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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 76 74
Rank change year-on-year -11 -2 -51
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 218 226 213
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 1.69% 4.38% 2.79%
As % of the Systems Management category 43.69% 22.11% 42.18%
Number of salaries quoted 164 71 79
10th Percentile £47,500 £51,250 £42,500
25th Percentile £57,188 £57,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £67,500 £63,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% +7.14% -16.00%
75th Percentile £88,750 £80,625 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £89,000 £87,600
England median annual salary £71,500 £77,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year -7.74% - +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 499 1,022 505
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 3.87% 19.79% 6.62%
Number of salaries quoted 361 204 238
10th Percentile £32,500 £26,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £38,750 £33,125 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £48,720 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +23.15% -2.56% -23.08%
75th Percentile £77,500 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £92,500 £82,125 £77,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £62,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year -4.00% -3.85% -

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 -10 182 £75,000 +11.11% 176
Lancashire -1 14 £51,065 -15.60% 20
Merseyside -13 13 £95,000 +46.15% 8
Cheshire -56 8 £62,500 -9.09% 16
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 4 (1.83%) Apache Spark
1 4 (1.83%) OpenStack
2 3 (1.38%) Apache
3 1 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.46%) Confluence
3 1 (0.46%) IIS
Applications
1 1 (0.46%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 140 (64.22%) AWS
2 76 (34.86%) Azure
3 48 (22.02%) GitHub
4 44 (20.18%) GCP
5 39 (17.89%) Serverless
6 31 (14.22%) AWS CloudFormation
7 21 (9.63%) GitHub Actions
7 21 (9.63%) OpenShift
8 19 (8.72%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (6.42%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (6.42%) Datadog
10 13 (5.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (5.50%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (5.50%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 12 (5.50%) SaaS
12 11 (5.05%) Azure AKS
12 11 (5.05%) GitHub Copilot
13 10 (4.59%) Amazon SQS
14 8 (3.67%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (3.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.83%) Firewall
2 3 (1.38%) AMQP
2 3 (1.38%) Network Security
2 3 (1.38%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (0.92%) DNS
4 1 (0.46%) DHCP
4 1 (0.46%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (12.84%) MongoDB
2 19 (8.72%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (4.13%) Amazon RDS
3 9 (4.13%) NoSQL
4 8 (3.67%) DynamoDB
5 6 (2.75%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (2.29%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (2.29%) Neo4j
7 4 (1.83%) Big Data
8 3 (1.38%) Chroma
8 3 (1.38%) Cloudera CDH
8 3 (1.38%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.38%) Pinecone
8 3 (1.38%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.92%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (0.92%) Redis
9 2 (0.92%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.46%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.46%) Electronic Patient Records
Development Applications
1 33 (15.14%) Git
2 30 (13.76%) Jenkins
3 28 (12.84%) GitLab
4 9 (4.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 5 (2.29%) Cypress.io
5 5 (2.29%) JIRA
6 4 (1.83%) Bitbucket
6 4 (1.83%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.83%) Robot Framework
6 4 (1.83%) Vagrant
6 4 (1.83%) Vite
7 3 (1.38%) Artifactory
7 3 (1.38%) Postman
7 3 (1.38%) Selenium
8 2 (0.92%) Mocha
9 1 (0.46%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.46%) Gemini Tracker
9 1 (0.46%) Maven
9 1 (0.46%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 32 (14.68%) Social Skills
2 17 (7.80%) Public Sector
3 12 (5.50%) Publishing
4 10 (4.59%) Finance
5 7 (3.21%) Advertising
6 6 (2.75%) Aerospace
7 5 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.83%) Analytical Skills
9 2 (0.92%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.92%) Retail
10 1 (0.46%) Front Office
10 1 (0.46%) iGaming
Job Titles
1 66 (30.28%) DevOps Engineer
2 58 (26.61%) Senior
3 35 (16.06%) Developer
4 34 (15.60%) Software Engineer
5 31 (14.22%) Cloud Engineer
6 30 (13.76%) Lead
7 19 (8.72%) Principal Engineer
8 17 (7.80%) Platform Engineer
9 15 (6.88%) Senior Software Engineer
10 14 (6.42%) Architect
11 12 (5.50%) Cloud Native Engineer
11 12 (5.50%) Principal DevOps Engineer
12 11 (5.05%) Senior Developer
12 11 (5.05%) Senior DevOps
12 11 (5.05%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 10 (4.59%) Java Developer
13 10 (4.59%) Lead Developer
14 9 (4.13%) Cloud Architect
14 9 (4.13%) Lead DevOps
14 9 (4.13%) Lead DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (58.72%) Terraform
2 59 (27.06%) Spring
3 55 (25.23%) Spring Boot
4 46 (21.10%) React
5 33 (15.14%) Kafka
6 24 (11.01%) Node.js
7 17 (7.80%) AngularJS
8 16 (7.34%) .NET
9 14 (6.42%) RESTful
9 14 (6.42%) Vue
10 12 (5.50%) FastAPI
10 12 (5.50%) REST
11 10 (4.59%) RabbitMQ
12 9 (4.13%) OpenTelemetry
13 8 (3.67%) LangChain
14 7 (3.21%) CSS
14 7 (3.21%) Django
14 7 (3.21%) OpenAPI
14 7 (3.21%) Swagger
15 6 (2.75%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 75 (34.40%) Cloud Native
2 22 (10.09%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (5.50%) Media Streaming
3 12 (5.50%) Podcast
4 10 (4.59%) Greenfield Project
5 7 (3.21%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (2.29%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.83%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.38%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (1.38%) Life Science
8 3 (1.38%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.38%) Social Media
9 2 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.92%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.92%) Renewable Energy
10 1 (0.46%) Culture of Ownership
10 1 (0.46%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.46%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (0.46%) Management Information System
10 1 (0.46%) Online Gambling
Operating Systems
1 35 (16.06%) Linux
2 11 (5.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 8 (3.67%) CentOS
4 5 (2.29%) Windows
5 4 (1.83%) Ubuntu
6 3 (1.38%) Debian
7 2 (0.92%) Unix
8 1 (0.46%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (72.02%) CI/CD
2 143 (65.60%) DevOps
3 111 (50.92%) Infrastructure as Code
4 104 (47.71%) Containerisation
5 85 (38.99%) Agile
6 62 (28.44%) AI
7 60 (27.52%) Observability
8 59 (27.06%) Software Engineering
9 58 (26.61%) Mentoring
10 55 (25.23%) Microservices
10 55 (25.23%) Platform Engineering
11 48 (22.02%) Continuous Improvement
12 47 (21.56%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 40 (18.35%) Problem-Solving
14 36 (16.51%) Event-Driven
15 25 (11.47%) Scrum
16 24 (11.01%) Cloud Security
16 24 (11.01%) TDD
17 23 (10.55%) Code Quality
18 21 (9.63%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 91 (41.74%) Python
2 76 (34.86%) Java
3 44 (20.18%) TypeScript
4 38 (17.43%) Bash
5 28 (12.84%) JavaScript
6 23 (10.55%) PowerShell
7 21 (9.63%) SQL
8 17 (7.80%) Go
9 16 (7.34%) C#
10 11 (5.05%) Bicep
11 5 (2.29%) Rust
12 4 (1.83%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.83%) Scala
13 3 (1.38%) C++
14 2 (0.92%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.46%) C
15 1 (0.46%) Objective-C
15 1 (0.46%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.46%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 72 (33.03%) Security Cleared
2 46 (21.10%) DV Cleared
3 36 (16.51%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.67%) Azure Certification
5 7 (3.21%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.75%) Degree
7 4 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.38%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.38%) QA
2 3 (1.38%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.46%) Accessibility
System Software
1 134 (61.47%) Docker
2 5 (2.29%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (1.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.38%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.38%) Ceph
5 2 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.92%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 64 (29.36%) Ansible
2 21 (9.63%) Prometheus
3 20 (9.17%) Grafana
4 13 (5.96%) Argo
5 12 (5.50%) Istio
6 11 (5.05%) Progress Chef
6 11 (5.05%) Puppet
7 8 (3.67%) linkerd
8 4 (1.83%) Packer
9 3 (1.38%) Check_MK
9 3 (1.38%) Podman
9 3 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.92%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 18 (8.26%) Google
2 17 (7.80%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.21%) HubSpot
4 6 (2.75%) OpenAI
4 6 (2.75%) Red Hat
5 5 (2.29%) VMware
6 4 (1.83%) Mistral
7 3 (1.38%) Dell
7 3 (1.38%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.38%) SaltStack
7 3 (1.38%) Splunk
7 3 (1.38%) YouTube
8 2 (0.92%) Databricks
9 1 (0.46%) New Relic
9 1 (0.46%) Oracle
9 1 (0.46%) Pega
9 1 (0.46%) Percona
9 1 (0.46%) WSO2