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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 44 52
Rank change year-on-year +13 +8 -20
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 168 87 90
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.06% 4.23% 3.20%
As % of the Systems Management category 40.98% 26.77% 25.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 117 66 65
10th Percentile £357 £364 £418
25th Percentile £402 £423 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -10.42%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £688
90th Percentile £643 £615 £700
England median daily rate £525 £590 £570
% change year-on-year -11.02% +3.51% -8.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 1 9
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £52.50 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £63.79 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -13.77% +38.12% -21.06%
75th Percentile £58.44 £68.18 -
90th Percentile £69.13 - £58.75
England median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £62.25
% change year-on-year +2.13% -5.62% -2.73%

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 410 325 349
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.78% 15.78% 12.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 192 249
10th Percentile £313 £250 £312
25th Percentile £368 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £565 £584
90th Percentile £638 £640 £670
England median daily rate £500 £536 £525
% change year-on-year -6.72% +2.10% -9.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 8 29
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £16.74
25th Percentile £24.88 £23.40 £17.72
Median hourly rate £55.00 £33.59 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +63.74% -27.26% +8.66%
75th Percentile £60.31 £70.51 £53.75
90th Percentile £73.83 £80.50 £79.50
England median hourly rate £53.25 £26.00 £40.31
% change year-on-year +104.81% -35.50% -16.02%

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 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 +3 108 £525 +5.10% 56
Cheshire +18 47 £433 +17.85% 8
Merseyside -8 6 £330 +10.00% 2
Lancashire -23 4 £550 -8.33% 20
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 7 (4.17%) Apache Airflow
1 7 (4.17%) Confluence
2 4 (2.38%) Apache Spark
2 4 (2.38%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.60%) Apache
3 1 (0.60%) IIS
Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 107 (63.69%) AWS
2 60 (35.71%) Azure
3 40 (23.81%) GCP
4 31 (18.45%) GitHub
5 21 (12.50%) OpenShift
6 19 (11.31%) Serverless
7 16 (9.52%) GitHub Actions
8 15 (8.93%) AWS CloudFormation
8 15 (8.93%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (8.33%) Amazon EKS
10 13 (7.74%) Amazon ECS
11 12 (7.14%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (5.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (5.36%) Amazon S3
13 7 (4.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 6 (3.57%) Amazon SQS
14 6 (3.57%) Apigee
14 6 (3.57%) Azure AKS
14 6 (3.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 5 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 23 (13.69%) Firewall
2 5 (2.98%) TCP/IP
2 5 (2.98%) VPN
3 4 (2.38%) DHCP
3 4 (2.38%) DNS
3 4 (2.38%) HTTP
3 4 (2.38%) HTTPS
3 4 (2.38%) NetScaler
3 4 (2.38%) Network Security
3 4 (2.38%) VLAN
4 3 (1.79%) BGP
4 3 (1.79%) Software-Defined Networking
5 1 (0.60%) VoIP
5 1 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (10.12%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (7.14%) NoSQL
3 11 (6.55%) MySQL
4 8 (4.76%) Relational Database
5 7 (4.17%) DocumentDB
5 7 (4.17%) MongoDB
6 5 (2.98%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (2.98%) Big Data
7 4 (2.38%) Apache Cassandra
7 4 (2.38%) DynamoDB
7 4 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (2.38%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.79%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.19%) Data Lake
9 2 (1.19%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.60%) ObjectStore
10 1 (0.60%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.60%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 59 (35.12%) GitLab
2 37 (22.02%) Jenkins
3 31 (18.45%) Git
4 16 (9.52%) JIRA
5 12 (7.14%) Gradle
5 12 (7.14%) IntelliJ
6 7 (4.17%) Bitbucket
6 7 (4.17%) Postman
7 6 (3.57%) MLflow
8 5 (2.98%) Snyk
8 5 (2.98%) SonarQube
9 4 (2.38%) Mockito
10 3 (1.79%) JMeter
10 3 (1.79%) Selenium
11 2 (1.19%) Mocha
11 2 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.60%) CircleCI
12 1 (0.60%) fastlane
12 1 (0.60%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.60%) XCTest
General
1 40 (23.81%) Public Sector
2 38 (22.62%) Finance
3 20 (11.90%) Banking
3 20 (11.90%) Social Skills
4 17 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (1.79%) Games
6 2 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.60%) Automotive
7 1 (0.60%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.60%) Military
7 1 (0.60%) Retail
Job Titles
1 43 (25.60%) Developer
2 22 (13.10%) Java Developer
2 22 (13.10%) Software Engineer
3 19 (11.31%) Platform Engineer
3 19 (11.31%) Senior
4 18 (10.71%) DevOps Engineer
5 16 (9.52%) Security Engineer
6 15 (8.93%) Architect
7 14 (8.33%) Java Engineer
7 14 (8.33%) Java Software Engineer
8 13 (7.74%) AWS Engineer
9 10 (5.95%) Lead
10 9 (5.36%) Cloud Engineer
10 9 (5.36%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 8 (4.76%) Lead Developer
12 7 (4.17%) Data Engineer
12 7 (4.17%) Software Developer
13 6 (3.57%) AWS Architect
13 6 (3.57%) AWS DevOps
13 6 (3.57%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (35.12%) Spring
2 58 (34.52%) Spring Boot
3 28 (16.67%) Kafka
4 27 (16.07%) RESTful
5 23 (13.69%) REST
6 12 (7.14%) Hibernate
6 12 (7.14%) OpenTelemetry
7 11 (6.55%) Node.js
8 9 (5.36%) React
9 7 (4.17%) JAX-RS
9 7 (4.17%) JMS
9 7 (4.17%) JSON
9 7 (4.17%) Spring Security
10 6 (3.57%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (3.57%) HTML
10 6 (3.57%) JWT
10 6 (3.57%) OAuth
11 5 (2.98%) AngularJS
11 5 (2.98%) Flask
11 5 (2.98%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 32 (19.05%) Cloud Native
2 7 (4.17%) Distributed Systems
2 7 (4.17%) Product Ownership
2 7 (4.17%) Public Cloud
2 7 (4.17%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 6 (3.57%) Private Cloud
3 6 (3.57%) Security Posture
4 4 (2.38%) Cloud Security Posture
4 4 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (2.38%) Management Information System
5 3 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (1.79%) Linux Command Line
5 3 (1.79%) Onboarding
6 2 (1.19%) Algorithms
6 2 (1.19%) Data Centre
6 2 (1.19%) Data Structures
6 2 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.19%) NHS
6 2 (1.19%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 39 (23.21%) Linux
2 14 (8.33%) Windows
3 10 (5.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (4.17%) Windows Server
5 4 (2.38%) Unix
5 4 (2.38%) Windows Server 2012
5 4 (2.38%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.60%) Android
6 1 (0.60%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.60%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (60.12%) CI/CD
2 82 (48.81%) DevOps
3 76 (45.24%) Containerisation
4 50 (29.76%) Infrastructure as Code
5 48 (28.57%) Agile
6 45 (26.79%) Microservices
7 37 (22.02%) Problem-Solving
8 33 (19.64%) Observability
8 33 (19.64%) Software Engineering
9 23 (13.69%) Test Automation
10 20 (11.90%) Cloud Security
11 17 (10.12%) DevSecOps
11 17 (10.12%) Event-Driven
11 17 (10.12%) Infrastructure Automation
11 17 (10.12%) TDD
12 16 (9.52%) Platform Engineering
13 14 (8.33%) AI
13 14 (8.33%) SDLC
14 13 (7.74%) API Design
14 13 (7.74%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 77 (45.83%) Java
2 63 (37.50%) Python
3 26 (15.48%) Bash
4 24 (14.29%) SQL
5 15 (8.93%) PowerShell
6 14 (8.33%) TypeScript
7 12 (7.14%) Kotlin
8 11 (6.55%) Go
9 7 (4.17%) JavaScript
10 6 (3.57%) Ruby
11 5 (2.98%) PHP
12 4 (2.38%) C#
13 2 (1.19%) Bicep
13 2 (1.19%) Perl
14 1 (0.60%) C
14 1 (0.60%) C++
14 1 (0.60%) Clojure
14 1 (0.60%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.60%) Swift
Qualifications
1 36 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 23 (13.69%) SC Cleared
3 13 (7.74%) Degree
4 11 (6.55%) AWS Certification
4 11 (6.55%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (4.76%) CISSP
6 7 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (3.57%) Azure Certification
8 5 (2.98%) CISM
9 4 (2.38%) DV Cleared
10 3 (1.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (1.19%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (1.19%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.60%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.60%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.95%) QA
2 8 (4.76%) ISO 20022
2 8 (4.76%) PSD2
3 7 (4.17%) Accessibility
3 7 (4.17%) SEPA
4 6 (3.57%) NIST
5 5 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (2.38%) GDPR
7 3 (1.79%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (1.79%) HIPAA
8 2 (1.19%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.60%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.60%) WCAG
System Software
1 112 (66.67%) Docker
2 12 (7.14%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (7.14%) vSphere
3 6 (3.57%) Active Directory
4 4 (2.38%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.19%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 59 (35.12%) Terraform
2 31 (18.45%) Grafana
3 11 (6.55%) Prometheus
4 5 (2.98%) Ansible
4 5 (2.98%) Fluentd
4 5 (2.98%) Progress Chef
4 5 (2.98%) SCCM
5 4 (2.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (1.79%) Istio
7 1 (0.60%) Puppet
Vendors
1 16 (9.52%) Microsoft
2 15 (8.93%) Oracle
3 13 (7.74%) VMware
4 11 (6.55%) Splunk
5 8 (4.76%) F5
5 8 (4.76%) Red Hat
6 7 (4.17%) Cribl.io
6 7 (4.17%) Google
7 5 (2.98%) Checkmarx
7 5 (2.98%) Veracode
8 4 (2.38%) Confluent
8 4 (2.38%) Palo Alto
8 4 (2.38%) Veeam
9 3 (1.79%) PagerDuty
10 2 (1.19%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.19%) CyberArk
10 2 (1.19%) Ping Identity
10 2 (1.19%) Varonis
11 1 (0.60%) Citrix
11 1 (0.60%) ServiceNow