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

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 43 51
Rank change year-on-year +17 +8 -19
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 183 89 93
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 6.88% 4.26% 3.24%
As % of the Systems Management category 43.26% 27.90% 26.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 129 64 66
10th Percentile £352 £365 £419
25th Percentile £400 £447 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.29% -1.05% -12.50%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £688
90th Percentile £643 £615 £700
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 2 12
10th Percentile - £47.50 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £49.48 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £54.98 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +0.03% +19.06% -12.87%
75th Percentile £58.44 £62.68 -
90th Percentile £69.13 £65.98 £56.37
England median hourly rate £58.75 £57.50 £58.00
% change year-on-year +2.17% -0.86% -7.20%

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 423 319 357
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 15.90% 15.27% 12.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 272 189 254
10th Percentile £311 £270 £313
25th Percentile £360 £385 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - -2.91%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £583
90th Percentile £638 £643 £675
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -9.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 9 35
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £16.64
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £17.72
Median hourly rate £55.00 £43.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +27.91% -6.89% +8.66%
75th Percentile £60.31 £68.18 £53.75
90th Percentile £72.13 £79.50 £78.45
England median hourly rate £47.75 £26.50 £44.97
% change year-on-year +80.19% -41.07% -3.93%

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 4 February 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 4 February 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 4 February 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 +3 110 £525 +5.00% 70
Cheshire +29 56 £430 +15.13% 7
Merseyside -2 10 £510 +70.00% 3
Lancashire -24 4 £550 -6.38% 21
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 (4.37%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (2.73%) OpenStack
3 4 (2.19%) Confluence
4 2 (1.09%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.55%) Apache
5 1 (0.55%) IIS
5 1 (0.55%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 116 (63.39%) AWS
2 68 (37.16%) Azure
3 47 (25.68%) GCP
4 36 (19.67%) GitHub
5 27 (14.75%) Serverless
6 23 (12.57%) AWS Lambda
7 21 (11.48%) OpenShift
8 20 (10.93%) Amazon ECS
9 16 (8.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (8.74%) Amazon EC2
9 16 (8.74%) AWS CloudFormation
9 16 (8.74%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (8.20%) Amazon SQS
11 12 (6.56%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (6.56%) Apigee
11 12 (6.56%) Datadog
11 12 (6.56%) PaaS
12 9 (4.92%) Azure AKS
12 9 (4.92%) SaaS
13 8 (4.37%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 22 (12.02%) Firewall
2 6 (3.28%) TCP/IP
3 5 (2.73%) VPN
4 4 (2.19%) DHCP
4 4 (2.19%) DNS
4 4 (2.19%) HTTP
4 4 (2.19%) HTTPS
4 4 (2.19%) NetScaler
4 4 (2.19%) Network Security
4 4 (2.19%) VLAN
5 3 (1.64%) BGP
5 3 (1.64%) Software-Defined Networking
6 1 (0.55%) VoIP
6 1 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (13.11%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (9.84%) NoSQL
3 16 (8.74%) MySQL
3 16 (8.74%) Relational Database
4 12 (6.56%) DynamoDB
5 10 (5.46%) Amazon RDS
6 8 (4.37%) BigQuery
7 7 (3.83%) DocumentDB
7 7 (3.83%) Redis
8 6 (3.28%) Amazon Aurora
8 6 (3.28%) Big Data
8 6 (3.28%) MongoDB
9 5 (2.73%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.64%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (1.64%) Data Lake
11 1 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.55%) Metadata
11 1 (0.55%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.55%) Power BI
11 1 (0.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 59 (32.24%) GitLab
2 45 (24.59%) Jenkins
3 44 (24.04%) Git
4 18 (9.84%) JIRA
5 17 (9.29%) Gradle
6 12 (6.56%) IntelliJ
7 11 (6.01%) Postman
7 11 (6.01%) SonarQube
8 7 (3.83%) Bitbucket
9 6 (3.28%) MLflow
10 5 (2.73%) JUnit
10 5 (2.73%) Maven
10 5 (2.73%) Snyk
10 5 (2.73%) SonarLint
11 4 (2.19%) Mockito
12 3 (1.64%) JMeter
12 3 (1.64%) Selenium
13 2 (1.09%) Mocha
13 2 (1.09%) Sonatype Nexus
14 1 (0.55%) CircleCI
General
1 44 (24.04%) Public Sector
2 41 (22.40%) Finance
3 27 (14.75%) Banking
3 27 (14.75%) Social Skills
4 17 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.19%) Games
6 2 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.55%) Automotive
7 1 (0.55%) Financial Institution
7 1 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.55%) Military
7 1 (0.55%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 49 (26.78%) Developer
2 30 (16.39%) Java Developer
3 24 (13.11%) Architect
4 23 (12.57%) Senior
5 22 (12.02%) Software Engineer
6 20 (10.93%) Platform Engineer
7 19 (10.38%) DevOps Engineer
8 14 (7.65%) AWS Engineer
8 14 (7.65%) Java Engineer
8 14 (7.65%) Java Software Engineer
9 11 (6.01%) Lead
9 11 (6.01%) Security Engineer
10 10 (5.46%) Technical Architect
11 9 (4.92%) DevSecOps Engineer
12 8 (4.37%) Data Engineer
12 8 (4.37%) Java Architect
12 8 (4.37%) Java Technical Architect
12 8 (4.37%) Senior Developer
13 7 (3.83%) AWS DevOps
13 7 (3.83%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (38.80%) Spring Boot
2 66 (36.07%) Spring
3 39 (21.31%) RESTful
4 28 (15.30%) REST
5 27 (14.75%) Kafka
6 17 (9.29%) Node.js
7 14 (7.65%) React
8 13 (7.10%) AngularJS
9 12 (6.56%) Hibernate
9 12 (6.56%) JMS
9 12 (6.56%) JWT
9 12 (6.56%) OpenTelemetry
10 11 (6.01%) JSON
11 8 (4.37%) GraphQL
12 7 (3.83%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (3.83%) JAX-RS
12 7 (3.83%) OAuth
12 7 (3.83%) Spring Security
13 6 (3.28%) J2EE
13 6 (3.28%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 38 (20.77%) Cloud Native
2 12 (6.56%) Distributed Systems
2 12 (6.56%) Product Ownership
2 12 (6.56%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 7 (3.83%) Public Cloud
4 6 (3.28%) N-Tier
4 6 (3.28%) Private Cloud
5 4 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.19%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.09%) Algorithms
7 2 (1.09%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.09%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.09%) NHS
7 2 (1.09%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.55%) AI Agents
8 1 (0.55%) Cloud Security Posture
8 1 (0.55%) Replication
8 1 (0.55%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 38 (20.77%) Linux
2 16 (8.74%) Windows
3 7 (3.83%) Windows Server
4 6 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (2.73%) Unix
6 4 (2.19%) Windows Server 2012
6 4 (2.19%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.55%) Android
7 1 (0.55%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.55%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (62.84%) CI/CD
2 93 (50.82%) Containerisation
3 87 (47.54%) DevOps
4 58 (31.69%) Microservices
5 56 (30.60%) Agile
6 50 (27.32%) Infrastructure as Code
7 48 (26.23%) Problem-Solving
8 33 (18.03%) Observability
8 33 (18.03%) Software Engineering
9 28 (15.30%) Test Automation
10 25 (13.66%) Event-Driven
11 23 (12.57%) SDLC
11 23 (12.57%) TDD
12 20 (10.93%) API Design
12 20 (10.93%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 18 (9.84%) AI
13 18 (9.84%) DevSecOps
14 17 (9.29%) Platform Engineering
15 16 (8.74%) API Development
15 16 (8.74%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 89 (48.63%) Java
2 68 (37.16%) Python
3 28 (15.30%) SQL
4 25 (13.66%) Bash
5 16 (8.74%) TypeScript
6 12 (6.56%) Kotlin
7 11 (6.01%) Go
7 11 (6.01%) PowerShell
8 9 (4.92%) PHP
9 8 (4.37%) JavaScript
10 6 (3.28%) Ruby
11 3 (1.64%) C#
12 2 (1.09%) Perl
13 1 (0.55%) C
13 1 (0.55%) C++
13 1 (0.55%) Clojure
13 1 (0.55%) Objective-C
13 1 (0.55%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.55%) Scala
13 1 (0.55%) Swift
Qualifications
1 38 (20.77%) Security Cleared
2 18 (9.84%) SC Cleared
3 11 (6.01%) AWS Certification
3 11 (6.01%) Computer Science Degree
3 11 (6.01%) Degree
4 10 (5.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.28%) CISSP
6 5 (2.73%) CISM
7 4 (2.19%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.64%) DV Cleared
8 3 (1.64%) TOGAF Certification
9 2 (1.09%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.55%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.55%) OSCP
10 1 (0.55%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (8.20%) QA
2 13 (7.10%) ISO 20022
2 13 (7.10%) PSD2
3 12 (6.56%) SEPA
4 11 (6.01%) Accessibility
5 5 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (2.73%) NIST
6 3 (1.64%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.55%) GDPR
7 1 (0.55%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.55%) WCAG
System Software
1 128 (69.95%) Docker
2 12 (6.56%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (6.56%) vSphere
3 5 (2.73%) Active Directory
4 4 (2.19%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (1.09%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 64 (34.97%) Terraform
2 35 (19.13%) Grafana
3 12 (6.56%) Prometheus
4 5 (2.73%) Fluentd
4 5 (2.73%) SCCM
5 4 (2.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (2.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (1.64%) Ansible
6 3 (1.64%) Istio
6 3 (1.64%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.55%) Argo
7 1 (0.55%) Puppet
Vendors
1 25 (13.66%) Oracle
2 14 (7.65%) Microsoft
3 13 (7.10%) Splunk
3 13 (7.10%) VMware
4 8 (4.37%) F5
5 7 (3.83%) Cribl.io
6 6 (3.28%) AppDynamics
6 6 (3.28%) Gigya
6 6 (3.28%) Red Hat
7 5 (2.73%) Checkmarx
7 5 (2.73%) Google
7 5 (2.73%) Veracode
8 4 (2.19%) Confluent
8 4 (2.19%) Palo Alto
8 4 (2.19%) Veeam
9 3 (1.64%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.64%) PagerDuty
10 2 (1.09%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.09%) Databricks
10 2 (1.09%) Ping Identity