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

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 52 71
Rank change year-on-year +2 +19 -2
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 179 123 151
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.84% 3.89% 2.74%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.41% 29.15% 22.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 80 111
10th Percentile £353 £393 £400
25th Percentile £413 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.82% - +0.55%
75th Percentile £538 £641 £615
90th Percentile £631 £675 £638
England median daily rate £525 £590 £573
% change year-on-year -11.02% +3.06% -8.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 0 6
10th Percentile £40.00 - £54.44
25th Percentile £50.63 - £66.11
Median hourly rate £60.00 - £76.53
75th Percentile £81.00 - -
90th Percentile £86.00 - -
England median hourly rate £58.88 £58.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year +0.23% +1.29% -7.20%

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 653 422 685
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.02% 13.36% 12.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 488 309 473
10th Percentile £255 £283 £205
25th Percentile £375 £400 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £563 £613 £585
90th Percentile £641 £675 £638
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -9.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 2 33
10th Percentile £18.99 £12.80 £20.12
25th Percentile £19.00 £13.99 £30.00
Median hourly rate £43.75 £15.99 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year +173.69% -66.97% -12.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £17.98 £68.63
90th Percentile £82.40 £19.17 £76.53
England median hourly rate £48.36 £26.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +82.49% -33.75% -19.70%

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 8 February 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 8 February 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 8 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
Thames Valley -16 77 £475 -7.32% 23
Hampshire +8 75 £488 -15.22% 29
Berkshire 0 72 £475 -3.80% 9
Surrey -3 12 £525 +50.00% 17
West Sussex -16 7 £300 -32.58% 7
East Sussex +3 4 £565 +21.51% 2
Buckinghamshire -10 3 £613 -3.92% 1
Middlesex - 3 £509 - 1
Oxfordshire -10 2 - - 13
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 (3.91%) Confluence
2 6 (3.35%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.23%) Apache
4 3 (1.68%) IIS
5 2 (1.12%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.56%) SAS
Applications
1 1 (0.56%) CPLEX
1 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 95 (53.07%) AWS
2 89 (49.72%) Azure
3 53 (29.61%) OpenShift
4 46 (25.70%) GitHub
5 43 (24.02%) GCP
6 27 (15.08%) GitHub Actions
7 20 (11.17%) Azure AKS
8 17 (9.50%) Azure DevOps
9 12 (6.70%) AWS CloudFormation
9 12 (6.70%) IaaS
10 11 (6.15%) Amazon S3
10 11 (6.15%) Datadog
10 11 (6.15%) Serverless
11 9 (5.03%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (4.47%) Amazon ECR
12 8 (4.47%) Cloud Computing
12 8 (4.47%) PaaS
13 7 (3.91%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (3.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 6 (3.35%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 13 (7.26%) DNS
2 12 (6.70%) Firewall
3 8 (4.47%) TCP/IP
4 6 (3.35%) DHCP
5 5 (2.79%) HTTP
5 5 (2.79%) Kerberos
6 1 (0.56%) Internet
6 1 (0.56%) MQTT
6 1 (0.56%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.56%) SNMP
6 1 (0.56%) SSL
6 1 (0.56%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (20.67%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (13.41%) NoSQL
3 14 (7.82%) MongoDB
4 10 (5.59%) Redis
5 9 (5.03%) DynamoDB
6 8 (4.47%) HBase
7 6 (3.35%) Big Data
7 6 (3.35%) Couchbase
7 6 (3.35%) Relational Database
8 5 (2.79%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (2.23%) Data Lake
9 4 (2.23%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (2.23%) SQL Server
10 2 (1.12%) BigQuery
10 2 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
11 1 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.56%) Amazon QuickSight
11 1 (0.56%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 46 (25.70%) Jenkins
2 35 (19.55%) GitLab
3 30 (16.76%) Git
4 17 (9.50%) Artifactory
5 15 (8.38%) Cucumber
6 13 (7.26%) JUnit
6 13 (7.26%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (6.15%) Gradle
8 8 (4.47%) JIRA
9 6 (3.35%) JMeter
9 6 (3.35%) Maven
10 4 (2.23%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.68%) Bitbucket
12 2 (1.12%) Gatling
13 1 (0.56%) LoadRunner
13 1 (0.56%) MLflow
13 1 (0.56%) Postman
13 1 (0.56%) Selenium
General
1 52 (29.05%) Social Skills
2 15 (8.38%) Analytical Skills
2 15 (8.38%) Public Sector
3 14 (7.82%) Finance
4 4 (2.23%) Aerospace
5 3 (1.68%) Banking
5 3 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.12%) Billing
6 2 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.56%) Military
7 1 (0.56%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 40 (22.35%) Developer
2 32 (17.88%) DevOps Engineer
2 32 (17.88%) Java Developer
3 24 (13.41%) Senior
4 17 (9.50%) Architect
5 15 (8.38%) Platform Engineer
6 14 (7.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 13 (7.26%) Azure Engineer
7 13 (7.26%) Senior Developer
7 13 (7.26%) Site Engineer
8 11 (6.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 10 (5.59%) AWS DevOps
10 9 (5.03%) Senior Java Developer
11 7 (3.91%) AWS Developer
11 7 (3.91%) Java Engineer
11 7 (3.91%) Lead
11 7 (3.91%) Software Engineer
12 6 (3.35%) AWS Engineer
12 6 (3.35%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
12 6 (3.35%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (22.91%) Kafka
2 27 (15.08%) Spring
2 27 (15.08%) Spring Boot
3 17 (9.50%) REST
4 15 (8.38%) AngularJS
4 15 (8.38%) Elastic Stack
5 13 (7.26%) Loki
5 13 (7.26%) RabbitMQ
6 10 (5.59%) Keycloak
6 10 (5.59%) React
7 8 (4.47%) RESTful
8 6 (3.35%) ADO
8 6 (3.35%) JSON
8 6 (3.35%) Middleware
9 5 (2.79%) PyTorch
9 5 (2.79%) scikit-learn
9 5 (2.79%) TensorFlow
10 4 (2.23%) Quarkus
10 4 (2.23%) Swagger
10 4 (2.23%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 28 (15.64%) Cloud Native
2 15 (8.38%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (4.47%) Virtual Team
4 6 (3.35%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
5 4 (2.23%) Onboarding
5 4 (2.23%) PKI
6 3 (1.68%) Algorithms
6 3 (1.68%) Data Structures
6 3 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (1.12%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (1.12%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.12%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.12%) TM Forum
8 1 (0.56%) Chip and PIN
8 1 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.56%) EMV
8 1 (0.56%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.56%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.56%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 59 (32.96%) Linux
2 17 (9.50%) Windows
3 10 (5.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.79%) Ubuntu
4 5 (2.79%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.68%) CentOS
5 3 (1.68%) Unix
6 2 (1.12%) VMS
7 1 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (74.30%) CI/CD
2 86 (48.04%) DevOps
3 82 (45.81%) Containerisation
4 55 (30.73%) Agile
5 52 (29.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 47 (26.26%) Observability
7 40 (22.35%) Microservices
8 35 (19.55%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 34 (18.99%) Platform Engineering
10 33 (18.44%) Problem-Solving
11 24 (13.41%) DevSecOps
12 23 (12.85%) Software Engineering
13 20 (11.17%) High Availability
14 18 (10.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 18 (10.06%) Test Automation
15 15 (8.38%) Continuous Integration
15 15 (8.38%) Scrum
16 13 (7.26%) GitOps
17 12 (6.70%) Software Testing
17 12 (6.70%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 85 (47.49%) Python
2 52 (29.05%) Bash
2 52 (29.05%) Java
3 21 (11.73%) PowerShell
3 21 (11.73%) SQL
4 17 (9.50%) Go
5 12 (6.70%) JavaScript
6 10 (5.59%) Bicep
7 7 (3.91%) C#
8 4 (2.23%) R
8 4 (2.23%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.68%) TypeScript
10 2 (1.12%) C
10 2 (1.12%) C++
10 2 (1.12%) Perl
10 2 (1.12%) PHP
10 2 (1.12%) Rust
11 1 (0.56%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 94 (52.51%) Security Cleared
2 77 (43.02%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.82%) Degree
4 10 (5.59%) Computer Science Degree
4 10 (5.59%) DV Cleared
5 9 (5.03%) OCP
5 9 (5.03%) Oracle Certification
6 7 (3.91%) RHCE
7 6 (3.35%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 2 (1.12%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.12%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (1.12%) RHCSA
10 1 (0.56%) CCNA
10 1 (0.56%) CCNP
10 1 (0.56%) JNCIP
10 1 (0.56%) Network+ Certification
10 1 (0.56%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.56%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.15%) QA
2 7 (3.91%) NCSC
3 3 (1.68%) Def Stans
3 3 (1.68%) PCI DSS
4 2 (1.12%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.56%) GDPR
5 1 (0.56%) ISO 20022
5 1 (0.56%) ISO 8583
5 1 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.56%) NIST
System Software
1 71 (39.66%) Docker
2 23 (12.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (8.38%) vSphere
4 7 (3.91%) Active Directory
5 6 (3.35%) VMware NSX
6 4 (2.23%) Hyper-V
7 2 (1.12%) KVM
8 1 (0.56%) NDS
8 1 (0.56%) NetIQ eDirectory
8 1 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 69 (38.55%) Terraform
2 57 (31.84%) Ansible
3 56 (31.28%) Grafana
4 49 (27.37%) Prometheus
5 30 (16.76%) Argo
6 11 (6.15%) Kustomize
7 9 (5.03%) Puppet
8 8 (4.47%) Istio
8 8 (4.47%) linkerd
8 8 (4.47%) Progress Chef
9 7 (3.91%) Sysdig
9 7 (3.91%) vCenter Server
10 4 (2.23%) Podman
11 3 (1.68%) Nessus
12 2 (1.12%) logstash
12 2 (1.12%) Packer
12 2 (1.12%) Rancher
12 2 (1.12%) Salt
12 2 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.56%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 39 (21.79%) Red Hat
2 38 (21.23%) VMware
3 19 (10.61%) Splunk
4 9 (5.03%) Microsoft
5 6 (3.35%) Atlassian
5 6 (3.35%) Google
5 6 (3.35%) Pure Storage
6 4 (2.23%) AppDynamics
6 4 (2.23%) Dynatrace
6 4 (2.23%) Oracle
7 3 (1.68%) Tenable
8 2 (1.12%) Ab Initio
8 2 (1.12%) Fortinet
8 2 (1.12%) Teradata
9 1 (0.56%) Arista
9 1 (0.56%) Ericsson
9 1 (0.56%) NetIQ
9 1 (0.56%) OpenText
9 1 (0.56%) Salesforce
9 1 (0.56%) Virgin Media