Kubernetes Contract Job Trends in the South West

Kubernetes (k8s)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Kubernetes skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 60 37
Rank change year-on-year +24 -23 -1
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 171 58 133
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.76% 3.06% 4.71%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.31% 20.79% 33.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 50 92
10th Percentile £406 £431 £475
25th Percentile £475 £509 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -
75th Percentile £644 £663 £625
90th Percentile £735 £700 £675
England median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.05% -2.32% -10.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 9
10th Percentile £91.91 £78.96 £62.20
25th Percentile - £79.35 £72.50
Median hourly rate £98.82 £80.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.53% +8.11% -5.13%
75th Percentile £99.71 £81.48 £74.44
90th Percentile £100.00 £82.37 £77.60
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £67.25
% change year-on-year +4.48% -0.37% -7.88%

All Systems Management Skills
South West

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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 435 279 392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 12.12% 14.72% 13.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 278 209 301
10th Percentile £322 £262 £225
25th Percentile £429 £447 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year - +2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £620 £626 £625
90th Percentile £730 £696 £700
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 8 9
10th Percentile £20.13 £16.80 £62.20
25th Percentile £47.38 £18.60 £72.50
Median hourly rate £51.00 £67.50 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.44% -8.78% -5.13%
75th Percentile £97.25 £79.03 £74.44
90th Percentile £99.88 £80.89 £77.60
England median hourly rate £65.45 £54.75 £36.83
% change year-on-year +19.54% +48.65% -28.13%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Kubernetes relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in the South West

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Kubernetes.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the South West over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in the South West

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Kubernetes.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in the South West over the 6 months to 7 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kubernetes in the South West

Kubernetes
Contract Job Locations in the South West

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 West region over the 6 months to 7 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
Bristol +9 48 £550 +4.76% 40
Gloucestershire +4 36 £575 -15.29% 66
Somerset 0 31 £475 -2.56% 8
Wiltshire +2 26 £575 -4.17% 3
Dorset +7 22 £540 -1.82% 9
Kubernetes
England

Kubernetes
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 12 (7.02%) Confluence
2 11 (6.43%) Apache Spark
3 6 (3.51%) Apache
4 2 (1.17%) nginx
5 1 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.58%) JBoss
5 1 (0.58%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 94 (54.97%) AWS
2 85 (49.71%) Azure
3 44 (25.73%) GCP
4 27 (15.79%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (13.45%) GitHub
6 16 (9.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 15 (8.77%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (8.19%) Serverless
9 10 (5.85%) OpenShift
10 9 (5.26%) Amazon S3
10 9 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
10 9 (5.26%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (4.68%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (4.68%) Datadog
12 7 (4.09%) AWS CloudFormation
13 6 (3.51%) Azure AKS
13 6 (3.51%) SaaS
14 4 (2.34%) Amazon EC2
14 4 (2.34%) Amazon ECS
15 2 (1.17%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 27 (15.79%) DNS
2 23 (13.45%) Firewall
3 22 (12.87%) TCP/IP
4 20 (11.70%) DHCP
5 14 (8.19%) VSAN
6 6 (3.51%) VPN
7 4 (2.34%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (1.17%) Network Security
8 2 (1.17%) VLAN
9 1 (0.58%) AMQP
9 1 (0.58%) Calico
9 1 (0.58%) IPsec
9 1 (0.58%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.58%) NAS
9 1 (0.58%) SAN
9 1 (0.58%) SSH
9 1 (0.58%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (7.02%) NoSQL
2 11 (6.43%) Geospatial Data
3 10 (5.85%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (4.09%) MongoDB
4 7 (4.09%) Relational Database
5 6 (3.51%) Big Data
6 4 (2.34%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (2.34%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (2.34%) Flink
7 3 (1.75%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.75%) HBase
7 3 (1.75%) Redis
8 2 (1.17%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.17%) CockroachDB
8 2 (1.17%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.17%) InfluxDB
8 2 (1.17%) Metadata
8 2 (1.17%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.58%) Dremio
9 1 (0.58%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 34 (19.88%) Git
1 34 (19.88%) GitLab
2 32 (18.71%) Jenkins
3 15 (8.77%) JIRA
4 14 (8.19%) Gatling
5 12 (7.02%) LoadRunner
6 11 (6.43%) JMeter
6 11 (6.43%) MSI
7 6 (3.51%) JUnit
8 5 (2.92%) Selenium
9 3 (1.75%) SonarQube
10 2 (1.17%) Cucumber
10 2 (1.17%) MLflow
10 2 (1.17%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (1.17%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.58%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.58%) Gradle
11 1 (0.58%) NUnit
11 1 (0.58%) REST Assured
General
1 25 (14.62%) Public Sector
2 13 (7.60%) Social Skills
3 5 (2.92%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (2.92%) Finance
3 5 (2.92%) Military
4 3 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (1.75%) Legal
4 3 (1.75%) Local Government
4 3 (1.75%) Police
5 2 (1.17%) Aviation
5 2 (1.17%) Banking
6 1 (0.58%) Aerospace
6 1 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 38 (22.22%) DevOps Engineer
2 35 (20.47%) Developer
3 22 (12.87%) Senior
4 15 (8.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 15 (8.77%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (8.19%) GCP Engineer
5 14 (8.19%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 13 (7.60%) Site Engineer
7 12 (7.02%) Software Engineer
8 11 (6.43%) Java Developer
8 11 (6.43%) Performance Engineer
9 10 (5.85%) Architect
10 9 (5.26%) Principal Engineer
11 8 (4.68%) Cloud Engineer
12 7 (4.09%) Backend Developer
12 7 (4.09%) GCP DevOps
12 7 (4.09%) GCP DevOps Engineer
13 6 (3.51%) Lead
13 6 (3.51%) Senior Developer
13 6 (3.51%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (15.20%) REST
2 23 (13.45%) Spring Boot
3 21 (12.28%) RESTful
3 21 (12.28%) Spring
4 19 (11.11%) Kafka
5 12 (7.02%) React
6 11 (6.43%) .NET
6 11 (6.43%) .NET Core
6 11 (6.43%) .NET Framework
6 11 (6.43%) ATL
6 11 (6.43%) COM
6 11 (6.43%) CSS
6 11 (6.43%) CSS3
6 11 (6.43%) GeoJSON
6 11 (6.43%) HTML
6 11 (6.43%) HTML5
6 11 (6.43%) MFC
6 11 (6.43%) WPF
7 9 (5.26%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (4.09%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 43 (25.15%) Cloud Native
2 17 (9.94%) Data Centre
2 17 (9.94%) PKI
3 13 (7.60%) Onboarding
4 10 (5.85%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (5.26%) Linux Command Line
6 8 (4.68%) Public Cloud
7 7 (4.09%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (3.51%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (2.92%) Product Ownership
10 4 (2.34%) Clustering
11 2 (1.17%) Private Cloud
12 1 (0.58%) Data Fabric
12 1 (0.58%) Hybrid Cloud
12 1 (0.58%) Learning Management System
12 1 (0.58%) Mobile App
12 1 (0.58%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 55 (32.16%) Linux
2 37 (21.64%) Windows
3 10 (5.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.92%) Rocky
4 5 (2.92%) Ubuntu
5 4 (2.34%) Debian
6 3 (1.75%) Unix
6 3 (1.75%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.58%) Android
7 1 (0.58%) CentOS
7 1 (0.58%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (74.27%) CI/CD
2 108 (63.16%) DevOps
3 89 (52.05%) Containerisation
4 88 (51.46%) Infrastructure as Code
5 44 (25.73%) Agile
6 42 (24.56%) Microservices
7 41 (23.98%) DevSecOps
8 38 (22.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 37 (21.64%) Platform Engineering
10 32 (18.71%) Technical Leadership
11 31 (18.13%) Problem-Solving
12 29 (16.96%) Software Engineering
13 26 (15.20%) Observability
14 24 (14.04%) Test Automation
15 23 (13.45%) Mentoring
16 22 (12.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 21 (12.28%) Deployment Automation
18 19 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
18 19 (11.11%) Cybersecurity
18 19 (11.11%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 86 (50.29%) Python
2 48 (28.07%) Bash
3 38 (22.22%) Java
4 28 (16.37%) SQL
5 25 (14.62%) PowerShell
6 22 (12.87%) JavaScript
7 19 (11.11%) Go
7 19 (11.11%) TypeScript
8 15 (8.77%) C#
9 13 (7.60%) Bicep
10 4 (2.34%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.75%) Groovy
11 3 (1.75%) Rust
12 1 (0.58%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 97 (56.73%) Security Cleared
2 60 (35.09%) SC Cleared
3 53 (30.99%) DV Cleared
4 11 (6.43%) VCAP
5 10 (5.85%) AWS Certification
6 8 (4.68%) Degree
7 7 (4.09%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (4.09%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (3.51%) CCNA
9 3 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (1.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (1.17%) CISSP
10 2 (1.17%) MCSE
10 2 (1.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 1 (0.58%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.58%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.58%) CCSK
11 1 (0.58%) CISM
11 1 (0.58%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (9.36%) Accessibility
1 16 (9.36%) WCAG
2 15 (8.77%) NCSC
3 10 (5.85%) QA
4 2 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.58%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.58%) NIST
System Software
1 104 (60.82%) Docker
2 22 (12.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (12.28%) Active Directory
4 17 (9.94%) Hyper-V
5 15 (8.77%) vSphere
6 14 (8.19%) VMware NSX
7 5 (2.92%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (1.17%) KVM
8 2 (1.17%) VirtualBox
9 1 (0.58%) iptables
9 1 (0.58%) NFS
9 1 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.58%) zsh
Systems Management
1 94 (54.97%) Terraform
2 47 (27.49%) Ansible
3 26 (15.20%) Prometheus
4 22 (12.87%) Grafana
5 14 (8.19%) VxRail
6 13 (7.60%) Argo
7 6 (3.51%) Istio
8 4 (2.34%) OPNET
8 4 (2.34%) Podman
8 4 (2.34%) Proxmox
9 3 (1.75%) Docker Swarm
9 3 (1.75%) Progress Chef
9 3 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (1.17%) Cilium
10 2 (1.17%) Kustomize
10 2 (1.17%) linkerd
10 2 (1.17%) Nagios
11 1 (0.58%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.58%) Puppet
11 1 (0.58%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 26 (15.20%) VMware
2 24 (14.04%) Google
3 23 (13.45%) Microsoft
4 17 (9.94%) Dynatrace
5 16 (9.36%) Splunk
6 12 (7.02%) Oracle
7 11 (6.43%) AppDynamics
7 11 (6.43%) New Relic
7 11 (6.43%) Red Hat
8 7 (4.09%) Databricks
9 4 (2.34%) CyberArk
9 4 (2.34%) Thales
10 3 (1.75%) Dell
11 2 (1.17%) BiZZdesign
11 2 (1.17%) Cisco
11 2 (1.17%) IBM
12 1 (0.58%) BeyondTrust
12 1 (0.58%) Informatica
12 1 (0.58%) Sparx
12 1 (0.58%) TIBCO