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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 36 78
Rank change year-on-year +6 +42 -41
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 159 86 81
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.83% 5.13% 2.53%
As % of the Systems Management category 38.13% 28.20% 19.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 98 75 57
10th Percentile £400 £479 £463
25th Percentile £450 £513 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +9.09% -
75th Percentile £635 £653 £578
90th Percentile £717 £735 £644
England median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -11.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 6
10th Percentile £79.80 £79.13 £59.88
25th Percentile £81.00 £79.77 £65.94
Median hourly rate £83.00 £80.83 £74.44
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% +8.58% +11.35%
75th Percentile £86.00 £81.90 £76.74
90th Percentile £87.80 £82.53 £77.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% -3.23% -13.89%

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 417 305 407
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 12.67% 18.18% 12.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 301 238 312
10th Percentile £315 £293 £205
25th Percentile £450 £440 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £551 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.09% +4.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £591
90th Percentile £738 £700 £700
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 4 15
10th Percentile £46.00 £31.15 -
25th Percentile £48.25 £56.13 -
Median hourly rate £51.00 £74.35 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.41% +85.88% -38.46%
75th Percentile £65.00 £79.77 £72.85
90th Percentile £83.00 £81.68 £76.28
England median hourly rate £57.50 £27.38 £27.25
% change year-on-year +110.05% +0.46% -52.61%

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 May 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
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 May 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 -5 51 £550 +1.38% 15
Wiltshire +6 45 £575 +1.77% 3
Gloucestershire -2 39 £575 -6.50% 31
Dorset +11 19 £388 -29.55%
Somerset - 1 £600 - 4
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 11 (6.92%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.66%) Apache
3 2 (1.26%) nginx
4 1 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
Business Applications
1 6 (3.77%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 71 (44.65%) AWS
2 60 (37.74%) Azure
3 32 (20.13%) GCP
4 27 (16.98%) GitHub
5 23 (14.47%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (11.32%) Serverless
7 17 (10.69%) OpenShift
8 14 (8.81%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (6.92%) Amazon S3
9 11 (6.92%) Azure AKS
9 11 (6.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 10 (6.29%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (6.29%) Amazon EKS
10 10 (6.29%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (5.66%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (5.66%) Azure Key Vault
12 8 (5.03%) Azure Monitor
12 8 (5.03%) Datadog
13 6 (3.77%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 6 (3.77%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 11 (6.92%) VPN
2 7 (4.40%) DNS
3 6 (3.77%) Reverse Proxy
4 3 (1.89%) Network Security
4 3 (1.89%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.26%) Firewall
6 1 (0.63%) AMQP
6 1 (0.63%) HTTP
6 1 (0.63%) IPsec
6 1 (0.63%) LAN
6 1 (0.63%) NAS
6 1 (0.63%) SAN
6 1 (0.63%) WAN
6 1 (0.63%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (9.43%) NoSQL
2 12 (7.55%) MongoDB
3 11 (6.92%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (5.66%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (4.40%) Relational Database
6 6 (3.77%) Flink
7 4 (2.52%) Big Data
7 4 (2.52%) Redis
8 2 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (1.26%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.26%) CockroachDB
8 2 (1.26%) Hadoop
8 2 (1.26%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.63%) InfluxDB
9 1 (0.63%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 40 (25.16%) GitLab
2 26 (16.35%) Jenkins
3 19 (11.95%) Git
4 13 (8.18%) Gatling
5 11 (6.92%) JMeter
5 11 (6.92%) LoadRunner
6 6 (3.77%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (2.52%) Artifactory
8 3 (1.89%) SonarQube
9 2 (1.26%) Bitbucket
9 2 (1.26%) MLflow
10 1 (0.63%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.63%) JUnit
10 1 (0.63%) Mocha
10 1 (0.63%) Mockito
10 1 (0.63%) NUnit
10 1 (0.63%) Selenium
10 1 (0.63%) Snyk
General
1 18 (11.32%) Social Skills
2 13 (8.18%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (5.03%) Public Sector
4 4 (2.52%) Finance
4 4 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
4 4 (2.52%) Presentation Skills
5 3 (1.89%) Aerospace
5 3 (1.89%) Banking
5 3 (1.89%) Legal
6 1 (0.63%) Military
6 1 (0.63%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 51 (32.08%) DevOps Engineer
2 25 (15.72%) Developer
3 20 (12.58%) Senior
4 14 (8.81%) GCP Engineer
4 14 (8.81%) Java Developer
5 13 (8.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 11 (6.92%) Performance Engineer
6 11 (6.92%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 10 (6.29%) Software Engineer
8 9 (5.66%) Azure Engineer
8 9 (5.66%) Backend Developer
8 9 (5.66%) Site Engineer
9 8 (5.03%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 8 (5.03%) Platform Engineer
10 7 (4.40%) Data Engineer
10 7 (4.40%) GCP DevOps
10 7 (4.40%) GCP DevOps Engineer
11 6 (3.77%) Senior Data Engineer
12 5 (3.14%) Lead
12 5 (3.14%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (13.84%) Kafka
2 16 (10.06%) Spring
2 16 (10.06%) Spring Boot
3 13 (8.18%) RESTful
4 12 (7.55%) REST
5 8 (5.03%) ARM Templates
5 8 (5.03%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (5.03%) Keycloak
6 7 (4.40%) Apache NiFi
6 7 (4.40%) RabbitMQ
6 7 (4.40%) React
7 6 (3.77%) gRPC
7 6 (3.77%) WebSockets
8 5 (3.14%) Flask
8 5 (3.14%) Java Concurrency
8 5 (3.14%) Node.js
9 4 (2.52%) FastAPI
9 4 (2.52%) GraphQL
9 4 (2.52%) OAuth
9 4 (2.52%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 22 (13.84%) Cloud Native
2 11 (6.92%) Enterprise Software
2 11 (6.92%) Hybrid Cloud
3 8 (5.03%) Onboarding
4 6 (3.77%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (1.89%) Private Cloud
6 3 (1.89%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.26%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.63%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.63%) Client/Server
8 1 (0.63%) Cloud Security Posture
8 1 (0.63%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.63%) DataPower
8 1 (0.63%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (0.63%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.63%) Replication
8 1 (0.63%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 38 (23.90%) Linux
2 11 (6.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 11 (6.92%) Windows
3 8 (5.03%) Ubuntu
4 4 (2.52%) Debian
4 4 (2.52%) Rocky
4 4 (2.52%) Unix
4 4 (2.52%) VMS
5 2 (1.26%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (67.92%) DevOps
2 102 (64.15%) CI/CD
3 72 (45.28%) Containerisation
4 49 (30.82%) Infrastructure as Code
5 30 (18.87%) Microservices
6 29 (18.24%) Agile
7 26 (16.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 26 (16.35%) Problem-Solving
8 23 (14.47%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 22 (13.84%) Cloud Security
9 22 (13.84%) Continuous Improvement
10 20 (12.58%) Analytics
10 20 (12.58%) Observability
10 20 (12.58%) Software Engineering
11 17 (10.69%) Data Engineering
11 17 (10.69%) DevSecOps
12 14 (8.81%) Data Pipeline
13 13 (8.18%) Platform Engineering
13 13 (8.18%) Technical Leadership
14 12 (7.55%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 67 (42.14%) Python
2 30 (18.87%) SQL
3 29 (18.24%) Bash
4 27 (16.98%) Java
5 23 (14.47%) Go
6 14 (8.81%) JavaScript
7 13 (8.18%) PowerShell
8 10 (6.29%) Bicep
9 7 (4.40%) TypeScript
10 4 (2.52%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.89%) C#
12 2 (1.26%) Groovy
12 2 (1.26%) Ruby
12 2 (1.26%) Rust
13 1 (0.63%) C
13 1 (0.63%) PHP
Qualifications
1 80 (50.31%) Security Cleared
2 61 (38.36%) SC Cleared
3 35 (22.01%) DV Cleared
4 14 (8.81%) Azure Certification
5 9 (5.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (5.66%) Degree
5 9 (5.66%) Microsoft Certification
6 7 (4.40%) CISM
6 7 (4.40%) CISSP
7 6 (3.77%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 3 (1.89%) AWS Certification
9 2 (1.26%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (1.26%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.63%) CSPO
10 1 (0.63%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.63%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (5.66%) QA
2 7 (4.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (3.77%) NIST
3 6 (3.77%) NIST 800
4 3 (1.89%) NCSC
5 2 (1.26%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.63%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.63%) GDPR
6 1 (0.63%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.63%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.63%) WCAG
System Software
1 80 (50.31%) Docker
2 5 (3.14%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.26%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.63%) iptables
6 1 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 72 (45.28%) Terraform
2 32 (20.13%) Ansible
3 31 (19.50%) Prometheus
4 26 (16.35%) Grafana
5 12 (7.55%) Argo
6 4 (2.52%) Nagios
6 4 (2.52%) Nessus
6 4 (2.52%) Packer
6 4 (2.52%) Podman
7 3 (1.89%) Dell DRAC
7 3 (1.89%) Puppet
7 3 (1.89%) Red Hat Satellite
8 2 (1.26%) Cilium
8 2 (1.26%) Istio
8 2 (1.26%) Kibana
8 2 (1.26%) logstash
8 2 (1.26%) Progress Chef
8 2 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.63%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.63%) Rancher
Vendors
1 24 (15.09%) Red Hat
2 19 (11.95%) Microsoft
3 16 (10.06%) Google
4 15 (9.43%) Splunk
5 13 (8.18%) Dynatrace
6 11 (6.92%) AppDynamics
6 11 (6.92%) New Relic
7 10 (6.29%) VMware
8 8 (5.03%) Databricks
9 7 (4.40%) IBM
10 5 (3.14%) Dell
11 3 (1.89%) Oracle
12 2 (1.26%) Broadcom
13 1 (0.63%) BeyondTrust
13 1 (0.63%) Checkmarx
13 1 (0.63%) Cisco
13 1 (0.63%) EMC
13 1 (0.63%) Thales
13 1 (0.63%) Veracode