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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 56 42
Rank change year-on-year +21 -14 -7
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 164 60 130
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.59% 3.16% 4.53%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.50% 21.20% 33.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 52 92
10th Percentile £406 £436 £475
25th Percentile £478 £507 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £625
90th Percentile £725 £700 £675
England median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -10.20%
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% -6.90%

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 426 283 393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 11.93% 14.92% 13.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 271 210 304
10th Percentile £315 £249 £227
25th Percentile £440 £442 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year - +2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £616 £626 £625
90th Percentile £730 £696 £697
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 8 9
10th Percentile £17.25 £16.80 £62.20
25th Percentile £46.38 £18.60 £72.50
Median hourly rate £51.00 £67.50 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.44% -8.78% -5.13%
75th Percentile £98.82 £79.03 £74.44
90th Percentile £100.00 £80.89 £77.60
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £30.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% +80.33% -40.49%

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 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 1 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 1 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 +9 47 £550 +4.76% 29
Gloucestershire +5 34 £575 -15.29% 74
Somerset -4 28 £488 - 10
Wiltshire -1 26 £575 -4.17% 7
Dorset +5 21 £495 -10.09% 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 12 (7.32%) Apache Spark
2 10 (6.10%) Confluence
3 5 (3.05%) Apache
4 2 (1.22%) nginx
5 1 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.61%) JBoss
5 1 (0.61%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 90 (54.88%) AWS
2 79 (48.17%) Azure
3 40 (24.39%) GCP
4 24 (14.63%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (12.80%) GitHub
6 16 (9.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 15 (9.15%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (9.15%) Serverless
8 10 (6.10%) Amazon EKS
8 10 (6.10%) Amazon S3
8 10 (6.10%) AWS Lambda
8 10 (6.10%) OpenShift
9 9 (5.49%) Azure Key Vault
9 9 (5.49%) Datadog
10 8 (4.88%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (3.66%) Azure AKS
11 6 (3.66%) SaaS
12 5 (3.05%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (2.44%) Amazon EC2
14 2 (1.22%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (15.85%) DNS
2 22 (13.41%) Firewall
3 21 (12.80%) TCP/IP
4 19 (11.59%) DHCP
5 13 (7.93%) VSAN
6 6 (3.66%) VPN
7 4 (2.44%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (1.22%) Network Security
8 2 (1.22%) VLAN
9 1 (0.61%) AMQP
9 1 (0.61%) Calico
9 1 (0.61%) IPsec
9 1 (0.61%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.61%) NAS
9 1 (0.61%) SAN
9 1 (0.61%) SSH
9 1 (0.61%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (7.32%) NoSQL
2 10 (6.10%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (5.49%) Geospatial Data
4 8 (4.88%) Relational Database
5 7 (4.27%) MongoDB
6 6 (3.66%) Big Data
7 5 (3.05%) Flink
8 4 (2.44%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (2.44%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.83%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (1.83%) HBase
9 3 (1.83%) Redis
10 2 (1.22%) BigQuery
10 2 (1.22%) CockroachDB
10 2 (1.22%) Data Lake
10 2 (1.22%) InfluxDB
10 2 (1.22%) Metadata
10 2 (1.22%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.61%) Dremio
11 1 (0.61%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 32 (19.51%) GitLab
2 30 (18.29%) Git
2 30 (18.29%) Jenkins
3 14 (8.54%) Gatling
4 13 (7.93%) JIRA
5 12 (7.32%) LoadRunner
6 11 (6.71%) JMeter
7 9 (5.49%) MSI
8 6 (3.66%) JUnit
9 5 (3.05%) Selenium
10 3 (1.83%) SonarQube
11 2 (1.22%) Cucumber
11 2 (1.22%) MLflow
11 2 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (1.22%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.61%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.61%) Bitbucket
12 1 (0.61%) Gradle
12 1 (0.61%) NUnit
12 1 (0.61%) REST Assured
General
1 23 (14.02%) Public Sector
2 13 (7.93%) Social Skills
3 5 (3.05%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (3.05%) Military
4 3 (1.83%) Finance
4 3 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (1.83%) Legal
4 3 (1.83%) Local Government
4 3 (1.83%) Police
5 2 (1.22%) Aviation
5 2 (1.22%) Banking
6 1 (0.61%) Aerospace
6 1 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 39 (23.78%) DevOps Engineer
2 32 (19.51%) Developer
3 21 (12.80%) Senior
4 15 (9.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 14 (8.54%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (8.54%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 13 (7.93%) GCP Engineer
6 13 (7.93%) Site Engineer
7 12 (7.32%) Java Developer
8 11 (6.71%) Performance Engineer
8 11 (6.71%) Software Engineer
9 9 (5.49%) Architect
9 9 (5.49%) Principal Engineer
10 8 (4.88%) Backend Developer
11 7 (4.27%) Cloud Engineer
11 7 (4.27%) GCP DevOps
11 7 (4.27%) GCP DevOps Engineer
12 6 (3.66%) Lead
13 5 (3.05%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
13 5 (3.05%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (14.63%) REST
1 24 (14.63%) Spring Boot
2 22 (13.41%) Spring
3 20 (12.20%) RESTful
4 19 (11.59%) Kafka
5 11 (6.71%) React
6 9 (5.49%) .NET
6 9 (5.49%) .NET Core
6 9 (5.49%) .NET Framework
6 9 (5.49%) ATL
6 9 (5.49%) COM
6 9 (5.49%) CSS
6 9 (5.49%) CSS3
6 9 (5.49%) GeoJSON
6 9 (5.49%) HTML
6 9 (5.49%) HTML5
6 9 (5.49%) MFC
6 9 (5.49%) RabbitMQ
6 9 (5.49%) WPF
7 7 (4.27%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 39 (23.78%) Cloud Native
2 16 (9.76%) Data Centre
2 16 (9.76%) PKI
3 11 (6.71%) Onboarding
4 8 (4.88%) Legacy Systems
4 8 (4.88%) Linux Command Line
5 7 (4.27%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (4.27%) Public Cloud
6 6 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (2.44%) Clustering
7 4 (2.44%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.22%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.61%) Data Fabric
9 1 (0.61%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.61%) Learning Management System
9 1 (0.61%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 53 (32.32%) Linux
2 34 (20.73%) Windows
3 9 (5.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.44%) Rocky
4 4 (2.44%) Ubuntu
5 3 (1.83%) Debian
5 3 (1.83%) Unix
5 3 (1.83%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.61%) Android
6 1 (0.61%) CentOS
6 1 (0.61%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (75.00%) CI/CD
2 105 (64.02%) DevOps
3 85 (51.83%) Containerisation
4 82 (50.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 41 (25.00%) Agile
6 40 (24.39%) Microservices
7 37 (22.56%) DevSecOps
8 36 (21.95%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 35 (21.34%) Platform Engineering
10 30 (18.29%) Technical Leadership
11 29 (17.68%) Problem-Solving
12 27 (16.46%) Software Engineering
13 26 (15.85%) Observability
14 22 (13.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 22 (13.41%) Mentoring
14 22 (13.41%) Test Automation
15 19 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
15 19 (11.59%) Cybersecurity
15 19 (11.59%) Deployment Automation
16 17 (10.37%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 80 (48.78%) Python
2 45 (27.44%) Bash
3 38 (23.17%) Java
4 28 (17.07%) SQL
5 23 (14.02%) PowerShell
6 20 (12.20%) JavaScript
7 18 (10.98%) Go
8 16 (9.76%) TypeScript
9 12 (7.32%) C#
10 11 (6.71%) Bicep
11 3 (1.83%) Rust
12 2 (1.22%) Groovy
12 2 (1.22%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.61%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 93 (56.71%) Security Cleared
2 57 (34.76%) SC Cleared
3 51 (31.10%) DV Cleared
4 10 (6.10%) VCAP
5 9 (5.49%) AWS Certification
6 7 (4.27%) Cisco Certification
6 7 (4.27%) Degree
7 6 (3.66%) CCNA
7 6 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (1.22%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (1.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (1.22%) CISSP
9 2 (1.22%) MCSE
9 2 (1.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (0.61%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.61%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.61%) CCSK
10 1 (0.61%) CISM
10 1 (0.61%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (8.54%) Accessibility
1 14 (8.54%) WCAG
2 13 (7.93%) NCSC
3 10 (6.10%) QA
4 2 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.61%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.61%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.61%) NIST
System Software
1 102 (62.20%) Docker
2 21 (12.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (12.20%) Active Directory
4 17 (10.37%) Hyper-V
5 14 (8.54%) vSphere
6 13 (7.93%) VMware NSX
7 5 (3.05%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (1.22%) KVM
8 2 (1.22%) VirtualBox
9 1 (0.61%) iptables
9 1 (0.61%) NFS
9 1 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 87 (53.05%) Terraform
2 45 (27.44%) Ansible
3 27 (16.46%) Prometheus
4 22 (13.41%) Grafana
5 13 (7.93%) Argo
5 13 (7.93%) VxRail
6 6 (3.66%) Istio
7 4 (2.44%) OPNET
7 4 (2.44%) Podman
7 4 (2.44%) Proxmox
8 3 (1.83%) Docker Swarm
8 3 (1.83%) Progress Chef
8 3 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (1.22%) Cilium
9 2 (1.22%) Kustomize
9 2 (1.22%) linkerd
9 2 (1.22%) Nagios
10 1 (0.61%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.61%) Puppet
10 1 (0.61%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 25 (15.24%) VMware
2 21 (12.80%) Google
3 20 (12.20%) Microsoft
4 16 (9.76%) Dynatrace
4 16 (9.76%) Splunk
5 12 (7.32%) Oracle
6 11 (6.71%) AppDynamics
6 11 (6.71%) New Relic
6 11 (6.71%) Red Hat
7 8 (4.88%) Databricks
8 4 (2.44%) CyberArk
8 4 (2.44%) Thales
9 3 (1.83%) Dell
10 2 (1.22%) BiZZdesign
10 2 (1.22%) Cisco
10 2 (1.22%) IBM
11 1 (0.61%) BeyondTrust
11 1 (0.61%) Informatica
11 1 (0.61%) Sparx
11 1 (0.61%) TIBCO