The state of Kubernetes jobs in 2023 Q4

Published in January 2024

Kubernetes Job market trends for Q4 2023

Looking for your next Kubernetes job in the new year but don't know what salary you should expect?

Are Kubernetes remote jobs still a thing?

Find the answer to those questions and more in the State of the Kubernetes job market report for Q4 2023!

We filtered 293 jobs collected from October to December, manually reviewed and tagged them and finally analyzed them to spot patterns and trends.

Before you start reading the report, remember that we only list jobs that:

1. Require Kubernetes experience.
2. Mention a clear salary range.
3. Are listed by companies (and not recruitment agencies).

Do consider the above factors while looking at the numbers.

You can also download the full report here:

Let's start!

How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q4 2023?

On average, a minimum of $130,948 and a maximum of $183,520.

Do take this with a grain of salt!

We've taken all 293 salaries of the jobs we've published in Q4 and converted these to USD.

Let's make more sense of those numbers by looking at the breakdown for each region.

Where are the most Kubernetes job offers located?

In North America.

Of all the jobs we listed in Q4 2023:

• Almost 64% of these were from North America.
• Europe comes in second with 33% of the jobs.
• 5% of the jobs are from the Asia-Pacific region.
• Less than 1% of the jobs are remote-only.

Let's compare this with the fourth quarter of 2022.

In Q4 2022:

• Europe was the most popular Kubernetes job location, with 41% of the total jobs.
• North America came in second with 29% of the total jobs.
• While Asia-Pacific represented 16%, and remote-only jobs represented the remaining 14%.

What could possibly be the reason for such a drastic difference within a year?

While there may be numerous factors involved, here is our take on the following:

Fully remote jobs were more popular in the fourth quarter of 2022, and soon after, they started decreasing until reaching a lower point in the third quarter of 2023.

To back up this fact, we found out that American work-from-home rates have been the lowest since the pandemic.

What's the average Kubernetes job salary in North America?

In North America, the average minimum salary stands at $144,030 and the maximum salary is at $202,202.

The highest recorded salary in North America was a groundbreaking $520,000!

You must thank the latest hype in Artificial Intelligence for that, as companies such as OpenAI are willing to go above and beyond to source the best candidates.

How do the numbers compare with Q4 2022?

The minimum average salary has increased by 9%:

• In Q4 2022, the minimum average salary in North America was $132,097.
• The average inflation in the United States from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023 is 5.05%.

Therefore, it is a good sign that the minimum salaries have increased beyond the inflation numbers.

The maximum average salary has increased by almost 15%.

What is the average Kubernetes job salary in Europe?

Across the pond, the minimum salary offered in Europe, on average, stands at €64,023, while the maximum salary (on average) offered stands at €84,584.

The highest recorded salary in Europe was €206,256.

While looking at these numbers, you should remember that we computed those numbers by filtering the location and converting the currency to euros.

Europe is a vast and diverse continent with countries with varied economics, cost of living, and technological status — so it might not fully represent the country you live in.

The Kubernetes job market seeks Senior Software and Platform Engineers

Of all the jobs we published in Q4 2023, 35% of these were Software Engineer positions that required Kubernetes experience.

Next in popularity were Platform Engineer and Site Reliability Engineer roles with 11% and 9% representation.

These were followed by:

• DevOps Engineer: 8%
• Machine Learning Engineer: 4%
• Test Automation Engineer: 3%
• Engineering Manager: 3%
• Data Engineer: 3%

Is remote work gaining or losing popularity?

Remote work job opportunities have increased by 12% since Q3 2023.

Of all the jobs that mentioned remote working in Q4 2023:

• Almost 72% of these were remote jobs.
• While Hybrid jobs accounted for almost 28% of the total jobs.
• Remote-only jobs represented a measly 0.59%.

How does this compare with the last quarter?

• Remote jobs restricted by location have risen almost 14% since Q3 2023.
• Hybrid jobs have seen a decline of 16% since Q3 2023.
• Meanwhile, there has been no noticeable difference in fully remote jobs.

Kubernetes jobs with on-call rota

Thankfully, most jobs don't ask employees to participate in on-call rotation.

Of all the jobs we published in Q4 2023, only 14% of these required the employee to be on-call.

Of all the jobs that mentioned on-call requirement:

• 38% of these were remote jobs with a local restriction.
• 35% were hybrid jobs, while 23% of these were in-person jobs.

This makes sense: if your company doesn't have a distributed workforce (e.g. doesn't allow employees to work from anywhere), they must ask the existing employee to participate in the call rota.

Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs

The most popular technology for Kubernetes jobs is Docker, with 60% of the jobs mentioning it.

PostgreSQL and Kafka, with 22% and 19% representation, are distinct from the first yet closer to each other.

The rest of the top ten popular technologies are:

• Redis: 13%
• MySQL: 10%
• Helm: 10%
• Spark: 8%
• ElasticSearch: 8%
• Mongo: 7%
• RabbitMQ: 5%

Which programming languages are most in demand for Kubernetes jobs?

More than half of the jobs (52%) published in Q4 2023 mentioned the need for Python experience.

The next tier of popular languages were Java (31%), Go (29%), and Javascript (27%).

Other languages completing the top ten list are:

• Shell: 14%
• C#: 11%
• Typescript: 10%
• C++: 9%
• GraphQL: 7%
• Rust: 7%

What CI/CD tools are popular in Kubernetes job descriptions?

Of all the jobs we published in Q4 2023, 42% mention a requirement for CI/CD experience.

Here are all the mentions of specific tools:

Gitlab topped the charts with 30% of the total tags.

Jenkins and CircleCI come in second and third with 25% and 13% representation.

These were followed by:

• GitHub Actions: 8%
• Azure DevOps: 6%
• Spinnaker: 3%

It's nice to see GitLab and Jenkins chasing each other!

We saw the same happening at the beginning of 2023, only for Jenkins to return to the top until the end of 2023.

Will Jenkins make a comeback again?

What monitoring, logging, and observability tools are popular in job descriptions?

Only 22% of the total jobs published in Q4 2023 mentioned the need for observability tools.

Of all the specific observability tags:

Prometheus was the most popular tool with 22% of the total tags mentioning it.

A close second was Grafana with 21%.

Other notable tools were:

• Datadog: 15%
• Splunk: 9%
• ELK: 7%

Conclusion

Hopefully, you learned all the skills/tools and expertise companies seek when hiring a Kubernetes Engineer.

Or, if you are a recruiter, you may get a better idea of what's popular in the Kubernetes job market.

We'd love to hear your feedback if you liked what you read (or didn't).

You can contact us at [email protected].