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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 61 36
Rank change year-on-year +28 -25 +1
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 180 53 136
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.92% 2.79% 4.91%
As % of the Systems Management category 40.54% 20.00% 34.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 45 93
10th Percentile £406 £421 £475
25th Percentile £481 £506 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -
75th Percentile £653 £644 £625
90th Percentile £750 £698 £671
England median daily rate £540 £533 £559
% change year-on-year +1.41% -4.70% -8.02%
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% -7.53%

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 444 265 400
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 12.15% 13.94% 14.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 286 193 304
10th Percentile £328 £238 £242
25th Percentile £430 £435 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year - +2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £625
90th Percentile £731 £700 £689
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -5.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 9 11
10th Percentile £25.88 £17.13 £15.50
25th Percentile £49.13 £18.87 £59.88
Median hourly rate £63.00 £60.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -18.92% -5.13%
75th Percentile £95.96 £78.70 £74.44
90th Percentile £99.65 £80.59 £77.50
England median hourly rate £67.00 £54.50 £36.83
% change year-on-year +22.94% +47.97% -25.62%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 48 £575 +9.00% 38
Gloucestershire +11 38 £575 -12.38% 89
Somerset +5 36 £475 -2.56% 9
Wiltshire +4 29 £575 - 5
Dorset +5 20 £449 -18.36% 12
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 (6.67%) Confluence
2 9 (5.00%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.22%) Apache
4 3 (1.67%) SharePoint
5 2 (1.11%) nginx
6 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.56%) JBoss
6 1 (0.56%) Oracle Coherence
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 98 (54.44%) AWS
2 91 (50.56%) Azure
3 50 (27.78%) GCP
4 29 (16.11%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (12.78%) GitHub
6 17 (9.44%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 15 (8.33%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (7.22%) Serverless
9 12 (6.67%) OpenShift
10 9 (5.00%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (5.00%) Azure AKS
10 9 (5.00%) Azure Key Vault
11 7 (3.89%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (3.33%) Amazon S3
12 6 (3.33%) Datadog
12 6 (3.33%) SaaS
13 3 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
14 2 (1.11%) Amazon SQS
14 2 (1.11%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (19.44%) DNS
2 28 (15.56%) Firewall
3 26 (14.44%) TCP/IP
4 23 (12.78%) DHCP
5 18 (10.00%) VSAN
6 8 (4.44%) VPN
7 4 (2.22%) Reverse Proxy
7 4 (2.22%) VLAN
8 3 (1.67%) Network Security
9 2 (1.11%) tcpdump
10 1 (0.56%) AMQP
10 1 (0.56%) Calico
10 1 (0.56%) IPsec
10 1 (0.56%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.56%) NAS
10 1 (0.56%) SAN
10 1 (0.56%) SSH
10 1 (0.56%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.11%) Geospatial Data
2 10 (5.56%) NoSQL
2 10 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (3.89%) MongoDB
4 6 (3.33%) Big Data
5 5 (2.78%) Relational Database
6 4 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.67%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.67%) HBase
7 3 (1.67%) Redis
8 2 (1.11%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.11%) CockroachDB
8 2 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 2 (1.11%) Flink
8 2 (1.11%) InfluxDB
8 2 (1.11%) Metadata
8 2 (1.11%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.56%) Dremio
9 1 (0.56%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 36 (20.00%) Git
2 35 (19.44%) GitLab
2 35 (19.44%) Jenkins
3 15 (8.33%) JIRA
4 14 (7.78%) Gatling
5 12 (6.67%) LoadRunner
6 11 (6.11%) JMeter
6 11 (6.11%) MSI
7 6 (3.33%) JUnit
8 5 (2.78%) Selenium
9 3 (1.67%) SonarQube
10 2 (1.11%) Claude Code
10 2 (1.11%) Cucumber
10 2 (1.11%) MLflow
10 2 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (1.11%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.56%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.56%) NUnit
11 1 (0.56%) Postman
11 1 (0.56%) REST Assured
General
1 26 (14.44%) Public Sector
2 14 (7.78%) Social Skills
3 8 (4.44%) Finance
4 5 (2.78%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (2.78%) Military
5 4 (2.22%) Banking
6 3 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.67%) Local Government
6 3 (1.67%) Police
7 2 (1.11%) Aviation
7 2 (1.11%) Legal
8 1 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.56%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 40 (22.22%) DevOps Engineer
2 34 (18.89%) Developer
3 23 (12.78%) Senior
4 16 (8.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 16 (8.89%) Platform Engineer
5 15 (8.33%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 14 (7.78%) GCP Engineer
6 14 (7.78%) Site Engineer
7 11 (6.11%) Architect
7 11 (6.11%) Performance Engineer
8 10 (5.56%) Software Engineer
9 9 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
9 9 (5.00%) Java Developer
9 9 (5.00%) Principal Engineer
10 7 (3.89%) GCP DevOps
10 7 (3.89%) GCP DevOps Engineer
10 7 (3.89%) Software Developer
11 6 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (3.33%) Lead
11 6 (3.33%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (13.33%) REST
2 21 (11.67%) Spring Boot
3 19 (10.56%) Spring
4 18 (10.00%) RESTful
5 17 (9.44%) Kafka
6 12 (6.67%) React
7 11 (6.11%) .NET
7 11 (6.11%) .NET Core
7 11 (6.11%) .NET Framework
7 11 (6.11%) ATL
7 11 (6.11%) COM
7 11 (6.11%) CSS
7 11 (6.11%) CSS3
7 11 (6.11%) GeoJSON
7 11 (6.11%) HTML
7 11 (6.11%) HTML5
7 11 (6.11%) MFC
7 11 (6.11%) WPF
8 9 (5.00%) RabbitMQ
9 7 (3.89%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 46 (25.56%) Cloud Native
2 18 (10.00%) Data Centre
2 18 (10.00%) PKI
3 13 (7.22%) Onboarding
4 11 (6.11%) Linux Command Line
5 10 (5.56%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (4.44%) Public Cloud
7 7 (3.89%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (3.89%) Product Ownership
8 6 (3.33%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (2.22%) Clustering
11 3 (1.67%) Wiki
12 2 (1.11%) Private Cloud
13 1 (0.56%) Data Fabric
13 1 (0.56%) Enterprise Cloud
13 1 (0.56%) Learning Management System
13 1 (0.56%) Mobile App
13 1 (0.56%) Security Posture
13 1 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 56 (31.11%) Linux
2 37 (20.56%) Windows
3 10 (5.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (2.78%) Unix
5 4 (2.22%) Rocky
5 4 (2.22%) Ubuntu
6 3 (1.67%) Debian
6 3 (1.67%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.56%) Android
7 1 (0.56%) CentOS
7 1 (0.56%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (75.00%) CI/CD
2 112 (62.22%) DevOps
3 99 (55.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 92 (51.11%) Containerisation
5 49 (27.22%) Agile
6 47 (26.11%) DevSecOps
7 40 (22.22%) Platform Engineering
7 40 (22.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 39 (21.67%) Microservices
9 33 (18.33%) Technical Leadership
10 32 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
11 29 (16.11%) Observability
12 27 (15.00%) Software Engineering
13 25 (13.89%) Mentoring
13 25 (13.89%) Test Automation
14 24 (13.33%) Continuous Improvement
15 23 (12.78%) Deployment Automation
15 23 (12.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 19 (10.56%) Cybersecurity
16 19 (10.56%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 86 (47.78%) Python
2 52 (28.89%) Bash
3 36 (20.00%) Java
4 28 (15.56%) PowerShell
5 25 (13.89%) SQL
6 21 (11.67%) JavaScript
7 19 (10.56%) Go
7 19 (10.56%) TypeScript
8 16 (8.89%) Bicep
8 16 (8.89%) C#
9 7 (3.89%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.67%) Groovy
10 3 (1.67%) Rust
11 1 (0.56%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 107 (59.44%) Security Cleared
2 65 (36.11%) SC Cleared
3 60 (33.33%) DV Cleared
4 15 (8.33%) VCAP
5 13 (7.22%) AWS Certification
6 7 (3.89%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (3.33%) CCNA
7 6 (3.33%) Degree
8 5 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (2.78%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (1.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (1.11%) Azure Certification
10 2 (1.11%) CISSP
10 2 (1.11%) MCSE
11 1 (0.56%) CCSP
11 1 (0.56%) CISM
11 1 (0.56%) ISTQB
11 1 (0.56%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.56%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.89%) Accessibility
1 16 (8.89%) NCSC
1 16 (8.89%) WCAG
2 11 (6.11%) QA
3 2 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.11%) SLA
4 1 (0.56%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.56%) Government Security Classifications
4 1 (0.56%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 1 (0.56%) NIST
System Software
1 103 (57.22%) Docker
2 28 (15.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (12.22%) Active Directory
4 19 (10.56%) vSphere
5 18 (10.00%) VMware NSX
6 17 (9.44%) Hyper-V
7 5 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (2.22%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (1.67%) VirtualBox
10 2 (1.11%) KVM
11 1 (0.56%) iptables
11 1 (0.56%) NFS
11 1 (0.56%) zsh
Systems Management
1 105 (58.33%) Terraform
2 54 (30.00%) Ansible
3 23 (12.78%) Prometheus
4 22 (12.22%) Grafana
5 15 (8.33%) VxRail
6 12 (6.67%) Argo
7 8 (4.44%) Istio
8 5 (2.78%) OPNET
9 4 (2.22%) Podman
9 4 (2.22%) Proxmox
10 3 (1.67%) Docker Swarm
10 3 (1.67%) PowerCLI
10 3 (1.67%) Progress Chef
10 3 (1.67%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (1.67%) vCenter Server
11 2 (1.11%) Cilium
11 2 (1.11%) Kustomize
11 2 (1.11%) linkerd
11 2 (1.11%) Nagios
12 1 (0.56%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 32 (17.78%) VMware
2 26 (14.44%) Microsoft
3 25 (13.89%) Google
4 19 (10.56%) Dynatrace
5 17 (9.44%) Splunk
6 12 (6.67%) Oracle
7 11 (6.11%) AppDynamics
7 11 (6.11%) New Relic
7 11 (6.11%) Red Hat
8 5 (2.78%) Databricks
9 4 (2.22%) CyberArk
9 4 (2.22%) Thales
10 3 (1.67%) Dell
10 3 (1.67%) SaltStack
11 2 (1.11%) BiZZdesign
11 2 (1.11%) Cisco
11 2 (1.11%) IBM
12 1 (0.56%) BeyondTrust
12 1 (0.56%) Informatica
12 1 (0.56%) Sparx