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 16 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 39 36 50
Rank change year-on-year -3 +14 -1
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 99 127 120
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.50% 5.25% 3.79%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.65% 33.42% 26.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 80 78 97
10th Percentile £461 £484 £465
25th Percentile £525 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £637 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year +6.21% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £700 £636 £688
90th Percentile £750 £708 £738
England median daily rate £525 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 7
10th Percentile £91.70 - -
25th Percentile £109.25 - -
Median hourly rate £119.00 £74.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.81% -5.13% -
75th Percentile - £74.11 -
90th Percentile - £74.31 £82.80
England median hourly rate £67.00 £60.00 £68.63
% change year-on-year +11.67% -12.58% +6.41%

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 358 380 451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 16.28% 15.72% 14.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 277 239 337
10th Percentile £350 £360 £363
25th Percentile £454 £460 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year - -1.79% +1.82%
75th Percentile £650 £644 £675
90th Percentile £719 £715 £733
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -5.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 7 17
10th Percentile £18.76 £12.50 £18.95
25th Percentile £42.00 £14.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £69.00 £74.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.76% -5.13% +20.00%
75th Percentile £109.25 - -
90th Percentile £119.00 £74.18 £82.00
England median hourly rate £34.00 £37.75 £49.00
% change year-on-year -9.93% -22.96% +90.59%

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 16 November 2025.

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 16 November 2025.

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 16 November 2025. 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
Gloucestershire -8 40 £650 +4.00% 40
Bristol +4 28 £525 -4.55% 34
Wiltshire -1 20 £606 +15.48% 18
Dorset -3 6 £550 -4.35% 7
Devon -1 1 £475 -20.83% 6
Somerset -1 1 £488 +8.33% 6
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 7 (7.07%) Apache
2 2 (2.02%) Alfresco
2 2 (2.02%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.02%) Camunda
2 2 (2.02%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (3.03%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (3.03%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (3.03%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 54 (54.55%) Azure
2 39 (39.39%) AWS
3 33 (33.33%) GitHub
4 17 (17.17%) GCP
5 16 (16.16%) Azure DevOps
6 13 (13.13%) OpenShift
7 12 (12.12%) Serverless
8 11 (11.11%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (9.09%) Amazon S3
10 8 (8.08%) Amazon EC2
10 8 (8.08%) Azure Data Factory
11 7 (7.07%) Azure AKS
11 7 (7.07%) Azure Key Vault
12 6 (6.06%) AWS CloudFormation
13 5 (5.05%) Azure Monitor
13 5 (5.05%) Entra ID
14 4 (4.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 3 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
15 3 (3.03%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 3 (3.03%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.03%) VPN
2 1 (1.01%) Firewall
2 1 (1.01%) Network Security
2 1 (1.01%) SAN
2 1 (1.01%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (23.23%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (12.12%) Elasticsearch
3 10 (10.10%) MongoDB
4 7 (7.07%) Redis
5 5 (5.05%) Relational Database
6 3 (3.03%) ObjectStore
7 2 (2.02%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (2.02%) Big Data
7 2 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (2.02%) Hadoop
7 2 (2.02%) MySQL
7 2 (2.02%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 16 (16.16%) GitLab
2 14 (14.14%) SonarQube
3 11 (11.11%) Jenkins
4 9 (9.09%) Git
5 6 (6.06%) Artifactory
6 2 (2.02%) JUnit
7 1 (1.01%) Appium
7 1 (1.01%) CircleCI
7 1 (1.01%) CMake
7 1 (1.01%) Cypress.io
7 1 (1.01%) Gradle
7 1 (1.01%) Selenium
7 1 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 13 (13.13%) Social Skills
2 9 (9.09%) Public Sector
3 5 (5.05%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (4.04%) Aerospace
4 4 (4.04%) Finance
5 3 (3.03%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (3.03%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (2.02%) Law
6 2 (2.02%) Telecoms
7 1 (1.01%) Electronics
7 1 (1.01%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.01%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 23 (23.23%) Developer
2 14 (14.14%) DevOps Engineer
2 14 (14.14%) Senior
3 12 (12.12%) DevSecOps Engineer
4 10 (10.10%) Backend Developer
4 10 (10.10%) Data Engineer
5 9 (9.09%) Senior Data Engineer
6 8 (8.08%) Python Developer
7 6 (6.06%) Architect
8 5 (5.05%) Full-Stack Developer
9 4 (4.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 4 (4.04%) Java Developer
9 4 (4.04%) Linux Engineer
9 4 (4.04%) Software Engineer
9 4 (4.04%) Solutions Architect
9 4 (4.04%) System Design Authority
10 3 (3.03%) Analyst
10 3 (3.03%) Azure Engineer
10 3 (3.03%) Business Analyst
10 3 (3.03%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (18.18%) REST
2 13 (13.13%) Kafka
3 12 (12.12%) YAML
4 11 (11.11%) Node.js
5 10 (10.10%) Keycloak
6 9 (9.09%) React
7 8 (8.08%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (7.07%) AngularJS
8 7 (7.07%) Apache NiFi
8 7 (7.07%) FastAPI
8 7 (7.07%) Flask
8 7 (7.07%) GraphQL
8 7 (7.07%) gRPC
8 7 (7.07%) Spring
8 7 (7.07%) WebSockets
9 5 (5.05%) ARM Templates
9 5 (5.05%) HTML
9 5 (5.05%) Vue
10 4 (4.04%) .NET
10 4 (4.04%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 21 (21.21%) Cloud Native
2 11 (11.11%) Hybrid Cloud
3 5 (5.05%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.03%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (3.03%) PKI
5 2 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.02%) Product Ownership
5 2 (2.02%) Public Cloud
6 1 (1.01%) DataPower
6 1 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.01%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 20 (20.20%) Linux
2 11 (11.11%) Windows
3 10 (10.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (7.07%) Ubuntu
5 4 (4.04%) Unix
6 3 (3.03%) VMS
7 1 (1.01%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (64.65%) DevOps
2 63 (63.64%) Containerisation
3 58 (58.59%) CI/CD
4 31 (31.31%) Infrastructure as Code
5 26 (26.26%) DevSecOps
6 24 (24.24%) Agile
7 22 (22.22%) Microservices
8 15 (15.15%) Test Automation
9 14 (14.14%) Platform Engineering
10 13 (13.13%) Machine Learning
11 11 (11.11%) Data Pipeline
11 11 (11.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 11 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
11 11 (11.11%) Regulatory Compliance
12 9 (9.09%) Continuous Improvement
12 9 (9.09%) Data Architecture
12 9 (9.09%) ETL
13 8 (8.08%) AI
13 8 (8.08%) Data Engineering
13 8 (8.08%) DataOps
Programming Languages
1 50 (50.51%) Python
2 19 (19.19%) Go
3 17 (17.17%) Bash
4 15 (15.15%) Java
5 13 (13.13%) SQL
6 12 (12.12%) PowerShell
7 10 (10.10%) TypeScript
8 9 (9.09%) JavaScript
9 7 (7.07%) Bicep
9 7 (7.07%) Shell Script
10 5 (5.05%) C
11 4 (4.04%) C#
12 3 (3.03%) C++
12 3 (3.03%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 80 (80.81%) Security Cleared
2 58 (58.59%) SC Cleared
3 44 (44.44%) DV Cleared
4 16 (16.16%) Azure Certification
5 7 (7.07%) Degree
6 5 (5.05%) AWS Certification
6 5 (5.05%) CISSP
6 5 (5.05%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (4.04%) CISM
7 4 (4.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (3.03%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 2 (2.02%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (2.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (1.01%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (1.01%) CSPO
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (12.12%) QA
2 11 (11.11%) NCSC
3 6 (6.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (5.05%) NIST
5 4 (4.04%) NIST 800
6 1 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (1.01%) Data Quality
6 1 (1.01%) GDPR
6 1 (1.01%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 68 (68.69%) Docker
2 5 (5.05%) Active Directory
3 3 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (1.01%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 50 (50.51%) Terraform
2 24 (24.24%) Ansible
3 20 (20.20%) Grafana
3 20 (20.20%) Prometheus
4 6 (6.06%) SCOM
5 5 (5.05%) Argo
6 4 (4.04%) Dell DRAC
6 4 (4.04%) Kibana
6 4 (4.04%) Podman
6 4 (4.04%) Red Hat Satellite
7 2 (2.02%) logstash
7 2 (2.02%) Progress Chef
7 2 (2.02%) Puppet
7 2 (2.02%) Rancher
8 1 (1.01%) Cilium
8 1 (1.01%) Istio
8 1 (1.01%) Nagios
8 1 (1.01%) Nessus
8 1 (1.01%) Packer
Vendors
1 18 (18.18%) Red Hat
2 17 (17.17%) Microsoft
3 7 (7.07%) Splunk
4 4 (4.04%) Dell
4 4 (4.04%) Google
4 4 (4.04%) IBM
4 4 (4.04%) VMware
5 2 (2.02%) NVIDIA
6 1 (1.01%) Broadcom
6 1 (1.01%) SAP