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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 56 52
Rank change year-on-year +21 -4 -16
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 166 61 123
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.68% 3.25% 3.90%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.15% 20.54% 29.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 53 87
10th Percentile £400 £463 £475
25th Percentile £463 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - +4.76%
75th Percentile £613 £644 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £675
England median daily rate £538 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -0.46% -1.82% -10.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 8
10th Percentile £89.15 £78.96 £61.43
25th Percentile £95.37 £79.35 £70.31
Median hourly rate £99.41 £80.00 £74.22
Median % change year-on-year +24.26% +7.79% -4.85%
75th Percentile £100.00 £81.48 £75.21
90th Percentile - £82.37 £77.65
England median hourly rate £70.00 £67.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +4.48% -0.74% -8.78%

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 424 297 416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 11.95% 15.84% 13.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 222 319
10th Percentile £315 £265 £273
25th Percentile £435 £450 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year - +3.77% -3.64%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £613
90th Percentile £722 £692 £690
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 9 15
10th Percentile £34.50 £17.13 -
25th Percentile £46.50 £18.87 £40.00
Median hourly rate £51.00 £70.00 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.14% +12.90% -20.51%
75th Percentile £92.53 £78.70 £74.22
90th Percentile £100.00 £80.59 £76.28
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £30.50
% change year-on-year +17.12% +81.97% -44.55%

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 17 July 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 17 July 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 17 July 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 +8 48 £550 +6.80% 7
Gloucestershire +3 37 £575 -12.38% 36
Wiltshire 0 27 £575 -4.17% 2
Dorset +9 25 £449 -18.36%
Somerset - 21 £475 - 10
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 (7.83%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.42%) Confluence
3 5 (3.01%) Apache
4 2 (1.20%) nginx
5 1 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.60%) JBoss
5 1 (0.60%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 90 (54.22%) AWS
2 79 (47.59%) Azure
3 40 (24.10%) GCP
4 25 (15.06%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (13.86%) GitHub
6 17 (10.24%) GitHub Actions
6 17 (10.24%) Serverless
7 16 (9.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 13 (7.83%) Amazon EKS
9 11 (6.63%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (6.02%) Amazon S3
10 10 (6.02%) Azure Key Vault
10 10 (6.02%) Datadog
11 9 (5.42%) OpenShift
12 8 (4.82%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (4.22%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (4.22%) Azure AKS
14 5 (3.01%) SaaS
15 3 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
16 2 (1.20%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (12.05%) DNS
2 16 (9.64%) Firewall
2 16 (9.64%) TCP/IP
3 13 (7.83%) DHCP
4 7 (4.22%) VSAN
5 6 (3.61%) VPN
6 4 (2.41%) Reverse Proxy
7 3 (1.81%) Network Security
8 2 (1.20%) NAS
8 2 (1.20%) SAN
8 2 (1.20%) VLAN
9 1 (0.60%) AMQP
9 1 (0.60%) Calico
9 1 (0.60%) IPsec
9 1 (0.60%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.60%) LAN
9 1 (0.60%) SSH
9 1 (0.60%) WAN
9 1 (0.60%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (8.43%) NoSQL
2 10 (6.02%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (5.42%) Relational Database
4 8 (4.82%) Geospatial Data
4 8 (4.82%) MongoDB
5 6 (3.61%) Big Data
5 6 (3.61%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (3.61%) Flink
6 4 (2.41%) Oracle Database
6 4 (2.41%) Redis
7 3 (1.81%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.81%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.81%) HBase
8 2 (1.20%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.20%) CockroachDB
8 2 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.20%) InfluxDB
8 2 (1.20%) Metadata
9 1 (0.60%) Dremio
9 1 (0.60%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 33 (19.88%) GitLab
2 30 (18.07%) Git
3 29 (17.47%) Jenkins
4 14 (8.43%) Gatling
5 12 (7.23%) JIRA
5 12 (7.23%) LoadRunner
6 11 (6.63%) JMeter
7 8 (4.82%) MSI
8 6 (3.61%) JUnit
9 5 (3.01%) Selenium
10 3 (1.81%) Cucumber
10 3 (1.81%) SonarQube
11 2 (1.20%) Bitbucket
11 2 (1.20%) MLflow
11 2 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (1.20%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.60%) Mockito
12 1 (0.60%) NUnit
12 1 (0.60%) Postman
12 1 (0.60%) REST Assured
General
1 20 (12.05%) Public Sector
2 11 (6.63%) Social Skills
3 8 (4.82%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (2.41%) Legal
4 4 (2.41%) Military
5 3 (1.81%) Finance
5 3 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (1.81%) Local Government
5 3 (1.81%) Police
6 2 (1.20%) Banking
7 1 (0.60%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.60%) Aviation
7 1 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.60%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 42 (25.30%) DevOps Engineer
2 34 (20.48%) Developer
3 19 (11.45%) Senior
4 15 (9.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 15 (9.04%) Java Developer
5 14 (8.43%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 13 (7.83%) GCP Engineer
6 13 (7.83%) Site Engineer
7 11 (6.63%) Performance Engineer
7 11 (6.63%) Software Engineer
8 10 (6.02%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (5.42%) Backend Developer
10 8 (4.82%) Architect
11 7 (4.22%) Cloud Engineer
11 7 (4.22%) GCP DevOps
11 7 (4.22%) GCP DevOps Engineer
12 6 (3.61%) Java Engineer
12 6 (3.61%) Lead
12 6 (3.61%) Principal Engineer
12 6 (3.61%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (18.07%) Spring Boot
2 28 (16.87%) Spring
3 23 (13.86%) REST
4 22 (13.25%) RESTful
5 21 (12.65%) Kafka
6 13 (7.83%) React
7 9 (5.42%) RabbitMQ
8 8 (4.82%) .NET
8 8 (4.82%) .NET Core
8 8 (4.82%) .NET Framework
8 8 (4.82%) ATL
8 8 (4.82%) COM
8 8 (4.82%) CSS
8 8 (4.82%) CSS3
8 8 (4.82%) GeoJSON
8 8 (4.82%) HTML
8 8 (4.82%) HTML5
8 8 (4.82%) MFC
8 8 (4.82%) WPF
9 7 (4.22%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 39 (23.49%) Cloud Native
2 10 (6.02%) Data Centre
2 10 (6.02%) Onboarding
2 10 (6.02%) PKI
3 8 (4.82%) Linux Command Line
4 7 (4.22%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (4.22%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (3.61%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (3.01%) Public Cloud
7 4 (2.41%) Clustering
7 4 (2.41%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.20%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.20%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.60%) Data Fabric
9 1 (0.60%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.60%) Learning Management System
9 1 (0.60%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 49 (29.52%) Linux
2 28 (16.87%) Windows
3 9 (5.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.41%) Rocky
4 4 (2.41%) Ubuntu
5 3 (1.81%) Debian
5 3 (1.81%) Unix
5 3 (1.81%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.60%) Android
6 1 (0.60%) CentOS
6 1 (0.60%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (74.10%) CI/CD
2 108 (65.06%) DevOps
3 87 (52.41%) Containerisation
4 76 (45.78%) Infrastructure as Code
5 44 (26.51%) Agile
6 43 (25.90%) Microservices
7 36 (21.69%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 29 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
9 28 (16.87%) DevSecOps
9 28 (16.87%) Platform Engineering
10 27 (16.27%) Observability
11 25 (15.06%) Technical Leadership
12 24 (14.46%) Software Engineering
13 22 (13.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 22 (13.25%) Test Automation
14 20 (12.05%) Full-Stack Development
15 19 (11.45%) Deployment Automation
16 18 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
17 16 (9.64%) AI
17 16 (9.64%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 76 (45.78%) Python
2 43 (25.90%) Java
3 38 (22.89%) Bash
4 32 (19.28%) SQL
5 21 (12.65%) Go
5 21 (12.65%) JavaScript
6 17 (10.24%) PowerShell
7 15 (9.04%) TypeScript
8 10 (6.02%) Bicep
9 9 (5.42%) C#
10 3 (1.81%) Rust
11 2 (1.20%) Groovy
11 2 (1.20%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.60%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 85 (51.20%) Security Cleared
2 55 (33.13%) SC Cleared
3 44 (26.51%) DV Cleared
4 7 (4.22%) Degree
5 6 (3.61%) AWS Certification
5 6 (3.61%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (3.01%) CCNA
6 5 (3.01%) VCAP
7 3 (1.81%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 2 (1.20%) CISSP
8 2 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.60%) CCSP
9 1 (0.60%) CISM
9 1 (0.60%) CompTIA Security+
9 1 (0.60%) ISTQB
9 1 (0.60%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.60%) MCSE
9 1 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.23%) Accessibility
1 12 (7.23%) NCSC
1 12 (7.23%) WCAG
2 11 (6.63%) QA
3 2 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.60%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.60%) Government Security Classifications
4 1 (0.60%) NIST
System Software
1 102 (61.45%) Docker
2 16 (9.64%) Active Directory
2 16 (9.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (7.83%) Hyper-V
4 8 (4.82%) vSphere
5 7 (4.22%) VMware NSX
6 5 (3.01%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (1.20%) KVM
7 2 (1.20%) VirtualBox
7 2 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.60%) iptables
8 1 (0.60%) NFS
Systems Management
1 83 (50.00%) Terraform
2 38 (22.89%) Ansible
3 31 (18.67%) Prometheus
4 26 (15.66%) Grafana
5 15 (9.04%) Argo
6 7 (4.22%) VxRail
7 6 (3.61%) Istio
8 4 (2.41%) Nagios
8 4 (2.41%) OPNET
8 4 (2.41%) Podman
8 4 (2.41%) Proxmox
9 3 (1.81%) Docker Swarm
9 3 (1.81%) Progress Chef
9 3 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (1.20%) Cilium
10 2 (1.20%) Kustomize
10 2 (1.20%) linkerd
10 2 (1.20%) Puppet
11 1 (0.60%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.60%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 20 (12.05%) Google
1 20 (12.05%) Microsoft
1 20 (12.05%) VMware
2 16 (9.64%) Dynatrace
2 16 (9.64%) Splunk
3 13 (7.83%) Oracle
4 11 (6.63%) AppDynamics
4 11 (6.63%) New Relic
5 10 (6.02%) Red Hat
6 9 (5.42%) Databricks
7 3 (1.81%) CyberArk
7 3 (1.81%) Dell
7 3 (1.81%) Thales
8 2 (1.20%) BiZZdesign
8 2 (1.20%) Cisco
8 2 (1.20%) IBM
9 1 (0.60%) BeyondTrust
9 1 (0.60%) Broadcom
9 1 (0.60%) EMC
9 1 (0.60%) Sparx