Kubernetes Job Trends in the South West

Kubernetes (k8s)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Kubernetes skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 49 25
Rank change year-on-year -14 -24 +19
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 133 178 380
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 2.61% 4.29% 8.05%
As % of the Systems Management category 43.32% 42.79% 44.50%
Number of salaries quoted 110 113 289
10th Percentile £42,500 £47,500 £45,000
25th Percentile £48,750 £57,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £70,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.71% +7.69% +6.56%
75th Percentile £79,813 £85,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £92,250 £91,934
England median annual salary £75,000 £80,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year -6.25% +6.67% -4.46%

All Systems Management Skills
South 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 South West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 307 416 854
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 6.02% 10.01% 18.09%
Number of salaries quoted 243 262 651
10th Percentile £31,250 £32,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £36,375 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +9.09% -
75th Percentile £72,500 £77,500 £72,433
90th Percentile £83,750 £87,500 £84,056
England median annual salary £62,500 £70,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -10.71% +7.69% -3.70%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Kubernetes relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in the South West

Kubernetes
Salary Trend in the South West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Kubernetes.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the South West over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Kubernetes in the South West

Kubernetes
Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes within the South West region over the 6 months to 15 January 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
Gloucestershire +3 40 £67,500 +3.85% 44
Bristol -28 29 £75,000 -3.23% 27
Somerset - 20 £45,000 - 21
Devon +8 14 £60,000 +4.35% 22
Dorset 0 10 £70,000 +27.27% 20
Wiltshire +5 4 £77,500 +37.78% 22
Cornwall - 3 - - 8
Kubernetes
England

Kubernetes
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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 (3.01%) Apache
1 4 (3.01%) IIS
2 2 (1.50%) Confluence
3 1 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.75%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.75%) Apache Superset
3 1 (0.75%) JBoss
3 1 (0.75%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 73 (54.89%) Azure
2 71 (53.38%) AWS
3 23 (17.29%) GitHub
4 21 (15.79%) GCP
5 20 (15.04%) Serverless
6 19 (14.29%) Amazon S3
6 19 (14.29%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (14.29%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (12.78%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (8.27%) OpenShift
9 10 (7.52%) Azure AKS
10 8 (6.02%) Amazon EC2
10 8 (6.02%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (3.76%) Microsoft 365
12 4 (3.01%) SaaS
13 3 (2.26%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (2.26%) Amazon SQS
13 3 (2.26%) Azure Stack
13 3 (2.26%) Datadog
13 3 (2.26%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 10 (7.52%) Firewall
2 7 (5.26%) VPN
3 5 (3.76%) AMQP
3 5 (3.76%) DNS
3 5 (3.76%) VLAN
4 4 (3.01%) Broadband
4 4 (3.01%) Cisco IOS
4 4 (3.01%) DHCP
4 4 (3.01%) IPsec
4 4 (3.01%) VoIP
4 4 (3.01%) Wireless
5 1 (0.75%) Internet
5 1 (0.75%) Network Security
5 1 (0.75%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (9.02%) Amazon RDS
2 10 (7.52%) NoSQL
3 9 (6.77%) SQL Server
4 7 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (5.26%) Relational Database
5 6 (4.51%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (4.51%) InfluxDB
5 6 (4.51%) Neo4j
6 3 (2.26%) CockroachDB
7 2 (1.50%) Big Data
7 2 (1.50%) Geospatial Data
7 2 (1.50%) MongoDB
7 2 (1.50%) MySQL
8 1 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.75%) DB2
8 1 (0.75%) GIS
8 1 (0.75%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.75%) Redis
8 1 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 27 (20.30%) Jenkins
2 11 (8.27%) GitLab
3 9 (6.77%) Git
4 5 (3.76%) Cypress.io
4 5 (3.76%) Subversion
5 4 (3.01%) Cucumber
5 4 (3.01%) JUnit
6 3 (2.26%) CircleCI
6 3 (2.26%) Gradle
6 3 (2.26%) Maven
6 3 (2.26%) Selenium
6 3 (2.26%) TeamCity
6 3 (2.26%) TestNG
7 2 (1.50%) Checkstyle
7 2 (1.50%) ESLint
7 2 (1.50%) JIRA
7 2 (1.50%) REST Assured
7 2 (1.50%) Robot Framework
7 2 (1.50%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.50%) TestRail
General
1 27 (20.30%) Social Skills
2 18 (13.53%) Finance
3 17 (12.78%) Public Sector
4 7 (5.26%) Aerospace
5 6 (4.51%) Electronics
5 6 (4.51%) Manufacturing
5 6 (4.51%) Marketing
5 6 (4.51%) Telecoms
6 5 (3.76%) Analytical Skills
7 2 (1.50%) Games
7 2 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (1.50%) Retail
8 1 (0.75%) Banking
8 1 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.75%) Law
8 1 (0.75%) Military
8 1 (0.75%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 24 (18.05%) Software Engineer
2 23 (17.29%) Developer
3 20 (15.04%) Senior
4 18 (13.53%) DevOps Engineer
5 13 (9.77%) Platform Engineer
6 11 (8.27%) Lead
7 9 (6.77%) Software Developer
8 7 (5.26%) Architect
8 7 (5.26%) IT Engineer
8 7 (5.26%) Java Developer
9 6 (4.51%) Azure Engineer
9 6 (4.51%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 6 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 6 (4.51%) Senior Software Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Senior Developer
10 5 (3.76%) Test Engineer
11 4 (3.01%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 4 (3.01%) Senior IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (18.80%) React
2 24 (18.05%) Spring
3 19 (14.29%) Spring Boot
4 18 (13.53%) .NET
5 17 (12.78%) .NET Core
6 11 (8.27%) AngularJS
6 11 (8.27%) YAML
7 9 (6.77%) RESTful
8 7 (5.26%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (5.26%) REST
9 6 (4.51%) MERN Stack
9 6 (4.51%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (3.76%) Node.js
11 4 (3.01%) Kafka
12 3 (2.26%) .NET Framework
12 3 (2.26%) Entity Framework
12 3 (2.26%) OAuth
12 3 (2.26%) OAuth2
12 3 (2.26%) OpenAPI
12 3 (2.26%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 30 (22.56%) Cloud Native
2 6 (4.51%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (3.01%) Clustering
3 4 (3.01%) Linux Command Line
3 4 (3.01%) Private Cloud
4 3 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
4 3 (2.26%) Over-the-Top Content
4 3 (2.26%) Video\Live Streaming
5 2 (1.50%) Blockchain
5 2 (1.50%) Data Centre
5 2 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.50%) Management Information System
5 2 (1.50%) Onboarding
5 2 (1.50%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.50%) Public Cloud
6 1 (0.75%) CUDA
6 1 (0.75%) Data Fabric
6 1 (0.75%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (0.75%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 34 (25.56%) Linux
2 13 (9.77%) Windows
3 10 (7.52%) Windows Server
4 5 (3.76%) Ubuntu
5 4 (3.01%) Debian
5 4 (3.01%) Mac OS
6 3 (2.26%) CentOS
7 2 (1.50%) Rocky
7 2 (1.50%) Unix
7 2 (1.50%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (58.65%) CI/CD
2 72 (54.14%) DevOps
3 70 (52.63%) Containerisation
4 51 (38.35%) Infrastructure as Code
5 47 (35.34%) Agile
6 43 (32.33%) Software Engineering
7 30 (22.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 28 (21.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 22 (16.54%) Collaborative Culture
10 18 (13.53%) Test Automation
11 17 (12.78%) Full-Stack Development
11 17 (12.78%) Mentoring
12 16 (12.03%) Platform Engineering
13 15 (11.28%) Microservices
13 15 (11.28%) Scrum
14 14 (10.53%) AI
14 14 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
15 13 (9.77%) Coaching
16 11 (8.27%) SDLC
17 10 (7.52%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 64 (48.12%) Python
2 49 (36.84%) Java
3 27 (20.30%) Bash
4 24 (18.05%) SQL
5 20 (15.04%) JavaScript
5 20 (15.04%) TypeScript
6 19 (14.29%) PowerShell
7 17 (12.78%) Bicep
8 16 (12.03%) C#
9 12 (9.02%) Go
10 7 (5.26%) C
11 6 (4.51%) Kotlin
12 4 (3.01%) Shell Script
13 3 (2.26%) Elixir
13 3 (2.26%) Erlang
13 3 (2.26%) Scala
14 1 (0.75%) C++
14 1 (0.75%) Delphi
14 1 (0.75%) PHP
14 1 (0.75%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 51 (38.35%) Security Cleared
2 38 (28.57%) DV Cleared
3 22 (16.54%) SC Cleared
4 6 (4.51%) Azure Certification
5 5 (3.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 4 (3.01%) ACMT
7 3 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (2.26%) Degree
8 2 (1.50%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.50%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 2 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.50%) ISTQB
8 2 (1.50%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 2 (1.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (1.50%) Network+ Certification
9 1 (0.75%) CCNA
9 1 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (9.77%) QA
2 4 (3.01%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.50%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.50%) NCSC
4 1 (0.75%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.75%) GDPR
4 1 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 89 (66.92%) Docker
2 6 (4.51%) Hyper-V
2 6 (4.51%) VMware ESXi
3 5 (3.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (3.01%) Active Directory
5 3 (2.26%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.75%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 39 (29.32%) Terraform
2 25 (18.80%) Ansible
3 16 (12.03%) Grafana
4 11 (8.27%) Prometheus
5 6 (4.51%) Argo
6 5 (3.76%) Rancher
6 5 (3.76%) vCenter Server
6 5 (3.76%) yum
7 4 (3.01%) Autotask
7 4 (3.01%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (3.01%) Progress Chef
7 4 (3.01%) Puppet
8 3 (2.26%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.75%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 12 (9.02%) Microsoft
2 9 (6.77%) Google
2 9 (6.77%) Oracle
2 9 (6.77%) Red Hat
3 6 (4.51%) SAP
4 5 (3.76%) Cisco
4 5 (3.76%) Splunk
4 5 (3.76%) VMware
5 4 (3.01%) Apple
5 4 (3.01%) Datto
5 4 (3.01%) Sophos
5 4 (3.01%) Veeam
6 2 (1.50%) Dell
6 2 (1.50%) Guidewire
7 1 (0.75%) Databricks
7 1 (0.75%) Fortinet
7 1 (0.75%) New Relic
7 1 (0.75%) NVIDIA
7 1 (0.75%) Palo Alto