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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 67 96
Rank change year-on-year -25 +29 -41
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 168 261 252
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.53% 5.35% 2.33%
As % of the Systems Management category 31.34% 23.45% 36.63%
Number of salaries quoted 145 106 155
10th Percentile £47,500 £47,500 £45,000
25th Percentile £58,750 £62,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,500 £75,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% +20.00% -10.71%
75th Percentile £87,500 £93,778 £77,500
90th Percentile £97,000 £112,500 £90,361
England median annual salary £71,500 £80,000 £77,500
% change year-on-year -10.63% +3.23% -

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 536 1,113 688
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.87% 22.82% 6.36%
Number of salaries quoted 434 276 507
10th Percentile £32,500 £32,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,620 £39,720
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £65,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +18.18% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £93,778 £81,250
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 28 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 28 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 -21 135 £71,500 -9.28% 48
Lancashire +11 11 £50,000 +18.67% 16
Merseyside -21 11 £95,000 - 3
Cheshire -47 7 £62,500 +4.17% 7
Cumbria - 3 £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 (1.79%) Apache
1 3 (1.79%) Apache Spark
2 2 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.19%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 111 (66.07%) AWS
2 72 (42.86%) Azure
3 38 (22.62%) GCP
3 38 (22.62%) GitHub
4 35 (20.83%) Serverless
5 28 (16.67%) AWS CloudFormation
6 18 (10.71%) Azure AKS
6 18 (10.71%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (10.12%) Amazon EKS
8 16 (9.52%) AWS Lambda
9 15 (8.93%) Amazon ECS
10 14 (8.33%) Datadog
11 12 (7.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 11 (6.55%) Amazon SQS
13 10 (5.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 10 (5.95%) OpenShift
14 9 (5.36%) GitHub Copilot
14 9 (5.36%) SaaS
15 8 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
16 7 (4.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (4.17%) Firewall
2 3 (1.79%) AMQP
2 3 (1.79%) Internet
2 3 (1.79%) Network Security
3 2 (1.19%) DNS
3 2 (1.19%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (16.07%) MongoDB
2 26 (15.48%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (10.12%) NoSQL
4 8 (4.76%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (4.76%) DynamoDB
5 5 (2.98%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (2.98%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (2.98%) Relational Database
6 4 (2.38%) Neo4j
7 3 (1.79%) Big Data
7 3 (1.79%) Cloudera CDH
7 3 (1.79%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.79%) Pinecone
8 2 (1.19%) BigQuery
8 2 (1.19%) SQL Server
9 1 (0.60%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.60%) MySQL
9 1 (0.60%) Redis
9 1 (0.60%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 24 (14.29%) Git
1 24 (14.29%) Jenkins
2 20 (11.90%) GitLab
3 5 (2.98%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 5 (2.98%) Bitbucket
4 4 (2.38%) Vite
5 3 (1.79%) Cucumber
5 3 (1.79%) Cypress.io
5 3 (1.79%) Postman
5 3 (1.79%) Robot Framework
5 3 (1.79%) Selenium
6 2 (1.19%) Claude Code
6 2 (1.19%) JIRA
6 2 (1.19%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.60%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.60%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.60%) JUnit
7 1 (0.60%) Mocha
General
1 12 (7.14%) Social Skills
2 8 (4.76%) Public Sector
3 6 (3.57%) Advertising
3 6 (3.57%) Finance
4 4 (2.38%) Aerospace
5 2 (1.19%) Retail
6 1 (0.60%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 51 (30.36%) Senior
2 39 (23.21%) DevOps Engineer
3 32 (19.05%) Software Engineer
4 30 (17.86%) Developer
5 28 (16.67%) Cloud Engineer
6 21 (12.50%) Lead
7 17 (10.12%) Platform Engineer
8 14 (8.33%) Java Developer
9 11 (6.55%) Senior Developer
9 11 (6.55%) Senior Java Developer
10 9 (5.36%) Azure Engineer
10 9 (5.36%) Principal Engineer
10 9 (5.36%) Senior Platform Engineer
10 9 (5.36%) Senior Software Engineer
11 8 (4.76%) Architect
11 8 (4.76%) Lead Developer
11 8 (4.76%) Lead Software Engineer
11 8 (4.76%) Senior DevOps
11 8 (4.76%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 7 (4.17%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (19.05%) Spring
2 30 (17.86%) Spring Boot
3 26 (15.48%) React
4 23 (13.69%) RESTful
5 22 (13.10%) Node.js
6 21 (12.50%) .NET
7 16 (9.52%) Kafka
8 14 (8.33%) AngularJS
9 13 (7.74%) FastAPI
9 13 (7.74%) Vue
10 10 (5.95%) RabbitMQ
11 9 (5.36%) Django
12 8 (4.76%) LangChain
12 8 (4.76%) OpenTelemetry
12 8 (4.76%) REST
13 7 (4.17%) .NET Framework
14 6 (3.57%) CSS
14 6 (3.57%) JWT
14 6 (3.57%) OAuth
14 6 (3.57%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 62 (36.90%) Cloud Native
2 25 (14.88%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (4.76%) Hybrid Cloud
4 6 (3.57%) Greenfield Project
5 5 (2.98%) AI Agents
6 4 (2.38%) Enterprise Cloud
6 4 (2.38%) Security Posture
7 3 (1.79%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.19%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.19%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.19%) Public Cloud
8 2 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.60%) Culture of Ownership
Operating Systems
1 25 (14.88%) Linux
2 6 (3.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (2.98%) Debian
3 5 (2.98%) Ubuntu
4 4 (2.38%) CentOS
4 4 (2.38%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (72.62%) CI/CD
2 109 (64.88%) DevOps
3 92 (54.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 84 (50.00%) Containerisation
5 59 (35.12%) Agile
6 46 (27.38%) Platform Engineering
7 44 (26.19%) AI
8 43 (25.60%) Software Engineering
9 39 (23.21%) Microservices
9 39 (23.21%) Observability
10 37 (22.02%) Mentoring
11 33 (19.64%) Continuous Improvement
12 32 (19.05%) Problem-Solving
13 28 (16.67%) TDD
14 26 (15.48%) Clean Code
15 25 (14.88%) Scrum
16 21 (12.50%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 20 (11.90%) Collaborative Culture
17 20 (11.90%) Event-Driven
18 16 (9.52%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 63 (37.50%) Python
2 42 (25.00%) Java
3 31 (18.45%) TypeScript
4 25 (14.88%) SQL
5 20 (11.90%) Bash
5 20 (11.90%) C#
5 20 (11.90%) JavaScript
6 16 (9.52%) PowerShell
7 13 (7.74%) Go
8 6 (3.57%) Bicep
9 4 (2.38%) C
10 3 (1.79%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.79%) Scala
Qualifications
1 40 (23.81%) Security Cleared
2 24 (14.29%) SC Cleared
3 17 (10.12%) DV Cleared
4 6 (3.57%) Azure Certification
5 5 (2.98%) Degree
6 4 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.79%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.79%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.79%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.60%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.60%) QA
System Software
1 95 (56.55%) Docker
2 5 (2.98%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.19%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.19%) VMware NSX
4 2 (1.19%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 97 (57.74%) Terraform
2 36 (21.43%) Ansible
3 14 (8.33%) Grafana
4 12 (7.14%) Prometheus
5 8 (4.76%) Argo
5 8 (4.76%) Istio
6 7 (4.17%) linkerd
7 5 (2.98%) Puppet
8 4 (2.38%) Progress Chef
9 2 (1.19%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (1.19%) Packer
10 1 (0.60%) Rancher
Vendors
1 14 (8.33%) Google
2 11 (6.55%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.17%) HubSpot
4 6 (3.57%) OpenAI
5 5 (2.98%) VMware
6 3 (1.79%) Dynatrace
6 3 (1.79%) Red Hat
6 3 (1.79%) SaltStack
6 3 (1.79%) Splunk
7 2 (1.19%) Pega
7 2 (1.19%) WSO2
8 1 (0.60%) Databricks