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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 58 69
Rank change year-on-year -4 +11 -11
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 188 103 151
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.13% 3.54% 2.73%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.97% 27.69% 20.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 64 104
10th Percentile £358 £341 £425
25th Percentile £402 £411 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £489 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.25% -14.96% -2.13%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £625
90th Percentile £664 £600 £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 £80.00 £67.00
% change year-on-year -18.75% +19.40% -7.90%

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 697 372 734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.61% 12.79% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 509 273 537
10th Percentile £296 £251 £213
25th Percentile £403 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £485
Median % change year-on-year - +3.09% -10.19%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £608
90th Percentile £725 £630 £659
England median daily rate £507 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -3.43% +0.96% -9.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 2 13
10th Percentile £31.25 £20.77 £14.00
25th Percentile £38.81 £21.98 £16.00
Median hourly rate £56.25 £23.99 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +134.52% -37.70% -34.47%
75th Percentile £70.00 £25.99 £48.75
90th Percentile £70.60 £27.20 £49.75
England median hourly rate £56.50 £29.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year +94.83% +7.41% -48.39%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -20 81 £401 -13.76% 40
Hampshire +3 72 £549 +2.19% 30
Berkshire -17 59 £400 -15.79% 23
Surrey -7 26 £505 -6.48% 3
Buckinghamshire -25 18 £393 +26.57% 5
West Sussex -15 5 £500 +66.67% 1
Oxfordshire -21 4 £750 +36.36% 12
Middlesex -3 2 £492 - 2
East Sussex -2 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 8 (4.26%) Apache Spark
2 7 (3.72%) OpenStack
3 4 (2.13%) IIS
4 3 (1.60%) Confluence
5 2 (1.06%) Apache Pulsar
5 2 (1.06%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.53%) Apache
6 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (2.13%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 97 (51.60%) Azure
2 94 (50.00%) AWS
3 48 (25.53%) GCP
4 47 (25.00%) OpenShift
5 25 (13.30%) GitHub
6 22 (11.70%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (11.17%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (9.04%) Amazon EKS
9 13 (6.91%) Serverless
10 12 (6.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 12 (6.38%) Azure AKS
11 9 (4.79%) Amazon S3
11 9 (4.79%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (4.79%) Entra ID
12 7 (3.72%) AWS CloudFormation
12 7 (3.72%) Snowflake
13 5 (2.66%) Amazon ECS
13 5 (2.66%) Datadog
13 5 (2.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 4 (2.13%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.72%) Firewall
2 6 (3.19%) 5G
2 6 (3.19%) Diameter Protocol
2 6 (3.19%) LTE
2 6 (3.19%) Radio Access Network
2 6 (3.19%) VoLTE
2 6 (3.19%) VoWiFi
2 6 (3.19%) Wireshark
3 4 (2.13%) DNS
3 4 (2.13%) HTTP
3 4 (2.13%) VPN
4 2 (1.06%) MQTT
4 2 (1.06%) Network Security
5 1 (0.53%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.53%) Internet
5 1 (0.53%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
5 1 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.53%) SAN
5 1 (0.53%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (15.43%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (8.51%) NoSQL
3 12 (6.38%) Relational Database
4 10 (5.32%) Big Data
4 10 (5.32%) Redis
5 6 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (3.19%) DynamoDB
5 6 (3.19%) MongoDB
6 5 (2.66%) SQL Server
7 4 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.60%) Amazon Aurora
8 3 (1.60%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.60%) DocumentDB
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.53%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.53%) HBase
9 1 (0.53%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 27 (14.36%) Git
2 26 (13.83%) GitLab
2 26 (13.83%) Jenkins
3 19 (10.11%) SonarQube
4 5 (2.66%) NUnit
4 5 (2.66%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (2.13%) Jaeger
6 3 (1.60%) Artifactory
6 3 (1.60%) JIRA
7 2 (1.06%) JUnit
7 2 (1.06%) MLflow
8 1 (0.53%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.53%) Gradle
8 1 (0.53%) JMeter
8 1 (0.53%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.53%) NeoLoad
8 1 (0.53%) Postman
8 1 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 44 (23.40%) Social Skills
2 19 (10.11%) Finance
3 18 (9.57%) Public Sector
4 11 (5.85%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (2.13%) Telecoms
6 3 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (1.60%) Manufacturing
6 3 (1.60%) Military
7 2 (1.06%) Aerospace
7 2 (1.06%) Automotive
7 2 (1.06%) Billing
7 2 (1.06%) Financial Institution
7 2 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.06%) Retail
8 1 (0.53%) Advertising
8 1 (0.53%) Banking
8 1 (0.53%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 36 (19.15%) Developer
2 28 (14.89%) DevOps Engineer
3 22 (11.70%) Platform Engineer
4 21 (11.17%) Java Developer
5 18 (9.57%) Architect
6 15 (7.98%) Software Engineer
7 14 (7.45%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 13 (6.91%) Azure Engineer
9 12 (6.38%) Senior
10 11 (5.85%) Site Engineer
11 10 (5.32%) Analyst
11 10 (5.32%) Security Analyst
12 8 (4.26%) Java Engineer
13 7 (3.72%) AWS Engineer
14 6 (3.19%) Cloud Engineer
14 6 (3.19%) DevSecOps Engineer
14 6 (3.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 5 (2.66%) .NET Developer
15 5 (2.66%) Python Developer
15 5 (2.66%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (16.49%) Kafka
2 26 (13.83%) AngularJS
3 16 (8.51%) RESTful
4 15 (7.98%) React
5 14 (7.45%) .NET
5 14 (7.45%) Quarkus
5 14 (7.45%) REST
5 14 (7.45%) Spring
6 13 (6.91%) Spring Boot
7 12 (6.38%) Keycloak
8 11 (5.85%) Loki
9 7 (3.72%) .NET Framework
9 7 (3.72%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (3.72%) Node.js
9 7 (3.72%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (3.19%) ARM Templates
10 6 (3.19%) JSON
10 6 (3.19%) OpenAPI
10 6 (3.19%) pytest
10 6 (3.19%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 30 (15.96%) Cloud Native
2 27 (14.36%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (5.32%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (5.32%) Onboarding
4 7 (3.72%) Data Structures
4 7 (3.72%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.19%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.13%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.13%) Security Posture
7 3 (1.60%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.60%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.06%) FMCG
8 2 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.06%) TM Forum
9 1 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.53%) Chip and PIN
9 1 (0.53%) EMV
9 1 (0.53%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.53%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 34 (18.09%) Linux
2 10 (5.32%) Unix
3 8 (4.26%) Windows
4 6 (3.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (2.66%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.06%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.06%) VMS
7 1 (0.53%) Android
7 1 (0.53%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.53%) CentOS
7 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (69.15%) CI/CD
2 86 (45.74%) DevOps
3 79 (42.02%) Containerisation
4 62 (32.98%) Agile
5 61 (32.45%) Infrastructure as Code
6 41 (21.81%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 40 (21.28%) Software Engineering
8 38 (20.21%) Platform Engineering
9 37 (19.68%) Observability
10 31 (16.49%) Microservices
10 31 (16.49%) Problem-Solving
11 30 (15.96%) DevSecOps
11 30 (15.96%) Scrum
12 29 (15.43%) High Availability
13 18 (9.57%) GitOps
13 18 (9.57%) Test Automation
13 18 (9.57%) Unit Testing
14 17 (9.04%) Continuous Improvement
14 17 (9.04%) Root Cause Analysis
14 17 (9.04%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 85 (45.21%) Python
2 52 (27.66%) Java
3 39 (20.74%) Bash
4 28 (14.89%) PowerShell
5 21 (11.17%) Go
6 17 (9.04%) JavaScript
6 17 (9.04%) SQL
7 13 (6.91%) C#
8 12 (6.38%) Bicep
9 10 (5.32%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.60%) Rust
10 3 (1.60%) Shell Script
11 2 (1.06%) Scala
12 1 (0.53%) C
12 1 (0.53%) C++
12 1 (0.53%) Groovy
12 1 (0.53%) Korn
12 1 (0.53%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 96 (51.06%) Security Cleared
2 82 (43.62%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.38%) Degree
4 11 (5.85%) DV Cleared
5 8 (4.26%) RHCE
6 7 (3.72%) Azure Certification
7 6 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (1.06%) OCP
9 2 (1.06%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.53%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.53%) CISSP
10 1 (0.53%) CSPO
10 1 (0.53%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.53%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.53%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (9.04%) QA
2 11 (5.85%) NCSC
3 7 (3.72%) PCI DSS
4 6 (3.19%) SLA
5 5 (2.66%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (2.66%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 5 (2.66%) GDPR
5 5 (2.66%) IASME
5 5 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 5 (2.66%) NIST
5 5 (2.66%) NIST 800
6 4 (2.13%) GRC
7 3 (1.60%) 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 68 (36.17%) Docker
2 7 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (2.13%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.06%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.53%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 1 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 1 (0.53%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 66 (35.11%) Terraform
2 45 (23.94%) Grafana
3 44 (23.40%) Prometheus
4 36 (19.15%) Ansible
5 28 (14.89%) Argo
6 11 (5.85%) Istio
7 10 (5.32%) Rancher
8 9 (4.79%) Puppet
9 7 (3.72%) linkerd
10 5 (2.66%) Podman
11 4 (2.13%) Nessus
12 3 (1.60%) Kustomize
13 2 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
14 1 (0.53%) Fluentd
14 1 (0.53%) Kubeflow
14 1 (0.53%) Packer
14 1 (0.53%) Progress Chef
14 1 (0.53%) Salt
14 1 (0.53%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 36 (19.15%) Red Hat
2 15 (7.98%) Splunk
3 13 (6.91%) VMware
4 11 (5.85%) Microsoft
5 7 (3.72%) Ericsson
6 6 (3.19%) BT
6 6 (3.19%) Dynatrace
6 6 (3.19%) Google
6 6 (3.19%) Huawei
6 6 (3.19%) Nokia
6 6 (3.19%) Tenable
7 5 (2.66%) Ab Initio
7 5 (2.66%) Oracle
7 5 (2.66%) Teradata
8 4 (2.13%) AppDynamics
9 3 (1.60%) Foundry
9 3 (1.60%) OpenAI
10 2 (1.06%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.06%) NVIDIA
10 2 (1.06%) Palantir