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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 69 71
Rank change year-on-year -16 +2 -43
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 224 219 211
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.74% 4.56% 2.94%
As % of the Systems Management category 40.95% 30.46% 42.20%
Number of salaries quoted 169 69 83
10th Percentile £45,000 £52,250 £42,500
25th Percentile £57,500 £57,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.77% +8.33% -17.24%
75th Percentile £88,148 £80,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,500 £87,800 £85,000
England median annual salary £70,466 £77,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -9.08% - +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 547 719 500
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 4.24% 14.99% 6.97%
Number of salaries quoted 402 207 235
10th Percentile £33,200 £26,250 £32,000
25th Percentile £42,500 £34,500 £40,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,720 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.89% -2.56% -20.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £81,750 £77,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £66,000
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +1.54%

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 16 October 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 16 October 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 -12 185 £75,000 +11.11% 36
Lancashire -2 15 £52,130 -13.83% 6
Cheshire -47 12 £71,250 +5.56% 5
Merseyside -17 10 £77,500 +19.23% 9
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 6 (2.68%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.23%) Apache
3 4 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.34%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.89%) Confluence
6 1 (0.45%) IIS
Cloud Services
1 142 (63.39%) AWS
2 70 (31.25%) Azure
3 50 (22.32%) GitHub
4 43 (19.20%) GCP
5 35 (15.63%) Serverless
6 28 (12.50%) AWS CloudFormation
7 21 (9.38%) OpenShift
8 18 (8.04%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (7.59%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (5.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 12 (5.36%) GitHub Copilot
10 12 (5.36%) SaaS
11 11 (4.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 9 (4.02%) Amazon ECS
12 9 (4.02%) Azure AKS
13 8 (3.57%) Amazon S3
14 7 (3.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 6 (2.68%) Amazon SQS
15 6 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
15 6 (2.68%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.79%) Firewall
2 3 (1.34%) AMQP
2 3 (1.34%) DNS
2 3 (1.34%) Network Security
2 3 (1.34%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.45%) DHCP
3 1 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (12.95%) MongoDB
2 20 (8.93%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (4.91%) NoSQL
4 9 (4.02%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (2.68%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (2.23%) Chroma
6 5 (2.23%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (2.23%) Neo4j
6 5 (2.23%) Pinecone
7 4 (1.79%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.34%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (1.34%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (1.34%) Big Data
8 3 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.34%) Power BI
8 3 (1.34%) Power Query
8 3 (1.34%) Redis
8 3 (1.34%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.89%) Cloudera CDH
9 2 (0.89%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 39 (17.41%) Git
2 36 (16.07%) GitLab
3 32 (14.29%) Jenkins
4 10 (4.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 5 (2.23%) Cypress.io
5 5 (2.23%) JIRA
6 4 (1.79%) Artifactory
6 4 (1.79%) Bitbucket
6 4 (1.79%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.79%) Robot Framework
6 4 (1.79%) Vagrant
6 4 (1.79%) Vite
7 3 (1.34%) Postman
7 3 (1.34%) Selenium
8 2 (0.89%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.89%) Mocha
9 1 (0.45%) Gemini Tracker
9 1 (0.45%) Maven
9 1 (0.45%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 39 (17.41%) Social Skills
2 19 (8.48%) Public Sector
3 12 (5.36%) Finance
3 12 (5.36%) Publishing
4 8 (3.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 6 (2.68%) Advertising
6 4 (1.79%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.79%) Analytical Skills
7 2 (0.89%) Manufacturing
7 2 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.45%) Front Office
8 1 (0.45%) iGaming
Job Titles
1 76 (33.93%) DevOps Engineer
2 59 (26.34%) Senior
3 35 (15.63%) Developer
4 31 (13.84%) Lead
4 31 (13.84%) Software Engineer
5 26 (11.61%) Cloud Engineer
6 20 (8.93%) Principal Engineer
7 19 (8.48%) Platform Engineer
8 15 (6.70%) Senior Software Engineer
9 14 (6.25%) Architect
9 14 (6.25%) Lead DevOps
9 14 (6.25%) Lead DevOps Engineer
9 14 (6.25%) Principal DevOps Engineer
10 13 (5.80%) Cloud Native Engineer
10 13 (5.80%) Senior DevOps
10 13 (5.80%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 12 (5.36%) AWS Engineer
11 12 (5.36%) Senior Developer
12 11 (4.91%) Java Developer
13 9 (4.02%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (58.04%) Terraform
2 64 (28.57%) Spring
3 61 (27.23%) Spring Boot
4 48 (21.43%) React
5 34 (15.18%) Kafka
6 21 (9.38%) Node.js
7 16 (7.14%) .NET
8 15 (6.70%) AngularJS
8 15 (6.70%) REST
9 14 (6.25%) RESTful
10 13 (5.80%) Vue
11 11 (4.91%) FastAPI
12 10 (4.46%) LangChain
13 9 (4.02%) CSS
13 9 (4.02%) RabbitMQ
14 8 (3.57%) HTML
15 7 (3.13%) CrewAI
15 7 (3.13%) LangGraph
16 6 (2.68%) ML.NET
16 6 (2.68%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 72 (32.14%) Cloud Native
2 15 (6.70%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (5.36%) Media Streaming
3 12 (5.36%) Podcast
4 10 (4.46%) Greenfield Project
5 6 (2.68%) AI Agents
6 4 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (1.79%) Security Posture
7 3 (1.34%) Cloud Security Posture
7 3 (1.34%) Life Science
7 3 (1.34%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.34%) Social Media
8 2 (0.89%) Cyber Defence
8 2 (0.89%) Cyber Threat
8 2 (0.89%) Data Centre
8 2 (0.89%) Hackathon
8 2 (0.89%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.89%) Product Ownership
8 2 (0.89%) Renewable Energy
9 1 (0.45%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 36 (16.07%) Linux
2 9 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 8 (3.57%) CentOS
3 8 (3.57%) Windows
4 3 (1.34%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.89%) Debian
5 2 (0.89%) Unix
6 1 (0.45%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (72.32%) CI/CD
2 152 (67.86%) DevOps
3 112 (50.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 103 (45.98%) Containerisation
5 93 (41.52%) Agile
6 63 (28.13%) AI
7 62 (27.68%) Mentoring
8 61 (27.23%) Software Engineering
9 57 (25.45%) Platform Engineering
10 55 (24.55%) Microservices
11 51 (22.77%) Observability
12 50 (22.32%) Continuous Improvement
13 47 (20.98%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 42 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
15 33 (14.73%) Event-Driven
16 30 (13.39%) Technical Leadership
17 27 (12.05%) Cloud Security
18 26 (11.61%) Test Automation
19 25 (11.16%) Scrum
19 25 (11.16%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 93 (41.52%) Python
2 85 (37.95%) Java
3 43 (19.20%) TypeScript
4 40 (17.86%) Bash
5 29 (12.95%) JavaScript
6 27 (12.05%) SQL
7 21 (9.38%) PowerShell
8 19 (8.48%) Go
9 16 (7.14%) C#
10 9 (4.02%) Bicep
11 6 (2.68%) Kotlin
12 5 (2.23%) Rust
13 4 (1.79%) Scala
14 3 (1.34%) C++
14 3 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 2 (0.89%) Shell Script
16 1 (0.45%) C
16 1 (0.45%) Objective-C
16 1 (0.45%) PL/SQL
16 1 (0.45%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 82 (36.61%) Security Cleared
2 52 (23.21%) DV Cleared
3 41 (18.30%) SC Cleared
4 12 (5.36%) AWS Certification
5 7 (3.13%) Degree
6 6 (2.68%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.89%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.45%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 1 (0.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.45%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (1.79%) PCI DSS
2 4 (1.79%) QA
3 3 (1.34%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.34%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.45%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 138 (61.61%) Docker
2 6 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (1.79%) VMware ESXi
3 4 (1.79%) VMware NSX
4 3 (1.34%) Ceph
4 3 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.45%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 67 (29.91%) Ansible
2 17 (7.59%) Prometheus
3 16 (7.14%) Grafana
4 13 (5.80%) Argo
5 12 (5.36%) Puppet
6 11 (4.91%) Istio
6 11 (4.91%) Progress Chef
7 8 (3.57%) linkerd
8 4 (1.79%) Packer
8 4 (1.79%) vCenter Server
9 3 (1.34%) Check_MK
9 3 (1.34%) Podman
9 3 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.45%) Opsview
Vendors
1 19 (8.48%) Google
1 19 (8.48%) Microsoft
2 8 (3.57%) OpenAI
3 7 (3.13%) VMware
4 6 (2.68%) Mistral
5 5 (2.23%) Databricks
5 5 (2.23%) Red Hat
6 4 (1.79%) YouTube
7 3 (1.34%) Dell
7 3 (1.34%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.34%) HubSpot
7 3 (1.34%) Splunk
8 2 (0.89%) SaltStack
9 1 (0.45%) CrowdStrike
9 1 (0.45%) New Relic
9 1 (0.45%) Oracle
9 1 (0.45%) Percona