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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 60 42
Rank change year-on-year +27 -18 -4
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 184 67 118
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.91% 3.40% 4.65%
As % of the Systems Management category 50.97% 24.01% 34.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 59 76
10th Percentile £406 £447 £475
25th Percentile £488 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £558 £600 £566
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% +5.96% +2.95%
75th Percentile £663 £675 £638
90th Percentile £736 £700 £700
England median daily rate £550 £530 £575
% change year-on-year +3.77% -7.83% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 5
10th Percentile £60.56 - -
25th Percentile £79.35 - -
Median hourly rate £98.82 £80.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.53% +8.11% -5.13%
75th Percentile £99.12 - £74.44
90th Percentile £100.00 - -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% -3.45%

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 361 279 342
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.63% 14.16% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 210 228
10th Percentile £390 £235 £330
25th Percentile £455 £416 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £556 £545 £536
Median % change year-on-year +2.02% +1.63% -2.50%
75th Percentile £678 £636 £625
90th Percentile £740 £700 £675
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 7 8
10th Percentile £17.25 £16.47 £12.50
25th Percentile £51.00 £18.33 £14.75
Median hourly rate £90.00 £60.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -18.92% -5.13%
75th Percentile £98.82 £71.00 £74.11
90th Percentile £100.00 £78.50 £74.44
England median hourly rate £65.69 £34.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +93.21% -10.53% -27.62%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 +11 45 £550 +4.76% 38
Somerset +9 44 £488 - 33
Gloucestershire +11 40 £575 -12.38% 109
Wiltshire -2 25 £638 +6.25% 10
Dorset +2 20 £434 -21.14% 30
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 15 (8.15%) Confluence
2 13 (7.07%) Apache
2 13 (7.07%) Apache Spark
3 9 (4.89%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.63%) nginx
5 2 (1.09%) IIS
5 2 (1.09%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.54%) JBoss
6 1 (0.54%) Oracle Coherence
6 1 (0.54%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 102 (55.43%) AWS
2 97 (52.72%) Azure
3 57 (30.98%) GCP
4 30 (16.30%) Azure DevOps
5 20 (10.87%) GitHub
6 19 (10.33%) OpenShift
7 15 (8.15%) Azure AKS
7 15 (8.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 12 (6.52%) Amazon S3
8 12 (6.52%) GitHub Actions
8 12 (6.52%) Serverless
9 9 (4.89%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (4.35%) Amazon EKS
10 8 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (3.26%) Datadog
11 6 (3.26%) SaaS
12 5 (2.72%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (2.17%) Amazon SQS
14 3 (1.63%) Amazon ECS
14 3 (1.63%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 38 (20.65%) DNS
2 29 (15.76%) Firewall
3 28 (15.22%) TCP/IP
4 25 (13.59%) DHCP
5 20 (10.87%) VSAN
6 7 (3.80%) VPN
7 6 (3.26%) VLAN
8 3 (1.63%) Network Security
9 2 (1.09%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (1.09%) tcpdump
10 1 (0.54%) AMQP
10 1 (0.54%) Calico
10 1 (0.54%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.54%) NAS
10 1 (0.54%) SAN
10 1 (0.54%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.98%) Geospatial Data
2 9 (4.89%) Big Data
3 8 (4.35%) NoSQL
3 8 (4.35%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (3.26%) Metadata
5 5 (2.72%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (2.72%) Flink
5 5 (2.72%) Hadoop
6 4 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (2.17%) MongoDB
6 4 (2.17%) Parquet
6 4 (2.17%) Relational Database
7 3 (1.63%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.63%) BigQuery
7 3 (1.63%) HBase
7 3 (1.63%) InfluxDB
7 3 (1.63%) SQL Server
8 2 (1.09%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.09%) MySQL
8 2 (1.09%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 46 (25.00%) Jenkins
2 43 (23.37%) Git
2 43 (23.37%) GitLab
3 19 (10.33%) JIRA
4 11 (5.98%) MSI
5 5 (2.72%) Gatling
5 5 (2.72%) JUnit
5 5 (2.72%) LoadRunner
6 4 (2.17%) JMeter
6 4 (2.17%) Selenium
7 3 (1.63%) Claude Code
7 3 (1.63%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.09%) Cucumber
8 2 (1.09%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (1.09%) Spinnaker
8 2 (1.09%) Visual Studio Team System
9 1 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.54%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.54%) Gradle
General
1 23 (12.50%) Public Sector
2 13 (7.07%) Social Skills
3 12 (6.52%) Finance
4 9 (4.89%) Banking
5 5 (2.72%) Military
6 4 (2.17%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.17%) Local Government
7 3 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.63%) Police
8 2 (1.09%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.09%) Aviation
9 1 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.54%) Legal
9 1 (0.54%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 40 (21.74%) Developer
2 38 (20.65%) DevOps Engineer
3 23 (12.50%) Senior
4 17 (9.24%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (7.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 14 (7.61%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 14 (7.61%) Software Developer
6 13 (7.07%) GCP Engineer
6 13 (7.07%) Site Engineer
7 12 (6.52%) Architect
8 11 (5.98%) Cloud Engineer
9 9 (4.89%) Java Developer
10 8 (4.35%) Principal Engineer
11 7 (3.80%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 7 (3.80%) Azure Engineer
11 7 (3.80%) Test Engineer
12 6 (3.26%) QA Engineer
12 6 (3.26%) QA Test Engineer
12 6 (3.26%) Senior Developer
12 6 (3.26%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (65.76%) Terraform
2 29 (15.76%) REST
3 21 (11.41%) Spring Boot
4 19 (10.33%) RESTful
4 19 (10.33%) Spring
5 15 (8.15%) React
6 13 (7.07%) CSS
6 13 (7.07%) HTML
6 13 (7.07%) Kafka
7 12 (6.52%) CSS3
7 12 (6.52%) HTML5
8 11 (5.98%) .NET
8 11 (5.98%) .NET Core
8 11 (5.98%) .NET Framework
8 11 (5.98%) ATL
8 11 (5.98%) COM
8 11 (5.98%) GeoJSON
8 11 (5.98%) MFC
8 11 (5.98%) WPF
9 10 (5.43%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 54 (29.35%) Cloud Native
2 18 (9.78%) PKI
3 16 (8.70%) Data Centre
4 15 (8.15%) Onboarding
5 13 (7.07%) Linux Command Line
6 12 (6.52%) Product Ownership
7 10 (5.43%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (4.89%) Wiki
9 7 (3.80%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (3.80%) Public Cloud
10 5 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (2.17%) Algorithms
11 4 (2.17%) Clustering
12 3 (1.63%) AI Agents
12 3 (1.63%) Enterprise Cloud
13 2 (1.09%) Security Posture
14 1 (0.54%) Data Fabric
14 1 (0.54%) Private Cloud
14 1 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 55 (29.89%) Linux
2 38 (20.65%) Windows
3 7 (3.80%) Unix
4 6 (3.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.63%) Rocky
5 3 (1.63%) Ubuntu
5 3 (1.63%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.09%) Debian
7 1 (0.54%) Android
7 1 (0.54%) CentOS
7 1 (0.54%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (78.80%) CI/CD
2 117 (63.59%) DevOps
3 107 (58.15%) Infrastructure as Code
4 98 (53.26%) Containerisation
5 61 (33.15%) DevSecOps
6 57 (30.98%) Agile
7 49 (26.63%) Platform Engineering
8 46 (25.00%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 37 (20.11%) Observability
10 33 (17.93%) Microservices
11 32 (17.39%) Problem-Solving
12 31 (16.85%) Deployment Automation
12 31 (16.85%) Software Engineering
13 28 (15.22%) Technical Leadership
14 25 (13.59%) Continuous Improvement
14 25 (13.59%) Software Delivery
15 22 (11.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 22 (11.96%) Test Automation
16 21 (11.41%) AI
16 21 (11.41%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 88 (47.83%) Python
2 56 (30.43%) Bash
3 43 (23.37%) Java
4 36 (19.57%) PowerShell
5 23 (12.50%) C#
5 23 (12.50%) JavaScript
5 23 (12.50%) SQL
6 21 (11.41%) Bicep
7 20 (10.87%) TypeScript
8 16 (8.70%) Go
9 8 (4.35%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.63%) Groovy
11 1 (0.54%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.54%) Rust
Qualifications
1 120 (65.22%) Security Cleared
2 75 (40.76%) DV Cleared
3 65 (35.33%) SC Cleared
4 15 (8.15%) AWS Certification
4 15 (8.15%) VCAP
5 9 (4.89%) Degree
6 7 (3.80%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (3.26%) CCNA
8 5 (2.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 4 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (1.09%) CISSP
11 2 (1.09%) MCSE
11 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.54%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.54%) CCSP
12 1 (0.54%) CISM
12 1 (0.54%) CompTIA Security+
12 1 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.70%) Accessibility
1 16 (8.70%) WCAG
2 15 (8.15%) NCSC
3 14 (7.61%) QA
4 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.09%) NIST
4 2 (1.09%) SLA
5 1 (0.54%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.54%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (0.54%) JSP 440
System Software
1 103 (55.98%) Docker
2 31 (16.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (13.04%) Active Directory
4 21 (11.41%) vSphere
5 20 (10.87%) VMware NSX
6 16 (8.70%) Hyper-V
7 6 (3.26%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (2.17%) VirtualBox
9 2 (1.09%) KVM
10 1 (0.54%) NFS
10 1 (0.54%) zsh
Systems Management
1 68 (36.96%) Ansible
2 18 (9.78%) Prometheus
3 17 (9.24%) Grafana
4 15 (8.15%) VxRail
5 8 (4.35%) Argo
5 8 (4.35%) Istio
6 5 (2.72%) OPNET
6 5 (2.72%) PowerCLI
6 5 (2.72%) vCenter Server
7 4 (2.17%) Proxmox
8 3 (1.63%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (1.09%) Cilium
9 2 (1.09%) Kustomize
9 2 (1.09%) linkerd
9 2 (1.09%) Nagios
9 2 (1.09%) Podman
9 2 (1.09%) Progress Chef
9 2 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.54%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.54%) QRadar
Vendors
1 35 (19.02%) VMware
2 32 (17.39%) Google
3 29 (15.76%) Microsoft
4 13 (7.07%) Oracle
5 12 (6.52%) Dynatrace
6 11 (5.98%) Splunk
7 6 (3.26%) Red Hat
8 5 (2.72%) SaltStack
8 5 (2.72%) webMethods
9 4 (2.17%) AppDynamics
9 4 (2.17%) Atlassian
9 4 (2.17%) CyberArk
9 4 (2.17%) Databricks
9 4 (2.17%) New Relic
9 4 (2.17%) Thales
10 3 (1.63%) Dell
11 2 (1.09%) BiZZdesign
11 2 (1.09%) Cisco
11 2 (1.09%) IBM
12 1 (0.54%) Sparx