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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 117 71 80
Rank change year-on-year -46 +9 -25
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 130 248 260
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.19% 5.49% 2.68%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.58% 22.90% 39.63%
Number of salaries quoted 107 103 177
10th Percentile £54,500 £47,750 £47,000
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 £77,500
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 489 1,083 656
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.48% 23.98% 6.75%
Number of salaries quoted 376 261 519
10th Percentile £30,500 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,750 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +17.39% -4.17%
75th Percentile £77,625 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £88,449 £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 26 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 26 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 -39 104 £70,000 -11.18% 81
Merseyside -14 10 £95,000 - 4
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 -
Cheshire -56 4 £67,500 -12.90% 6
Lancashire -5 3 £65,576 +27.79% 23
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 (2.31%) Apache
1 3 (2.31%) Apache Spark
1 3 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.54%) nginx
2 2 (1.54%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.77%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.77%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 90 (69.23%) AWS
2 60 (46.15%) Azure
3 31 (23.85%) Serverless
4 30 (23.08%) GCP
5 25 (19.23%) AWS CloudFormation
5 25 (19.23%) GitHub
6 20 (15.38%) Azure AKS
7 18 (13.85%) Amazon EKS
8 15 (11.54%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (10.77%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (10.00%) Datadog
10 13 (10.00%) GitHub Actions
11 9 (6.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (6.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 8 (6.15%) Amazon SQS
12 8 (6.15%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (6.15%) OpenShift
13 7 (5.38%) Amazon EC2
13 7 (5.38%) Amazon EventBridge
14 6 (4.62%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.38%) Internet
2 6 (4.62%) Firewall
3 3 (2.31%) AMQP
3 3 (2.31%) DNS
3 3 (2.31%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.77%) DHCP
4 1 (0.77%) Network Security
4 1 (0.77%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.77%) VLAN
4 1 (0.77%) VPN
4 1 (0.77%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (17.69%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (16.92%) MongoDB
3 19 (14.62%) NoSQL
4 10 (7.69%) DynamoDB
5 9 (6.92%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (4.62%) Relational Database
6 6 (4.62%) SQL Server
7 5 (3.85%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (2.31%) Big Data
8 3 (2.31%) Cloudera CDH
8 3 (2.31%) Hadoop
8 3 (2.31%) MySQL
9 2 (1.54%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (1.54%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.54%) Neo4j
9 2 (1.54%) PostHog
9 2 (1.54%) Redis
10 1 (0.77%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.77%) DB2
Development Applications
1 19 (14.62%) Git
2 17 (13.08%) GitLab
3 16 (12.31%) Jenkins
4 3 (2.31%) Bitbucket
5 2 (1.54%) Vagrant
5 2 (1.54%) Vite
6 1 (0.77%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.77%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.77%) JIRA
6 1 (0.77%) JUnit
General
1 13 (10.00%) Social Skills
2 5 (3.85%) Finance
2 5 (3.85%) Public Sector
3 4 (3.08%) Aerospace
4 3 (2.31%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (1.54%) Advertising
5 2 (1.54%) Retail
6 1 (0.77%) Banking
6 1 (0.77%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (33.85%) Senior
2 27 (20.77%) Software Engineer
3 25 (19.23%) Developer
4 22 (16.92%) Cloud Engineer
5 21 (16.15%) DevOps Engineer
6 19 (14.62%) Lead
7 13 (10.00%) Java Developer
8 10 (7.69%) Platform Engineer
8 10 (7.69%) Senior Developer
9 9 (6.92%) Senior Java Developer
10 8 (6.15%) .NET Software Engineer
10 8 (6.15%) Lead Developer
11 7 (5.38%) Azure Engineer
11 7 (5.38%) Integration Developer
11 7 (5.38%) Integration Engineer
11 7 (5.38%) Lead Software Engineer
11 7 (5.38%) Python Engineer
11 7 (5.38%) Senior DevOps
11 7 (5.38%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 7 (5.38%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (20.00%) Spring
2 24 (18.46%) Spring Boot
3 18 (13.85%) Node.js
3 18 (13.85%) React
3 18 (13.85%) RESTful
4 16 (12.31%) .NET
5 10 (7.69%) .NET Framework
5 10 (7.69%) FastAPI
6 8 (6.15%) Django
6 8 (6.15%) Vue
7 7 (5.38%) AngularJS
7 7 (5.38%) Kafka
7 7 (5.38%) OpenTelemetry
7 7 (5.38%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (4.62%) JWT
8 6 (4.62%) OAuth
8 6 (4.62%) REST
9 4 (3.08%) Hibernate
9 4 (3.08%) OpenID
9 4 (3.08%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (28.46%) Cloud Native
2 21 (16.15%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (5.38%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (3.08%) AI Agents
4 4 (3.08%) Enterprise Cloud
4 4 (3.08%) Public Cloud
5 2 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.54%) Mobile App
5 2 (1.54%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.77%) Culture of Ownership
6 1 (0.77%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.77%) Distributed Computing
6 1 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (0.77%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 25 (19.23%) Linux
2 6 (4.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (3.85%) Debian
3 5 (3.85%) Ubuntu
4 4 (3.08%) CentOS
5 3 (2.31%) Windows
6 1 (0.77%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (70.77%) CI/CD
2 79 (60.77%) DevOps
3 78 (60.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 66 (50.77%) Containerisation
5 53 (40.77%) Agile
6 37 (28.46%) Microservices
7 33 (25.38%) Platform Engineering
7 33 (25.38%) Software Engineering
8 29 (22.31%) Mentoring
8 29 (22.31%) Observability
9 28 (21.54%) AI
9 28 (21.54%) Continuous Improvement
10 26 (20.00%) Clean Code
11 25 (19.23%) Scrum
12 24 (18.46%) Problem-Solving
12 24 (18.46%) TDD
13 19 (14.62%) Collaborative Culture
14 17 (13.08%) Event-Driven
15 13 (10.00%) Test Automation
16 12 (9.23%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 55 (42.31%) Python
2 34 (26.15%) Java
3 29 (22.31%) TypeScript
4 22 (16.92%) SQL
5 16 (12.31%) Go
6 15 (11.54%) C#
6 15 (11.54%) JavaScript
7 11 (8.46%) Bash
8 10 (7.69%) PowerShell
9 9 (6.92%) C
10 2 (1.54%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 24 (18.46%) Security Cleared
2 16 (12.31%) SC Cleared
3 10 (7.69%) DV Cleared
4 6 (4.62%) Azure Certification
5 4 (3.08%) Degree
6 3 (2.31%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.31%) QA
2 1 (0.77%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (0.77%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 72 (55.38%) Docker
2 6 (4.62%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (3.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.31%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.31%) VMware NSX
4 3 (2.31%) vSphere
5 1 (0.77%) Firmware
5 1 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 81 (62.31%) Terraform
2 36 (27.69%) Ansible
3 13 (10.00%) Grafana
4 10 (7.69%) Prometheus
5 4 (3.08%) Puppet
6 3 (2.31%) Istio
6 3 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (2.31%) Progress Chef
6 3 (2.31%) Rancher
7 2 (1.54%) Argo
7 2 (1.54%) linkerd
7 2 (1.54%) Packer
8 1 (0.77%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.77%) Nagios
Vendors
1 9 (6.92%) Google
2 7 (5.38%) HubSpot
2 7 (5.38%) Microsoft
2 7 (5.38%) VMware
3 4 (3.08%) Red Hat
4 3 (2.31%) OpenAI
4 3 (2.31%) SaltStack
5 2 (1.54%) Databricks
5 2 (1.54%) Pega
5 2 (1.54%) WSO2
6 1 (0.77%) Fortinet
6 1 (0.77%) Oracle