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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 57 44 39
Rank change year-on-year -13 -5 +13
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 61 123 152
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 3.09% 4.63% 4.73%
As % of the Systems Management category 19.93% 31.46% 33.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 54 83 126
10th Percentile £438 £475 £450
25th Percentile £507 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.65%
75th Percentile £669 £628 £688
90th Percentile £700 £685 £751
England median daily rate £530 £567 £600
% change year-on-year -6.61% -5.50% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 13
10th Percentile - - £72.00
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £80.00 £74.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -5.13% -
75th Percentile - £74.44 -
90th Percentile - - £87.60
England median hourly rate £67.00 £55.00 £73.00
% change year-on-year +21.82% -24.66% -6.56%

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 306 391 452
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 15.49% 14.70% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 268 341
10th Percentile £235 £220 £375
25th Percentile £413 £425 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £533 £558
Median % change year-on-year +0.84% -4.39% +6.19%
75th Percentile £622 £613 £675
90th Percentile £695 £673 £738
England median daily rate £502 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.41% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 20
10th Percentile £16.47 £14.30 £19.18
25th Percentile £18.33 £44.75 £70.06
Median hourly rate £36.00 £74.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year -51.35% -5.13% +194.34%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.22 -
90th Percentile £78.50 £74.44 £85.50
England median hourly rate £36.75 £40.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year -8.13% -21.95% +114.35%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Job postings citing Kubernetes as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Job vacancy trend for Kubernetes 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 18 September 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
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 18 September 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 -12 18 £656 +9.38% 41
Bristol +4 17 £525 -1.50% 22
Wiltshire +6 15 £575 +6.98% 1
Dorset -1 8 £550 -4.35% 2
Devon +4 1 £475 -13.64% 1
Somerset +4 1 £488 +8.33% 6
Kubernetes
England

Kubernetes
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 8 (13.11%) Apache
2 3 (4.92%) nginx
3 2 (3.28%) Alfresco
3 2 (3.28%) Apache Spark
3 2 (3.28%) Camunda
Business Applications
1 1 (1.64%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 34 (55.74%) AWS
2 27 (44.26%) Azure
3 12 (19.67%) GCP
4 11 (18.03%) GitHub
5 10 (16.39%) OpenShift
6 9 (14.75%) Azure DevOps
6 9 (14.75%) Serverless
7 7 (11.48%) Amazon S3
7 7 (11.48%) AWS CloudFormation
8 6 (9.84%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (8.20%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (4.92%) Amazon EC2
10 3 (4.92%) Azure AKS
10 3 (4.92%) Azure Key Vault
11 2 (3.28%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 2 (3.28%) Entra ID
12 1 (1.64%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 1 (1.64%) Azure Monitor
12 1 (1.64%) Azure Sentinel
12 1 (1.64%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 5 (8.20%) Firewall
2 3 (4.92%) DNS
3 2 (3.28%) VPN
4 1 (1.64%) SAN
4 1 (1.64%) TCP/IP
4 1 (1.64%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (13.11%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (8.20%) MongoDB
3 4 (6.56%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (6.56%) MySQL
4 3 (4.92%) Redis
5 2 (3.28%) Big Data
5 2 (3.28%) Hadoop
5 2 (3.28%) NoSQL
5 2 (3.28%) Relational Database
6 1 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.64%) Flink
Development Applications
1 12 (19.67%) GitLab
2 11 (18.03%) Jenkins
3 10 (16.39%) SonarQube
4 3 (4.92%) Git
5 2 (3.28%) Artifactory
5 2 (3.28%) Cypress.io
5 2 (3.28%) JUnit
5 2 (3.28%) Selenium
6 1 (1.64%) Appium
6 1 (1.64%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (1.64%) CircleCI
6 1 (1.64%) CMake
6 1 (1.64%) Gatling
6 1 (1.64%) Gradle
6 1 (1.64%) JIRA
6 1 (1.64%) JMeter
6 1 (1.64%) LoadRunner
6 1 (1.64%) Snyk
General
1 10 (16.39%) Public Sector
2 6 (9.84%) Social Skills
3 5 (8.20%) Finance
4 4 (6.56%) Aerospace
4 4 (6.56%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (3.28%) Electronics
5 2 (3.28%) Law
5 2 (3.28%) Manufacturing
5 2 (3.28%) Marketing
5 2 (3.28%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 15 (24.59%) Developer
2 13 (21.31%) DevOps Engineer
3 9 (14.75%) Backend Developer
4 8 (13.11%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 5 (8.20%) Software Engineer
6 4 (6.56%) Java Developer
6 4 (6.56%) Python Developer
6 4 (6.56%) Senior
6 4 (6.56%) Software Developer
7 3 (4.92%) Administrator
7 3 (4.92%) Architect
7 3 (4.92%) Lead
7 3 (4.92%) Linux Administrator
8 2 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
8 2 (3.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 2 (3.28%) Platform Engineer
8 2 (3.28%) QA Engineer
8 2 (3.28%) Security Architect
8 2 (3.28%) Senior Developer
8 2 (3.28%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (19.67%) Node.js
2 11 (18.03%) REST
3 9 (14.75%) Elastic Stack
4 7 (11.48%) React
4 7 (11.48%) YAML
5 6 (9.84%) Spring
5 6 (9.84%) Spring Boot
6 5 (8.20%) AngularJS
6 5 (8.20%) Apache NiFi
6 5 (8.20%) Kafka
7 3 (4.92%) FastAPI
7 3 (4.92%) Flask
7 3 (4.92%) GraphQL
7 3 (4.92%) gRPC
7 3 (4.92%) Vue
7 3 (4.92%) WebSockets
8 2 (3.28%) Express.js
8 2 (3.28%) Hibernate
8 2 (3.28%) JPA
8 2 (3.28%) LAMP
Miscellaneous
1 9 (14.75%) Cloud Native
2 3 (4.92%) PKI
3 2 (3.28%) Data Centre
3 2 (3.28%) Hybrid Cloud
3 2 (3.28%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.64%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 17 (27.87%) Linux
2 9 (14.75%) Windows
3 2 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (3.28%) Ubuntu
4 1 (1.64%) CentOS
4 1 (1.64%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (63.93%) DevOps
2 38 (62.30%) Containerisation
3 34 (55.74%) CI/CD
4 22 (36.07%) Infrastructure as Code
5 19 (31.15%) Agile
6 15 (24.59%) DevSecOps
7 11 (18.03%) Microservices
8 10 (16.39%) Platform Engineering
9 9 (14.75%) Test Automation
10 8 (13.11%) Software Engineering
11 7 (11.48%) Artificial Intelligence
11 7 (11.48%) Machine Learning
12 6 (9.84%) Observability
12 6 (9.84%) Regulatory Compliance
13 5 (8.20%) Configuration Management
13 5 (8.20%) Decision-Making
13 5 (8.20%) Full-Stack Development
13 5 (8.20%) High Availability
13 5 (8.20%) Mentoring
13 5 (8.20%) Vulnerability Scanning
Programming Languages
1 27 (44.26%) Python
2 13 (21.31%) Bash
3 9 (14.75%) Java
4 7 (11.48%) PowerShell
5 6 (9.84%) Go
5 6 (9.84%) SQL
6 5 (8.20%) TypeScript
7 4 (6.56%) C
8 3 (4.92%) Bicep
8 3 (4.92%) C++
8 3 (4.92%) JavaScript
9 2 (3.28%) C#
9 2 (3.28%) Perl
9 2 (3.28%) PHP
9 2 (3.28%) Shell Script
10 1 (1.64%) Groovy
10 1 (1.64%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 51 (83.61%) Security Cleared
2 33 (54.10%) DV Cleared
2 33 (54.10%) SC Cleared
3 5 (8.20%) AWS Certification
4 3 (4.92%) Azure Certification
5 2 (3.28%) CISSP
6 1 (1.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
6 1 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (1.64%) CISM
6 1 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
6 1 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (1.64%) Degree
6 1 (1.64%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
6 1 (1.64%) ISTQB
6 1 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (11.48%) NCSC
1 7 (11.48%) QA
2 3 (4.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (4.92%) NIST
3 2 (3.28%) NIST 800
4 1 (1.64%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (1.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (1.64%) Data Quality
System Software
1 44 (72.13%) Docker
2 4 (6.56%) Active Directory
2 4 (6.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (3.28%) vSphere
4 1 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (1.64%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 37 (60.66%) Terraform
2 24 (39.34%) Ansible
3 19 (31.15%) Grafana
3 19 (31.15%) Prometheus
4 4 (6.56%) Kibana
5 3 (4.92%) Podman
5 3 (4.92%) Puppet
6 2 (3.28%) logstash
6 2 (3.28%) Nessus
7 1 (1.64%) Argo
7 1 (1.64%) HAProxy
7 1 (1.64%) Packer
7 1 (1.64%) Progress Chef
7 1 (1.64%) Rancher
7 1 (1.64%) SCCM
7 1 (1.64%) vCenter Server
7 1 (1.64%) VxRail
7 1 (1.64%) WSUS
Vendors
1 8 (13.11%) Microsoft
2 7 (11.48%) VMware
3 6 (9.84%) Red Hat
4 5 (8.20%) Splunk
5 2 (3.28%) SAP
6 1 (1.64%) AppDynamics
6 1 (1.64%) Citrix
6 1 (1.64%) Dell
6 1 (1.64%) Dynatrace
6 1 (1.64%) IBM
6 1 (1.64%) New Relic