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

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 52 57 55
Rank change year-on-year +5 -2 +4
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 161 148 195
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.07% 3.60% 3.66%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.47% 24.75% 27.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 112 151
10th Percentile £363 £400 £425
25th Percentile £413 £450 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.90% -8.70% +3.37%
75th Percentile £538 £625 £625
90th Percentile £618 £675 £713
England median daily rate £525 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 5
10th Percentile £43.00 - £68.19
25th Percentile £47.50 - -
Median hourly rate £55.00 - £76.53
75th Percentile £84.25 - -
90th Percentile £101.80 - -
England median hourly rate £67.00 £60.64 £68.63
% change year-on-year +10.48% -11.64% +6.41%

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 586 598 720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.81% 14.56% 13.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 396 448 485
10th Percentile £255 £262 £205
25th Percentile £375 £393 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% -6.98% +4.88%
75th Percentile £565 £613 £625
90th Percentile £616 £675 £699
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -5.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 7 29
10th Percentile £18.87 £18.15 £24.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £26.13 £30.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £34.00 £49.73
Median % change year-on-year -26.47% -31.63% +10.51%
75th Percentile £55.00 £37.37 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.65 £44.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £34.00 £37.50 £49.00
% change year-on-year -9.33% -23.47% +96.00%

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 13 November 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 13 November 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 13 November 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 -18 70 £489 -5.56% 80
Hampshire +36 69 £450 -21.74% 34
Berkshire +1 65 £485 -3.00% 41
Surrey +3 11 £420 -35.38% 11
East Sussex +1 4 £565 +22.83% 1
Buckinghamshire -10 3 £650 +8.33% 11
Oxfordshire -13 2 £469 -6.25% 31
West Sussex -17 2 £250 -51.92% 5
Kent - 2 £325 - 5
Middlesex - 2 £635 - 2
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 (3.73%) Confluence
2 4 (2.48%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.24%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.24%) Camunda
4 1 (0.62%) Apache
4 1 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.62%) CMS
4 1 (0.62%) Drupal
4 1 (0.62%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.62%) nginx
4 1 (0.62%) Red Hat Fuse
4 1 (0.62%) SAS
4 1 (0.62%) WordPress
Applications
1 1 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.62%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.86%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 70 (43.48%) AWS
2 69 (42.86%) Azure
3 51 (31.68%) OpenShift
4 42 (26.09%) GitHub
5 30 (18.63%) GCP
6 18 (11.18%) GitHub Actions
7 16 (9.94%) Azure AKS
8 15 (9.32%) IaaS
9 14 (8.70%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (8.07%) Amazon S3
11 12 (7.45%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (6.21%) Cloud Computing
13 9 (5.59%) PaaS
14 8 (4.97%) Amazon ECR
14 8 (4.97%) Datadog
15 7 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (4.35%) Azure Data Factory
15 7 (4.35%) Azure Storage
15 7 (4.35%) Serverless
16 5 (3.11%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 9 (5.59%) DNS
2 8 (4.97%) Firewall
3 5 (3.11%) Kerberos
4 4 (2.48%) HTTP
4 4 (2.48%) MPLS
4 4 (2.48%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.86%) 4G
5 3 (1.86%) 5G
5 3 (1.86%) DOCSIS
5 3 (1.86%) GPON
5 3 (1.86%) LTE
5 3 (1.86%) Network Security
5 3 (1.86%) Radio Access Network
5 3 (1.86%) SSL
5 3 (1.86%) VoIP
5 3 (1.86%) VPN
5 3 (1.86%) xDSL
6 2 (1.24%) Converged Networks
6 2 (1.24%) DHCP
7 1 (0.62%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (21.12%) PostgreSQL
2 27 (16.77%) NoSQL
3 17 (10.56%) MongoDB
4 10 (6.21%) Redis
5 8 (4.97%) Azure SQL Database
6 7 (4.35%) DynamoDB
6 7 (4.35%) HBase
7 6 (3.73%) Couchbase
7 6 (3.73%) Data Lake
8 5 (3.11%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (2.48%) Relational Database
10 3 (1.86%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.86%) Big Data
10 3 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (1.86%) MySQL
11 2 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (1.24%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (1.24%) SQL Server
12 1 (0.62%) Delta Lake
12 1 (0.62%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 51 (31.68%) Jenkins
2 30 (18.63%) GitLab
3 17 (10.56%) Git
4 15 (9.32%) Artifactory
4 15 (9.32%) Cucumber
5 12 (7.45%) JIRA
5 12 (7.45%) JUnit
6 11 (6.83%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (5.59%) Gradle
8 6 (3.73%) JMeter
9 5 (3.11%) Maven
10 3 (1.86%) MLflow
10 3 (1.86%) SonarQube
11 2 (1.24%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.24%) Cypress.io
11 2 (1.24%) Gatling
12 1 (0.62%) Mocha
12 1 (0.62%) Poetry
12 1 (0.62%) PyCharm
12 1 (0.62%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 59 (36.65%) Social Skills
2 18 (11.18%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (7.45%) Finance
4 11 (6.83%) Public Sector
5 9 (5.59%) Telecoms
6 4 (2.48%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.86%) Retail
8 2 (1.24%) Banking
8 2 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.24%) Legal
Job Titles
1 34 (21.12%) Developer
2 25 (15.53%) DevOps Engineer
3 24 (14.91%) Senior
4 23 (14.29%) Architect
5 20 (12.42%) Java Developer
5 20 (12.42%) Platform Engineer
6 16 (9.94%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 15 (9.32%) Site Engineer
8 14 (8.70%) Senior Developer
9 10 (6.21%) Azure Engineer
9 10 (6.21%) Cloud Engineer
10 9 (5.59%) AWS DevOps
10 9 (5.59%) Security Architect
11 6 (3.73%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 6 (3.73%) Senior Java Developer
12 5 (3.11%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 5 (3.11%) AWS Engineer
12 5 (3.11%) Full-Stack Developer
12 5 (3.11%) Full-Stack Java Developer
12 5 (3.11%) Kubernetes Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (20.50%) Kafka
2 20 (12.42%) React
3 19 (11.80%) Spring
3 19 (11.80%) Spring Boot
4 17 (10.56%) Elastic Stack
5 13 (8.07%) REST
6 12 (7.45%) Middleware
7 11 (6.83%) PyTorch
7 11 (6.83%) RabbitMQ
7 11 (6.83%) TensorFlow
8 9 (5.59%) AngularJS
8 9 (5.59%) scikit-learn
9 8 (4.97%) ADO
9 8 (4.97%) Loki
9 8 (4.97%) YAML
10 7 (4.35%) Keycloak
11 6 (3.73%) RESTful
12 5 (3.11%) Node.js
13 4 (2.48%) Google JAX
13 4 (2.48%) JAX
Miscellaneous
1 23 (14.29%) Cloud Native
2 14 (8.70%) Private Cloud
3 11 (6.83%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (4.97%) Virtual Team
5 5 (3.11%) Algorithms
5 5 (3.11%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.11%) Security Posture
6 4 (2.48%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.86%) Cloud Security Posture
7 3 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.86%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.86%) TM Forum
8 2 (1.24%) IoT
8 2 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.62%) Data Centre
9 1 (0.62%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.62%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (0.62%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.62%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 54 (33.54%) Linux
2 11 (6.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (2.48%) Ubuntu
3 4 (2.48%) Windows
4 3 (1.86%) CentOS
4 3 (1.86%) Unix
4 3 (1.86%) VMS
5 2 (1.24%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (80.12%) CI/CD
2 80 (49.69%) DevOps
3 65 (40.37%) Containerisation
4 46 (28.57%) Infrastructure as Code
5 39 (24.22%) Agile
6 38 (23.60%) Problem-Solving
7 31 (19.25%) Observability
8 27 (16.77%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 26 (16.15%) Migration
10 25 (15.53%) Platform Engineering
11 24 (14.91%) High Availability
11 24 (14.91%) Microservices
12 20 (12.42%) Configuration Management
13 18 (11.18%) Machine Learning
14 17 (10.56%) Software Engineering
15 16 (9.94%) Analytics
15 16 (9.94%) Open Source
15 16 (9.94%) Test Automation
16 13 (8.07%) Immutable Infrastructure
16 13 (8.07%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 83 (51.55%) Python
2 54 (33.54%) Java
3 39 (24.22%) SQL
4 33 (20.50%) Bash
5 22 (13.66%) JavaScript
6 18 (11.18%) PowerShell
7 15 (9.32%) Go
8 14 (8.70%) C#
9 9 (5.59%) R
10 7 (4.35%) Bicep
11 5 (3.11%) C++
12 4 (2.48%) C
12 4 (2.48%) TypeScript
13 3 (1.86%) Scala
13 3 (1.86%) Shell Script
14 2 (1.24%) Korn
14 2 (1.24%) Perl
14 2 (1.24%) Ruby
15 1 (0.62%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 66 (40.99%) Security Cleared
2 61 (37.89%) SC Cleared
3 10 (6.21%) Degree
4 8 (4.97%) OCP
4 8 (4.97%) Oracle Certification
5 7 (4.35%) AWS Certification
5 7 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (3.73%) Azure Certification
7 4 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (1.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 3 (1.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (1.86%) CCSP
8 3 (1.86%) CISSP
9 2 (1.24%) DV Cleared
9 2 (1.24%) Master's Degree
9 2 (1.24%) RHCE
9 2 (1.24%) RHCSA
9 2 (1.24%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.62%) JNCIP
10 1 (0.62%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (5.59%) GDPR
1 9 (5.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (4.97%) QA
3 7 (4.35%) NIST
4 5 (3.11%) EU AI Act
4 5 (3.11%) PCI DSS
5 3 (1.86%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.86%) Def Stans
5 3 (1.86%) PSD2
6 2 (1.24%) NCSC
6 2 (1.24%) OASIS TOSCA
7 1 (0.62%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.62%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.62%) JSP 440
System Software
1 57 (35.40%) Docker
2 18 (11.18%) vSphere
3 17 (10.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (3.73%) VMware NSX
5 3 (1.86%) Active Directory
6 2 (1.24%) KVM
7 1 (0.62%) NDS
7 1 (0.62%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 1 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 57 (35.40%) Ansible
2 47 (29.19%) Terraform
3 38 (23.60%) Grafana
4 31 (19.25%) Prometheus
5 17 (10.56%) Argo
6 8 (4.97%) Kustomize
7 7 (4.35%) Sysdig
8 6 (3.73%) Packer
8 6 (3.73%) Progress Chef
8 6 (3.73%) vCenter Server
9 5 (3.11%) SCOM
10 4 (2.48%) Rsyslog
11 3 (1.86%) Cilium
11 3 (1.86%) Puppet
12 2 (1.24%) Amdocs OSS
12 2 (1.24%) Istio
12 2 (1.24%) Kibana
12 2 (1.24%) Kubeflow
12 2 (1.24%) logstash
12 2 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 38 (23.60%) Red Hat
2 26 (16.15%) VMware
3 13 (8.07%) Microsoft
4 10 (6.21%) Splunk
5 7 (4.35%) Atlassian
6 6 (3.73%) Pure Storage
7 5 (3.11%) Google
8 4 (2.48%) Oracle
9 3 (1.86%) NVIDIA
10 2 (1.24%) Ab Initio
10 2 (1.24%) Amdocs
10 2 (1.24%) Ericsson
10 2 (1.24%) Huawei
10 2 (1.24%) NetCracker
10 2 (1.24%) Nokia
11 1 (0.62%) Cloudera
11 1 (0.62%) Dynatrace
11 1 (0.62%) NetIQ
11 1 (0.62%) OpenText
11 1 (0.62%) ServiceNow