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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 44 62 69
Rank change year-on-year +18 +7 -5
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 187 124 158
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.21% 3.40% 3.14%
As % of the Systems Management category 29.17% 25.83% 22.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 83 120
10th Percentile £362 £401 £412
25th Percentile £416 £438 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £563
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -6.67% +2.27%
75th Percentile £550 £631 £623
90th Percentile £636 £675 £700
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 0 5
10th Percentile £40.00 - £68.19
25th Percentile £46.25 - -
Median hourly rate £60.00 - £76.53
75th Percentile £82.00 - -
90th Percentile £91.50 - -
England median hourly rate £66.00 £51.84 £57.50
% change year-on-year +27.31% -9.84% -14.50%

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 641 480 694
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.42% 13.17% 13.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 457 357 473
10th Percentile £260 £260 £205
25th Percentile £400 £375 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £569 £600 £615
90th Percentile £638 £675 £688
England median daily rate £513 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.67% -7.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 4 32
10th Percentile £18.87 £14.39 £24.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.98 £30.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.99 £49.07
Median % change year-on-year +48.23% -45.00% -10.79%
75th Percentile £75.00 £36.50 £68.97
90th Percentile £85.70 £37.40 £76.53
England median hourly rate £48.72 £26.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +83.85% -42.62% +31.94%

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 December 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in the South East over the 6 months to 27 December 2025.

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 December 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 -6 81 £500 -2.68% 180
Hampshire +17 80 £500 -13.04% 99
Berkshire +3 76 £500 - 118
Surrey +4 12 £425 -15.00% 47
East Sussex +7 4 £565 +22.83% 21
Middlesex - 4 £594 - 1
Oxfordshire -13 3 £525 +5.00% 28
West Sussex -16 3 £273 -47.60% 16
Buckinghamshire -2 2 £613 -3.92% 34
Kent - 2 £325 - 35
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 6 (3.21%) Confluence
2 4 (2.14%) Apache
2 4 (2.14%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.60%) IIS
4 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.53%) CMS
4 1 (0.53%) Drupal
4 1 (0.53%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.53%) Red Hat Fuse
4 1 (0.53%) SAS
4 1 (0.53%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 93 (49.73%) AWS
2 92 (49.20%) Azure
3 55 (29.41%) OpenShift
4 48 (25.67%) GitHub
5 43 (22.99%) GCP
6 27 (14.44%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (9.09%) Azure AKS
8 16 (8.56%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (7.49%) Amazon EKS
10 12 (6.42%) IaaS
11 11 (5.88%) Datadog
12 9 (4.81%) Amazon S3
12 9 (4.81%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (4.81%) Serverless
13 8 (4.28%) Amazon ECR
13 8 (4.28%) Cloud Computing
14 7 (3.74%) PaaS
15 6 (3.21%) Entra ID
16 5 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
16 5 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 14 (7.49%) DNS
2 12 (6.42%) Firewall
3 9 (4.81%) TCP/IP
4 6 (3.21%) DHCP
5 5 (2.67%) Kerberos
6 3 (1.60%) HTTP
6 3 (1.60%) Network Security
6 3 (1.60%) SSL
7 2 (1.07%) MQTT
8 1 (0.53%) HTTPS
8 1 (0.53%) Internet
8 1 (0.53%) SSH
8 1 (0.53%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (18.18%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (12.83%) NoSQL
3 17 (9.09%) MongoDB
4 11 (5.88%) Redis
5 8 (4.28%) HBase
6 7 (3.74%) DynamoDB
7 6 (3.21%) Couchbase
8 5 (2.67%) Apache Cassandra
8 5 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (2.67%) Data Lake
9 4 (2.14%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (2.14%) Relational Database
9 4 (2.14%) SQL Server
10 3 (1.60%) Big Data
11 2 (1.07%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.53%) Amazon Aurora
12 1 (0.53%) Delta Lake
12 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.53%) MySQL
12 1 (0.53%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 57 (30.48%) Jenkins
2 35 (18.72%) GitLab
3 34 (18.18%) Git
4 16 (8.56%) Artifactory
4 16 (8.56%) Cucumber
5 13 (6.95%) JUnit
6 12 (6.42%) Gradle
6 12 (6.42%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (5.35%) JIRA
8 7 (3.74%) Maven
9 6 (3.21%) JMeter
10 4 (2.14%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.60%) Bitbucket
11 3 (1.60%) MLflow
12 2 (1.07%) Cypress.io
12 2 (1.07%) Gatling
13 1 (0.53%) Poetry
13 1 (0.53%) Postman
13 1 (0.53%) PyCharm
13 1 (0.53%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 54 (28.88%) Social Skills
2 19 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (8.56%) Public Sector
4 11 (5.88%) Finance
5 4 (2.14%) Aerospace
5 4 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.07%) Banking
6 2 (1.07%) Billing
6 2 (1.07%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.53%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.53%) Legal
Job Titles
1 35 (18.72%) Developer
2 33 (17.65%) DevOps Engineer
3 26 (13.90%) Architect
3 26 (13.90%) Java Developer
3 26 (13.90%) Senior
4 22 (11.76%) Platform Engineer
5 15 (8.02%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 14 (7.49%) Site Engineer
7 12 (6.42%) Azure Engineer
7 12 (6.42%) Senior Developer
8 11 (5.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 10 (5.35%) AWS DevOps
10 9 (4.81%) Security Architect
11 8 (4.28%) Senior Java Developer
12 7 (3.74%) Lead
12 7 (3.74%) Software Engineer
13 6 (3.21%) AWS Developer
13 6 (3.21%) AWS Engineer
13 6 (3.21%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
13 6 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (18.72%) Kafka
2 23 (12.30%) Spring
2 23 (12.30%) Spring Boot
3 18 (9.63%) REST
4 15 (8.02%) Elastic Stack
5 14 (7.49%) React
6 13 (6.95%) AngularJS
7 11 (5.88%) Middleware
7 11 (5.88%) RabbitMQ
8 10 (5.35%) Keycloak
8 10 (5.35%) Loki
8 10 (5.35%) PyTorch
8 10 (5.35%) TensorFlow
9 8 (4.28%) RESTful
9 8 (4.28%) scikit-learn
10 6 (3.21%) ADO
11 5 (2.67%) .NET
12 4 (2.14%) Google JAX
12 4 (2.14%) Swagger
12 4 (2.14%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 28 (14.97%) Cloud Native
2 13 (6.95%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (5.35%) Private Cloud
4 8 (4.28%) Virtual Team
5 6 (3.21%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.21%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (2.67%) Security Posture
7 4 (2.14%) Algorithms
7 4 (2.14%) PKI
8 3 (1.60%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (1.60%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.60%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (1.07%) Onboarding
9 2 (1.07%) TM Forum
10 1 (0.53%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.53%) Data Structures
10 1 (0.53%) Distributed Architecture
10 1 (0.53%) IoT
10 1 (0.53%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 61 (32.62%) Linux
2 15 (8.02%) Windows
3 11 (5.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (3.21%) Ubuntu
5 5 (2.67%) VMS
5 5 (2.67%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.60%) CentOS
7 2 (1.07%) Unix
8 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (75.40%) CI/CD
2 90 (48.13%) DevOps
3 84 (44.92%) Containerisation
4 55 (29.41%) Infrastructure as Code
5 50 (26.74%) Agile
6 41 (21.93%) Observability
6 41 (21.93%) Problem-Solving
7 39 (20.86%) Microservices
8 38 (20.32%) Platform Engineering
9 32 (17.11%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 27 (14.44%) DevSecOps
11 26 (13.90%) Software Engineering
12 25 (13.37%) High Availability
13 19 (10.16%) Configuration Management
13 19 (10.16%) Test Automation
14 18 (9.63%) Migration
15 15 (8.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 14 (7.49%) Continuous Integration
16 14 (7.49%) Machine Learning
16 14 (7.49%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 93 (49.73%) Python
2 59 (31.55%) Java
3 48 (25.67%) Bash
4 30 (16.04%) SQL
5 29 (15.51%) PowerShell
6 21 (11.23%) JavaScript
7 16 (8.56%) C#
8 15 (8.02%) Go
9 8 (4.28%) Bicep
9 8 (4.28%) R
10 5 (2.67%) C++
11 4 (2.14%) C
11 4 (2.14%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.60%) TypeScript
13 2 (1.07%) Perl
13 2 (1.07%) PHP
13 2 (1.07%) Rust
14 1 (0.53%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 97 (51.87%) Security Cleared
2 84 (44.92%) SC Cleared
3 9 (4.81%) Degree
3 9 (4.81%) DV Cleared
3 9 (4.81%) OCP
3 9 (4.81%) Oracle Certification
4 8 (4.28%) AWS Certification
5 7 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (3.74%) RHCE
6 4 (2.14%) Azure Certification
6 4 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (1.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (1.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.60%) CCSP
7 3 (1.60%) CISSP
7 3 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 2 (1.07%) RHCSA
9 1 (0.53%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.53%) CCNP
9 1 (0.53%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.42%) QA
2 8 (4.28%) GDPR
2 8 (4.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (3.74%) NIST
4 6 (3.21%) NCSC
5 5 (2.67%) EU AI Act
6 4 (2.14%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.60%) Def Stans
7 3 (1.60%) PSD2
8 1 (0.53%) JSP 440
System Software
1 74 (39.57%) Docker
2 23 (12.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (8.02%) vSphere
4 6 (3.21%) Active Directory
4 6 (3.21%) VMware NSX
5 4 (2.14%) Hyper-V
6 2 (1.07%) KVM
7 1 (0.53%) NDS
7 1 (0.53%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 1 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 72 (38.50%) Ansible
2 70 (37.43%) Terraform
3 50 (26.74%) Grafana
4 43 (22.99%) Prometheus
5 26 (13.90%) Argo
6 9 (4.81%) Puppet
7 8 (4.28%) Kustomize
7 8 (4.28%) Progress Chef
8 7 (3.74%) Istio
8 7 (3.74%) Sysdig
8 7 (3.74%) vCenter Server
9 6 (3.21%) linkerd
10 5 (2.67%) SCOM
11 4 (2.14%) Podman
11 4 (2.14%) Rsyslog
12 3 (1.60%) Cilium
13 2 (1.07%) Kibana
13 2 (1.07%) Kubeflow
13 2 (1.07%) logstash
13 2 (1.07%) Packer
Vendors
1 46 (24.60%) Red Hat
2 37 (19.79%) VMware
3 17 (9.09%) Splunk
4 15 (8.02%) Microsoft
5 6 (3.21%) Google
5 6 (3.21%) Pure Storage
6 5 (2.67%) Atlassian
7 3 (1.60%) AppDynamics
7 3 (1.60%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.60%) NVIDIA
7 3 (1.60%) Oracle
8 2 (1.07%) Tenable
9 1 (0.53%) Cloudera
9 1 (0.53%) NetIQ
9 1 (0.53%) OpenText
9 1 (0.53%) Salesforce
9 1 (0.53%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.53%) Virgin Media
9 1 (0.53%) Zscaler