Kubernetes Contract Job Trends in the North West

Kubernetes (k8s)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Kubernetes skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 43 75
Rank change year-on-year -5 +32 -31
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 146 93 64
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.11% 4.56% 2.32%
As % of the Systems Management category 30.04% 34.07% 24.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 76 49
10th Percentile £406 £363 £408
25th Percentile £450 £401 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £495 £550
Median % change year-on-year +6.09% -10.00% -6.38%
75th Percentile £608 £588 £650
90th Percentile £655 £656 £694
England median daily rate £530 £550 £557
% change year-on-year -3.64% -1.17% -9.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 2 0
10th Percentile £52.50 £75.65 -
25th Percentile £56.88 £78.88 -
Median hourly rate £62.50 £87.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -28.16% - -
75th Percentile £76.50 £92.38 -
90th Percentile £84.20 £93.95 -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £80.00 £67.25
% change year-on-year -12.50% +18.96% -7.88%

All Systems Management Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 486 273 262
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.68% 13.39% 9.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 334 187 190
10th Percentile £306 £263 £210
25th Percentile £401 £359 £366
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.11% -9.52%
75th Percentile £599 £538 £575
90th Percentile £653 £643 £650
England median daily rate £514 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +0.29% -2.38% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 7 11
10th Percentile £21.25 £62.54 £16.79
25th Percentile £43.49 - -
Median hourly rate £62.00 £63.40 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -2.21% +257.79% -40.93%
75th Percentile £76.50 £84.88 £40.63
90th Percentile £95.00 £89.15 £82.50
England median hourly rate £60.00 £52.50 £31.25
% change year-on-year +14.29% +68.00% -42.32%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Kubernetes relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in the North West

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Kubernetes.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the North West over the 6 months to 30 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in the North West

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Kubernetes.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in the North West over the 6 months to 30 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kubernetes in the North West

Kubernetes
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes within the North West region over the 6 months to 30 June 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
Manchester -3 105 £525 +5.00% 49
Cheshire -4 28 £600 +26.32% 7
Lancashire -7 7 £712 +18.70% 15
Merseyside - 3 £575 - 2
Cumbria - 3 £525 -
Kubernetes
England

Kubernetes
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 10 (6.85%) Confluence
2 7 (4.79%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.74%) Apache
4 1 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.68%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.37%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.68%) FIS Private Capital Suite
1 1 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 98 (67.12%) AWS
2 80 (54.79%) Azure
3 41 (28.08%) GCP
4 20 (13.70%) GitHub
4 20 (13.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 19 (13.01%) Serverless
6 17 (11.64%) OpenShift
7 15 (10.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 14 (9.59%) Azure AKS
8 14 (9.59%) Azure DevOps
8 14 (9.59%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (7.53%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (6.16%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (6.16%) Amazon S3
11 7 (4.79%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (4.11%) Amazon ECR
12 6 (4.11%) Amazon SQS
13 5 (3.42%) AWS CloudFormation
13 5 (3.42%) Entra ID
14 4 (2.74%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (13.01%) Firewall
2 4 (2.74%) DNS
2 4 (2.74%) Network Security
3 2 (1.37%) DHCP
3 2 (1.37%) NetScaler
3 2 (1.37%) TCP/IP
3 2 (1.37%) VPN
4 1 (0.68%) HTTP
4 1 (0.68%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (12.33%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (7.53%) NoSQL
3 10 (6.85%) SQL Server
4 9 (6.16%) DocumentDB
5 7 (4.79%) MySQL
5 7 (4.79%) Relational Database
6 5 (3.42%) DynamoDB
6 5 (3.42%) MongoDB
7 4 (2.74%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (2.74%) Hadoop
8 3 (2.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (1.37%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (1.37%) Data Lake
9 2 (1.37%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.68%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.68%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.68%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.68%) Semantic Layer
10 1 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 32 (21.92%) GitLab
2 23 (15.75%) Git
2 23 (15.75%) Jenkins
3 13 (8.90%) JIRA
4 7 (4.79%) Postman
4 7 (4.79%) Selenium
4 7 (4.79%) SonarQube
5 5 (3.42%) Cucumber
5 5 (3.42%) Gradle
5 5 (3.42%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (2.74%) JUnit
7 3 (2.05%) JMeter
8 2 (1.37%) Bitbucket
8 2 (1.37%) Burp Suite
8 2 (1.37%) Gatling
8 2 (1.37%) IntelliJ
8 2 (1.37%) LoadRunner
8 2 (1.37%) Mocha
8 2 (1.37%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.68%) MLflow
General
1 35 (23.97%) Finance
2 27 (18.49%) Public Sector
3 20 (13.70%) Social Skills
4 13 (8.90%) Banking
5 7 (4.79%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.05%) Health Technology
7 2 (1.37%) Retail
8 1 (0.68%) Automotive
8 1 (0.68%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.68%) Military
Job Titles
1 29 (19.86%) Developer
2 25 (17.12%) DevOps Engineer
3 23 (15.75%) Senior
4 22 (15.07%) Security Engineer
5 21 (14.38%) Software Engineer
6 20 (13.70%) Lead
7 15 (10.27%) Java Engineer
7 15 (10.27%) Lead Developer
8 13 (8.90%) Architect
8 13 (8.90%) Java Software Engineer
9 12 (8.22%) Java Developer
10 11 (7.53%) Software Developer
11 10 (6.85%) Cloud Engineer
12 8 (5.48%) Platform Engineer
12 8 (5.48%) Solutions Architect
13 7 (4.79%) AWS Engineer
13 7 (4.79%) Lead Software Developer
13 7 (4.79%) Senior Software Engineer
14 6 (4.11%) GCP Engineer
14 6 (4.11%) Kubernetes Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (31.51%) Spring
2 39 (26.71%) Spring Boot
3 27 (18.49%) Kafka
4 22 (15.07%) Node.js
5 20 (13.70%) REST
6 11 (7.53%) React
6 11 (7.53%) RESTful
7 6 (4.11%) Nunjucks
7 6 (4.11%) RabbitMQ
8 5 (3.42%) AWS CDK
8 5 (3.42%) Express.js
8 5 (3.42%) GraphQL
8 5 (3.42%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (2.74%) Apache NiFi
9 4 (2.74%) ARM Templates
9 4 (2.74%) Next.js
10 3 (2.05%) Hibernate
10 3 (2.05%) JMS
10 3 (2.05%) OAuth
11 2 (1.37%) Struts
Miscellaneous
1 58 (39.73%) Cloud Native
2 20 (13.70%) Security Posture
3 13 (8.90%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (8.90%) Management Information System
4 9 (6.16%) Linux Command Line
4 9 (6.16%) Public Cloud
5 6 (4.11%) Onboarding
6 5 (3.42%) AI Agents
6 5 (3.42%) Cloud Security Posture
6 5 (3.42%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (3.42%) NHS
6 5 (3.42%) Product Ownership
7 4 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (2.74%) Private Cloud
7 4 (2.74%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 4 (2.74%) Virtual Team
8 3 (2.05%) Data Centre
8 3 (2.05%) Enterprise Cloud
8 3 (2.05%) PKI
9 2 (1.37%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 31 (21.23%) Linux
2 15 (10.27%) Windows
3 14 (9.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.74%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.37%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (1.37%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.68%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (73.97%) CI/CD
2 88 (60.27%) DevOps
3 53 (36.30%) Containerisation
4 51 (34.93%) Infrastructure as Code
5 50 (34.25%) Agile
6 43 (29.45%) Observability
7 42 (28.77%) Microservices
8 29 (19.86%) Software Engineering
9 26 (17.81%) Cloud Security
9 26 (17.81%) Problem-Solving
10 25 (17.12%) Event-Driven
10 25 (17.12%) Test Automation
11 20 (13.70%) Infrastructure Automation
11 20 (13.70%) Scrum
12 19 (13.01%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 17 (11.64%) Load Balancing
13 17 (11.64%) SIEM
14 16 (10.96%) AI
15 15 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
15 15 (10.27%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 70 (47.95%) Java
2 59 (40.41%) Python
3 30 (20.55%) Bash
4 29 (19.86%) PowerShell
5 24 (16.44%) SQL
6 15 (10.27%) TypeScript
7 10 (6.85%) Bicep
8 8 (5.48%) Go
8 8 (5.48%) Kotlin
9 7 (4.79%) JavaScript
10 4 (2.74%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.68%) C#
Qualifications
1 28 (19.18%) Security Cleared
2 23 (15.75%) SC Cleared
3 19 (13.01%) Azure Certification
4 16 (10.96%) AWS Certification
5 14 (9.59%) Degree
6 12 (8.22%) CISSP
7 8 (5.48%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (3.42%) DV Cleared
9 3 (2.05%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 3 (2.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.68%) CISM
11 1 (0.68%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.68%) OCP
11 1 (0.68%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (10.27%) GDPR
2 7 (4.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 6 (4.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 6 (4.11%) Data Quality
3 6 (4.11%) HIPAA
3 6 (4.11%) NIST
3 6 (4.11%) QA
4 4 (2.74%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.74%) ISO 20022
4 4 (2.74%) PSD2
4 4 (2.74%) SEPA
5 2 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.68%) SLA
6 1 (0.68%) WCAG
System Software
1 93 (63.70%) Docker
2 5 (3.42%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.05%) vSphere
5 2 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.68%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 1 (0.68%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.68%) zsh
Systems Management
1 62 (42.47%) Terraform
2 25 (17.12%) Grafana
3 17 (11.64%) Prometheus
4 11 (7.53%) Ansible
4 11 (7.53%) Progress Chef
5 9 (6.16%) Argo
5 9 (6.16%) Istio
6 2 (1.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (1.37%) linkerd
6 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (1.37%) SCCM
6 2 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.68%) Packer
7 1 (0.68%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 25 (17.12%) Microsoft
2 17 (11.64%) Google
3 15 (10.27%) Red Hat
4 7 (4.79%) Oracle
4 7 (4.79%) Splunk
5 6 (4.11%) Dynatrace
5 6 (4.11%) Varonis
6 3 (2.05%) CyberArk
6 3 (2.05%) PagerDuty
6 3 (2.05%) SAP
6 3 (2.05%) VMware
7 2 (1.37%) Atlassian
7 2 (1.37%) F5
7 2 (1.37%) ServiceNow
7 2 (1.37%) Veeam
8 1 (0.68%) Confluent
8 1 (0.68%) Databricks
8 1 (0.68%) Foundry
8 1 (0.68%) Tanium
8 1 (0.68%) Trend Micro