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 21 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 38 47 47
Rank change year-on-year +9 0 -13
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 117 73 117
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.12% 3.09% 4.08%
As % of the Systems Management category 36.45% 26.16% 24.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 90 41 69
10th Percentile £315 £356 £425
25th Percentile £369 £400 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -15.91% +2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £618 £600 £638
90th Percentile £676 £675 £688
England median daily rate £525 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 24
10th Percentile £75.65 - £45.97
25th Percentile £78.88 - -
Median hourly rate £87.00 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +88.39% - -12.87%
75th Percentile £92.38 £57.18 -
90th Percentile £93.95 £63.78 £58.48
England median hourly rate £67.00 £60.64 £70.00
% change year-on-year +10.48% -13.37% +8.53%

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 321 279 471
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.04% 11.79% 16.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 216 156 309
10th Percentile £267 £228 £313
25th Percentile £350 £375 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -3.25% -4.76%
75th Percentile £576 £577 £575
90th Percentile £650 £656 £663
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.95% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 11 44
10th Percentile - £21.05 £17.98
25th Percentile £15.50 £24.18 £39.91
Median hourly rate £18.87 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -39.13% -32.87% +112.03%
75th Percentile £63.40 £47.47 £49.31
90th Percentile £75.88 £68.18 £76.91
England median hourly rate £34.00 £36.17 £51.25
% change year-on-year -5.99% -29.43% +114.35%

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 21 October 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in the North West over the 6 months to 21 October 2025.

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 21 October 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 +4 66 £500 -9.09% 118
Cheshire +13 43 £405 -14.74% 27
Merseyside +5 4 £510 +70.00% 2
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 (6.84%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (4.27%) Confluence
2 5 (4.27%) JBoss
2 5 (4.27%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.71%) Mule
3 2 (1.71%) Mule ESB
3 2 (1.71%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.71%) WebSphere
3 2 (1.71%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (0.85%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.85%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.85%) IIS
4 1 (0.85%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.85%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 75 (64.10%) AWS
2 40 (34.19%) Azure
3 27 (23.08%) GCP
4 25 (21.37%) OpenShift
5 21 (17.95%) GitHub
6 17 (14.53%) Serverless
7 15 (12.82%) AWS Lambda
7 15 (12.82%) SaaS
8 14 (11.97%) Amazon ECS
8 14 (11.97%) PaaS
9 13 (11.11%) Amazon EC2
9 13 (11.11%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (10.26%) Datadog
11 11 (9.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 11 (9.40%) Amazon SQS
12 10 (8.55%) IaaS
13 9 (7.69%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (5.98%) Apigee
14 7 (5.98%) Azure DevOps
15 6 (5.13%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 12 (10.26%) Firewall
2 2 (1.71%) Calico
2 2 (1.71%) TCP/IP
2 2 (1.71%) VPN
2 2 (1.71%) X.509
3 1 (0.85%) VLAN
3 1 (0.85%) VoIP
3 1 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (17.09%) Relational Database
2 14 (11.97%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (8.55%) MySQL
4 9 (7.69%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (7.69%) DynamoDB
4 9 (7.69%) NoSQL
4 9 (7.69%) RDBMS
5 8 (6.84%) Redis
6 6 (5.13%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (5.13%) Big Data
6 6 (5.13%) BigQuery
7 5 (4.27%) MongoDB
8 3 (2.56%) Apache Cassandra
8 3 (2.56%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (1.71%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.85%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.85%) ObjectStore
10 1 (0.85%) Power BI
10 1 (0.85%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (34.19%) Jenkins
2 32 (27.35%) Git
3 24 (20.51%) GitLab
4 20 (17.09%) JIRA
5 14 (11.97%) SonarQube
6 7 (5.98%) Bitbucket
6 7 (5.98%) Maven
7 6 (5.13%) MLflow
7 6 (5.13%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (4.27%) Gradle
8 5 (4.27%) JUnit
8 5 (4.27%) SonarLint
9 4 (3.42%) Postman
9 4 (3.42%) TeamCity
10 3 (2.56%) Artifactory
10 3 (2.56%) Bitbucket Server
10 3 (2.56%) CA Release Automation
10 3 (2.56%) Mockito
10 3 (2.56%) Rational DOORS
10 3 (2.56%) Snyk
General
1 22 (18.80%) Social Skills
2 20 (17.09%) Banking
2 20 (17.09%) Public Sector
3 18 (15.38%) Finance
4 8 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (3.42%) Games
5 4 (3.42%) Retail
6 2 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.85%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.85%) Military
7 1 (0.85%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 21 (17.95%) Developer
2 16 (13.68%) Architect
3 15 (12.82%) Senior
4 14 (11.97%) DevOps Engineer
4 14 (11.97%) Platform Engineer
5 12 (10.26%) Java Developer
5 12 (10.26%) Software Engineer
6 11 (9.40%) Technical Architect
7 10 (8.55%) AWS Engineer
8 9 (7.69%) Lead
9 8 (6.84%) AWS DevOps
9 8 (6.84%) Java Architect
9 8 (6.84%) Java Technical Architect
10 7 (5.98%) Data Engineer
10 7 (5.98%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 7 (5.98%) Senior Developer
11 6 (5.13%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 6 (5.13%) Security Engineer
11 6 (5.13%) Senior Java Developer
11 6 (5.13%) Virtualisation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (27.35%) Spring Boot
2 22 (18.80%) Spring
3 20 (17.09%) AngularJS
4 19 (16.24%) RESTful
5 16 (13.68%) Node.js
6 13 (11.11%) Kafka
7 12 (10.26%) React
8 9 (7.69%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (6.84%) J2EE
9 8 (6.84%) REST
10 7 (5.98%) HTML
11 6 (5.13%) Dropwizard
11 6 (5.13%) JMS
11 6 (5.13%) JSON
11 6 (5.13%) JWT
11 6 (5.13%) Micronaut
11 6 (5.13%) PySpark
12 5 (4.27%) Celery
12 5 (4.27%) Flask
12 5 (4.27%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 21 (17.95%) Cloud Native
2 8 (6.84%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (5.13%) N-Tier
3 6 (5.13%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 5 (4.27%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (1.71%) PKI
6 1 (0.85%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.85%) Clustering
6 1 (0.85%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.85%) Distributed Computing
6 1 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.85%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (0.85%) IBM XIV
6 1 (0.85%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.85%) Replication
6 1 (0.85%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 41 (35.04%) Linux
2 19 (16.24%) Windows
3 8 (6.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.71%) Android
4 2 (1.71%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.85%) Unix
5 1 (0.85%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (65.81%) CI/CD
2 62 (52.99%) Containerisation
2 62 (52.99%) DevOps
3 35 (29.91%) Agile
3 35 (29.91%) Microservices
4 32 (27.35%) Infrastructure as Code
5 30 (25.64%) Observability
6 26 (22.22%) Problem-Solving
7 23 (19.66%) Software Engineering
8 17 (14.53%) TDD
9 15 (12.82%) Test Automation
10 14 (11.97%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 14 (11.97%) Unit Testing
11 13 (11.11%) Infrastructure Automation
11 13 (11.11%) Migration
11 13 (11.11%) Platform Engineering
11 13 (11.11%) SDLC
12 12 (10.26%) Clean Code
12 12 (10.26%) Full-Stack Development
12 12 (10.26%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 62 (52.99%) Python
2 50 (42.74%) Java
3 24 (20.51%) Bash
4 20 (17.09%) SQL
5 11 (9.40%) PHP
6 8 (6.84%) TypeScript
7 6 (5.13%) Perl
8 5 (4.27%) Go
9 4 (3.42%) JavaScript
10 3 (2.56%) C++
10 3 (2.56%) PL/SQL
10 3 (2.56%) PowerShell
10 3 (2.56%) Ruby
11 2 (1.71%) C#
11 2 (1.71%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.85%) Clojure
12 1 (0.85%) Korn
12 1 (0.85%) Scala
Qualifications
1 22 (18.80%) Security Cleared
2 10 (8.55%) SC Cleared
3 7 (5.98%) AWS Certification
4 5 (4.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (3.42%) CISSP
6 3 (2.56%) CISM
6 3 (2.56%) Degree
7 2 (1.71%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 2 (1.71%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.71%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.71%) TOGAF Certification
8 1 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.85%) OSCP
8 1 (0.85%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (6.84%) QA
2 6 (5.13%) Accessibility
2 6 (5.13%) ISO 20022
2 6 (5.13%) PSD2
2 6 (5.13%) SEPA
3 3 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.56%) NIST
4 1 (0.85%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.85%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.85%) WCAG
System Software
1 84 (71.79%) Docker
2 8 (6.84%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (6.84%) vSphere
3 5 (4.27%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.71%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 38 (32.48%) Terraform
2 16 (13.68%) Grafana
3 9 (7.69%) Progress Chef
4 8 (6.84%) Ansible
5 5 (4.27%) Prometheus
6 4 (3.42%) Kibana
7 3 (2.56%) Podman
7 3 (2.56%) SELinux
8 2 (1.71%) Fluentd
8 2 (1.71%) Istio
9 1 (0.85%) Argo
9 1 (0.85%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.85%) Puppet
9 1 (0.85%) SCCM
Vendors
1 22 (18.80%) Oracle
2 17 (14.53%) AppDynamics
3 14 (11.97%) Splunk
4 10 (8.55%) Microsoft
5 8 (6.84%) VMware
6 7 (5.98%) Red Hat
7 6 (5.13%) Dynatrace
7 6 (5.13%) Gigya
8 5 (4.27%) Cloudera
9 4 (3.42%) Cribl.io
9 4 (3.42%) F5
9 4 (3.42%) Palo Alto
10 3 (2.56%) Checkmarx
10 3 (2.56%) Google
10 3 (2.56%) IBM
10 3 (2.56%) Veracode
11 2 (1.71%) Atlassian
12 1 (0.85%) Citrix
12 1 (0.85%) PagerDuty
12 1 (0.85%) SendGrid