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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 73 71
Rank change year-on-year -23 -2 -44
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 195 236 227
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.60% 4.54% 2.77%
As % of the Systems Management category 41.76% 23.39% 45.22%
Number of salaries quoted 162 82 88
10th Percentile £44,125 £52,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £57,500 £57,500 £50,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,250 £68,750 £62,750
Median % change year-on-year +5.09% +9.56% -16.33%
75th Percentile £87,500 £86,875 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,375 £106,700 £85,000
England median annual salary £70,079 £78,810 £77,500
% change year-on-year -11.08% +1.69% +2.42%

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 467 1,009 502
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 3.82% 19.42% 6.13%
Number of salaries quoted 360 193 269
10th Percentile £30,950 £25,800 £30,001
25th Percentile £38,750 £33,125 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,808 £57,500 £48,256
Median % change year-on-year +0.53% +19.16% -28.51%
75th Percentile £75,007 £73,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £88,500 £76,250
England median annual salary £60,000 £62,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -3.85%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 -15 159 £72,500 +3.57% 166
Lancashire +7 13 £50,000 -17.36% 17
Merseyside -12 12 £95,000 - 5
Cheshire -52 10 £62,500 +4.17% 7
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 (2.56%) OpenStack
2 3 (1.54%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.03%) Apache
4 1 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 1 (0.51%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 123 (63.08%) AWS
2 72 (36.92%) Azure
3 43 (22.05%) GitHub
4 42 (21.54%) GCP
5 35 (17.95%) Serverless
6 32 (16.41%) AWS CloudFormation
7 20 (10.26%) OpenShift
8 18 (9.23%) AWS Lambda
8 18 (9.23%) GitHub Actions
9 16 (8.21%) Amazon ECS
10 14 (7.18%) Datadog
11 13 (6.67%) SaaS
12 12 (6.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 11 (5.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 11 (5.64%) Amazon EKS
13 11 (5.64%) GitHub Copilot
14 10 (5.13%) Amazon SQS
14 10 (5.13%) Azure AKS
15 9 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
15 9 (4.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.05%) Firewall
2 3 (1.54%) Network Security
2 3 (1.54%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (1.03%) AMQP
4 1 (0.51%) DNS
4 1 (0.51%) HTTP
4 1 (0.51%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (12.31%) MongoDB
2 20 (10.26%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (5.64%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.62%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (4.10%) DynamoDB
6 6 (3.08%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (2.56%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (2.56%) Neo4j
8 4 (2.05%) Relational Database
9 3 (1.54%) Big Data
9 3 (1.54%) Chroma
9 3 (1.54%) Pinecone
9 3 (1.54%) SQL Server
10 2 (1.03%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (1.03%) Cloudera CDH
10 2 (1.03%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.51%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.51%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.51%) Redis
11 1 (0.51%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 31 (15.90%) Git
2 27 (13.85%) Jenkins
3 25 (12.82%) GitLab
4 8 (4.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 5 (2.56%) Cypress.io
6 4 (2.05%) Bitbucket
6 4 (2.05%) Cucumber
6 4 (2.05%) Robot Framework
6 4 (2.05%) Vite
7 3 (1.54%) Postman
7 3 (1.54%) Selenium
8 2 (1.03%) Claude Code
8 2 (1.03%) JIRA
8 2 (1.03%) Mocha
9 1 (0.51%) Gemini Tracker
9 1 (0.51%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.51%) JUnit
9 1 (0.51%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 20 (10.26%) Social Skills
2 13 (6.67%) Public Sector
3 10 (5.13%) Finance
4 7 (3.59%) Advertising
5 4 (2.05%) Aerospace
5 4 (2.05%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.03%) Manufacturing
6 2 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.03%) Retail
7 1 (0.51%) Front Office
7 1 (0.51%) iGaming
Job Titles
1 62 (31.79%) DevOps Engineer
2 47 (24.10%) Senior
3 35 (17.95%) Developer
4 33 (16.92%) Cloud Engineer
5 24 (12.31%) Lead
6 22 (11.28%) Software Engineer
7 17 (8.72%) Platform Engineer
7 17 (8.72%) Principal Engineer
8 13 (6.67%) Architect
9 12 (6.15%) Java Developer
10 11 (5.64%) Cloud Native Engineer
10 11 (5.64%) Senior DevOps
10 11 (5.64%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 10 (5.13%) Lead Developer
11 10 (5.13%) Principal DevOps Engineer
11 10 (5.13%) Senior Developer
12 9 (4.62%) Senior Java Developer
13 8 (4.10%) Cloud Architect
13 8 (4.10%) Senior Platform Engineer
13 8 (4.10%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (61.03%) Terraform
2 40 (20.51%) Spring
3 38 (19.49%) Spring Boot
4 27 (13.85%) React
5 25 (12.82%) Node.js
6 19 (9.74%) .NET
7 17 (8.72%) Kafka
8 16 (8.21%) AngularJS
8 16 (8.21%) RESTful
9 14 (7.18%) Vue
10 11 (5.64%) FastAPI
10 11 (5.64%) REST
11 9 (4.62%) OpenTelemetry
12 8 (4.10%) LangChain
12 8 (4.10%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (3.59%) CSS
14 6 (3.08%) ASP.NET
14 6 (3.08%) Django
14 6 (3.08%) HTML
14 6 (3.08%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 67 (34.36%) Cloud Native
2 25 (12.82%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.62%) Greenfield Project
3 9 (4.62%) Hybrid Cloud
4 5 (2.56%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.05%) Enterprise Cloud
5 4 (2.05%) Security Posture
6 3 (1.54%) Cloud Security Posture
6 3 (1.54%) Life Science
6 3 (1.54%) Social Media
7 2 (1.03%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.03%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.03%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.03%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (0.51%) Culture of Ownership
8 1 (0.51%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.51%) Management Information System
8 1 (0.51%) Online Gambling
8 1 (0.51%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 29 (14.87%) Linux
2 8 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (3.08%) CentOS
4 4 (2.05%) Windows
5 2 (1.03%) Debian
5 2 (1.03%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (72.31%) CI/CD
2 124 (63.59%) DevOps
3 104 (53.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 89 (45.64%) Containerisation
5 66 (33.85%) Agile
6 57 (29.23%) Platform Engineering
7 51 (26.15%) AI
8 45 (23.08%) Microservices
9 44 (22.56%) Observability
9 44 (22.56%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 44 (22.56%) Software Engineering
10 40 (20.51%) Mentoring
11 35 (17.95%) Continuous Improvement
11 35 (17.95%) Problem-Solving
12 22 (11.28%) TDD
13 21 (10.77%) Cloud Security
13 21 (10.77%) Event-Driven
14 19 (9.74%) Collaborative Culture
15 18 (9.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 18 (9.23%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 81 (41.54%) Python
2 56 (28.72%) Java
3 33 (16.92%) Bash
4 28 (14.36%) TypeScript
5 27 (13.85%) JavaScript
6 22 (11.28%) SQL
7 18 (9.23%) C#
7 18 (9.23%) PowerShell
8 17 (8.72%) Go
9 8 (4.10%) Bicep
10 4 (2.05%) Kotlin
10 4 (2.05%) Rust
10 4 (2.05%) Scala
11 3 (1.54%) C++
12 2 (1.03%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.51%) C
13 1 (0.51%) Objective-C
13 1 (0.51%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 65 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 37 (18.97%) DV Cleared
3 34 (17.44%) SC Cleared
4 7 (3.59%) AWS Certification
4 7 (3.59%) Azure Certification
4 7 (3.59%) Degree
5 4 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.03%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 1 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.54%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.54%) QA
2 3 (1.54%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.51%) Accessibility
System Software
1 124 (63.59%) Docker
2 4 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.54%) Ceph
4 2 (1.03%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.03%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.51%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 59 (30.26%) Ansible
2 19 (9.74%) Prometheus
3 18 (9.23%) Grafana
4 12 (6.15%) Argo
4 12 (6.15%) Istio
5 9 (4.62%) Puppet
6 8 (4.10%) linkerd
7 7 (3.59%) Progress Chef
8 3 (1.54%) Check_MK
8 3 (1.54%) Podman
9 2 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.51%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 17 (8.72%) Google
2 13 (6.67%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.59%) HubSpot
4 6 (3.08%) OpenAI
5 5 (2.56%) Red Hat
5 5 (2.56%) VMware
6 4 (2.05%) Mistral
7 3 (1.54%) Dell
7 3 (1.54%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.54%) Splunk
8 2 (1.03%) Databricks
8 2 (1.03%) Pega
8 2 (1.03%) SaltStack
8 2 (1.03%) WSO2
9 1 (0.51%) New Relic
9 1 (0.51%) Percona