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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 46 53
Rank change year-on-year +14 +7 -21
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 168 86 87
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.06% 4.24% 3.11%
As % of the Systems Management category 41.08% 26.63% 25.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 119 65 63
10th Percentile £357 £363 £415
25th Percentile £402 £419 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -10.42%
75th Percentile £599 £575 £669
90th Percentile £643 £615 £699
England median daily rate £525 £587 £563
% change year-on-year -10.52% +4.31% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 1 8
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 £49.01
90th Percentile £69.13 - £59.38
England median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -6.25%

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 409 323 342
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.76% 15.93% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 259 190 243
10th Percentile £313 £250 £311
25th Percentile £368 £375 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £566 £584
90th Percentile £638 £638 £668
England median daily rate £500 £537 £525
% change year-on-year -6.93% +2.33% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 8 27
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £16.69
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 £55.63
90th Percentile £73.83 £80.50 £80.25
England median hourly rate £53.25 £26.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +100.94% -33.75% -20.89%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +3 106 £525 +5.10% 55
Cheshire +19 49 £440 +19.89% 8
Merseyside -11 6 £330 +10.00% 2
Lancashire -18 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 9 (5.36%) Confluence
2 7 (4.17%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (2.38%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.38%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.60%) Apache
Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 109 (64.88%) AWS
2 62 (36.90%) Azure
3 40 (23.81%) GCP
4 31 (18.45%) GitHub
5 23 (13.69%) 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 8 (4.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 7 (4.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 6 (3.57%) Amazon SQS
15 6 (3.57%) Apigee
15 6 (3.57%) Azure AKS
16 5 (2.98%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 24 (14.29%) Firewall
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%) TCP/IP
4 3 (1.79%) BGP
4 3 (1.79%) Software-Defined Networking
4 3 (1.79%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (9.52%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (7.14%) NoSQL
3 9 (5.36%) MySQL
4 8 (4.76%) Relational Database
5 7 (4.17%) DocumentDB
6 5 (2.98%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (2.98%) Big Data
6 5 (2.98%) MongoDB
7 4 (2.38%) DynamoDB
7 4 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (2.38%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.79%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.19%) Apache Cassandra
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 18 (10.71%) 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 3 (1.79%) JMeter
9 3 (1.79%) Selenium
10 2 (1.19%) Mocha
10 2 (1.19%) Mockito
10 2 (1.19%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.60%) Android Studio
11 1 (0.60%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.60%) fastlane
11 1 (0.60%) Spinnaker
General
1 41 (24.40%) Finance
2 38 (22.62%) Public Sector
3 21 (12.50%) Banking
4 20 (11.90%) Social Skills
5 17 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (1.79%) Games
7 2 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.19%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.60%) Automotive
8 1 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.60%) Military
8 1 (0.60%) Retail
Job Titles
1 42 (25.00%) Developer
2 22 (13.10%) Software Engineer
3 21 (12.50%) Java Developer
4 19 (11.31%) Security Engineer
5 18 (10.71%) Platform Engineer
5 18 (10.71%) Senior
6 17 (10.12%) DevOps Engineer
7 15 (8.93%) Architect
8 14 (8.33%) Java Engineer
8 14 (8.33%) Java Software Engineer
9 13 (7.74%) AWS Engineer
10 10 (5.95%) Cloud Engineer
10 10 (5.95%) Lead
11 9 (5.36%) DevSecOps Engineer
12 8 (4.76%) Data Engineer
12 8 (4.76%) Lead Developer
13 7 (4.17%) Software Developer
14 6 (3.57%) AWS Architect
14 6 (3.57%) AWS DevOps
14 6 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (33.93%) Spring
2 56 (33.33%) Spring Boot
3 27 (16.07%) RESTful
4 26 (15.48%) Kafka
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%) JMS
9 7 (4.17%) JSON
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%) OAuth2
11 5 (2.98%) PySpark
11 5 (2.98%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 34 (20.24%) Cloud Native
2 8 (4.76%) Security Posture
3 7 (4.17%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (4.17%) Product Ownership
3 7 (4.17%) Public Cloud
3 7 (4.17%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 6 (3.57%) Private Cloud
5 5 (2.98%) Cloud Security Posture
5 5 (2.98%) Management Information System
6 4 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (2.38%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.79%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.19%) AI Agents
8 2 (1.19%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.19%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.19%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.19%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 39 (23.21%) Linux
2 15 (8.93%) Windows
3 9 (5.36%) 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 83 (49.40%) DevOps
3 77 (45.83%) Containerisation
4 51 (30.36%) Infrastructure as Code
5 49 (29.17%) Agile
6 43 (25.60%) Microservices
7 37 (22.02%) Problem-Solving
8 33 (19.64%) Observability
9 31 (18.45%) Software Engineering
10 23 (13.69%) Cloud Security
10 23 (13.69%) Test Automation
11 18 (10.71%) DevSecOps
12 17 (10.12%) Event-Driven
12 17 (10.12%) Infrastructure Automation
13 16 (9.52%) Platform Engineering
14 15 (8.93%) TDD
15 14 (8.33%) AI
15 14 (8.33%) SDLC
16 13 (7.74%) API Design
16 13 (7.74%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 75 (44.64%) Java
2 66 (39.29%) Python
3 26 (15.48%) Bash
4 24 (14.29%) SQL
5 17 (10.12%) 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
13 2 (1.19%) Shell Script
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%) 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 10 (5.95%) CISSP
6 7 (4.17%) Azure Certification
6 7 (4.17%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (3.57%) CISM
8 4 (2.38%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (1.19%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.19%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.60%) Master's Degree
11 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%) NIST
3 7 (4.17%) SEPA
4 6 (3.57%) GDPR
5 5 (2.98%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 5 (2.98%) HIPAA
5 5 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (1.19%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.60%) WCAG
System Software
1 113 (67.26%) Docker
2 11 (6.55%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (6.55%) vSphere
3 5 (2.98%) 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%) Fluentd
4 5 (2.98%) Progress Chef
5 4 (2.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (2.38%) Ansible
5 4 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (2.38%) SCCM
6 3 (1.79%) Istio
7 1 (0.60%) Puppet
Vendors
1 16 (9.52%) Microsoft
1 16 (9.52%) Oracle
2 12 (7.14%) VMware
3 11 (6.55%) Splunk
4 8 (4.76%) F5
4 8 (4.76%) Google
5 7 (4.17%) Cribl.io
5 7 (4.17%) Red Hat
6 5 (2.98%) Checkmarx
6 5 (2.98%) Veracode
7 4 (2.38%) Confluent
7 4 (2.38%) Palo Alto
7 4 (2.38%) Varonis
7 4 (2.38%) Veeam
8 3 (1.79%) CyberArk
8 3 (1.79%) PagerDuty
9 2 (1.19%) Atlassian
9 2 (1.19%) Ping Identity
10 1 (0.60%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.60%) Virgin Media