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 20 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 33 74
Rank change year-on-year 0 +41 -38
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 154 95 78
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.81% 5.51% 2.43%
As % of the Systems Management category 37.38% 29.41% 18.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 79 55
10th Percentile £400 £473 £463
25th Percentile £450 £513 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -
75th Percentile £627 £634 £594
90th Percentile £706 £733 £659
England median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 6
10th Percentile £80.60 £79.13 £59.88
25th Percentile £83.00 £79.77 £65.94
Median hourly rate £89.00 £80.83 £74.44
Median % change year-on-year +10.11% +8.58% +11.35%
75th Percentile £119.00 £81.90 £76.74
90th Percentile - £82.53 £77.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% -3.23% -13.89%

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 412 323 418
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 12.87% 18.75% 13.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 303 250 323
10th Percentile £350 £337 £206
25th Percentile £450 £440 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £556 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% +5.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £629 £600
90th Percentile £738 £700 £700
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 15
10th Percentile £46.05 £31.15 -
25th Percentile £49.13 £56.13 -
Median hourly rate £51.00 £74.35 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.41% +85.88% -38.46%
75th Percentile £84.50 £79.77 £72.85
90th Percentile £116.00 £81.68 £76.28
England median hourly rate £56.50 £27.25 £30.00
% change year-on-year +107.34% -9.17% -47.83%

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 20 April 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 20 April 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 20 April 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 0 50 £538 +0.23% 19
Wiltshire +4 43 £575 +8.49% 8
Gloucestershire -4 38 £575 -6.50% 30
Dorset +12 19 £388 -17.73%
Somerset - 1 £600 - 5
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 10 (6.49%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.84%) Apache
3 2 (1.30%) nginx
4 1 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 2 (1.30%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (3.90%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 66 (42.86%) AWS
2 56 (36.36%) Azure
3 28 (18.18%) GitHub
4 27 (17.53%) GCP
5 21 (13.64%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (11.69%) OpenShift
6 18 (11.69%) Serverless
7 13 (8.44%) Amazon S3
7 13 (8.44%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (7.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 10 (6.49%) Amazon ECS
9 10 (6.49%) Amazon EKS
9 10 (6.49%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (6.49%) Azure AKS
10 8 (5.19%) Azure Key Vault
10 8 (5.19%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (4.55%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (4.55%) Azure Data Factory
11 7 (4.55%) Datadog
12 6 (3.90%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 10 (6.49%) VPN
2 6 (3.90%) DNS
2 6 (3.90%) Reverse Proxy
3 3 (1.95%) Network Security
3 3 (1.95%) TCP/IP
4 2 (1.30%) Firewall
5 1 (0.65%) AMQP
5 1 (0.65%) HTTP
5 1 (0.65%) IPsec
5 1 (0.65%) LAN
5 1 (0.65%) NAS
5 1 (0.65%) SAN
5 1 (0.65%) WAN
5 1 (0.65%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (9.74%) NoSQL
2 12 (7.79%) MongoDB
2 12 (7.79%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (7.14%) Elasticsearch
4 7 (4.55%) Relational Database
5 6 (3.90%) Flink
6 4 (2.60%) Redis
7 3 (1.95%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.95%) Big Data
8 2 (1.30%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.30%) CockroachDB
8 2 (1.30%) Hadoop
8 2 (1.30%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.65%) InfluxDB
9 1 (0.65%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 38 (24.68%) GitLab
2 26 (16.88%) Jenkins
3 16 (10.39%) Git
4 13 (8.44%) Gatling
5 11 (7.14%) JMeter
5 11 (7.14%) LoadRunner
6 6 (3.90%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (3.25%) Artifactory
8 3 (1.95%) SonarQube
9 2 (1.30%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.65%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.65%) JUnit
10 1 (0.65%) MLflow
10 1 (0.65%) Mocha
10 1 (0.65%) Mockito
10 1 (0.65%) NUnit
10 1 (0.65%) Selenium
10 1 (0.65%) Snyk
General
1 16 (10.39%) Social Skills
2 13 (8.44%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (5.84%) Public Sector
4 4 (2.60%) Finance
4 4 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
4 4 (2.60%) Presentation Skills
5 3 (1.95%) Aerospace
5 3 (1.95%) Banking
5 3 (1.95%) Legal
6 1 (0.65%) Military
6 1 (0.65%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 47 (30.52%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (15.58%) Developer
3 22 (14.29%) Senior
4 14 (9.09%) GCP Engineer
4 14 (9.09%) Java Developer
5 13 (8.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 11 (7.14%) Performance Engineer
7 9 (5.84%) Azure Engineer
7 9 (5.84%) Backend Developer
7 9 (5.84%) Data Engineer
7 9 (5.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 8 (5.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 8 (5.19%) Senior Data Engineer
8 8 (5.19%) Software Engineer
9 7 (4.55%) Platform Engineer
9 7 (4.55%) Site Engineer
10 6 (3.90%) Cloud Engineer
10 6 (3.90%) GCP DevOps
10 6 (3.90%) GCP DevOps Engineer
11 5 (3.25%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (14.94%) Kafka
2 16 (10.39%) Spring
2 16 (10.39%) Spring Boot
3 12 (7.79%) REST
3 12 (7.79%) RESTful
4 10 (6.49%) Keycloak
5 8 (5.19%) Apache NiFi
5 8 (5.19%) ARM Templates
6 7 (4.55%) Elastic Stack
7 6 (3.90%) gRPC
7 6 (3.90%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (3.90%) React
7 6 (3.90%) WebSockets
8 5 (3.25%) Flask
8 5 (3.25%) Java Concurrency
8 5 (3.25%) Node.js
9 4 (2.60%) FastAPI
9 4 (2.60%) GraphQL
9 4 (2.60%) OAuth
9 4 (2.60%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 20 (12.99%) Cloud Native
2 13 (8.44%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (6.49%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (5.19%) Onboarding
5 5 (3.25%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.60%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.95%) Private Cloud
8 2 (1.30%) Data Centre
9 1 (0.65%) Algorithms
9 1 (0.65%) Client/Server
9 1 (0.65%) Cloud Security Posture
9 1 (0.65%) Data Fabric
9 1 (0.65%) DataPower
9 1 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.65%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.65%) Replication
9 1 (0.65%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 37 (24.03%) Linux
2 13 (8.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 12 (7.79%) Windows
4 9 (5.84%) Ubuntu
5 4 (2.60%) Unix
5 4 (2.60%) VMS
6 3 (1.95%) Debian
6 3 (1.95%) Rocky
7 2 (1.30%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (65.58%) DevOps
2 96 (62.34%) CI/CD
3 71 (46.10%) Containerisation
4 45 (29.22%) Infrastructure as Code
5 29 (18.83%) Microservices
6 27 (17.53%) Agile
6 27 (17.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 22 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
8 21 (13.64%) Cloud Security
8 21 (13.64%) Continuous Improvement
9 19 (12.34%) Analytics
9 19 (12.34%) Data Engineering
9 19 (12.34%) DevSecOps
9 19 (12.34%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 18 (11.69%) Observability
11 16 (10.39%) Data Pipeline
11 16 (10.39%) Software Engineering
12 12 (7.79%) Code Quality
12 12 (7.79%) Performance Engineering
12 12 (7.79%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 64 (41.56%) Python
2 31 (20.13%) SQL
3 26 (16.88%) Java
4 25 (16.23%) Bash
5 21 (13.64%) Go
6 13 (8.44%) PowerShell
7 12 (7.79%) JavaScript
8 10 (6.49%) Bicep
9 6 (3.90%) Shell Script
9 6 (3.90%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.95%) C#
11 2 (1.30%) Ruby
11 2 (1.30%) Rust
12 1 (0.65%) C
12 1 (0.65%) Groovy
12 1 (0.65%) PHP
Qualifications
1 83 (53.90%) Security Cleared
2 62 (40.26%) SC Cleared
3 37 (24.03%) DV Cleared
4 16 (10.39%) Azure Certification
5 10 (6.49%) Degree
6 9 (5.84%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (5.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (4.55%) CISM
8 7 (4.55%) CISSP
9 6 (3.90%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 3 (1.95%) AWS Certification
11 2 (1.30%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
11 2 (1.30%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.65%) CSPO
12 1 (0.65%) ISTQB
12 1 (0.65%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (5.84%) QA
2 7 (4.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (3.90%) NIST
3 6 (3.90%) NIST 800
4 3 (1.95%) NCSC
5 2 (1.30%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.65%) GDPR
6 1 (0.65%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.65%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 78 (50.65%) Docker
2 5 (3.25%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.95%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.30%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.65%) iptables
6 1 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 69 (44.81%) Terraform
2 34 (22.08%) Ansible
3 31 (20.13%) Prometheus
4 26 (16.88%) Grafana
5 11 (7.14%) Argo
6 4 (2.60%) Dell DRAC
6 4 (2.60%) Nagios
6 4 (2.60%) Nessus
6 4 (2.60%) Packer
6 4 (2.60%) Podman
6 4 (2.60%) Red Hat Satellite
7 3 (1.95%) Istio
7 3 (1.95%) Progress Chef
7 3 (1.95%) Puppet
8 2 (1.30%) Cilium
8 2 (1.30%) Kibana
8 2 (1.30%) logstash
8 2 (1.30%) SCOM
8 2 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.65%) VxRail
Vendors
1 26 (16.88%) Red Hat
2 19 (12.34%) Microsoft
3 15 (9.74%) Google
3 15 (9.74%) Splunk
4 12 (7.79%) Dynatrace
5 11 (7.14%) AppDynamics
5 11 (7.14%) New Relic
6 10 (6.49%) VMware
7 7 (4.55%) Databricks
7 7 (4.55%) IBM
8 6 (3.90%) Dell
9 3 (1.95%) Oracle
10 2 (1.30%) Broadcom
11 1 (0.65%) BeyondTrust
11 1 (0.65%) Checkmarx
11 1 (0.65%) Cisco
11 1 (0.65%) EMC
11 1 (0.65%) Thales
11 1 (0.65%) Veracode