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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 70 87
Rank change year-on-year -32 +17 -34
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 144 260 259
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.35% 5.54% 2.39%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.91% 23.51% 38.60%
Number of salaries quoted 122 108 169
10th Percentile £51,250 £47,500 £45,000
25th Percentile £60,000 £62,500 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £61,206
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +22.54% -12.56%
75th Percentile £87,500 £93,778 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,125 £112,500 £85,000
England median annual salary £72,500 £82,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -12.12% +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 516 1,106 671
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.84% 23.55% 6.18%
Number of salaries quoted 409 274 515
10th Percentile £30,950 £32,150 £29,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £42,500 £39,720
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £67,037 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.77% +21.89% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £89,000 £93,778 £80,000
England median annual salary £65,000 £67,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.70% +8.00% -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 11 June 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 11 June 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 -29 116 £70,750 -5.67% 66
Merseyside -13 9 £95,000 - 2
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 -
Cheshire -43 6 £62,500 -7.06% 6
Lancashire +13 5 £57,500 +36.47% 16
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 (2.08%) Apache
1 3 (2.08%) Apache Spark
2 2 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.39%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.69%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 98 (68.06%) AWS
2 62 (43.06%) Azure
3 32 (22.22%) GCP
3 32 (22.22%) Serverless
4 30 (20.83%) GitHub
5 25 (17.36%) AWS CloudFormation
6 19 (13.19%) Azure AKS
7 18 (12.50%) Amazon EKS
8 15 (10.42%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (9.72%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (9.72%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (9.03%) Datadog
11 10 (6.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 9 (6.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (6.25%) Amazon SQS
12 9 (6.25%) OpenShift
13 7 (4.86%) Amazon EventBridge
13 7 (4.86%) Azure DevOps
13 7 (4.86%) SaaS
14 6 (4.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (4.86%) Internet
2 5 (3.47%) Firewall
3 3 (2.08%) AMQP
4 2 (1.39%) DNS
4 2 (1.39%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.69%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (19.44%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (17.36%) MongoDB
3 18 (12.50%) NoSQL
4 9 (6.25%) DynamoDB
5 8 (5.56%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (4.17%) Relational Database
7 5 (3.47%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (2.08%) Big Data
8 3 (2.08%) Cloudera CDH
8 3 (2.08%) Hadoop
8 3 (2.08%) Neo4j
8 3 (2.08%) SQL Server
9 2 (1.39%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (1.39%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.39%) MySQL
9 2 (1.39%) Pinecone
10 1 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.69%) Db2
10 1 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 23 (15.97%) Git
2 20 (13.89%) Jenkins
3 19 (13.19%) GitLab
4 4 (2.78%) Bitbucket
4 4 (2.78%) Vite
5 3 (2.08%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (1.39%) JIRA
6 2 (1.39%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.69%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.69%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.69%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.69%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.69%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.69%) JUnit
7 1 (0.69%) Postman
7 1 (0.69%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.69%) Selenium
General
1 13 (9.03%) Social Skills
2 6 (4.17%) Finance
2 6 (4.17%) Public Sector
3 4 (2.78%) Aerospace
4 3 (2.08%) Advertising
5 2 (1.39%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (1.39%) Retail
6 1 (0.69%) Banking
6 1 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (0.69%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 47 (32.64%) Senior
2 32 (22.22%) Software Engineer
3 27 (18.75%) DevOps Engineer
4 24 (16.67%) Developer
5 23 (15.97%) Cloud Engineer
6 19 (13.19%) Lead
7 13 (9.03%) Platform Engineer
8 12 (8.33%) Java Developer
9 9 (6.25%) Senior Developer
9 9 (6.25%) Senior Java Developer
9 9 (6.25%) Senior Software Engineer
10 8 (5.56%) .NET Software Engineer
10 8 (5.56%) Azure Engineer
10 8 (5.56%) Lead Developer
10 8 (5.56%) Senior Platform Engineer
11 7 (4.86%) Integration Developer
11 7 (4.86%) Lead Software Engineer
11 7 (4.86%) Python Engineer
11 7 (4.86%) Senior DevOps
11 7 (4.86%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (18.75%) Spring
2 25 (17.36%) Spring Boot
3 23 (15.97%) React
4 21 (14.58%) RESTful
5 20 (13.89%) Node.js
6 17 (11.81%) .NET
7 13 (9.03%) FastAPI
8 11 (7.64%) AngularJS
9 10 (6.94%) Kafka
9 10 (6.94%) Vue
10 9 (6.25%) Django
11 8 (5.56%) .NET Framework
11 8 (5.56%) OpenTelemetry
11 8 (5.56%) RabbitMQ
12 6 (4.17%) JWT
12 6 (4.17%) LangChain
12 6 (4.17%) OAuth
12 6 (4.17%) REST
13 5 (3.47%) OpenID
13 5 (3.47%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 48 (33.33%) Cloud Native
2 23 (15.97%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (4.86%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (2.78%) AI Agents
4 4 (2.78%) Enterprise Cloud
5 3 (2.08%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.39%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.39%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.39%) Security Posture
6 2 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.69%) Cloud Security Posture
7 1 (0.69%) Culture of Ownership
7 1 (0.69%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 25 (17.36%) Linux
2 6 (4.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (3.47%) Debian
3 5 (3.47%) Ubuntu
4 4 (2.78%) CentOS
5 3 (2.08%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (70.83%) CI/CD
2 91 (63.19%) DevOps
3 85 (59.03%) Infrastructure as Code
4 71 (49.31%) Containerisation
5 51 (35.42%) Agile
6 39 (27.08%) Software Engineering
7 38 (26.39%) Microservices
8 37 (25.69%) Platform Engineering
9 36 (25.00%) AI
10 32 (22.22%) Observability
11 31 (21.53%) Mentoring
12 27 (18.75%) Continuous Improvement
13 26 (18.06%) Scrum
14 25 (17.36%) Problem-Solving
14 25 (17.36%) TDD
15 24 (16.67%) Clean Code
16 19 (13.19%) Collaborative Culture
17 18 (12.50%) Event-Driven
18 15 (10.42%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 13 (9.03%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 60 (41.67%) Python
2 35 (24.31%) Java
3 32 (22.22%) TypeScript
4 23 (15.97%) SQL
5 17 (11.81%) JavaScript
6 16 (11.11%) C#
6 16 (11.11%) Go
7 13 (9.03%) Bash
8 11 (7.64%) PowerShell
9 9 (6.25%) C
10 3 (2.08%) Bicep
11 1 (0.69%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.69%) Scala
Qualifications
1 31 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 20 (13.89%) SC Cleared
3 13 (9.03%) DV Cleared
4 5 (3.47%) Azure Certification
5 4 (2.78%) Degree
6 3 (2.08%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.69%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 2 (1.39%) PCI DSS
2 1 (0.69%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.69%) QA
2 1 (0.69%) SOC 2
System Software
1 77 (53.47%) Docker
2 5 (3.47%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.39%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.39%) VMware NSX
4 2 (1.39%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 88 (61.11%) Terraform
2 36 (25.00%) Ansible
3 10 (6.94%) Grafana
4 9 (6.25%) Prometheus
5 5 (3.47%) Istio
6 4 (2.78%) Argo
6 4 (2.78%) linkerd
6 4 (2.78%) Puppet
7 3 (2.08%) Progress Chef
8 2 (1.39%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (1.39%) Packer
8 2 (1.39%) Rancher
Vendors
1 11 (7.64%) Google
2 7 (4.86%) HubSpot
2 7 (4.86%) Microsoft
3 5 (3.47%) OpenAI
3 5 (3.47%) VMware
4 3 (2.08%) Red Hat
4 3 (2.08%) SaltStack
5 2 (1.39%) Databricks
5 2 (1.39%) Pega
5 2 (1.39%) WSO2
6 1 (0.69%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.69%) Oracle
6 1 (0.69%) Splunk