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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 68 87
Rank change year-on-year -31 +19 -34
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 151 260 267
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.40% 5.52% 2.41%
As % of the Systems Management category 28.93% 23.51% 38.58%
Number of salaries quoted 127 106 169
10th Percentile £51,250 £47,500 £45,000
25th Percentile £60,000 £62,500 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,500 £75,000 £61,206
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% +22.54% -12.56%
75th Percentile £87,500 £93,778 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,500 £112,500 £85,000
England median annual salary £72,500 £82,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -12.12% +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 522 1,106 692
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.83% 23.50% 6.24%
Number of salaries quoted 413 272 521
10th Percentile £31,050 £32,050 £29,000
25th Percentile £38,750 £41,092 £39,720
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £67,037 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -6.77% +16.59% -4.17%
75th Percentile £77,500 £77,813 £70,000
90th Percentile £88,750 £93,778 £80,000
England median annual salary £65,000 £67,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.70% +8.00% -7.41%

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 15 June 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 15 June 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 -26 122 £70,000 -11.18% 58
Merseyside -15 10 £95,000 - 5
Lancashire +14 7 £57,500 +36.47% 13
Cheshire -47 6 £62,500 -7.06% 6
Cumbria - 5 £85,000 -
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 3 (1.99%) Apache
1 3 (1.99%) Apache Spark
2 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.32%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.66%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 102 (67.55%) AWS
2 69 (45.70%) Azure
3 35 (23.18%) GCP
4 34 (22.52%) GitHub
5 33 (21.85%) Serverless
6 25 (16.56%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (12.58%) Azure AKS
8 17 (11.26%) Amazon EKS
8 17 (11.26%) GitHub Actions
9 15 (9.93%) Amazon ECS
9 15 (9.93%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (8.61%) Datadog
11 10 (6.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (6.62%) Amazon SQS
11 10 (6.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 9 (5.96%) OpenShift
13 8 (5.30%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (4.64%) Amazon EventBridge
14 7 (4.64%) SaaS
14 7 (4.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.31%) Firewall
1 5 (3.31%) Internet
2 3 (1.99%) AMQP
3 2 (1.32%) DNS
3 2 (1.32%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.66%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (16.56%) PostgreSQL
2 23 (15.23%) MongoDB
3 18 (11.92%) NoSQL
4 8 (5.30%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (5.30%) DynamoDB
5 6 (3.97%) Relational Database
6 5 (3.31%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (2.65%) Neo4j
8 3 (1.99%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (1.99%) Big Data
8 3 (1.99%) Cloudera CDH
8 3 (1.99%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.99%) Pinecone
8 3 (1.99%) SQL Server
9 2 (1.32%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.66%) Db2
10 1 (0.66%) MySQL
10 1 (0.66%) Redis
10 1 (0.66%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 25 (16.56%) Git
2 23 (15.23%) Jenkins
3 20 (13.25%) GitLab
4 4 (2.65%) Vite
5 3 (1.99%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 3 (1.99%) Bitbucket
6 2 (1.32%) Claude Code
6 2 (1.32%) Cucumber
6 2 (1.32%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.32%) JIRA
6 2 (1.32%) Postman
6 2 (1.32%) Robot Framework
6 2 (1.32%) Selenium
6 2 (1.32%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.66%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.66%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.66%) JUnit
General
1 13 (8.61%) Social Skills
2 7 (4.64%) Finance
2 7 (4.64%) Public Sector
3 4 (2.65%) Advertising
3 4 (2.65%) Aerospace
4 2 (1.32%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (1.32%) Retail
5 1 (0.66%) Banking
5 1 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (0.66%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 49 (32.45%) Senior
2 33 (21.85%) Software Engineer
3 29 (19.21%) DevOps Engineer
4 27 (17.88%) Developer
5 23 (15.23%) Cloud Engineer
6 19 (12.58%) Lead
7 14 (9.27%) Platform Engineer
8 13 (8.61%) Java Developer
9 10 (6.62%) Senior Developer
9 10 (6.62%) Senior Java Developer
9 10 (6.62%) Senior Software Engineer
10 9 (5.96%) Azure Engineer
11 8 (5.30%) .NET Software Engineer
11 8 (5.30%) Architect
11 8 (5.30%) Lead Developer
11 8 (5.30%) Senior Platform Engineer
12 7 (4.64%) Integration Developer
12 7 (4.64%) Integration Engineer
12 7 (4.64%) Lead Software Engineer
12 7 (4.64%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (18.54%) Spring
2 26 (17.22%) Spring Boot
3 24 (15.89%) React
4 21 (13.91%) RESTful
5 20 (13.25%) Node.js
6 18 (11.92%) .NET
7 13 (8.61%) FastAPI
8 12 (7.95%) AngularJS
9 11 (7.28%) Kafka
9 11 (7.28%) Vue
10 9 (5.96%) Django
11 8 (5.30%) .NET Framework
11 8 (5.30%) OpenTelemetry
11 8 (5.30%) RabbitMQ
12 7 (4.64%) LangChain
12 7 (4.64%) REST
13 6 (3.97%) JWT
13 6 (3.97%) OAuth
14 5 (3.31%) LangGraph
14 5 (3.31%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 52 (34.44%) Cloud Native
2 23 (15.23%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (5.30%) Hybrid Cloud
4 5 (3.31%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.65%) Enterprise Cloud
5 4 (2.65%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.32%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.32%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.32%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.32%) Security Posture
7 2 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.66%) Cloud Security Posture
8 1 (0.66%) Culture of Ownership
8 1 (0.66%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 24 (15.89%) Linux
2 6 (3.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (3.31%) Debian
3 5 (3.31%) Ubuntu
4 4 (2.65%) CentOS
5 3 (1.99%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (71.52%) CI/CD
2 94 (62.25%) DevOps
3 87 (57.62%) Infrastructure as Code
4 75 (49.67%) Containerisation
5 55 (36.42%) Agile
6 41 (27.15%) Platform Engineering
6 41 (27.15%) Software Engineering
7 40 (26.49%) AI
8 37 (24.50%) Microservices
9 36 (23.84%) Observability
10 32 (21.19%) Mentoring
11 30 (19.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 28 (18.54%) Problem-Solving
13 26 (17.22%) Scrum
13 26 (17.22%) TDD
14 25 (16.56%) Clean Code
15 20 (13.25%) Collaborative Culture
16 18 (11.92%) Event-Driven
17 16 (10.60%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 13 (8.61%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 63 (41.72%) Python
2 38 (25.17%) Java
3 32 (21.19%) TypeScript
4 24 (15.89%) SQL
5 19 (12.58%) JavaScript
6 17 (11.26%) Bash
6 17 (11.26%) C#
7 15 (9.93%) Go
8 13 (8.61%) PowerShell
9 7 (4.64%) C
10 5 (3.31%) Bicep
11 2 (1.32%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.32%) Scala
Qualifications
1 34 (22.52%) Security Cleared
2 21 (13.91%) SC Cleared
3 14 (9.27%) DV Cleared
4 6 (3.97%) Azure Certification
5 5 (3.31%) Degree
6 4 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.99%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 2 (1.32%) PCI DSS
2 1 (0.66%) Accessibility
2 1 (0.66%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.66%) QA
2 1 (0.66%) SOC 2
System Software
1 86 (56.95%) Docker
2 5 (3.31%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.32%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.32%) VMware NSX
4 2 (1.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 90 (59.60%) Terraform
2 34 (22.52%) Ansible
3 13 (8.61%) Grafana
4 12 (7.95%) Prometheus
5 7 (4.64%) Istio
6 6 (3.97%) Argo
6 6 (3.97%) linkerd
7 5 (3.31%) Puppet
8 4 (2.65%) Progress Chef
9 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (1.32%) Packer
10 1 (0.66%) Rancher
Vendors
1 12 (7.95%) Google
2 9 (5.96%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.64%) HubSpot
4 5 (3.31%) OpenAI
4 5 (3.31%) VMware
5 3 (1.99%) Red Hat
5 3 (1.99%) SaltStack
6 2 (1.32%) Databricks
6 2 (1.32%) Dynatrace
6 2 (1.32%) Pega
6 2 (1.32%) Splunk
6 2 (1.32%) WSO2
7 1 (0.66%) Oracle