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

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 70 82
Rank change year-on-year -43 +12 -26
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 139 256 256
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.25% 5.54% 2.57%
As % of the Systems Management category 27.20% 23.34% 38.96%
Number of salaries quoted 117 107 170
10th Percentile £51,250 £48,250 £46,125
25th Percentile £60,000 £61,450 £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 £75,938
90th Percentile £95,500 £112,500 £85,000
England median annual salary £74,750 £82,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -9.39% +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 511 1,097 657
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.58% 23.74% 6.60%
Number of salaries quoted 397 270 516
10th Percentile £30,500 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,720
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £67,269 £57,004
Median % change year-on-year -10.81% +18.01% -4.99%
75th Percentile £78,000 £78,750 £70,125
90th Percentile £88,750 £93,778 £80,000
England median annual salary £65,000 £68,942 £62,500
% change year-on-year -5.72% +10.31% -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 31 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 31 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 -33 111 £70,000 -11.18% 61
Merseyside -15 10 £95,000 - 3
Cumbria - 7 £85,000 -
Lancashire 0 5 £57,500 +12.05% 22
Cheshire -55 5 £62,500 -16.11% 3
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 (2.16%) Apache
1 3 (2.16%) Apache Spark
1 3 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.44%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.72%) nginx
3 1 (0.72%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.72%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 93 (66.91%) AWS
2 60 (43.17%) Azure
3 32 (23.02%) Serverless
4 31 (22.30%) GCP
5 28 (20.14%) GitHub
6 24 (17.27%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (13.67%) Azure AKS
8 18 (12.95%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (10.79%) Amazon ECS
10 14 (10.07%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (10.07%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (9.35%) Datadog
12 9 (6.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (6.47%) Amazon SQS
12 9 (6.47%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 8 (5.76%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (5.76%) OpenShift
14 7 (5.04%) Amazon EventBridge
14 7 (5.04%) Entra ID
15 6 (4.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (5.04%) Internet
2 5 (3.60%) Firewall
3 3 (2.16%) AMQP
3 3 (2.16%) DNS
3 3 (2.16%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.72%) DHCP
4 1 (0.72%) Network Security
4 1 (0.72%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.72%) VLAN
4 1 (0.72%) VPN
4 1 (0.72%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (17.99%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (17.27%) MongoDB
3 17 (12.23%) NoSQL
4 9 (6.47%) DynamoDB
5 8 (5.76%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (4.32%) Relational Database
7 5 (3.60%) SQL Server
8 4 (2.88%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (2.16%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (2.16%) Big Data
9 3 (2.16%) Cloudera CDH
9 3 (2.16%) Hadoop
10 2 (1.44%) BigQuery
10 2 (1.44%) MySQL
10 2 (1.44%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.72%) DB2
11 1 (0.72%) PostHog
11 1 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 21 (15.11%) Git
2 18 (12.95%) Jenkins
3 17 (12.23%) GitLab
4 4 (2.88%) Bitbucket
5 3 (2.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (1.44%) JIRA
6 2 (1.44%) Vagrant
6 2 (1.44%) Vite
7 1 (0.72%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.72%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.72%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.72%) JUnit
7 1 (0.72%) Postman
7 1 (0.72%) Selenium
General
1 14 (10.07%) Social Skills
2 7 (5.04%) Finance
3 6 (4.32%) Public Sector
4 4 (2.88%) Aerospace
5 3 (2.16%) Advertising
5 3 (2.16%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (1.44%) Retail
7 1 (0.72%) Banking
7 1 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.72%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 47 (33.81%) Senior
2 29 (20.86%) Software Engineer
3 26 (18.71%) DevOps Engineer
4 25 (17.99%) Developer
5 21 (15.11%) Cloud Engineer
6 20 (14.39%) Lead
7 12 (8.63%) Java Developer
7 12 (8.63%) Platform Engineer
8 10 (7.19%) Senior Developer
9 9 (6.47%) Senior Java Developer
10 8 (5.76%) .NET Software Engineer
10 8 (5.76%) Lead Developer
10 8 (5.76%) Senior Software Engineer
11 7 (5.04%) Architect
11 7 (5.04%) Integration Developer
11 7 (5.04%) Integration Engineer
11 7 (5.04%) Lead Software Engineer
11 7 (5.04%) Senior DevOps
11 7 (5.04%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 7 (5.04%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (19.42%) Spring
2 25 (17.99%) Spring Boot
3 20 (14.39%) RESTful
4 19 (13.67%) Node.js
4 19 (13.67%) React
5 18 (12.95%) .NET
6 11 (7.91%) FastAPI
7 10 (7.19%) Kafka
8 9 (6.47%) .NET Framework
8 9 (6.47%) AngularJS
8 9 (6.47%) Django
8 9 (6.47%) Vue
9 7 (5.04%) OpenTelemetry
9 7 (5.04%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (4.32%) JWT
10 6 (4.32%) OAuth
10 6 (4.32%) REST
11 4 (2.88%) ARM Templates
11 4 (2.88%) LangChain
11 4 (2.88%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 43 (30.94%) Cloud Native
2 22 (15.83%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (5.04%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (2.88%) AI Agents
4 4 (2.88%) Enterprise Cloud
5 3 (2.16%) Public Cloud
6 2 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.44%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.44%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.72%) Culture of Ownership
7 1 (0.72%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.72%) Distributed Computing
7 1 (0.72%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 26 (18.71%) Linux
2 6 (4.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (3.60%) Debian
3 5 (3.60%) Ubuntu
4 4 (2.88%) CentOS
4 4 (2.88%) Windows
5 1 (0.72%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (72.66%) CI/CD
2 87 (62.59%) DevOps
3 83 (59.71%) Infrastructure as Code
4 70 (50.36%) Containerisation
5 52 (37.41%) Agile
6 37 (26.62%) Microservices
7 36 (25.90%) Platform Engineering
7 36 (25.90%) Software Engineering
8 32 (23.02%) AI
9 31 (22.30%) Mentoring
10 30 (21.58%) Observability
11 27 (19.42%) Continuous Improvement
12 26 (18.71%) Scrum
12 26 (18.71%) TDD
13 25 (17.99%) Clean Code
14 24 (17.27%) Problem-Solving
15 19 (13.67%) Collaborative Culture
15 19 (13.67%) Event-Driven
16 15 (10.79%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 13 (9.35%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 57 (41.01%) Python
2 34 (24.46%) Java
3 29 (20.86%) TypeScript
4 22 (15.83%) SQL
5 17 (12.23%) C#
6 15 (10.79%) Go
7 14 (10.07%) JavaScript
8 13 (9.35%) Bash
9 12 (8.63%) PowerShell
10 9 (6.47%) C
11 3 (2.16%) Bicep
12 1 (0.72%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.72%) Scala
Qualifications
1 27 (19.42%) Security Cleared
2 17 (12.23%) SC Cleared
3 13 (9.35%) DV Cleared
4 6 (4.32%) Azure Certification
5 4 (2.88%) Degree
6 3 (2.16%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.72%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (1.44%) QA
2 1 (0.72%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (0.72%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 77 (55.40%) Docker
2 6 (4.32%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.16%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.16%) VMware NSX
4 3 (2.16%) vSphere
5 1 (0.72%) Firmware
5 1 (0.72%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 84 (60.43%) Terraform
2 37 (26.62%) Ansible
3 11 (7.91%) Grafana
4 9 (6.47%) Prometheus
5 4 (2.88%) Argo
5 4 (2.88%) Istio
5 4 (2.88%) Puppet
6 3 (2.16%) linkerd
6 3 (2.16%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (2.16%) Progress Chef
7 2 (1.44%) Packer
7 2 (1.44%) Rancher
8 1 (0.72%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 10 (7.19%) Google
2 8 (5.76%) Microsoft
3 7 (5.04%) HubSpot
4 6 (4.32%) VMware
5 3 (2.16%) OpenAI
5 3 (2.16%) Red Hat
5 3 (2.16%) SaltStack
6 2 (1.44%) Databricks
6 2 (1.44%) Pega
6 2 (1.44%) WSO2
7 1 (0.72%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.72%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.72%) Oracle
7 1 (0.72%) Splunk