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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 75 72
Rank change year-on-year -15 -3 -49
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 215 225 209
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.67% 4.40% 2.78%
As % of the Systems Management category 43.52% 22.10% 42.48%
Number of salaries quoted 165 70 78
10th Percentile £47,500 £51,200 £42,500
25th Percentile £57,500 £57,938 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £67,500 £62,750
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% +7.57% -16.33%
75th Percentile £88,750 £80,938 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £89,100 £87,650
England median annual salary £71,500 £77,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -7.74% - +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 494 1,018 492
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 3.84% 19.93% 6.54%
Number of salaries quoted 360 201 232
10th Percentile £32,725 £26,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £38,750 £33,125 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £48,720 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +23.15% -2.56% -23.08%
75th Percentile £77,500 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £92,500 £82,500 £77,375
England median annual salary £60,000 £62,500 £65,000
% 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 23 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 23 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 -11 178 £75,000 +11.11% 183
Lancashire 0 14 £51,065 -15.60% 20
Merseyside -12 13 £95,000 +46.15% 8
Cheshire -55 9 £62,500 -13.79% 20
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 4 (1.86%) Apache Spark
1 4 (1.86%) OpenStack
2 3 (1.40%) Apache
3 1 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.47%) Confluence
3 1 (0.47%) IIS
Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 136 (63.26%) AWS
2 76 (35.35%) Azure
3 48 (22.33%) GitHub
4 44 (20.47%) GCP
5 39 (18.14%) Serverless
6 32 (14.88%) AWS CloudFormation
7 21 (9.77%) GitHub Actions
7 21 (9.77%) OpenShift
8 19 (8.84%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (6.51%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (6.51%) Datadog
10 13 (6.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (5.58%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (5.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 12 (5.58%) SaaS
12 11 (5.12%) Azure AKS
12 11 (5.12%) GitHub Copilot
13 10 (4.65%) Amazon SQS
14 8 (3.72%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (3.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.86%) Firewall
2 3 (1.40%) AMQP
2 3 (1.40%) Network Security
2 3 (1.40%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (0.93%) DNS
4 1 (0.47%) DHCP
4 1 (0.47%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (13.02%) MongoDB
2 19 (8.84%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.65%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.19%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (3.72%) DynamoDB
6 6 (2.79%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (2.33%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (2.33%) Neo4j
8 4 (1.86%) Big Data
9 3 (1.40%) Chroma
9 3 (1.40%) Cloudera CDH
9 3 (1.40%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.40%) Pinecone
9 3 (1.40%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.93%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.93%) Redis
10 2 (0.93%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.47%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.47%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.47%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 33 (15.35%) Git
2 30 (13.95%) Jenkins
3 28 (13.02%) GitLab
4 9 (4.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 5 (2.33%) Cypress.io
5 5 (2.33%) JIRA
6 4 (1.86%) Bitbucket
6 4 (1.86%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.86%) Robot Framework
6 4 (1.86%) Vagrant
6 4 (1.86%) Vite
7 3 (1.40%) Artifactory
7 3 (1.40%) Postman
7 3 (1.40%) Selenium
8 2 (0.93%) Mocha
9 1 (0.47%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.47%) Gemini Tracker
9 1 (0.47%) Maven
9 1 (0.47%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 30 (13.95%) Social Skills
2 17 (7.91%) Public Sector
3 10 (4.65%) Finance
4 8 (3.72%) Publishing
5 7 (3.26%) Advertising
6 6 (2.79%) Aerospace
7 5 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.86%) Analytical Skills
9 2 (0.93%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.93%) Retail
10 1 (0.47%) Front Office
10 1 (0.47%) iGaming
Job Titles
1 66 (30.70%) DevOps Engineer
2 56 (26.05%) Senior
3 35 (16.28%) Developer
4 31 (14.42%) Cloud Engineer
4 31 (14.42%) Software Engineer
5 28 (13.02%) Lead
6 19 (8.84%) Principal Engineer
7 17 (7.91%) Platform Engineer
8 14 (6.51%) Architect
9 13 (6.05%) Senior Software Engineer
10 12 (5.58%) Cloud Native Engineer
10 12 (5.58%) Principal DevOps Engineer
11 11 (5.12%) Senior Developer
11 11 (5.12%) Senior DevOps
11 11 (5.12%) Senior DevOps Engineer
12 10 (4.65%) Java Developer
12 10 (4.65%) Lead Developer
13 9 (4.19%) Cloud Architect
13 9 (4.19%) Lead DevOps
13 9 (4.19%) Lead DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (60.00%) Terraform
2 56 (26.05%) Spring
3 51 (23.72%) Spring Boot
4 42 (19.53%) React
5 29 (13.49%) Kafka
6 25 (11.63%) Node.js
7 17 (7.91%) AngularJS
8 16 (7.44%) .NET
9 15 (6.98%) RESTful
10 14 (6.51%) Vue
11 12 (5.58%) FastAPI
11 12 (5.58%) REST
12 10 (4.65%) RabbitMQ
13 9 (4.19%) OpenTelemetry
14 8 (3.72%) LangChain
15 7 (3.26%) CSS
15 7 (3.26%) Django
15 7 (3.26%) OpenAPI
15 7 (3.26%) Swagger
16 6 (2.79%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 75 (34.88%) Cloud Native
2 22 (10.23%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (4.65%) Greenfield Project
4 8 (3.72%) Media Streaming
4 8 (3.72%) Podcast
5 7 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (2.33%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.86%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.40%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (1.40%) Life Science
8 3 (1.40%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.40%) Social Media
9 2 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.93%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.93%) Renewable Energy
10 1 (0.47%) Culture of Ownership
10 1 (0.47%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.47%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (0.47%) Online Gambling
10 1 (0.47%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 35 (16.28%) Linux
2 11 (5.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 8 (3.72%) CentOS
4 5 (2.33%) Windows
5 4 (1.86%) Ubuntu
6 3 (1.40%) Debian
7 2 (0.93%) Unix
8 1 (0.47%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (71.63%) CI/CD
2 139 (64.65%) DevOps
3 112 (52.09%) Infrastructure as Code
4 100 (46.51%) Containerisation
5 81 (37.67%) Agile
6 60 (27.91%) AI
7 56 (26.05%) Observability
7 56 (26.05%) Software Engineering
8 55 (25.58%) Platform Engineering
9 54 (25.12%) Mentoring
10 53 (24.65%) Microservices
11 47 (21.86%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 44 (20.47%) Continuous Improvement
13 40 (18.60%) Problem-Solving
14 32 (14.88%) Event-Driven
15 24 (11.16%) Cloud Security
15 24 (11.16%) TDD
16 23 (10.70%) Scrum
17 21 (9.77%) Stakeholder Management
18 20 (9.30%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 91 (42.33%) Python
2 73 (33.95%) Java
3 41 (19.07%) TypeScript
4 38 (17.67%) Bash
5 28 (13.02%) JavaScript
6 23 (10.70%) PowerShell
7 22 (10.23%) SQL
8 17 (7.91%) Go
9 16 (7.44%) C#
10 11 (5.12%) Bicep
11 5 (2.33%) Rust
12 4 (1.86%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.86%) Scala
13 3 (1.40%) C++
14 2 (0.93%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.47%) C
15 1 (0.47%) Objective-C
15 1 (0.47%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.47%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 72 (33.49%) Security Cleared
2 46 (21.40%) DV Cleared
3 36 (16.74%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.72%) Azure Certification
5 7 (3.26%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.79%) Degree
7 4 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.93%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.40%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.40%) QA
2 3 (1.40%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.47%) Accessibility
System Software
1 135 (62.79%) Docker
2 5 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (1.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.40%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.40%) Ceph
5 2 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.93%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 64 (29.77%) Ansible
2 21 (9.77%) Prometheus
3 20 (9.30%) Grafana
4 13 (6.05%) Argo
5 12 (5.58%) Istio
6 11 (5.12%) Progress Chef
6 11 (5.12%) Puppet
7 8 (3.72%) linkerd
8 4 (1.86%) Packer
9 3 (1.40%) Check_MK
9 3 (1.40%) Podman
9 3 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.93%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 18 (8.37%) Google
2 17 (7.91%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.26%) HubSpot
4 6 (2.79%) OpenAI
4 6 (2.79%) Red Hat
5 5 (2.33%) VMware
6 4 (1.86%) Mistral
7 3 (1.40%) Dell
7 3 (1.40%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.40%) SaltStack
7 3 (1.40%) Splunk
7 3 (1.40%) YouTube
8 2 (0.93%) Databricks
9 1 (0.47%) New Relic
9 1 (0.47%) Oracle
9 1 (0.47%) Pega
9 1 (0.47%) Percona
9 1 (0.47%) WSO2