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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 51 74
Rank change year-on-year -4 +23 -18
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 187 112 134
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.46% 3.82% 2.38%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.71% 28.35% 19.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 71 90
10th Percentile £363 £394 £413
25th Percentile £413 £409 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -
75th Percentile £550 £640 £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 15 0 2
10th Percentile £42.50 - £49.28
25th Percentile £57.50 - £53.82
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £62.02
75th Percentile £75.00 - £69.59
90th Percentile £84.40 - £73.75
England median hourly rate £63.75 £60.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year +6.25% -3.23% -9.49%

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 700 395 683
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.95% 13.48% 12.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 520 287 478
10th Percentile £255 £311 £205
25th Percentile £392 £408 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £569 £613 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £639
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 2 21
10th Percentile £19.00 £12.80 £14.00
25th Percentile £40.00 £13.99 £24.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £15.99 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +244.07% -66.35% -16.48%
75th Percentile £67.50 £17.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.20 £19.17 £68.63
England median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +107.55% -11.67% -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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -2 78 £500 -13.04% 22
Thames Valley -28 77 £475 -7.32% 38
Berkshire -25 63 £475 -3.80% 21
Surrey +5 18 £513 +46.43% 12
Buckinghamshire -21 11 £450 -21.74% 4
West Sussex -12 7 £300 - 3
East Sussex +1 3 £565 +18.95% 2
Oxfordshire -9 3 £600 +9.09% 13
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
1 103 (55.08%) AWS
2 87 (46.52%) Azure
3 60 (32.09%) OpenShift
4 48 (25.67%) GitHub
5 41 (21.93%) GCP
6 30 (16.04%) GitHub Actions
7 18 (9.63%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (8.02%) AWS CloudFormation
9 13 (6.95%) Azure AKS
9 13 (6.95%) Serverless
10 11 (5.88%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (5.88%) Datadog
11 9 (4.81%) Amazon S3
12 8 (4.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (4.28%) Cloud Computing
13 7 (3.74%) Amazon ECR
13 7 (3.74%) IaaS
14 5 (2.67%) Amazon EC2
14 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 24 (12.83%) 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%) Azure SQL Database
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
7 11 (5.88%) Gradle
8 10 (5.35%) SonarQube
9 6 (3.21%) JIRA
9 6 (3.21%) JMeter
9 6 (3.21%) Maven
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 56 (29.95%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.70%) Public Sector
3 15 (8.02%) Finance
4 14 (7.49%) 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%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 41 (21.93%) Developer
2 34 (18.18%) Java Developer
3 27 (14.44%) DevOps Engineer
4 24 (12.83%) Senior
5 21 (11.23%) Platform Engineer
6 20 (10.70%) Architect
7 15 (8.02%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 13 (6.95%) Site Engineer
9 12 (6.42%) Senior Developer
10 11 (5.88%) AWS DevOps
11 10 (5.35%) Software Engineer
12 9 (4.81%) Azure Engineer
12 9 (4.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 9 (4.81%) Senior Java Developer
13 7 (3.74%) AWS Developer
13 7 (3.74%) AWS Engineer
13 7 (3.74%) Java Engineer
13 7 (3.74%) Lead
14 6 (3.21%) 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 21 (11.23%) AngularJS
4 16 (8.56%) Elastic Stack
4 16 (8.56%) Loki
5 14 (7.49%) REST
6 12 (6.42%) RabbitMQ
7 11 (5.88%) Keycloak
7 11 (5.88%) React
8 10 (5.35%) Quarkus
9 9 (4.81%) RESTful
10 8 (4.28%) .NET
11 6 (3.21%) JSON
11 6 (3.21%) OpenTelemetry
12 5 (2.67%) Middleware
12 5 (2.67%) YAML
13 4 (2.14%) Hibernate
13 4 (2.14%) Node.js
13 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 58 (31.02%) 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
1 140 (74.87%) CI/CD
2 90 (48.13%) DevOps
3 77 (41.18%) Containerisation
4 66 (35.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 64 (34.22%) Agile
6 52 (27.81%) Observability
7 42 (22.46%) Platform Engineering
8 40 (21.39%) Microservices
9 39 (20.86%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 33 (17.65%) Problem-Solving
11 31 (16.58%) DevSecOps
12 28 (14.97%) Software Engineering
13 24 (12.83%) Scrum
14 22 (11.76%) Test Automation
15 20 (10.70%) High Availability
16 18 (9.63%) GitOps
17 16 (8.56%) Analytics
17 16 (8.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 14 (7.49%) Root Cause Analysis
18 14 (7.49%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 85 (45.45%) Python
2 56 (29.95%) Bash
3 54 (28.88%) Java
4 26 (13.90%) PowerShell
5 18 (9.63%) Go
6 16 (8.56%) SQL
7 12 (6.42%) JavaScript
8 9 (4.81%) Bicep
9 8 (4.28%) C#
10 2 (1.07%) C
10 2 (1.07%) C++
10 2 (1.07%) PHP
10 2 (1.07%) Rust
10 2 (1.07%) Shell Script
10 2 (1.07%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.53%) Korn
11 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 6 (3.21%) 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
5 1 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 72 (38.50%) Terraform
2 62 (33.16%) Grafana
3 55 (29.41%) Prometheus
4 54 (28.88%) Ansible
5 37 (19.79%) 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 45 (24.06%) 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