Kubernetes Job Trends in the North West

Kubernetes (k8s)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Kubernetes skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 63 79
Rank change year-on-year -59 +16 -22
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 118 246 262
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.15% 5.45% 2.79%
As % of the Systems Management category 25.76% 27.24% 39.70%
Number of salaries quoted 95 109 181
10th Percentile £55,500 £49,750 £47,500
25th Percentile £60,000 £62,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £78,810 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.18% +26.10% -10.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £93,778 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £112,500 £85,000
England median annual salary £75,000 £82,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +6.45% -

All Systems Management Skills
North West

Kubernetes falls under the Systems Management category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring systems management skills in the North West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 458 903 660
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.47% 20.00% 7.02%
Number of salaries quoted 346 270 527
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £47,231 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +17.39% -3.40%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £87,500 £95,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £65,000 £67,563 £61,206
% change year-on-year -3.79% +10.39% -9.32%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Kubernetes relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in the North West

Kubernetes
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Kubernetes.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the North West over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Kubernetes in the North West

Kubernetes
Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes within the North West region over the 6 months to 12 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Manchester -35 93 £67,500 -15.63% 52
Merseyside -16 9 £95,000 - 4
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 - 1
Cheshire -57 4 £66,250 -14.52% 5
Lancashire 0 3 £65,576 +27.79% 16
Kubernetes
England

Kubernetes
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North 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 4 (3.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (2.54%) Apache
2 3 (2.54%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.69%) nginx
3 2 (1.69%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.85%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.85%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 80 (67.80%) AWS
2 54 (45.76%) Azure
3 29 (24.58%) Serverless
4 26 (22.03%) GCP
5 22 (18.64%) AWS CloudFormation
6 20 (16.95%) Azure AKS
6 20 (16.95%) GitHub
7 18 (15.25%) Amazon EKS
8 14 (11.86%) Amazon ECS
9 13 (11.02%) AWS Lambda
10 12 (10.17%) Datadog
11 11 (9.32%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (5.93%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (5.93%) Amazon SQS
12 7 (5.93%) Azure DevOps
12 7 (5.93%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 6 (5.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (5.08%) Amazon EventBridge
13 6 (5.08%) Amazon S3
13 6 (5.08%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.93%) Internet
2 6 (5.08%) Firewall
3 3 (2.54%) AMQP
3 3 (2.54%) DNS
3 3 (2.54%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.85%) DHCP
4 1 (0.85%) Network Security
4 1 (0.85%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.85%) VLAN
4 1 (0.85%) VPN
4 1 (0.85%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (19.49%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (18.64%) NoSQL
3 21 (17.80%) MongoDB
4 9 (7.63%) DynamoDB
5 8 (6.78%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (5.08%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (5.08%) Relational Database
7 5 (4.24%) SQL Server
8 4 (3.39%) MySQL
9 3 (2.54%) Big Data
9 3 (2.54%) Cloudera CDH
9 3 (2.54%) Hadoop
9 3 (2.54%) Neo4j
10 2 (1.69%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (1.69%) BigQuery
10 2 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (1.69%) PostHog
10 2 (1.69%) Redis
11 1 (0.85%) DB2
Development Applications
1 18 (15.25%) Git
2 13 (11.02%) GitLab
3 11 (9.32%) Jenkins
4 3 (2.54%) Bitbucket
5 2 (1.69%) Vagrant
5 2 (1.69%) Vite
6 1 (0.85%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.85%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.85%) JIRA
6 1 (0.85%) JUnit
6 1 (0.85%) TeamCity
General
1 14 (11.86%) Social Skills
2 5 (4.24%) Finance
3 4 (3.39%) Aerospace
3 4 (3.39%) Public Sector
4 3 (2.54%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (1.69%) Advertising
5 2 (1.69%) Retail
6 1 (0.85%) Banking
6 1 (0.85%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 37 (31.36%) Senior
2 31 (26.27%) Software Engineer
3 23 (19.49%) Developer
4 18 (15.25%) Lead
5 17 (14.41%) Cloud Engineer
6 15 (12.71%) DevOps Engineer
7 12 (10.17%) Java Developer
8 9 (7.63%) .NET Software Engineer
8 9 (7.63%) Senior Developer
9 8 (6.78%) Lead Software Engineer
9 8 (6.78%) Senior Java Developer
9 8 (6.78%) Senior Software Engineer
10 7 (5.93%) Lead Developer
10 7 (5.93%) Python Engineer
11 6 (5.08%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (5.08%) Integration Developer
11 6 (5.08%) Integration Engineer
11 6 (5.08%) Platform Engineer
12 5 (4.24%) Java Engineer
12 5 (4.24%) Java Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (20.34%) Spring
2 22 (18.64%) Spring Boot
3 19 (16.10%) React
4 18 (15.25%) .NET
5 17 (14.41%) RESTful
6 15 (12.71%) Node.js
7 12 (10.17%) .NET Framework
8 10 (8.47%) FastAPI
9 8 (6.78%) AngularJS
9 8 (6.78%) Django
10 6 (5.08%) Kafka
10 6 (5.08%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (5.08%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (5.08%) REST
10 6 (5.08%) Vue
11 4 (3.39%) ARM Templates
11 4 (3.39%) Hibernate
11 4 (3.39%) JWT
11 4 (3.39%) Next.js
11 4 (3.39%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 35 (29.66%) Cloud Native
2 22 (18.64%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (5.08%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (3.39%) Enterprise Cloud
4 4 (3.39%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.54%) AI Agents
5 3 (2.54%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.69%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.69%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.85%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (0.85%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.85%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 25 (21.19%) Linux
2 6 (5.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (4.24%) Debian
3 5 (4.24%) Ubuntu
4 4 (3.39%) CentOS
5 3 (2.54%) Windows
6 1 (0.85%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (70.34%) CI/CD
2 70 (59.32%) DevOps
3 66 (55.93%) Infrastructure as Code
4 59 (50.00%) Containerisation
5 50 (42.37%) Agile
6 38 (32.20%) Microservices
7 37 (31.36%) Software Engineering
8 27 (22.88%) Continuous Improvement
8 27 (22.88%) Mentoring
9 26 (22.03%) Clean Code
9 26 (22.03%) TDD
10 25 (21.19%) Observability
10 25 (21.19%) Scrum
11 23 (19.49%) Platform Engineering
12 21 (17.80%) Problem-Solving
13 20 (16.95%) AI
14 18 (15.25%) Event-Driven
15 16 (13.56%) Collaborative Culture
16 13 (11.02%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 12 (10.17%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 49 (41.53%) Python
2 33 (27.97%) Java
3 29 (24.58%) TypeScript
4 26 (22.03%) SQL
5 17 (14.41%) C#
6 15 (12.71%) JavaScript
7 13 (11.02%) Go
8 10 (8.47%) C
9 7 (5.93%) PowerShell
10 6 (5.08%) Bash
11 2 (1.69%) Bicep
12 1 (0.85%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 20 (16.95%) Security Cleared
2 12 (10.17%) SC Cleared
3 10 (8.47%) DV Cleared
4 5 (4.24%) Azure Certification
5 4 (3.39%) Degree
6 3 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.69%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 1 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.69%) QA
2 1 (0.85%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.85%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 66 (55.93%) Docker
2 4 (3.39%) Active Directory
2 4 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (2.54%) VMware NSX
3 3 (2.54%) vSphere
4 1 (0.85%) Firmware
4 1 (0.85%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.85%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 68 (57.63%) Terraform
2 33 (27.97%) Ansible
3 9 (7.63%) Grafana
4 6 (5.08%) Prometheus
5 4 (3.39%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (2.54%) Puppet
6 3 (2.54%) Rancher
7 2 (1.69%) Nagios
7 2 (1.69%) Packer
7 2 (1.69%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.85%) Argo
8 1 (0.85%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.85%) Istio
Vendors
1 8 (6.78%) Microsoft
2 7 (5.93%) Google
3 6 (5.08%) HubSpot
4 5 (4.24%) VMware
5 4 (3.39%) Red Hat
6 3 (2.54%) SaltStack
7 2 (1.69%) Databricks
7 2 (1.69%) OpenAI
7 2 (1.69%) Pega
7 2 (1.69%) WSO2
8 1 (0.85%) Dell
8 1 (0.85%) Fortinet
8 1 (0.85%) Oracle