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 30 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 32 47 45
Rank change year-on-year +15 -2 -17
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 149 79 106
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.08% 3.43% 3.94%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.11% 27.72% 25.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 43 68
10th Percentile £333 £356 £425
25th Percentile £367 £406 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £639
90th Percentile £656 £725 £691
England median daily rate £530 £595 £585
% change year-on-year -10.92% +1.71% -6.40%
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% -3.10%

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 381 285 410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 15.55% 12.39% 15.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 269 147 292
10th Percentile £300 £234 £313
25th Percentile £358 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £583
90th Percentile £650 £656 £663
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 12 40
10th Percentile - £21.36 £17.75
25th Percentile £15.50 £24.18 £39.86
Median hourly rate £18.87 £44.59 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -57.68% -3.44% +13.81%
75th Percentile £55.44 £53.61 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £76.57 £78.00
England median hourly rate £37.00 £35.08 £46.18
% change year-on-year +5.47% -24.03% +77.62%

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 30 November 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 30 November 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 +2 78 £522 -5.14% 34
Cheshire +29 58 £402 -12.94% 17
Merseyside +1 5 £510 +70.00% 4
Lancashire -16 4 £550 +4.76% 19
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 (5.37%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (3.36%) Confluence
2 5 (3.36%) OpenStack
3 4 (2.68%) JBoss
4 2 (1.34%) Mule
4 2 (1.34%) Mule ESB
4 2 (1.34%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.67%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.67%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.67%) IIS
5 1 (0.67%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.67%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 93 (62.42%) AWS
2 53 (35.57%) Azure
3 41 (27.52%) GCP
4 31 (20.81%) GitHub
5 28 (18.79%) OpenShift
6 18 (12.08%) Serverless
7 17 (11.41%) Amazon ECS
8 16 (10.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 16 (10.74%) AWS Lambda
8 16 (10.74%) GitHub Actions
9 15 (10.07%) SaaS
10 14 (9.40%) Amazon EC2
10 14 (9.40%) AWS CloudFormation
10 14 (9.40%) Datadog
10 14 (9.40%) PaaS
11 11 (7.38%) Amazon SQS
11 11 (7.38%) Apigee
12 10 (6.71%) IaaS
13 9 (6.04%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (4.70%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (12.08%) Firewall
2 4 (2.68%) HTTP
2 4 (2.68%) HTTPS
2 4 (2.68%) VLAN
2 4 (2.68%) VPN
3 3 (2.01%) BGP
3 3 (2.01%) Network Security
3 3 (2.01%) Software-Defined Networking
4 2 (1.34%) TCP/IP
4 2 (1.34%) X.509
5 1 (0.67%) VoIP
5 1 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (16.11%) Relational Database
2 18 (12.08%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (10.07%) MySQL
4 11 (7.38%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (6.04%) DynamoDB
5 9 (6.04%) NoSQL
6 8 (5.37%) BigQuery
6 8 (5.37%) RDBMS
6 8 (5.37%) Redis
7 6 (4.03%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (4.03%) Big Data
8 4 (2.68%) MongoDB
9 3 (2.01%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (2.01%) Data Lake
10 2 (1.34%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.67%) ObjectStore
11 1 (0.67%) Power BI
11 1 (0.67%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 43 (28.86%) Jenkins
2 41 (27.52%) Git
3 35 (23.49%) GitLab
4 21 (14.09%) JIRA
5 13 (8.72%) SonarQube
6 8 (5.37%) Postman
7 7 (4.70%) Bitbucket
8 5 (3.36%) Gradle
8 5 (3.36%) JUnit
8 5 (3.36%) Maven
8 5 (3.36%) MLflow
8 5 (3.36%) SonarLint
8 5 (3.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (2.68%) Snyk
10 3 (2.01%) Mockito
10 3 (2.01%) Rational DOORS
10 3 (2.01%) TeamCity
11 2 (1.34%) Artifactory
11 2 (1.34%) Bitbucket Server
11 2 (1.34%) SpecFlow
General
1 34 (22.82%) Finance
2 28 (18.79%) Social Skills
3 27 (18.12%) Banking
3 27 (18.12%) Public Sector
4 13 (8.72%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.68%) Games
6 2 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.67%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.67%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.67%) Military
7 1 (0.67%) Retail
7 1 (0.67%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 35 (23.49%) Developer
2 21 (14.09%) Java Developer
3 19 (12.75%) Architect
3 19 (12.75%) DevOps Engineer
4 17 (11.41%) Platform Engineer
5 15 (10.07%) Senior
6 12 (8.05%) Software Engineer
7 11 (7.38%) AWS Engineer
7 11 (7.38%) Security Engineer
7 11 (7.38%) Technical Architect
8 9 (6.04%) AWS DevOps
8 9 (6.04%) Lead
9 8 (5.37%) Data Engineer
9 8 (5.37%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 8 (5.37%) Java Architect
9 8 (5.37%) Java Technical Architect
9 8 (5.37%) Senior Developer
10 7 (4.70%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 6 (4.03%) Senior Java Developer
11 6 (4.03%) Virtualisation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (29.53%) Spring Boot
2 35 (23.49%) Spring
3 30 (20.13%) RESTful
4 20 (13.42%) AngularJS
5 19 (12.75%) Kafka
6 18 (12.08%) Node.js
7 16 (10.74%) REST
8 11 (7.38%) JWT
8 11 (7.38%) React
9 10 (6.71%) Hibernate
9 10 (6.71%) JSON
10 9 (6.04%) JMS
11 8 (5.37%) Elastic Stack
11 8 (5.37%) J2EE
12 7 (4.70%) HTML
12 7 (4.70%) JAX-RS
12 7 (4.70%) Spring Security
13 6 (4.03%) OAuth
13 6 (4.03%) OAuth2
13 6 (4.03%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (16.11%) Cloud Native
2 9 (6.04%) Distributed Systems
2 9 (6.04%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 8 (5.37%) Product Ownership
4 6 (4.03%) N-Tier
5 4 (2.68%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.34%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.34%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.34%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.34%) PKI
7 2 (1.34%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.67%) Clustering
8 1 (0.67%) CUDA
8 1 (0.67%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.67%) Enterprise Storage
8 1 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.67%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.67%) IBM XIV
8 1 (0.67%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 45 (30.20%) Linux
2 20 (13.42%) Windows
3 10 (6.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (3.36%) Unix
5 3 (2.01%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (67.11%) CI/CD
2 88 (59.06%) Containerisation
3 73 (48.99%) DevOps
4 46 (30.87%) Microservices
5 45 (30.20%) Agile
6 40 (26.85%) Infrastructure as Code
7 38 (25.50%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (22.82%) Observability
9 23 (15.44%) Software Engineering
10 21 (14.09%) Test Automation
11 20 (13.42%) TDD
12 18 (12.08%) API Design
12 18 (12.08%) SDLC
13 17 (11.41%) Unit Testing
14 16 (10.74%) AI
14 16 (10.74%) Cloud Security
14 16 (10.74%) Event-Driven
14 16 (10.74%) Platform Engineering
15 15 (10.07%) DevSecOps
15 15 (10.07%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 70 (46.98%) Python
2 62 (41.61%) Java
3 27 (18.12%) Bash
4 24 (16.11%) SQL
5 15 (10.07%) PHP
6 9 (6.04%) TypeScript
7 6 (4.03%) Go
7 6 (4.03%) JavaScript
7 6 (4.03%) PowerShell
8 5 (3.36%) Perl
9 4 (2.68%) C#
9 4 (2.68%) C++
10 3 (2.01%) PL/SQL
10 3 (2.01%) Ruby
11 1 (0.67%) Bicep
11 1 (0.67%) C
11 1 (0.67%) Clojure
11 1 (0.67%) Korn
11 1 (0.67%) Scala
Qualifications
1 35 (23.49%) Security Cleared
2 18 (12.08%) SC Cleared
3 11 (7.38%) Degree
4 9 (6.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (4.70%) AWS Certification
5 7 (4.70%) CISSP
6 6 (4.03%) CISM
7 5 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (2.01%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (1.34%) DV Cleared
9 2 (1.34%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.67%) OSCP
10 1 (0.67%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (8.05%) QA
2 9 (6.04%) ISO 20022
2 9 (6.04%) PSD2
2 9 (6.04%) SEPA
3 6 (4.03%) Accessibility
3 6 (4.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (4.03%) NIST
4 3 (2.01%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.67%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.67%) WCAG
System Software
1 113 (75.84%) Docker
2 8 (5.37%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (5.37%) vSphere
3 4 (2.68%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 49 (32.89%) Terraform
2 22 (14.77%) Grafana
3 9 (6.04%) Prometheus
4 6 (4.03%) Ansible
4 6 (4.03%) Progress Chef
5 5 (3.36%) Fluentd
6 3 (2.01%) Kibana
6 3 (2.01%) Podman
6 3 (2.01%) SELinux
7 1 (0.67%) Argo
7 1 (0.67%) Istio
7 1 (0.67%) Puppet
7 1 (0.67%) SCCM
Vendors
1 28 (18.79%) Oracle
2 19 (12.75%) Splunk
3 16 (10.74%) AppDynamics
4 13 (8.72%) Microsoft
5 9 (6.04%) Red Hat
5 9 (6.04%) VMware
6 7 (4.70%) Cribl.io
7 6 (4.03%) Dynatrace
7 6 (4.03%) Gigya
8 4 (2.68%) Checkmarx
8 4 (2.68%) Cloudera
8 4 (2.68%) Confluent
8 4 (2.68%) F5
8 4 (2.68%) Google
8 4 (2.68%) Palo Alto
8 4 (2.68%) Veracode
9 2 (1.34%) Atlassian
9 2 (1.34%) Ping Identity
10 1 (0.67%) BiZZdesign
10 1 (0.67%) OpenAI