7 75 (3.52%) Elasticsearch
8 68 (3.19%) Amazon RDS
9 48 (2.25%) Redis
10 39 (1.83%) MySQL
11 38 (1.78%) Big Data
12 37 (1.74%) Power BI
13 36 (1.69%) Pentaho
14 35 (1.64%) BigQuery
15 32 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
16 31 (1.46%) DynamoDB
17 27 (1.27%) Data Lake
17 27 (1.27%) Oracle Database
18 20 (0.94%) Hadoop
19 19 (0.89%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 536 (25.18%) Jenkins
2 410 (19.26%) GitLab
3 390 (18.32%) Git
4 196 (9.21%) JIRA
5 97 (4.56%) JUnit
6 62 (2.91%) Selenium
7 54 (2.54%) Cucumber
8 50 (2.35%) SonarQube
9 41 (1.93%) Artifactory
9 41 (1.93%) MLflow
10 39 (1.83%) Bitbucket
10 39 (1.83%) Gradle
11 34 (1.60%) Maven
11 34 (1.60%) Sonatype Nexus
12 33 (1.55%) JMeter
12 33 (1.55%) Mockito
13 26 (1.22%) Postman
14 24 (1.13%) CircleCI
15 18 (0.85%) Gatling
16 16 (0.75%) Liquibase
General
1 556 (26.12%) Social Skills
2 364 (17.10%) Finance
3 271 (12.73%) Public Sector
4 186 (8.74%) Banking
5 167 (7.84%) Analytical Skills
6 58 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (1.55%) Financial Institution
8 28 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
9 24 (1.13%) Front Office
10 20 (0.94%) Telecoms
11 19 (0.89%) Investment Banking
11 19 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (0.70%) Retail
13 14 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (0.61%) Military
15 12 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
16 9 (0.42%) Aerospace
17 8 (0.38%) Pharmaceutical
18 7 (0.33%) Law
19 5 (0.23%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 471 (22.12%) Developer
2 328 (15.41%) Senior
3 292 (13.72%) DevOps Engineer
4 196 (9.21%) Architect
5 143 (6.72%) Java Developer
6 131 (6.15%) Software Engineer
7 114 (5.35%) Lead
8 108 (5.07%) Cloud Engineer
9 106 (4.98%) Senior Developer
10 104 (4.88%) AWS Engineer
11 99 (4.65%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 96 (4.51%) Data Engineer
12 96 (4.51%) Platform Engineer
13 86 (4.04%) Python Developer
14 77 (3.62%) Java Engineer
15 76 (3.57%) Azure Engineer
15 76 (3.57%) Full-Stack Developer
16 73 (3.43%) AWS DevOps
16 73 (3.43%) Site Engineer
17 69 (3.24%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 339 (15.92%) Kafka
2 297 (13.95%) Spring
3 256 (12.02%) Spring Boot
4 221 (10.38%) REST
5 199 (9.35%) RESTful
6 188 (8.83%) React
7 169 (7.94%) Node.js
8 130 (6.11%) Elastic Stack
9 119 (5.59%) OpenTelemetry
10 115 (5.40%) AngularJS
11 107 (5.03%) .NET
12 82 (3.85%) gRPC
13 81 (3.80%) FastAPI
13 81 (3.80%) PyTorch
14 70 (3.29%) OAuth
15 64 (3.01%) GraphQL
15 64 (3.01%) HTML
16 63 (2.96%) TensorFlow
17 57 (2.68%) Playwright
18 55 (2.58%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 417 (19.59%) Cloud Native
2 166 (7.80%) Distributed Systems
3 89 (4.18%) Hybrid Cloud
4 70 (3.29%) Public Cloud
5 63 (2.96%) Product Ownership
6 56 (2.63%) Onboarding
7 38 (1.78%) Private Cloud
8 37 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
8 37 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
9 34 (1.60%) Management Information System
10 33 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
11 30 (1.41%) PKI
12 29 (1.36%) Data Centre
12 29 (1.36%) Security Posture
13 28 (1.32%) AI Agents
14 25 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 22 (1.03%) Algorithms
15 22 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
16 21 (0.99%) Linux Command Line
17 20 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 427 (20.06%) Linux
2 118 (5.54%) Windows
3 67 (3.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 65 (3.05%) Unix
5 43 (2.02%) VMS
6 29 (1.36%) Windows Server
7 24 (1.13%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.52%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.23%) CoreOS
9 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.19%) Android
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Rocky
12 2 (0.094%) Debian
13 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.047%) Solaris
13 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,404 (65.95%) CI/CD
2 1,140 (53.55%) DevOps
3 930 (43.68%) Containerisation
4 699 (32.83%) Agile
5 622 (29.22%) Infrastructure as Code
6 561 (26.35%) Microservices
7 465 (21.84%) Problem-Solving
8 426 (20.01%) Observability
9 352 (16.53%) Software Engineering
10 331 (15.55%) Test Automation
11 254 (11.93%) AI
12 228 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
13 222 (10.43%) Analytics
13 222 (10.43%) Migration
14 209 (9.82%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 189 (8.88%) Machine Learning
16 187 (8.78%) Platform Engineering
17 186 (8.74%) DevSecOps
18 184 (8.64%) Data Pipeline
18 184 (8.64%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 911 (42.79%) Python
2 536 (25.18%) Java
3 403 (18.93%) SQL
4 280 (13.15%) Bash
5 206 (9.68%) Go
6 169 (7.94%) JavaScript
7 167 (7.84%) TypeScript
8 138 (6.48%) PowerShell
9 94 (4.42%) C#
10 66 (3.10%) Bicep
11 57 (2.68%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.35%) Ruby
13 32 (1.50%) Kotlin
14 31 (1.46%) Scala
15 26 (1.22%) C++
16 25 (1.17%) Rust
17 18 (0.85%) Groovy
18 16 (0.75%) PHP
19 15 (0.70%) Perl
20 13 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 751 (35.27%) Security Cleared
2 618 (29.03%) SC Cleared
3 162 (7.61%) Degree
4 126 (5.92%) DV Cleared
5 114 (5.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 106 (4.98%) Azure Certification
7 94 (4.42%) AWS Certification
8 55 (2.58%) CISSP
9 50 (2.35%) Master's Degree
10 46 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
11 33 (1.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 33 (1.55%) CISM
12 25 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
13 23 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
14 21 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
15 18 (0.85%) OCP
15 18 (0.85%) Oracle Certification
16 17 (0.80%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 14 (0.66%) CCSP
18 13 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (5.31%) QA
2 72 (3.38%) Data Quality
3 64 (3.01%) NIST
4 61 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 51 (2.40%) GDPR
6 47 (2.21%) NCSC
7 45 (2.11%) Accessibility
8 33 (1.55%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.85%) WCAG
10 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
11 15 (0.70%) PSD2
12 12 (0.56%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.52%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.47%) SEPA
15 9 (0.42%) SLA
16 8 (0.38%) GRC
17 7 (0.33%) JSP 440
18 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
18 6 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,313 (61.67%) Docker
2 70 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 54 (2.54%) vSphere
4 50 (2.35%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (1.97%) Active Directory
6 27 (1.27%) VMware NSX
7 22 (1.03%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 15 (0.70%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.56%) Squid
10 11 (0.52%) NFS
11 9 (0.42%) Lustre
12 8 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.33%) GPFS
13 7 (0.33%) Snort
13 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
14 6 (0.28%) KVM
15 5 (0.23%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
17 3 (0.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 791 (37.15%) Terraform
2 360 (16.91%) Grafana
3 357 (16.77%) Ansible
4 324 (15.22%) Prometheus
5 117 (5.50%) Argo
6 57 (2.68%) Istio
7 50 (2.35%) Kibana
8 49 (2.30%) Puppet
9 40 (1.88%) Progress Chef
10 35 (1.64%) Nessus
11 29 (1.36%) Packer
12 28 (1.32%) vCenter Server
13 25 (1.17%) Podman
14 24 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
15 23 (1.08%) Consul
15 23 (1.08%) Control-M
15 23 (1.08%) IBM Guardium
16 21 (0.99%) Rancher
17 17 (0.80%) logstash
18 14 (0.66%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 234 (10.99%) Microsoft
2 184 (8.64%) Splunk
3 162 (7.61%) Google
4 150 (7.05%) Red Hat
5 120 (5.64%) Oracle
6 105 (4.93%) VMware
7 62 (2.91%) Databricks
8 50 (2.35%) Dynatrace
9 49 (2.30%) OpenAI
10 36 (1.69%) Denodo
10 36 (1.69%) Talend
11 30 (1.41%) Tenable
12 24 (1.13%) Atlassian
12 24 (1.13%) Pure Storage
13 20 (0.94%) IBM
14 18 (0.85%) CyberArk
15 17 (0.80%) Foundry
15 17 (0.80%) ServiceNow
16 16 (0.75%) AppDynamics
16 16 (0.75%) NetApp