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 29 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 114 72 80
Rank change year-on-year -42 +8 -28
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 137 253 259
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.24% 5.57% 2.64%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.24% 23.30% 39.48%
Number of salaries quoted 115 105 174
10th Percentile £51,250 £48,000 £46,625
25th Percentile £60,000 £62,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +20.00% -10.71%
75th Percentile £87,500 £93,778 £77,188
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 503 1,086 656
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.55% 23.92% 6.68%
Number of salaries quoted 390 263 518
10th Percentile £30,500 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,375 £39,720
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +17.39% -4.17%
75th Percentile £77,500 £78,750 £71,063
90th Percentile £88,750 £93,778 £80,000
England median annual salary £65,000 £70,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -7.14% +12.00% -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 29 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 29 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 -40 110 £70,000 -11.18% 59
Merseyside -18 10 £95,000 - 3
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 -
Lancashire +1 5 £57,500 +12.05% 24
Cheshire -58 4 £67,500 -11.18% 3
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 (2.19%) Apache
1 3 (2.19%) Apache Spark
1 3 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.46%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.73%) nginx
3 1 (0.73%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.73%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 92 (67.15%) AWS
2 60 (43.80%) Azure
3 32 (23.36%) Serverless
4 31 (22.63%) GCP
5 28 (20.44%) GitHub
6 24 (17.52%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (13.87%) Azure AKS
8 18 (13.14%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (10.95%) Amazon ECS
10 14 (10.22%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (10.22%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (9.49%) Datadog
12 9 (6.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (6.57%) Amazon SQS
12 9 (6.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 8 (5.84%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (5.11%) Amazon EventBridge
14 7 (5.11%) Entra ID
14 7 (5.11%) OpenShift
15 6 (4.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.11%) Internet
2 5 (3.65%) Firewall
3 3 (2.19%) AMQP
3 3 (2.19%) DNS
3 3 (2.19%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.73%) DHCP
4 1 (0.73%) Network Security
4 1 (0.73%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.73%) VLAN
4 1 (0.73%) VPN
4 1 (0.73%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (18.25%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (17.52%) MongoDB
3 17 (12.41%) NoSQL
4 9 (6.57%) DynamoDB
5 8 (5.84%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (4.38%) Relational Database
7 5 (3.65%) SQL Server
8 4 (2.92%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (2.19%) Big Data
9 3 (2.19%) Cloudera CDH
9 3 (2.19%) Hadoop
10 2 (1.46%) BigQuery
10 2 (1.46%) MySQL
10 2 (1.46%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.73%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.73%) DB2
11 1 (0.73%) PostHog
11 1 (0.73%) Redis
Development Applications
1 21 (15.33%) Git
2 18 (13.14%) Jenkins
3 17 (12.41%) GitLab
4 4 (2.92%) Bitbucket
5 3 (2.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (1.46%) JIRA
6 2 (1.46%) Vagrant
6 2 (1.46%) Vite
7 1 (0.73%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.73%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.73%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.73%) JUnit
7 1 (0.73%) Postman
7 1 (0.73%) Selenium
General
1 14 (10.22%) Social Skills
2 7 (5.11%) Finance
3 6 (4.38%) Public Sector
4 4 (2.92%) Aerospace
5 3 (2.19%) Advertising
5 3 (2.19%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (1.46%) Retail
7 1 (0.73%) Banking
7 1 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.73%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 46 (33.58%) Senior
2 29 (21.17%) Software Engineer
3 26 (18.98%) DevOps Engineer
4 25 (18.25%) Developer
5 21 (15.33%) Cloud Engineer
6 20 (14.60%) Lead
7 12 (8.76%) Java Developer
8 11 (8.03%) Platform Engineer
9 10 (7.30%) Senior Developer
10 9 (6.57%) Senior Java Developer
11 8 (5.84%) .NET Software Engineer
11 8 (5.84%) Lead Developer
11 8 (5.84%) Senior Software Engineer
12 7 (5.11%) Architect
12 7 (5.11%) Azure Engineer
12 7 (5.11%) Integration Developer
12 7 (5.11%) Integration Engineer
12 7 (5.11%) Lead Software Engineer
12 7 (5.11%) Senior DevOps
12 7 (5.11%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (19.71%) Spring
2 25 (18.25%) Spring Boot
3 19 (13.87%) RESTful
4 18 (13.14%) Node.js
4 18 (13.14%) React
5 17 (12.41%) .NET
6 11 (8.03%) FastAPI
7 10 (7.30%) Kafka
8 9 (6.57%) .NET Framework
8 9 (6.57%) Django
8 9 (6.57%) Vue
9 8 (5.84%) AngularJS
10 7 (5.11%) OpenTelemetry
11 6 (4.38%) JWT
11 6 (4.38%) OAuth
11 6 (4.38%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (4.38%) REST
12 4 (2.92%) OpenID
12 4 (2.92%) Swagger
12 4 (2.92%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 41 (29.93%) Cloud Native
2 21 (15.33%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (5.11%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (2.92%) AI Agents
4 4 (2.92%) Enterprise Cloud
5 3 (2.19%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.46%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.46%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.73%) Culture of Ownership
7 1 (0.73%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.73%) Distributed Computing
7 1 (0.73%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 26 (18.98%) Linux
2 6 (4.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (3.65%) Debian
3 5 (3.65%) Ubuntu
4 4 (2.92%) CentOS
4 4 (2.92%) Windows
5 1 (0.73%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (72.26%) CI/CD
2 85 (62.04%) DevOps
3 83 (60.58%) Infrastructure as Code
4 68 (49.64%) Containerisation
5 52 (37.96%) Agile
6 36 (26.28%) Microservices
7 35 (25.55%) Platform Engineering
7 35 (25.55%) Software Engineering
8 32 (23.36%) AI
9 30 (21.90%) Mentoring
9 30 (21.90%) Observability
10 27 (19.71%) Continuous Improvement
11 26 (18.98%) Scrum
11 26 (18.98%) TDD
12 24 (17.52%) Clean Code
13 23 (16.79%) Problem-Solving
14 19 (13.87%) Collaborative Culture
15 18 (13.14%) Event-Driven
16 15 (10.95%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 12 (8.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 57 (41.61%) Python
2 34 (24.82%) Java
3 29 (21.17%) TypeScript
4 22 (16.06%) SQL
5 16 (11.68%) C#
6 15 (10.95%) Go
7 14 (10.22%) JavaScript
8 13 (9.49%) Bash
9 12 (8.76%) PowerShell
10 9 (6.57%) C
11 3 (2.19%) Bicep
12 1 (0.73%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.73%) Scala
Qualifications
1 27 (19.71%) Security Cleared
2 17 (12.41%) SC Cleared
3 13 (9.49%) DV Cleared
4 6 (4.38%) Azure Certification
5 4 (2.92%) Degree
6 3 (2.19%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.73%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 1 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.73%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.46%) QA
2 1 (0.73%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (0.73%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 76 (55.47%) Docker
2 6 (4.38%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.19%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.19%) VMware NSX
4 3 (2.19%) vSphere
5 1 (0.73%) Firmware
5 1 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 84 (61.31%) Terraform
2 37 (27.01%) Ansible
3 11 (8.03%) Grafana
4 9 (6.57%) Prometheus
5 4 (2.92%) Argo
5 4 (2.92%) Puppet
6 3 (2.19%) Istio
6 3 (2.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (2.19%) Progress Chef
7 2 (1.46%) linkerd
7 2 (1.46%) Packer
7 2 (1.46%) Rancher
8 1 (0.73%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 10 (7.30%) Google
2 8 (5.84%) Microsoft
3 7 (5.11%) HubSpot
4 6 (4.38%) VMware
5 3 (2.19%) OpenAI
5 3 (2.19%) Red Hat
5 3 (2.19%) SaltStack
6 2 (1.46%) Databricks
6 2 (1.46%) Pega
6 2 (1.46%) WSO2
7 1 (0.73%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.73%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.73%) Oracle
7 1 (0.73%) Splunk