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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 57 38
Rank change year-on-year +22 -19 0
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 183 70 124
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.95% 3.54% 4.88%
As % of the Systems Management category 51.84% 24.56% 36.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 116 59 79
10th Percentile £406 £460 £475
25th Percentile £484 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% +4.55%
75th Percentile £652 £694 £638
90th Percentile £735 £710 £700
England median daily rate £550 £525 £575
% change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 5
10th Percentile £61.79 - -
25th Percentile £62.50 - -
Median hourly rate £91.91 £80.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.89% +8.11% -5.13%
75th Percentile £98.82 - £74.44
90th Percentile £100.00 - -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £63.79
% change year-on-year +4.48% +5.04% -12.02%

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 353 285 341
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.54% 14.42% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 211 222
10th Percentile £400 £235 £339
25th Percentile £475 £413 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £556 £540 £546
Median % change year-on-year +2.96% -1.14% -0.68%
75th Percentile £688 £634 £632
90th Percentile £742 £700 £690
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 7 8
10th Percentile £23.10 £16.47 £12.50
25th Percentile £53.63 £18.33 £14.75
Median hourly rate £85.00 £60.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.67% -18.92% -1.99%
75th Percentile £96.91 £71.00 £74.11
90th Percentile £99.76 £78.50 £74.44
England median hourly rate £65.45 £34.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +92.50% -10.53% -27.62%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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
Somerset +13 44 £488 - 29
Bristol +6 42 £538 +2.38% 25
Gloucestershire +9 39 £550 -19.27% 74
Wiltshire 0 28 £600 - 12
Dorset +2 20 £434 -21.14% 23
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 15 (8.20%) Confluence
2 14 (7.65%) Apache
3 13 (7.10%) Apache Spark
4 9 (4.92%) SharePoint
5 3 (1.64%) nginx
6 2 (1.09%) IIS
6 2 (1.09%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.55%) JBoss
7 1 (0.55%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.55%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 100 (54.64%) AWS
2 99 (54.10%) Azure
3 54 (29.51%) GCP
4 33 (18.03%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (11.48%) GitHub
6 20 (10.93%) OpenShift
7 15 (8.20%) Azure AKS
8 13 (7.10%) Amazon S3
8 13 (7.10%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (7.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 12 (6.56%) Serverless
10 9 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (4.37%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (4.37%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (3.28%) Datadog
13 5 (2.73%) Amazon EC2
14 4 (2.19%) Amazon SQS
14 4 (2.19%) SaaS
15 3 (1.64%) Amazon ECS
15 3 (1.64%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 36 (19.67%) DNS
2 29 (15.85%) Firewall
3 28 (15.30%) TCP/IP
4 25 (13.66%) DHCP
5 20 (10.93%) VSAN
6 6 (3.28%) VLAN
7 5 (2.73%) VPN
8 3 (1.64%) Network Security
9 2 (1.09%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (1.09%) tcpdump
10 1 (0.55%) AMQP
10 1 (0.55%) Calico
10 1 (0.55%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.55%) NAS
10 1 (0.55%) SAN
10 1 (0.55%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.01%) Geospatial Data
2 9 (4.92%) Big Data
3 8 (4.37%) NoSQL
3 8 (4.37%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (3.83%) Metadata
5 5 (2.73%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (2.73%) Flink
5 5 (2.73%) Hadoop
5 5 (2.73%) Parquet
6 4 (2.19%) MongoDB
6 4 (2.19%) Relational Database
7 3 (1.64%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.64%) BigQuery
7 3 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (1.64%) HBase
7 3 (1.64%) InfluxDB
7 3 (1.64%) SQL Server
8 2 (1.09%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.09%) MySQL
8 2 (1.09%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 48 (26.23%) Jenkins
2 46 (25.14%) Git
3 44 (24.04%) GitLab
4 19 (10.38%) JIRA
5 11 (6.01%) MSI
6 5 (2.73%) JUnit
7 4 (2.19%) Selenium
8 3 (1.64%) Claude Code
8 3 (1.64%) Gatling
8 3 (1.64%) LoadRunner
8 3 (1.64%) SonarQube
9 2 (1.09%) Cucumber
9 2 (1.09%) JMeter
9 2 (1.09%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (1.09%) Spinnaker
9 2 (1.09%) Visual Studio Team System
10 1 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.55%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.55%) Gradle
10 1 (0.55%) Maven
General
1 23 (12.57%) Public Sector
2 13 (7.10%) Finance
2 13 (7.10%) Social Skills
3 9 (4.92%) Banking
4 5 (2.73%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (2.73%) Military
5 4 (2.19%) Local Government
6 3 (1.64%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.64%) Police
7 2 (1.09%) Aviation
8 1 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.55%) Legal
8 1 (0.55%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 41 (22.40%) Developer
2 37 (20.22%) DevOps Engineer
3 26 (14.21%) Senior
4 17 (9.29%) Platform Engineer
5 15 (8.20%) Software Developer
6 14 (7.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 12 (6.56%) Architect
7 12 (6.56%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 11 (6.01%) Site Engineer
9 9 (4.92%) Cloud Engineer
9 9 (4.92%) GCP Engineer
9 9 (4.92%) Java Developer
10 8 (4.37%) Principal Engineer
11 7 (3.83%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 7 (3.83%) Azure Engineer
11 7 (3.83%) Test Engineer
12 6 (3.28%) QA Engineer
12 6 (3.28%) QA Test Engineer
12 6 (3.28%) Senior Developer
12 6 (3.28%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (67.21%) Terraform
2 31 (16.94%) REST
3 21 (11.48%) Spring Boot
4 19 (10.38%) RESTful
4 19 (10.38%) Spring
5 14 (7.65%) React
6 13 (7.10%) CSS
6 13 (7.10%) HTML
6 13 (7.10%) Kafka
7 12 (6.56%) CSS3
7 12 (6.56%) HTML5
8 11 (6.01%) .NET
8 11 (6.01%) .NET Core
8 11 (6.01%) .NET Framework
8 11 (6.01%) ATL
8 11 (6.01%) COM
8 11 (6.01%) GeoJSON
8 11 (6.01%) MFC
8 11 (6.01%) WPF
9 10 (5.46%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 52 (28.42%) Cloud Native
2 19 (10.38%) PKI
3 16 (8.74%) Data Centre
4 15 (8.20%) Onboarding
5 13 (7.10%) Linux Command Line
6 12 (6.56%) Product Ownership
7 10 (5.46%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (4.92%) Wiki
9 7 (3.83%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (3.83%) Public Cloud
10 5 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (2.73%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (2.19%) Algorithms
11 4 (2.19%) Clustering
12 3 (1.64%) AI Agents
12 3 (1.64%) Enterprise Cloud
13 2 (1.09%) Mobile App
13 2 (1.09%) Security Posture
14 1 (0.55%) Private Cloud
14 1 (0.55%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 53 (28.96%) Linux
2 38 (20.77%) Windows
3 7 (3.83%) Unix
4 6 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.64%) Rocky
5 3 (1.64%) Ubuntu
5 3 (1.64%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.09%) Debian
7 1 (0.55%) Android
7 1 (0.55%) CentOS
7 1 (0.55%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (78.69%) CI/CD
2 118 (64.48%) DevOps
3 108 (59.02%) Infrastructure as Code
4 99 (54.10%) Containerisation
5 63 (34.43%) DevSecOps
6 55 (30.05%) Agile
7 51 (27.87%) Platform Engineering
8 43 (23.50%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 36 (19.67%) Observability
10 34 (18.58%) Microservices
11 33 (18.03%) Problem-Solving
11 33 (18.03%) Software Engineering
12 31 (16.94%) Deployment Automation
13 29 (15.85%) Technical Leadership
14 26 (14.21%) Continuous Improvement
14 26 (14.21%) Software Delivery
15 24 (13.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 23 (12.57%) Test Automation
17 22 (12.02%) Mentoring
18 21 (11.48%) AI
Programming Languages
1 92 (50.27%) Python
2 58 (31.69%) Bash
3 45 (24.59%) Java
4 40 (21.86%) PowerShell
5 24 (13.11%) C#
6 23 (12.57%) JavaScript
6 23 (12.57%) SQL
7 21 (11.48%) Bicep
8 20 (10.93%) TypeScript
9 16 (8.74%) Go
10 9 (4.92%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.64%) Groovy
12 1 (0.55%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.55%) Rust
Qualifications
1 125 (68.31%) Security Cleared
2 79 (43.17%) DV Cleared
3 66 (36.07%) SC Cleared
4 15 (8.20%) AWS Certification
4 15 (8.20%) VCAP
5 9 (4.92%) Degree
6 7 (3.83%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (3.28%) CCNA
8 5 (2.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 4 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (1.09%) CISSP
11 2 (1.09%) MCSE
11 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.55%) CCSP
12 1 (0.55%) CISM
12 1 (0.55%) CompTIA Security+
12 1 (0.55%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.55%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.74%) Accessibility
1 16 (8.74%) WCAG
2 15 (8.20%) NCSC
3 14 (7.65%) QA
4 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.09%) NIST
4 2 (1.09%) SLA
5 1 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.55%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (0.55%) JSP 440
System Software
1 106 (57.92%) Docker
2 31 (16.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (13.11%) Active Directory
4 21 (11.48%) vSphere
5 20 (10.93%) VMware NSX
6 16 (8.74%) Hyper-V
7 6 (3.28%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (2.19%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (2.19%) VirtualBox
9 2 (1.09%) KVM
10 1 (0.55%) NFS
10 1 (0.55%) zsh
Systems Management
1 74 (40.44%) Ansible
2 16 (8.74%) Prometheus
3 15 (8.20%) VxRail
4 14 (7.65%) Grafana
5 8 (4.37%) Istio
6 7 (3.83%) Argo
7 5 (2.73%) OPNET
7 5 (2.73%) PowerCLI
7 5 (2.73%) vCenter Server
8 4 (2.19%) Proxmox
9 3 (1.64%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (1.09%) Kustomize
10 2 (1.09%) linkerd
10 2 (1.09%) Podman
10 2 (1.09%) Progress Chef
10 2 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.55%) HAProxy
11 1 (0.55%) Nagios
11 1 (0.55%) QRadar
11 1 (0.55%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 35 (19.13%) VMware
2 31 (16.94%) Google
3 29 (15.85%) Microsoft
4 13 (7.10%) Oracle
5 11 (6.01%) Dynatrace
5 11 (6.01%) Splunk
6 6 (3.28%) Red Hat
7 5 (2.73%) SaltStack
7 5 (2.73%) webMethods
8 4 (2.19%) Atlassian
8 4 (2.19%) CyberArk
8 4 (2.19%) Databricks
8 4 (2.19%) Thales
9 3 (1.64%) Dell
10 2 (1.09%) AppDynamics
10 2 (1.09%) BiZZdesign
10 2 (1.09%) Cisco
10 2 (1.09%) IBM
10 2 (1.09%) New Relic
11 1 (0.55%) Cloudera