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 5 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 69 76
Rank change year-on-year -18 +7 -33
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 188 252 227
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.61% 4.87% 2.70%
As % of the Systems Management category 33.22% 23.06% 37.46%
Number of salaries quoted 160 94 102
10th Percentile £46,450 £47,875 £42,500
25th Percentile £57,500 £57,500 £51,563
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,500 £72,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.38% +11.54% -10.34%
75th Percentile £87,813 £88,750 £77,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £99,275 £92,050
England median annual salary £70,079 £80,000 £77,500
% change year-on-year -12.40% +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 566 1,093 606
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.84% 21.14% 7.20%
Number of salaries quoted 451 260 396
10th Percentile £32,750 £28,000 £30,250
25th Percentile £40,500 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +9.09% -15.38%
75th Percentile £77,750 £77,500 £71,250
90th Percentile £90,000 £88,875 £82,500
England median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - - -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 5 August 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 5 August 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 -13 154 £72,500 - 129
Lancashire +9 12 £46,250 -23.55% 13
Merseyside -18 12 £95,000 - 1
Cheshire -46 9 £62,500 -5.66% 29
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 (2.66%) OpenStack
2 2 (1.06%) Apache
2 2 (1.06%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 117 (62.23%) AWS
2 70 (37.23%) Azure
3 40 (21.28%) GitHub
4 39 (20.74%) GCP
5 36 (19.15%) Serverless
6 31 (16.49%) AWS CloudFormation
7 17 (9.04%) Amazon ECS
7 17 (9.04%) GitHub Actions
8 16 (8.51%) AWS Lambda
9 15 (7.98%) OpenShift
10 14 (7.45%) Amazon EKS
10 14 (7.45%) Datadog
11 13 (6.91%) Azure AKS
11 13 (6.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 11 (5.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 11 (5.85%) Amazon SQS
12 11 (5.85%) GitHub Copilot
12 11 (5.85%) SaaS
13 8 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (3.72%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.19%) Firewall
2 3 (1.60%) Network Security
3 2 (1.06%) AMQP
3 2 (1.06%) DNS
3 2 (1.06%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (1.06%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (12.77%) MongoDB
2 21 (11.17%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (7.45%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.79%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (4.26%) DynamoDB
6 6 (3.19%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (2.66%) Relational Database
8 4 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (2.13%) Neo4j
9 3 (1.60%) Pinecone
9 3 (1.60%) SQL Server
10 2 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (1.06%) Big Data
10 2 (1.06%) Cloudera CDH
10 2 (1.06%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.53%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.53%) Redis
11 1 (0.53%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 28 (14.89%) Git
2 25 (13.30%) Jenkins
3 21 (11.17%) GitLab
4 7 (3.72%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (2.13%) Bitbucket
5 4 (2.13%) Cucumber
5 4 (2.13%) Cypress.io
5 4 (2.13%) Robot Framework
5 4 (2.13%) Vite
6 3 (1.60%) Postman
6 3 (1.60%) Selenium
7 2 (1.06%) Claude Code
7 2 (1.06%) JIRA
8 1 (0.53%) Gemini Tracker
8 1 (0.53%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.53%) JUnit
8 1 (0.53%) Mocha
8 1 (0.53%) Vagrant
General
1 18 (9.57%) Social Skills
2 10 (5.32%) Public Sector
3 9 (4.79%) Finance
4 7 (3.72%) Advertising
5 4 (2.13%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.60%) Aerospace
7 2 (1.06%) Retail
8 1 (0.53%) Front Office
8 1 (0.53%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 56 (29.79%) DevOps Engineer
2 47 (25.00%) Senior
3 32 (17.02%) Cloud Engineer
4 31 (16.49%) Developer
5 28 (14.89%) Software Engineer
6 25 (13.30%) Lead
7 17 (9.04%) Platform Engineer
8 15 (7.98%) Principal Engineer
9 13 (6.91%) Java Developer
10 11 (5.85%) Architect
11 10 (5.32%) Cloud Native Engineer
11 10 (5.32%) Senior Developer
11 10 (5.32%) Senior DevOps
11 10 (5.32%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 10 (5.32%) Senior Java Developer
12 9 (4.79%) Lead Developer
13 8 (4.26%) Azure Engineer
13 8 (4.26%) Cloud Architect
13 8 (4.26%) Lead Software Engineer
13 8 (4.26%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (20.21%) Spring
2 36 (19.15%) Spring Boot
3 26 (13.83%) React
4 22 (11.70%) .NET
5 21 (11.17%) Node.js
6 19 (10.11%) RESTful
7 16 (8.51%) Kafka
8 15 (7.98%) AngularJS
9 14 (7.45%) Vue
10 13 (6.91%) FastAPI
11 9 (4.79%) OpenTelemetry
11 9 (4.79%) RabbitMQ
12 8 (4.26%) Django
12 8 (4.26%) LangChain
12 8 (4.26%) REST
13 7 (3.72%) CSS
14 6 (3.19%) .NET Core
14 6 (3.19%) ASP.NET
14 6 (3.19%) HTML
14 6 (3.19%) ML.NET
Miscellaneous
1 68 (36.17%) Cloud Native
2 26 (13.83%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.79%) Hybrid Cloud
4 8 (4.26%) Greenfield Project
5 5 (2.66%) AI Agents
6 4 (2.13%) Enterprise Cloud
6 4 (2.13%) Security Posture
7 3 (1.60%) Cloud Security Posture
7 3 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.60%) Social Media
8 2 (1.06%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.53%) Culture of Ownership
9 1 (0.53%) Life Science
9 1 (0.53%) Management Information System
9 1 (0.53%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.53%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.53%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.53%) Renewable Energy
9 1 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.53%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 29 (15.43%) Linux
2 7 (3.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (2.66%) CentOS
4 4 (2.13%) Windows
5 3 (1.60%) Debian
5 3 (1.60%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (72.87%) CI/CD
2 125 (66.49%) DevOps
3 102 (54.26%) Infrastructure as Code
4 90 (47.87%) Containerisation
5 62 (32.98%) Agile
6 54 (28.72%) Platform Engineering
7 49 (26.06%) AI
8 45 (23.94%) Software Engineering
9 44 (23.40%) Observability
10 41 (21.81%) Mentoring
11 40 (21.28%) Microservices
11 40 (21.28%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 33 (17.55%) Continuous Improvement
12 33 (17.55%) Problem-Solving
13 27 (14.36%) TDD
14 22 (11.70%) Clean Code
15 21 (11.17%) Cloud Security
15 21 (11.17%) Event-Driven
15 21 (11.17%) Scrum
16 20 (10.64%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 73 (38.83%) Python
2 50 (26.60%) Java
3 29 (15.43%) Bash
4 27 (14.36%) TypeScript
5 24 (12.77%) SQL
6 21 (11.17%) C#
7 20 (10.64%) JavaScript
8 17 (9.04%) Go
8 17 (9.04%) PowerShell
9 7 (3.72%) Bicep
10 3 (1.60%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.60%) Scala
11 1 (0.53%) C++
11 1 (0.53%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.53%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 55 (29.26%) Security Cleared
2 31 (16.49%) DV Cleared
3 28 (14.89%) SC Cleared
4 7 (3.72%) Azure Certification
4 7 (3.72%) Degree
5 6 (3.19%) AWS Certification
6 5 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 1 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.60%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.60%) SOC 2
3 2 (1.06%) QA
4 1 (0.53%) Accessibility
System Software
1 113 (60.11%) Docker
2 4 (2.13%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.60%) Ceph
4 2 (1.06%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.06%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.53%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 111 (59.04%) Terraform
2 52 (27.66%) Ansible
3 20 (10.64%) Prometheus
4 19 (10.11%) Grafana
5 12 (6.38%) Istio
6 11 (5.85%) Argo
7 8 (4.26%) linkerd
7 8 (4.26%) Puppet
8 7 (3.72%) Progress Chef
9 3 (1.60%) Check_MK
9 3 (1.60%) Podman
10 1 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.53%) Packer
10 1 (0.53%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 16 (8.51%) Google
2 13 (6.91%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.72%) HubSpot
4 6 (3.19%) OpenAI
5 5 (2.66%) Red Hat
5 5 (2.66%) VMware
6 3 (1.60%) Dell
6 3 (1.60%) Dynatrace
6 3 (1.60%) Splunk
7 2 (1.06%) Pega
7 2 (1.06%) SaltStack
7 2 (1.06%) WSO2
8 1 (0.53%) Databricks
8 1 (0.53%) Percona