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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 61 37
Rank change year-on-year +27 -24 0
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 178 55 132
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.89% 2.85% 4.81%
As % of the Systems Management category 45.88% 20.83% 35.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 47 91
10th Percentile £409 £425 £475
25th Percentile £488 £503 £516
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -
75th Percentile £653 £656 £625
90th Percentile £745 £700 £653
England median daily rate £540 £533 £557
% change year-on-year +1.27% -4.18% -7.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 9
10th Percentile £91.91 £78.96 £62.20
25th Percentile - £79.35 £72.50
Median hourly rate £98.82 £80.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.53% +8.11% -5.13%
75th Percentile £99.71 £81.48 £74.44
90th Percentile £100.00 £82.37 £77.60
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +4.48% -0.74% -10.00%

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 388 264 369
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 10.65% 13.67% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 253 196 275
10th Percentile £313 £235 £220
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year - +2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £656 £625 £600
90th Percentile £738 £695 £671
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 8 11
10th Percentile £25.88 £16.80 £15.50
25th Percentile £49.13 £18.60 £59.88
Median hourly rate £63.00 £67.50 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -8.78% -5.13%
75th Percentile £95.96 £79.03 £74.44
90th Percentile £99.65 £80.89 £77.50
England median hourly rate £67.00 £51.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +31.37% +36.00% -24.80%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 +14 47 £575 +10.58% 43
Gloucestershire +13 38 £575 -12.38% 92
Somerset +8 36 £475 -2.56% 14
Wiltshire +6 30 £575 - 5
Dorset +3 18 £495 -10.09% 16
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 12 (6.74%) Confluence
2 8 (4.49%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.25%) Apache
4 3 (1.69%) SharePoint
5 2 (1.12%) nginx
6 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.56%) JBoss
6 1 (0.56%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 98 (55.06%) AWS
2 91 (51.12%) Azure
3 51 (28.65%) GCP
4 28 (15.73%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (12.36%) GitHub
6 17 (9.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 14 (7.87%) GitHub Actions
8 12 (6.74%) OpenShift
9 11 (6.18%) Serverless
10 9 (5.06%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (5.06%) Azure AKS
11 8 (4.49%) Azure Key Vault
12 6 (3.37%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (3.37%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (3.37%) SaaS
13 5 (2.81%) Amazon S3
13 5 (2.81%) Datadog
14 3 (1.69%) Amazon EC2
15 2 (1.12%) Amazon SQS
15 2 (1.12%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 36 (20.22%) DNS
2 28 (15.73%) Firewall
3 26 (14.61%) TCP/IP
4 23 (12.92%) DHCP
5 19 (10.67%) VSAN
6 8 (4.49%) VPN
7 4 (2.25%) VLAN
8 3 (1.69%) Network Security
8 3 (1.69%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (1.12%) tcpdump
10 1 (0.56%) AMQP
10 1 (0.56%) Calico
10 1 (0.56%) IPsec
10 1 (0.56%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.56%) NAS
10 1 (0.56%) SAN
10 1 (0.56%) SSH
10 1 (0.56%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.18%) Geospatial Data
2 9 (5.06%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (4.49%) NoSQL
4 7 (3.93%) MongoDB
5 6 (3.37%) Big Data
6 4 (2.25%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (2.25%) Relational Database
7 3 (1.69%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.69%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.69%) HBase
8 2 (1.12%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.12%) InfluxDB
8 2 (1.12%) Metadata
8 2 (1.12%) Oracle Database
8 2 (1.12%) Redis
9 1 (0.56%) CockroachDB
9 1 (0.56%) Dremio
9 1 (0.56%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.56%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 36 (20.22%) Git
1 36 (20.22%) GitLab
2 35 (19.66%) Jenkins
3 15 (8.43%) JIRA
4 13 (7.30%) Gatling
5 12 (6.74%) LoadRunner
6 11 (6.18%) JMeter
6 11 (6.18%) MSI
7 6 (3.37%) JUnit
8 5 (2.81%) Selenium
9 2 (1.12%) Claude Code
9 2 (1.12%) Cucumber
9 2 (1.12%) MLflow
9 2 (1.12%) SonarQube
9 2 (1.12%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (1.12%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.56%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.56%) Gradle
10 1 (0.56%) Postman
10 1 (0.56%) REST Assured
General
1 26 (14.61%) Public Sector
2 14 (7.87%) Social Skills
3 7 (3.93%) Finance
4 5 (2.81%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (2.81%) Military
5 4 (2.25%) Banking
6 3 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.69%) Local Government
6 3 (1.69%) Police
7 2 (1.12%) Aviation
7 2 (1.12%) Legal
8 1 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.56%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 39 (21.91%) DevOps Engineer
2 33 (18.54%) Developer
3 23 (12.92%) Senior
4 16 (8.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 16 (8.99%) Platform Engineer
5 15 (8.43%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 14 (7.87%) GCP Engineer
6 14 (7.87%) Site Engineer
7 11 (6.18%) Architect
7 11 (6.18%) Performance Engineer
8 10 (5.62%) Software Engineer
9 9 (5.06%) Cloud Engineer
9 9 (5.06%) Principal Engineer
10 8 (4.49%) Java Developer
10 8 (4.49%) Software Developer
11 7 (3.93%) GCP DevOps
11 7 (3.93%) GCP DevOps Engineer
12 6 (3.37%) Azure Engineer
12 6 (3.37%) Lead
12 6 (3.37%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (59.55%) Terraform
2 23 (12.92%) REST
3 20 (11.24%) Spring Boot
4 18 (10.11%) Spring
5 17 (9.55%) RESTful
6 15 (8.43%) Kafka
7 12 (6.74%) React
8 11 (6.18%) .NET
8 11 (6.18%) .NET Core
8 11 (6.18%) .NET Framework
8 11 (6.18%) ATL
8 11 (6.18%) COM
8 11 (6.18%) CSS
8 11 (6.18%) CSS3
8 11 (6.18%) GeoJSON
8 11 (6.18%) HTML
8 11 (6.18%) HTML5
8 11 (6.18%) MFC
8 11 (6.18%) WPF
9 9 (5.06%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 46 (25.84%) Cloud Native
2 18 (10.11%) Data Centre
2 18 (10.11%) PKI
3 13 (7.30%) Onboarding
4 11 (6.18%) Linux Command Line
5 10 (5.62%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (4.49%) Public Cloud
7 7 (3.93%) Product Ownership
8 6 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (3.37%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (2.25%) Clustering
10 3 (1.69%) Wiki
11 2 (1.12%) Private Cloud
12 1 (0.56%) Data Fabric
12 1 (0.56%) Enterprise Cloud
12 1 (0.56%) Learning Management System
12 1 (0.56%) Mobile App
12 1 (0.56%) Security Posture
12 1 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 55 (30.90%) Linux
2 37 (20.79%) Windows
3 10 (5.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.81%) Unix
5 4 (2.25%) Rocky
5 4 (2.25%) Ubuntu
6 3 (1.69%) Debian
6 3 (1.69%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.56%) Android
7 1 (0.56%) CentOS
7 1 (0.56%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (74.72%) CI/CD
2 111 (62.36%) DevOps
3 101 (56.74%) Infrastructure as Code
4 90 (50.56%) Containerisation
5 50 (28.09%) Agile
6 47 (26.40%) DevSecOps
7 42 (23.60%) Platform Engineering
8 41 (23.03%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 35 (19.66%) Microservices
10 33 (18.54%) Technical Leadership
11 32 (17.98%) Problem-Solving
12 28 (15.73%) Observability
12 28 (15.73%) Software Engineering
13 25 (14.04%) Mentoring
14 24 (13.48%) Continuous Improvement
14 24 (13.48%) Test Automation
15 23 (12.92%) Deployment Automation
15 23 (12.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 19 (10.67%) Cybersecurity
17 18 (10.11%) Systems Engineering
Programming Languages
1 84 (47.19%) Python
2 51 (28.65%) Bash
3 35 (19.66%) Java
4 28 (15.73%) PowerShell
5 23 (12.92%) SQL
6 21 (11.80%) JavaScript
7 19 (10.67%) TypeScript
8 17 (9.55%) C#
8 17 (9.55%) Go
9 16 (8.99%) Bicep
10 7 (3.93%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.69%) Groovy
12 2 (1.12%) Rust
13 1 (0.56%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 108 (60.67%) Security Cleared
2 65 (36.52%) SC Cleared
3 60 (33.71%) DV Cleared
4 15 (8.43%) VCAP
5 13 (7.30%) AWS Certification
6 7 (3.93%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (3.37%) CCNA
7 6 (3.37%) Degree
8 5 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (2.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (1.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.69%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (1.12%) Azure Certification
10 2 (1.12%) CISSP
10 2 (1.12%) MCSE
11 1 (0.56%) CCSP
11 1 (0.56%) CISM
11 1 (0.56%) ISTQB
11 1 (0.56%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.56%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.99%) Accessibility
1 16 (8.99%) NCSC
1 16 (8.99%) WCAG
2 11 (6.18%) QA
3 2 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.12%) SLA
4 1 (0.56%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.56%) Government Security Classifications
4 1 (0.56%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 1 (0.56%) NIST
System Software
1 101 (56.74%) Docker
2 29 (16.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (12.36%) Active Directory
4 20 (11.24%) vSphere
5 19 (10.67%) VMware NSX
6 17 (9.55%) Hyper-V
7 5 (2.81%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (2.81%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (1.69%) VirtualBox
9 2 (1.12%) KVM
10 1 (0.56%) iptables
10 1 (0.56%) NFS
10 1 (0.56%) zsh
Systems Management
1 56 (31.46%) Ansible
2 20 (11.24%) Grafana
2 20 (11.24%) Prometheus
3 15 (8.43%) VxRail
4 12 (6.74%) Argo
5 7 (3.93%) Istio
6 5 (2.81%) OPNET
7 4 (2.25%) PowerCLI
7 4 (2.25%) Proxmox
7 4 (2.25%) vCenter Server
8 3 (1.69%) Docker Swarm
8 3 (1.69%) Podman
8 3 (1.69%) Progress Chef
8 3 (1.69%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (1.12%) Cilium
9 2 (1.12%) Kustomize
9 2 (1.12%) linkerd
9 2 (1.12%) Nagios
10 1 (0.56%) Puppet
10 1 (0.56%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 33 (18.54%) VMware
2 25 (14.04%) Google
2 25 (14.04%) Microsoft
3 19 (10.67%) Dynatrace
4 17 (9.55%) Splunk
5 12 (6.74%) Oracle
6 11 (6.18%) AppDynamics
6 11 (6.18%) New Relic
7 10 (5.62%) Red Hat
8 4 (2.25%) CyberArk
8 4 (2.25%) Databricks
8 4 (2.25%) SaltStack
8 4 (2.25%) Thales
9 3 (1.69%) Dell
10 2 (1.12%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.12%) BiZZdesign
10 2 (1.12%) Cisco
10 2 (1.12%) IBM
11 1 (0.56%) BeyondTrust
11 1 (0.56%) Sparx