Kubernetes Contract Job Trends in the South East

Kubernetes (k8s)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Kubernetes skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 27 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 51 86
Rank change year-on-year -6 +35 -28
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 187 115 131
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.45% 3.91% 2.33%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.64% 28.75% 19.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 140 74 86
10th Percentile £362 £396 £413
25th Percentile £413 £409 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -
75th Percentile £550 £626 £615
90th Percentile £625 £675 £650
England median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 0 3
10th Percentile £43.13 - £38.65
25th Percentile £58.75 - £41.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £47.50
75th Percentile £72.50 - £62.64
90th Percentile £84.00 - £70.97
England median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% - -12.41%

All Systems Management Skills
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 702 400 687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.95% 13.60% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 520 291 482
10th Percentile £260 £313 £205
25th Percentile £398 £406 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £688 £663 £650
England median daily rate £503 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.24% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 3 22
10th Percentile £19.00 £13.59 £14.96
25th Percentile £40.00 £15.99 £24.00
Median hourly rate £57.50 £19.97 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +187.93% -53.56% -24.40%
75th Percentile £69.38 £23.99 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £26.39 £68.63
England median hourly rate £55.00 £26.48 £30.00
% change year-on-year +107.74% -11.75% -45.45%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Kubernetes relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in the South East

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kubernetes.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the South East over the 6 months to 27 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in the South East

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kubernetes.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in the South East over the 6 months to 27 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kubernetes in the South East

Kubernetes
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes within the South East region over the 6 months to 27 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
Hampshire -1 78 £500 -13.04% 21
Thames Valley -24 75 £475 -5.00% 41
Berkshire -19 61 £475 -2.56% 23
Surrey +1 20 £513 +46.43% 12
Buckinghamshire -19 11 £450 -21.74% 4
West Sussex -10 7 £300 - 3
East Sussex +1 3 £565 +18.95% 2
Oxfordshire -8 3 £600 +9.09% 14
Middlesex - 3 £509 - 2
Home Counties - 1 - -
Kubernetes
England

Kubernetes
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 7 (3.74%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.67%) Confluence
3 4 (2.14%) Apache
4 3 (1.60%) IIS
5 2 (1.07%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.53%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.53%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (1.07%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 102 (54.55%) AWS
2 86 (45.99%) Azure
3 62 (33.16%) OpenShift
4 48 (25.67%) GitHub
5 41 (21.93%) GCP
6 30 (16.04%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (8.02%) AWS CloudFormation
9 13 (6.95%) Serverless
10 12 (6.42%) Azure AKS
11 11 (5.88%) Amazon EKS
11 11 (5.88%) Datadog
12 9 (4.81%) Amazon S3
13 8 (4.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 8 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (4.28%) Cloud Computing
14 7 (3.74%) Amazon ECR
15 6 (3.21%) IaaS
16 5 (2.67%) Amazon EC2
16 5 (2.67%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 13 (6.95%) DNS
2 11 (5.88%) Firewall
3 5 (2.67%) Kerberos
3 5 (2.67%) TCP/IP
4 4 (2.14%) DHCP
4 4 (2.14%) HTTP
5 3 (1.60%) VPN
6 1 (0.53%) Internet
6 1 (0.53%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.53%) MQTT
6 1 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
6 1 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.53%) SAN
6 1 (0.53%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (19.79%) PostgreSQL
2 23 (12.30%) NoSQL
3 15 (8.02%) MongoDB
4 10 (5.35%) DynamoDB
4 10 (5.35%) Redis
5 9 (4.81%) Relational Database
6 8 (4.28%) HBase
7 7 (3.74%) Big Data
8 4 (2.14%) Couchbase
8 4 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (2.14%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.60%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (1.07%) BigQuery
10 2 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
11 1 (0.53%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
11 1 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
11 1 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 46 (24.60%) Jenkins
2 33 (17.65%) GitLab
3 31 (16.58%) Git
4 17 (9.09%) Artifactory
5 13 (6.95%) JUnit
5 13 (6.95%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (6.42%) Cucumber
6 12 (6.42%) SonarQube
7 11 (5.88%) Gradle
8 6 (3.21%) JMeter
8 6 (3.21%) Maven
9 5 (2.67%) JIRA
10 3 (1.60%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.60%) Jaeger
11 2 (1.07%) Gatling
12 1 (0.53%) LoadRunner
12 1 (0.53%) MLflow
12 1 (0.53%) NUnit
12 1 (0.53%) Postman
12 1 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 55 (29.41%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.70%) Public Sector
3 15 (8.02%) Finance
4 13 (6.95%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.14%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.60%) Banking
6 3 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.60%) Military
7 2 (1.07%) Billing
7 2 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.07%) Financial Institution
7 2 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Advertising
8 1 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 42 (22.46%) Developer
2 35 (18.72%) Java Developer
3 25 (13.37%) DevOps Engineer
4 24 (12.83%) Senior
5 21 (11.23%) Platform Engineer
6 20 (10.70%) Architect
7 14 (7.49%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 12 (6.42%) Senior Developer
8 12 (6.42%) Site Engineer
9 11 (5.88%) Software Engineer
10 10 (5.35%) AWS DevOps
11 9 (4.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 9 (4.81%) Senior Java Developer
12 8 (4.28%) Azure Engineer
12 8 (4.28%) Java Engineer
13 7 (3.74%) AWS Developer
13 7 (3.74%) Lead
14 6 (3.21%) AWS Engineer
15 5 (2.67%) Cloud Engineer
15 5 (2.67%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (21.93%) Kafka
2 26 (13.90%) Spring
2 26 (13.90%) Spring Boot
3 23 (12.30%) AngularJS
4 16 (8.56%) Elastic Stack
4 16 (8.56%) Loki
5 14 (7.49%) REST
6 12 (6.42%) Quarkus
6 12 (6.42%) RabbitMQ
7 11 (5.88%) Keycloak
7 11 (5.88%) React
8 9 (4.81%) RESTful
9 8 (4.28%) .NET
10 6 (3.21%) JSON
10 6 (3.21%) OpenTelemetry
11 5 (2.67%) Middleware
11 5 (2.67%) YAML
12 4 (2.14%) Hibernate
12 4 (2.14%) Node.js
12 4 (2.14%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 34 (18.18%) Cloud Native
2 20 (10.70%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (4.28%) Hybrid Cloud
3 8 (4.28%) Virtual Team
4 7 (3.74%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.21%) Onboarding
6 4 (2.14%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.14%) Data Structures
6 4 (2.14%) PKI
7 3 (1.60%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.60%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.07%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (1.07%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.07%) TM Forum
9 1 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.53%) Chip and PIN
9 1 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.53%) EMV
9 1 (0.53%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 57 (30.48%) Linux
2 14 (7.49%) Windows
3 12 (6.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.14%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.60%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.07%) Unix
6 2 (1.07%) VMS
7 1 (0.53%) CentOS
7 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (73.80%) CI/CD
2 88 (47.06%) DevOps
3 77 (41.18%) Containerisation
4 66 (35.29%) Agile
4 66 (35.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 52 (27.81%) Observability
6 42 (22.46%) Platform Engineering
7 40 (21.39%) Microservices
8 38 (20.32%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 33 (17.65%) DevSecOps
10 32 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
11 30 (16.04%) Software Engineering
12 25 (13.37%) Scrum
13 23 (12.30%) Test Automation
14 19 (10.16%) High Availability
15 18 (9.63%) GitOps
16 16 (8.56%) Analytics
16 16 (8.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 15 (8.02%) SDLC
17 15 (8.02%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 84 (44.92%) Python
2 56 (29.95%) Bash
2 56 (29.95%) Java
3 26 (13.90%) PowerShell
4 18 (9.63%) Go
5 14 (7.49%) SQL
6 12 (6.42%) JavaScript
7 9 (4.81%) Bicep
8 8 (4.28%) C#
9 2 (1.07%) C
9 2 (1.07%) C++
9 2 (1.07%) PHP
9 2 (1.07%) Rust
9 2 (1.07%) Shell Script
9 2 (1.07%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.53%) Korn
10 1 (0.53%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 105 (56.15%) Security Cleared
2 86 (45.99%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.49%) Degree
4 12 (6.42%) DV Cleared
5 9 (4.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (4.81%) OCP
5 9 (4.81%) Oracle Certification
6 7 (3.74%) RHCE
7 5 (2.67%) AWS Certification
8 4 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.60%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.53%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.53%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.56%) QA
2 10 (5.35%) NCSC
3 6 (3.21%) PCI DSS
4 4 (2.14%) GDPR
5 3 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials
5 3 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 3 (1.60%) Def Stans
5 3 (1.60%) GRC
5 3 (1.60%) IASME
5 3 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 3 (1.60%) JSP 440
5 3 (1.60%) NIST
5 3 (1.60%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.53%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.53%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.53%) ISO 8583
6 1 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 69 (36.90%) Docker
2 22 (11.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (8.02%) vSphere
4 6 (3.21%) Active Directory
4 6 (3.21%) Hyper-V
4 6 (3.21%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.53%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 72 (38.50%) Terraform
2 62 (33.16%) Grafana
3 55 (29.41%) Prometheus
4 54 (28.88%) Ansible
5 39 (20.86%) Argo
6 11 (5.88%) Istio
6 11 (5.88%) Kustomize
7 8 (4.28%) linkerd
7 8 (4.28%) Rancher
8 7 (3.74%) Puppet
8 7 (3.74%) Sysdig
8 7 (3.74%) vCenter Server
9 6 (3.21%) Progress Chef
10 4 (2.14%) Nessus
11 3 (1.60%) Podman
12 2 (1.07%) Packer
12 2 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.53%) Docker Swarm
13 1 (0.53%) Fluentd
13 1 (0.53%) Salt
Vendors
1 46 (24.60%) Red Hat
2 37 (19.79%) VMware
3 20 (10.70%) Splunk
4 12 (6.42%) Microsoft
5 6 (3.21%) Pure Storage
6 5 (2.67%) Dynatrace
6 5 (2.67%) Google
7 4 (2.14%) AppDynamics
7 4 (2.14%) Atlassian
7 4 (2.14%) Tenable
8 3 (1.60%) Ab Initio
8 3 (1.60%) Oracle
8 3 (1.60%) Teradata
9 2 (1.07%) Fortinet
9 2 (1.07%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.53%) Arista
10 1 (0.53%) Databricks
10 1 (0.53%) Dell
10 1 (0.53%) Mavenir
10 1 (0.53%) Virgin Media