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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 58 40
Rank change year-on-year +23 -18 +1
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 174 63 122
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.67% 3.20% 4.75%
As % of the Systems Management category 49.57% 22.99% 34.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 57 80
10th Percentile £406 £443 £475
25th Percentile £475 £508 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £588 £556
Median % change year-on-year -4.26% +5.62% +1.14%
75th Percentile £663 £650 £634
90th Percentile £738 £700 £700
England median daily rate £549 £529 £575
% change year-on-year +3.81% -8.00% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 5
10th Percentile £91.91 - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £98.82 £80.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.53% +8.11% -5.13%
75th Percentile £99.71 - £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 351 274 351
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.43% 13.93% 13.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 207 236
10th Percentile £381 £235 £334
25th Percentile £450 £414 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year - +2.23% -2.18%
75th Percentile £675 £625 £625
90th Percentile £742 £695 £675
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 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 £67.00 £34.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +97.06% -15.00% -19.78%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 +5 44 £550 +4.76% 27
Somerset +8 43 £475 -2.56% 29
Gloucestershire +17 37 £575 -11.54% 86
Wiltshire -9 20 £619 +7.61% 10
Dorset -1 19 £434 -21.14% 15
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 13 (7.47%) Confluence
2 9 (5.17%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.17%) SharePoint
3 6 (3.45%) Apache
4 3 (1.72%) nginx
5 1 (0.57%) JBoss
5 1 (0.57%) Oracle Coherence
5 1 (0.57%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.57%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 99 (56.90%) AWS
2 96 (55.17%) Azure
3 56 (32.18%) GCP
4 30 (17.24%) Azure DevOps
5 19 (10.92%) GitHub
6 16 (9.20%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 15 (8.62%) Azure AKS
8 14 (8.05%) OpenShift
9 11 (6.32%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (6.32%) Serverless
10 8 (4.60%) Amazon EKS
10 8 (4.60%) AWS CloudFormation
10 8 (4.60%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (4.02%) Amazon S3
12 6 (3.45%) Datadog
12 6 (3.45%) SaaS
13 4 (2.30%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (2.30%) Amazon SQS
14 3 (1.72%) Amazon ECS
14 3 (1.72%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 37 (21.26%) DNS
2 29 (16.67%) Firewall
3 27 (15.52%) TCP/IP
4 24 (13.79%) DHCP
5 19 (10.92%) VSAN
6 8 (4.60%) VPN
7 5 (2.87%) VLAN
8 2 (1.15%) Network Security
8 2 (1.15%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (1.15%) tcpdump
9 1 (0.57%) Calico
9 1 (0.57%) IPsec
9 1 (0.57%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.57%) NAS
9 1 (0.57%) SAN
9 1 (0.57%) SSH
9 1 (0.57%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.32%) Geospatial Data
2 8 (4.60%) NoSQL
2 8 (4.60%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (2.87%) Big Data
4 4 (2.30%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (2.30%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (2.30%) Flink
4 4 (2.30%) MongoDB
5 3 (1.72%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (1.72%) BigQuery
5 3 (1.72%) HBase
5 3 (1.72%) Relational Database
5 3 (1.72%) SQL Server
6 2 (1.15%) Chroma
6 2 (1.15%) Data Lake
6 2 (1.15%) InfluxDB
6 2 (1.15%) Metadata
6 2 (1.15%) MySQL
6 2 (1.15%) Oracle Database
6 2 (1.15%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 43 (24.71%) Jenkins
2 42 (24.14%) Git
3 38 (21.84%) GitLab
4 17 (9.77%) JIRA
5 11 (6.32%) MSI
6 5 (2.87%) Gatling
6 5 (2.87%) JUnit
6 5 (2.87%) LoadRunner
7 4 (2.30%) JMeter
7 4 (2.30%) Selenium
8 3 (1.72%) Claude Code
8 3 (1.72%) SonarQube
9 2 (1.15%) Cucumber
9 2 (1.15%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (1.15%) Spinnaker
9 2 (1.15%) Visual Studio Team System
10 1 (0.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.57%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.57%) Gradle
10 1 (0.57%) Maven
General
1 22 (12.64%) Public Sector
2 11 (6.32%) Finance
3 10 (5.75%) Social Skills
4 8 (4.60%) Banking
5 5 (2.87%) Military
6 4 (2.30%) Local Government
7 3 (1.72%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.72%) Police
8 2 (1.15%) Aviation
9 1 (0.57%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.57%) Legal
9 1 (0.57%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 39 (22.41%) Developer
2 38 (21.84%) DevOps Engineer
3 20 (11.49%) Senior
4 17 (9.77%) Platform Engineer
5 15 (8.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 13 (7.47%) GCP Engineer
6 13 (7.47%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 13 (7.47%) Software Developer
7 12 (6.90%) Architect
7 12 (6.90%) Site Engineer
8 11 (6.32%) Cloud Engineer
9 9 (5.17%) Java Developer
10 8 (4.60%) Principal Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 7 (4.02%) Azure Engineer
12 6 (3.45%) Cloud Platform Engineer
12 6 (3.45%) GCP DevOps
12 6 (3.45%) GCP DevOps Engineer
12 6 (3.45%) Lead
12 6 (3.45%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 114 (65.52%) Terraform
2 24 (13.79%) REST
3 20 (11.49%) Spring Boot
4 19 (10.92%) RESTful
5 18 (10.34%) Spring
6 14 (8.05%) React
7 12 (6.90%) CSS
7 12 (6.90%) CSS3
7 12 (6.90%) HTML
7 12 (6.90%) HTML5
7 12 (6.90%) Kafka
8 11 (6.32%) .NET
8 11 (6.32%) .NET Core
8 11 (6.32%) .NET Framework
8 11 (6.32%) ATL
8 11 (6.32%) COM
8 11 (6.32%) GeoJSON
8 11 (6.32%) MFC
8 11 (6.32%) WPF
9 10 (5.75%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 52 (29.89%) Cloud Native
2 18 (10.34%) PKI
3 16 (9.20%) Data Centre
3 16 (9.20%) Onboarding
4 12 (6.90%) Product Ownership
5 11 (6.32%) Linux Command Line
6 10 (5.75%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (5.17%) Wiki
8 7 (4.02%) Public Cloud
9 6 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (2.30%) Clustering
11 4 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
12 3 (1.72%) AI Agents
12 3 (1.72%) Enterprise Cloud
13 2 (1.15%) Private Cloud
13 2 (1.15%) Security Posture
14 1 (0.57%) Learning Management System
14 1 (0.57%) Mobile App
14 1 (0.57%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 53 (30.46%) Linux
2 37 (21.26%) Windows
3 6 (3.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (3.45%) Unix
4 3 (1.72%) Rocky
4 3 (1.72%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.72%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.15%) Debian
6 1 (0.57%) Android
6 1 (0.57%) CentOS
6 1 (0.57%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (77.01%) CI/CD
2 108 (62.07%) DevOps
3 105 (60.34%) Infrastructure as Code
4 95 (54.60%) Containerisation
5 60 (34.48%) DevSecOps
6 54 (31.03%) Agile
7 47 (27.01%) Platform Engineering
8 43 (24.71%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 36 (20.69%) Observability
10 32 (18.39%) Microservices
11 30 (17.24%) Software Engineering
12 29 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
13 28 (16.09%) Deployment Automation
13 28 (16.09%) Technical Leadership
14 25 (14.37%) Continuous Improvement
15 24 (13.79%) Software Delivery
16 23 (13.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 21 (12.07%) Mentoring
18 18 (10.34%) Systems Engineering
18 18 (10.34%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 82 (47.13%) Python
2 54 (31.03%) Bash
3 40 (22.99%) Java
4 34 (19.54%) PowerShell
5 22 (12.64%) C#
6 21 (12.07%) Bicep
6 21 (12.07%) JavaScript
7 20 (11.49%) TypeScript
8 17 (9.77%) SQL
9 15 (8.62%) Go
10 6 (3.45%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.72%) Groovy
12 1 (0.57%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.57%) Rust
Qualifications
1 110 (63.22%) Security Cleared
2 66 (37.93%) DV Cleared
3 62 (35.63%) SC Cleared
4 15 (8.62%) AWS Certification
4 15 (8.62%) VCAP
5 7 (4.02%) Cisco Certification
6 6 (3.45%) CCNA
7 5 (2.87%) Degree
7 5 (2.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 4 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (1.15%) CISSP
10 2 (1.15%) MCSE
10 2 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 1 (0.57%) CCSK
11 1 (0.57%) CCSP
11 1 (0.57%) CISM
11 1 (0.57%) CompTIA Security+
11 1 (0.57%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (9.20%) Accessibility
1 16 (9.20%) WCAG
2 15 (8.62%) NCSC
3 13 (7.47%) QA
4 2 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.15%) NIST
4 2 (1.15%) SLA
5 1 (0.57%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (0.57%) JSP 440
System Software
1 99 (56.90%) Docker
2 30 (17.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (12.64%) Active Directory
4 20 (11.49%) vSphere
5 19 (10.92%) VMware NSX
6 17 (9.77%) Hyper-V
7 5 (2.87%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (2.30%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (1.72%) VirtualBox
10 2 (1.15%) KVM
11 1 (0.57%) iptables
11 1 (0.57%) NFS
11 1 (0.57%) zsh
Systems Management
1 60 (34.48%) Ansible
2 18 (10.34%) Prometheus
3 17 (9.77%) Grafana
4 15 (8.62%) VxRail
5 9 (5.17%) Argo
6 8 (4.60%) Istio
7 5 (2.87%) OPNET
8 4 (2.30%) PowerCLI
8 4 (2.30%) Proxmox
8 4 (2.30%) vCenter Server
9 2 (1.15%) Cilium
9 2 (1.15%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (1.15%) Kustomize
9 2 (1.15%) linkerd
9 2 (1.15%) Nagios
9 2 (1.15%) Podman
9 2 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.57%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.57%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.57%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 34 (19.54%) VMware
2 31 (17.82%) Google
3 29 (16.67%) Microsoft
4 13 (7.47%) Oracle
5 12 (6.90%) Dynatrace
6 11 (6.32%) Splunk
7 6 (3.45%) Red Hat
8 4 (2.30%) AppDynamics
8 4 (2.30%) CyberArk
8 4 (2.30%) Databricks
8 4 (2.30%) New Relic
8 4 (2.30%) SaltStack
8 4 (2.30%) Thales
8 4 (2.30%) webMethods
9 3 (1.72%) Dell
10 2 (1.15%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.15%) BiZZdesign
10 2 (1.15%) Cisco
10 2 (1.15%) IBM
11 1 (0.57%) Sparx