The state of Kubernetes jobs in 2024 Q1
Published in May 2024
Kubernetes Job market trends for Q1 2024
How has the Kubernetes job market trended so far in 2024? Has the demand for Kubernetes jobs resurrected or plummeted?
If you are in the market for a Kubernetes job, what skillsets are in demand, and what should you prioritize?
The answers to the above questions and many more await us in our State of the Kubernetes job market report for Q1 2024.
We filtered through hundreds of job descriptions to arrive at a dataset of 332 jobs.
Then, we manually reviewed and tagged them, finally analyzing them to spot key patterns and trends.
Before you start reading the report, remember that we only list jobs that:
- Require Kubernetes experience.
- Mention a clear salary range.
- Are listed by companies (and not recruitment agencies).
Do consider the above factors while looking at the numbers.
Let's start!
You can also download the full report here:
Table of content
- How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q1 2024?
- Where are the most Kubernetes jobs located?
- What's the average Kubernetes salary in North America?
- What is the average Kubernetes salary in Europe?
- The Kubernetes job market seeks Senior Software Engineers, DevOps and SREs
- 7 out of 10 jobs allow remote work of some sort!
- Remote work doesn't mean you can work from anywhere
- Kubernetes jobs with on-call rota
- Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs
- Which programming languages are in demand the most for Kubernetes jobs?
- What CI/CD tools are popular in Kubernetes job descriptions?
- Observability adoption in Kubernetes
How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q1 2024?
On average, it pays a minimum of $135,692 and a maximum of $188,823.
The average numbers have increased since the last sequential quarter, i.e. Q4 2023.
In Q4 2023, on average:
- The minimum salary was $130,948 - almost 4% increase in Q1 2024
- And the maximum salary was $183,520 - a 3% increase in Q1 2024
But, do take these numbers with a grain of salt!
We've simply taken all salaries of the jobs we've published in Q1 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 jobs located?
Of all jobs published in Q1 2024, almost 60% were from North America, 36% were from Europe, 2% were from South East Asia, and 1% each from Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Has North America always been the place for Kubernetes jobs in the previous quarters as well?
Mostly, yes.
North American jobs have averaged 66% of the total in the last three quarters, while European jobs average at 31%.
What's the average Kubernetes salary in North America?
In North America, the minimum salary stands at $147,203 and the maximum at $205,149.
The average North American Kubernetes job salary is $176,176.
This doesn't come as a surprise since the average US Software Engineer salary comes to be $145,000.
The highest recorded salary in North America was up to a whopping $546,250! for a Head of Engineering position.
Let's compare the numbers with the past four quarters.
We learn that from Q2 2023 to Q1 2024, the minimum average salary has increased by 10%.
The maximum average salary has increased by 11%, well above the average inflation of 3.49% for the US and 3.1% for Canada.
Here's a look at the average salaries combined through the quarters.
From Q2 2023 to Q1 2024, the average salary has increased from $154,661 to $176,176, and, on average, each quarter has shown an increase of 4% over the previous one.
What is the average Kubernetes salary in Europe?
The minimum salary offered in Europe, on average, stands at €58,691, while the maximum is €78,161.
The highest recorded salary in Europe was up to €158,645.
We have converted all the European salaries to Euros; further deviation needs to be made to obtain better results since Europe is a vast and diverse continent with countries with varied economics, cost of living, and technological status.
The Kubernetes job market seeks Senior Software Engineers, DevOps and SREs
Of all the jobs we published in Q1 2024, 43% were Software Engineers.
DevOps Engineer and Site Reliability Engineer were the next popular roles with 10% and 8% representation.
These were followed by Platform Engineer at 6%, Engineering Manager at 6%, Data Engineer at 5%, and DevSecOps at 5%.
Software Engineer positions were popular in the previous quarters as well.
If we compare the data from the past two quarters, we understand that Software Engineer positions have been the most popular job titles by a large margin.
The second position has been exchanged between the Platform Engineer and DevOps Engineer roles.
Site Reliability Engineer roles are a variable third popular title for Kubernetes jobs.
7 out of 10 jobs allow remote work of some sort!
Of all the jobs we published in Q1 2024, almost 70% of these allow some kind of remote work.
But it's not that simple since remote mentions don't equal fully remote work!
More than half of the jobs that mention remote work require the selected candidate to work remotely, although only within a specified geography (for example, within the United States).
Of all the jobs that mention remote work possibility 53% of these are restricted by geographies.
Most of these require the selected candidate to work remotely within the country.
Hybrid jobs consitute for 44% of the remote work mentions.
Remote work doesn't mean you can work from anywhere
If we analyze the job description of the last four quarters, we find that remote work averages at 59% and hybrid roles that require you to be in the office at 39%.
Things will likely change in the coming quarters as more companies mandate that employees return to the office.
Kubernetes jobs with on-call rota
Not all job descriptions explicitly mention the requirement for the employee to be on call (they should, ideally).
Thus, even though only 14% of the jobs in Q1 2024 explicitly mention the need for on-call rotation, we can't exclude that the number is higher.
The most on-call mentions were for remote and jobs from the office.
Of all the jobs that mentioned an on-call requirement, 53% were remote jobs, 24% were jobs from the office, and 18% were hybrid roles (office + home).
Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs
Docker is the most popular technology for Kubernetes jobs, with more than 50% of the jobs mentioning it.
Distant from the first yet closer together are PostgreSQL and Kafka, with 25% and 18% representation, respectively.
The top ten popular technologies are MYSQL 10%, Redis 9%, Elastisearch 9%, Spark 8%, Snowflake 7%, Helm 7%, and Airflow 6%.
Which were the popular technologies in the previous quarters?
Docker is the most popular technology mentioned in job descriptions, averaging 55% representation across the past three quarters.
PostgreSQL and Kafka are almost tied at second place with averages of 20% and 19% across the quarters.
Completing the top five most popular technologies are MySQL and Redis, which average 11% and 10%.
Which programming languages are in demand the most for Kubernetes jobs?
Every time a programming language was mentioned in Q1 2024, 6 out of 10 times was Python.
The next popular languages were Go (36%%), Java (35%), and Javascript (28%).
Other languages completing the top ten list are Shell scripting 16%, C++ 13%, Typescript 13%, Ruby 10%, C# 9%, and Scala 9%.
Looking at the past four quarters, it is evident that Python is the most in-demand programming language for Kubernetes jobs.
There appears to be a second tier of programming languages, in which Go and Java exchange the top popularity of the tier while Javascript is consistently next in line to the duo.
The third tier of programming languages consists of Shell scripting, C++, TypeScript, and Ruby, each almost trading places with the others over time.
What CI/CD tools are popular in Kubernetes job descriptions?
Of the jobs that cited CI/CD experience, 40% were generic mentions with no tool specification.
Of the total specific tags for CI/CD tools, Jenkins was the most popular, with 30% of the total tags.
A close second was Gitlab with 25%, and Github Actions with 15%.
CircleCI followed these at 12%, Azure DevOps at 5%, and Spinnaker at 3%.
Has Jenkins always been the most popular CI/CD tool?
Barring Q4 2023, wherein Gitlab took the top spot, Jenkins is the most popular CI/CD tool mentioned in job descriptions while Gitlab has been consistent in the second spot.
Although starting much lower in Q2 2023, Gitlab Actions and CircleCI have risen in popularity to book the third and fourth spots in Q1 2024, while Azure DevOps and Bamboo have slipped from the highs in Q2 2023 to the fifth and sixth spots by Q1 2024.
Spinnaker was not mentioned in Q2 2023, but now it accounts for 3% of the total CI/CD-specific tool tags.
Observability adoption in Kubernetes
Grafana was the most popular tool with 16% of the total mentions.
A close second and third were Datadog and Prometheus with 15% and 14% representation.
Other notable tools are Splunk 7%, ELK 5%, and NewRelic 4%.
Summary
Hopefully, you learned all the skills/tools and expertise companies seek when hiring a Kubernetes Engineer.
This is a shorter version of the report, which you can find here.
We'd love to hear your feedback on whether you liked what you read (or didn't).
You can get in touch with us at [email protected].
