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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 37 34 57
Rank change year-on-year -3 +23 -16
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 116 119 105
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 4.99% 5.62% 3.54%
As % of the Systems Management category 30.45% 35.63% 24.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 90 74 89
10th Percentile £449 £475 £465
25th Percentile £525 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £700 £632 £688
90th Percentile £750 £733 £751
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 3
10th Percentile £81.00 - -
25th Percentile £84.50 - -
Median hourly rate £104.00 £74.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.54% -5.13% -
75th Percentile £119.00 £74.22 -
90th Percentile - £74.35 -
England median hourly rate £67.00 £46.18 £62.25
% change year-on-year +45.08% -25.82% -7.43%

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 381 334 434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 16.40% 15.77% 14.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 309 210 324
10th Percentile £349 £330 £352
25th Percentile £450 £425 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £539 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -2.05% -
75th Percentile £695 £632 £675
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
England median daily rate £513 £531 £550
% change year-on-year -3.39% -3.55% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 6 12
10th Percentile £53.85 £12.50 £19.35
25th Percentile £74.63 £13.25 £49.13
Median hourly rate £86.00 £45.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +91.11% -37.93% +11.54%
75th Percentile £119.00 £74.00 £78.00
90th Percentile - £74.22 -
England median hourly rate £47.50 £30.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +55.74% -33.95% +31.94%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 -8 44 £650 +6.12% 16
Bristol +10 37 £531 -3.41% 23
Wiltshire -15 25 £613 +8.41% 20
Dorset +5 6 £270 -44.16% 12
Somerset -3 1 £488 +8.33% 5
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 10 (8.62%) Apache
2 3 (2.59%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.86%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (2.59%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (2.59%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 55 (47.41%) Azure
2 42 (36.21%) AWS
3 39 (33.62%) GitHub
4 19 (16.38%) GCP
5 17 (14.66%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (13.79%) OpenShift
7 14 (12.07%) Serverless
8 12 (10.34%) GitHub Actions
9 10 (8.62%) Amazon S3
9 10 (8.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 9 (7.76%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (6.03%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (6.03%) Azure AKS
11 7 (6.03%) Azure Key Vault
12 6 (5.17%) IaaS
13 5 (4.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (4.31%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (4.31%) Azure Monitor
13 5 (4.31%) Entra ID
14 3 (2.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.59%) VPN
2 2 (1.72%) DNS
2 2 (1.72%) Reverse Proxy
3 1 (0.86%) HTTP
3 1 (0.86%) Network Security
3 1 (0.86%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (18.97%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (12.07%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (9.48%) MongoDB
4 7 (6.03%) Redis
5 4 (3.45%) NoSQL
6 3 (2.59%) Hadoop
6 3 (2.59%) ObjectStore
6 3 (2.59%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (1.72%) Big Data
7 2 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 22 (18.97%) GitLab
2 15 (12.93%) Jenkins
2 15 (12.93%) SonarQube
3 12 (10.34%) Git
4 9 (7.76%) Artifactory
5 3 (2.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.86%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.86%) CircleCI
6 1 (0.86%) CMake
6 1 (0.86%) Gradle
6 1 (0.86%) Mocha
6 1 (0.86%) Snyk
General
1 13 (11.21%) Social Skills
2 10 (8.62%) Public Sector
3 7 (6.03%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (5.17%) Finance
5 5 (4.31%) Aerospace
6 4 (3.45%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (3.45%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (2.59%) Banking
8 2 (1.72%) Law
8 2 (1.72%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.86%) Electronics
9 1 (0.86%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.86%) Marketing
9 1 (0.86%) Military
Job Titles
1 23 (19.83%) Developer
2 22 (18.97%) DevOps Engineer
3 19 (16.38%) Senior
4 13 (11.21%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 12 (10.34%) Data Engineer
6 11 (9.48%) Senior Data Engineer
7 9 (7.76%) Architect
7 9 (7.76%) Backend Developer
8 8 (6.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 7 (6.03%) Python Developer
10 5 (4.31%) Java Developer
10 5 (4.31%) Linux Engineer
10 5 (4.31%) Solutions Architect
11 4 (3.45%) Analyst
11 4 (3.45%) Business Analyst
11 4 (3.45%) Software Engineer
11 4 (3.45%) System Design Authority
11 4 (3.45%) VMware Engineer
11 4 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
12 3 (2.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (16.38%) REST
2 15 (12.93%) Kafka
3 12 (10.34%) YAML
4 10 (8.62%) Apache NiFi
4 10 (8.62%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (8.62%) Keycloak
5 8 (6.90%) Node.js
5 8 (6.90%) React
6 7 (6.03%) FastAPI
6 7 (6.03%) Flask
6 7 (6.03%) GraphQL
6 7 (6.03%) gRPC
6 7 (6.03%) WebSockets
7 6 (5.17%) Spring
8 5 (4.31%) ARM Templates
9 4 (3.45%) .NET
9 4 (3.45%) AngularJS
9 4 (3.45%) Vue
10 3 (2.59%) Express.js
10 3 (2.59%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 23 (19.83%) Cloud Native
2 13 (11.21%) Hybrid Cloud
3 8 (6.90%) Onboarding
4 3 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (2.59%) Public Cloud
5 2 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.72%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.86%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.86%) Client/Server
6 1 (0.86%) Cloud Security Posture
6 1 (0.86%) Data Fabric
6 1 (0.86%) DataPower
6 1 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.86%) PKI
6 1 (0.86%) Replication
6 1 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 27 (23.28%) Linux
2 14 (12.07%) Windows
3 11 (9.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 10 (8.62%) Ubuntu
5 5 (4.31%) Unix
6 4 (3.45%) VMS
7 2 (1.72%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (63.79%) DevOps
2 70 (60.34%) CI/CD
3 69 (59.48%) Containerisation
4 37 (31.90%) Infrastructure as Code
5 29 (25.00%) DevSecOps
6 23 (19.83%) Agile
7 22 (18.97%) Microservices
8 18 (15.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 15 (12.93%) Platform Engineering
9 15 (12.93%) Test Automation
10 14 (12.07%) Machine Learning
11 13 (11.21%) Problem-Solving
12 12 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
12 12 (10.34%) Data Pipeline
12 12 (10.34%) ETL
13 11 (9.48%) Data Architecture
13 11 (9.48%) Regulatory Compliance
14 10 (8.62%) Data Engineering
14 10 (8.62%) DataOps
14 10 (8.62%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 56 (48.28%) Python
2 20 (17.24%) Go
3 16 (13.79%) Bash
3 16 (13.79%) Java
3 16 (13.79%) PowerShell
4 15 (12.93%) SQL
5 10 (8.62%) TypeScript
6 8 (6.90%) Bicep
6 8 (6.90%) JavaScript
6 8 (6.90%) Shell Script
7 5 (4.31%) C#
7 5 (4.31%) Ruby
8 4 (3.45%) C
9 2 (1.72%) C++
10 1 (0.86%) PHP
Qualifications
1 91 (78.45%) Security Cleared
2 66 (56.90%) SC Cleared
3 51 (43.97%) DV Cleared
4 18 (15.52%) Azure Certification
5 10 (8.62%) Degree
6 7 (6.03%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (4.31%) AWS Certification
7 5 (4.31%) CISSP
7 5 (4.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (3.45%) CISM
9 3 (2.59%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 2 (1.72%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (1.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
11 1 (0.86%) CompTIA Security+
11 1 (0.86%) CSPO
11 1 (0.86%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (11.21%) QA
2 12 (10.34%) NCSC
3 6 (5.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (4.31%) NIST
5 4 (3.45%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.86%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.86%) GDPR
6 1 (0.86%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.86%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 70 (60.34%) Docker
2 5 (4.31%) Active Directory
3 3 (2.59%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (2.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.86%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 61 (52.59%) Terraform
2 35 (30.17%) Ansible
3 22 (18.97%) Grafana
3 22 (18.97%) Prometheus
4 6 (5.17%) SCOM
5 5 (4.31%) Argo
5 5 (4.31%) Dell DRAC
5 5 (4.31%) Red Hat Satellite
6 4 (3.45%) Kibana
6 4 (3.45%) Nessus
6 4 (3.45%) Packer
7 3 (2.59%) Podman
8 2 (1.72%) Istio
8 2 (1.72%) logstash
8 2 (1.72%) Progress Chef
8 2 (1.72%) Puppet
8 2 (1.72%) Rancher
9 1 (0.86%) Cilium
9 1 (0.86%) Nagios
Vendors
1 23 (19.83%) Red Hat
2 18 (15.52%) Microsoft
3 8 (6.90%) Splunk
4 7 (6.03%) VMware
5 6 (5.17%) Google
6 5 (4.31%) Dell
7 4 (3.45%) IBM
8 2 (1.72%) NVIDIA
9 1 (0.86%) Broadcom
9 1 (0.86%) Checkmarx
9 1 (0.86%) SAP
9 1 (0.86%) Veracode