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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 48 57
Rank change year-on-year +14 +9 -15
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 148 78 107
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.24% 4.41% 3.24%
As % of the Systems Management category 37.56% 24.45% 24.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 68 79
10th Percentile £400 £482 £473
25th Percentile £450 £546 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £613 £645 £600
90th Percentile £687 £720 £655
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 7
10th Percentile - £78.96 £60.65
25th Percentile - £79.35 £68.13
Median hourly rate - £80.00 £74.44
Median % change year-on-year - +7.47% -4.56%
75th Percentile - £81.48 £75.97
90th Percentile - £82.37 £77.70
England median hourly rate £68.50 £80.00 £67.25
% change year-on-year -14.38% +18.96% -10.33%

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 394 319 431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 11.29% 18.04% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 256 243 337
10th Percentile £306 £265 £215
25th Percentile £427 £449 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.39% +9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £690
England median daily rate £513 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 9 15
10th Percentile £46.00 £17.13 -
25th Percentile £46.50 £18.87 -
Median hourly rate £51.00 £70.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.14% +75.00% -48.72%
75th Percentile - £78.70 £74.22
90th Percentile - £80.59 £76.28
England median hourly rate £58.72 £42.25 £30.75
% change year-on-year +38.98% +37.40% -41.90%

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 13 June 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
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 13 June 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 +4 48 £550 +3.77% 9
Gloucestershire -3 36 £575 -8.18% 56
Wiltshire +12 32 £575 - 8
Dorset +9 20 £369 -32.91% 6
Somerset - 5 £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 12 (8.11%) Apache Spark
2 5 (3.38%) Apache
3 4 (2.70%) Confluence
4 2 (1.35%) nginx
5 1 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.68%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 5 (3.38%) Maximo
2 1 (0.68%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 74 (50.00%) AWS
2 61 (41.22%) Azure
3 35 (23.65%) GCP
4 24 (16.22%) GitHub
5 23 (15.54%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (12.16%) OpenShift
7 17 (11.49%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (11.49%) Serverless
8 15 (10.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 13 (8.78%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (7.43%) AWS Lambda
10 11 (7.43%) Azure AKS
11 10 (6.76%) Amazon S3
12 9 (6.08%) Azure Key Vault
13 8 (5.41%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (5.41%) Datadog
14 7 (4.73%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (3.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 5 (3.38%) Azure Monitor
15 5 (3.38%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 11 (7.43%) VPN
2 10 (6.76%) DNS
3 6 (4.05%) Firewall
3 6 (4.05%) TCP/IP
4 4 (2.70%) Reverse Proxy
5 3 (2.03%) DHCP
5 3 (2.03%) Network Security
6 2 (1.35%) NAS
6 2 (1.35%) SAN
6 2 (1.35%) VLAN
7 1 (0.68%) AMQP
7 1 (0.68%) Calico
7 1 (0.68%) IPsec
7 1 (0.68%) Kerberos
7 1 (0.68%) LAN
7 1 (0.68%) SSH
7 1 (0.68%) WAN
7 1 (0.68%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (9.46%) NoSQL
2 9 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (6.08%) Relational Database
3 7 (4.73%) MongoDB
4 6 (4.05%) Big Data
4 6 (4.05%) Elasticsearch
4 6 (4.05%) Flink
5 4 (2.70%) Redis
6 3 (2.03%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (2.03%) Apache Cassandra
6 3 (2.03%) BigQuery
6 3 (2.03%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (2.03%) HBase
6 3 (2.03%) Oracle Database
7 2 (1.35%) CockroachDB
7 2 (1.35%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.68%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.68%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.68%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.68%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 39 (26.35%) GitLab
2 32 (21.62%) Jenkins
3 25 (16.89%) Git
4 14 (9.46%) Gatling
5 12 (8.11%) LoadRunner
6 11 (7.43%) JMeter
7 7 (4.73%) JIRA
8 5 (3.38%) JUnit
8 5 (3.38%) Selenium
8 5 (3.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (2.03%) Cucumber
9 3 (2.03%) MSI
9 3 (2.03%) SonarQube
10 2 (1.35%) Bitbucket
10 2 (1.35%) MLflow
10 2 (1.35%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.68%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.68%) Gradle
11 1 (0.68%) Postman
11 1 (0.68%) REST Assured
General
1 10 (6.76%) Social Skills
2 9 (6.08%) Public Sector
3 8 (5.41%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (2.03%) Legal
5 2 (1.35%) Banking
5 2 (1.35%) Finance
5 2 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (1.35%) Military
6 1 (0.68%) Aerospace
6 1 (0.68%) Local Government
6 1 (0.68%) Police
Job Titles
1 49 (33.11%) DevOps Engineer
2 26 (17.57%) Developer
3 15 (10.14%) GCP Engineer
4 14 (9.46%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 13 (8.78%) Java Developer
5 13 (8.78%) Site Engineer
6 12 (8.11%) Software Engineer
7 11 (7.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 11 (7.43%) Performance Engineer
7 11 (7.43%) Senior
8 9 (6.08%) Backend Developer
9 8 (5.41%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 8 (5.41%) Azure Engineer
9 8 (5.41%) GCP DevOps
9 8 (5.41%) GCP DevOps Engineer
9 8 (5.41%) Platform Engineer
10 6 (4.05%) Cloud Engineer
10 6 (4.05%) Java Engineer
10 6 (4.05%) Python Developer
11 4 (2.70%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (18.92%) Spring Boot
2 26 (17.57%) Spring
3 19 (12.84%) Kafka
4 16 (10.81%) RESTful
5 15 (10.14%) REST
6 11 (7.43%) React
7 8 (5.41%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (4.73%) Node.js
9 6 (4.05%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (4.05%) Flask
9 6 (4.05%) gRPC
9 6 (4.05%) WebSockets
10 5 (3.38%) ARM Templates
10 5 (3.38%) FastAPI
10 5 (3.38%) Java Concurrency
11 4 (2.70%) Apache NiFi
11 4 (2.70%) GraphQL
11 4 (2.70%) Keycloak
11 4 (2.70%) Quarkus
11 4 (2.70%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 30 (20.27%) Cloud Native
2 10 (6.76%) Enterprise Software
3 6 (4.05%) Hybrid Cloud
4 5 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (3.38%) Onboarding
4 5 (3.38%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.70%) Linux Command Line
5 4 (2.70%) Private Cloud
6 3 (2.03%) Clustering
6 3 (2.03%) Data Centre
6 3 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (2.03%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.35%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.68%) Learning Management System
8 1 (0.68%) PKI
8 1 (0.68%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 35 (23.65%) Linux
2 9 (6.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 8 (5.41%) Windows
4 5 (3.38%) Rocky
4 5 (3.38%) Ubuntu
5 4 (2.70%) Debian
6 3 (2.03%) Unix
7 2 (1.35%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.68%) Android
8 1 (0.68%) CentOS
8 1 (0.68%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (72.30%) CI/CD
2 103 (69.59%) DevOps
3 75 (50.68%) Containerisation
4 55 (37.16%) Infrastructure as Code
5 34 (22.97%) Agile
5 34 (22.97%) Microservices
6 32 (21.62%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 26 (17.57%) Observability
8 24 (16.22%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (16.22%) Software Engineering
9 22 (14.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 20 (13.51%) Cloud Security
11 19 (12.84%) Analytics
12 17 (11.49%) Continuous Improvement
13 16 (10.81%) DevSecOps
13 16 (10.81%) High Availability
13 16 (10.81%) Platform Engineering
13 16 (10.81%) Test Automation
14 14 (9.46%) Full-Stack Development
15 13 (8.78%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 64 (43.24%) Python
2 38 (25.68%) Java
3 31 (20.95%) SQL
4 27 (18.24%) Bash
5 22 (14.86%) Go
6 16 (10.81%) JavaScript
7 9 (6.08%) Bicep
7 9 (6.08%) TypeScript
8 6 (4.05%) PowerShell
9 3 (2.03%) C#
9 3 (2.03%) Rust
10 2 (1.35%) Groovy
10 2 (1.35%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.68%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 70 (47.30%) Security Cleared
2 48 (32.43%) SC Cleared
3 34 (22.97%) DV Cleared
4 8 (5.41%) Degree
5 7 (4.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (4.05%) Azure Certification
6 6 (4.05%) CISM
6 6 (4.05%) CISSP
6 6 (4.05%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (3.38%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 4 (2.70%) AWS Certification
9 3 (2.03%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 1 (0.68%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.68%) CCSK
10 1 (0.68%) CCSP
10 1 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.68%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.76%) QA
2 7 (4.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (4.73%) NCSC
3 6 (4.05%) Accessibility
3 6 (4.05%) NIST
3 6 (4.05%) WCAG
4 5 (3.38%) NIST 800
5 1 (0.68%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.68%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 81 (54.73%) Docker
2 6 (4.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (3.38%) Hyper-V
4 3 (2.03%) Active Directory
5 2 (1.35%) KVM
5 2 (1.35%) VirtualBox
5 2 (1.35%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.68%) iptables
6 1 (0.68%) NFS
6 1 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.68%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 69 (46.62%) Terraform
2 32 (21.62%) Prometheus
3 27 (18.24%) Grafana
4 26 (17.57%) Ansible
5 15 (10.14%) Argo
6 6 (4.05%) Istio
7 4 (2.70%) Nagios
7 4 (2.70%) Podman
7 4 (2.70%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (2.03%) Docker Swarm
8 3 (2.03%) Progress Chef
9 2 (1.35%) Cilium
9 2 (1.35%) Kustomize
9 2 (1.35%) linkerd
9 2 (1.35%) Puppet
9 2 (1.35%) VxRail
10 1 (0.68%) Kibana
10 1 (0.68%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.68%) logstash
10 1 (0.68%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 19 (12.84%) Microsoft
2 16 (10.81%) Dynatrace
2 16 (10.81%) Google
2 16 (10.81%) Red Hat
2 16 (10.81%) Splunk
3 11 (7.43%) AppDynamics
3 11 (7.43%) New Relic
3 11 (7.43%) VMware
4 8 (5.41%) Databricks
4 8 (5.41%) Oracle
5 6 (4.05%) IBM
6 4 (2.70%) Dell
7 2 (1.35%) BeyondTrust
7 2 (1.35%) BiZZdesign
7 2 (1.35%) Thales
8 1 (0.68%) Broadcom
8 1 (0.68%) Cisco
8 1 (0.68%) Cloudera
8 1 (0.68%) EMC
8 1 (0.68%) Sparx