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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 58 66
Rank change year-on-year -5 +8 -11
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 188 102 147
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.15% 3.38% 2.70%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.05% 28.02% 20.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 64 100
10th Percentile £353 £341 £425
25th Percentile £401 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% -8.74% -1.37%
75th Percentile £567 £588 £625
90th Percentile £656 £663 £676
England median daily rate £525 £561 £550
% change year-on-year -6.46% +2.05% -11.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 0 2
10th Percentile £53.13 - £37.70
25th Percentile £60.00 - £39.13
Median hourly rate £67.50 - £43.00
75th Percentile £70.00 - £46.63
90th Percentile £81.00 - £47.90
England median hourly rate £65.00 £78.85 £62.00
% change year-on-year -17.56% +27.18% -15.07%

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 695 364 715
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.66% 12.08% 13.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 510 267 520
10th Percentile £278 £269 £213
25th Percentile £400 £413 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -11.63%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £607
90th Percentile £725 £661 £656
England median daily rate £509 £525 £521
% change year-on-year -3.05% +0.72% -9.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 2 14
10th Percentile £31.25 £20.77 £14.00
25th Percentile £43.11 £21.98 £17.91
Median hourly rate £60.00 £23.99 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +150.16% -44.22% -26.81%
75th Percentile £70.00 £25.99 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.20 £27.20 £55.25
England median hourly rate £56.50 £28.00 £25.77
% change year-on-year +101.79% +8.67% -50.75%

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 17 May 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 17 May 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 17 May 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
Thames Valley -19 86 £403 -19.49% 42
Hampshire +3 67 £545 -5.22% 41
Berkshire -20 64 £425 -15.08% 21
Surrey +2 25 £505 -7.34% 6
Buckinghamshire -19 18 £393 +26.57% 5
West Sussex -15 5 £400 +33.33% 2
Oxfordshire -17 4 £600 +9.09% 16
Middlesex -1 3 £509 - 1
East Sussex -1 1 - - 2
Home Counties - 1 - - 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 9 (4.79%) Apache Spark
2 7 (3.72%) OpenStack
3 4 (2.13%) IIS
4 2 (1.06%) Apache
4 2 (1.06%) Apache Pulsar
4 2 (1.06%) Confluence
5 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 4 (2.13%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 101 (53.72%) Azure
2 96 (51.06%) AWS
3 49 (26.06%) GCP
4 45 (23.94%) OpenShift
5 24 (12.77%) Azure DevOps
6 23 (12.23%) GitHub
7 21 (11.17%) GitHub Actions
8 16 (8.51%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (7.98%) Azure AKS
10 14 (7.45%) Serverless
11 13 (6.91%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (5.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 10 (5.32%) Amazon S3
14 9 (4.79%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (3.72%) Snowflake
16 6 (3.19%) Entra ID
17 5 (2.66%) Amazon ECS
17 5 (2.66%) Datadog
18 4 (2.13%) Azure Key Vault
18 4 (2.13%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (5.85%) Firewall
2 8 (4.26%) DNS
3 6 (3.19%) 5G
3 6 (3.19%) Diameter Protocol
3 6 (3.19%) LTE
3 6 (3.19%) Radio Access Network
3 6 (3.19%) VoLTE
3 6 (3.19%) VoWiFi
3 6 (3.19%) Wireshark
4 5 (2.66%) DHCP
4 5 (2.66%) TCP/IP
5 4 (2.13%) VPN
6 3 (1.60%) HTTP
7 1 (0.53%) Internet
7 1 (0.53%) iSCSI
7 1 (0.53%) MQTT
7 1 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
7 1 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.53%) SAN
7 1 (0.53%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (13.83%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (8.51%) NoSQL
3 12 (6.38%) Relational Database
4 10 (5.32%) Big Data
4 10 (5.32%) Redis
5 6 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (3.19%) DynamoDB
5 6 (3.19%) MongoDB
6 5 (2.66%) SQL Server
7 3 (1.60%) DocumentDB
8 2 (1.06%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.53%) HBase
9 1 (0.53%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 34 (18.09%) Git
2 26 (13.83%) Jenkins
3 20 (10.64%) GitLab
4 14 (7.45%) SonarQube
5 5 (2.66%) NUnit
6 4 (2.13%) Jaeger
7 3 (1.60%) Artifactory
8 2 (1.06%) Gradle
8 2 (1.06%) JIRA
8 2 (1.06%) JUnit
8 2 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.53%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.53%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.53%) Maven
9 1 (0.53%) MLflow
9 1 (0.53%) Postman
9 1 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 43 (22.87%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.64%) Public Sector
3 18 (9.57%) Finance
4 11 (5.85%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (1.60%) Military
6 3 (1.60%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.06%) Automotive
7 2 (1.06%) Banking
7 2 (1.06%) Billing
7 2 (1.06%) Financial Institution
7 2 (1.06%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Advertising
8 1 (0.53%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.53%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Retail
Job Titles
1 36 (19.15%) Developer
2 30 (15.96%) DevOps Engineer
3 23 (12.23%) Platform Engineer
4 22 (11.70%) Java Developer
5 17 (9.04%) Architect
5 17 (9.04%) Senior
6 15 (7.98%) Software Engineer
7 14 (7.45%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 12 (6.38%) Azure Engineer
9 11 (5.85%) Site Engineer
10 10 (5.32%) Analyst
10 10 (5.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (5.32%) Security Analyst
11 9 (4.79%) Java Engineer
12 7 (3.72%) AWS Engineer
13 6 (3.19%) Cloud Engineer
13 6 (3.19%) Solutions Architect
14 5 (2.66%) .NET Developer
14 5 (2.66%) Python Developer
14 5 (2.66%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (15.43%) Kafka
2 26 (13.83%) AngularJS
3 16 (8.51%) REST
4 15 (7.98%) .NET
4 15 (7.98%) React
4 15 (7.98%) Spring
5 14 (7.45%) Quarkus
5 14 (7.45%) Spring Boot
6 11 (5.85%) Loki
7 10 (5.32%) Keycloak
7 10 (5.32%) RESTful
8 7 (3.72%) Node.js
8 7 (3.72%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (3.19%) .NET Framework
9 6 (3.19%) OpenAPI
9 6 (3.19%) pytest
9 6 (3.19%) Swagger
9 6 (3.19%) Vue
10 5 (2.66%) ASP.NET Web Forms
10 5 (2.66%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 31 (16.49%) Cloud Native
2 26 (13.83%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (5.32%) Hybrid Cloud
4 8 (4.26%) Onboarding
5 7 (3.72%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (3.19%) Algorithms
6 6 (3.19%) Data Structures
7 4 (2.13%) PKI
7 4 (2.13%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.60%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.60%) Public Cloud
9 2 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (1.06%) TM Forum
10 1 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (0.53%) Chip and PIN
10 1 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.53%) EMV
10 1 (0.53%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (0.53%) Legacy Applications
10 1 (0.53%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 42 (22.34%) Linux
2 15 (7.98%) Windows
3 10 (5.32%) Unix
4 5 (2.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.66%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.06%) Ubuntu
5 2 (1.06%) VMS
6 1 (0.53%) Android
6 1 (0.53%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.53%) CentOS
6 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (68.62%) CI/CD
2 89 (47.34%) DevOps
3 83 (44.15%) Containerisation
4 65 (34.57%) Infrastructure as Code
5 62 (32.98%) Agile
6 47 (25.00%) Platform Engineering
7 39 (20.74%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 39 (20.74%) Software Engineering
8 38 (20.21%) Observability
9 34 (18.09%) DevSecOps
10 32 (17.02%) Microservices
10 32 (17.02%) Problem-Solving
11 30 (15.96%) High Availability
12 27 (14.36%) Scrum
13 19 (10.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 19 (10.11%) Test Automation
13 19 (10.11%) Unit Testing
14 18 (9.57%) GitOps
15 17 (9.04%) Root Cause Analysis
15 17 (9.04%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 87 (46.28%) Python
2 53 (28.19%) Java
3 48 (25.53%) Bash
4 34 (18.09%) PowerShell
5 21 (11.17%) Go
6 19 (10.11%) JavaScript
7 18 (9.57%) SQL
8 14 (7.45%) C#
9 12 (6.38%) Bicep
10 8 (4.26%) TypeScript
11 2 (1.06%) PHP
11 2 (1.06%) Rust
11 2 (1.06%) Scala
12 1 (0.53%) C
12 1 (0.53%) C++
12 1 (0.53%) Korn
12 1 (0.53%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.53%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 92 (48.94%) Security Cleared
2 73 (38.83%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.45%) DV Cleared
4 11 (5.85%) Degree
5 9 (4.79%) RHCE
6 7 (3.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (3.19%) Azure Certification
8 5 (2.66%) AWS Certification
9 4 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (1.06%) OCP
11 2 (1.06%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.53%) ISTQB
12 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.53%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.53%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (9.57%) QA
2 11 (5.85%) NCSC
3 7 (3.72%) PCI DSS
4 6 (3.19%) SLA
5 5 (2.66%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (2.66%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 5 (2.66%) GDPR
5 5 (2.66%) IASME
5 5 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 5 (2.66%) NIST
5 5 (2.66%) NIST 800
6 4 (2.13%) GRC
7 3 (1.60%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.53%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.53%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.53%) ISO 8583
8 1 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 73 (38.83%) Docker
2 11 (5.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (3.72%) Active Directory
4 6 (3.19%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.53%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 1 (0.53%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 69 (36.70%) Terraform
2 41 (21.81%) Ansible
3 39 (20.74%) Grafana
4 38 (20.21%) Prometheus
5 28 (14.89%) Argo
6 11 (5.85%) Istio
7 10 (5.32%) Rancher
8 9 (4.79%) Puppet
9 7 (3.72%) linkerd
10 4 (2.13%) Nessus
10 4 (2.13%) Podman
11 3 (1.60%) Kustomize
12 2 (1.06%) Progress Chef
12 2 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.53%) Fluentd
13 1 (0.53%) Kubeflow
13 1 (0.53%) Packer
13 1 (0.53%) Salt
13 1 (0.53%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 34 (18.09%) Red Hat
2 18 (9.57%) Splunk
3 17 (9.04%) VMware
4 13 (6.91%) Microsoft
5 7 (3.72%) Ericsson
5 7 (3.72%) Google
6 6 (3.19%) BT
6 6 (3.19%) Huawei
6 6 (3.19%) Nokia
7 5 (2.66%) Ab Initio
7 5 (2.66%) Dynatrace
7 5 (2.66%) Oracle
7 5 (2.66%) Teradata
8 4 (2.13%) AppDynamics
8 4 (2.13%) Tenable
9 2 (1.06%) Fortinet
9 2 (1.06%) Foundry
9 2 (1.06%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.53%) Atlassian
10 1 (0.53%) Salesforce