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 21 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 59 68
Rank change year-on-year +1 +9 -12
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 190 99 151
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.19% 3.33% 2.76%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.22% 27.42% 20.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 62 104
10th Percentile £355 £339 £425
25th Percentile £402 £413 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -10.87% -2.13%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £625
90th Percentile £660 £659 £675
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 0 2
10th Percentile £50.38 - £37.70
25th Percentile £60.00 - £39.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £43.00
75th Percentile £70.00 - £46.63
90th Percentile - - £47.90
England median hourly rate £65.00 £79.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year -17.72% +27.42% -15.07%

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 698 361 720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.73% 12.13% 13.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 511 264 527
10th Percentile £281 £258 £213
25th Percentile £402 £401 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -11.63%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £606
90th Percentile £725 £661 £656
England median daily rate £507 £525 £515
% change year-on-year -3.43% +1.90% -10.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 2 14
10th Percentile £31.25 £20.77 £14.00
25th Percentile £40.34 £21.98 £17.91
Median hourly rate £56.25 £23.99 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +134.52% -44.22% -26.81%
75th Percentile £69.38 £25.99 £48.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £27.20 £55.25
England median hourly rate £56.50 £33.25 £25.77
% change year-on-year +69.92% +29.05% -50.58%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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
Thames Valley -15 82 £402 -19.57% 36
Hampshire +7 72 £548 -4.78% 35
Berkshire -12 61 £414 -17.31% 17
Surrey -3 26 £505 -7.34% 3
Buckinghamshire -20 18 £393 +26.57% 6
West Sussex -11 5 £400 +33.33% 1
Middlesex -2 3 £509 - 2
Oxfordshire -18 3 £600 +9.09% 13
East Sussex -1 1 - - 2
Home Counties - 1 - - 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 9 (4.74%) Apache Spark
2 7 (3.68%) OpenStack
3 4 (2.11%) IIS
4 2 (1.05%) Apache
4 2 (1.05%) Apache Pulsar
4 2 (1.05%) Confluence
4 2 (1.05%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (2.11%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 100 (52.63%) Azure
2 94 (49.47%) AWS
3 50 (26.32%) GCP
4 48 (25.26%) OpenShift
5 27 (14.21%) GitHub
6 25 (13.16%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (12.63%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (8.95%) Amazon EKS
9 16 (8.42%) Serverless
10 15 (7.89%) Azure AKS
11 12 (6.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 10 (5.26%) Amazon S3
12 10 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (4.74%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (4.21%) Entra ID
15 7 (3.68%) Snowflake
16 5 (2.63%) Amazon ECS
16 5 (2.63%) Datadog
17 4 (2.11%) PaaS
17 4 (2.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.68%) Firewall
2 6 (3.16%) 5G
2 6 (3.16%) Diameter Protocol
2 6 (3.16%) LTE
2 6 (3.16%) Radio Access Network
2 6 (3.16%) VoLTE
2 6 (3.16%) VoWiFi
2 6 (3.16%) Wireshark
3 4 (2.11%) DNS
3 4 (2.11%) VPN
4 3 (1.58%) HTTP
5 2 (1.05%) MQTT
6 1 (0.53%) DHCP
6 1 (0.53%) Internet
6 1 (0.53%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.53%) Network Security
6 1 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
6 1 (0.53%) SAN
6 1 (0.53%) SNMP
6 1 (0.53%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (14.21%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (8.42%) NoSQL
3 12 (6.32%) Relational Database
4 10 (5.26%) Big Data
4 10 (5.26%) Redis
5 6 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (3.16%) DynamoDB
5 6 (3.16%) MongoDB
6 5 (2.63%) SQL Server
7 3 (1.58%) DocumentDB
7 3 (1.58%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.05%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.53%) HBase
9 1 (0.53%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 35 (18.42%) Git
2 30 (15.79%) Jenkins
3 24 (12.63%) GitLab
4 18 (9.47%) SonarQube
5 5 (2.63%) NUnit
5 5 (2.63%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (2.11%) Jaeger
7 3 (1.58%) Artifactory
8 2 (1.05%) Gradle
8 2 (1.05%) JIRA
8 2 (1.05%) JUnit
9 1 (0.53%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.53%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.53%) Maven
9 1 (0.53%) MLflow
9 1 (0.53%) Postman
9 1 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 45 (23.68%) Social Skills
2 21 (11.05%) Public Sector
3 18 (9.47%) Finance
4 11 (5.79%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.58%) Military
6 3 (1.58%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.05%) Automotive
7 2 (1.05%) Banking
7 2 (1.05%) Billing
7 2 (1.05%) Financial Institution
7 2 (1.05%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Advertising
8 1 (0.53%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.53%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Retail
Job Titles
1 36 (18.95%) Developer
2 31 (16.32%) DevOps Engineer
3 22 (11.58%) Java Developer
3 22 (11.58%) Platform Engineer
4 19 (10.00%) Architect
5 15 (7.89%) Software Engineer
6 14 (7.37%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 13 (6.84%) Azure Engineer
7 13 (6.84%) Senior
8 11 (5.79%) Site Engineer
9 10 (5.26%) Analyst
9 10 (5.26%) Security Analyst
10 9 (4.74%) Java Engineer
11 7 (3.68%) AWS Engineer
11 7 (3.68%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 7 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
12 6 (3.16%) Cloud Engineer
12 6 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 5 (2.63%) .NET Developer
13 5 (2.63%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (15.79%) Kafka
2 26 (13.68%) AngularJS
3 16 (8.42%) REST
4 15 (7.89%) .NET
4 15 (7.89%) React
4 15 (7.89%) Spring
5 14 (7.37%) Quarkus
5 14 (7.37%) Spring Boot
6 12 (6.32%) RESTful
7 11 (5.79%) Keycloak
7 11 (5.79%) Loki
8 8 (4.21%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (3.68%) Node.js
9 7 (3.68%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (3.16%) .NET Framework
10 6 (3.16%) ARM Templates
10 6 (3.16%) OpenAPI
10 6 (3.16%) pytest
10 6 (3.16%) Swagger
10 6 (3.16%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 31 (16.32%) Cloud Native
2 26 (13.68%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (5.26%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (5.26%) Onboarding
4 7 (3.68%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.16%) Algorithms
5 6 (3.16%) Data Structures
6 4 (2.11%) Security Posture
7 3 (1.58%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.58%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.58%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.05%) 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%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.53%) FMCG
9 1 (0.53%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 38 (20.00%) Linux
2 10 (5.26%) Unix
2 10 (5.26%) Windows
3 5 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 2 (1.05%) Ubuntu
4 2 (1.05%) VMS
5 1 (0.53%) Android
5 1 (0.53%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.53%) CentOS
5 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (68.95%) CI/CD
2 92 (48.42%) DevOps
3 83 (43.68%) Containerisation
4 65 (34.21%) Agile
5 63 (33.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (22.11%) Platform Engineering
7 41 (21.58%) Software Engineering
8 40 (21.05%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 38 (20.00%) Observability
10 34 (17.89%) Microservices
11 33 (17.37%) DevSecOps
12 30 (15.79%) High Availability
12 30 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
13 28 (14.74%) Scrum
14 19 (10.00%) SDLC
14 19 (10.00%) Test Automation
14 19 (10.00%) Unit Testing
15 18 (9.47%) GitOps
16 17 (8.95%) Root Cause Analysis
17 16 (8.42%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 83 (43.68%) Python
2 53 (27.89%) Java
3 43 (22.63%) Bash
4 30 (15.79%) PowerShell
5 21 (11.05%) Go
6 19 (10.00%) JavaScript
7 18 (9.47%) SQL
8 14 (7.37%) C#
9 12 (6.32%) Bicep
10 9 (4.74%) TypeScript
11 3 (1.58%) Rust
12 2 (1.05%) PHP
12 2 (1.05%) Scala
12 2 (1.05%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.53%) C
13 1 (0.53%) C++
13 1 (0.53%) Korn
13 1 (0.53%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 96 (50.53%) Security Cleared
2 78 (41.05%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.37%) DV Cleared
4 12 (6.32%) Degree
5 9 (4.74%) RHCE
6 7 (3.68%) Azure Certification
6 7 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.05%) OCP
8 2 (1.05%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.53%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.53%) CISSP
9 1 (0.53%) CSPO
9 1 (0.53%) ISTQB
9 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.53%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.53%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (9.47%) QA
2 11 (5.79%) NCSC
3 7 (3.68%) PCI DSS
4 6 (3.16%) SLA
5 5 (2.63%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (2.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 5 (2.63%) GDPR
5 5 (2.63%) IASME
5 5 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 5 (2.63%) NIST
5 5 (2.63%) NIST 800
6 4 (2.11%) GRC
7 3 (1.58%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.53%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.53%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.53%) ISO 8583
8 1 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 70 (36.84%) Docker
2 7 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (2.11%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.53%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 1 (0.53%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 70 (36.84%) Terraform
2 44 (23.16%) Grafana
3 43 (22.63%) Prometheus
4 41 (21.58%) Ansible
5 28 (14.74%) Argo
6 11 (5.79%) Istio
7 10 (5.26%) Puppet
7 10 (5.26%) Rancher
8 7 (3.68%) linkerd
9 5 (2.63%) Podman
10 4 (2.11%) Nessus
11 3 (1.58%) Kustomize
12 2 (1.05%) Progress Chef
12 2 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.53%) Fluentd
13 1 (0.53%) Kubeflow
13 1 (0.53%) Packer
13 1 (0.53%) Salt
13 1 (0.53%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 37 (19.47%) Red Hat
2 18 (9.47%) Splunk
3 13 (6.84%) VMware
4 10 (5.26%) Microsoft
5 7 (3.68%) Ericsson
5 7 (3.68%) Google
6 6 (3.16%) BT
6 6 (3.16%) Huawei
6 6 (3.16%) Nokia
7 5 (2.63%) Ab Initio
7 5 (2.63%) Dynatrace
7 5 (2.63%) Oracle
7 5 (2.63%) Tenable
7 5 (2.63%) Teradata
8 4 (2.11%) AppDynamics
9 3 (1.58%) Foundry
10 2 (1.05%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.05%) OpenAI
10 2 (1.05%) Palantir
11 1 (0.53%) ForgeRock