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

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 29 51 48
Rank change year-on-year +22 -3 -19
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 148 79 102
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.04% 3.52% 3.79%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.85% 28.01% 24.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 44 65
10th Percentile £338 £356 £425
25th Percentile £368 £409 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £593 £588 £638
90th Percentile £651 £719 £688
England median daily rate £525 £600 £580
% change year-on-year -12.50% +3.45% -7.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 22
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +60.81% - -12.87%
75th Percentile - £57.18 -
90th Percentile - £63.78 £61.99
England median hourly rate £67.00 £51.84 £62.50
% change year-on-year +29.24% -17.06% -10.71%

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 381 282 413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 15.54% 12.55% 15.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 269 147 289
10th Percentile £300 £247 £302
25th Percentile £355 £393 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £582
90th Percentile £650 £656 £659
England median daily rate £513 £531 £550
% change year-on-year -3.39% -3.55% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 11 43
10th Percentile - £21.05 £17.73
25th Percentile £15.50 £24.18 £19.63
Median hourly rate £18.87 £43.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -56.12% -6.89% -1.33%
75th Percentile £55.44 £57.18 £50.31
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.50 £77.27
England median hourly rate £39.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +21.54% -29.62% +34.83%

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 7 December 2025.

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
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 7 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
Manchester +1 77 £526 -4.32% 64
Cheshire +25 58 £402 -12.94% 38
Merseyside -1 5 £510 +70.00% 10
Lancashire -15 4 £550 +4.76% 28
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 (5.41%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (3.38%) OpenStack
3 4 (2.70%) Confluence
3 4 (2.70%) JBoss
4 2 (1.35%) Mule
4 2 (1.35%) Mule ESB
4 2 (1.35%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.68%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.68%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.68%) IIS
5 1 (0.68%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.68%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 93 (62.84%) AWS
2 51 (34.46%) Azure
3 40 (27.03%) GCP
4 30 (20.27%) GitHub
5 28 (18.92%) OpenShift
6 19 (12.84%) Amazon ECS
6 19 (12.84%) Serverless
7 18 (12.16%) AWS Lambda
8 16 (10.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 16 (10.81%) AWS CloudFormation
9 15 (10.14%) GitHub Actions
9 15 (10.14%) SaaS
10 14 (9.46%) Amazon EC2
10 14 (9.46%) Datadog
10 14 (9.46%) PaaS
11 11 (7.43%) Amazon SQS
11 11 (7.43%) Apigee
12 10 (6.76%) IaaS
13 8 (5.41%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (4.73%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (12.16%) Firewall
2 4 (2.70%) HTTP
2 4 (2.70%) HTTPS
2 4 (2.70%) VLAN
2 4 (2.70%) VPN
3 3 (2.03%) BGP
3 3 (2.03%) Network Security
3 3 (2.03%) Software-Defined Networking
4 2 (1.35%) TCP/IP
4 2 (1.35%) X.509
5 1 (0.68%) VoIP
5 1 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (16.22%) Relational Database
2 18 (12.16%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (10.14%) MySQL
4 11 (7.43%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (6.08%) DynamoDB
5 9 (6.08%) NoSQL
6 8 (5.41%) BigQuery
6 8 (5.41%) RDBMS
6 8 (5.41%) Redis
7 6 (4.05%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (4.05%) Big Data
8 4 (2.70%) MongoDB
9 3 (2.03%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (2.03%) Data Lake
10 2 (1.35%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.68%) ObjectStore
11 1 (0.68%) Power BI
11 1 (0.68%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.68%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 42 (28.38%) Jenkins
2 41 (27.70%) Git
3 34 (22.97%) GitLab
4 20 (13.51%) JIRA
5 13 (8.78%) SonarQube
6 8 (5.41%) Postman
7 7 (4.73%) Bitbucket
8 5 (3.38%) Gradle
8 5 (3.38%) JUnit
8 5 (3.38%) Maven
8 5 (3.38%) MLflow
8 5 (3.38%) SonarLint
8 5 (3.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (2.70%) Snyk
10 3 (2.03%) Mockito
10 3 (2.03%) Rational DOORS
10 3 (2.03%) TeamCity
11 2 (1.35%) Artifactory
11 2 (1.35%) Bitbucket Server
11 2 (1.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 34 (22.97%) Finance
2 29 (19.59%) Public Sector
3 28 (18.92%) Social Skills
4 27 (18.24%) Banking
5 13 (8.78%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.70%) Games
7 2 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.68%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.68%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.68%) Military
8 1 (0.68%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 34 (22.97%) Developer
2 21 (14.19%) Java Developer
3 19 (12.84%) DevOps Engineer
4 18 (12.16%) Architect
5 17 (11.49%) Platform Engineer
6 15 (10.14%) Senior
7 12 (8.11%) Software Engineer
8 11 (7.43%) AWS Engineer
8 11 (7.43%) Security Engineer
8 11 (7.43%) Technical Architect
9 9 (6.08%) Lead
10 8 (5.41%) AWS DevOps
10 8 (5.41%) Data Engineer
10 8 (5.41%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 8 (5.41%) Java Architect
10 8 (5.41%) Java Technical Architect
10 8 (5.41%) Senior Developer
11 7 (4.73%) AWS DevOps Engineer
12 6 (4.05%) Senior Java Developer
12 6 (4.05%) Virtualisation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (29.73%) Spring Boot
2 35 (23.65%) Spring
3 30 (20.27%) RESTful
4 19 (12.84%) AngularJS
4 19 (12.84%) Kafka
5 18 (12.16%) Node.js
6 16 (10.81%) REST
7 11 (7.43%) JWT
7 11 (7.43%) React
8 10 (6.76%) Hibernate
8 10 (6.76%) JSON
9 9 (6.08%) JMS
10 8 (5.41%) Elastic Stack
10 8 (5.41%) J2EE
11 7 (4.73%) HTML
11 7 (4.73%) JAX-RS
11 7 (4.73%) Spring Security
12 6 (4.05%) OAuth
12 6 (4.05%) OAuth2
12 6 (4.05%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 23 (15.54%) Cloud Native
2 9 (6.08%) Distributed Systems
2 9 (6.08%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 8 (5.41%) Product Ownership
4 6 (4.05%) N-Tier
5 4 (2.70%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (2.03%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.35%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.35%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.35%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.35%) PKI
7 2 (1.35%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.68%) Clustering
8 1 (0.68%) CUDA
8 1 (0.68%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (0.68%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.68%) Enterprise Storage
8 1 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.68%) IBM XIV
8 1 (0.68%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 47 (31.76%) Linux
2 20 (13.51%) Windows
3 10 (6.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (3.38%) Unix
5 3 (2.03%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (67.57%) CI/CD
2 87 (58.78%) Containerisation
3 71 (47.97%) DevOps
4 46 (31.08%) Microservices
5 45 (30.41%) Agile
6 41 (27.70%) Infrastructure as Code
7 38 (25.68%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (22.97%) Observability
9 22 (14.86%) Software Engineering
10 21 (14.19%) Test Automation
11 19 (12.84%) TDD
12 18 (12.16%) API Design
12 18 (12.16%) SDLC
13 17 (11.49%) Unit Testing
14 16 (10.81%) AI
14 16 (10.81%) Event-Driven
14 16 (10.81%) Platform Engineering
15 15 (10.14%) Cloud Security
15 15 (10.14%) ETL
15 15 (10.14%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 71 (47.97%) Python
2 62 (41.89%) Java
3 27 (18.24%) Bash
4 24 (16.22%) SQL
5 15 (10.14%) PHP
6 8 (5.41%) TypeScript
7 6 (4.05%) Go
7 6 (4.05%) JavaScript
7 6 (4.05%) PowerShell
8 5 (3.38%) Perl
8 5 (3.38%) Ruby
9 4 (2.70%) C#
9 4 (2.70%) C++
10 3 (2.03%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.68%) Bicep
11 1 (0.68%) C
11 1 (0.68%) Clojure
11 1 (0.68%) Korn
11 1 (0.68%) Scala
Qualifications
1 35 (23.65%) Security Cleared
2 18 (12.16%) SC Cleared
3 11 (7.43%) Degree
4 9 (6.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (4.73%) AWS Certification
6 6 (4.05%) CISSP
7 5 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (3.38%) CISM
8 3 (2.03%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (1.35%) DV Cleared
9 2 (1.35%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.68%) OSCP
10 1 (0.68%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (8.11%) QA
2 9 (6.08%) ISO 20022
2 9 (6.08%) PSD2
2 9 (6.08%) SEPA
3 6 (4.05%) Accessibility
4 5 (3.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (3.38%) NIST
5 3 (2.03%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.68%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.68%) WCAG
System Software
1 112 (75.68%) Docker
2 8 (5.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (5.41%) vSphere
3 4 (2.70%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 50 (33.78%) Terraform
2 22 (14.86%) Grafana
3 9 (6.08%) Prometheus
4 6 (4.05%) Ansible
4 6 (4.05%) Progress Chef
5 5 (3.38%) Fluentd
6 3 (2.03%) Kibana
6 3 (2.03%) Podman
6 3 (2.03%) SELinux
7 1 (0.68%) Argo
7 1 (0.68%) Istio
7 1 (0.68%) Puppet
7 1 (0.68%) SCCM
Vendors
1 28 (18.92%) Oracle
2 19 (12.84%) Splunk
3 16 (10.81%) AppDynamics
4 13 (8.78%) Microsoft
5 9 (6.08%) Red Hat
5 9 (6.08%) VMware
6 7 (4.73%) Cribl.io
7 6 (4.05%) Dynatrace
7 6 (4.05%) Gigya
8 4 (2.70%) Checkmarx
8 4 (2.70%) Cloudera
8 4 (2.70%) Confluent
8 4 (2.70%) F5
8 4 (2.70%) Google
8 4 (2.70%) Palo Alto
8 4 (2.70%) Veracode
9 2 (1.35%) Atlassian
9 2 (1.35%) Ping Identity
10 1 (0.68%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.68%) SnapLogic