Kubernetes jobs market trends for 2022 Q1

Published in April 2022

What's trending in the Kubernetes Job Market?

Have the desirable skillsets changed with the times?

How can you upskill yourself to gain an advantage while applying for Kubernetes jobs?

Let's try to answer these questions and many more with our Jobs report for the first quarter of 2022.

Before we begin, a few points worth mentioning:

1. At Kube Careers, we solely focus on Kubernetes Jobs.
2. The dataset is comparatively small — a total of 97 job descriptions from January to March 2022.
3. If a job doesn't have a clear salary range, we don't post it. Many job offers don't indicate a salary range, and we think this is not good for engineers looking for work.
4. We discarded job offers from recruitment agencies.
5. We have analysed listings on platforms used by European, American, and Asia-Pacific audiences.

Do consider the above factors while looking at the numbers.

You can also download this report as a PDF here.

Let's start!

Table of contents

• Where are the most Kubernetes job offers located?
• What's the salary range?
• How essential are certifications for a Kubernetes job? And if so, which are the important ones?
• What about CI/CD? How important is it for Kubernetes jobs?
• Of the configuration management tools, which ones are popular?
• How much work experience do companies seek in a Kubernetes engineer role?
• Infrastructure location: which are the popular cloud providers?
• Which popular technologies other than Kubernetes should you learn?
• What about Programming languages? Which ones are the most in-demand?
• Final Remarks

Where are the most Kubernetes job offers located?

In Europe.

At least that's the case for this quarter.

Europe leads with more than 34% of the Kubernetes jobs, while Asia-Pacific comes in second place with 26% of the job listings.

Remote only and North American jobs are tied at 19%.

Are all the Kubernetes job offers always from Europe?

Yes, and no.

It's worth keeping in mind that:

1. Most remote job listings are from companies based in North America.
2. In the past three months, we tried to include more diverse offers from locations other than Europe and North America.

With this in mind, in Q1 2021, Europe led the charts with almost 39% of the Kubernetes jobs, with North America in second place at 35%, while Asia-Pacific jobs were merely 5%.

Thus, Asia-Pacific has risen to second place this quarter, putting North America third.

What's the remote jobs scenario like?

It's encouraging for people who are pro-remote work.

This quarter, more than 56% of the jobs mentioned remote work.

However, it must be noted that there are different types of remote jobs, and not all are entirely office free.

As can be seen, "office only" jobs lead the way with almost 44% representation.

This is understandable since almost all the COVID-19 restrictions have been taken away.

Also good to see are "hybrid working" (Remote + Office) jobs are steady at second place.

While the Remote only jobs are at third with almost 20% representation.

How has remote working changed over the quarters?

It has changed quite a bit.

"Remote only" jobs have increased quarter-on-quarter, while the "Office only" jobs have also raised this quarter.

In contrast, "Remote-but-sometimes-office" jobs have decreased a little this quarter compared to the one in 2021.

What's the salary range?

This quarter we divided the salary ranges into two categories:

1. North America Kubernetes jobs (normalized to be in USD), and
2. European Kubernetes jobs (normalized to be in EUR).

Salary ranges for Kubernetes jobs in North America

The minimum salary offered in North America, on average, stands at $123,126, while the maximum salary (on average) offered stands at $166,505.

The Highest salary range is between $200,000-240,000.

Salary ranges for Kubernetes jobs in Europe

The minimum salary offered in Europe, on average, stands at €83,398, while the maximum salary (on average) offered stands at €170,380.

Do take this with a grain of salt.

Europe is a vast, diverse continent, consisting of countries with varied living costs, economies, and technological status.

The above numbers are for representation only: we simply took all the salaries from European countries, normalised them, and then converted them into Euros.

How essential are certifications for a Kubernetes job? And if so, which are the important ones?

Certifications still aren't a necessity for the majority of the jobs, but they are often seen as an advantage.

Of all the job descriptions this quarter, more than 88% did not mention a certification requirement.

So, if you don't have certifications, you can still apply for the majority of the Kubernetes jobs.

So, which are the popular certifications one should consider completing?

Of the job descriptions that mention certifications, AWS certifications top the chart with almost 64% representation.

This trend has been reflected in the yearly 2021 report, with AWS certifications representing 64% and 73%, respectively.

So, if you wish to complete just one certification, you know which one to go for.

Kubernetes Certifications stand in second place, with Azure and GCP certifications.

What's the trend for Kubernetes certifications for Q1 2022?

This quarter, CKAand CKAD represent 27% of the certifications mentioned in job listings.

In Q1 2021, CKA represented 54%, while for the entire year of 2021, it represented 52% of the certifications mentioned.

The pattern is CKA > CKAD > CKS in terms of popularity.

This pattern is justified since:

1. CKA is the longest-running Kubernetes Certification.
2. You can't attempt CKS until you clear the CKA.

What about the Cloud provider certifications?

As for the Cloud provider certifications, AWS dominates the chart, with Azure a distant second and GCP an even distant third.

What about CI/CD? How important is it for Kubernetes jobs?

Quite important.

Of all the job listings this quarter, more than 57% mentioned some sort of CI/CD tooling in their description.

Almost 70% were simple "CI/CD" mentions of these.

As far as specifics go, Jenkins comes at the top with 30% representation, with Gitlab CI and CircleCI sharing the second place with 16% of the mentions.

Of the configuration management tools, which ones are popular?

In the dataset for this quarter, 58 jobs (59%) have mentioned at least one configuration management tool experience requirement, which is fair to say that these are more than relevant for Kubernetes jobs.

As seen in the chart, Terraform dominates this trend, with more than 43% of the jobs mentioning the tool as a requirement.

This dominance of Terraform has also been reflected in Q1 of 2021 and the yearly report of 2021, with 32% and 40% representation.

Ansible is second, with almost 29% of the jobs favouring the tool.

Followed by Puppet and Chef.

How much work experience do companies seek in a Kubernetes engineer role?

Surprisingly, more than 70% of the job descriptions didn't mention experience during this quarter.

Of the ones that mentioned experience, what is the requested experience?

It is evident that a Senior level experience (4-6 years) is the most sought-after for this quarter.

Veteran (7+ years) level of experience continues to be the least sought-after since Kubernetes was launched in 2014!

Sadly, Junior (0-1 years) level of experience is also the least sought-after — a trend which we hope will change in the following quarters.

Senior-level experience has been the most sought-after for all the quarters of 2021.

Infrastructure location: which are the popular cloud providers?

In a dataset of 97 job listings, 191 instances of either a cloud provider or an infrastructure location term were mentioned.

In other words, job descriptions mentioned more than one cloud provider per listing.

More than 60% of the job listings mentioned AWS as their cloud provider.

54% of the job listings just mentioned cloud as their infrastructure locations without specifics.

While GCP and Azure showed 29% and 31% representation among the job descriptions.

Has the trend been the same over the quarters?

It's been almost identical.

In Q1 of 2021, the order was the same AWS > GCP > Azure > On-premises.

Conclusions from this analysis are:

1. AWS is unchallenged when it comes to the top cloud providers.
2. Although GCP stands in second place, there is very little between it and Azure, so they almost share the second place between them.
3. On-premise infrastructure location has been consistent, floating at ~20% representation.

What about the monitoring stack? Which tools are popular?

Only 23% of the job listings mentioned a monitoring tool experience in our dataset.

Of the monitoring tools mentioned, Prometheus leads the way, and that too with quite a distance.

Datadog comes in a distant second. Followed by NewRelic, Thanos, Nagios, and Icinga.

Prometheus was also the most popular for Q1 2021, with more than 21% of job listings mentioning the monitoring tool.

Call me, maybe?!

Let's face it. No one likes to be on-call rotation.

But sometimes, it comes with the job.

How many times, exactly?

Well, thankfully, not a lot.

Only 13% of the jobs this quarter mentioned an on-call requirement.

What's even better is that this stat for Q1 2021 was at 20%.

Which popular technologies other than Kubernetes should you learn?

The following list is an excellent guide for engineers seeking to round out their skill set.

The most popular choices of technology among Kubernetes engineers are:

• Programming languages: Python, Go, and Java.
• Cloud platforms: AWS, GCP, and Azure (in that order).
• Operating systems: Linux.
• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform.
• Database management: PostgreSQL.
• Configuration management: Ansible.
• CI/CD: Jenkins.

It's essential to notice that if you already master Python and AWS, you can confidently apply for more than 60% of job offers.

What about Programming languages? Which ones are the most in-demand?

Python continues to be the preferred programming language for the cloud, with more than 60% representation.

Go comes in second at almost 44%.

Other frequently mentioned programming languages include Java, Shell, Typescript, and Javascript.

Has the trend been the same in Q1 2021?

Largely, yes.

In Q1 2021, Python led the charts with 67% representation, with Go in second place and Java and Shell following suite.

Service meshes: is there a demand for such tools?

Still not very apparent.

Only 4% of the jobs have displayed or mentioned a requirement for service meshes.

Of these, Istio and Consul garnered two mentions each this quarter, with Linkerd being mentioned in one job listing:

Final Remarks

There was a lot of data mining here, and we hope you found some gold in the end!

Hopefully, this sheds some light on what companies look for when hiring a Kubernetes Engineer.

Did you like what you read?

Could it have been better?

Would you like us to include a new category?

Let us know!