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 29 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 30 46 42
Rank change year-on-year +16 -4 -8
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 164 85 106
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.55% 3.95% 3.98%
As % of the Systems Management category 40.49% 28.72% 26.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 51 66
10th Percentile £334 £356 £425
25th Percentile £381 £431 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -1.18% -11.01%
75th Percentile £610 £581 £660
90th Percentile £650 £640 £697
England median daily rate £525 £590 £575
% change year-on-year -11.02% +2.61% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 3 23
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £52.50 - -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +19.10% - -12.87%
75th Percentile £60.31 £57.18 -
90th Percentile £70.43 £63.78 £62.50
England median hourly rate £66.00 £51.84 £56.25
% change year-on-year +27.31% -7.84% -16.36%

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 405 296 400
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 16.19% 13.77% 15.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 272 163 278
10th Percentile £300 £250 £300
25th Percentile £358 £375 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £576 £571 £582
90th Percentile £650 £653 £665
England median daily rate £513 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.67% -7.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 10 46
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £17.74
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £24.39
Median hourly rate £55.00 £44.59 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +23.35% -3.44% -7.30%
75th Percentile £61.25 £62.68 £56.56
90th Percentile £72.56 £78.50 £78.00
England median hourly rate £48.72 £26.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +83.85% -42.62% +31.94%

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 29 December 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in the North West over the 6 months to 29 December 2025.

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 29 December 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 0 93 £525 +2.44% 219
Cheshire +28 56 £415 +16.57% 105
Merseyside +2 8 £510 +70.00% 34
Lancashire -12 4 £550 +4.76% 53
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 (4.88%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (3.05%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.83%) Confluence
3 3 (1.83%) JBoss
4 2 (1.22%) Mule
4 2 (1.22%) Mule ESB
4 2 (1.22%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.61%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.61%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.61%) IIS
5 1 (0.61%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 102 (62.20%) AWS
2 56 (34.15%) Azure
3 43 (26.22%) GCP
4 32 (19.51%) GitHub
5 24 (14.63%) OpenShift
6 20 (12.20%) Amazon ECS
7 19 (11.59%) Serverless
8 18 (10.98%) AWS Lambda
9 16 (9.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (9.76%) AWS CloudFormation
10 15 (9.15%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (8.54%) Amazon EC2
12 13 (7.93%) Datadog
13 11 (6.71%) Amazon SQS
13 11 (6.71%) Apigee
14 10 (6.10%) SaaS
15 9 (5.49%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (5.49%) PaaS
16 8 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
17 6 (3.66%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 20 (12.20%) Firewall
2 4 (2.44%) HTTP
2 4 (2.44%) HTTPS
2 4 (2.44%) TCP/IP
2 4 (2.44%) VLAN
2 4 (2.44%) VPN
3 3 (1.83%) BGP
3 3 (1.83%) Network Security
3 3 (1.83%) Software-Defined Networking
4 2 (1.22%) DHCP
4 2 (1.22%) DNS
4 2 (1.22%) NetScaler
5 1 (0.61%) VoIP
5 1 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.61%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (12.20%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (10.98%) Relational Database
3 15 (9.15%) MySQL
4 11 (6.71%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (6.71%) NoSQL
5 9 (5.49%) DynamoDB
6 8 (4.88%) BigQuery
6 8 (4.88%) Redis
7 7 (4.27%) RDBMS
8 6 (3.66%) Amazon Aurora
8 6 (3.66%) Big Data
9 4 (2.44%) MongoDB
10 3 (1.83%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (1.83%) Data Lake
11 1 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.61%) Metadata
11 1 (0.61%) Power BI
11 1 (0.61%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 46 (28.05%) GitLab
2 44 (26.83%) Jenkins
3 41 (25.00%) Git
4 18 (10.98%) JIRA
5 15 (9.15%) Gradle
6 13 (7.93%) SonarQube
7 10 (6.10%) IntelliJ
8 8 (4.88%) Bitbucket
8 8 (4.88%) Postman
9 5 (3.05%) JUnit
9 5 (3.05%) Maven
9 5 (3.05%) MLflow
9 5 (3.05%) Snyk
9 5 (3.05%) SonarLint
10 4 (2.44%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (1.83%) Mockito
11 3 (1.83%) Rational DOORS
12 2 (1.22%) TeamCity
13 1 (0.61%) Cucumber
13 1 (0.61%) Xcode
General
1 36 (21.95%) Finance
2 31 (18.90%) Public Sector
3 29 (17.68%) Social Skills
4 28 (17.07%) Banking
5 16 (9.76%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.44%) Games
7 2 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.61%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.61%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.61%) Military
8 1 (0.61%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 36 (21.95%) Developer
2 22 (13.41%) Architect
2 22 (13.41%) Java Developer
3 21 (12.80%) Software Engineer
4 20 (12.20%) DevOps Engineer
5 18 (10.98%) Platform Engineer
6 16 (9.76%) Senior
7 14 (8.54%) AWS Engineer
8 12 (7.32%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 11 (6.71%) Java Engineer
9 11 (6.71%) Java Software Engineer
9 11 (6.71%) Security Engineer
9 11 (6.71%) Technical Architect
10 8 (4.88%) AWS DevOps
10 8 (4.88%) Cloud Engineer
10 8 (4.88%) Data Engineer
10 8 (4.88%) Java Architect
10 8 (4.88%) Java Technical Architect
10 8 (4.88%) Senior Developer
11 7 (4.27%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (34.15%) Spring Boot
2 48 (29.27%) Spring
3 32 (19.51%) RESTful
4 19 (11.59%) Kafka
4 19 (11.59%) REST
5 14 (8.54%) AngularJS
6 13 (7.93%) Node.js
7 12 (7.32%) JSON
7 12 (7.32%) React
8 11 (6.71%) JWT
9 10 (6.10%) Hibernate
9 10 (6.10%) OpenTelemetry
10 9 (5.49%) JMS
11 8 (4.88%) J2EE
12 7 (4.27%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (4.27%) HTML
12 7 (4.27%) JAX-RS
12 7 (4.27%) Spring Security
13 6 (3.66%) OAuth
13 6 (3.66%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 24 (14.63%) Cloud Native
2 9 (5.49%) Distributed Systems
2 9 (5.49%) Product Ownership
2 9 (5.49%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 6 (3.66%) N-Tier
4 4 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (2.44%) Private Cloud
5 3 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (1.83%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.22%) Algorithms
6 2 (1.22%) Data Structures
6 2 (1.22%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.61%) Cloud Security Posture
7 1 (0.61%) CUDA
7 1 (0.61%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.61%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.61%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (0.61%) IBM XIV
7 1 (0.61%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 42 (25.61%) Linux
2 16 (9.76%) Windows
3 9 (5.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (3.05%) Unix
4 5 (3.05%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.22%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.61%) Android
6 1 (0.61%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (62.20%) CI/CD
2 84 (51.22%) Containerisation
3 76 (46.34%) DevOps
4 47 (28.66%) Microservices
5 46 (28.05%) Agile
6 43 (26.22%) Infrastructure as Code
7 42 (25.61%) Problem-Solving
8 31 (18.90%) Software Engineering
9 29 (17.68%) Observability
10 21 (12.80%) TDD
10 21 (12.80%) Test Automation
11 20 (12.20%) SDLC
12 19 (11.59%) API Design
13 18 (10.98%) DevSecOps
13 18 (10.98%) Unit Testing
14 17 (10.37%) AI
15 16 (9.76%) Cloud Security
15 16 (9.76%) Event-Driven
15 16 (9.76%) Infrastructure Automation
16 14 (8.54%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 75 (45.73%) Java
2 69 (42.07%) Python
3 28 (17.07%) Bash
4 26 (15.85%) SQL
5 10 (6.10%) Kotlin
5 10 (6.10%) PHP
6 9 (5.49%) PowerShell
6 9 (5.49%) TypeScript
7 7 (4.27%) Go
7 7 (4.27%) JavaScript
8 6 (3.66%) Ruby
9 4 (2.44%) C#
9 4 (2.44%) C++
9 4 (2.44%) Perl
10 3 (1.83%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.61%) Bicep
11 1 (0.61%) C
11 1 (0.61%) Korn
11 1 (0.61%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.61%) Scala
Qualifications
1 36 (21.95%) Security Cleared
2 19 (11.59%) SC Cleared
3 12 (7.32%) Degree
4 10 (6.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (4.88%) AWS Certification
6 6 (3.66%) CISSP
7 5 (3.05%) CISM
8 4 (2.44%) Azure Certification
8 4 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.83%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (1.22%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.22%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.61%) OSCP
11 1 (0.61%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (7.93%) QA
2 10 (6.10%) Accessibility
2 10 (6.10%) ISO 20022
2 10 (6.10%) PSD2
3 9 (5.49%) SEPA
4 5 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (3.05%) NIST
5 3 (1.83%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.61%) GDPR
6 1 (0.61%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 112 (68.29%) Docker
2 10 (6.10%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (6.10%) vSphere
3 5 (3.05%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (1.22%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 54 (32.93%) Terraform
2 28 (17.07%) Grafana
3 9 (5.49%) Prometheus
4 6 (3.66%) Ansible
5 5 (3.05%) Fluentd
5 5 (3.05%) Progress Chef
6 3 (1.83%) Podman
6 3 (1.83%) SCCM
6 3 (1.83%) SELinux
7 2 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (1.22%) Istio
7 2 (1.22%) Kibana
7 2 (1.22%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.61%) Argo
8 1 (0.61%) Puppet
Vendors
1 23 (14.02%) Oracle
2 18 (10.98%) Splunk
3 11 (6.71%) Microsoft
3 11 (6.71%) VMware
4 10 (6.10%) AppDynamics
5 8 (4.88%) Red Hat
6 7 (4.27%) Cribl.io
7 6 (3.66%) Dynatrace
7 6 (3.66%) F5
7 6 (3.66%) Gigya
8 5 (3.05%) Checkmarx
8 5 (3.05%) Google
8 5 (3.05%) Veracode
9 4 (2.44%) Confluent
9 4 (2.44%) Palo Alto
10 3 (1.83%) Cloudera
11 2 (1.22%) Ping Identity
11 2 (1.22%) Veeam
12 1 (0.61%) OpenAI
12 1 (0.61%) Virgin Media