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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 40 51
Rank change year-on-year -8 +11 -9
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 161 110 74
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 4.03% 5.01% 3.08%
As % of the Systems Management category 33.68% 37.67% 32.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 90 41
10th Percentile £408 £315 £356
25th Percentile £466 £369 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £463 £550
Median % change year-on-year +21.08% -15.91% -
75th Percentile £628 £575 £600
90th Percentile £709 £650 £675
England median daily rate £550 £525 £575
% change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 2 2
10th Percentile £75.00 £75.65 -
25th Percentile £76.00 £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 £90.00 £93.95 -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% -3.45%

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 478 292 230
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 11.96% 13.30% 9.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 343 198 133
10th Percentile £270 £259 £201
25th Percentile £381 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £448 £450
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -0.44% -7.02%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £565
90th Percentile £638 £644 £612
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 17 9
10th Percentile £50.95 - £23.55
25th Percentile £66.25 £15.50 £26.25
Median hourly rate £76.00 £18.87 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +302.76% -59.14% -
75th Percentile £77.00 £63.40 £48.75
90th Percentile £86.40 £74.15 £90.80
England median hourly rate £66.35 £34.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +95.13% -10.53% -27.62%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 -3 116 £560 +17.89% 198
Cheshire -14 27 £500 +16.28% 25
Lancashire - 10 £712 - 41
Cumbria - 4 £460 - 4
Merseyside -18 1 £575 +12.75% 8
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 (2.48%) Tomcat
2 3 (1.86%) Apache
2 3 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.86%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.86%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.62%) Confluence
3 1 (0.62%) nginx
3 1 (0.62%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.62%) FIS Private Capital Suite
1 1 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 105 (65.22%) AWS
2 75 (46.58%) Azure
3 51 (31.68%) GCP
4 24 (14.91%) AWS CloudFormation
5 22 (13.66%) GitHub
6 21 (13.04%) Azure DevOps
7 20 (12.42%) Azure AKS
8 18 (11.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 17 (10.56%) Serverless
10 16 (9.94%) Amazon EKS
10 16 (9.94%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (8.70%) Amazon ECS
12 11 (6.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 11 (6.83%) AWS Lambda
13 10 (6.21%) OpenShift
14 9 (5.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 8 (4.97%) Azure Sentinel
16 7 (4.35%) Entra ID
17 6 (3.73%) Amazon SQS
17 6 (3.73%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (9.32%) Firewall
2 8 (4.97%) Network Security
3 6 (3.73%) HTTP
4 3 (1.86%) DNS
5 2 (1.24%) SSL
5 2 (1.24%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.24%) VPN
6 1 (0.62%) BGP
6 1 (0.62%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (0.62%) DHCP
6 1 (0.62%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.62%) MPLS
6 1 (0.62%) OSPF
6 1 (0.62%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.62%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.62%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.62%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (7.45%) NoSQL
2 11 (6.83%) Relational Database
3 10 (6.21%) MySQL
3 10 (6.21%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (3.73%) SQL Server
5 4 (2.48%) DynamoDB
5 4 (2.48%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.24%) DocumentDB
7 1 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.62%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.62%) Big Data
7 1 (0.62%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.62%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.62%) Flink
7 1 (0.62%) Metadata
7 1 (0.62%) Parquet
7 1 (0.62%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.62%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.62%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 32 (19.88%) Git
2 24 (14.91%) GitLab
3 22 (13.66%) Jenkins
4 9 (5.59%) Claude Code
5 8 (4.97%) JUnit
6 7 (4.35%) Cucumber
6 7 (4.35%) SonarQube
7 6 (3.73%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (3.11%) Mockito
8 5 (3.11%) Selenium
9 4 (2.48%) Bitbucket
9 4 (2.48%) Gradle
9 4 (2.48%) Postman
10 3 (1.86%) Gatling
11 2 (1.24%) Burp Suite
11 2 (1.24%) JIRA
11 2 (1.24%) LoadRunner
11 2 (1.24%) Maven
11 2 (1.24%) REST Assured
12 1 (0.62%) Robot Framework
General
1 36 (22.36%) Finance
2 31 (19.25%) Social Skills
3 14 (8.70%) Public Sector
4 11 (6.83%) Banking
5 8 (4.97%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (4.35%) Retail
7 4 (2.48%) Military
8 3 (1.86%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.62%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.62%) Billing
9 1 (0.62%) Police
9 1 (0.62%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 35 (21.74%) DevOps Engineer
2 31 (19.25%) Senior
3 24 (14.91%) Cloud Engineer
3 24 (14.91%) Security Engineer
3 24 (14.91%) Software Engineer
4 22 (13.66%) Java Engineer
5 20 (12.42%) Developer
6 18 (11.18%) Lead
7 16 (9.94%) Java Software Engineer
8 15 (9.32%) Cloud Security Engineer
9 13 (8.07%) Architect
10 12 (7.45%) AWS Engineer
11 9 (5.59%) Azure Engineer
11 9 (5.59%) Java Developer
11 9 (5.59%) Senior DevOps
11 9 (5.59%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 8 (4.97%) Full-Stack Developer
13 7 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
13 7 (4.35%) Senior Java Engineer
13 7 (4.35%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (47.20%) Terraform
2 39 (24.22%) Spring
3 38 (23.60%) REST
4 36 (22.36%) Spring Boot
5 35 (21.74%) Kafka
6 25 (15.53%) React
7 20 (12.42%) Node.js
8 11 (6.83%) Next.js
8 11 (6.83%) RESTful
9 10 (6.21%) GraphQL
10 8 (4.97%) Spring MVC
11 7 (4.35%) Vue
12 5 (3.11%) ARM Templates
12 5 (3.11%) Azure Blueprints
13 4 (2.48%) AngularJS
13 4 (2.48%) Hibernate
13 4 (2.48%) HTML
13 4 (2.48%) Spring Security
13 4 (2.48%) Web Services
14 3 (1.86%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 69 (42.86%) Cloud Native
2 29 (18.01%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (12.42%) Security Posture
4 11 (6.83%) Enterprise Cloud
5 10 (6.21%) Management Information System
6 8 (4.97%) AI Agents
6 8 (4.97%) Onboarding
7 7 (4.35%) Cloud Security Posture
7 7 (4.35%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (3.73%) Public Cloud
9 5 (3.11%) Private Cloud
10 4 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (2.48%) Linux Command Line
10 4 (2.48%) PKI
11 3 (1.86%) Culture of Ownership
11 3 (1.86%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.86%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.86%) Replication
11 3 (1.86%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 34 (21.12%) Linux
2 19 (11.80%) Windows
3 18 (11.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.86%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.24%) Unix
6 1 (0.62%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (80.12%) CI/CD
2 95 (59.01%) DevOps
3 67 (41.61%) Agile
3 67 (41.61%) Infrastructure as Code
4 66 (40.99%) Observability
5 47 (29.19%) Microservices
6 45 (27.95%) Software Engineering
7 43 (26.71%) Containerisation
8 37 (22.98%) Cloud Security
9 36 (22.36%) Test Automation
10 34 (21.12%) Event-Driven
11 32 (19.88%) AI
12 31 (19.25%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 30 (18.63%) Infrastructure Automation
14 27 (16.77%) Scrum
15 24 (14.91%) Continuous Improvement
16 22 (13.66%) Mentoring
16 22 (13.66%) Platform Engineering
17 21 (13.04%) Change Management
18 20 (12.42%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 80 (49.69%) Java
2 52 (32.30%) Python
3 31 (19.25%) Bash
4 29 (18.01%) PowerShell
5 22 (13.66%) Bicep
6 21 (13.04%) TypeScript
7 19 (11.80%) SQL
8 16 (9.94%) JavaScript
9 9 (5.59%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.86%) Go
11 2 (1.24%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 32 (19.88%) Security Cleared
2 28 (17.39%) SC Cleared
3 20 (12.42%) Azure Certification
4 19 (11.80%) AWS Certification
4 19 (11.80%) Degree
5 15 (9.32%) CISSP
6 5 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (3.11%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (1.24%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.24%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 1 (0.62%) CCIE
8 1 (0.62%) CCNP
8 1 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.21%) QA
2 4 (2.48%) Accessibility
2 4 (2.48%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.86%) GDPR
4 2 (1.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.62%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.62%) NCSC
5 1 (0.62%) NIST
5 1 (0.62%) SLA
5 1 (0.62%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 92 (57.14%) Docker
2 6 (3.73%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.86%) Ceph
3 3 (1.86%) KVM
4 2 (1.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 1 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.62%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 18 (11.18%) Ansible
2 15 (9.32%) Progress Chef
3 13 (8.07%) Grafana
4 10 (6.21%) Prometheus
5 8 (4.97%) Istio
6 4 (2.48%) Argo
7 2 (1.24%) Packer
8 1 (0.62%) Consul
8 1 (0.62%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.62%) Kibana
8 1 (0.62%) linkerd
8 1 (0.62%) Puppet
8 1 (0.62%) Rancher
8 1 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.62%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 21 (13.04%) Google
2 18 (11.18%) Microsoft
2 18 (11.18%) Red Hat
3 8 (4.97%) Dynatrace
4 4 (2.48%) Oracle
4 4 (2.48%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.86%) Splunk
6 2 (1.24%) Cisco
6 2 (1.24%) Confluent
6 2 (1.24%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.24%) Palo Alto
6 2 (1.24%) SAP
7 1 (0.62%) Apple
7 1 (0.62%) CyberArk
7 1 (0.62%) Databricks
7 1 (0.62%) ESET
7 1 (0.62%) Okta
7 1 (0.62%) Tanium
7 1 (0.62%) Tenable
7 1 (0.62%) Varonis