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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 33 62
Rank change year-on-year -2 +29 -19
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 125 113 90
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 5.06% 5.77% 3.10%
As % of the Systems Management category 31.81% 34.56% 21.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 91 78 73
10th Percentile £450 £489 £463
25th Percentile £511 £516 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £700 £631 £675
90th Percentile £750 £734 £752
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 3
10th Percentile £81.00 £74.04 -
25th Percentile £84.50 £74.11 -
Median hourly rate £104.00 £74.22 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.12% -4.85% -
75th Percentile £119.00 £74.33 -
90th Percentile - £74.40 -
England median hourly rate £60.00 £51.84 £56.25
% change year-on-year +15.74% -7.84% -16.04%

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 393 327 414
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 15.91% 16.71% 14.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 314 214 304
10th Percentile £343 £330 £283
25th Percentile £450 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
75th Percentile £684 £638 £675
90th Percentile £738 £734 £738
England median daily rate £508 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.19% -2.33% -8.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 5 11
10th Percentile £53.85 - £19.25
25th Percentile £74.63 £12.50 £39.50
Median hourly rate £86.00 £16.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +437.50% -77.93% +11.54%
75th Percentile £119.00 £74.00 £77.13
90th Percentile - £74.26 £78.00
England median hourly rate £52.50 £26.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +98.11% -42.62% +19.95%

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 January 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 16 January 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 16 January 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
Gloucestershire -5 44 £650 +5.69% 39
Bristol +9 43 £531 -3.41% 28
Wiltshire -12 28 £575 -4.17% 19
Dorset +4 6 £270 -44.16% 18
Somerset - 1 £488 - 17
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 10 (8.00%) Apache
2 2 (1.60%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.80%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (2.40%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (6.40%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 58 (46.40%) Azure
2 41 (32.80%) AWS
3 40 (32.00%) GitHub
4 26 (20.80%) OpenShift
5 19 (15.20%) Azure DevOps
6 17 (13.60%) GCP
7 14 (11.20%) Serverless
8 12 (9.60%) Azure AKS
9 11 (8.80%) GitHub Actions
10 10 (8.00%) Amazon S3
10 10 (8.00%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (8.00%) Azure Monitor
11 9 (7.20%) Amazon EC2
12 8 (6.40%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 8 (6.40%) Azure Sentinel
13 7 (5.60%) Azure Key Vault
14 6 (4.80%) AWS CloudFormation
14 6 (4.80%) IaaS
15 5 (4.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 5 (4.00%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 8 (6.40%) VPN
2 2 (1.60%) DNS
2 2 (1.60%) Reverse Proxy
3 1 (0.80%) HTTP
3 1 (0.80%) Network Security
3 1 (0.80%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (17.60%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (10.40%) Elasticsearch
3 10 (8.00%) MongoDB
4 7 (5.60%) Redis
5 4 (3.20%) NoSQL
6 3 (2.40%) ObjectStore
6 3 (2.40%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.60%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (1.60%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.80%) Big Data
8 1 (0.80%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 27 (21.60%) GitLab
2 17 (13.60%) Jenkins
3 13 (10.40%) Git
3 13 (10.40%) SonarQube
4 9 (7.20%) Artifactory
5 6 (4.80%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.80%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.80%) CircleCI
6 1 (0.80%) Mocha
6 1 (0.80%) Snyk
General
1 13 (10.40%) Social Skills
2 10 (8.00%) Public Sector
3 8 (6.40%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (3.20%) Finance
4 4 (3.20%) Influencing Skills
4 4 (3.20%) Presentation Skills
5 3 (2.40%) Aerospace
5 3 (2.40%) Banking
6 2 (1.60%) Law
6 2 (1.60%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.80%) Electronics
7 1 (0.80%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.80%) Marketing
7 1 (0.80%) Military
Job Titles
1 30 (24.00%) DevOps Engineer
2 23 (18.40%) Developer
3 19 (15.20%) Senior
4 13 (10.40%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 11 (8.80%) Data Engineer
5 11 (8.80%) Senior Data Engineer
6 9 (7.20%) Backend Developer
6 9 (7.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 8 (6.40%) Architect
7 8 (6.40%) Azure Engineer
8 7 (5.60%) Python Developer
9 5 (4.00%) Administrator
9 5 (4.00%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 5 (4.00%) GCP Engineer
9 5 (4.00%) Java Developer
9 5 (4.00%) Linux Engineer
9 5 (4.00%) Software Engineer
9 5 (4.00%) Solutions Architect
10 4 (3.20%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 4 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (15.20%) REST
2 13 (10.40%) Kafka
3 12 (9.60%) YAML
4 11 (8.80%) Keycloak
5 10 (8.00%) Apache NiFi
5 10 (8.00%) ARM Templates
5 10 (8.00%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (6.40%) React
7 7 (5.60%) FastAPI
7 7 (5.60%) Flask
7 7 (5.60%) GraphQL
7 7 (5.60%) gRPC
7 7 (5.60%) Node.js
7 7 (5.60%) WebSockets
8 6 (4.80%) Spring
9 4 (3.20%) .NET
9 4 (3.20%) AngularJS
9 4 (3.20%) Vue
10 3 (2.40%) Express.js
10 3 (2.40%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 22 (17.60%) Cloud Native
2 18 (14.40%) Hybrid Cloud
3 9 (7.20%) Onboarding
4 8 (6.40%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (2.40%) Product Ownership
5 3 (2.40%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.60%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.80%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.80%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.80%) Cloud Security Posture
7 1 (0.80%) Data Fabric
7 1 (0.80%) DataPower
7 1 (0.80%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.80%) PKI
7 1 (0.80%) Replication
7 1 (0.80%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 27 (21.60%) Linux
2 14 (11.20%) Windows
3 12 (9.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (8.80%) Ubuntu
5 5 (4.00%) Unix
6 4 (3.20%) VMS
7 3 (2.40%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.80%) Debian
8 1 (0.80%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (64.80%) DevOps
2 71 (56.80%) CI/CD
3 69 (55.20%) Containerisation
4 35 (28.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 31 (24.80%) DevSecOps
6 23 (18.40%) Agile
7 22 (17.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 22 (17.60%) Microservices
8 17 (13.60%) Platform Engineering
9 16 (12.80%) Cloud Security
9 16 (12.80%) Continuous Improvement
9 16 (12.80%) Problem-Solving
10 14 (11.20%) Test Automation
11 12 (9.60%) ETL
11 12 (9.60%) ITIL
11 12 (9.60%) Machine Learning
12 11 (8.80%) Analytics
12 11 (8.80%) Data Architecture
12 11 (8.80%) Data Engineering
12 11 (8.80%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 53 (42.40%) Python
2 21 (16.80%) Go
3 16 (12.80%) Java
3 16 (12.80%) SQL
4 13 (10.40%) Bicep
4 13 (10.40%) PowerShell
5 12 (9.60%) Bash
6 10 (8.00%) TypeScript
7 9 (7.20%) JavaScript
8 8 (6.40%) Shell Script
9 5 (4.00%) C#
9 5 (4.00%) Ruby
10 3 (2.40%) C
11 1 (0.80%) C++
11 1 (0.80%) PHP
Qualifications
1 98 (78.40%) Security Cleared
2 76 (60.80%) SC Cleared
3 53 (42.40%) DV Cleared
4 22 (17.60%) Azure Certification
5 11 (8.80%) Degree
6 10 (8.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (7.20%) CISM
7 9 (7.20%) CISSP
8 8 (6.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (6.40%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 3 (2.40%) AWS Certification
10 2 (1.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
11 1 (0.80%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.80%) CSPO
11 1 (0.80%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (10.40%) QA
2 11 (8.80%) NCSC
3 9 (7.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (6.40%) NIST
4 8 (6.40%) NIST 800
5 1 (0.80%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.80%) GDPR
5 1 (0.80%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.80%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 66 (52.80%) Docker
2 5 (4.00%) Active Directory
3 3 (2.40%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (2.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.80%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.80%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 63 (50.40%) Terraform
2 33 (26.40%) Ansible
3 20 (16.00%) Grafana
3 20 (16.00%) Prometheus
4 6 (4.80%) SCOM
5 5 (4.00%) Argo
5 5 (4.00%) Dell DRAC
5 5 (4.00%) Red Hat Satellite
6 4 (3.20%) Nessus
6 4 (3.20%) Packer
7 3 (2.40%) Kibana
7 3 (2.40%) Podman
8 2 (1.60%) Istio
8 2 (1.60%) Progress Chef
8 2 (1.60%) Rancher
9 1 (0.80%) logstash
9 1 (0.80%) Nagios
9 1 (0.80%) Puppet
9 1 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.80%) VxRail
Vendors
1 31 (24.80%) Red Hat
2 24 (19.20%) Microsoft
3 9 (7.20%) IBM
4 8 (6.40%) VMware
5 7 (5.60%) Google
6 6 (4.80%) Dell
7 5 (4.00%) Splunk
8 2 (1.60%) NVIDIA
9 1 (0.80%) BeyondTrust
9 1 (0.80%) Broadcom
9 1 (0.80%) Checkmarx
9 1 (0.80%) SAP
9 1 (0.80%) Thales
9 1 (0.80%) Veracode