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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 31 57
Rank change year-on-year 0 +26 -26
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 2,114 1,473 1,352
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.04% 5.80% 3.58%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.67% 38.21% 29.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,455 1,016 992
10th Percentile £400 £407 £425
25th Percentile £450 £495 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £587 £563
Median % change year-on-year -10.52% +4.31% -10.00%
75th Percentile £630 £700 £675
90th Percentile £713 £810 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £560
% change year-on-year -8.70% +2.68% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 6 24
10th Percentile £51.25 £25.88 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £33.94 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -6.25%
75th Percentile £78.75 £66.13 £76.53
90th Percentile £89.00 £71.31 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -6.25%

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 5,329 3,855 4,628
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.23% 15.19% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,692 2,524 3,373
10th Percentile £313 £313 £250
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £537 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.93% +2.33% -8.70%
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 120 41 142
10th Percentile £18.65 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.17 £21.05 £20.00
Median hourly rate £53.25 £26.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +100.94% -33.75% -20.89%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.25 £59.69
90th Percentile £77.63 £77.50 £76.50
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £25.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +111.76% -36.25% -20.00%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -6 981 £550 -8.33% 262
North of England +9 441 £487 -6.35% 132
Midlands +53 277 £525 - 45
West Midlands +44 248 £525 - 31
Yorkshire +12 232 £486 -15.48% 42
South East -1 187 £480 -12.73% 143
North West +14 168 £500 - 68
South West +2 143 £575 -4.17% 73
North East -7 45 £520 - 22
East of England -7 37 £606 +15.48% 19
East Midlands -11 28 £438 -4.68% 14
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 97 (4.59%) Confluence
2 73 (3.45%) SAS
3 54 (2.55%) Apache Spark
4 38 (1.80%) Apache
5 34 (1.61%) nginx
6 28 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
6 28 (1.32%) OpenStack
7 17 (0.80%) Jupyter
8 11 (0.52%) Camunda
9 10 (0.47%) WebLogic
10 8 (0.38%) Appian
10 8 (0.38%) SharePoint
11 6 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.24%) Ethereum
12 5 (0.24%) Hyperledger
13 4 (0.19%) Drupal
13 4 (0.19%) Traefik
14 3 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.14%) CMS
14 3 (0.14%) IIS
Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.24%) Weka
3 3 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.095%) 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 (0.43%) Maximo
2 2 (0.095%) 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 1,093 (51.70%) AWS
2 810 (38.32%) Azure
3 521 (24.65%) GCP
4 471 (22.28%) GitHub
5 301 (14.24%) OpenShift
6 268 (12.68%) GitHub Actions
7 231 (10.93%) Serverless
8 195 (9.22%) Azure DevOps
9 161 (7.62%) Amazon EKS
10 146 (6.91%) Azure AKS
11 141 (6.67%) AWS CloudFormation
12 139 (6.58%) Amazon S3
13 133 (6.29%) AWS Lambda
14 101 (4.78%) Amazon EC2
15 100 (4.73%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 94 (4.45%) Amazon ECS
17 66 (3.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 65 (3.07%) Datadog
19 62 (2.93%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 55 (2.60%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 105 (4.97%) Firewall
2 76 (3.60%) DNS
3 46 (2.18%) Network Security
4 41 (1.94%) VPN
5 38 (1.80%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.90%) HTTP
7 18 (0.85%) SAN
7 18 (0.85%) SSL
8 16 (0.76%) DHCP
9 14 (0.66%) Reverse Proxy
10 11 (0.52%) NAS
11 8 (0.38%) Kerberos
12 7 (0.33%) Fibre Channel
12 7 (0.33%) iSCSI
12 7 (0.33%) OpenVPN
13 5 (0.24%) 5G
13 5 (0.24%) HTTPS
13 5 (0.24%) InfiniBand
13 5 (0.24%) Software-Defined Networking
13 5 (0.24%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (12.44%) PostgreSQL
2 190 (8.99%) NoSQL
3 133 (6.29%) MongoDB
4 90 (4.26%) Relational Database
5 80 (3.78%) Elasticsearch
6 79 (3.74%) Apache Cassandra
7 71 (3.36%) SQL Server
8 68 (3.22%) Amazon RDS
9 48 (2.27%) Redis
10 42 (1.99%) MySQL
11 39 (1.84%) Big Data
12 37 (1.75%) Power BI
13 34 (1.61%) BigQuery
13 34 (1.61%) Pentaho
14 30 (1.42%) DynamoDB
15 29 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
16 27 (1.28%) Data Lake
16 27 (1.28%) Oracle Database
17 21 (0.99%) Hadoop
18 20 (0.95%) Flink
Development Applications
1 529 (25.02%) Jenkins
2 414 (19.58%) GitLab
3 376 (17.79%) Git
4 188 (8.89%) JIRA
5 93 (4.40%) JUnit
6 59 (2.79%) Selenium
7 49 (2.32%) Cucumber
8 48 (2.27%) SonarQube
9 42 (1.99%) Gradle
9 42 (1.99%) MLflow
10 40 (1.89%) Artifactory
10 40 (1.89%) Sonatype Nexus
11 39 (1.84%) Bitbucket
12 37 (1.75%) Maven
13 32 (1.51%) JMeter
14 31 (1.47%) Mockito
15 26 (1.23%) Postman
16 25 (1.18%) CircleCI
17 24 (1.14%) Liquibase
18 18 (0.85%) Gatling
General
1 576 (27.25%) Social Skills
2 361 (17.08%) Finance
3 259 (12.25%) Public Sector
4 189 (8.94%) Banking
5 169 (7.99%) Analytical Skills
6 58 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (1.84%) Financial Institution
8 26 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
9 25 (1.18%) Front Office
10 22 (1.04%) Investment Banking
11 18 (0.85%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (0.71%) Retail
14 12 (0.57%) Military
15 10 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
16 9 (0.43%) Aerospace
16 9 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.33%) Law
18 6 (0.28%) Games
Job Titles
1 465 (22.00%) Developer
2 330 (15.61%) Senior
3 300 (14.19%) DevOps Engineer
4 187 (8.85%) Architect
5 142 (6.72%) Java Developer
6 138 (6.53%) Software Engineer
7 110 (5.20%) Lead
8 105 (4.97%) AWS Engineer
8 105 (4.97%) Senior Developer
9 104 (4.92%) Cloud Engineer
10 102 (4.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 92 (4.35%) Data Engineer
11 92 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
12 86 (4.07%) Python Developer
13 77 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
13 77 (3.64%) Full-Stack Developer
14 76 (3.60%) Java Engineer
14 76 (3.60%) Site Engineer
15 71 (3.36%) AWS DevOps
16 68 (3.22%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (15.94%) Kafka
2 288 (13.62%) Spring
3 254 (12.02%) Spring Boot
4 219 (10.36%) REST
5 209 (9.89%) RESTful
6 188 (8.89%) React
7 160 (7.57%) Node.js
8 140 (6.62%) Elastic Stack
9 112 (5.30%) AngularJS
10 109 (5.16%) OpenTelemetry
11 101 (4.78%) .NET
12 82 (3.88%) PyTorch
13 81 (3.83%) FastAPI
14 79 (3.74%) gRPC
15 68 (3.22%) HTML
16 66 (3.12%) GraphQL
16 66 (3.12%) OAuth
17 64 (3.03%) TensorFlow
18 60 (2.84%) Playwright
19 55 (2.60%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 424 (20.06%) Cloud Native
2 168 (7.95%) Distributed Systems
3 86 (4.07%) Hybrid Cloud
4 76 (3.60%) Public Cloud
5 63 (2.98%) Product Ownership
6 58 (2.74%) Onboarding
7 41 (1.94%) Private Cloud
8 38 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
9 36 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
9 36 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 35 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
11 29 (1.37%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.28%) PKI
13 26 (1.23%) Algorithms
14 24 (1.14%) AI Agents
14 24 (1.14%) Data Centre
14 24 (1.14%) Virtual Team
15 23 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
16 20 (0.95%) Data Structures
16 20 (0.95%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 440 (20.81%) Linux
2 109 (5.16%) Windows
3 70 (3.31%) Unix
4 67 (3.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 44 (2.08%) VMS
6 26 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 24 (1.14%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.57%) CentOS
9 5 (0.24%) 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 (0.095%) Debian
13 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,394 (65.94%) CI/CD
2 1,144 (54.12%) DevOps
3 936 (44.28%) Containerisation
4 690 (32.64%) Agile
5 627 (29.66%) Infrastructure as Code
6 561 (26.54%) Microservices
7 470 (22.23%) Problem-Solving
8 418 (19.77%) Observability
9 361 (17.08%) Software Engineering
10 314 (14.85%) Test Automation
11 248 (11.73%) AI
12 226 (10.69%) Migration
13 219 (10.36%) Analytics
14 213 (10.08%) Continuous Improvement
15 210 (9.93%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 186 (8.80%) DevSecOps
17 184 (8.70%) Data Pipeline
18 182 (8.61%) Machine Learning
19 180 (8.51%) Platform Engineering
20 179 (8.47%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 923 (43.66%) Python
2 539 (25.50%) Java
3 384 (18.16%) SQL
4 280 (13.25%) Bash
5 217 (10.26%) Go
6 170 (8.04%) JavaScript
7 164 (7.76%) TypeScript
8 129 (6.10%) PowerShell
9 90 (4.26%) C#
10 66 (3.12%) Bicep
11 58 (2.74%) Shell Script
12 50 (2.37%) Ruby
13 32 (1.51%) Kotlin
13 32 (1.51%) Scala
14 29 (1.37%) C++
14 29 (1.37%) Rust
15 17 (0.80%) Groovy
15 17 (0.80%) PHP
16 15 (0.71%) Perl
17 14 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 734 (34.72%) Security Cleared
2 608 (28.76%) SC Cleared
3 168 (7.95%) Degree
4 125 (5.91%) Computer Science Degree
4 125 (5.91%) DV Cleared
5 99 (4.68%) Azure Certification
6 95 (4.49%) AWS Certification
7 56 (2.65%) CISSP
8 55 (2.60%) Master's Degree
9 43 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
10 35 (1.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 34 (1.61%) CISM
12 26 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 21 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
13 21 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
14 17 (0.80%) OCP
14 17 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
15 16 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 14 (0.66%) CCSP
17 13 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (5.25%) QA
2 67 (3.17%) Data Quality
3 64 (3.03%) NIST
4 63 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 49 (2.32%) GDPR
6 47 (2.22%) NCSC
7 40 (1.89%) Accessibility
8 32 (1.51%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 16 (0.76%) WCAG
10 15 (0.71%) PSD2
11 12 (0.57%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.52%) NIST 800
13 10 (0.47%) SEPA
14 9 (0.43%) SLA
15 8 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.33%) GRC
16 7 (0.33%) JSP 440
16 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 1,305 (61.73%) Docker
2 67 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 52 (2.46%) vSphere
4 49 (2.32%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (1.99%) Active Directory
6 26 (1.23%) VMware NSX
7 22 (1.04%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 12 (0.57%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.52%) Squid
10 10 (0.47%) NFS
11 9 (0.43%) Lustre
12 7 (0.33%) GPFS
12 7 (0.33%) Snort
12 7 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
13 6 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
14 5 (0.24%) KVM
15 4 (0.19%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.19%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 797 (37.70%) Terraform
2 361 (17.08%) Ansible
3 359 (16.98%) Grafana
4 323 (15.28%) Prometheus
5 116 (5.49%) Argo
6 54 (2.55%) Kibana
7 53 (2.51%) Istio
8 51 (2.41%) Puppet
9 40 (1.89%) Progress Chef
10 34 (1.61%) Nessus
11 27 (1.28%) Packer
11 27 (1.28%) Podman
11 27 (1.28%) vCenter Server
12 25 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
13 22 (1.04%) Consul
13 22 (1.04%) Control-M
13 22 (1.04%) IBM Guardium
14 21 (0.99%) logstash
15 19 (0.90%) Rancher
16 13 (0.61%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 226 (10.69%) Microsoft
2 194 (9.18%) Splunk
3 171 (8.09%) Google
4 151 (7.14%) Red Hat
5 120 (5.68%) Oracle
6 102 (4.82%) VMware
7 63 (2.98%) Databricks
8 53 (2.51%) Dynatrace
9 46 (2.18%) OpenAI
10 34 (1.61%) Denodo
10 34 (1.61%) Talend
11 29 (1.37%) Tenable
12 24 (1.14%) Pure Storage
13 23 (1.09%) Atlassian
13 23 (1.09%) IBM
14 18 (0.85%) AppDynamics
14 18 (0.85%) CyberArk
15 16 (0.76%) Foundry
16 14 (0.66%) NetApp
16 14 (0.66%) ServiceNow