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

6 months to
7 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 34 58 37
Rank change year-on-year +24 -21 -2
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 184 56 126
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.97% 2.91% 4.71%
As % of the Systems Management category 47.67% 21.21% 34.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 48 87
10th Percentile £411 £427 £475
25th Percentile £491 £505 £516
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -
75th Percentile £655 £655 £625
90th Percentile £738 £700 £675
England median daily rate £543 £525 £573
% change year-on-year +3.33% -8.30% -4.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 6
10th Percentile £91.91 £78.96 £59.88
25th Percentile - £79.35 £66.31
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 -
90th Percentile £100.00 £82.37 £74.22
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £58.50
% change year-on-year +4.48% +14.53% -19.86%

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 386 264 361
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 10.42% 13.74% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 197 257
10th Percentile £339 £235 £208
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year - +2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £669 £625 £600
90th Percentile £737 £694 £666
England median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 8 8
10th Percentile £28.75 £16.80 £14.60
25th Percentile £50.00 £18.60 £45.88
Median hourly rate £75.00 £67.50 £70.75
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -4.59% -9.29%
75th Percentile £95.00 £79.03 £74.00
90th Percentile £99.53 £80.89 £74.13
England median hourly rate £67.47 £44.48 £38.25
% change year-on-year +51.70% +16.27% -23.08%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +11 49 £575 +10.58% 30
Gloucestershire +15 39 £575 -11.54% 56
Somerset +5 38 £488 - 17
Wiltshire -1 31 £588 +2.17% 5
Dorset +3 18 £489 -11.14% 22
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 (6.52%) Confluence
2 10 (5.43%) Apache Spark
3 5 (2.72%) Apache
4 4 (2.17%) SharePoint
5 3 (1.63%) nginx
6 1 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.54%) JBoss
6 1 (0.54%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 102 (55.43%) AWS
2 96 (52.17%) Azure
3 55 (29.89%) GCP
4 30 (16.30%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (12.50%) GitHub
6 17 (9.24%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 14 (7.61%) GitHub Actions
7 14 (7.61%) OpenShift
8 11 (5.98%) Serverless
9 10 (5.43%) Azure AKS
10 9 (4.89%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (3.80%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (3.80%) Azure Key Vault
12 6 (3.26%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (3.26%) Datadog
12 6 (3.26%) SaaS
13 5 (2.72%) Amazon S3
14 3 (1.63%) Amazon EC2
15 2 (1.09%) Amazon SQS
15 2 (1.09%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 37 (20.11%) DNS
2 29 (15.76%) Firewall
3 27 (14.67%) TCP/IP
4 24 (13.04%) DHCP
5 19 (10.33%) VSAN
6 8 (4.35%) VPN
7 5 (2.72%) VLAN
8 3 (1.63%) Network Security
8 3 (1.63%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (1.09%) tcpdump
10 1 (0.54%) AMQP
10 1 (0.54%) Calico
10 1 (0.54%) IPsec
10 1 (0.54%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.54%) NAS
10 1 (0.54%) SAN
10 1 (0.54%) SSH
10 1 (0.54%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.98%) Geospatial Data
2 9 (4.89%) NoSQL
3 7 (3.80%) Big Data
3 7 (3.80%) MongoDB
3 7 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (2.17%) Relational Database
5 3 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.63%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (1.63%) BigQuery
5 3 (1.63%) HBase
6 2 (1.09%) Data Lake
6 2 (1.09%) Flink
6 2 (1.09%) InfluxDB
6 2 (1.09%) Metadata
6 2 (1.09%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.54%) CockroachDB
7 1 (0.54%) Dremio
7 1 (0.54%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.54%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 42 (22.83%) GitLab
1 42 (22.83%) Jenkins
2 39 (21.20%) Git
3 15 (8.15%) JIRA
4 13 (7.07%) Gatling
5 12 (6.52%) LoadRunner
6 11 (5.98%) JMeter
6 11 (5.98%) MSI
7 6 (3.26%) JUnit
8 5 (2.72%) Selenium
9 3 (1.63%) Claude Code
10 2 (1.09%) Cucumber
10 2 (1.09%) MLflow
10 2 (1.09%) SonarQube
10 2 (1.09%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (1.09%) Spinnaker
10 2 (1.09%) Visual Studio Team System
11 1 (0.54%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.54%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.54%) Gradle
General
1 26 (14.13%) Public Sector
2 14 (7.61%) Social Skills
3 9 (4.89%) Finance
4 5 (2.72%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (2.72%) Military
5 4 (2.17%) Banking
5 4 (2.17%) Local Government
6 3 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.63%) Police
7 2 (1.09%) Aviation
8 1 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.54%) Legal
8 1 (0.54%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 41 (22.28%) DevOps Engineer
2 35 (19.02%) Developer
3 23 (12.50%) Senior
4 17 (9.24%) Platform Engineer
5 15 (8.15%) GCP Engineer
5 15 (8.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 15 (8.15%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 14 (7.61%) Site Engineer
7 12 (6.52%) Architect
8 11 (5.98%) Performance Engineer
9 10 (5.43%) Cloud Engineer
9 10 (5.43%) Software Developer
9 10 (5.43%) Software Engineer
10 9 (4.89%) Principal Engineer
11 8 (4.35%) Java Developer
12 7 (3.80%) GCP DevOps
12 7 (3.80%) GCP DevOps Engineer
13 6 (3.26%) Lead
13 6 (3.26%) Senior Developer
13 6 (3.26%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (61.41%) Terraform
2 23 (12.50%) REST
3 20 (10.87%) Spring Boot
4 18 (9.78%) Spring
5 17 (9.24%) RESTful
6 16 (8.70%) Kafka
7 12 (6.52%) React
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%) CSS
8 11 (5.98%) CSS3
8 11 (5.98%) GeoJSON
8 11 (5.98%) HTML
8 11 (5.98%) HTML5
8 11 (5.98%) MFC
8 11 (5.98%) WPF
9 9 (4.89%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 48 (26.09%) Cloud Native
2 18 (9.78%) PKI
3 16 (8.70%) Data Centre
4 13 (7.07%) Onboarding
5 12 (6.52%) Linux Command Line
6 10 (5.43%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (4.35%) Product Ownership
7 8 (4.35%) Public Cloud
8 6 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (3.26%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (2.17%) Clustering
9 4 (2.17%) Wiki
10 2 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
10 2 (1.09%) Private Cloud
11 1 (0.54%) Data Fabric
11 1 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
11 1 (0.54%) Learning Management System
11 1 (0.54%) Mobile App
11 1 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 59 (32.07%) Linux
2 37 (20.11%) Windows
3 11 (5.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (3.26%) Unix
5 4 (2.17%) Rocky
5 4 (2.17%) Ubuntu
6 3 (1.63%) Debian
6 3 (1.63%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.54%) Android
7 1 (0.54%) CentOS
7 1 (0.54%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (76.63%) CI/CD
2 117 (63.59%) DevOps
3 108 (58.70%) Infrastructure as Code
4 95 (51.63%) Containerisation
5 52 (28.26%) Agile
5 52 (28.26%) DevSecOps
6 46 (25.00%) Platform Engineering
7 44 (23.91%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 35 (19.02%) Microservices
9 32 (17.39%) Problem-Solving
10 31 (16.85%) Observability
10 31 (16.85%) Software Engineering
10 31 (16.85%) Technical Leadership
11 25 (13.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 25 (13.59%) Deployment Automation
12 24 (13.04%) Test Automation
13 23 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 23 (12.50%) Mentoring
14 19 (10.33%) AI
14 19 (10.33%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 86 (46.74%) Python
2 53 (28.80%) Bash
3 37 (20.11%) Java
4 30 (16.30%) PowerShell
5 23 (12.50%) SQL
6 21 (11.41%) JavaScript
7 19 (10.33%) C#
7 19 (10.33%) TypeScript
8 17 (9.24%) Bicep
8 17 (9.24%) Go
9 7 (3.80%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.63%) Groovy
11 2 (1.09%) Rust
12 1 (0.54%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 114 (61.96%) Security Cleared
2 65 (35.33%) DV Cleared
2 65 (35.33%) SC Cleared
3 15 (8.15%) VCAP
4 13 (7.07%) AWS Certification
5 7 (3.80%) Cisco Certification
6 6 (3.26%) CCNA
6 6 (3.26%) Degree
7 5 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 3 (1.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (1.09%) CISSP
9 2 (1.09%) MCSE
9 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.54%) CCSP
10 1 (0.54%) CISM
10 1 (0.54%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (0.54%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.54%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.54%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (9.24%) NCSC
2 16 (8.70%) Accessibility
2 16 (8.70%) WCAG
3 10 (5.43%) QA
4 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.09%) NIST
4 2 (1.09%) SLA
5 1 (0.54%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.54%) Government Security Classifications
5 1 (0.54%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (0.54%) JSP 440
System Software
1 104 (56.52%) Docker
2 30 (16.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (11.96%) Active Directory
4 20 (10.87%) vSphere
5 19 (10.33%) VMware NSX
6 17 (9.24%) Hyper-V
7 5 (2.72%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (1.63%) VirtualBox
10 2 (1.09%) KVM
11 1 (0.54%) iptables
11 1 (0.54%) NFS
11 1 (0.54%) zsh
Systems Management
1 61 (33.15%) Ansible
2 22 (11.96%) Prometheus
3 21 (11.41%) Grafana
4 15 (8.15%) VxRail
5 13 (7.07%) Argo
6 7 (3.80%) Istio
7 5 (2.72%) OPNET
8 4 (2.17%) PowerCLI
8 4 (2.17%) Proxmox
8 4 (2.17%) vCenter Server
9 3 (1.63%) Docker Swarm
9 3 (1.63%) Podman
9 3 (1.63%) Progress Chef
9 3 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (1.09%) Cilium
10 2 (1.09%) Kustomize
10 2 (1.09%) linkerd
10 2 (1.09%) Nagios
11 1 (0.54%) Puppet
11 1 (0.54%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 34 (18.48%) VMware
2 29 (15.76%) Google
3 25 (13.59%) Microsoft
4 19 (10.33%) Dynatrace
5 18 (9.78%) Splunk
6 11 (5.98%) AppDynamics
6 11 (5.98%) New Relic
6 11 (5.98%) Oracle
6 11 (5.98%) Red Hat
7 5 (2.72%) Databricks
8 4 (2.17%) CyberArk
8 4 (2.17%) SaltStack
8 4 (2.17%) Thales
9 3 (1.63%) Dell
10 2 (1.09%) Atlassian
10 2 (1.09%) BiZZdesign
10 2 (1.09%) Cisco
10 2 (1.09%) IBM
11 1 (0.54%) BeyondTrust
11 1 (0.54%) Sparx