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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 38 56
Rank change year-on-year -16 +18 -12
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 152 116 67
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.91% 5.29% 2.83%
As % of the Systems Management category 32.41% 38.03% 31.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 93 39
10th Percentile £413 £319 £356
25th Percentile £463 £385 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -7.49%
75th Percentile £620 £575 £613
90th Percentile £711 £660 £685
England median daily rate £540 £528 £570
% change year-on-year +2.37% -7.46% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 2 2
10th Percentile £69.50 £75.65 -
25th Percentile £75.50 £78.88 -
Median hourly rate £77.00 £87.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -11.49% +88.39% -
75th Percentile - £92.38 -
90th Percentile £84.20 £93.95 -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +4.48% +21.82% -24.66%

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 469 305 215
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 12.06% 13.91% 9.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 336 207 143
10th Percentile £240 £264 £201
25th Percentile £375 £350 £306
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £450 £448
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% +0.56% -10.50%
75th Percentile £575 £539 £550
90th Percentile £639 £650 £624
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.95% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 15 6
10th Percentile £21.25 £15.50 £27.88
25th Percentile £47.87 £18.12 £33.67
Median hourly rate £75.00 £20.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +275.00% -56.69% -
75th Percentile £77.00 £63.58 £48.11
90th Percentile - £77.60 £76.38
England median hourly rate £67.24 £34.00 £39.25
% change year-on-year +97.75% -13.38% -23.41%

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 -1 110 £550 +10.00% 226
Cheshire -16 28 £550 +15.79% 19
Lancashire -15 7 £712 +35.66% 25
Cumbria - 3 £525 -
Merseyside -22 1 £575 +12.75% 5
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 4 (2.63%) Tomcat
2 3 (1.97%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.32%) Apache
3 2 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.32%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.66%) Confluence
4 1 (0.66%) nginx
4 1 (0.66%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.66%) FIS Private Capital Suite
1 1 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 102 (67.11%) AWS
2 75 (49.34%) Azure
3 44 (28.95%) GCP
4 22 (14.47%) AWS CloudFormation
5 20 (13.16%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (12.50%) GitHub
7 18 (11.84%) Azure AKS
8 16 (10.53%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 16 (10.53%) Serverless
9 15 (9.87%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (9.87%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (7.89%) Amazon ECS
11 10 (6.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (6.58%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (6.58%) OpenShift
12 9 (5.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 8 (5.26%) Azure Sentinel
14 6 (3.95%) Entra ID
14 6 (3.95%) GitHub Copilot
14 6 (3.95%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 15 (9.87%) Firewall
2 7 (4.61%) Network Security
3 5 (3.29%) HTTP
4 4 (2.63%) DNS
5 2 (1.32%) SSL
5 2 (1.32%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.32%) VPN
6 1 (0.66%) BGP
6 1 (0.66%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (0.66%) DHCP
6 1 (0.66%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.66%) MPLS
6 1 (0.66%) OSPF
6 1 (0.66%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.66%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.66%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.66%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (7.24%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (5.92%) NoSQL
3 8 (5.26%) MySQL
3 8 (5.26%) Relational Database
3 8 (5.26%) SQL Server
4 4 (2.63%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.32%) Data Lake
5 2 (1.32%) DocumentDB
5 2 (1.32%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.66%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.66%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.66%) Flink
6 1 (0.66%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.66%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.66%) Semantic Layer
6 1 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 25 (16.45%) Git
2 20 (13.16%) GitLab
3 19 (12.50%) Jenkins
4 8 (5.26%) JUnit
5 7 (4.61%) SonarQube
6 6 (3.95%) Claude Code
6 6 (3.95%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (3.29%) Cucumber
7 5 (3.29%) Mockito
8 4 (2.63%) Bitbucket
8 4 (2.63%) Gradle
8 4 (2.63%) Postman
8 4 (2.63%) Selenium
9 2 (1.32%) Burp Suite
9 2 (1.32%) Gatling
9 2 (1.32%) JIRA
9 2 (1.32%) LoadRunner
9 2 (1.32%) Maven
9 2 (1.32%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.66%) Cypress.io
General
1 39 (25.66%) Finance
2 25 (16.45%) Social Skills
3 14 (9.21%) Public Sector
4 10 (6.58%) Banking
5 8 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (4.61%) Retail
7 4 (2.63%) Military
8 3 (1.97%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.66%) Police
Job Titles
1 30 (19.74%) DevOps Engineer
2 27 (17.76%) Security Engineer
3 25 (16.45%) Senior
4 23 (15.13%) Software Engineer
5 22 (14.47%) Cloud Engineer
6 19 (12.50%) Lead
7 17 (11.18%) Developer
8 16 (10.53%) Java Engineer
9 15 (9.87%) Architect
9 15 (9.87%) Cloud Security Engineer
10 14 (9.21%) Java Software Engineer
11 11 (7.24%) AWS Engineer
12 9 (5.92%) Solutions Architect
13 8 (5.26%) Azure Engineer
13 8 (5.26%) Full-Stack Developer
13 8 (5.26%) Kubernetes Engineer
13 8 (5.26%) Lead Developer
14 7 (4.61%) Java Developer
14 7 (4.61%) Senior DevOps
14 7 (4.61%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (46.71%) Terraform
2 35 (23.03%) Spring
3 28 (18.42%) REST
4 27 (17.76%) Kafka
4 27 (17.76%) Spring Boot
5 21 (13.82%) Node.js
6 19 (12.50%) React
7 10 (6.58%) Next.js
8 9 (5.92%) RESTful
9 8 (5.26%) Spring MVC
10 6 (3.95%) Nunjucks
11 5 (3.29%) ARM Templates
11 5 (3.29%) Azure Blueprints
11 5 (3.29%) Express.js
12 4 (2.63%) AngularJS
12 4 (2.63%) Hibernate
12 4 (2.63%) Spring Security
13 3 (1.97%) AWS CDK
13 3 (1.97%) GraphQL
14 2 (1.32%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 64 (42.11%) Cloud Native
2 23 (15.13%) Security Posture
3 21 (13.82%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (7.24%) Management Information System
5 10 (6.58%) Enterprise Cloud
6 7 (4.61%) Cloud Security Posture
6 7 (4.61%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (3.95%) Public Cloud
8 5 (3.29%) AI Agents
8 5 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (3.29%) Onboarding
8 5 (3.29%) Private Cloud
9 4 (2.63%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (2.63%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (2.63%) PKI
10 3 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (1.97%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (1.97%) NHS
10 3 (1.97%) Replication
10 3 (1.97%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 34 (22.37%) Linux
2 19 (12.50%) Windows
3 18 (11.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.32%) Unix
6 1 (0.66%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (76.32%) CI/CD
2 88 (57.89%) DevOps
3 63 (41.45%) Infrastructure as Code
4 58 (38.16%) Agile
5 57 (37.50%) Observability
6 45 (29.61%) Microservices
7 43 (28.29%) Software Engineering
8 41 (26.97%) Containerisation
9 37 (24.34%) Cloud Security
10 33 (21.71%) Test Automation
11 30 (19.74%) Event-Driven
12 29 (19.08%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 28 (18.42%) Infrastructure Automation
14 26 (17.11%) AI
14 26 (17.11%) Scrum
15 22 (14.47%) Continuous Improvement
16 21 (13.82%) Change Management
17 20 (13.16%) Platform Engineering
17 20 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
18 18 (11.84%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 73 (48.03%) Java
2 53 (34.87%) Python
3 32 (21.05%) Bash
4 29 (19.08%) PowerShell
5 20 (13.16%) Bicep
6 17 (11.18%) SQL
7 15 (9.87%) TypeScript
8 11 (7.24%) JavaScript
9 8 (5.26%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.97%) Go
11 2 (1.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 30 (19.74%) Security Cleared
2 27 (17.76%) SC Cleared
3 20 (13.16%) Azure Certification
4 19 (12.50%) Degree
5 18 (11.84%) AWS Certification
6 15 (9.87%) CISSP
7 5 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.66%) CCIE
10 1 (0.66%) CCNP
10 1 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.66%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.66%) OCP
10 1 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.26%) GDPR
2 7 (4.61%) QA
3 6 (3.95%) Data Quality
4 4 (2.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.97%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.66%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (0.66%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.66%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.66%) NCSC
6 1 (0.66%) NIST
6 1 (0.66%) PSD2
6 1 (0.66%) SEPA
6 1 (0.66%) SLA
6 1 (0.66%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 87 (57.24%) Docker
2 5 (3.29%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.97%) Ceph
3 3 (1.97%) KVM
4 2 (1.32%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.32%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.66%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 19 (12.50%) Ansible
2 15 (9.87%) Progress Chef
3 13 (8.55%) Grafana
4 9 (5.92%) Prometheus
5 6 (3.95%) Istio
6 5 (3.29%) Argo
7 2 (1.32%) Packer
8 1 (0.66%) Consul
8 1 (0.66%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.66%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.66%) linkerd
8 1 (0.66%) Puppet
8 1 (0.66%) Rancher
8 1 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.66%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.66%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 20 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 19 (12.50%) Red Hat
3 18 (11.84%) Google
4 6 (3.95%) Dynatrace
5 4 (2.63%) Oracle
5 4 (2.63%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.63%) Splunk
6 3 (1.97%) SAP
7 2 (1.32%) Cisco
7 2 (1.32%) Confluent
7 2 (1.32%) OpenAI
7 2 (1.32%) Palo Alto
7 2 (1.32%) VMware
8 1 (0.66%) Apple
8 1 (0.66%) Databricks
8 1 (0.66%) ESET
8 1 (0.66%) Fortinet
8 1 (0.66%) Okta
8 1 (0.66%) Sage
8 1 (0.66%) Tanium