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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 52 63 59
Rank change year-on-year +11 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 139 144 195
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 4.01% 3.12% 3.46%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.47% 21.59% 27.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 86 113 159
10th Percentile £393 £406 £425
25th Percentile £413 £453 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -12.50% +9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £695
90th Percentile £627 £675 £760
England median daily rate £528 £568 £600
% change year-on-year -7.05% -5.42% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 3
10th Percentile - - £65.41
25th Percentile - £36.75 £69.58
Median hourly rate - £38.50 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year - -49.69% -19.44%
75th Percentile - £40.25 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £67.00 £55.00 £74.00
% change year-on-year +21.82% -25.68% -5.28%

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 506 667 712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.59% 14.44% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 335 504 498
10th Percentile £261 £302 £213
25th Percentile £402 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -8.18% +10.00%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £661
90th Percentile £637 £675 £738
England median daily rate £506 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.67% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 9 24
10th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £22.09
25th Percentile £18.97 £30.00 £45.05
Median hourly rate £30.39 £36.17 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.98% -34.25% +62.96%
75th Percentile £62.00 £40.25 £72.35
90th Percentile £84.99 £53.90 £76.53
England median hourly rate £39.00 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -2.50% -23.81% +119.57%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing Kubernetes as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for Kubernetes 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 14 September 2025.

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
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 14 September 2025. 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 +5 73 £475 -9.52% 61
Berkshire +16 69 £475 -9.52% 39
Hampshire +30 44 £550 - 10
Surrey +11 13 £545 -16.15% 19
Middlesex +2 3 £635 - 3
East Sussex +1 2 £450 -2.17% 2
Buckinghamshire -3 2 - - 9
Oxfordshire -9 2 £469 -6.25% 13
Kent - 2 £325 - 7
West Sussex -13 1 £325 -26.97%
Kubernetes
England

Kubernetes
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 9 (6.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (3.60%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.44%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.44%) Camunda
4 1 (0.72%) CMS
4 1 (0.72%) Confluence
4 1 (0.72%) Drupal
4 1 (0.72%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.72%) nginx
4 1 (0.72%) Red Hat Fuse
4 1 (0.72%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.72%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (2.16%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 77 (55.40%) Azure
2 60 (43.17%) AWS
3 32 (23.02%) GCP
4 31 (22.30%) OpenShift
5 24 (17.27%) Azure AKS
6 20 (14.39%) Azure DevOps
7 19 (13.67%) IaaS
7 19 (13.67%) PaaS
8 15 (10.79%) Amazon EKS
9 13 (9.35%) Azure Storage
10 12 (8.63%) GitHub
11 9 (6.47%) Azure Data Factory
11 9 (6.47%) Azure Monitor
11 9 (6.47%) Entra ID
11 9 (6.47%) Serverless
12 8 (5.76%) Amazon S3
13 7 (5.04%) Azure Machine Learning
14 6 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
15 5 (3.60%) Amazon EC2
15 5 (3.60%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 14 (10.07%) Firewall
2 11 (7.91%) VPN
3 10 (7.19%) DNS
4 9 (6.47%) DHCP
5 8 (5.76%) SMTP
6 4 (2.88%) MPLS
6 4 (2.88%) Network Security
7 3 (2.16%) 4G
7 3 (2.16%) 5G
7 3 (2.16%) DOCSIS
7 3 (2.16%) GPON
7 3 (2.16%) LTE
7 3 (2.16%) Radio Access Network
7 3 (2.16%) VoIP
7 3 (2.16%) xDSL
8 2 (1.44%) Converged Networks
8 2 (1.44%) HTTP
8 2 (1.44%) SSL
9 1 (0.72%) HTTPS
9 1 (0.72%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (9.35%) Azure SQL Database
2 12 (8.63%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (7.91%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (7.19%) Big Data
4 10 (7.19%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (7.19%) NoSQL
5 7 (5.04%) Redis
6 6 (4.32%) MongoDB
7 5 (3.60%) Data Lake
7 5 (3.60%) Relational Database
8 4 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (2.16%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (2.16%) MySQL
9 3 (2.16%) Power BI
10 2 (1.44%) GIS
10 2 (1.44%) RDBMS
11 1 (0.72%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.72%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.72%) Parquet
11 1 (0.72%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 39 (28.06%) Jenkins
2 22 (15.83%) GitLab
3 16 (11.51%) Git
4 15 (10.79%) JIRA
5 11 (7.91%) SonarQube
6 10 (7.19%) Cucumber
7 9 (6.47%) REST Assured
7 9 (6.47%) Selenium
8 3 (2.16%) MLflow
9 2 (1.44%) Cypress.io
9 2 (1.44%) JMeter
9 2 (1.44%) JUnit
9 2 (1.44%) Mockito
10 1 (0.72%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.72%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.72%) Gradle
10 1 (0.72%) Maven
10 1 (0.72%) Mocha
10 1 (0.72%) PyCharm
10 1 (0.72%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 45 (32.37%) Social Skills
2 18 (12.95%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (10.07%) Public Sector
4 10 (7.19%) Telecoms
5 8 (5.76%) Finance
5 8 (5.76%) Law
6 4 (2.88%) Police
7 3 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (2.16%) Retail
8 2 (1.44%) Banking
8 2 (1.44%) Legal
9 1 (0.72%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 29 (20.86%) DevOps Engineer
2 19 (13.67%) Developer
3 18 (12.95%) Platform Engineer
4 17 (12.23%) Architect
4 17 (12.23%) Senior
5 16 (11.51%) Azure Engineer
6 15 (10.79%) Site Engineer
6 15 (10.79%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 14 (10.07%) Cloud Engineer
7 14 (10.07%) Support Engineer
8 12 (8.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 11 (7.91%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 9 (6.47%) Security Architect
11 8 (5.76%) 3rd Line Engineer
11 8 (5.76%) 3rd Line Support
11 8 (5.76%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
11 8 (5.76%) Java Developer
11 8 (5.76%) Senior Developer
11 8 (5.76%) Software Engineer
12 7 (5.04%) Infrastructure Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (15.11%) React
2 17 (12.23%) REST
3 15 (10.79%) ARM Templates
4 13 (9.35%) ADO
5 12 (8.63%) Kafka
6 11 (7.91%) Middleware
7 10 (7.19%) PyTorch
7 10 (7.19%) TensorFlow
8 9 (6.47%) Java EE
9 8 (5.76%) scikit-learn
10 7 (5.04%) Elastic Stack
10 7 (5.04%) Node.js
10 7 (5.04%) YAML
11 6 (4.32%) .NET
12 5 (3.60%) AngularJS
12 5 (3.60%) HTML
12 5 (3.60%) Keycloak
13 4 (2.88%) Next.js
13 4 (2.88%) Spring Boot
13 4 (2.88%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 15 (10.79%) Cloud Native
2 14 (10.07%) Private Cloud
3 12 (8.63%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (6.47%) Data Centre
4 9 (6.47%) PKI
5 8 (5.76%) Clustering
6 5 (3.60%) Algorithms
6 5 (3.60%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (3.60%) Security Posture
7 4 (2.88%) Product Ownership
7 4 (2.88%) Public Cloud
8 3 (2.16%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (2.16%) TM Forum
9 2 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.44%) IoT
9 2 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.72%) Data Structures
10 1 (0.72%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 34 (24.46%) Linux
2 12 (8.63%) Windows
3 11 (7.91%) Windows Server
4 3 (2.16%) VMS
4 3 (2.16%) Windows Server 2003
5 1 (0.72%) CentOS
5 1 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.72%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.72%) Unix
5 1 (0.72%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (66.19%) CI/CD
2 88 (63.31%) DevOps
3 58 (41.73%) Containerisation
4 53 (38.13%) Infrastructure as Code
5 35 (25.18%) Problem-Solving
6 28 (20.14%) Machine Learning
7 27 (19.42%) Configuration Management
8 24 (17.27%) Agile
9 23 (16.55%) Migration
9 23 (16.55%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 23 (16.55%) Software Engineering
10 22 (15.83%) Platform Engineering
11 19 (13.67%) Artificial Intelligence
11 19 (13.67%) High Availability
12 17 (12.23%) Technical Leadership
12 17 (12.23%) Test Automation
13 16 (11.51%) Microservices
14 15 (10.79%) Continuous Integration
15 14 (10.07%) Analytics
16 13 (9.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 64 (46.04%) Python
2 44 (31.65%) Java
3 40 (28.78%) SQL
4 31 (22.30%) PowerShell
5 26 (18.71%) JavaScript
6 19 (13.67%) Bash
7 18 (12.95%) C#
8 12 (8.63%) Bicep
9 10 (7.19%) Go
10 8 (5.76%) R
11 7 (5.04%) TypeScript
12 4 (2.88%) C++
12 4 (2.88%) Shell Script
13 3 (2.16%) C
13 3 (2.16%) Scala
14 2 (1.44%) Korn
14 2 (1.44%) Ruby
15 1 (0.72%) Groovy
15 1 (0.72%) VB
15 1 (0.72%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 54 (38.85%) Security Cleared
2 42 (30.22%) SC Cleared
3 13 (9.35%) Degree
3 13 (9.35%) DV Cleared
4 9 (6.47%) Azure Certification
5 7 (5.04%) AWS Certification
6 5 (3.60%) Cisco Certification
7 4 (2.88%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 4 (2.88%) CCSP
7 4 (2.88%) CISSP
7 4 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (2.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (1.44%) Master's Degree
9 2 (1.44%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.72%) CCNA
10 1 (0.72%) CCNP
10 1 (0.72%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.72%) OCP
10 1 (0.72%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (7.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (5.76%) GDPR
3 7 (5.04%) NIST
4 5 (3.60%) EU AI Act
4 5 (3.60%) QA
5 4 (2.88%) Data Quality
5 4 (2.88%) PCI DSS
6 3 (2.16%) PSD2
7 2 (1.44%) OASIS TOSCA
8 1 (0.72%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.72%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.72%) HL7
8 1 (0.72%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.72%) NCSC
8 1 (0.72%) SLA
System Software
1 63 (45.32%) Docker
2 12 (8.63%) Active Directory
3 11 (7.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (5.76%) BitLocker
4 8 (5.76%) Hyper-V
4 8 (5.76%) Microsoft App-V
4 8 (5.76%) Terminal Services
4 8 (5.76%) VMware ESXi
5 5 (3.60%) vSphere
6 1 (0.72%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 61 (43.88%) Ansible
2 51 (36.69%) Terraform
3 16 (11.51%) Grafana
4 14 (10.07%) Prometheus
5 9 (6.47%) Docker Swarm
5 9 (6.47%) Podman
5 9 (6.47%) Puppet
6 8 (5.76%) Nagios
6 8 (5.76%) vCenter Server
6 8 (5.76%) vMotion
7 5 (3.60%) Packer
7 5 (3.60%) SCOM
8 4 (2.88%) Kibana
8 4 (2.88%) Rsyslog
9 3 (2.16%) Cilium
10 2 (1.44%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (1.44%) Kubeflow
10 2 (1.44%) logstash
10 2 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.72%) Argo
Vendors
1 23 (16.55%) Microsoft
2 19 (13.67%) Red Hat
3 13 (9.35%) Google
4 11 (7.91%) VMware
5 9 (6.47%) Splunk
6 8 (5.76%) Citrix
6 8 (5.76%) HP
6 8 (5.76%) Symantec
7 3 (2.16%) Databricks
7 3 (2.16%) Dynatrace
7 3 (2.16%) NVIDIA
8 2 (1.44%) Ab Initio
8 2 (1.44%) Amdocs
8 2 (1.44%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.44%) Ericsson
8 2 (1.44%) Huawei
8 2 (1.44%) NetCracker
8 2 (1.44%) Nokia
8 2 (1.44%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.72%) Cloudera