Kubernetes Engineer Contracts

Kubernetes Engineer (K8s Engineer)
UK

The median Kubernetes Engineer (K8s Engineer) daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 459 563 549
Rank change year-on-year +104 -14 +88
Contract jobs requiring a Kubernetes Engineer 61 19 169
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.21% 0.044% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.23% 0.047% 0.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 13 131
10th Percentile £451 £450 £550
25th Percentile £548 £513 £575
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £550 £650
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -15.38% -7.14%
75th Percentile £750 £638 £800
90th Percentile £776 £688 £863
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £563 £645
% change year-on-year -15.56% -12.79% +17.27%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Kubernetes Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Kubernetes Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Kubernetes Engineer in the UK

Kubernetes Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Kubernetes Engineer in the UK

Kubernetes Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Kubernetes Engineer in the UK

Kubernetes Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Kubernetes Engineer in the UK

Kubernetes Engineer
Top 11 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 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
England +91 47 £600 +6.67% 23
London +61 30 £694 +20.65% 14
Work from Home +57 24 £600 +14.29% 9
UK excluding London +67 9 £475 -15.56% 13
North of England +24 6 £475 - 8
North West - 5 £475 - 8
South East +46 1 £300 -42.86% 4
Midlands +22 1 £575 +27.78%
West Midlands +14 1 £575 +27.78%
North East - 1 £620 -
South West - 1 £500 -

Kubernetes Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Kubernetes Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Kubernetes Engineer in the job title.

1 61 (100.00%) Kubernetes
2 46 (75.41%) Terraform
3 37 (60.66%) CI/CD
4 36 (59.02%) Ansible
5 33 (54.10%) Linux
6 31 (50.82%) DevOps
7 26 (42.62%) AWS
7 26 (42.62%) Python
8 25 (40.98%) Infrastructure as Code
9 22 (36.07%) Docker
10 20 (32.79%) Containerisation
10 20 (32.79%) Agile
11 19 (31.15%) Grafana
12 18 (29.51%) Elasticsearch
13 17 (27.87%) Jenkins
14 16 (26.23%) Apache Spark
14 16 (26.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 16 (26.23%) Cloud Native
14 16 (26.23%) Platform Engineering
15 15 (24.59%) GitOps
15 15 (24.59%) Observability
15 15 (24.59%) Finance
16 14 (22.95%) Migration
16 14 (22.95%) Hadoop
16 14 (22.95%) OpenTelemetry
17 13 (21.31%) Argo
17 13 (21.31%) Amazon S3
17 13 (21.31%) Banking
18 12 (19.67%) PostgreSQL
18 12 (19.67%) Amazon EC2

Kubernetes Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 16 (26.23%) Apache Spark
2 4 (6.56%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (3.28%) Confluence
4 1 (1.64%) Apache
4 1 (1.64%) nginx
4 1 (1.64%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 26 (42.62%) AWS
2 13 (21.31%) Amazon S3
3 12 (19.67%) Amazon EC2
4 8 (13.11%) AWS CloudFormation
4 8 (13.11%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 7 (11.48%) Amazon EKS
5 7 (11.48%) GitHub
5 7 (11.48%) OpenShift
6 5 (8.20%) Amazon ECS
6 5 (8.20%) Amazon SQS
6 5 (8.20%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (8.20%) Serverless
7 4 (6.56%) Azure
7 4 (6.56%) GCP
8 2 (3.28%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 1 (1.64%) Azure AKS
9 1 (1.64%) Datadog
9 1 (1.64%) Snowflake
9 1 (1.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (8.20%) OpenLDAP
2 3 (4.92%) DNS
2 3 (4.92%) TCP/IP
3 2 (3.28%) HTTP
4 1 (1.64%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (29.51%) Elasticsearch
2 14 (22.95%) Hadoop
3 12 (19.67%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (11.48%) Amazon RDS
4 7 (11.48%) Big Data
5 5 (8.20%) Amazon Redshift
6 4 (6.56%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (4.92%) Data Lake
8 2 (3.28%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (3.28%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (3.28%) Redis
9 1 (1.64%) MongoDB
9 1 (1.64%) NoSQL
9 1 (1.64%) SAP HANA
9 1 (1.64%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (27.87%) Jenkins
2 7 (11.48%) Artifactory
3 6 (9.84%) GitLab
4 3 (4.92%) JIRA
5 2 (3.28%) Git
5 2 (3.28%) Liquibase
6 1 (1.64%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.64%) Jaeger
General
1 15 (24.59%) Finance
2 13 (21.31%) Banking
3 9 (14.75%) Social Skills
4 5 (8.20%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (8.20%) Front Office
5 2 (3.28%) Financial Institution
5 2 (3.28%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.64%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (22.95%) OpenTelemetry
2 8 (13.11%) Kafka
3 5 (8.20%) J2EE
3 5 (8.20%) Keycloak
3 5 (8.20%) LDAP
3 5 (8.20%) OAuth
3 5 (8.20%) OAuth2
3 5 (8.20%) OpenID
3 5 (8.20%) SAML
4 3 (4.92%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (3.28%) GraphQL
5 2 (3.28%) Node.js
5 2 (3.28%) React
5 2 (3.28%) RESTful
6 1 (1.64%) FastAPI
6 1 (1.64%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 16 (26.23%) Cloud Native
2 5 (8.20%) Tandem
3 3 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (1.64%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 33 (54.10%) Linux
2 16 (26.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (1.64%) Ubuntu
3 1 (1.64%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (60.66%) CI/CD
2 31 (50.82%) DevOps
3 25 (40.98%) Infrastructure as Code
4 20 (32.79%) Agile
4 20 (32.79%) Containerisation
5 16 (26.23%) Platform Engineering
6 15 (24.59%) GitOps
6 15 (24.59%) Observability
7 14 (22.95%) Migration
8 12 (19.67%) Microservices
9 9 (14.75%) Deployment Automation
9 9 (14.75%) Software Engineering
10 8 (13.11%) Problem-Solving
10 8 (13.11%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 7 (11.48%) Analytics
11 7 (11.48%) Batch Processing
11 7 (11.48%) High Availability
11 7 (11.48%) Open Source
12 6 (9.84%) Stakeholder Management
12 6 (9.84%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 26 (42.62%) Python
2 9 (14.75%) Java
3 7 (11.48%) Go
4 5 (8.20%) SQL
5 4 (6.56%) Bash
6 3 (4.92%) JavaScript
7 2 (3.28%) Shell Script
7 2 (3.28%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.64%) Groovy
8 1 (1.64%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 8 (13.11%) Security Cleared
2 6 (9.84%) SC Cleared
3 4 (6.56%) Degree
4 2 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.64%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.64%) OCP
5 1 (1.64%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.64%) QA
System Software
1 22 (36.07%) Docker
2 6 (9.84%) Active Directory
3 3 (4.92%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (1.64%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (1.64%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 61 (100.00%) Kubernetes
2 46 (75.41%) Terraform
3 36 (59.02%) Ansible
4 19 (31.15%) Grafana
5 13 (21.31%) Argo
6 8 (13.11%) Rancher
7 6 (9.84%) Prometheus
8 5 (8.20%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (6.56%) Puppet
10 3 (4.92%) Progress Chef
11 1 (1.64%) Consul
11 1 (1.64%) HP Data Protector
11 1 (1.64%) Istio
11 1 (1.64%) Karpenter
11 1 (1.64%) Kustomize
11 1 (1.64%) logstash
11 1 (1.64%) Nessus
11 1 (1.64%) Packer
11 1 (1.64%) Podman
11 1 (1.64%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 5 (8.20%) Splunk
2 4 (6.56%) Red Hat
3 2 (3.28%) Dynatrace
3 2 (3.28%) Google
4 1 (1.64%) AppDynamics
4 1 (1.64%) CyberArk
4 1 (1.64%) Databricks
4 1 (1.64%) Dell
4 1 (1.64%) EMC
4 1 (1.64%) HP
4 1 (1.64%) New Relic
4 1 (1.64%) Oracle
4 1 (1.64%) SAP
4 1 (1.64%) VMware