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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 55 70
Rank change year-on-year -10 +15 -12
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 187 105 151
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.13% 3.61% 2.73%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.95% 28.23% 20.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 66 104
10th Percentile £357 £344 £425
25th Percentile £402 £413 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% -13.00% -2.13%
75th Percentile £567 £588 £625
90th Percentile £660 £610 £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 £67.00
% change year-on-year -17.72% +17.91% -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 694 372 734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.62% 12.78% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 507 273 537
10th Percentile £293 £258 £213
25th Percentile £403 £400 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £485
Median % change year-on-year - +3.09% -10.60%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £608
90th Percentile £725 £646 £659
England median daily rate £507 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -3.48% +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 £28.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year +98.25% +5.56% -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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -19 81 £402 -13.55% 36
Hampshire 0 71 £550 - 30
Berkshire -15 60 £403 -15.21% 19
Surrey -1 26 £505 -6.48% 4
Buckinghamshire -28 18 £393 +26.57% 5
West Sussex -15 5 £500 +66.67% 1
Oxfordshire -22 3 £600 +9.09% 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 (4.28%) Apache Spark
2 7 (3.74%) OpenStack
3 4 (2.14%) IIS
4 3 (1.60%) Confluence
5 2 (1.07%) Apache Pulsar
5 2 (1.07%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.53%) Apache
6 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (2.14%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 99 (52.94%) Azure
2 94 (50.27%) AWS
3 51 (27.27%) GCP
4 49 (26.20%) OpenShift
5 24 (12.83%) GitHub
6 22 (11.76%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (11.23%) GitHub Actions
8 16 (8.56%) Amazon EKS
9 13 (6.95%) Serverless
10 12 (6.42%) Azure AKS
11 11 (5.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (4.81%) Amazon S3
12 9 (4.81%) Entra ID
13 8 (4.28%) AWS Lambda
14 7 (3.74%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (3.74%) Snowflake
15 5 (2.67%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (2.67%) Datadog
16 4 (2.14%) Azure Key Vault
16 4 (2.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.74%) Firewall
2 6 (3.21%) 5G
2 6 (3.21%) Diameter Protocol
2 6 (3.21%) LTE
2 6 (3.21%) Radio Access Network
2 6 (3.21%) VoLTE
2 6 (3.21%) VoWiFi
2 6 (3.21%) Wireshark
3 4 (2.14%) DNS
3 4 (2.14%) VPN
4 3 (1.60%) HTTP
4 3 (1.60%) MQTT
5 2 (1.07%) Network Security
6 1 (0.53%) DHCP
6 1 (0.53%) Internet
6 1 (0.53%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.53%) SAN
6 1 (0.53%) SNMP
6 1 (0.53%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (14.44%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (8.56%) NoSQL
3 12 (6.42%) Relational Database
4 10 (5.35%) Big Data
4 10 (5.35%) Redis
5 6 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (3.21%) DynamoDB
5 6 (3.21%) MongoDB
6 5 (2.67%) SQL Server
7 4 (2.14%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.60%) DocumentDB
9 2 (1.07%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.53%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.53%) HBase
10 1 (0.53%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 30 (16.04%) Git
2 27 (14.44%) Jenkins
3 26 (13.90%) GitLab
4 19 (10.16%) SonarQube
5 5 (2.67%) NUnit
5 5 (2.67%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (2.14%) Jaeger
7 3 (1.60%) Artifactory
7 3 (1.60%) JIRA
8 2 (1.07%) JUnit
9 1 (0.53%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.53%) Gradle
9 1 (0.53%) MLflow
9 1 (0.53%) Postman
9 1 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 44 (23.53%) Social Skills
2 19 (10.16%) Finance
2 19 (10.16%) Public Sector
3 11 (5.88%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 4 (2.14%) Telecoms
5 3 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (1.60%) Manufacturing
5 3 (1.60%) Military
6 2 (1.07%) Aerospace
6 2 (1.07%) Automotive
6 2 (1.07%) Billing
6 2 (1.07%) Financial Institution
6 2 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (1.07%) Retail
7 1 (0.53%) Advertising
7 1 (0.53%) Banking
7 1 (0.53%) Health Technology
7 1 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 36 (19.25%) Developer
2 28 (14.97%) DevOps Engineer
3 22 (11.76%) Platform Engineer
4 21 (11.23%) Java Developer
5 19 (10.16%) Architect
6 15 (8.02%) Software Engineer
7 14 (7.49%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 13 (6.95%) Azure Engineer
9 11 (5.88%) Site Engineer
10 10 (5.35%) Analyst
10 10 (5.35%) Security Analyst
10 10 (5.35%) Senior
11 8 (4.28%) Java Engineer
12 7 (3.74%) AWS Engineer
12 7 (3.74%) DevSecOps Engineer
12 7 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
13 6 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
13 6 (3.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 5 (2.67%) .NET Developer
14 5 (2.67%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (17.11%) Kafka
2 26 (13.90%) AngularJS
3 15 (8.02%) React
3 15 (8.02%) REST
4 14 (7.49%) .NET
4 14 (7.49%) Quarkus
4 14 (7.49%) RESTful
4 14 (7.49%) Spring
5 13 (6.95%) Spring Boot
6 12 (6.42%) Keycloak
7 11 (5.88%) Loki
8 7 (3.74%) .NET Framework
8 7 (3.74%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (3.74%) Node.js
8 7 (3.74%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (3.21%) ARM Templates
9 6 (3.21%) OpenAPI
9 6 (3.21%) pytest
9 6 (3.21%) Swagger
9 6 (3.21%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 31 (16.58%) Cloud Native
2 26 (13.90%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (5.35%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (5.35%) Onboarding
4 7 (3.74%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.21%) Algorithms
5 6 (3.21%) Data Structures
6 4 (2.14%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.14%) Security Posture
7 3 (1.60%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.60%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.07%) FMCG
8 2 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.07%) 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 37 (19.79%) Linux
2 10 (5.35%) Unix
3 8 (4.28%) Windows
4 6 (3.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (2.67%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.07%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.07%) 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
1 129 (68.98%) CI/CD
2 88 (47.06%) DevOps
3 80 (42.78%) Containerisation
4 63 (33.69%) Agile
5 61 (32.62%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (22.46%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 39 (20.86%) Software Engineering
8 38 (20.32%) Platform Engineering
9 37 (19.79%) Observability
10 33 (17.65%) Microservices
11 31 (16.58%) DevSecOps
12 30 (16.04%) Problem-Solving
12 30 (16.04%) Scrum
13 29 (15.51%) High Availability
14 18 (9.63%) GitOps
14 18 (9.63%) Unit Testing
15 17 (9.09%) Continuous Improvement
15 17 (9.09%) Root Cause Analysis
15 17 (9.09%) SDLC
15 17 (9.09%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 83 (44.39%) Python
2 51 (27.27%) Java
3 39 (20.86%) Bash
4 28 (14.97%) PowerShell
5 21 (11.23%) Go
6 17 (9.09%) JavaScript
6 17 (9.09%) SQL
7 13 (6.95%) C#
8 12 (6.42%) Bicep
9 9 (4.81%) TypeScript
10 4 (2.14%) Rust
11 3 (1.60%) Shell Script
12 2 (1.07%) Scala
13 1 (0.53%) C
13 1 (0.53%) C++
13 1 (0.53%) Korn
13 1 (0.53%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 95 (50.80%) Security Cleared
2 81 (43.32%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.42%) Degree
3 12 (6.42%) DV Cleared
4 10 (5.35%) RHCE
5 7 (3.74%) Azure Certification
6 6 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.07%) OCP
8 2 (1.07%) 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 (9.63%) QA
2 11 (5.88%) NCSC
3 7 (3.74%) PCI DSS
4 6 (3.21%) SLA
5 5 (2.67%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (2.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 5 (2.67%) GDPR
5 5 (2.67%) IASME
5 5 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 5 (2.67%) NIST
5 5 (2.67%) NIST 800
6 4 (2.14%) 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 67 (35.83%) Docker
2 7 (3.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (2.14%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.07%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.53%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 1 (0.53%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 69 (36.90%) Terraform
2 45 (24.06%) Grafana
3 44 (23.53%) Prometheus
4 39 (20.86%) Ansible
5 28 (14.97%) Argo
6 11 (5.88%) Istio
7 10 (5.35%) Puppet
7 10 (5.35%) Rancher
8 7 (3.74%) linkerd
9 6 (3.21%) Podman
10 4 (2.14%) Nessus
11 3 (1.60%) Kustomize
12 2 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.53%) Fluentd
13 1 (0.53%) Kubeflow
13 1 (0.53%) Packer
13 1 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 1 (0.53%) Salt
13 1 (0.53%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 38 (20.32%) Red Hat
2 15 (8.02%) Splunk
3 13 (6.95%) VMware
4 10 (5.35%) Microsoft
5 7 (3.74%) Ericsson
6 6 (3.21%) BT
6 6 (3.21%) Google
6 6 (3.21%) Huawei
6 6 (3.21%) Nokia
6 6 (3.21%) Tenable
7 5 (2.67%) Ab Initio
7 5 (2.67%) Dynatrace
7 5 (2.67%) Oracle
7 5 (2.67%) Teradata
8 4 (2.14%) AppDynamics
9 3 (1.60%) Foundry
10 2 (1.07%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.07%) NVIDIA
10 2 (1.07%) OpenAI
10 2 (1.07%) Palantir