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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 59 43
Rank change year-on-year +24 -16 -7
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 164 59 128
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.65% 3.11% 4.21%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.86% 20.14% 31.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 99 51 90
10th Percentile £400 £463 £475
25th Percentile £453 £507 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - +3.53%
75th Percentile £613 £656 £625
90th Percentile £693 £700 £675
England median daily rate £538 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.27% - -10.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 8
10th Percentile £90.53 £78.96 £61.43
25th Percentile - £79.35 £70.31
Median hourly rate £98.82 £80.00 £74.22
Median % change year-on-year +23.53% +7.79% -4.85%
75th Percentile £100.00 £81.48 £75.21
90th Percentile - £82.37 £77.65
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +4.48% -0.74% -7.53%

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 422 293 408
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 11.95% 15.45% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 268 218 313
10th Percentile £326 £246 £239
25th Percentile £425 £448 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £550 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% +3.19% -3.09%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £625
90th Percentile £705 £697 £690
England median daily rate £520 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +1.46% -2.38% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 8 12
10th Percentile £37.38 £16.80 -
25th Percentile £47.38 £18.60 £40.00
Median hourly rate £51.00 £67.50 £70.75
Median % change year-on-year -24.44% -4.59% -9.29%
75th Percentile £97.25 £79.03 £74.44
90th Percentile £100.00 £80.89 £77.19
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% +83.33% -45.45%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 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
Bristol +15 50 £550 +6.80% 16
Gloucestershire +7 32 £575 -15.29% 39
Wiltshire +3 26 £575 -4.17% 3
Dorset +7 25 £449 -18.36% 1
Somerset - 23 £463 - 10
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 13 (7.93%) Apache Spark
2 10 (6.10%) Confluence
3 5 (3.05%) Apache
4 2 (1.22%) nginx
5 1 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.61%) JBoss
5 1 (0.61%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 87 (53.05%) AWS
2 75 (45.73%) Azure
3 40 (24.39%) GCP
4 24 (14.63%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (12.80%) GitHub
6 17 (10.37%) Serverless
7 16 (9.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 15 (9.15%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (7.93%) Amazon EKS
10 12 (7.32%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (6.71%) Amazon S3
12 10 (6.10%) Datadog
13 9 (5.49%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (5.49%) Azure Key Vault
13 9 (5.49%) OpenShift
14 7 (4.27%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (4.27%) Azure AKS
15 5 (3.05%) SaaS
16 4 (2.44%) Amazon EC2
17 2 (1.22%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (12.80%) DNS
2 16 (9.76%) Firewall
2 16 (9.76%) TCP/IP
3 14 (8.54%) DHCP
4 8 (4.88%) VSAN
5 6 (3.66%) VPN
6 4 (2.44%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (1.22%) Network Security
7 2 (1.22%) VLAN
8 1 (0.61%) AMQP
8 1 (0.61%) Calico
8 1 (0.61%) IPsec
8 1 (0.61%) Kerberos
8 1 (0.61%) NAS
8 1 (0.61%) SAN
8 1 (0.61%) SSH
8 1 (0.61%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (7.93%) NoSQL
2 10 (6.10%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (5.49%) Geospatial Data
3 9 (5.49%) Relational Database
4 7 (4.27%) MongoDB
5 6 (3.66%) Big Data
5 6 (3.66%) Flink
6 5 (3.05%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (2.44%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (2.44%) Oracle Database
8 3 (1.83%) Apache Cassandra
8 3 (1.83%) HBase
8 3 (1.83%) Redis
9 2 (1.22%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.22%) CockroachDB
9 2 (1.22%) Data Lake
9 2 (1.22%) InfluxDB
9 2 (1.22%) Metadata
10 1 (0.61%) Dremio
10 1 (0.61%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 31 (18.90%) GitLab
2 30 (18.29%) Git
3 28 (17.07%) Jenkins
4 14 (8.54%) Gatling
5 13 (7.93%) JIRA
6 12 (7.32%) LoadRunner
7 11 (6.71%) JMeter
8 9 (5.49%) MSI
9 6 (3.66%) JUnit
10 5 (3.05%) Selenium
11 3 (1.83%) Cucumber
11 3 (1.83%) SonarQube
12 2 (1.22%) MLflow
12 2 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (1.22%) Spinnaker
13 1 (0.61%) Artifactory
13 1 (0.61%) Burp Suite
13 1 (0.61%) Gradle
13 1 (0.61%) Postman
13 1 (0.61%) REST Assured
General
1 22 (13.41%) Public Sector
2 12 (7.32%) Social Skills
3 8 (4.88%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (2.44%) Military
5 3 (1.83%) Finance
5 3 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (1.83%) Legal
5 3 (1.83%) Local Government
5 3 (1.83%) Police
6 2 (1.22%) Banking
7 1 (0.61%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.61%) Aviation
7 1 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 40 (24.39%) DevOps Engineer
2 33 (20.12%) Developer
3 20 (12.20%) Senior
4 14 (8.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 14 (8.54%) Java Developer
4 14 (8.54%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 13 (7.93%) GCP Engineer
5 13 (7.93%) Site Engineer
6 11 (6.71%) Performance Engineer
6 11 (6.71%) Platform Engineer
6 11 (6.71%) Software Engineer
7 8 (4.88%) Architect
7 8 (4.88%) Backend Developer
8 7 (4.27%) Cloud Engineer
8 7 (4.27%) GCP DevOps
8 7 (4.27%) GCP DevOps Engineer
8 7 (4.27%) Principal Engineer
9 6 (3.66%) Java Engineer
9 6 (3.66%) Lead
10 5 (3.05%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (17.68%) Spring Boot
2 27 (16.46%) Spring
3 24 (14.63%) REST
4 23 (14.02%) RESTful
5 20 (12.20%) Kafka
6 12 (7.32%) React
7 9 (5.49%) .NET
7 9 (5.49%) .NET Core
7 9 (5.49%) .NET Framework
7 9 (5.49%) ATL
7 9 (5.49%) COM
7 9 (5.49%) CSS
7 9 (5.49%) CSS3
7 9 (5.49%) GeoJSON
7 9 (5.49%) HTML
7 9 (5.49%) HTML5
7 9 (5.49%) MFC
7 9 (5.49%) RabbitMQ
7 9 (5.49%) WPF
8 7 (4.27%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 38 (23.17%) Cloud Native
2 11 (6.71%) Data Centre
2 11 (6.71%) Onboarding
2 11 (6.71%) PKI
3 8 (4.88%) Legacy Systems
3 8 (4.88%) Linux Command Line
4 7 (4.27%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (3.05%) Public Cloud
7 4 (2.44%) Clustering
7 4 (2.44%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.22%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.22%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.61%) Data Fabric
9 1 (0.61%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.61%) Learning Management System
9 1 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 47 (28.66%) Linux
2 29 (17.68%) Windows
3 9 (5.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.44%) Rocky
4 4 (2.44%) Ubuntu
5 3 (1.83%) Debian
5 3 (1.83%) Unix
5 3 (1.83%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.61%) Android
6 1 (0.61%) CentOS
6 1 (0.61%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (75.00%) CI/CD
2 106 (64.63%) DevOps
3 86 (52.44%) Containerisation
4 76 (46.34%) Infrastructure as Code
5 45 (27.44%) Agile
6 43 (26.22%) Microservices
7 35 (21.34%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 30 (18.29%) DevSecOps
8 30 (18.29%) Problem-Solving
9 29 (17.68%) Platform Engineering
10 27 (16.46%) Observability
11 26 (15.85%) Technical Leadership
12 25 (15.24%) Software Engineering
13 22 (13.41%) Test Automation
14 21 (12.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 20 (12.20%) Full-Stack Development
16 19 (11.59%) Deployment Automation
17 18 (10.98%) Continuous Improvement
17 18 (10.98%) Mentoring
18 16 (9.76%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 76 (46.34%) Python
2 42 (25.61%) Java
3 39 (23.78%) Bash
4 30 (18.29%) SQL
5 21 (12.80%) JavaScript
6 20 (12.20%) Go
7 18 (10.98%) PowerShell
8 17 (10.37%) TypeScript
9 11 (6.71%) Bicep
10 10 (6.10%) C#
11 3 (1.83%) Rust
12 2 (1.22%) Groovy
12 2 (1.22%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.61%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 85 (51.83%) Security Cleared
2 54 (32.93%) SC Cleared
3 44 (26.83%) DV Cleared
4 7 (4.27%) Degree
5 6 (3.66%) AWS Certification
5 6 (3.66%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.66%) VCAP
6 5 (3.05%) CCNA
7 2 (1.22%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 2 (1.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.22%) CISSP
7 2 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.61%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.61%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.61%) CCSK
8 1 (0.61%) CCSP
8 1 (0.61%) CISM
8 1 (0.61%) MCSE
8 1 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (8.54%) Accessibility
1 14 (8.54%) WCAG
2 13 (7.93%) NCSC
3 11 (6.71%) QA
4 2 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.61%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.61%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.61%) NIST
System Software
1 101 (61.59%) Docker
2 16 (9.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (9.15%) Active Directory
4 14 (8.54%) Hyper-V
5 9 (5.49%) vSphere
6 8 (4.88%) VMware NSX
7 5 (3.05%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (1.22%) KVM
8 2 (1.22%) VirtualBox
9 1 (0.61%) iptables
9 1 (0.61%) NFS
9 1 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 83 (50.61%) Terraform
2 37 (22.56%) Ansible
3 29 (17.68%) Prometheus
4 23 (14.02%) Grafana
5 14 (8.54%) Argo
6 8 (4.88%) VxRail
7 6 (3.66%) Istio
8 4 (2.44%) OPNET
8 4 (2.44%) Podman
8 4 (2.44%) Proxmox
9 3 (1.83%) Docker Swarm
9 3 (1.83%) Nagios
9 3 (1.83%) Progress Chef
9 3 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (1.22%) Cilium
10 2 (1.22%) Kustomize
10 2 (1.22%) linkerd
11 1 (0.61%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.61%) Puppet
11 1 (0.61%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 20 (12.20%) Google
1 20 (12.20%) VMware
2 19 (11.59%) Microsoft
3 16 (9.76%) Dynatrace
3 16 (9.76%) Splunk
4 13 (7.93%) Oracle
5 11 (6.71%) AppDynamics
5 11 (6.71%) New Relic
6 10 (6.10%) Red Hat
7 9 (5.49%) Databricks
8 3 (1.83%) CyberArk
8 3 (1.83%) Dell
8 3 (1.83%) Thales
9 2 (1.22%) BiZZdesign
9 2 (1.22%) IBM
10 1 (0.61%) BeyondTrust
10 1 (0.61%) Cisco
10 1 (0.61%) Informatica
10 1 (0.61%) Sparx
10 1 (0.61%) TIBCO