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 22 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 41 44
Rank change year-on-year +14 +3 -13
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 174 90 99
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.74% 4.27% 3.63%
As % of the Systems Management category 41.83% 28.85% 27.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 127 62 67
10th Percentile £352 £362 £420
25th Percentile £400 £441 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.08% -3.43% -12.50%
75th Percentile £585 £584 £688
90th Percentile £650 £625 £700
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 3 17
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £52.50 - -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +19.10% - -12.87%
75th Percentile £58.44 £57.18 -
90th Percentile £69.13 £63.78 £60.00
England median hourly rate £58.75 £57.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +2.17% - -16.06%

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 416 312 365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 16.11% 14.79% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 278 182 257
10th Percentile £309 £250 £301
25th Percentile £359 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £583
90th Percentile £640 £656 £688
England median daily rate £507 £526 £536
% change year-on-year -3.57% -2.00% -8.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 10 38
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £38.32
Median hourly rate £55.00 £44.59 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +23.35% -3.44% -7.30%
75th Percentile £59.38 £62.68 £63.13
90th Percentile £71.70 £78.50 £78.88
England median hourly rate £48.00 £26.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +81.13% -42.62% +13.81%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 22 January 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 +3 102 £522 +4.35% 65
Cheshire +28 57 £430 +15.13% 15
Merseyside -8 8 £510 +70.00% 6
Lancashire -15 4 £550 -6.38% 23
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 8 (4.60%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (2.87%) Confluence
2 5 (2.87%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.15%) Mule
3 2 (1.15%) Mule ESB
3 2 (1.15%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.57%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.57%) Apache
4 1 (0.57%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.57%) IIS
4 1 (0.57%) JBoss
4 1 (0.57%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.57%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 105 (60.34%) AWS
2 59 (33.91%) Azure
3 44 (25.29%) GCP
4 33 (18.97%) GitHub
5 23 (13.22%) Serverless
6 22 (12.64%) OpenShift
7 20 (11.49%) Amazon ECS
7 20 (11.49%) AWS Lambda
8 16 (9.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 16 (9.20%) AWS CloudFormation
9 15 (8.62%) GitHub Actions
10 14 (8.05%) Amazon EC2
11 13 (7.47%) Amazon SQS
11 13 (7.47%) Datadog
12 12 (6.90%) Apigee
13 11 (6.32%) Amazon EKS
13 11 (6.32%) PaaS
14 9 (5.17%) SaaS
15 8 (4.60%) Azure AKS
15 8 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (11.49%) Firewall
2 4 (2.30%) HTTP
2 4 (2.30%) HTTPS
2 4 (2.30%) TCP/IP
2 4 (2.30%) VLAN
2 4 (2.30%) VPN
3 3 (1.72%) BGP
3 3 (1.72%) Network Security
3 3 (1.72%) Software-Defined Networking
4 2 (1.15%) DHCP
4 2 (1.15%) DNS
4 2 (1.15%) NetScaler
5 1 (0.57%) VoIP
5 1 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.57%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (13.79%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (9.20%) Relational Database
3 15 (8.62%) NoSQL
4 14 (8.05%) MySQL
5 11 (6.32%) DynamoDB
6 10 (5.75%) Amazon RDS
7 9 (5.17%) BigQuery
8 7 (4.02%) Redis
9 6 (3.45%) Amazon Aurora
9 6 (3.45%) Big Data
10 5 (2.87%) RDBMS
11 4 (2.30%) DocumentDB
11 4 (2.30%) MongoDB
12 3 (1.72%) Apache Cassandra
12 3 (1.72%) Data Lake
13 1 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
13 1 (0.57%) Metadata
13 1 (0.57%) Power BI
13 1 (0.57%) SQL Server
13 1 (0.57%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 52 (29.89%) GitLab
2 43 (24.71%) Jenkins
3 41 (23.56%) Git
4 19 (10.92%) JIRA
5 17 (9.77%) Gradle
6 12 (6.90%) IntelliJ
7 11 (6.32%) SonarQube
8 8 (4.60%) Postman
9 7 (4.02%) Bitbucket
10 6 (3.45%) MLflow
11 5 (2.87%) JUnit
11 5 (2.87%) Maven
11 5 (2.87%) Snyk
11 5 (2.87%) SonarLint
12 3 (1.72%) Mockito
13 2 (1.15%) Sonatype Nexus
14 1 (0.57%) Android Studio
14 1 (0.57%) CircleCI
14 1 (0.57%) fastlane
14 1 (0.57%) Spinnaker
General
1 39 (22.41%) Finance
2 37 (21.26%) Public Sector
3 29 (16.67%) Banking
4 28 (16.09%) Social Skills
5 16 (9.20%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.30%) Games
7 2 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.57%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.57%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.57%) Military
8 1 (0.57%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (24.71%) Developer
2 27 (15.52%) Java Developer
3 24 (13.79%) Architect
4 22 (12.64%) Software Engineer
5 20 (11.49%) DevOps Engineer
6 18 (10.34%) Platform Engineer
7 17 (9.77%) Senior
8 14 (8.05%) AWS Engineer
8 14 (8.05%) Java Engineer
8 14 (8.05%) Java Software Engineer
9 11 (6.32%) Security Engineer
9 11 (6.32%) Technical Architect
10 10 (5.75%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 9 (5.17%) Lead
12 8 (4.60%) Data Engineer
12 8 (4.60%) Java Architect
12 8 (4.60%) Java Technical Architect
13 7 (4.02%) AWS DevOps
13 7 (4.02%) Cloud Engineer
13 7 (4.02%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (36.78%) Spring Boot
2 59 (33.91%) Spring
3 34 (19.54%) RESTful
4 24 (13.79%) REST
5 21 (12.07%) Kafka
6 14 (8.05%) AngularJS
6 14 (8.05%) Node.js
7 12 (6.90%) Hibernate
7 12 (6.90%) JSON
7 12 (6.90%) JWT
7 12 (6.90%) OpenTelemetry
7 12 (6.90%) React
8 11 (6.32%) JMS
9 8 (4.60%) J2EE
10 7 (4.02%) GraphQL
10 7 (4.02%) JAX-RS
10 7 (4.02%) OAuth
10 7 (4.02%) Spring Security
11 6 (3.45%) Dropwizard
11 6 (3.45%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 33 (18.97%) Cloud Native
2 12 (6.90%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (6.32%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 9 (5.17%) Product Ownership
5 6 (3.45%) N-Tier
6 5 (2.87%) Public Cloud
7 4 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (2.30%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.72%) Onboarding
9 2 (1.15%) Algorithms
9 2 (1.15%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.15%) Distributed Computing
10 1 (0.57%) Enterprise Storage
10 1 (0.57%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.57%) Hybrid Cloud
10 1 (0.57%) IBM XIV
10 1 (0.57%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.57%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 38 (21.84%) Linux
2 14 (8.05%) Windows
3 6 (3.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.87%) Unix
4 5 (2.87%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.15%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.57%) Android
6 1 (0.57%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.57%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (61.49%) CI/CD
2 90 (51.72%) Containerisation
3 80 (45.98%) DevOps
4 54 (31.03%) Microservices
5 52 (29.89%) Agile
6 46 (26.44%) Infrastructure as Code
7 44 (25.29%) Problem-Solving
8 32 (18.39%) Software Engineering
9 29 (16.67%) Observability
10 24 (13.79%) Test Automation
11 22 (12.64%) SDLC
12 21 (12.07%) TDD
13 19 (10.92%) API Design
13 19 (10.92%) Event-Driven
14 18 (10.34%) AI
15 17 (9.77%) Unit Testing
16 16 (9.20%) API Development
16 16 (9.20%) DevSecOps
17 15 (8.62%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 15 (8.62%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 83 (47.70%) Java
2 68 (39.08%) Python
3 30 (17.24%) SQL
4 26 (14.94%) Bash
5 12 (6.90%) Kotlin
6 11 (6.32%) TypeScript
7 9 (5.17%) PHP
7 9 (5.17%) PowerShell
8 7 (4.02%) Go
8 7 (4.02%) JavaScript
9 6 (3.45%) Ruby
10 4 (2.30%) C#
11 3 (1.72%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.15%) C++
12 2 (1.15%) Perl
13 1 (0.57%) C
13 1 (0.57%) Clojure
13 1 (0.57%) Objective-C
13 1 (0.57%) Scala
13 1 (0.57%) Swift
Qualifications
1 36 (20.69%) Security Cleared
2 19 (10.92%) SC Cleared
3 13 (7.47%) Degree
4 11 (6.32%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (5.75%) AWS Certification
6 8 (4.60%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (3.45%) CISSP
8 5 (2.87%) CISM
9 4 (2.30%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.72%) TOGAF Certification
11 2 (1.15%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (1.15%) DV Cleared
12 1 (0.57%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.57%) OSCP
12 1 (0.57%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (8.05%) QA
2 12 (6.90%) ISO 20022
2 12 (6.90%) PSD2
3 11 (6.32%) SEPA
4 10 (5.75%) Accessibility
5 5 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (2.87%) NIST
6 3 (1.72%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.57%) GDPR
7 1 (0.57%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.57%) WCAG
System Software
1 120 (68.97%) Docker
2 10 (5.75%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (5.75%) vSphere
3 3 (1.72%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (1.15%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 59 (33.91%) Terraform
2 31 (17.82%) Grafana
3 9 (5.17%) Prometheus
4 5 (2.87%) Fluentd
5 4 (2.30%) Ansible
6 3 (1.72%) Istio
6 3 (1.72%) Progress Chef
6 3 (1.72%) SCCM
7 2 (1.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (1.15%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.57%) Argo
8 1 (0.57%) Podman
8 1 (0.57%) Puppet
8 1 (0.57%) SELinux
Vendors
1 25 (14.37%) Oracle
2 16 (9.20%) Splunk
3 13 (7.47%) Microsoft
4 11 (6.32%) VMware
5 8 (4.60%) AppDynamics
6 7 (4.02%) Cribl.io
7 6 (3.45%) Dynatrace
7 6 (3.45%) F5
7 6 (3.45%) Gigya
7 6 (3.45%) Google
7 6 (3.45%) Red Hat
8 5 (2.87%) Checkmarx
8 5 (2.87%) Veracode
9 4 (2.30%) Confluent
9 4 (2.30%) Palo Alto
10 2 (1.15%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.15%) Databricks
10 2 (1.15%) Ping Identity
10 2 (1.15%) Veeam
11 1 (0.57%) Citrix