Kubernetes Contracts in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes (k8s)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Kubernetes skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Kubernetes over the 6 months leading up to 26 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 56 64 54
Rank change year-on-year +8 -10 -2
Contract jobs citing Kubernetes 549 604 883
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 4.03% 2.85% 3.86%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.61% 24.89% 26.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 391 442 649
10th Percentile £380 £400 £425
25th Percentile £430 £450 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £588
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -10.64% +6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £615 £676
90th Percentile £663 £675 £731
UK median daily rate £537 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -2.36% -8.33% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 12 31
10th Percentile £63.00 £46.18 £49.68
25th Percentile £74.80 £46.23 £60.18
Median hourly rate £79.50 £68.75 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.64% -5.17% +52.63%
75th Percentile £84.12 £74.58 £78.00
90th Percentile £89.75 £77.25 -
UK median hourly rate £79.50 £67.25 £72.50
% change year-on-year +18.22% -7.24% +49.93%

All Systems Management Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 2,063 2,427 3,312
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 15.13% 11.45% 14.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,407 1,765 2,378
10th Percentile £231 £216 £300
25th Percentile £379 £393 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £623
90th Percentile £649 £650 £700
UK median daily rate £513 £515 £550
% change year-on-year -0.52% -6.33% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 61 111
10th Percentile £19.97 £14.00 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.39 £17.72 £21.26
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.00 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -8.57% +118.75%
75th Percentile £70.00 £48.75 £65.88
90th Percentile £83.27 £74.44 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £31.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +19.05% -45.22% +155.56%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Kubernetes as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Kubernetes in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Kubernetes in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Kubernetes in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 26 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Kubernetes in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Kubernetes in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kubernetes in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 26 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Kubernetes in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 26 June 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
North of England +11 185 £500 -2.44% 490
South East 0 110 £475 -13.64% 454
North West +31 100 £485 -11.82% 292
Midlands +58 85 £525 +16.67% 185
Scotland +19 76 £496 +7.83% 109
Yorkshire -3 76 £538 +8.59% 169
South West +3 66 £600 +9.09% 209
West Midlands +48 59 £550 +12.82% 120
East Midlands +14 26 £435 +7.02% 58
East of England +18 23 £490 -12.89% 154
North East -4 12 £523 +26.67% 29
Wales +3 8 £500 - 40
Northern Ireland -7 3 £470 - 49
Kubernetes
UK

Kubernetes
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 24 (4.37%) Apache
2 19 (3.46%) Confluence
3 15 (2.73%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (2.55%) JBoss
5 9 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
5 9 (1.64%) nginx
6 8 (1.46%) WebSphere
7 7 (1.28%) WebLogic
8 6 (1.09%) Apache Spark
8 6 (1.09%) OpenStack
8 6 (1.09%) WebSphere Application Server
9 4 (0.73%) Camunda
9 4 (0.73%) IIS
9 4 (0.73%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.55%) Oracle Application Server
10 3 (0.55%) WebLogic Portal
11 2 (0.36%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.36%) GemFire
11 2 (0.36%) IBM Domino
11 2 (0.36%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (0.91%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (0.91%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.36%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 287 (52.28%) AWS
2 187 (34.06%) Azure
3 100 (18.21%) GCP
4 85 (15.48%) OpenShift
5 66 (12.02%) GitHub
6 50 (9.11%) Amazon EKS
7 42 (7.65%) Azure DevOps
7 42 (7.65%) Serverless
8 40 (7.29%) Amazon S3
8 40 (7.29%) Azure AKS
8 40 (7.29%) GitHub Actions
9 28 (5.10%) AWS CloudFormation
10 27 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
10 27 (4.92%) PaaS
11 26 (4.74%) Amazon EC2
12 24 (4.37%) SaaS
13 23 (4.19%) IaaS
14 18 (3.28%) Entra ID
15 17 (3.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 17 (3.10%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.19%) Firewall
2 31 (5.65%) DNS
3 21 (3.83%) HTTP
3 21 (3.83%) VPN
4 19 (3.46%) DHCP
5 16 (2.91%) TCP/IP
6 13 (2.37%) Network Security
6 13 (2.37%) SAN
7 12 (2.19%) SSL
8 11 (2.00%) NAS
9 8 (1.46%) Kerberos
9 8 (1.46%) SMTP
10 7 (1.28%) Wireless
11 5 (0.91%) 4G
11 5 (0.91%) 5G
11 5 (0.91%) HTTPS
12 4 (0.73%) Calico
12 4 (0.73%) MPLS
13 3 (0.55%) GPON
13 3 (0.55%) xDSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (11.66%) PostgreSQL
2 52 (9.47%) Relational Database
3 41 (7.47%) NoSQL
4 34 (6.19%) Elasticsearch
5 33 (6.01%) MongoDB
6 22 (4.01%) Amazon RDS
7 20 (3.64%) Big Data
8 19 (3.46%) MySQL
8 19 (3.46%) SQL Server
9 15 (2.73%) RDBMS
10 14 (2.55%) Oracle Database
11 12 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
12 11 (2.00%) Data Warehouse
12 11 (2.00%) KDB
12 11 (2.00%) Kdb+
13 10 (1.82%) Redis
14 8 (1.46%) Hadoop
15 7 (1.28%) Apache Cassandra
15 7 (1.28%) DynamoDB
16 6 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 136 (24.77%) Jenkins
2 109 (19.85%) Git
3 83 (15.12%) GitLab
4 61 (11.11%) JIRA
5 26 (4.74%) SonarQube
6 18 (3.28%) Selenium
7 16 (2.91%) Maven
8 15 (2.73%) Bitbucket
8 15 (2.73%) Sonatype Nexus
9 13 (2.37%) Cucumber
9 13 (2.37%) JUnit
10 12 (2.19%) REST Assured
11 10 (1.82%) Artifactory
11 10 (1.82%) Bitbucket Server
11 10 (1.82%) CA Release Automation
11 10 (1.82%) TeamCity
12 8 (1.46%) Mockito
13 7 (1.28%) JMeter
14 6 (1.09%) Visual Studio Code
15 5 (0.91%) CircleCI
General
1 171 (31.15%) Social Skills
2 71 (12.93%) Finance
3 59 (10.75%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (9.29%) Public Sector
5 45 (8.20%) Banking
6 16 (2.91%) Investment Banking
6 16 (2.91%) Telecoms
7 15 (2.73%) Legal
8 8 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.46%) Law
8 8 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (1.46%) Retail
9 6 (1.09%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.91%) Financial Institution
10 5 (0.91%) Manufacturing
10 5 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (0.73%) Police
12 2 (0.36%) Korean Language
12 2 (0.36%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 116 (21.13%) Developer
2 100 (18.21%) DevOps Engineer
3 82 (14.94%) Senior
4 55 (10.02%) Architect
5 35 (6.38%) Senior Developer
6 34 (6.19%) Java Developer
7 31 (5.65%) Software Engineer
8 30 (5.46%) Data Engineer
8 30 (5.46%) Lead
9 29 (5.28%) AWS Engineer
10 27 (4.92%) Cloud Engineer
10 27 (4.92%) Python Developer
11 23 (4.19%) Python Engineer
12 21 (3.83%) AWS DevOps
13 18 (3.28%) Java Engineer
13 18 (3.28%) Support Engineer
14 17 (3.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 17 (3.10%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 16 (2.91%) Azure Engineer
15 16 (2.91%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (10.20%) Kafka
2 55 (10.02%) REST
3 49 (8.93%) React
4 42 (7.65%) .NET
5 41 (7.47%) Spring
6 40 (7.29%) Node.js
7 39 (7.10%) RESTful
7 39 (7.10%) Spring Boot
8 38 (6.92%) OAuth
9 35 (6.38%) AngularJS
10 33 (6.01%) Elastic Stack
11 30 (5.46%) SAML
12 25 (4.55%) OpenID
13 20 (3.64%) ARM Templates
13 20 (3.64%) HTML
14 19 (3.46%) Middleware
15 18 (3.28%) Web Services
16 17 (3.10%) LDAP
17 15 (2.73%) Hibernate
17 15 (2.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 41 (7.47%) Cloud Native
2 20 (3.64%) Enterprise Software
3 15 (2.73%) Algorithms
4 14 (2.55%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (2.37%) PKI
5 13 (2.37%) Product Ownership
5 13 (2.37%) Public Cloud
6 12 (2.19%) Clustering
6 12 (2.19%) Data Centre
6 12 (2.19%) Onboarding
7 11 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.64%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (1.64%) Private Cloud
8 9 (1.64%) Virtual Team
9 5 (0.91%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.73%) Replication
10 4 (0.73%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 176 (32.06%) Linux
2 87 (15.85%) Windows
3 31 (5.65%) Windows Server
4 30 (5.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (5.28%) Unix
6 7 (1.28%) VMS
7 4 (0.73%) Android
7 4 (0.73%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.55%) CentOS
8 3 (0.55%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.55%) Windows Server 2003
9 2 (0.36%) AIX
9 2 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.18%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.18%) Solaris
10 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 313 (57.01%) CI/CD
2 270 (49.18%) DevOps
3 269 (49.00%) Containerisation
4 147 (26.78%) Agile
5 140 (25.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 119 (21.68%) Microservices
7 115 (20.95%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (13.66%) Test Automation
9 67 (12.20%) Software Engineering
10 57 (10.38%) Observability
11 54 (9.84%) Continuous Integration
12 51 (9.29%) Configuration Management
12 51 (9.29%) SDLC
13 49 (8.93%) Migration
14 46 (8.38%) Analytics
15 45 (8.20%) Artificial Intelligence
16 43 (7.83%) Task Automation
17 42 (7.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 39 (7.10%) Machine Learning
19 37 (6.74%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 283 (51.55%) Python
2 148 (26.96%) Java
3 90 (16.39%) SQL
4 86 (15.66%) Bash
5 67 (12.20%) JavaScript
6 55 (10.02%) PowerShell
7 42 (7.65%) C#
8 34 (6.19%) TypeScript
9 31 (5.65%) Shell Script
10 18 (3.28%) Perl
11 17 (3.10%) C++
11 17 (3.10%) Go
12 14 (2.55%) Bicep
13 11 (2.00%) PHP
14 10 (1.82%) Groovy
14 10 (1.82%) Scala
15 7 (1.28%) Ruby
16 6 (1.09%) R
17 5 (0.91%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.91%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 158 (28.78%) Security Cleared
2 83 (15.12%) SC Cleared
3 63 (11.48%) DV Cleared
4 40 (7.29%) Degree
5 21 (3.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (3.46%) AWS Certification
7 12 (2.19%) Azure Certification
8 11 (2.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 9 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.46%) Master's Degree
11 6 (1.09%) CISSP
12 4 (0.73%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 4 (0.73%) ISTQB
12 4 (0.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 3 (0.55%) CEH
13 3 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
13 3 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.55%) OCP
13 3 (0.55%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (4.74%) QA
2 13 (2.37%) GDPR
3 10 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (1.64%) Data Quality
4 9 (1.64%) HIPAA
4 9 (1.64%) NIST
5 6 (1.09%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.09%) NCSC
6 3 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.55%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.36%) HL7
7 2 (0.36%) OASIS TOSCA
7 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.36%) SLA
8 1 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.18%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.18%) Software Quality Assurance
8 1 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 333 (60.66%) Docker
2 36 (6.56%) Active Directory
3 31 (5.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (3.28%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
5 9 (1.64%) vSphere
6 8 (1.46%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 8 (1.46%) BitLocker
6 8 (1.46%) Microsoft App-V
6 8 (1.46%) Terminal Services
7 5 (0.91%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 4 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.55%) LXC
10 2 (0.36%) NFS
10 2 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.18%) GPFS
11 1 (0.18%) Samba
11 1 (0.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 196 (35.70%) Terraform
2 158 (28.78%) Ansible
3 73 (13.30%) Grafana
4 60 (10.93%) Prometheus
5 33 (6.01%) Puppet
6 23 (4.19%) Progress Chef
7 20 (3.64%) Kibana
8 13 (2.37%) Podman
8 13 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (2.19%) Istio
10 11 (2.00%) Docker Swarm
11 10 (1.82%) Nagios
12 9 (1.64%) vCenter Server
13 8 (1.46%) Packer
13 8 (1.46%) vMotion
14 7 (1.28%) Kustomize
14 7 (1.28%) NetBackup
14 7 (1.28%) Oracle RMAN
14 7 (1.28%) Tivoli Identity Manager
15 4 (0.73%) logstash
Vendors
1 54 (9.84%) Splunk
2 51 (9.29%) Red Hat
3 47 (8.56%) Oracle
4 46 (8.38%) Microsoft
5 41 (7.47%) VMware
6 35 (6.38%) Google
7 21 (3.83%) AppDynamics
8 18 (3.28%) IBM
9 13 (2.37%) Veritas
10 12 (2.19%) Dynatrace
11 11 (2.00%) Symantec
12 9 (1.64%) Citrix
12 9 (1.64%) Databricks
12 9 (1.64%) ServiceNow
13 8 (1.46%) Alibaba
13 8 (1.46%) HP
13 8 (1.46%) Virgin Media
14 6 (1.09%) Cloudera
14 6 (1.09%) Commvault
14 6 (1.09%) Ping Identity