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

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 46 60 71
Rank change year-on-year +14 +11 -4
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 184 124 153
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.17% 3.45% 3.08%
As % of the Systems Management category 28.84% 26.11% 22.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 83 115
10th Percentile £361 £401 £408
25th Percentile £416 £438 £484
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £563
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -6.67% +2.27%
75th Percentile £550 £631 £624
90th Percentile £637 £675 £700
England median daily rate £525 £590 £575
% change year-on-year -11.02% +2.61% -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 £55.00
% change year-on-year +27.31% -5.75% -18.22%

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 638 475 687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.46% 13.23% 13.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 455 352 468
10th Percentile £260 £260 £205
25th Percentile £396 £375 £318
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £495 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.66% -5.67% -
75th Percentile £569 £602 £615
90th Percentile £638 £675 £688
England median daily rate £513 £525 £542
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.05% -7.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 4 30
10th Percentile £18.87 £14.39 £23.96
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.98 £30.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.99 £52.37
Median % change year-on-year +48.23% -48.47% -4.79%
75th Percentile £75.00 £36.50 £69.66
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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -5 81 £500 -2.68% 418
Hampshire +16 77 £500 -13.04% 189
Berkshire +3 76 £500 - 261
Surrey 0 12 £425 -15.00% 108
East Sussex +5 4 £565 +22.83% 46
Middlesex - 4 £594 - 1
Oxfordshire -11 3 £525 +5.00% 64
West Sussex -16 3 £273 -47.60% 43
Buckinghamshire -1 2 £613 -3.92% 93
Kent - 2 £325 - 104
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 (3.26%) Confluence
2 4 (2.17%) Apache
2 4 (2.17%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.63%) IIS
4 1 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.54%) CMS
4 1 (0.54%) Drupal
4 1 (0.54%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.54%) Red Hat Fuse
4 1 (0.54%) SAS
4 1 (0.54%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 92 (50.00%) AWS
2 89 (48.37%) Azure
3 52 (28.26%) OpenShift
4 48 (26.09%) GitHub
5 43 (23.37%) GCP
6 27 (14.67%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (9.24%) Azure AKS
8 16 (8.70%) Azure DevOps
9 12 (6.52%) IaaS
10 11 (5.98%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (5.98%) Datadog
11 9 (4.89%) Amazon S3
11 9 (4.89%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (4.89%) Serverless
12 8 (4.35%) Amazon ECR
12 8 (4.35%) Cloud Computing
13 7 (3.80%) PaaS
14 6 (3.26%) Entra ID
15 5 (2.72%) AWS Lambda
15 5 (2.72%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 14 (7.61%) DNS
2 12 (6.52%) Firewall
3 9 (4.89%) TCP/IP
4 6 (3.26%) DHCP
5 5 (2.72%) Kerberos
6 3 (1.63%) HTTP
6 3 (1.63%) Network Security
6 3 (1.63%) SSL
7 2 (1.09%) MQTT
8 1 (0.54%) HTTPS
8 1 (0.54%) Internet
8 1 (0.54%) SSH
8 1 (0.54%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (18.48%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (13.04%) NoSQL
3 17 (9.24%) MongoDB
4 11 (5.98%) Redis
5 8 (4.35%) HBase
6 7 (3.80%) DynamoDB
7 6 (3.26%) Couchbase
8 5 (2.72%) Apache Cassandra
8 5 (2.72%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (2.72%) Data Lake
9 4 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (2.17%) Relational Database
9 4 (2.17%) SQL Server
10 3 (1.63%) Big Data
11 2 (1.09%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.54%) Amazon Aurora
12 1 (0.54%) Delta Lake
12 1 (0.54%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.54%) MySQL
12 1 (0.54%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 55 (29.89%) Jenkins
2 36 (19.57%) GitLab
3 34 (18.48%) Git
4 16 (8.70%) Artifactory
4 16 (8.70%) Cucumber
5 13 (7.07%) JUnit
5 13 (7.07%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (6.52%) Gradle
7 10 (5.43%) JIRA
8 7 (3.80%) Maven
9 6 (3.26%) JMeter
10 4 (2.17%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.63%) Bitbucket
11 3 (1.63%) MLflow
12 2 (1.09%) Cypress.io
12 2 (1.09%) Gatling
13 1 (0.54%) Poetry
13 1 (0.54%) Postman
13 1 (0.54%) PyCharm
13 1 (0.54%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 54 (29.35%) Social Skills
2 19 (10.33%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (8.70%) Public Sector
4 11 (5.98%) Finance
5 4 (2.17%) Aerospace
5 4 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.09%) Banking
6 2 (1.09%) Billing
6 2 (1.09%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.54%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.54%) Legal
Job Titles
1 35 (19.02%) Developer
2 34 (18.48%) DevOps Engineer
3 27 (14.67%) Senior
4 26 (14.13%) Architect
4 26 (14.13%) Java Developer
5 18 (9.78%) Platform Engineer
6 15 (8.15%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 14 (7.61%) Site Engineer
8 12 (6.52%) Azure Engineer
8 12 (6.52%) Senior Developer
9 11 (5.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (5.43%) AWS DevOps
11 9 (4.89%) Security Architect
12 8 (4.35%) Senior Java Developer
13 7 (3.80%) Lead
13 7 (3.80%) Software Engineer
14 6 (3.26%) AWS Developer
14 6 (3.26%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
14 6 (3.26%) Java Engineer
14 6 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (19.02%) Kafka
2 23 (12.50%) Spring
2 23 (12.50%) Spring Boot
3 18 (9.78%) REST
4 16 (8.70%) Elastic Stack
5 13 (7.07%) AngularJS
6 12 (6.52%) React
7 11 (5.98%) RabbitMQ
8 10 (5.43%) Keycloak
8 10 (5.43%) Loki
8 10 (5.43%) PyTorch
8 10 (5.43%) TensorFlow
9 9 (4.89%) Middleware
10 8 (4.35%) RESTful
10 8 (4.35%) scikit-learn
11 6 (3.26%) ADO
12 5 (2.72%) .NET
13 4 (2.17%) Google JAX
13 4 (2.17%) Swagger
13 4 (2.17%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 28 (15.22%) Cloud Native
2 13 (7.07%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (4.35%) Virtual Team
4 6 (3.26%) Enterprise Software
4 6 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
4 6 (3.26%) Private Cloud
5 5 (2.72%) Security Posture
6 4 (2.17%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.17%) PKI
7 3 (1.63%) Cloud Security Posture
7 3 (1.63%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.63%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.63%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.09%) TM Forum
9 1 (0.54%) Data Centre
9 1 (0.54%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.54%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (0.54%) IoT
9 1 (0.54%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 61 (33.15%) Linux
2 15 (8.15%) Windows
3 11 (5.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (3.26%) Ubuntu
5 5 (2.72%) VMS
5 5 (2.72%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.63%) CentOS
7 2 (1.09%) Unix
8 1 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (75.00%) CI/CD
2 91 (49.46%) DevOps
3 83 (45.11%) Containerisation
4 51 (27.72%) Infrastructure as Code
5 50 (27.17%) Agile
6 41 (22.28%) Observability
6 41 (22.28%) Problem-Solving
7 39 (21.20%) Microservices
8 34 (18.48%) Platform Engineering
9 32 (17.39%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 28 (15.22%) DevSecOps
11 26 (14.13%) Software Engineering
12 23 (12.50%) High Availability
13 19 (10.33%) Test Automation
14 18 (9.78%) Configuration Management
15 15 (8.15%) Continuous Integration
15 15 (8.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 14 (7.61%) Machine Learning
16 14 (7.61%) Migration
16 14 (7.61%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 89 (48.37%) Python
2 57 (30.98%) Java
3 48 (26.09%) Bash
4 27 (14.67%) SQL
5 25 (13.59%) PowerShell
6 18 (9.78%) JavaScript
7 15 (8.15%) Go
8 14 (7.61%) C#
9 8 (4.35%) Bicep
9 8 (4.35%) R
10 5 (2.72%) C++
11 4 (2.17%) C
11 4 (2.17%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.63%) TypeScript
13 2 (1.09%) Perl
13 2 (1.09%) PHP
13 2 (1.09%) Rust
14 1 (0.54%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 93 (50.54%) Security Cleared
2 80 (43.48%) SC Cleared
3 9 (4.89%) Degree
3 9 (4.89%) DV Cleared
3 9 (4.89%) OCP
3 9 (4.89%) Oracle Certification
4 8 (4.35%) AWS Certification
5 7 (3.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (3.80%) RHCE
6 4 (2.17%) Azure Certification
6 4 (2.17%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (1.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (1.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.63%) CCSP
7 3 (1.63%) CISSP
7 3 (1.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 2 (1.09%) RHCSA
9 1 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.54%) CCNP
9 1 (0.54%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.52%) QA
2 8 (4.35%) GDPR
2 8 (4.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (3.80%) NIST
4 6 (3.26%) NCSC
5 5 (2.72%) EU AI Act
6 4 (2.17%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.63%) Def Stans
7 3 (1.63%) PSD2
8 1 (0.54%) JSP 440
System Software
1 74 (40.22%) Docker
2 23 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (8.15%) vSphere
4 6 (3.26%) Active Directory
4 6 (3.26%) VMware NSX
5 4 (2.17%) Hyper-V
6 2 (1.09%) KVM
7 1 (0.54%) NDS
7 1 (0.54%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 1 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 69 (37.50%) Terraform
2 68 (36.96%) Ansible
3 50 (27.17%) Grafana
4 43 (23.37%) Prometheus
5 26 (14.13%) Argo
6 9 (4.89%) Puppet
7 8 (4.35%) Kustomize
7 8 (4.35%) Progress Chef
8 7 (3.80%) Istio
8 7 (3.80%) Sysdig
8 7 (3.80%) vCenter Server
9 6 (3.26%) linkerd
10 5 (2.72%) SCOM
11 4 (2.17%) Podman
11 4 (2.17%) Rsyslog
12 3 (1.63%) Cilium
13 2 (1.09%) Kubeflow
13 2 (1.09%) logstash
13 2 (1.09%) Packer
13 2 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 43 (23.37%) Red Hat
2 37 (20.11%) VMware
3 17 (9.24%) Splunk
4 14 (7.61%) Microsoft
5 6 (3.26%) Google
5 6 (3.26%) Pure Storage
6 5 (2.72%) Atlassian
7 3 (1.63%) AppDynamics
7 3 (1.63%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.63%) NVIDIA
7 3 (1.63%) Oracle
8 2 (1.09%) Tenable
9 1 (0.54%) Cloudera
9 1 (0.54%) NetIQ
9 1 (0.54%) OpenText
9 1 (0.54%) Salesforce
9 1 (0.54%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.54%) Virgin Media
9 1 (0.54%) Zscaler