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 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 68 41
Rank change year-on-year -19 -27 -6
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 101 166 250
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.59% 3.29% 5.55%
As % of the Systems Management category 30.33% 36.32% 49.80%
Number of salaries quoted 80 85 207
10th Percentile £54,750 £50,000 £45,750
25th Percentile £57,500 £52,500 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% +3.85% -7.14%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £77,715
90th Percentile £89,600 £93,778 £85,500
England median annual salary £75,000 £80,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year -6.25% +6.67% -6.25%

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 333 457 502
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 5.25% 9.07% 11.15%
Number of salaries quoted 257 250 442
10th Percentile £28,650 £35,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,803 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £56,250 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.22% -6.25% +3.79%
75th Percentile £72,500 £74,144 £75,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £84,056
England median annual salary £62,500 £70,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -10.71% +7.69% -3.70%

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 13 January 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 13 January 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 -24 70 £67,500 - 52
Cheshire -5 17 £72,500 -2.68% 17
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 - 1
Merseyside -8 3 £77,500 +3.33% 9
Lancashire +2 2 £85,000 +31.07% 20
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 5 (4.95%) OpenStack
2 4 (3.96%) Apache
3 3 (2.97%) Apache Spark
3 3 (2.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (2.97%) nginx
4 1 (0.99%) IIS
4 1 (0.99%) JBoss
4 1 (0.99%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.99%) WebSphere
Business Applications
1 1 (0.99%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 71 (70.30%) AWS
2 49 (48.51%) Azure
3 30 (29.70%) GCP
4 12 (11.88%) AWS CloudFormation
4 12 (11.88%) Azure AKS
4 12 (11.88%) Serverless
5 11 (10.89%) GitHub
5 11 (10.89%) OpenShift
6 8 (7.92%) Amazon EC2
6 8 (7.92%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (6.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 6 (5.94%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (5.94%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (4.95%) Amazon S3
9 5 (4.95%) Amazon SQS
9 5 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (3.96%) AWS CodeBuild
10 4 (3.96%) PaaS
11 3 (2.97%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (2.97%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 7 (6.93%) Internet
2 4 (3.96%) DNS
2 4 (3.96%) Firewall
3 3 (2.97%) AMQP
3 3 (2.97%) DHCP
4 2 (1.98%) HTTP
4 2 (1.98%) SSL
4 2 (1.98%) VPN
5 1 (0.99%) Network Security
5 1 (0.99%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.99%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.99%) VLAN
5 1 (0.99%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (22.77%) NoSQL
2 20 (19.80%) MongoDB
3 18 (17.82%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (8.91%) MySQL
5 5 (4.95%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (4.95%) SQL Server
6 3 (2.97%) Big Data
6 3 (2.97%) Cloudera CDH
6 3 (2.97%) Hadoop
6 3 (2.97%) Neo4j
6 3 (2.97%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.98%) DynamoDB
7 2 (1.98%) PostHog
7 2 (1.98%) Redis
8 1 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.99%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.99%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.99%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.99%) DB2
Development Applications
1 19 (18.81%) Git
2 18 (17.82%) Jenkins
3 12 (11.88%) GitLab
4 3 (2.97%) CircleCI
4 3 (2.97%) Cypress.io
5 2 (1.98%) Bitbucket
5 2 (1.98%) SonarQube
5 2 (1.98%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (1.98%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.99%) Ant
6 1 (0.99%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.99%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.99%) CA Release Automation
6 1 (0.99%) Cucumber
6 1 (0.99%) git-flow
6 1 (0.99%) JIRA
6 1 (0.99%) JMeter
6 1 (0.99%) Locust
6 1 (0.99%) Maven
General
1 17 (16.83%) Social Skills
2 7 (6.93%) Finance
3 5 (4.95%) Banking
4 3 (2.97%) Aerospace
4 3 (2.97%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (2.97%) Public Sector
5 2 (1.98%) Games
5 2 (1.98%) Retail
6 1 (0.99%) Electronics
6 1 (0.99%) Investment Banking
6 1 (0.99%) Legal
6 1 (0.99%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.99%) Marketing
6 1 (0.99%) Tech for Good
6 1 (0.99%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 25 (24.75%) Senior
2 24 (23.76%) Software Engineer
3 17 (16.83%) Developer
4 15 (14.85%) DevOps Engineer
5 11 (10.89%) Lead
6 10 (9.90%) Java Developer
7 8 (7.92%) Senior Developer
7 8 (7.92%) Senior Software Engineer
8 6 (5.94%) Cloud Engineer
8 6 (5.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 6 (5.94%) Platform Engineer
8 6 (5.94%) Python Engineer
8 6 (5.94%) Senior Java Developer
9 5 (4.95%) .NET Software Engineer
9 5 (4.95%) AWS DevOps
9 5 (4.95%) Senior .NET Software Engineer
10 4 (3.96%) AWS DevOps Engineer
10 4 (3.96%) AWS Engineer
10 4 (3.96%) Python Software Engineer
10 4 (3.96%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (22.77%) .NET
2 19 (18.81%) React
3 15 (14.85%) Spring
3 15 (14.85%) Spring Boot
4 14 (13.86%) RESTful
5 13 (12.87%) .NET Framework
6 11 (10.89%) RabbitMQ
7 10 (9.90%) AngularJS
8 7 (6.93%) Node.js
9 6 (5.94%) Django
9 6 (5.94%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (5.94%) FastAPI
9 6 (5.94%) Hibernate
9 6 (5.94%) Vue
10 5 (4.95%) CSS
10 5 (4.95%) HTML
10 5 (4.95%) Next.js
10 5 (4.95%) REST
11 4 (3.96%) Flask
11 4 (3.96%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 35 (34.65%) Cloud Native
2 17 (16.83%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (6.93%) Distributed Computing
4 3 (2.97%) Cyber Threat
4 3 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (2.97%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.98%) Driving Licence
5 2 (1.98%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (1.98%) Management Information System
5 2 (1.98%) Online Games
5 2 (1.98%) Public Cloud
6 1 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.99%) Cybercrime
6 1 (0.99%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.99%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.99%) NVMe
6 1 (0.99%) Private Cloud
6 1 (0.99%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 27 (26.73%) Linux
2 8 (7.92%) Windows
3 6 (5.94%) Debian
3 6 (5.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (5.94%) Ubuntu
4 4 (3.96%) CentOS
5 3 (2.97%) VMS
6 1 (0.99%) Unix
6 1 (0.99%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (74.26%) CI/CD
2 63 (62.38%) Containerisation
3 60 (59.41%) DevOps
4 45 (44.55%) Agile
5 39 (38.61%) Infrastructure as Code
6 38 (37.62%) Microservices
7 32 (31.68%) Software Engineering
8 23 (22.77%) Problem-Solving
8 23 (22.77%) TDD
9 21 (20.79%) Observability
10 20 (19.80%) Clean Code
11 16 (15.84%) Continuous Improvement
12 15 (14.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 15 (14.85%) Mentoring
12 15 (14.85%) Platform Engineering
13 14 (13.86%) Open Source
14 12 (11.88%) Event-Driven
14 12 (11.88%) Scrum
15 11 (10.89%) AI
15 11 (10.89%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 42 (41.58%) Python
2 30 (29.70%) Java
3 26 (25.74%) SQL
4 21 (20.79%) C#
5 20 (19.80%) TypeScript
6 15 (14.85%) Go
6 15 (14.85%) JavaScript
7 10 (9.90%) Bash
7 10 (9.90%) C
8 4 (3.96%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.98%) Bicep
9 2 (1.98%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.99%) Groovy
10 1 (0.99%) PHP
Qualifications
1 12 (11.88%) Security Cleared
2 9 (8.91%) DV Cleared
3 7 (6.93%) SC Cleared
4 5 (4.95%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (4.95%) Degree
5 4 (3.96%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.99%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.99%) CISM
6 1 (0.99%) CISSP
6 1 (0.99%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (6.93%) QA
2 3 (2.97%) GDPR
3 2 (1.98%) NIST
4 1 (0.99%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.99%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.99%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.99%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.99%) WCAG
System Software
1 66 (65.35%) Docker
2 5 (4.95%) Active Directory
3 4 (3.96%) vSphere
4 3 (2.97%) KVM
4 3 (2.97%) QEMU
4 3 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.97%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.99%) Firmware
5 1 (0.99%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.99%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 46 (45.54%) Terraform
2 31 (30.69%) Ansible
3 14 (13.86%) Grafana
4 10 (9.90%) Prometheus
5 6 (5.94%) Puppet
6 3 (2.97%) Progress Chef
7 2 (1.98%) Argo
7 2 (1.98%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (1.98%) Nagios
7 2 (1.98%) Rancher
8 1 (0.99%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.99%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.99%) Podman
Vendors
1 8 (7.92%) Google
2 6 (5.94%) SaltStack
2 6 (5.94%) VMware
3 5 (4.95%) Microsoft
3 5 (4.95%) Red Hat
4 4 (3.96%) Splunk
5 3 (2.97%) AppDynamics
6 2 (1.98%) Dell
6 2 (1.98%) Oracle
7 1 (0.99%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.99%) Databricks
7 1 (0.99%) F5
7 1 (0.99%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.99%) Palo Alto
7 1 (0.99%) Pega
7 1 (0.99%) SAP
7 1 (0.99%) WSO2