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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 71 69
Rank change year-on-year -23 -2 -27
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 106 156 221
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.44% 3.43% 3.31%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.84% 35.21% 41.70%
Number of salaries quoted 83 105 203
10th Percentile £55,250 £49,250 £46,306
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £53,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £71,991 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.77% +10.76% -3.70%
75th Percentile £85,000 £93,778 £77,500
90th Percentile £88,950 £98,095 £84,984
England median annual salary £75,000 £80,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year -6.25% +6.67% -3.23%

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 395 443 530
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 5.38% 9.73% 7.94%
Number of salaries quoted 297 270 481
10th Percentile £28,650 £36,250 £30,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £46,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -
75th Percentile £72,500 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £93,778 £84,000
England median annual salary £62,500 £70,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.71% +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 17 February 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 17 February 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 -24 77 £67,500 -6.90% 66
Cheshire -8 15 £72,500 -2.68% 9
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 -
Merseyside -16 3 £77,500 +3.33% 2
Lancashire -13 2 £85,000 +48.21% 21
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 (4.72%) Apache
1 5 (4.72%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (4.72%) OpenStack
2 4 (3.77%) Apache Spark
3 3 (2.83%) nginx
4 1 (0.94%) IIS
4 1 (0.94%) JBoss
4 1 (0.94%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.94%) WebSphere
Cloud Services
1 72 (67.92%) AWS
2 53 (50.00%) Azure
3 32 (30.19%) GCP
4 17 (16.04%) Azure AKS
5 14 (13.21%) AWS CloudFormation
5 14 (13.21%) Serverless
6 13 (12.26%) GitHub
7 12 (11.32%) Amazon EKS
7 12 (11.32%) OpenShift
8 10 (9.43%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (7.55%) Amazon EC2
10 7 (6.60%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (5.66%) Amazon S3
12 5 (4.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (4.72%) Entra ID
12 5 (4.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 4 (3.77%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (3.77%) Amazon SQS
13 4 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (3.77%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (6.60%) Firewall
1 7 (6.60%) Internet
2 5 (4.72%) DNS
3 4 (3.77%) AMQP
4 3 (2.83%) DHCP
5 2 (1.89%) HTTP
5 2 (1.89%) SSL
5 2 (1.89%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.89%) VPN
6 1 (0.94%) Network Security
6 1 (0.94%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.94%) VLAN
6 1 (0.94%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (21.70%) NoSQL
2 21 (19.81%) MongoDB
3 20 (18.87%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (7.55%) MySQL
5 7 (6.60%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (4.72%) Relational Database
6 5 (4.72%) SQL Server
7 4 (3.77%) Big Data
7 4 (3.77%) Cloudera CDH
7 4 (3.77%) Hadoop
7 4 (3.77%) Neo4j
8 3 (2.83%) DynamoDB
9 2 (1.89%) PostHog
9 2 (1.89%) Redis
10 1 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.94%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.94%) DB2
Development Applications
1 19 (17.92%) Git
2 13 (12.26%) Jenkins
3 12 (11.32%) GitLab
4 3 (2.83%) Bitbucket
4 3 (2.83%) Cypress.io
5 2 (1.89%) CircleCI
5 2 (1.89%) SonarQube
5 2 (1.89%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.94%) Ant
6 1 (0.94%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.94%) Cucumber
6 1 (0.94%) git-flow
6 1 (0.94%) JIRA
6 1 (0.94%) JMeter
6 1 (0.94%) Locust
6 1 (0.94%) Maven
6 1 (0.94%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.94%) TeamCity
General
1 19 (17.92%) Social Skills
2 4 (3.77%) Aerospace
2 4 (3.77%) Banking
2 4 (3.77%) Finance
3 3 (2.83%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (2.83%) Public Sector
4 2 (1.89%) Retail
5 1 (0.94%) Electronics
5 1 (0.94%) Investment Banking
5 1 (0.94%) Manufacturing
5 1 (0.94%) Marketing
5 1 (0.94%) Tech for Good
5 1 (0.94%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 30 (28.30%) Software Engineer
2 29 (27.36%) Senior
3 16 (15.09%) DevOps Engineer
4 15 (14.15%) Developer
5 12 (11.32%) Lead
6 11 (10.38%) Senior Software Engineer
7 10 (9.43%) Java Developer
8 9 (8.49%) Cloud Engineer
9 8 (7.55%) Senior Developer
10 7 (6.60%) .NET Software Engineer
10 7 (6.60%) Platform Engineer
10 7 (6.60%) Python Engineer
11 6 (5.66%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (5.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 6 (5.66%) Senior .NET Software Engineer
11 6 (5.66%) Senior Java Developer
12 5 (4.72%) AWS DevOps
12 5 (4.72%) AWS Engineer
12 5 (4.72%) Lead Software Engineer
12 5 (4.72%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (20.75%) React
2 21 (19.81%) .NET
3 18 (16.98%) RESTful
4 17 (16.04%) Spring
4 17 (16.04%) Spring Boot
5 12 (11.32%) .NET Framework
6 11 (10.38%) AngularJS
6 11 (10.38%) RabbitMQ
7 8 (7.55%) Node.js
8 7 (6.60%) Django
8 7 (6.60%) FastAPI
9 6 (5.66%) Hibernate
9 6 (5.66%) Vue
10 5 (4.72%) Celery
10 5 (4.72%) Flask
10 5 (4.72%) REST
11 4 (3.77%) .NET Core
11 4 (3.77%) gRPC
11 4 (3.77%) Swagger
11 4 (3.77%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 37 (34.91%) Cloud Native
2 17 (16.04%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (6.60%) Distributed Computing
4 3 (2.83%) Cyber Threat
4 3 (2.83%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (2.83%) Public Cloud
5 2 (1.89%) Driving Licence
5 2 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.89%) Mobile App
5 2 (1.89%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.94%) Cybercrime
6 1 (0.94%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.94%) Management Information System
6 1 (0.94%) NVMe
6 1 (0.94%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 29 (27.36%) Linux
2 8 (7.55%) Debian
2 8 (7.55%) Ubuntu
3 7 (6.60%) Windows
4 6 (5.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (4.72%) CentOS
6 3 (2.83%) VMS
7 1 (0.94%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (73.58%) CI/CD
2 65 (61.32%) Containerisation
3 64 (60.38%) DevOps
4 45 (42.45%) Agile
4 45 (42.45%) Infrastructure as Code
5 39 (36.79%) Microservices
6 37 (34.91%) Software Engineering
7 25 (23.58%) TDD
8 23 (21.70%) Clean Code
8 23 (21.70%) Problem-Solving
9 18 (16.98%) Observability
10 17 (16.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 16 (15.09%) Platform Engineering
12 15 (14.15%) Continuous Improvement
12 15 (14.15%) Mentoring
12 15 (14.15%) Open Source
12 15 (14.15%) Scrum
13 12 (11.32%) High Availability
13 12 (11.32%) Performance Tuning
14 11 (10.38%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 42 (39.62%) Python
2 32 (30.19%) Java
3 26 (24.53%) SQL
4 22 (20.75%) TypeScript
5 18 (16.98%) C#
6 15 (14.15%) Go
6 15 (14.15%) JavaScript
7 11 (10.38%) C
8 5 (4.72%) Bash
9 4 (3.77%) PowerShell
10 2 (1.89%) Bicep
11 1 (0.94%) Groovy
11 1 (0.94%) PHP
11 1 (0.94%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 13 (12.26%) Security Cleared
2 10 (9.43%) DV Cleared
3 7 (6.60%) SC Cleared
4 5 (4.72%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (4.72%) Degree
5 3 (2.83%) Azure Certification
6 1 (0.94%) CISM
6 1 (0.94%) CISSP
6 1 (0.94%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (6.60%) QA
2 2 (1.89%) GDPR
3 1 (0.94%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.94%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.94%) NIST
3 1 (0.94%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.94%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (58.49%) Docker
2 5 (4.72%) Active Directory
2 5 (4.72%) vSphere
3 4 (3.77%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (3.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (3.77%) VMware NSX
4 3 (2.83%) KVM
4 3 (2.83%) QEMU
5 1 (0.94%) Firmware
5 1 (0.94%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 51 (48.11%) Terraform
2 34 (32.08%) Ansible
3 11 (10.38%) Grafana
4 8 (7.55%) Prometheus
5 7 (6.60%) Puppet
6 4 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (3.77%) Progress Chef
7 3 (2.83%) Rancher
8 2 (1.89%) Argo
8 2 (1.89%) Nagios
8 2 (1.89%) Packer
9 1 (0.94%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.94%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.94%) Podman
Vendors
1 9 (8.49%) Google
2 7 (6.60%) Microsoft
2 7 (6.60%) SaltStack
2 7 (6.60%) VMware
3 5 (4.72%) Red Hat
4 3 (2.83%) AppDynamics
4 3 (2.83%) Splunk
5 2 (1.89%) Oracle
6 1 (0.94%) Cribl.io
6 1 (0.94%) Databricks
6 1 (0.94%) Dell
6 1 (0.94%) F5
6 1 (0.94%) Fortinet
6 1 (0.94%) Palo Alto
6 1 (0.94%) Pega
6 1 (0.94%) SAP
6 1 (0.94%) WSO2