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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 80 69
Rank change year-on-year -7 -11 -44
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 215 218 219
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.67% 4.19% 2.98%
As % of the Systems Management category 39.89% 21.29% 43.11%
Number of salaries quoted 161 67 83
10th Percentile £45,000 £52,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £56,250 £57,500 £51,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.54% +8.33% -18.64%
75th Percentile £88,148 £80,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £88,100 £87,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £77,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -9.68% - +3.33%

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 539 1,024 508
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.19% 19.68% 6.92%
Number of salaries quoted 397 204 235
10th Percentile £33,000 £26,250 £31,450
25th Percentile £42,215 £33,125 £39,735
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,720 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.89% -2.56% -23.08%
75th Percentile £74,987 £67,500 £66,250
90th Percentile £88,750 £81,250 £76,900
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year - -7.69% -

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 -8 177 £75,000 +11.11% 158
Lancashire +7 15 £52,130 -13.83% 10
Cheshire -46 11 £62,500 -7.41% 10
Merseyside -17 10 £77,500 +19.23% 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 6 (2.79%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.33%) Apache
3 4 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.40%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.93%) Confluence
6 1 (0.47%) IIS
Cloud Services
1 136 (63.26%) AWS
2 69 (32.09%) Azure
3 47 (21.86%) GitHub
4 39 (18.14%) GCP
5 35 (16.28%) Serverless
6 28 (13.02%) AWS CloudFormation
7 21 (9.77%) OpenShift
8 18 (8.37%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (7.91%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (6.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (5.58%) SaaS
12 11 (5.12%) GitHub Copilot
12 11 (5.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 10 (4.65%) Amazon ECS
13 10 (4.65%) Azure AKS
14 8 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (3.72%) Datadog
15 7 (3.26%) Amazon S3
15 7 (3.26%) Amazon SQS
15 7 (3.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.86%) Firewall
2 3 (1.40%) DNS
2 3 (1.40%) Network Security
2 3 (1.40%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (0.93%) AMQP
4 1 (0.47%) DHCP
4 1 (0.47%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (12.56%) MongoDB
2 17 (7.91%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.65%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (3.72%) NoSQL
5 6 (2.79%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (2.33%) Chroma
6 5 (2.33%) DynamoDB
6 5 (2.33%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (2.33%) Neo4j
6 5 (2.33%) Pinecone
7 3 (1.40%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.40%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.40%) Big Data
7 3 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.40%) Power BI
7 3 (1.40%) Power Query
8 2 (0.93%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.93%) Redis
8 2 (0.93%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.93%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 36 (16.74%) Git
2 33 (15.35%) GitLab
3 28 (13.02%) Jenkins
4 9 (4.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 6 (2.79%) JIRA
6 5 (2.33%) Cypress.io
7 4 (1.86%) Artifactory
7 4 (1.86%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.86%) Cucumber
7 4 (1.86%) Robot Framework
7 4 (1.86%) Vagrant
7 4 (1.86%) Vite
8 3 (1.40%) Postman
8 3 (1.40%) Selenium
9 2 (0.93%) Mocha
10 1 (0.47%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.47%) Gemini Tracker
10 1 (0.47%) Maven
10 1 (0.47%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 34 (15.81%) Social Skills
2 18 (8.37%) Public Sector
3 12 (5.58%) Finance
3 12 (5.58%) Publishing
4 8 (3.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 6 (2.79%) Advertising
6 5 (2.33%) Aerospace
7 4 (1.86%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (0.93%) Manufacturing
8 2 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.47%) Front Office
9 1 (0.47%) iGaming
Job Titles
1 72 (33.49%) DevOps Engineer
2 56 (26.05%) Senior
3 35 (16.28%) Developer
4 30 (13.95%) Lead
4 30 (13.95%) Software Engineer
5 28 (13.02%) Cloud Engineer
6 17 (7.91%) Platform Engineer
6 17 (7.91%) Principal Engineer
7 15 (6.98%) Senior Software Engineer
8 14 (6.51%) Architect
9 13 (6.05%) Cloud Native Engineer
9 13 (6.05%) Senior DevOps
9 13 (6.05%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 12 (5.58%) AWS Engineer
10 12 (5.58%) Lead DevOps
10 12 (5.58%) Lead DevOps Engineer
10 12 (5.58%) Principal DevOps Engineer
10 12 (5.58%) Senior Developer
11 11 (5.12%) Java Developer
12 9 (4.19%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (58.60%) Terraform
2 59 (27.44%) Spring
3 56 (26.05%) Spring Boot
4 45 (20.93%) React
5 33 (15.35%) Kafka
6 19 (8.84%) Node.js
7 16 (7.44%) .NET
8 15 (6.98%) AngularJS
9 13 (6.05%) Vue
10 12 (5.58%) RESTful
11 11 (5.12%) FastAPI
11 11 (5.12%) REST
12 10 (4.65%) LangChain
13 9 (4.19%) RabbitMQ
14 7 (3.26%) CrewAI
14 7 (3.26%) CSS
14 7 (3.26%) LangGraph
15 6 (2.79%) ASP.NET
15 6 (2.79%) HTML
15 6 (2.79%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 69 (32.09%) Cloud Native
2 15 (6.98%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (5.58%) Media Streaming
3 12 (5.58%) Podcast
4 10 (4.65%) Greenfield Project
5 6 (2.79%) AI Agents
6 5 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (1.86%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.40%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (1.40%) Life Science
8 3 (1.40%) Social Media
9 2 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.93%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.93%) Product Ownership
9 2 (0.93%) Renewable Energy
10 1 (0.47%) Culture of Ownership
10 1 (0.47%) Cyber Defence
10 1 (0.47%) Cyber Threat
10 1 (0.47%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.47%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 35 (16.28%) Linux
2 8 (3.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 8 (3.72%) Windows
3 7 (3.26%) CentOS
4 3 (1.40%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.93%) Debian
5 2 (0.93%) Unix
6 1 (0.47%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (71.63%) CI/CD
2 143 (66.51%) DevOps
3 108 (50.23%) Infrastructure as Code
4 99 (46.05%) Containerisation
5 91 (42.33%) Agile
6 60 (27.91%) AI
7 57 (26.51%) Mentoring
8 56 (26.05%) Software Engineering
9 54 (25.12%) Platform Engineering
10 52 (24.19%) Observability
11 51 (23.72%) Microservices
12 49 (22.79%) Continuous Improvement
13 45 (20.93%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 41 (19.07%) Problem-Solving
15 30 (13.95%) Event-Driven
16 26 (12.09%) Cloud Security
16 26 (12.09%) Scrum
17 24 (11.16%) Technical Leadership
18 23 (10.70%) Code Quality
18 23 (10.70%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 92 (42.79%) Python
2 79 (36.74%) Java
3 41 (19.07%) Bash
3 41 (19.07%) TypeScript
4 27 (12.56%) JavaScript
5 23 (10.70%) PowerShell
6 22 (10.23%) SQL
7 18 (8.37%) Go
8 16 (7.44%) C#
9 10 (4.65%) Bicep
10 5 (2.33%) Rust
11 4 (1.86%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.86%) Scala
12 3 (1.40%) C++
12 3 (1.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.93%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.47%) C
14 1 (0.47%) Objective-C
14 1 (0.47%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.47%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 77 (35.81%) Security Cleared
2 50 (23.26%) DV Cleared
3 37 (17.21%) SC Cleared
4 11 (5.12%) AWS Certification
5 6 (2.79%) Azure Certification
5 6 (2.79%) Degree
6 3 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (0.93%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 1 (0.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 1 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (1.86%) PCI DSS
3 3 (1.40%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.40%) QA
3 3 (1.40%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.47%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 131 (60.93%) Docker
2 6 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (1.86%) VMware ESXi
3 4 (1.86%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.40%) Ceph
5 2 (0.93%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 64 (29.77%) Ansible
2 18 (8.37%) Prometheus
3 17 (7.91%) Grafana
4 13 (6.05%) Argo
5 12 (5.58%) Puppet
6 11 (5.12%) Istio
6 11 (5.12%) Progress Chef
7 8 (3.72%) linkerd
8 4 (1.86%) Packer
8 4 (1.86%) vCenter Server
9 3 (1.40%) Check_MK
9 3 (1.40%) Podman
9 3 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.47%) Opsview
Vendors
1 19 (8.84%) Microsoft
2 17 (7.91%) Google
3 8 (3.72%) OpenAI
4 7 (3.26%) VMware
5 6 (2.79%) Mistral
6 5 (2.33%) Databricks
6 5 (2.33%) Red Hat
7 4 (1.86%) HubSpot
7 4 (1.86%) YouTube
8 3 (1.40%) Dell
8 3 (1.40%) Dynatrace
8 3 (1.40%) Splunk
9 2 (0.93%) SaltStack
10 1 (0.47%) CrowdStrike
10 1 (0.47%) New Relic
10 1 (0.47%) Oracle
10 1 (0.47%) Percona