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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 50 59
Rank change year-on-year -20 +9 -5
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 211 137 168
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.19% 3.99% 3.25%
As % of the Systems Management category 28.25% 28.66% 22.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 151 86 120
10th Percentile £358 £321 £424
25th Percentile £439 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £580 £588 £630
90th Percentile £700 £619 £675
England median daily rate £538 £539 £550
% change year-on-year -0.30% -1.98% -10.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 0 1
10th Percentile £62.50 - -
25th Percentile - - £36.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 - £38.50
75th Percentile - - £40.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £67.25
% change year-on-year +4.48% -0.37% -7.24%

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 747 478 739
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 11.29% 13.91% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 507 320 543
10th Percentile £310 £261 £278
25th Percentile £411 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -10.11%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £714 £625 £675
England median daily rate £521 £511 £525
% change year-on-year +1.86% -2.67% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 7 11
10th Percentile £19.30 £18.87 £16.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £23.44 £26.13
Median hourly rate £67.47 £32.77 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +105.89% -9.39% -34.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £69.00 £45.13
90th Percentile £70.80 £85.65 £53.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £54.50 £30.50
% change year-on-year +19.27% +78.69% -44.55%

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 28 July 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
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 28 July 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 -36 78 £455 -4.21% 45
Hampshire -13 76 £550 +7.32% 41
Berkshire -29 53 £460 -3.16% 13
Surrey +5 44 £488 -11.36% 9
Buckinghamshire -27 20 £393 +26.57% 8
West Sussex -23 6 £400 +33.33% 3
Oxfordshire -20 5 £825 +57.14% 24
Middlesex -12 4 - - 3
East Sussex 0 2 £330 -28.65% 3
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 8 (3.79%) Apache Spark
2 7 (3.32%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (3.32%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.42%) Confluence
3 3 (1.42%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.95%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.47%) IIS
5 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (2.84%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 114 (54.03%) AWS
2 109 (51.66%) Azure
3 46 (21.80%) GCP
4 45 (21.33%) OpenShift
5 32 (15.17%) Azure DevOps
6 28 (13.27%) GitHub
7 21 (9.95%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (8.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (7.58%) Amazon EKS
10 15 (7.11%) Serverless
11 13 (6.16%) Azure AKS
12 10 (4.74%) AWS CloudFormation
12 10 (4.74%) Entra ID
13 8 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
13 8 (3.79%) Datadog
13 8 (3.79%) SaaS
14 7 (3.32%) AWS Lambda
15 6 (2.84%) Amazon S3
16 5 (2.37%) Apigee
16 5 (2.37%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.79%) DNS
1 8 (3.79%) Firewall
1 8 (3.79%) Network Security
2 7 (3.32%) VPN
3 6 (2.84%) 5G
3 6 (2.84%) Diameter Protocol
3 6 (2.84%) LTE
3 6 (2.84%) Radio Access Network
3 6 (2.84%) VoLTE
3 6 (2.84%) VoWiFi
3 6 (2.84%) Wireshark
4 4 (1.90%) HTTP
4 4 (1.90%) MQTT
5 3 (1.42%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.95%) BGP
6 2 (0.95%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.47%) iSCSI
7 1 (0.47%) Remote Desktop
7 1 (0.47%) Software-Defined Networking
7 1 (0.47%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (13.27%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (8.06%) NoSQL
3 11 (5.21%) Relational Database
4 9 (4.27%) Big Data
4 9 (4.27%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (2.84%) MongoDB
6 5 (2.37%) DynamoDB
6 5 (2.37%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (2.37%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.90%) DocumentDB
8 3 (1.42%) Redis
9 2 (0.95%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.95%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.95%) Spark SQL
9 2 (0.95%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.47%) InfluxDB
10 1 (0.47%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 32 (15.17%) Git
2 30 (14.22%) GitLab
2 30 (14.22%) SonarQube
3 27 (12.80%) Jenkins
4 9 (4.27%) MLflow
5 5 (2.37%) NUnit
6 4 (1.90%) Jaeger
6 4 (1.90%) JIRA
7 3 (1.42%) JUnit
7 3 (1.42%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.47%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.47%) Gradle
8 1 (0.47%) JMeter
8 1 (0.47%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.47%) Maven
8 1 (0.47%) Mockito
8 1 (0.47%) NeoLoad
8 1 (0.47%) Selenium
8 1 (0.47%) Subversion
General
1 49 (23.22%) Social Skills
2 20 (9.48%) Public Sector
3 19 (9.00%) Finance
4 14 (6.64%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (3.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (3.32%) Telecoms
7 5 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.42%) Banking
8 3 (1.42%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.42%) Publishing
9 2 (0.95%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.95%) Automotive
9 2 (0.95%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.95%) Military
9 2 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (0.95%) Retail
10 1 (0.47%) Advertising
10 1 (0.47%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 45 (21.33%) Developer
2 26 (12.32%) Architect
2 26 (12.32%) Platform Engineer
3 20 (9.48%) Java Developer
4 16 (7.58%) DevOps Engineer
5 12 (5.69%) Software Engineer
6 11 (5.21%) Java Engineer
6 11 (5.21%) Senior
6 11 (5.21%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 10 (4.74%) Analyst
7 10 (4.74%) Azure Engineer
7 10 (4.74%) DevSecOps Engineer
7 10 (4.74%) Security Analyst
8 8 (3.79%) Cloud Architect
8 8 (3.79%) Lead
8 8 (3.79%) Site Engineer
9 7 (3.32%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 7 (3.32%) Python Developer
10 6 (2.84%) .NET Developer
10 6 (2.84%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (18.01%) Kafka
2 30 (14.22%) AngularJS
3 25 (11.85%) RESTful
4 23 (10.90%) Quarkus
5 22 (10.43%) REST
6 18 (8.53%) React
7 16 (7.58%) .NET
8 13 (6.16%) Spring
9 12 (5.69%) Spring Boot
10 11 (5.21%) YAML
11 10 (4.74%) Django
11 10 (4.74%) OAuth
11 10 (4.74%) OAuth2
12 9 (4.27%) OpenAPI
12 9 (4.27%) Swagger
13 8 (3.79%) .NET Framework
13 8 (3.79%) pytest
13 8 (3.79%) RabbitMQ
14 7 (3.32%) ASP.NET Web API
14 7 (3.32%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 35 (16.59%) Cloud Native
2 22 (10.43%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (6.16%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (4.74%) Data Structures
4 10 (4.74%) Onboarding
5 7 (3.32%) Algorithms
6 6 (2.84%) Enterprise Cloud
6 6 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (2.84%) Product Ownership
7 4 (1.90%) CMDB
7 4 (1.90%) Public Cloud
7 4 (1.90%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.42%) AI Agents
9 2 (0.95%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.95%) Distributed Computing
9 2 (0.95%) FMCG
9 2 (0.95%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.95%) Operational Technology
9 2 (0.95%) PKI
9 2 (0.95%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 49 (23.22%) Linux
2 17 (8.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (4.27%) Unix
4 4 (1.90%) Windows
5 1 (0.47%) Android
5 1 (0.47%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.47%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (66.35%) CI/CD
2 97 (45.97%) Containerisation
2 97 (45.97%) DevOps
3 86 (40.76%) Agile
4 59 (27.96%) DevSecOps
5 55 (26.07%) Infrastructure as Code
6 48 (22.75%) Software Engineering
7 44 (20.85%) Problem-Solving
8 42 (19.91%) Scrum
9 41 (19.43%) Platform Engineering
10 35 (16.59%) AI
10 35 (16.59%) Continuous Improvement
10 35 (16.59%) Machine Learning
10 35 (16.59%) Test Automation
11 34 (16.11%) Microservices
11 34 (16.11%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 30 (14.22%) SDLC
13 27 (12.80%) Observability
13 27 (12.80%) Unit Testing
14 26 (12.32%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 92 (43.60%) Python
2 50 (23.70%) Java
3 38 (18.01%) Bash
4 26 (12.32%) PowerShell
5 20 (9.48%) JavaScript
5 20 (9.48%) SQL
6 18 (8.53%) Go
7 13 (6.16%) TypeScript
8 11 (5.21%) C#
9 10 (4.74%) Bicep
10 4 (1.90%) Rust
10 4 (1.90%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.95%) Groovy
11 2 (0.95%) Scala
12 1 (0.47%) C
12 1 (0.47%) C++
12 1 (0.47%) Korn
12 1 (0.47%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 102 (48.34%) Security Cleared
2 87 (41.23%) SC Cleared
3 15 (7.11%) Degree
4 13 (6.16%) DV Cleared
5 11 (5.21%) Azure Certification
6 9 (4.27%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (3.32%) AWS Certification
7 7 (3.32%) RHCE
8 6 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (1.90%) ITIL Certification
9 4 (1.90%) Master's Degree
10 3 (1.42%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (1.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.42%) CISSP
11 2 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 2 (0.95%) CCSP
11 2 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.47%) CCNA
12 1 (0.47%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (17.54%) QA
2 8 (3.79%) NIST
2 8 (3.79%) PCI DSS
3 6 (2.84%) Cyber Essentials
3 6 (2.84%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 6 (2.84%) GDPR
3 6 (2.84%) SLA
4 5 (2.37%) GRC
4 5 (2.37%) IASME
4 5 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 5 (2.37%) NCSC
4 5 (2.37%) NIST 800
5 3 (1.42%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.42%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.47%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.47%) ISO 8583
7 1 (0.47%) JSP 440
System Software
1 94 (44.55%) Docker
2 8 (3.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.90%) IAG
4 3 (1.42%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.95%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.95%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.47%) Citrix Hypervisor
6 1 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 60 (28.44%) Terraform
2 30 (14.22%) Grafana
3 27 (12.80%) Ansible
4 26 (12.32%) Argo
4 26 (12.32%) Prometheus
5 10 (4.74%) Rancher
6 6 (2.84%) Istio
6 6 (2.84%) Puppet
7 5 (2.37%) Podman
8 2 (0.95%) CASB
8 2 (0.95%) Kibana
8 2 (0.95%) linkerd
8 2 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.47%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.47%) Nessus
9 1 (0.47%) QRadar
Vendors
1 38 (18.01%) Red Hat
2 22 (10.43%) Microsoft
3 17 (8.06%) Google
4 10 (4.74%) Oracle
5 9 (4.27%) Dynatrace
5 9 (4.27%) Splunk
6 8 (3.79%) VMware
7 6 (2.84%) BT
7 6 (2.84%) Ericsson
7 6 (2.84%) Huawei
7 6 (2.84%) Nokia
8 5 (2.37%) Tenable
9 4 (1.90%) Ab Initio
9 4 (1.90%) Foundry
9 4 (1.90%) Nexthink
9 4 (1.90%) NVIDIA
9 4 (1.90%) OpenAI
9 4 (1.90%) ServiceNow
9 4 (1.90%) Teradata
10 3 (1.42%) Palantir