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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 35 76
Rank change year-on-year -1 +41 -35
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 145 102 78
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 5.00% 5.82% 2.42%
As % of the Systems Management category 34.94% 31.68% 18.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 98 79 56
10th Percentile £400 £499 £463
25th Percentile £453 £513 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £573 £600 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.58% +12.94% -7.61%
75th Percentile £700 £684 £638
90th Percentile £750 £735 £713
England median daily rate £525 £585 £560
% change year-on-year -10.26% +4.46% -10.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 3
10th Percentile £81.00 - £72.89
25th Percentile £84.50 - £73.47
Median hourly rate £104.00 £74.44 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.71% -0.75% +30.43%
75th Percentile £119.00 - £77.75
90th Percentile - - £77.90
England median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £64.75
% change year-on-year +2.13% -9.27% +1.17%

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 415 322 418
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 14.31% 18.38% 12.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 321 231 311
10th Percentile £363 £350 £300
25th Percentile £463 £480 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +7.98% -3.18%
75th Percentile £675 £644 £675
90th Percentile £738 £734 £711
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -9.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 3 15
10th Percentile £72.00 £24.00 -
25th Percentile £81.00 £41.25 -
Median hourly rate £89.00 £70.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.14% +75.00% -38.46%
75th Percentile £119.00 £72.22 £75.35
90th Percentile - £73.55 £77.00
England median hourly rate £54.00 £26.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +103.77% -33.75% -23.27%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 +9 50 £530 -1.40% 29
Gloucestershire -7 47 £650 +5.69% 38
Wiltshire -7 27 £575 -4.17% 6
Dorset +11 18 £388 -1.15% 7
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 11 (7.59%) Apache
2 8 (5.52%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 3 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (2.07%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 7 (4.83%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 60 (41.38%) Azure
2 54 (37.24%) AWS
3 43 (29.66%) GitHub
4 23 (15.86%) Azure DevOps
4 23 (15.86%) OpenShift
5 20 (13.79%) Serverless
6 18 (12.41%) GCP
7 17 (11.72%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (9.66%) Amazon S3
9 11 (7.59%) Amazon EKS
9 11 (7.59%) Azure AKS
10 10 (6.90%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (6.90%) Azure Data Factory
11 9 (6.21%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (6.21%) Azure Key Vault
11 9 (6.21%) Azure Monitor
12 8 (5.52%) Amazon EC2
13 7 (4.83%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 7 (4.83%) Azure Sentinel
13 7 (4.83%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 7 (4.83%) VPN
2 3 (2.07%) Reverse Proxy
2 3 (2.07%) TCP/IP
3 2 (1.38%) DNS
3 2 (1.38%) Network Security
4 1 (0.69%) Firewall
4 1 (0.69%) HTTP
4 1 (0.69%) LAN
4 1 (0.69%) NAS
4 1 (0.69%) SAN
4 1 (0.69%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (15.86%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (9.66%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (7.59%) NoSQL
4 10 (6.90%) MongoDB
5 9 (6.21%) Redis
5 9 (6.21%) Relational Database
6 6 (4.14%) Flink
7 3 (2.07%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (2.07%) ObjectStore
8 2 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (1.38%) Hadoop
8 2 (1.38%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.69%) Big Data
9 1 (0.69%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.69%) CockroachDB
Development Applications
1 31 (21.38%) GitLab
2 19 (13.10%) Jenkins
3 15 (10.34%) Git
4 10 (6.90%) SonarQube
5 9 (6.21%) Artifactory
6 6 (4.14%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (1.38%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.69%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.69%) Gatling
8 1 (0.69%) Mocha
8 1 (0.69%) Mockito
8 1 (0.69%) Snyk
General
1 14 (9.66%) Social Skills
2 10 (6.90%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (6.21%) Public Sector
4 5 (3.45%) Finance
5 4 (2.76%) Influencing Skills
5 4 (2.76%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (2.07%) Aerospace
6 3 (2.07%) Banking
6 3 (2.07%) Legal
7 2 (1.38%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.69%) Electronics
8 1 (0.69%) Law
8 1 (0.69%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.69%) Marketing
8 1 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 37 (25.52%) DevOps Engineer
2 30 (20.69%) Developer
3 20 (13.79%) Senior
4 14 (9.66%) Backend Developer
5 12 (8.28%) Java Developer
6 11 (7.59%) Data Engineer
6 11 (7.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 11 (7.59%) Senior Data Engineer
7 9 (6.21%) DevSecOps Engineer
7 9 (6.21%) Python Developer
8 8 (5.52%) Architect
9 7 (4.83%) Azure Engineer
10 6 (4.14%) GCP Engineer
10 6 (4.14%) Platform Engineer
10 6 (4.14%) Software Engineer
11 5 (3.45%) Administrator
11 5 (3.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 5 (3.45%) Linux Engineer
11 5 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
12 4 (2.76%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (13.79%) Kafka
2 19 (13.10%) REST
3 16 (11.03%) Spring
4 13 (8.97%) Spring Boot
5 12 (8.28%) RESTful
6 11 (7.59%) Apache NiFi
6 11 (7.59%) Keycloak
7 10 (6.90%) gRPC
8 9 (6.21%) ARM Templates
8 9 (6.21%) Elastic Stack
8 9 (6.21%) FastAPI
8 9 (6.21%) Flask
8 9 (6.21%) GraphQL
8 9 (6.21%) React
8 9 (6.21%) WebSockets
9 8 (5.52%) YAML
10 7 (4.83%) Node.js
11 5 (3.45%) Java Concurrency
12 4 (2.76%) AngularJS
12 4 (2.76%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 25 (17.24%) Cloud Native
2 17 (11.72%) Hybrid Cloud
3 9 (6.21%) Onboarding
4 7 (4.83%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.76%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.76%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.38%) Data Centre
6 2 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.38%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.69%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.69%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.69%) Cloud Security Posture
7 1 (0.69%) Data Fabric
7 1 (0.69%) DataPower
7 1 (0.69%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.69%) Replication
7 1 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 34 (23.45%) Linux
2 15 (10.34%) Windows
3 13 (8.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (8.28%) Ubuntu
5 5 (3.45%) Unix
6 4 (2.76%) VMS
7 3 (2.07%) Windows Server
8 2 (1.38%) Debian
8 2 (1.38%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (64.14%) DevOps
2 85 (58.62%) CI/CD
3 81 (55.86%) Containerisation
4 38 (26.21%) Infrastructure as Code
5 32 (22.07%) Microservices
6 27 (18.62%) DevSecOps
7 26 (17.93%) Agile
8 25 (17.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 20 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
10 19 (13.10%) Cloud Security
10 19 (13.10%) Continuous Improvement
10 19 (13.10%) Data Engineering
11 18 (12.41%) Analytics
12 17 (11.72%) Data Pipeline
13 14 (9.66%) Platform Engineering
14 13 (8.97%) Observability
15 12 (8.28%) Code Quality
15 12 (8.28%) ETL
15 12 (8.28%) Software Engineering
15 12 (8.28%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 69 (47.59%) Python
2 28 (19.31%) Java
3 27 (18.62%) SQL
4 25 (17.24%) Go
5 16 (11.03%) Bash
6 12 (8.28%) JavaScript
6 12 (8.28%) PowerShell
7 11 (7.59%) Bicep
8 10 (6.90%) TypeScript
9 7 (4.83%) Shell Script
10 5 (3.45%) C#
10 5 (3.45%) Ruby
11 1 (0.69%) C
11 1 (0.69%) PHP
11 1 (0.69%) Rust
Qualifications
1 93 (64.14%) Security Cleared
2 75 (51.72%) SC Cleared
3 47 (32.41%) DV Cleared
4 22 (15.17%) Azure Certification
5 12 (8.28%) Degree
6 10 (6.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (6.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (5.52%) CISM
8 8 (5.52%) CISSP
9 7 (4.83%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 6 (4.14%) AWS Certification
11 3 (2.07%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (1.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
13 1 (0.69%) CSPO
13 1 (0.69%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (9.66%) QA
2 8 (5.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (4.83%) NCSC
3 7 (4.83%) NIST
3 7 (4.83%) NIST 800
4 1 (0.69%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.69%) GDPR
4 1 (0.69%) JSP 440
4 1 (0.69%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 79 (54.48%) Docker
2 6 (4.14%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.76%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.69%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.69%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 67 (46.21%) Terraform
2 33 (22.76%) Ansible
3 30 (20.69%) Prometheus
4 25 (17.24%) Grafana
5 7 (4.83%) Argo
6 6 (4.14%) SCOM
7 5 (3.45%) Dell DRAC
7 5 (3.45%) Red Hat Satellite
8 4 (2.76%) Nessus
8 4 (2.76%) Packer
9 3 (2.07%) Istio
9 3 (2.07%) Kibana
9 3 (2.07%) Nagios
10 2 (1.38%) logstash
10 2 (1.38%) Podman
10 2 (1.38%) Progress Chef
10 2 (1.38%) Puppet
10 2 (1.38%) Rancher
11 1 (0.69%) Cilium
11 1 (0.69%) VxRail
Vendors
1 30 (20.69%) Red Hat
2 24 (16.55%) Microsoft
3 10 (6.90%) Google
4 9 (6.21%) VMware
5 8 (5.52%) IBM
6 6 (4.14%) Databricks
6 6 (4.14%) Dell
7 5 (3.45%) Splunk
8 3 (2.07%) Oracle
9 2 (1.38%) Broadcom
9 2 (1.38%) NVIDIA
10 1 (0.69%) BeyondTrust
10 1 (0.69%) Checkmarx
10 1 (0.69%) Cisco
10 1 (0.69%) EMC
10 1 (0.69%) SAP
10 1 (0.69%) Thales
10 1 (0.69%) Veracode