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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 40 64
Rank change year-on-year +8 +24 -26
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 173 93 75
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.57% 4.70% 2.66%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.70% 29.25% 25.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 73 61
10th Percentile £359 £393 £406
25th Percentile £444 £456 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.16% -2.10% -12.50%
75th Percentile £615 £588 £688
90th Percentile £652 £637 £700
England median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 1 3
10th Percentile - - £47.44
25th Percentile £52.50 £59.39 £49.34
Median hourly rate £55.00 £63.79 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.77% +15.97% -5.98%
75th Percentile £61.81 £68.18 £60.63
90th Percentile £68.13 - £62.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% - -14.29%

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 447 318 300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.40% 16.08% 10.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 292 203 224
10th Percentile £313 £250 £300
25th Percentile £400 £386 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £475 £507
Median % change year-on-year +1.71% -6.31% -3.43%
75th Percentile £592 £563 £600
90th Percentile £650 £655 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 8 18
10th Percentile £39.53 £21.05 £16.72
25th Percentile £52.50 £23.40 £17.72
Median hourly rate £55.00 £33.59 £18.11
Median % change year-on-year +63.74% +85.48% -51.71%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.51 £60.31
90th Percentile £74.26 £79.83 £79.88
England median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +107.55% -11.67% -45.45%

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 March 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 29 March 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 29 March 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 0 114 £538 +7.50% 63
Cheshire +6 46 £475 -3.06% 8
Merseyside - 6 £330 - 5
Lancashire -18 4 £550 -8.33% 18
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 10 (5.78%) Confluence
2 7 (4.05%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.31%) Apache
3 4 (2.31%) OpenStack
4 3 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 2 (1.16%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 110 (63.58%) AWS
2 74 (42.77%) Azure
3 47 (27.17%) GCP
4 33 (19.08%) GitHub
5 20 (11.56%) GitHub Actions
5 20 (11.56%) OpenShift
5 20 (11.56%) Serverless
6 16 (9.25%) Amazon EKS
7 14 (8.09%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 13 (7.51%) Azure DevOps
9 12 (6.94%) AWS CloudFormation
10 11 (6.36%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (5.20%) Amazon EC2
11 9 (5.20%) Azure AKS
12 8 (4.62%) Amazon S3
13 7 (4.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (4.05%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (4.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 6 (3.47%) Apigee
15 5 (2.89%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 24 (13.87%) Firewall
2 5 (2.89%) DNS
2 5 (2.89%) Network Security
3 4 (2.31%) DHCP
3 4 (2.31%) HTTP
3 4 (2.31%) HTTPS
3 4 (2.31%) NetScaler
3 4 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 3 (1.73%) BGP
4 3 (1.73%) Software-Defined Networking
4 3 (1.73%) VLAN
4 3 (1.73%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (12.72%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (6.94%) NoSQL
3 8 (4.62%) MySQL
3 8 (4.62%) Relational Database
4 7 (4.05%) DocumentDB
5 6 (3.47%) SQL Server
6 4 (2.31%) Data Lake
6 4 (2.31%) DynamoDB
6 4 (2.31%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (2.31%) Hadoop
6 4 (2.31%) MongoDB
7 3 (1.73%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.58%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.58%) Big Data
9 1 (0.58%) ObjectStore
9 1 (0.58%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.58%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 56 (32.37%) GitLab
2 31 (17.92%) Git
2 31 (17.92%) Jenkins
3 16 (9.25%) JIRA
4 12 (6.94%) Gradle
4 12 (6.94%) IntelliJ
5 7 (4.05%) Postman
6 3 (1.73%) Bitbucket
6 3 (1.73%) JMeter
6 3 (1.73%) Selenium
6 3 (1.73%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.16%) MLflow
7 2 (1.16%) Mocha
7 2 (1.16%) Snyk
8 1 (0.58%) Android Studio
8 1 (0.58%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.58%) fastlane
8 1 (0.58%) Mockito
8 1 (0.58%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.58%) Xcode
General
1 42 (24.28%) Finance
2 33 (19.08%) Public Sector
3 20 (11.56%) Banking
4 19 (10.98%) Social Skills
5 13 (7.51%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (1.16%) Financial Institution
6 2 (1.16%) Games
6 2 (1.16%) Retail
7 1 (0.58%) Automotive
7 1 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 39 (22.54%) Developer
2 26 (15.03%) Software Engineer
3 22 (12.72%) Senior
4 20 (11.56%) DevOps Engineer
5 19 (10.98%) Java Developer
5 19 (10.98%) Security Engineer
6 18 (10.40%) Platform Engineer
7 17 (9.83%) Architect
7 17 (9.83%) Java Engineer
8 16 (9.25%) Java Software Engineer
9 13 (7.51%) Lead
10 11 (6.36%) Cloud Engineer
11 10 (5.78%) AWS Engineer
12 9 (5.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 8 (4.62%) Lead Developer
13 8 (4.62%) Software Developer
14 7 (4.05%) AWS Architect
14 7 (4.05%) Cloud Architect
15 6 (3.47%) DevSecOps Engineer
15 6 (3.47%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (34.68%) Spring
2 56 (32.37%) Spring Boot
3 24 (13.87%) Kafka
3 24 (13.87%) REST
3 24 (13.87%) RESTful
4 14 (8.09%) Node.js
4 14 (8.09%) OpenTelemetry
5 11 (6.36%) Hibernate
6 8 (4.62%) OAuth
7 7 (4.05%) JSON
8 6 (3.47%) GraphQL
8 6 (3.47%) JMS
8 6 (3.47%) JWT
8 6 (3.47%) React
9 5 (2.89%) OAuth2
9 5 (2.89%) RabbitMQ
10 4 (2.31%) .NET
10 4 (2.31%) JAX-RS
10 4 (2.31%) Spring Security
10 4 (2.31%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (22.54%) Cloud Native
2 12 (6.94%) Security Posture
3 7 (4.05%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (4.05%) Product Ownership
3 7 (4.05%) Public Cloud
3 7 (4.05%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 6 (3.47%) Private Cloud
5 5 (2.89%) Cloud Security Posture
5 5 (2.89%) Linux Command Line
5 5 (2.89%) Management Information System
6 4 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.73%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.73%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.73%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.16%) Driving Licence
8 2 (1.16%) NHS
8 2 (1.16%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 39 (22.54%) Linux
2 15 (8.67%) Windows
3 9 (5.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (4.05%) Windows Server
5 4 (2.31%) Unix
5 4 (2.31%) Windows Server 2012
5 4 (2.31%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.58%) Android
6 1 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.58%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (63.01%) CI/CD
2 88 (50.87%) DevOps
3 82 (47.40%) Containerisation
4 60 (34.68%) Infrastructure as Code
5 51 (29.48%) Agile
6 44 (25.43%) Microservices
7 38 (21.97%) Problem-Solving
8 35 (20.23%) Observability
9 33 (19.08%) Software Engineering
10 25 (14.45%) Test Automation
11 22 (12.72%) Cloud Security
12 21 (12.14%) Event-Driven
13 20 (11.56%) Infrastructure Automation
14 18 (10.40%) DevSecOps
14 18 (10.40%) Platform Engineering
15 16 (9.25%) Continuous Improvement
16 14 (8.09%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 14 (8.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 13 (7.51%) API Design
17 13 (7.51%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 75 (43.35%) Java
2 70 (40.46%) Python
3 33 (19.08%) Bash
4 27 (15.61%) SQL
5 21 (12.14%) PowerShell
6 15 (8.67%) TypeScript
7 12 (6.94%) Kotlin
8 10 (5.78%) Go
9 8 (4.62%) Bicep
9 8 (4.62%) JavaScript
10 4 (2.31%) C#
10 4 (2.31%) PHP
10 4 (2.31%) Ruby
11 2 (1.16%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.58%) C
12 1 (0.58%) C++
12 1 (0.58%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.58%) Swift
Qualifications
1 34 (19.65%) Security Cleared
2 21 (12.14%) SC Cleared
3 13 (7.51%) Degree
4 12 (6.94%) AWS Certification
5 11 (6.36%) Azure Certification
5 11 (6.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (4.05%) CISSP
7 5 (2.89%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 4 (2.31%) CISM
8 4 (2.31%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.58%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.58%) OCP
10 1 (0.58%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.94%) GDPR
2 10 (5.78%) QA
3 8 (4.62%) ISO 20022
3 8 (4.62%) NIST
3 8 (4.62%) PSD2
4 7 (4.05%) Accessibility
4 7 (4.05%) SEPA
5 5 (2.89%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 5 (2.89%) HIPAA
5 5 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (2.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 4 (2.31%) Data Quality
7 2 (1.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 114 (65.90%) Docker
2 12 (6.94%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (6.94%) vSphere
3 6 (3.47%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.89%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (2.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.58%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.58%) zsh
Systems Management
1 67 (38.73%) Terraform
2 37 (21.39%) Grafana
3 18 (10.40%) Prometheus
4 7 (4.05%) Argo
5 6 (3.47%) Istio
5 6 (3.47%) Progress Chef
6 5 (2.89%) Ansible
7 4 (2.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 4 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (2.31%) SCCM
8 3 (1.73%) Fluentd
9 2 (1.16%) linkerd
9 2 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.58%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 21 (12.14%) Microsoft
2 14 (8.09%) Splunk
3 13 (7.51%) Oracle
3 13 (7.51%) VMware
4 11 (6.36%) Google
5 10 (5.78%) Red Hat
6 8 (4.62%) F5
7 5 (2.89%) Cribl.io
7 5 (2.89%) Varonis
8 4 (2.31%) Confluent
8 4 (2.31%) Palo Alto
8 4 (2.31%) Veeam
9 3 (1.73%) CyberArk
9 3 (1.73%) PagerDuty
10 2 (1.16%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.16%) Checkmarx
10 2 (1.16%) Dynatrace
10 2 (1.16%) Ping Identity
10 2 (1.16%) SAP
10 2 (1.16%) Veracode