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

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 38 80
Rank change year-on-year +6 +42 -39
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 141 102 73
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 5.19% 5.45% 2.34%
As % of the Systems Management category 34.31% 30.18% 17.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 99 78 55
10th Percentile £400 £489 £463
25th Percentile £488 £513 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £588 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% +9.09% -7.37%
75th Percentile £700 £629 £650
90th Percentile £750 £734 £752
England median daily rate £525 £595 £573
% change year-on-year -11.76% +3.93% -8.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 3
10th Percentile £81.00 - -
25th Percentile £84.50 - -
Median hourly rate £104.00 £74.44 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.71% -4.56% +35.65%
75th Percentile £119.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £60.00 £58.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year +2.13% +1.29% -7.20%

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 411 338 412
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 15.13% 18.07% 13.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 324 229 298
10th Percentile £350 £348 £259
25th Percentile £450 £463 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +7.23% -2.50%
75th Percentile £675 £638 £663
90th Percentile £738 £734 £720
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -7.06% +2.48% -9.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 5 17
10th Percentile £72.00 - -
25th Percentile £81.00 £12.50 -
Median hourly rate £89.00 £16.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +456.25% -60.00% -38.46%
75th Percentile £119.00 £70.00 £76.25
90th Percentile - £72.66 £78.00
England median hourly rate £48.72 £26.00 £40.31
% change year-on-year +87.38% -35.50% -19.08%

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 February 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 13 February 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 13 February 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
Gloucestershire -1 50 £650 +5.69% 28
Bristol +9 49 £535 -2.73% 19
Wiltshire -2 28 £575 -4.17% 10
Dorset +3 11 £351 -27.51% 7
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 9 (6.38%) Apache
2 6 (4.26%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.71%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (5.67%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 63 (44.68%) Azure
2 54 (38.30%) AWS
3 43 (30.50%) GitHub
4 26 (18.44%) OpenShift
5 22 (15.60%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (14.18%) GCP
7 17 (12.06%) Serverless
8 15 (10.64%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (9.22%) Azure AKS
10 12 (8.51%) Amazon S3
11 10 (7.09%) Azure Data Factory
11 10 (7.09%) Azure Monitor
12 9 (6.38%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (5.67%) Amazon EC2
13 8 (5.67%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (5.67%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 8 (5.67%) Azure Key Vault
13 8 (5.67%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (4.96%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (4.96%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 8 (5.67%) VPN
2 2 (1.42%) DNS
2 2 (1.42%) Network Security
2 2 (1.42%) Reverse Proxy
2 2 (1.42%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.71%) Firewall
3 1 (0.71%) HTTP
3 1 (0.71%) LAN
3 1 (0.71%) NAS
3 1 (0.71%) SAN
3 1 (0.71%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (15.60%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (10.64%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (7.80%) MongoDB
4 9 (6.38%) NoSQL
5 8 (5.67%) Redis
6 7 (4.96%) Relational Database
7 4 (2.84%) Flink
8 3 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (2.13%) ObjectStore
9 2 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (1.42%) Hadoop
9 2 (1.42%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.71%) Big Data
10 1 (0.71%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 30 (21.28%) GitLab
2 19 (13.48%) Jenkins
3 13 (9.22%) Git
4 12 (8.51%) SonarQube
5 8 (5.67%) Artifactory
6 6 (4.26%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (1.42%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.71%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.71%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.71%) Mocha
8 1 (0.71%) Mockito
8 1 (0.71%) Snyk
General
1 14 (9.93%) Social Skills
2 10 (7.09%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (6.38%) Public Sector
4 4 (2.84%) Finance
4 4 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
4 4 (2.84%) Presentation Skills
5 3 (2.13%) Banking
6 2 (1.42%) Aerospace
6 2 (1.42%) Law
6 2 (1.42%) Legal
6 2 (1.42%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.71%) Electronics
7 1 (0.71%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.71%) Marketing
7 1 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 34 (24.11%) DevOps Engineer
2 29 (20.57%) Developer
3 20 (14.18%) Senior
4 13 (9.22%) Backend Developer
5 12 (8.51%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 11 (7.80%) Data Engineer
6 11 (7.80%) Senior Data Engineer
7 10 (7.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (6.38%) Java Developer
9 8 (5.67%) Architect
9 8 (5.67%) Azure Engineer
9 8 (5.67%) Python Developer
10 6 (4.26%) GCP Engineer
10 6 (4.26%) Platform Engineer
11 5 (3.55%) Administrator
11 5 (3.55%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 5 (3.55%) Linux Engineer
11 5 (3.55%) Software Engineer
11 5 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
12 4 (2.84%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (12.06%) Kafka
1 17 (12.06%) REST
2 13 (9.22%) Spring
3 11 (7.80%) Keycloak
3 11 (7.80%) React
3 11 (7.80%) YAML
4 10 (7.09%) Apache NiFi
4 10 (7.09%) ARM Templates
4 10 (7.09%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (7.09%) Spring Boot
5 9 (6.38%) Node.js
5 9 (6.38%) RESTful
6 8 (5.67%) FastAPI
6 8 (5.67%) Flask
6 8 (5.67%) GraphQL
6 8 (5.67%) gRPC
6 8 (5.67%) WebSockets
7 5 (3.55%) AngularJS
7 5 (3.55%) Vue
8 4 (2.84%) Java Concurrency
Miscellaneous
1 25 (17.73%) Cloud Native
2 18 (12.77%) Hybrid Cloud
3 9 (6.38%) Onboarding
4 8 (5.67%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.84%) Public Cloud
6 3 (2.13%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.42%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.71%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.71%) Client/Server
8 1 (0.71%) Cloud Security Posture
8 1 (0.71%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.71%) DataPower
8 1 (0.71%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.71%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.71%) PKI
8 1 (0.71%) Replication
8 1 (0.71%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 32 (22.70%) Linux
2 14 (9.93%) Windows
3 12 (8.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (7.80%) Ubuntu
5 5 (3.55%) Unix
6 4 (2.84%) VMS
7 3 (2.13%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.71%) Debian
8 1 (0.71%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 91 (64.54%) DevOps
2 81 (57.45%) CI/CD
3 79 (56.03%) Containerisation
4 43 (30.50%) Infrastructure as Code
5 30 (21.28%) DevSecOps
6 27 (19.15%) Agile
6 27 (19.15%) Microservices
7 24 (17.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 19 (13.48%) Cloud Security
8 19 (13.48%) Continuous Improvement
8 19 (13.48%) Problem-Solving
9 17 (12.06%) Analytics
9 17 (12.06%) Data Engineering
9 17 (12.06%) Platform Engineering
10 15 (10.64%) Data Pipeline
11 14 (9.93%) Test Automation
12 12 (8.51%) ETL
12 12 (8.51%) ITIL
13 11 (7.80%) Data Architecture
13 11 (7.80%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 62 (43.97%) Python
2 25 (17.73%) Java
3 23 (16.31%) Go
3 23 (16.31%) SQL
4 15 (10.64%) Bash
5 13 (9.22%) Bicep
6 12 (8.51%) JavaScript
6 12 (8.51%) PowerShell
7 11 (7.80%) TypeScript
8 8 (5.67%) Shell Script
9 5 (3.55%) C#
9 5 (3.55%) Ruby
10 3 (2.13%) C
11 1 (0.71%) C++
11 1 (0.71%) PHP
Qualifications
1 97 (68.79%) Security Cleared
2 77 (54.61%) SC Cleared
3 52 (36.88%) DV Cleared
4 22 (15.60%) Azure Certification
5 10 (7.09%) Degree
5 10 (7.09%) Microsoft Certification
6 9 (6.38%) CISM
6 9 (6.38%) CISSP
7 8 (5.67%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 7 (4.96%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (4.26%) AWS Certification
10 3 (2.13%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (1.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (0.71%) CSPO
12 1 (0.71%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.80%) QA
2 10 (7.09%) NCSC
3 9 (6.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (5.67%) NIST
4 8 (5.67%) NIST 800
5 1 (0.71%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.71%) GDPR
5 1 (0.71%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.71%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 79 (56.03%) Docker
2 7 (4.96%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.13%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.71%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.71%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 71 (50.35%) Terraform
2 34 (24.11%) Ansible
3 27 (19.15%) Prometheus
4 24 (17.02%) Grafana
5 7 (4.96%) Argo
6 6 (4.26%) SCOM
7 5 (3.55%) Dell DRAC
7 5 (3.55%) Red Hat Satellite
8 4 (2.84%) Kibana
8 4 (2.84%) Nessus
8 4 (2.84%) Packer
9 3 (2.13%) Nagios
9 3 (2.13%) Podman
10 2 (1.42%) Istio
10 2 (1.42%) logstash
10 2 (1.42%) Progress Chef
10 2 (1.42%) Puppet
10 2 (1.42%) Rancher
11 1 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.71%) VxRail
Vendors
1 30 (21.28%) Red Hat
2 24 (17.02%) Microsoft
3 9 (6.38%) Google
3 9 (6.38%) IBM
3 9 (6.38%) VMware
4 6 (4.26%) Dell
5 5 (3.55%) Splunk
6 4 (2.84%) Databricks
7 2 (1.42%) Broadcom
7 2 (1.42%) NVIDIA
7 2 (1.42%) Oracle
8 1 (0.71%) BeyondTrust
8 1 (0.71%) Checkmarx
8 1 (0.71%) Cisco
8 1 (0.71%) EMC
8 1 (0.71%) SAP
8 1 (0.71%) Thales
8 1 (0.71%) Veracode