Kubernetes Contracts in the South East

Kubernetes (k8s)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East requiring Kubernetes skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Kubernetes over the 6 months leading up to 6 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 53 57 56
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 -14
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 124 179 220
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 3.77% 3.15% 3.73%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.78% 22.98% 28.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 78 128 170
10th Percentile £333 £413 £475
25th Percentile £413 £470 £544
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £563 £600
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -6.25% +6.67%
75th Percentile £588 £626 £698
90th Percentile £611 £675 £750
England median daily rate £541 £550 £619
% change year-on-year -1.59% -11.11% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 1
Median hourly rate - £43.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -38.57% -
England median hourly rate £79.50 £67.25 £73.00
% change year-on-year +18.22% -7.88% +5.70%

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 463 779 765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.08% 13.71% 12.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 318 564 558
10th Percentile £259 £250 £308
25th Percentile £400 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £650
90th Percentile £630 £675 £718
England median daily rate £513 £525 £575
% change year-on-year -2.38% -8.70% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 14 19
10th Percentile - £14.00 £18.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £17.56 £35.00
Median hourly rate £28.00 £37.33 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.00% -32.12% +152.87%
75th Percentile £32.77 £48.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £46.11 £52.10 £73.97
England median hourly rate £48.50 £31.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +53.97% -45.22% +161.36%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Kubernetes in the South East.

Daily rate trend for Kubernetes in the South East

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the South East over the 6 months to 6 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in the South East

Kubernetes
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Kubernetes in the South East.

Hourly rate trend 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 6 July 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 -11 61 £455 -20.87% 81
Berkshire -6 55 £475 -21.49% 52
Hampshire +48 41 £525 -8.74% 36
Surrey +17 12 £545 -16.15% 24
Buckinghamshire 0 4 £311 -43.55% 11
East Sussex -1 3 £463 - 9
West Sussex -9 3 £300 -33.33% 12
Middlesex +7 2 - - 3
Oxfordshire -2 2 £481 -3.75% 18
Kent - 2 £500 - 5
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 (7.26%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (4.03%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.61%) Apache
3 2 (1.61%) Camunda
3 2 (1.61%) Confluence
3 2 (1.61%) IIS
3 2 (1.61%) JBoss
3 2 (1.61%) nginx
3 2 (1.61%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.81%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.81%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 1 (0.81%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (2.42%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 56 (45.16%) Azure
2 54 (43.55%) AWS
3 28 (22.58%) OpenShift
4 22 (17.74%) Azure AKS
5 18 (14.52%) GCP
6 16 (12.90%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (12.90%) GitHub
7 15 (12.10%) IaaS
7 15 (12.10%) PaaS
8 14 (11.29%) Amazon EKS
9 12 (9.68%) Serverless
10 11 (8.87%) Azure Storage
11 9 (7.26%) Azure Monitor
12 8 (6.45%) GitHub Actions
13 7 (5.65%) Amazon S3
13 7 (5.65%) Azure Data Factory
14 6 (4.84%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (4.84%) Entra ID
15 5 (4.03%) Amazon EC2
16 4 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 11 (8.87%) Firewall
2 10 (8.06%) VPN
3 9 (7.26%) DHCP
3 9 (7.26%) DNS
4 8 (6.45%) SMTP
5 4 (3.23%) MPLS
6 3 (2.42%) 4G
6 3 (2.42%) 5G
6 3 (2.42%) DOCSIS
6 3 (2.42%) GPON
6 3 (2.42%) LTE
6 3 (2.42%) Radio Access Network
6 3 (2.42%) VoIP
6 3 (2.42%) xDSL
7 2 (1.61%) Converged Networks
7 2 (1.61%) HTTP
7 2 (1.61%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.81%) BGP
8 1 (0.81%) Network Security
8 1 (0.81%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (12.90%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (9.68%) Amazon RDS
2 12 (9.68%) Relational Database
3 11 (8.87%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (8.06%) Big Data
4 10 (8.06%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (6.45%) NoSQL
5 8 (6.45%) Redis
6 6 (4.84%) MySQL
7 4 (3.23%) Apache Cassandra
7 4 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (3.23%) MongoDB
7 4 (3.23%) RDBMS
8 3 (2.42%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (2.42%) Power BI
8 3 (2.42%) SQL Server
9 2 (1.61%) DocumentDB
9 2 (1.61%) GIS
10 1 (0.81%) Couchbase
10 1 (0.81%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 36 (29.03%) Jenkins
2 19 (15.32%) GitLab
3 17 (13.71%) Git
4 15 (12.10%) JIRA
5 11 (8.87%) SonarQube
6 10 (8.06%) Cucumber
7 9 (7.26%) REST Assured
7 9 (7.26%) Selenium
8 2 (1.61%) Artifactory
8 2 (1.61%) Bitbucket Server
8 2 (1.61%) CA Release Automation
8 2 (1.61%) JMeter
8 2 (1.61%) JUnit
8 2 (1.61%) Mockito
8 2 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (1.61%) Subversion
8 2 (1.61%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.81%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.81%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.81%) Cypress.io
General
1 38 (30.65%) Social Skills
2 18 (14.52%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (8.06%) Public Sector
4 9 (7.26%) Telecoms
5 8 (6.45%) Law
6 7 (5.65%) Finance
7 4 (3.23%) Police
8 3 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (2.42%) Retail
9 2 (1.61%) Banking
9 2 (1.61%) Korean Language
10 1 (0.81%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.81%) Legal
10 1 (0.81%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 25 (20.16%) Developer
2 24 (19.35%) DevOps Engineer
3 16 (12.90%) Support Engineer
4 15 (12.10%) Cloud Engineer
4 15 (12.10%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (11.29%) Senior
6 12 (9.68%) Architect
7 10 (8.06%) Azure Engineer
7 10 (8.06%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 9 (7.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 9 (7.26%) Senior Developer
8 9 (7.26%) Site Engineer
9 8 (6.45%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 8 (6.45%) 3rd Line Support
9 8 (6.45%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
9 8 (6.45%) AWS Engineer
9 8 (6.45%) Software Engineer
10 7 (5.65%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (5.65%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Support
10 7 (5.65%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (17.74%) React
2 20 (16.13%) REST
3 15 (12.10%) .NET
4 14 (11.29%) ARM Templates
5 13 (10.48%) Kafka
6 10 (8.06%) ADO
7 9 (7.26%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (7.26%) Java EE
7 9 (7.26%) Middleware
7 9 (7.26%) Node.js
8 6 (4.84%) .NET Core
8 6 (4.84%) Web Services
8 6 (4.84%) YAML
9 5 (4.03%) HTML
9 5 (4.03%) Keycloak
9 5 (4.03%) PyTorch
9 5 (4.03%) scikit-learn
9 5 (4.03%) TensorFlow
10 4 (3.23%) AngularJS
10 4 (3.23%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 12 (9.68%) Private Cloud
2 11 (8.87%) Cloud Native
3 10 (8.06%) Data Centre
4 9 (7.26%) PKI
5 8 (6.45%) Clustering
6 6 (4.84%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (3.23%) Algorithms
7 4 (3.23%) Product Ownership
8 3 (2.42%) Public Cloud
8 3 (2.42%) Security Posture
8 3 (2.42%) TM Forum
9 2 (1.61%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.61%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (1.61%) Operational Technology
9 2 (1.61%) SCADA
9 2 (1.61%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 1 (0.81%) IoT
10 1 (0.81%) Legacy Applications
10 1 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 32 (25.81%) Linux
2 14 (11.29%) Windows
3 10 (8.06%) Windows Server
4 3 (2.42%) Windows Server 2003
5 2 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.81%) CentOS
6 1 (0.81%) Unix
6 1 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (66.13%) CI/CD
2 80 (64.52%) DevOps
3 55 (44.35%) Containerisation
4 51 (41.13%) Infrastructure as Code
5 27 (21.77%) Problem-Solving
6 23 (18.55%) Agile
6 23 (18.55%) Configuration Management
6 23 (18.55%) Migration
7 22 (17.74%) Software Engineering
8 20 (16.13%) Machine Learning
8 20 (16.13%) Microservices
9 19 (15.32%) Platform Engineering
10 17 (13.71%) Artificial Intelligence
10 17 (13.71%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 17 (13.71%) Test Automation
11 16 (12.90%) Continuous Integration
11 16 (12.90%) Technical Leadership
12 15 (12.10%) Observability
13 12 (9.68%) Analytics
14 10 (8.06%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 53 (42.74%) Python
2 37 (29.84%) SQL
3 30 (24.19%) Java
3 30 (24.19%) PowerShell
4 26 (20.97%) JavaScript
5 21 (16.94%) C#
6 17 (13.71%) Bash
7 10 (8.06%) Bicep
8 7 (5.65%) TypeScript
9 5 (4.03%) R
10 4 (3.23%) C++
10 4 (3.23%) Go
10 4 (3.23%) PHP
11 3 (2.42%) C
11 3 (2.42%) Ruby
11 3 (2.42%) Scala
11 3 (2.42%) Shell Script
12 2 (1.61%) Korn
12 2 (1.61%) Perl
13 1 (0.81%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 41 (33.06%) Security Cleared
2 30 (24.19%) SC Cleared
3 16 (12.90%) Degree
4 12 (9.68%) DV Cleared
5 5 (4.03%) Azure Certification
6 4 (3.23%) AWS Certification
6 4 (3.23%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (2.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (1.61%) Master's Degree
8 2 (1.61%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.81%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.81%) CCSP
9 1 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.81%) CISSP
9 1 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 1 (0.81%) OSCP
9 1 (0.81%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (4.03%) GDPR
3 4 (3.23%) Data Quality
3 4 (3.23%) EU AI Act
4 2 (1.61%) NIST
4 2 (1.61%) OASIS TOSCA
4 2 (1.61%) QA
5 1 (0.81%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.81%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.81%) HL7
5 1 (0.81%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.81%) NCSC
5 1 (0.81%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.81%) SLA
System Software
1 63 (50.81%) Docker
2 13 (10.48%) Active Directory
3 9 (7.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (6.45%) BitLocker
4 8 (6.45%) Hyper-V
4 8 (6.45%) Microsoft App-V
4 8 (6.45%) Terminal Services
4 8 (6.45%) VMware ESXi
5 5 (4.03%) vSphere
6 1 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 50 (40.32%) Ansible
2 45 (36.29%) Terraform
3 16 (12.90%) Grafana
3 16 (12.90%) Prometheus
4 9 (7.26%) Docker Swarm
4 9 (7.26%) Podman
5 8 (6.45%) Nagios
5 8 (6.45%) Puppet
5 8 (6.45%) vCenter Server
5 8 (6.45%) vMotion
6 6 (4.84%) Kibana
7 5 (4.03%) Packer
8 2 (1.61%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (1.61%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 1 (0.81%) Argo
9 1 (0.81%) Istio
9 1 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.81%) Rancher
9 1 (0.81%) WSUS
Vendors
1 20 (16.13%) Microsoft
2 17 (13.71%) Red Hat
3 14 (11.29%) Google
4 13 (10.48%) Splunk
5 9 (7.26%) VMware
6 8 (6.45%) Citrix
6 8 (6.45%) HP
6 8 (6.45%) Symantec
7 3 (2.42%) Atlassian
7 3 (2.42%) Databricks
7 3 (2.42%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.61%) Ab Initio
8 2 (1.61%) Amdocs
8 2 (1.61%) AppDynamics
8 2 (1.61%) Ericsson
8 2 (1.61%) Huawei
8 2 (1.61%) NetCracker
8 2 (1.61%) Nokia
8 2 (1.61%) Spotify
8 2 (1.61%) Zend