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 3 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 47 80
Rank change year-on-year -11 +33 -26
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 188 117 139
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.40% 3.95% 2.46%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.82% 29.18% 19.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 74 94
10th Percentile £359 £396 £413
25th Percentile £412 £409 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -
75th Percentile £550 £613 £615
90th Percentile £625 £675 £666
England median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 0 2
10th Percentile £43.13 - £37.70
25th Percentile £58.75 - £39.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £43.00
75th Percentile £72.50 - £46.63
90th Percentile £84.00 - £47.90
England median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £59.75
% change year-on-year +8.33% +0.42% -14.64%

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 701 401 709
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 12.67% 13.52% 12.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 516 291 507
10th Percentile £260 £313 £205
25th Percentile £392 £409 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £595
90th Percentile £688 £661 £650
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.90% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 3 21
10th Percentile £21.40 £13.59 £14.00
25th Percentile £40.00 £15.99 £24.00
Median hourly rate £60.00 £19.97 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +200.45% -48.13% -34.47%
75th Percentile £70.00 £23.99 £50.00
90th Percentile £81.20 £26.39 £68.63
England median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £25.77
% change year-on-year +107.55% +2.85% -55.19%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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
Hampshire -3 80 £500 -13.04% 21
Thames Valley -29 76 £475 -5.05% 41
Berkshire -22 60 £475 -5.00% 23
Surrey +2 20 £513 +46.43% 12
Buckinghamshire -17 13 £426 -13.72% 4
West Sussex -11 7 £300 - 3
Oxfordshire -14 3 £600 +9.09% 14
Middlesex - 3 £509 - 2
East Sussex 0 1 - - 2
Home Counties - 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 11 (5.85%) Apache Spark
2 4 (2.13%) Apache
3 3 (1.60%) Confluence
3 3 (1.60%) IIS
4 2 (1.06%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.53%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.53%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (1.06%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 106 (56.38%) AWS
2 90 (47.87%) Azure
3 63 (33.51%) OpenShift
4 43 (22.87%) GCP
5 41 (21.81%) GitHub
6 25 (13.30%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (9.04%) Azure DevOps
8 16 (8.51%) Serverless
9 15 (7.98%) AWS CloudFormation
10 13 (6.91%) Azure AKS
11 12 (6.38%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (6.38%) Amazon S3
12 11 (5.85%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (4.79%) Datadog
14 8 (4.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (4.26%) Cloud Computing
15 7 (3.72%) Amazon ECR
15 7 (3.72%) Snowflake
16 6 (3.19%) IaaS
17 5 (2.66%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 13 (6.91%) DNS
2 11 (5.85%) Firewall
3 5 (2.66%) TCP/IP
4 4 (2.13%) DHCP
4 4 (2.13%) HTTP
4 4 (2.13%) VPN
5 3 (1.60%) Kerberos
6 1 (0.53%) Internet
6 1 (0.53%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.53%) MQTT
6 1 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
6 1 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.53%) SAN
6 1 (0.53%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (19.15%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (11.70%) NoSQL
3 12 (6.38%) Relational Database
4 11 (5.85%) Big Data
4 11 (5.85%) DynamoDB
5 10 (5.32%) Redis
6 9 (4.79%) MongoDB
7 6 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (3.19%) HBase
8 4 (2.13%) SQL Server
9 2 (1.06%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.06%) Couchbase
9 2 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.53%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.53%) DocumentDB
Development Applications
1 43 (22.87%) Jenkins
2 30 (15.96%) Git
3 29 (15.43%) GitLab
4 15 (7.98%) Artifactory
5 12 (6.38%) JUnit
5 12 (6.38%) SonarQube
6 11 (5.85%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (5.32%) Cucumber
8 9 (4.79%) Gradle
9 6 (3.19%) JMeter
10 3 (1.60%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.60%) Jaeger
10 3 (1.60%) JIRA
10 3 (1.60%) Maven
11 2 (1.06%) Gatling
11 2 (1.06%) NUnit
11 2 (1.06%) Selenium
12 1 (0.53%) LoadRunner
12 1 (0.53%) MLflow
12 1 (0.53%) Postman
General
1 57 (30.32%) Social Skills
2 21 (11.17%) Public Sector
3 20 (10.64%) Finance
4 11 (5.85%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (1.60%) Banking
5 3 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (1.60%) Military
6 2 (1.06%) Billing
6 2 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (1.06%) Financial Institution
6 2 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (0.53%) Advertising
7 1 (0.53%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.53%) Automotive
7 1 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (0.53%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 42 (22.34%) Developer
2 35 (18.62%) Java Developer
3 25 (13.30%) DevOps Engineer
4 23 (12.23%) Senior
5 20 (10.64%) Architect
6 19 (10.11%) Platform Engineer
7 14 (7.45%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 12 (6.38%) Site Engineer
8 12 (6.38%) Software Engineer
9 10 (5.32%) AWS DevOps
9 10 (5.32%) Senior Developer
10 9 (4.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 8 (4.26%) Azure Engineer
11 8 (4.26%) Java Engineer
11 8 (4.26%) Senior Java Developer
12 7 (3.72%) Analyst
12 7 (3.72%) Security Analyst
13 6 (3.19%) AWS Developer
13 6 (3.19%) AWS Engineer
14 5 (2.66%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (20.21%) Kafka
2 28 (14.89%) Spring
3 24 (12.77%) Spring Boot
4 23 (12.23%) AngularJS
5 16 (8.51%) Loki
6 13 (6.91%) Elastic Stack
6 13 (6.91%) REST
7 12 (6.38%) Quarkus
7 12 (6.38%) React
8 11 (5.85%) Keycloak
9 9 (4.79%) .NET
9 9 (4.79%) RESTful
10 8 (4.26%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (3.19%) JSON
11 6 (3.19%) OpenTelemetry
12 5 (2.66%) Middleware
12 5 (2.66%) YAML
13 4 (2.13%) Node.js
13 4 (2.13%) OpenAPI
13 4 (2.13%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (19.15%) Cloud Native
2 20 (10.64%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (4.26%) Hybrid Cloud
3 8 (4.26%) Virtual Team
4 7 (3.72%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.19%) Onboarding
6 4 (2.13%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.13%) Data Structures
6 4 (2.13%) PKI
7 3 (1.60%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.60%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.06%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (1.06%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.06%) TM Forum
9 1 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.53%) Legacy Applications
9 1 (0.53%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.53%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 57 (30.32%) Linux
2 14 (7.45%) Windows
3 12 (6.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.13%) Unix
4 4 (2.13%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.60%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.06%) VMS
7 1 (0.53%) CentOS
7 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (76.06%) CI/CD
2 88 (46.81%) DevOps
3 81 (43.09%) Containerisation
4 68 (36.17%) Infrastructure as Code
5 64 (34.04%) Agile
6 50 (26.60%) Observability
7 41 (21.81%) Platform Engineering
8 39 (20.74%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 38 (20.21%) Microservices
10 33 (17.55%) DevSecOps
11 31 (16.49%) Software Engineering
12 30 (15.96%) Problem-Solving
13 24 (12.77%) Scrum
14 22 (11.70%) Test Automation
15 21 (11.17%) High Availability
16 18 (9.57%) GitOps
17 16 (8.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 15 (7.98%) Incident Response
18 15 (7.98%) SDLC
18 15 (7.98%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 83 (44.15%) Python
2 56 (29.79%) Bash
3 55 (29.26%) Java
4 26 (13.83%) PowerShell
5 17 (9.04%) SQL
6 16 (8.51%) Go
7 13 (6.91%) JavaScript
8 10 (5.32%) Bicep
9 9 (4.79%) C#
10 3 (1.60%) TypeScript
11 2 (1.06%) C
11 2 (1.06%) C++
11 2 (1.06%) PHP
11 2 (1.06%) Rust
11 2 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.53%) Korn
12 1 (0.53%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 101 (53.72%) Security Cleared
2 82 (43.62%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.38%) Degree
3 12 (6.38%) DV Cleared
4 7 (3.72%) Computer Science Degree
4 7 (3.72%) OCP
4 7 (3.72%) Oracle Certification
4 7 (3.72%) RHCE
5 5 (2.66%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.13%) Azure Certification
6 4 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.53%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.53%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.51%) QA
2 12 (6.38%) NCSC
3 6 (3.19%) PCI DSS
4 5 (2.66%) Cyber Essentials
4 5 (2.66%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 5 (2.66%) IASME
4 5 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 5 (2.66%) NIST
4 5 (2.66%) NIST 800
5 4 (2.13%) GDPR
6 3 (1.60%) GRC
6 3 (1.60%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.53%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.53%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.53%) ISO 8583
7 1 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 71 (37.77%) Docker
2 22 (11.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (7.98%) vSphere
4 6 (3.19%) Active Directory
4 6 (3.19%) Hyper-V
4 6 (3.19%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.53%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 74 (39.36%) Terraform
2 57 (30.32%) Grafana
3 54 (28.72%) Ansible
4 52 (27.66%) Prometheus
5 39 (20.74%) Argo
6 11 (5.85%) Istio
6 11 (5.85%) Kustomize
7 8 (4.26%) linkerd
7 8 (4.26%) Rancher
8 7 (3.72%) Puppet
8 7 (3.72%) Sysdig
8 7 (3.72%) vCenter Server
9 6 (3.19%) Progress Chef
10 4 (2.13%) Nessus
11 3 (1.60%) Podman
12 2 (1.06%) Packer
12 2 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.53%) Fluentd
13 1 (0.53%) Kubeflow
13 1 (0.53%) SCOM
Vendors
1 46 (24.47%) Red Hat
2 34 (18.09%) VMware
3 20 (10.64%) Splunk
4 14 (7.45%) Microsoft
5 6 (3.19%) Pure Storage
6 5 (2.66%) Ab Initio
6 5 (2.66%) Dynatrace
6 5 (2.66%) Google
6 5 (2.66%) Teradata
7 4 (2.13%) AppDynamics
7 4 (2.13%) Tenable
8 3 (1.60%) Oracle
9 2 (1.06%) Atlassian
9 2 (1.06%) Fortinet
9 2 (1.06%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.53%) Arista
10 1 (0.53%) Databricks
10 1 (0.53%) Dell
10 1 (0.53%) Mavenir
10 1 (0.53%) Virgin Media