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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 73 78
Rank change year-on-year -21 +5 -34
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 106 141 219
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.37% 3.39% 3.02%
As % of the Systems Management category 26.17% 34.90% 40.41%
Number of salaries quoted 83 103 197
10th Percentile £56,500 £47,500 £47,500
25th Percentile £60,625 £53,125 £53,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £72,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% +11.54% -2.67%
75th Percentile £85,000 £93,778 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,284 £85,000
England median annual salary £75,000 £82,865 £75,000
% change year-on-year -9.49% +10.49% -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 405 404 542
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 5.22% 9.71% 7.48%
Number of salaries quoted 303 270 485
10th Percentile £28,500 £36,250 £29,100
25th Percentile £37,500 £46,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £51,500 £62,205 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -17.21% +8.18% -
75th Percentile £72,500 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £85,800 £93,778 £82,548
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 3 March 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 3 March 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 -23 78 £70,000 -3.45% 59
Cheshire -19 14 £71,250 -8.06% 19
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 - 2
Merseyside -11 3 £77,500 +3.33% 10
Lancashire -15 2 £85,000 +79.64% 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 5 (4.72%) Apache
1 5 (4.72%) OpenStack
2 4 (3.77%) Apache Spark
2 4 (3.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (2.83%) nginx
4 1 (0.94%) JBoss
4 1 (0.94%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.94%) WebSphere
Cloud Services
1 70 (66.04%) AWS
2 51 (48.11%) Azure
3 32 (30.19%) GCP
4 19 (17.92%) Azure AKS
5 17 (16.04%) Serverless
6 14 (13.21%) GitHub
7 13 (12.26%) AWS CloudFormation
8 12 (11.32%) Amazon EKS
8 12 (11.32%) OpenShift
9 11 (10.38%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (6.60%) Amazon EC2
10 7 (6.60%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (5.66%) Amazon S3
11 6 (5.66%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 5 (4.72%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (4.72%) Entra ID
13 4 (3.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 4 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (3.77%) Microsoft 365
13 4 (3.77%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (6.60%) Firewall
1 7 (6.60%) Internet
2 4 (3.77%) AMQP
2 4 (3.77%) DNS
3 3 (2.83%) DHCP
4 2 (1.89%) HTTP
4 2 (1.89%) SSL
4 2 (1.89%) TCP/IP
4 2 (1.89%) VPN
5 1 (0.94%) Network Security
5 1 (0.94%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.94%) VLAN
5 1 (0.94%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (23.58%) NoSQL
2 22 (20.75%) MongoDB
3 21 (19.81%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (7.55%) MySQL
5 7 (6.60%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (4.72%) Relational Database
7 4 (3.77%) Big Data
7 4 (3.77%) Cloudera CDH
7 4 (3.77%) Hadoop
7 4 (3.77%) Neo4j
7 4 (3.77%) SQL Server
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 11 (10.38%) GitLab
4 3 (2.83%) Bitbucket
4 3 (2.83%) Cypress.io
5 2 (1.89%) SonarQube
5 2 (1.89%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.94%) Ant
6 1 (0.94%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.94%) CircleCI
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 18 (16.98%) Social Skills
2 4 (3.77%) Aerospace
2 4 (3.77%) Banking
2 4 (3.77%) Finance
3 3 (2.83%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (1.89%) 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 33 (31.13%) Software Engineer
2 32 (30.19%) Senior
3 15 (14.15%) Developer
3 15 (14.15%) DevOps Engineer
3 15 (14.15%) Lead
4 11 (10.38%) Java Developer
4 11 (10.38%) Senior Software Engineer
5 9 (8.49%) .NET Software Engineer
5 9 (8.49%) Cloud Engineer
5 9 (8.49%) Senior Developer
6 8 (7.55%) Lead Software Engineer
6 8 (7.55%) Python Engineer
7 7 (6.60%) Senior Java Developer
8 6 (5.66%) Azure Engineer
8 6 (5.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 6 (5.66%) Platform Engineer
8 6 (5.66%) Senior .NET Software Engineer
9 5 (4.72%) AWS DevOps
9 5 (4.72%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 5 (4.72%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (21.70%) .NET
2 21 (19.81%) React
3 20 (18.87%) RESTful
4 19 (17.92%) Spring
4 19 (17.92%) Spring Boot
5 14 (13.21%) .NET Framework
6 11 (10.38%) AngularJS
7 10 (9.43%) RabbitMQ
8 8 (7.55%) Django
8 8 (7.55%) FastAPI
8 8 (7.55%) Node.js
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%) gRPC
11 4 (3.77%) Material-UI
11 4 (3.77%) Swagger
11 4 (3.77%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 40 (37.74%) Cloud Native
2 17 (16.04%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (6.60%) Distributed Computing
4 4 (3.77%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.83%) Cyber Threat
5 3 (2.83%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.89%) Driving Licence
6 2 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.89%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.89%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.94%) Cybercrime
7 1 (0.94%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.94%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.94%) NVMe
7 1 (0.94%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 28 (26.42%) Linux
2 7 (6.60%) Debian
2 7 (6.60%) Ubuntu
3 6 (5.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (5.66%) Windows
4 5 (4.72%) CentOS
5 3 (2.83%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (74.53%) CI/CD
2 65 (61.32%) DevOps
3 63 (59.43%) Containerisation
4 47 (44.34%) Agile
4 47 (44.34%) Infrastructure as Code
5 39 (36.79%) Microservices
5 39 (36.79%) Software Engineering
6 28 (26.42%) TDD
7 25 (23.58%) Clean Code
8 22 (20.75%) Problem-Solving
9 18 (16.98%) Scrum
10 17 (16.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 17 (16.04%) Mentoring
10 17 (16.04%) Observability
11 16 (15.09%) Continuous Improvement
12 15 (14.15%) Platform Engineering
13 14 (13.21%) High Availability
13 14 (13.21%) Open Source
13 14 (13.21%) Performance Tuning
14 12 (11.32%) Software Architecture
Programming Languages
1 42 (39.62%) Python
2 34 (32.08%) Java
3 28 (26.42%) SQL
4 21 (19.81%) TypeScript
5 20 (18.87%) C#
6 15 (14.15%) Go
6 15 (14.15%) JavaScript
7 11 (10.38%) C
8 4 (3.77%) Bash
8 4 (3.77%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.89%) Bicep
10 1 (0.94%) Groovy
10 1 (0.94%) PHP
10 1 (0.94%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 12 (11.32%) Security Cleared
2 10 (9.43%) DV Cleared
3 6 (5.66%) 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 5 (4.72%) QA
2 1 (0.94%) Accessibility
2 1 (0.94%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (0.94%) NIST
2 1 (0.94%) PCI DSS
2 1 (0.94%) WCAG
System Software
1 59 (55.66%) Docker
2 5 (4.72%) vSphere
3 4 (3.77%) Active Directory
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 49 (46.23%) Terraform
2 31 (29.25%) Ansible
3 9 (8.49%) Grafana
4 5 (4.72%) Prometheus
4 5 (4.72%) Puppet
5 4 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (2.83%) Rancher
7 2 (1.89%) Argo
7 2 (1.89%) Nagios
7 2 (1.89%) Packer
7 2 (1.89%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.94%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.94%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.94%) Podman
Vendors
1 10 (9.43%) Google
2 7 (6.60%) SaltStack
2 7 (6.60%) VMware
3 6 (5.66%) Microsoft
4 5 (4.72%) Red Hat
5 3 (2.83%) AppDynamics
6 2 (1.89%) Oracle
6 2 (1.89%) Splunk
7 1 (0.94%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.94%) Databricks
7 1 (0.94%) Dell
7 1 (0.94%) F5
7 1 (0.94%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.94%) Palo Alto
7 1 (0.94%) Pega
7 1 (0.94%) SAP
7 1 (0.94%) WSO2