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

6 months to
30 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 52 63
Rank change year-on-year -8 +11 -6
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 231 138 141
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.47% 3.89% 2.99%
As % of the Systems Management category 35.05% 29.11% 21.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 151 87 108
10th Percentile £357 £398 £411
25th Percentile £453 £413 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -7.41% -10.00%
75th Percentile £584 £588 £630
90th Percentile £700 £623 £675
England median daily rate £540 £525 £563
% change year-on-year +2.86% -6.71% -6.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 0 1
10th Percentile £63.30 - -
25th Percentile - - £36.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 - £38.50
75th Percentile - - £40.25
90th Percentile £71.09 - -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £58.50
% change year-on-year +4.48% +14.53% -19.86%

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 659 474 646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 9.91% 13.35% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 426 323 476
10th Percentile £317 £261 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.40% - -6.98%
75th Percentile £623 £588 £608
90th Percentile £725 £629 £675
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -5.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 7 9
10th Percentile £25.63 £18.87 £21.00
25th Percentile £44.86 £23.44 £30.00
Median hourly rate £68.11 £32.77 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +107.83% -9.39% -27.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £69.00 £40.25
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.65 £53.90
England median hourly rate £67.00 £51.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +31.37% +36.00% -24.27%

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 August 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 30 August 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 30 August 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 -19 93 £460 -4.91% 65
Berkshire -16 71 £460 -4.91% 37
Hampshire -13 70 £550 +3.53% 40
Surrey +12 50 £468 -14.22% 20
Buckinghamshire -23 17 £393 - 7
Middlesex -13 9 - - 1
West Sussex -15 7 £296 -8.92% 11
Oxfordshire -20 5 £825 +76.00% 21
East Sussex 0 2 £330 -28.65% 3
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 8 (3.46%) OpenStack
2 7 (3.03%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (2.60%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.30%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.87%) Apache
5 2 (0.87%) Apache Superset
5 2 (0.87%) Confluence
6 1 (0.43%) IIS
Applications
1 5 (2.16%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (0.43%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 128 (55.41%) Azure
2 122 (52.81%) AWS
3 55 (23.81%) OpenShift
4 46 (19.91%) GCP
5 40 (17.32%) GitHub
6 38 (16.45%) Azure DevOps
7 27 (11.69%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (7.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 15 (6.49%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (6.49%) Azure Monitor
9 15 (6.49%) Serverless
10 12 (5.19%) Azure AKS
10 12 (5.19%) Datadog
10 12 (5.19%) SaaS
11 11 (4.76%) Entra ID
12 9 (3.90%) AWS CloudFormation
13 6 (2.60%) AWS Lambda
13 6 (2.60%) Power Platform
14 5 (2.16%) Amazon S3
15 4 (1.73%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (6.93%) DNS
2 15 (6.49%) VPN
3 14 (6.06%) Firewall
4 10 (4.33%) TCP/IP
5 8 (3.46%) DHCP
5 8 (3.46%) Network Security
6 7 (3.03%) LTE
7 6 (2.60%) 5G
7 6 (2.60%) Diameter Protocol
7 6 (2.60%) Radio Access Network
7 6 (2.60%) VoLTE
7 6 (2.60%) VoWiFi
7 6 (2.60%) Wireshark
8 4 (1.73%) Intrusion Detection
8 4 (1.73%) MQTT
8 4 (1.73%) Software-Defined Networking
9 3 (1.30%) BGP
10 2 (0.87%) HTTP
11 1 (0.43%) Broadband
11 1 (0.43%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (12.12%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (6.49%) NoSQL
3 14 (6.06%) Relational Database
4 9 (3.90%) Oracle Database
5 7 (3.03%) Big Data
5 7 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (2.16%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (2.16%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.73%) DocumentDB
8 3 (1.30%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.30%) Power BI
8 3 (1.30%) Redis
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.87%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.87%) Spark SQL
9 2 (0.87%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.43%) InfluxDB
10 1 (0.43%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 38 (16.45%) Git
1 38 (16.45%) GitLab
2 34 (14.72%) Jenkins
3 28 (12.12%) SonarQube
4 8 (3.46%) MLflow
5 5 (2.16%) NUnit
6 4 (1.73%) JUnit
7 3 (1.30%) JIRA
7 3 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.87%) Gradle
8 2 (0.87%) Jaeger
8 2 (0.87%) Maven
9 1 (0.43%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.43%) JMeter
9 1 (0.43%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.43%) Mockito
9 1 (0.43%) NeoLoad
9 1 (0.43%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.43%) Selenium
9 1 (0.43%) Subversion
General
1 61 (26.41%) Social Skills
2 25 (10.82%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (9.52%) Public Sector
4 17 (7.36%) Aerospace
5 15 (6.49%) Finance
6 12 (5.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (3.90%) Telecoms
8 5 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.30%) Banking
9 3 (1.30%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.30%) Publishing
10 2 (0.87%) Automotive
10 2 (0.87%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.87%) Military
10 2 (0.87%) Retail
11 1 (0.43%) Advertising
11 1 (0.43%) Local Government
11 1 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.43%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 40 (17.32%) Developer
2 30 (12.99%) Architect
3 28 (12.12%) Platform Engineer
4 20 (8.66%) Senior
5 16 (6.93%) DevOps Engineer
5 16 (6.93%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 16 (6.93%) Java Developer
5 16 (6.93%) Lead
6 11 (4.76%) Java Engineer
6 11 (4.76%) Technical Leader
7 10 (4.33%) Analyst
7 10 (4.33%) Azure Engineer
7 10 (4.33%) Security Analyst
7 10 (4.33%) Software Engineer
8 9 (3.90%) Cloud Architect
9 8 (3.46%) Service Owner
10 7 (3.03%) .NET Developer
10 7 (3.03%) Cloud Engineer
10 7 (3.03%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 7 (3.03%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (32.90%) Terraform
2 34 (14.72%) Kafka
3 27 (11.69%) RESTful
4 26 (11.26%) AngularJS
4 26 (11.26%) REST
5 21 (9.09%) Quarkus
6 19 (8.23%) React
7 14 (6.06%) .NET
7 14 (6.06%) OAuth
8 13 (5.63%) Django
8 13 (5.63%) OAuth2
9 11 (4.76%) ARM Templates
9 11 (4.76%) YAML
10 10 (4.33%) Spring
11 9 (3.90%) OpenID
12 8 (3.46%) .NET Framework
12 8 (3.46%) CSS
12 8 (3.46%) HTML
12 8 (3.46%) Spring Boot
12 8 (3.46%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 46 (19.91%) Cloud Native
2 24 (10.39%) Hybrid Cloud
3 19 (8.23%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.76%) Enterprise Cloud
5 8 (3.46%) CMDB
6 7 (3.03%) Data Structures
6 7 (3.03%) Onboarding
6 7 (3.03%) Product Ownership
7 6 (2.60%) AI Agents
7 6 (2.60%) Algorithms
8 5 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.73%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (1.73%) Public Cloud
10 2 (0.87%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (0.87%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (0.87%) Operational Technology
10 2 (0.87%) SCADA
10 2 (0.87%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 60 (25.97%) Linux
2 20 (8.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 10 (4.33%) Windows
4 9 (3.90%) Unix
4 9 (3.90%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.43%) Android
5 1 (0.43%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.43%) CentOS
5 1 (0.43%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (63.64%) CI/CD
2 116 (50.22%) DevOps
3 106 (45.89%) Containerisation
4 95 (41.13%) Agile
5 70 (30.30%) DevSecOps
6 69 (29.87%) Infrastructure as Code
7 55 (23.81%) Problem-Solving
8 52 (22.51%) Platform Engineering
9 48 (20.78%) Continuous Improvement
10 47 (20.35%) Software Engineering
11 43 (18.61%) AI
12 41 (17.75%) Test Automation
13 40 (17.32%) Machine Learning
14 38 (16.45%) Scrum
15 35 (15.15%) Microservices
15 35 (15.15%) Observability
16 33 (14.29%) SDLC
17 31 (13.42%) Analytics
18 30 (12.99%) Cybersecurity
18 30 (12.99%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 110 (47.62%) Python
2 45 (19.48%) Bash
2 45 (19.48%) Java
3 41 (17.75%) PowerShell
4 23 (9.96%) JavaScript
5 20 (8.66%) SQL
6 17 (7.36%) Bicep
7 13 (5.63%) TypeScript
8 12 (5.19%) C#
9 10 (4.33%) Go
10 4 (1.73%) Rust
10 4 (1.73%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.87%) Groovy
11 2 (0.87%) Scala
Qualifications
1 117 (50.65%) Security Cleared
2 102 (44.16%) SC Cleared
3 16 (6.93%) Degree
4 15 (6.49%) Azure Certification
5 12 (5.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (4.76%) DV Cleared
7 10 (4.33%) CISSP
8 9 (3.90%) AWS Certification
8 9 (3.90%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (3.46%) ITIL Certification
10 7 (3.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 7 (3.03%) Master's Degree
11 5 (2.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (2.16%) RHCE
12 4 (1.73%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 4 (1.73%) CEH
12 4 (1.73%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (1.30%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 3 (1.30%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (19.05%) QA
2 13 (5.63%) NIST
3 10 (4.33%) NCSC
4 9 (3.90%) Cyber Essentials
4 9 (3.90%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 8 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (3.03%) Accessibility
7 6 (2.60%) SLA
8 5 (2.16%) GDPR
8 5 (2.16%) IASME
8 5 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 5 (2.16%) NIST 800
9 4 (1.73%) Data Quality
10 3 (1.30%) GRC
10 3 (1.30%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 101 (43.72%) Docker
2 16 (6.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (3.90%) Hyper-V
4 8 (3.46%) IAG
5 3 (1.30%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 2 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 50 (21.65%) Ansible
2 28 (12.12%) Grafana
3 25 (10.82%) Argo
4 23 (9.96%) Prometheus
5 7 (3.03%) Istio
6 6 (2.60%) Puppet
7 5 (2.16%) Podman
8 4 (1.73%) Rancher
9 2 (0.87%) CASB
9 2 (0.87%) Kibana
9 2 (0.87%) linkerd
9 2 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.43%) QRadar
Vendors
1 44 (19.05%) Microsoft
2 37 (16.02%) Red Hat
3 19 (8.23%) Google
4 17 (7.36%) VMware
5 15 (6.49%) Oracle
6 13 (5.63%) Dynatrace
7 8 (3.46%) Nexthink
7 8 (3.46%) ServiceNow
7 8 (3.46%) Splunk
8 6 (2.60%) BT
8 6 (2.60%) Ericsson
8 6 (2.60%) Huawei
8 6 (2.60%) Nokia
9 5 (2.16%) Databricks
10 4 (1.73%) Foundry
10 4 (1.73%) NVIDIA
10 4 (1.73%) Tenable
11 3 (1.30%) OpenAI
11 3 (1.30%) Palantir
11 3 (1.30%) Salesforce