Kubernetes Engineer Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes Engineer (K8s Engineer)
UK > UK excluding London

The median Kubernetes Engineer (K8s Engineer) salary in the UK excluding London is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 13 January 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 497 567 547
Rank change year-on-year +70 -20 +168
Permanent jobs requiring a Kubernetes Engineer 9 5 20
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.021% 0.014% 0.058%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.024% 0.015% 0.061%
Number of salaries quoted 5 5 15
10th Percentile £56,500 £63,500 £42,874
25th Percentile £62,500 £72,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £80,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.75% +60.00% -31.03%
75th Percentile £67,500 £88,000 £74,375
90th Percentile £73,500 £95,200 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £107,500 £100,000
% change year-on-year -44.19% +7.50% +14.29%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 38,179 33,328 33,027
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.48% 92.91% 95.32%
Number of salaries quoted 23,318 16,178 25,075
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,563
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -5.66%
75th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £78,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -4.17%

Kubernetes Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Kubernetes Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Kubernetes Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes Engineer
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Kubernetes Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Kubernetes Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes Engineer
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Kubernetes Engineer in the UK excluding London

Kubernetes Engineer
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Kubernetes Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 13 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
Midlands - 5 £65,000 -
West Midlands - 5 £65,000 -
Scotland +4 3 - -
North of England +27 1 £55,000 -41.49%
Yorkshire - 1 £55,000 -
Kubernetes Engineer
UK

Kubernetes Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 13 January 2026, Kubernetes Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Kubernetes Engineer in the job title.

1 9 (100.00%) DevOps
1 9 (100.00%) Kubernetes
2 8 (88.89%) CI/CD
3 5 (55.56%) Python
4 4 (44.44%) Agile
4 4 (44.44%) AWS
4 4 (44.44%) JavaScript
5 3 (33.33%) Docker
5 3 (33.33%) Go
5 3 (33.33%) OpenShift
5 3 (33.33%) PaaS
5 3 (33.33%) Product Backlog
5 3 (33.33%) SIEM
6 2 (22.22%) Argo
6 2 (22.22%) Azure
6 2 (22.22%) GitOps
6 2 (22.22%) Linux
6 2 (22.22%) Terraform
7 1 (11.11%) AI
7 1 (11.11%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (11.11%) Ansible
7 1 (11.11%) AWS Certification
7 1 (11.11%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (11.11%) Cloud Security
7 1 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
7 1 (11.11%) Grafana
7 1 (11.11%) Jenkins
7 1 (11.11%) Kustomize
7 1 (11.11%) Line Management
7 1 (11.11%) LLM

Kubernetes Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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:

Cloud Services
1 4 (44.44%) AWS
2 3 (33.33%) OpenShift
2 3 (33.33%) PaaS
3 2 (22.22%) Azure
4 1 (11.11%) Amazon EKS
4 1 (11.11%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (11.11%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (11.11%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 1 (11.11%) Jenkins
General
1 1 (11.11%) Law
1 1 (11.11%) Military
1 1 (11.11%) Social Skills
Miscellaneous
1 3 (33.33%) Clustering
1 3 (33.33%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (22.22%) Linux
2 1 (11.11%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (100.00%) DevOps
2 8 (88.89%) CI/CD
3 4 (44.44%) Agile
4 3 (33.33%) Product Backlog
4 3 (33.33%) SIEM
5 2 (22.22%) GitOps
6 1 (11.11%) AI
6 1 (11.11%) Cloud Security
6 1 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 1 (11.11%) Line Management
6 1 (11.11%) LLM
6 1 (11.11%) Machine Learning
6 1 (11.11%) Microservices
6 1 (11.11%) Migration
6 1 (11.11%) Platform Engineering
6 1 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 5 (55.56%) Python
2 4 (44.44%) JavaScript
3 3 (33.33%) Go
4 1 (11.11%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1 (11.11%) AWS Certification
1 1 (11.11%) SC Cleared
1 1 (11.11%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 3 (33.33%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (100.00%) Kubernetes
2 2 (22.22%) Argo
2 2 (22.22%) Terraform
3 1 (11.11%) Ansible
3 1 (11.11%) Grafana
3 1 (11.11%) Kustomize