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

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 75 55
Rank change year-on-year -13 -20 -18
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 100 158 235
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.48% 3.17% 4.04%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.86% 34.27% 46.08%
Number of salaries quoted 77 93 204
10th Percentile £55,750 £50,000 £46,250
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £53,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £69,308 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% +6.63% -6.40%
75th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £88,850 £98,474 £84,056
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 359 461 510
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 5.32% 9.26% 8.77%
Number of salaries quoted 271 264 456
10th Percentile £28,750 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £38,750 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £58,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +2.56% +1.74%
75th Percentile £72,500 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £83,750
England median annual salary £62,500 £70,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.71% +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 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 26 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 -22 71 £67,500 -3.57% 65
Cheshire -5 15 £70,000 -6.04% 16
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 - 1
Merseyside -10 3 £77,500 +3.33% 10
Lancashire -7 2 £85,000 +36.64% 22
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 (5.00%) Apache
1 5 (5.00%) OpenStack
2 4 (4.00%) Apache Spark
3 3 (3.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (3.00%) nginx
4 1 (1.00%) IIS
4 1 (1.00%) JBoss
4 1 (1.00%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.00%) WebSphere
Business Applications
1 1 (1.00%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 70 (70.00%) AWS
2 52 (52.00%) Azure
3 34 (34.00%) GCP
4 13 (13.00%) AWS CloudFormation
4 13 (13.00%) Azure AKS
4 13 (13.00%) OpenShift
5 12 (12.00%) Serverless
6 11 (11.00%) GitHub
7 8 (8.00%) Amazon EKS
7 8 (8.00%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (7.00%) Amazon EC2
8 7 (7.00%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (5.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 5 (5.00%) Amazon S3
9 5 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (5.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 4 (4.00%) PaaS
11 3 (3.00%) Amazon SQS
11 3 (3.00%) SaaS
11 3 (3.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (7.00%) Internet
2 4 (4.00%) AMQP
2 4 (4.00%) DNS
2 4 (4.00%) Firewall
3 3 (3.00%) DHCP
4 2 (2.00%) HTTP
4 2 (2.00%) SSL
4 2 (2.00%) VPN
5 1 (1.00%) Network Security
5 1 (1.00%) SD-WAN
5 1 (1.00%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.00%) VLAN
5 1 (1.00%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (22.00%) NoSQL
2 21 (21.00%) MongoDB
3 20 (20.00%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (8.00%) MySQL
5 7 (7.00%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (5.00%) SQL Server
7 4 (4.00%) Big Data
7 4 (4.00%) Cloudera CDH
7 4 (4.00%) Hadoop
7 4 (4.00%) Neo4j
8 3 (3.00%) DynamoDB
8 3 (3.00%) Relational Database
9 2 (2.00%) PostHog
9 2 (2.00%) Redis
10 1 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (1.00%) BigQuery
10 1 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (1.00%) DB2
Development Applications
1 20 (20.00%) Git
2 16 (16.00%) Jenkins
3 12 (12.00%) GitLab
4 3 (3.00%) Bitbucket
4 3 (3.00%) Cypress.io
5 2 (2.00%) CircleCI
5 2 (2.00%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.00%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (2.00%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.00%) Ant
6 1 (1.00%) Artifactory
6 1 (1.00%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (1.00%) CA Release Automation
6 1 (1.00%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.00%) git-flow
6 1 (1.00%) JIRA
6 1 (1.00%) JMeter
6 1 (1.00%) Locust
6 1 (1.00%) Maven
General
1 16 (16.00%) Social Skills
2 6 (6.00%) Finance
3 5 (5.00%) Banking
4 4 (4.00%) Aerospace
5 3 (3.00%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (3.00%) Public Sector
6 2 (2.00%) Retail
7 1 (1.00%) Electronics
7 1 (1.00%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.00%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.00%) Marketing
7 1 (1.00%) Tech for Good
7 1 (1.00%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 28 (28.00%) Senior
2 25 (25.00%) Software Engineer
3 16 (16.00%) Developer
4 14 (14.00%) DevOps Engineer
5 11 (11.00%) Java Developer
5 11 (11.00%) Lead
6 9 (9.00%) Senior Developer
6 9 (9.00%) Senior Software Engineer
7 7 (7.00%) Cloud Engineer
7 7 (7.00%) Python Engineer
7 7 (7.00%) Senior Java Developer
8 6 (6.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 6 (6.00%) Platform Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) .NET Software Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) AWS DevOps
9 5 (5.00%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) AWS Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) Python Software Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) Senior .NET Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (21.00%) React
2 19 (19.00%) .NET
3 17 (17.00%) Spring
3 17 (17.00%) Spring Boot
4 16 (16.00%) RESTful
5 11 (11.00%) AngularJS
6 10 (10.00%) .NET Framework
6 10 (10.00%) RabbitMQ
7 8 (8.00%) Node.js
8 7 (7.00%) Django
8 7 (7.00%) FastAPI
8 7 (7.00%) Hibernate
9 6 (6.00%) Vue
10 5 (5.00%) Celery
10 5 (5.00%) Elastic Stack
10 5 (5.00%) Flask
10 5 (5.00%) REST
11 4 (4.00%) .NET Core
11 4 (4.00%) gRPC
11 4 (4.00%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 34 (34.00%) Cloud Native
2 17 (17.00%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (7.00%) Distributed Computing
4 3 (3.00%) Cyber Threat
4 3 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (3.00%) Public Cloud
5 2 (2.00%) Driving Licence
5 2 (2.00%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (2.00%) Product Ownership
6 1 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.00%) Cybercrime
6 1 (1.00%) Data Structures
6 1 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.00%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.00%) NVMe
6 1 (1.00%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 28 (28.00%) Linux
2 9 (9.00%) Windows
3 6 (6.00%) Debian
3 6 (6.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (6.00%) Ubuntu
4 5 (5.00%) CentOS
5 3 (3.00%) VMS
6 1 (1.00%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (74.00%) CI/CD
2 63 (63.00%) Containerisation
3 59 (59.00%) DevOps
4 44 (44.00%) Agile
5 41 (41.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 39 (39.00%) Microservices
7 33 (33.00%) Software Engineering
8 24 (24.00%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (24.00%) TDD
9 21 (21.00%) Clean Code
10 19 (19.00%) Observability
11 16 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 16 (16.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 16 (16.00%) Open Source
12 15 (15.00%) Platform Engineering
13 13 (13.00%) Mentoring
13 13 (13.00%) Scrum
14 12 (12.00%) Performance Optimisation
15 11 (11.00%) Event-Driven
15 11 (11.00%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 44 (44.00%) Python
2 32 (32.00%) Java
3 25 (25.00%) SQL
4 21 (21.00%) TypeScript
5 16 (16.00%) C#
5 16 (16.00%) Go
6 15 (15.00%) JavaScript
7 11 (11.00%) C
8 8 (8.00%) Bash
9 4 (4.00%) PowerShell
10 2 (2.00%) Bicep
11 1 (1.00%) Groovy
11 1 (1.00%) PHP
11 1 (1.00%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 13 (13.00%) Security Cleared
2 10 (10.00%) DV Cleared
3 7 (7.00%) SC Cleared
4 5 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (5.00%) Degree
5 3 (3.00%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.00%) CISM
6 1 (1.00%) CISSP
6 1 (1.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.00%) QA
2 2 (2.00%) GDPR
3 1 (1.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.00%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.00%) NIST
3 1 (1.00%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.00%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (62.00%) Docker
2 5 (5.00%) Active Directory
2 5 (5.00%) vSphere
3 4 (4.00%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (4.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (4.00%) VMware NSX
4 3 (3.00%) KVM
4 3 (3.00%) QEMU
5 1 (1.00%) Firmware
5 1 (1.00%) Hyper-V
5 1 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 47 (47.00%) Terraform
2 33 (33.00%) Ansible
3 11 (11.00%) Grafana
4 7 (7.00%) Prometheus
4 7 (7.00%) Puppet
5 3 (3.00%) Progress Chef
5 3 (3.00%) Rancher
6 2 (2.00%) Argo
6 2 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (2.00%) Nagios
7 1 (1.00%) Fluentd
7 1 (1.00%) FortiGate
7 1 (1.00%) Podman
Vendors
1 9 (9.00%) Google
2 7 (7.00%) SaltStack
2 7 (7.00%) VMware
3 5 (5.00%) Microsoft
3 5 (5.00%) Red Hat
4 3 (3.00%) AppDynamics
4 3 (3.00%) Splunk
5 2 (2.00%) Oracle
6 1 (1.00%) Cribl.io
6 1 (1.00%) Databricks
6 1 (1.00%) Dell
6 1 (1.00%) F5
6 1 (1.00%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.00%) Palo Alto
6 1 (1.00%) Pega
6 1 (1.00%) SAP
6 1 (1.00%) WSO2