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 6 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 34 72
Rank change year-on-year -6 +38 -31
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 157 101 67
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.91% 5.14% 2.48%
As % of the Systems Management category 35.68% 33.01% 24.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 105 81 53
10th Percentile £385 £393 £407
25th Percentile £450 £456 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £584 £650
90th Percentile £651 £638 £694
England median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -11.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £52.50 £73.50 £52.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £79.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.38% +43.64% +4.66%
75th Percentile £61.81 £84.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £68.13 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £69.35 £62.00
% change year-on-year -6.27% +11.85% -15.07%

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 440 306 276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.75% 15.57% 10.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 295 207 202
10th Percentile £307 £258 £215
25th Percentile £400 £386 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £587 £550 £592
90th Percentile £650 £643 £650
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 5 16
10th Percentile £38.52 £49.40 £16.67
25th Percentile £52.50 £61.25 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £63.40 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -13.25% +257.79% -40.24%
75th Percentile £62.88 £84.50 £58.44
90th Percentile £71.20 £84.95 £91.25
England median hourly rate £57.63 £28.50 £25.77
% change year-on-year +102.22% +10.62% -55.19%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 6 May 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 -4 108 £538 +7.50% 46
Cheshire +4 39 £478 +0.66% 11
Merseyside - 5 £330 - 4
Cumbria - 3 £525 - 1
Lancashire -10 2 £712 +18.70% 14
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 (6.37%) Confluence
2 7 (4.46%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.55%) Apache
4 1 (0.64%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.27%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 103 (65.61%) AWS
2 70 (44.59%) Azure
3 38 (24.20%) GCP
4 26 (16.56%) GitHub
5 20 (12.74%) Serverless
6 16 (10.19%) Amazon EKS
7 15 (9.55%) OpenShift
8 14 (8.92%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (8.28%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 12 (7.64%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (7.01%) Azure AKS
12 9 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (5.10%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (5.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 7 (4.46%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (3.82%) Amazon S3
16 5 (3.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 5 (3.18%) Amazon ECR
16 5 (3.18%) Amazon ECS
16 5 (3.18%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 11 (7.01%) Firewall
2 5 (3.18%) DNS
3 4 (2.55%) DHCP
3 4 (2.55%) NetScaler
3 4 (2.55%) TCP/IP
4 3 (1.91%) Network Security
5 2 (1.27%) HTTP
5 2 (1.27%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.64%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (15.92%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (8.28%) NoSQL
3 9 (5.73%) Relational Database
3 9 (5.73%) SQL Server
4 8 (5.10%) MySQL
5 7 (4.46%) DocumentDB
6 5 (3.18%) DynamoDB
6 5 (3.18%) MongoDB
7 4 (2.55%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (2.55%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.91%) BigQuery
8 3 (1.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (1.27%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (1.27%) Data Lake
9 2 (1.27%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.64%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 46 (29.30%) GitLab
2 28 (17.83%) Git
3 24 (15.29%) Jenkins
4 16 (10.19%) JIRA
5 13 (8.28%) Gradle
6 12 (7.64%) IntelliJ
7 6 (3.82%) Postman
8 4 (2.55%) Selenium
9 3 (1.91%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.91%) JMeter
9 3 (1.91%) SonarQube
10 2 (1.27%) Mocha
11 1 (0.64%) Android Studio
11 1 (0.64%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.64%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.64%) fastlane
11 1 (0.64%) MLflow
11 1 (0.64%) Mockito
11 1 (0.64%) Snyk
11 1 (0.64%) Spinnaker
General
1 41 (26.11%) Finance
2 32 (20.38%) Public Sector
3 18 (11.46%) Banking
3 18 (11.46%) Social Skills
4 5 (3.18%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (1.91%) Health Technology
6 2 (1.27%) Retail
7 1 (0.64%) Automotive
7 1 (0.64%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 38 (24.20%) Developer
2 24 (15.29%) Software Engineer
3 23 (14.65%) Senior
4 19 (12.10%) Java Developer
4 19 (12.10%) Java Engineer
5 17 (10.83%) DevOps Engineer
5 17 (10.83%) Java Software Engineer
5 17 (10.83%) Lead
6 16 (10.19%) Architect
6 16 (10.19%) Security Engineer
7 12 (7.64%) Lead Developer
7 12 (7.64%) Platform Engineer
8 11 (7.01%) Cloud Engineer
9 10 (6.37%) Software Developer
10 9 (5.73%) AWS Engineer
10 9 (5.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 7 (4.46%) AWS Architect
11 7 (4.46%) Cloud Architect
12 6 (3.82%) Azure Engineer
12 6 (3.82%) Lead Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (38.85%) Spring
2 54 (34.39%) Spring Boot
3 25 (15.92%) REST
4 21 (13.38%) Kafka
5 20 (12.74%) RESTful
6 18 (11.46%) Node.js
7 15 (9.55%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (6.37%) Hibernate
9 8 (5.10%) React
10 7 (4.46%) GraphQL
11 6 (3.82%) JMS
11 6 (3.82%) Nunjucks
12 5 (3.18%) AWS CDK
12 5 (3.18%) Express.js
12 5 (3.18%) JSON
12 5 (3.18%) OAuth
12 5 (3.18%) Spring MVC
13 4 (2.55%) Apache NiFi
13 4 (2.55%) Spring Cloud
13 4 (2.55%) Spring Security
Miscellaneous
1 45 (28.66%) Cloud Native
2 14 (8.92%) Security Posture
3 8 (5.10%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (4.46%) Management Information System
4 7 (4.46%) Public Cloud
4 7 (4.46%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 6 (3.82%) Cloud Security Posture
5 6 (3.82%) Linux Command Line
5 6 (3.82%) Private Cloud
6 4 (2.55%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.91%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.91%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.91%) NHS
7 3 (1.91%) Virtual Team
8 2 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.27%) Driving Licence
8 2 (1.27%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.64%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 24 (15.29%) Linux
2 8 (5.10%) Windows
3 6 (3.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.55%) Unix
4 4 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 4 (2.55%) Windows Server 2012
4 4 (2.55%) Windows Server 2019
5 1 (0.64%) Android
5 1 (0.64%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.64%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (58.60%) CI/CD
2 73 (46.50%) DevOps
3 67 (42.68%) Containerisation
4 50 (31.85%) Infrastructure as Code
5 49 (31.21%) Agile
6 45 (28.66%) Microservices
7 32 (20.38%) Observability
7 32 (20.38%) Problem-Solving
8 31 (19.75%) Software Engineering
9 26 (16.56%) Test Automation
10 22 (14.01%) Event-Driven
11 17 (10.83%) Cloud Security
12 16 (10.19%) DevSecOps
13 15 (9.55%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 14 (8.92%) API Development
14 14 (8.92%) Code Quality
14 14 (8.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 13 (8.28%) Continuous Improvement
15 13 (8.28%) Platform Engineering
15 13 (8.28%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 79 (50.32%) Java
2 58 (36.94%) Python
3 26 (16.56%) SQL
4 21 (13.38%) Bash
5 20 (12.74%) PowerShell
6 16 (10.19%) TypeScript
7 12 (7.64%) Kotlin
8 9 (5.73%) Go
9 8 (5.10%) Bicep
9 8 (5.10%) JavaScript
10 4 (2.55%) PHP
10 4 (2.55%) Ruby
11 3 (1.91%) C#
11 3 (1.91%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.64%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.64%) Swift
Qualifications
1 31 (19.75%) Security Cleared
2 21 (13.38%) SC Cleared
3 14 (8.92%) Azure Certification
4 12 (7.64%) Degree
5 10 (6.37%) AWS Certification
6 9 (5.73%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (4.46%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (3.18%) CISSP
9 4 (2.55%) DV Cleared
10 3 (1.91%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (1.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.64%) CISM
11 1 (0.64%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.64%) OCP
11 1 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (10.19%) GDPR
2 11 (7.01%) QA
3 8 (5.10%) ISO 20022
3 8 (5.10%) PSD2
4 7 (4.46%) Accessibility
4 7 (4.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 7 (4.46%) SEPA
5 6 (3.82%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 6 (3.82%) HIPAA
5 6 (3.82%) NIST
6 5 (3.18%) Data Quality
7 2 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.64%) WCAG
System Software
1 97 (61.78%) Docker
2 6 (3.82%) Active Directory
3 5 (3.18%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (3.18%) vSphere
4 4 (2.55%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.64%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.64%) zsh
Systems Management
1 56 (35.67%) Terraform
2 34 (21.66%) Grafana
3 16 (10.19%) Prometheus
4 7 (4.46%) Argo
5 6 (3.82%) Istio
6 5 (3.18%) Ansible
7 4 (2.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 4 (2.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (2.55%) Progress Chef
7 4 (2.55%) SCCM
8 2 (1.27%) linkerd
8 2 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.64%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 20 (12.74%) Microsoft
2 14 (8.92%) Oracle
3 11 (7.01%) Google
4 7 (4.46%) Red Hat
4 7 (4.46%) Splunk
5 6 (3.82%) Varonis
5 6 (3.82%) VMware
6 4 (2.55%) Confluent
6 4 (2.55%) CyberArk
6 4 (2.55%) F5
6 4 (2.55%) Veeam
7 3 (1.91%) PagerDuty
7 3 (1.91%) SAP
8 2 (1.27%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.27%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.27%) Ping Identity
9 1 (0.64%) Databricks
9 1 (0.64%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.64%) SnapLogic
9 1 (0.64%) Veracode