Kubernetes Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Kubernetes (k8s)
South East > Thames Valley

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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 97 56
Rank change year-on-year +8 -41 +3
Permanent jobs citing Kubernetes 94 94 279
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 1.62% 2.78% 3.84%
As % of the Systems Management category 37.01% 35.88% 40.03%
Number of salaries quoted 63 42 226
10th Percentile £50,000 £47,000 £52,500
25th Percentile £53,750 £51,563 £57,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £70,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -6.67% -3.23%
75th Percentile £72,500 £83,750 £91,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £97,125 £95,000
South East median annual salary £63,750 £62,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year +2.00% -10.71% -

All Systems Management Skills
Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 254 262 697
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 4.38% 7.75% 9.59%
Number of salaries quoted 183 150 527
10th Percentile £37,500 £32,375 £34,000
25th Percentile £46,250 £37,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £50,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £72,500 £78,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £82,000 £90,000 £92,500
South East median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -8.33%

Kubernetes
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

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

Kubernetes job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Kubernetes
Salary Trend in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Kubernetes.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Kubernetes

Kubernetes
Salary Histogram in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 15 June 2026.

Salary histogram for Kubernetes in the Thames Valley

Kubernetes
Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 15 June 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
Berkshire -7 41 £82,500 +3.13% 13
Buckinghamshire 0 28 £60,000 -14.29% 2
Oxfordshire +9 25 £57,000 +8.57% 4
Kubernetes
South East

Kubernetes
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 8 (8.51%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (7.45%) OpenEdge
3 5 (5.32%) OpenStack
4 2 (2.13%) Apache
4 2 (2.13%) Confluence
5 1 (1.06%) JBoss
5 1 (1.06%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 1 (1.06%) Lightworks
Cloud Services
1 62 (65.96%) AWS
2 38 (40.43%) Azure
3 24 (25.53%) Amazon EKS
3 24 (25.53%) Serverless
4 16 (17.02%) Amazon ECS
5 15 (15.96%) Amazon EC2
6 12 (12.77%) Amazon S3
7 11 (11.70%) Azure AKS
7 11 (11.70%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 11 (11.70%) Azure Key Vault
7 11 (11.70%) Azure Storage
7 11 (11.70%) IaaS
8 8 (8.51%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (8.51%) Microsoft 365
9 6 (6.38%) OpenShift
10 5 (5.32%) GitHub
10 5 (5.32%) GitHub Copilot
11 4 (4.26%) Amazon SQS
11 4 (4.26%) GCP
12 3 (3.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 17 (18.09%) DNS
2 14 (14.89%) Firewall
3 8 (8.51%) iSCSI
3 8 (8.51%) Remote Desktop
3 8 (8.51%) SAN
4 4 (4.26%) Internet
5 3 (3.19%) DHCP
6 2 (2.13%) Network Security
6 2 (2.13%) PBX
6 2 (2.13%) VPN
7 1 (1.06%) HTTP
7 1 (1.06%) MQTT
7 1 (1.06%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (31.91%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (15.96%) Relational Database
3 11 (11.70%) MySQL
4 8 (8.51%) SQL Server
5 7 (7.45%) MongoDB
6 5 (5.32%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (5.32%) NoSQL
6 5 (5.32%) RDBMS
7 4 (4.26%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (2.13%) Redis
9 1 (1.06%) DynamoDB
9 1 (1.06%) Oracle Database
9 1 (1.06%) TimescaleDB
9 1 (1.06%) Vitess
Development Applications
1 24 (25.53%) Jenkins
2 18 (19.15%) Git
3 12 (12.77%) GitLab
4 8 (8.51%) JUnit
5 7 (7.45%) JIRA
5 7 (7.45%) JMeter
5 7 (7.45%) Mockito
6 6 (6.38%) SonarQube
7 5 (5.32%) Cucumber
8 4 (4.26%) Artifactory
9 2 (2.13%) Mocha
9 2 (2.13%) Selenium
General
1 23 (24.47%) Social Skills
2 12 (12.77%) Organisational Skills
2 12 (12.77%) Public Sector
3 11 (11.70%) Law
4 8 (8.51%) Finance
5 6 (6.38%) Manufacturing
6 4 (4.26%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (4.26%) Automotive
7 3 (3.19%) Aerospace
8 1 (1.06%) Aviation
8 1 (1.06%) Health Technology
8 1 (1.06%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 25 (26.60%) Developer
2 19 (20.21%) Java Developer
3 16 (17.02%) Cloud Engineer
3 16 (17.02%) Senior
4 12 (12.77%) Azure Engineer
4 12 (12.77%) DevOps Engineer
5 11 (11.70%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 9 (9.57%) Java Engineer
7 8 (8.51%) Linux Engineer
7 8 (8.51%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 8 (8.51%) Software Engineer
8 7 (7.45%) Infrastructure Manager
8 7 (7.45%) Infrastructure Support
8 7 (7.45%) Infrastructure Support Manager
8 7 (7.45%) IT Infrastructure Manager
8 7 (7.45%) IT Manager
8 7 (7.45%) IT Support
8 7 (7.45%) IT Support Manager
8 7 (7.45%) Support Manager
9 6 (6.38%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (29.79%) REST
2 19 (20.21%) React
3 18 (19.15%) Spring Boot
4 17 (18.09%) Spring
5 16 (17.02%) JSON
6 14 (14.89%) Web Services
7 13 (13.83%) Elastic Stack
7 13 (13.83%) RabbitMQ
8 11 (11.70%) HTML
8 11 (11.70%) Node.js
9 10 (10.64%) XML
10 9 (9.57%) AngularJS
10 9 (9.57%) Kafka
10 9 (9.57%) RESTful
11 8 (8.51%) .NET
11 8 (8.51%) Apache Camel
11 8 (8.51%) Hibernate
11 8 (8.51%) Vue
12 7 (7.45%) ActiveMQ
12 7 (7.45%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 31 (32.98%) Distributed Systems
2 22 (23.40%) Cloud Native
3 8 (8.51%) Management Information System
4 6 (6.38%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (4.26%) Life Science
5 4 (4.26%) Onboarding
5 4 (4.26%) Product Ownership
6 3 (3.19%) Cyber Defence
6 3 (3.19%) Distributed Computing
6 3 (3.19%) Hackathon
6 3 (3.19%) IoT
6 3 (3.19%) Private Cloud
6 3 (3.19%) Public Cloud
6 3 (3.19%) Renewable Energy
6 3 (3.19%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (3.19%) Virtual Team
7 2 (2.13%) AI Agents
7 2 (2.13%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (2.13%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (1.06%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 23 (24.47%) Linux
2 8 (8.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (2.13%) CentOS
4 1 (1.06%) Unix
4 1 (1.06%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (63.83%) Agile
2 47 (50.00%) CI/CD
3 40 (42.55%) Microservices
4 37 (39.36%) Containerisation
5 29 (30.85%) DevOps
6 26 (27.66%) Problem-Solving
7 24 (25.53%) High Availability
8 23 (24.47%) TDD
9 20 (21.28%) Scrum
10 18 (19.15%) Full-Stack Development
10 18 (19.15%) Infrastructure as Code
11 16 (17.02%) Software Engineering
12 15 (15.96%) BDD
12 15 (15.96%) Continuous Improvement
12 15 (15.96%) Design Patterns
12 15 (15.96%) Load Balancing
12 15 (15.96%) Test Automation
13 14 (14.89%) Kanban
14 13 (13.83%) Computer Science
15 12 (12.77%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 35 (37.23%) Python
2 34 (36.17%) Java
3 26 (27.66%) SQL
4 22 (23.40%) PowerShell
5 17 (18.09%) JavaScript
6 16 (17.02%) C#
7 15 (15.96%) Bash
7 15 (15.96%) TypeScript
8 10 (10.64%) Shell Script
9 8 (8.51%) C++
10 6 (6.38%) Groovy
10 6 (6.38%) Korn
11 4 (4.26%) Perl
11 4 (4.26%) PL/SQL
12 3 (3.19%) C
13 1 (1.06%) Go
Qualifications
1 25 (26.60%) Degree
2 21 (22.34%) Security Cleared
3 17 (18.09%) SC Cleared
4 15 (15.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (13.83%) Azure Certification
6 7 (7.45%) Master's Degree
7 4 (4.26%) AWS Certification
7 4 (4.26%) PhD
8 2 (2.13%) RHCE
8 2 (2.13%) RHCSA
9 1 (1.06%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (14.89%) QA
2 6 (6.38%) SLA
3 3 (3.19%) SOC 2
4 2 (2.13%) Accessibility
System Software
1 51 (54.26%) Docker
2 11 (11.70%) Active Directory
3 10 (10.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (8.51%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 3 (3.19%) Hyper-V
6 2 (2.13%) Samba
Systems Management
1 18 (19.15%) Terraform
2 16 (17.02%) Ansible
3 11 (11.70%) Kibana
4 9 (9.57%) Grafana
4 9 (9.57%) Prometheus
5 7 (7.45%) Argo
6 5 (5.32%) Kustomize
7 4 (4.26%) Packer
8 3 (3.19%) Istio
9 1 (1.06%) Graylog
Vendors
1 17 (18.09%) Microsoft
2 13 (13.83%) Red Hat
3 10 (10.64%) VMware
4 9 (9.57%) AppDynamics
5 8 (8.51%) Dell
5 8 (8.51%) IBM
6 7 (7.45%) Dynatrace
6 7 (7.45%) Splunk
7 4 (4.26%) Oracle
8 2 (2.13%) D-Link
9 1 (1.06%) Atlassian
9 1 (1.06%) Databricks
9 1 (1.06%) NVIDIA