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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 115 70 78
Rank change year-on-year -45 +8 -22
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 124 246 264
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.15% 5.44% 2.77%
As % of the Systems Management category 25.67% 22.74% 39.94%
Number of salaries quoted 101 103 182
10th Percentile £53,750 £47,750 £46,375
25th Percentile £60,000 £62,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +20.00% -10.71%
75th Percentile £87,500 £93,778 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £112,500 £85,000
England median annual salary £75,000 £82,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +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 483 1,082 661
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.46% 23.93% 6.93%
Number of salaries quoted 369 262 526
10th Percentile £30,500 £32,500 £29,125
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +17.39% -4.17%
75th Percentile £77,500 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £88,268 £93,778 £80,000
England median annual salary £65,000 £70,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -7.14% +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 23 May 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 May 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 -35 98 £70,000 -11.18% 70
Merseyside -13 10 £95,000 - 4
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 -
Cheshire -60 4 £66,250 -14.52% 7
Lancashire -2 3 £65,576 +27.79% 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 3 (2.42%) Apache
1 3 (2.42%) Apache Spark
1 3 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.61%) nginx
2 2 (1.61%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.81%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.81%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 87 (70.16%) AWS
2 59 (47.58%) Azure
3 31 (25.00%) Serverless
4 28 (22.58%) GCP
5 24 (19.35%) AWS CloudFormation
5 24 (19.35%) GitHub
6 20 (16.13%) Azure AKS
7 18 (14.52%) Amazon EKS
8 15 (12.10%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (11.29%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (10.48%) Datadog
10 13 (10.48%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (6.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (6.45%) Amazon SQS
11 8 (6.45%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (6.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 7 (5.65%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (5.65%) Amazon EventBridge
12 7 (5.65%) OpenShift
13 6 (4.84%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.65%) Internet
2 6 (4.84%) Firewall
3 3 (2.42%) AMQP
3 3 (2.42%) DNS
3 3 (2.42%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.81%) DHCP
4 1 (0.81%) Network Security
4 1 (0.81%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.81%) VLAN
4 1 (0.81%) VPN
4 1 (0.81%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (18.55%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (16.94%) MongoDB
3 19 (15.32%) NoSQL
4 10 (8.06%) DynamoDB
5 9 (7.26%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (4.84%) Relational Database
6 6 (4.84%) SQL Server
7 5 (4.03%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (2.42%) Big Data
8 3 (2.42%) Cloudera CDH
8 3 (2.42%) Hadoop
8 3 (2.42%) MySQL
9 2 (1.61%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (1.61%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.61%) Neo4j
9 2 (1.61%) PostHog
9 2 (1.61%) Redis
10 1 (0.81%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.81%) DB2
Development Applications
1 20 (16.13%) Git
2 15 (12.10%) GitLab
3 14 (11.29%) Jenkins
4 3 (2.42%) Bitbucket
5 2 (1.61%) Vagrant
5 2 (1.61%) Vite
6 1 (0.81%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.81%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.81%) JIRA
6 1 (0.81%) JUnit
6 1 (0.81%) TeamCity
General
1 13 (10.48%) Social Skills
2 5 (4.03%) Finance
2 5 (4.03%) Public Sector
3 4 (3.23%) Aerospace
4 3 (2.42%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (1.61%) Advertising
5 2 (1.61%) Retail
6 1 (0.81%) Banking
6 1 (0.81%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 41 (33.06%) Senior
2 27 (21.77%) Software Engineer
3 25 (20.16%) Developer
4 21 (16.94%) Cloud Engineer
5 18 (14.52%) DevOps Engineer
5 18 (14.52%) Lead
6 13 (10.48%) Java Developer
7 10 (8.06%) Senior Developer
8 9 (7.26%) Platform Engineer
8 9 (7.26%) Senior Java Developer
9 8 (6.45%) .NET Software Engineer
9 8 (6.45%) Lead Developer
10 7 (5.65%) Azure Engineer
10 7 (5.65%) Integration Developer
10 7 (5.65%) Integration Engineer
10 7 (5.65%) Lead Software Engineer
10 7 (5.65%) Python Engineer
10 7 (5.65%) Senior Software Engineer
11 6 (4.84%) Java Software Developer
11 6 (4.84%) Senior Java Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (20.16%) Spring
2 23 (18.55%) Spring Boot
3 18 (14.52%) React
4 16 (12.90%) .NET
4 16 (12.90%) Node.js
4 16 (12.90%) RESTful
5 10 (8.06%) .NET Framework
5 10 (8.06%) FastAPI
6 8 (6.45%) Django
7 7 (5.65%) AngularJS
7 7 (5.65%) Kafka
7 7 (5.65%) OpenTelemetry
7 7 (5.65%) Vue
8 6 (4.84%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (4.84%) REST
9 5 (4.03%) JWT
9 5 (4.03%) OAuth
10 4 (3.23%) ARM Templates
10 4 (3.23%) Next.js
10 4 (3.23%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (27.42%) Cloud Native
2 20 (16.13%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (5.65%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (3.23%) AI Agents
4 4 (3.23%) Enterprise Cloud
4 4 (3.23%) Public Cloud
5 2 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.61%) Mobile App
5 2 (1.61%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.81%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.81%) Distributed Computing
6 1 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (0.81%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 26 (20.97%) Linux
2 6 (4.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (4.03%) Debian
3 5 (4.03%) Ubuntu
4 4 (3.23%) CentOS
5 3 (2.42%) Windows
6 1 (0.81%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (70.16%) CI/CD
2 75 (60.48%) DevOps
3 74 (59.68%) Infrastructure as Code
4 62 (50.00%) Containerisation
5 52 (41.94%) Agile
6 36 (29.03%) Microservices
7 33 (26.61%) Software Engineering
8 30 (24.19%) Platform Engineering
9 28 (22.58%) Continuous Improvement
9 28 (22.58%) Mentoring
10 27 (21.77%) Observability
11 26 (20.97%) Clean Code
12 25 (20.16%) AI
12 25 (20.16%) Scrum
13 24 (19.35%) TDD
14 23 (18.55%) Problem-Solving
15 18 (14.52%) Collaborative Culture
16 17 (13.71%) Event-Driven
17 13 (10.48%) Test Automation
18 12 (9.68%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 52 (41.94%) Python
2 33 (26.61%) Java
3 28 (22.58%) TypeScript
4 22 (17.74%) SQL
5 15 (12.10%) C#
5 15 (12.10%) Go
6 14 (11.29%) JavaScript
7 9 (7.26%) Bash
7 9 (7.26%) C
7 9 (7.26%) PowerShell
8 2 (1.61%) Bicep
9 1 (0.81%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 22 (17.74%) Security Cleared
2 15 (12.10%) SC Cleared
3 9 (7.26%) DV Cleared
4 6 (4.84%) Azure Certification
5 4 (3.23%) Degree
6 3 (2.42%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 1 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.81%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.42%) QA
2 1 (0.81%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (0.81%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 68 (54.84%) Docker
2 5 (4.03%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.42%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.42%) VMware NSX
4 3 (2.42%) vSphere
5 1 (0.81%) Firmware
5 1 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 78 (62.90%) Terraform
2 36 (29.03%) Ansible
3 11 (8.87%) Grafana
4 8 (6.45%) Prometheus
5 4 (3.23%) Puppet
6 3 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (2.42%) Progress Chef
6 3 (2.42%) Rancher
7 2 (1.61%) Argo
7 2 (1.61%) Istio
7 2 (1.61%) Nagios
7 2 (1.61%) Packer
8 1 (0.81%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.81%) linkerd
Vendors
1 8 (6.45%) Google
2 7 (5.65%) HubSpot
2 7 (5.65%) Microsoft
3 6 (4.84%) VMware
4 4 (3.23%) Red Hat
5 3 (2.42%) SaltStack
6 2 (1.61%) Databricks
6 2 (1.61%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.61%) Pega
6 2 (1.61%) WSO2
7 1 (0.81%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.81%) Oracle