The state of Kubernetes jobs in 2024 Q3
Published in November 2024
Is the Kubernetes job market prospering or regressing in 2024? What skillsets should applicants possess to land their next Kubernetes job?
Have the average salaries increased? Or have they hit a plateau?
Let's use our State of the Kubernetes job market report for Q3 2024 to try to answer the above questions (and many more).
This quarter, we have scrapped through 8772 jobs, meticulously filtering these down to a dataset of 1607 jobs to finally mine critical patterns and trends that will help employees and employers alike.
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 begin!
You can also download the full report here:
Table of contents
- How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q3 2024?
- Where are most of the Kubernetes job offers located?
- What's the average Kubernetes salary in North America?
- What is the average Kubernetes salary in Europe?
- The Kubernetes job market seeks Software Engineers, DevOps, and Platform Engineers.
- 7 out of 10 jobs allow remote work of some sort
- 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
- Summary
How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q3 2024?
Currently, the average salary for a Kubernetes job is between $129,049 and $187,219.
Which comes to an average worldwide salary of $158,134.
Note that the above numbers average all the recorded salaries with a simple conversion to USD.
To better grasp the job salaries with respect to location, let's get deeper into the details.
Where are most of the Kubernetes job offers located?
In North America. And it isn't even close!
A staggering 62.1% of the jobs listed in Q3 2024 came from the North American region!
European job offers came in at a distant second, representing 32.5% of the total jobs published.
Job offers from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific stood at less than 2% each.
Interestingly, North America has always had the most Kubernetes job offers.
If we take the numbers from the past five quarters, we find that jobs from North America average at 62% per quarter, while European Kubernetes jobs average at 32%.
Jobs from Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America averaged less than 2% per quarter.
What's the average Kubernetes salary in North America?
For the North American region, on average, the minimum salary stands at $137,738 and the maximum at $201,516.
The average North American Kubernetes job salary is $169,627.
The highest recorded salary in North America was a whopping $550,000! for a Director of Engineering role.
The highest recorded salaries include equity and are usually for C-level positions.
Have North American Kubernetes jobs salaries increased since Q3 2023? Let's find out.
We learn that from Q3 2023 to Q3 2024:
- The minimum average salary has increased by 4%.
- The maximum average salary has increased by 5%, well above the average inflation of 2.62% for the US and 2.4% for Canada.
What is the average Kubernetes salary in Europe?
The minimum salary offered in Europe, on average, stands at €66,605, while the maximum is €85,509.
The highest recorded salary in Europe was up to €249,018.
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 consisting of countries with varied economics, cost of living, and technological status.
If we compare the data from the past year, the European salaries appear consistent in simplified conversions.
The average European salary in the past five quarters comes at a minimum of €64,968 and a maximum of €86,880.
Again, we can't rely on these numbers as these are a simple conversion of all European salaries to Euros. As we increase our dataset in the future, we may get better, granular insights. Look out for the same.
The Kubernetes job market seeks Software Engineers, DevOps, and Platform Engineers.
Of all the jobs we published in Q3 2024, 42% of these were Software Engineer positions.
DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer and Site Reliability Engineer positions were the next popular roles with 11%, 8% and 6% representation.
These were followed by DevSecOps Engineer, Engineering Manager, Data Engineer, and Solution Architect positions with less than 3% representation each.
Software Engineer positions were popular in the previous quarters as well.
If we compare the data from the past year, we find that Software Engineer positions have always been popular, with an average representation of 35% each quarter.
Interestingly:
- DevOps, Platform, and Site Reliability Engineer positions have exchanged the second, third, and fourth spot in popularity through the quarters.
- DevSecOps and Machine Learning Engineer positions have been sparse compared to the above positions, averaging close to 2% representation each quarter.
7 out of 10 jobs allow remote work of some sort
Of all the jobs we published in Q3 2024, 68% of these allow some sort of remote work.
Remote work mentions averaged 68% in the past five quarters!
However, 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 54% of these are restricted by geographies.
Most of these require the selected candidate to work remotely within the country.
Hybrid jobs consitute for 45% of the remote work mentions.
Hybrid working has risen in popularity over the past few quarters.
From Q3 2023 to Q3 2024, hybrid jobs increased by 19%!
In the past year, hybrid jobs averaged 40%, while remote jobs were restricted by geographies averaged 58%.
As can be seen from the graph, remote jobs restricted within a specific timezone averaged less than 2% each quarter for the past year.
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 13% of the jobs in Q3 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 hybrid jobs.
Of all the jobs that mentioned an on-call requirement, 53% were remote jobs, 26% were Hybrid jobs, and 19% were jobs from the office.
Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs
Docker is the most popular technology for Kubernetes jobs, with more than 60% of the jobs mentioning it.
Distant from the first yet closer together are PostgreSQL and Kafka, with 19% representation each.
MySQL and Helm complete the top five popular technologies, with 13% and 9% of the jobs mentioning them, respectively.
Which were the popular technologies in the previous quarters?
Docker is the most popular technology mentioned in job descriptions, averaging 56% per quarter across the past year.
PostgreSQL and Kafka are close in second and third place, with averages of 22% and 18% across the quarters, respectively.
Completing the top five most popular technologies are MySQL and Helm, which average 11% and 10%.
Which programming languages are in demand the most for Kubernetes jobs?
Every time a programming language was mentioned in Q3 2024, 55% of the time, it was Python.
The next popular languages were Java (37%), Javascript (35%), and Go (30%).
Other languages completing the top ten list are Shell 19%, Typescript 13%, C++ 11%, C# 10%, Ruby 6%, and Scala 5%.
Looking at the past four quarters, it is evident that Python is the most in-demand programming language for Kubernetes jobs, with an average of 56% jobs mentioning it each quarter.
There appears to be a second tier of programming languages, in which Java, Javascript, and Go exchange the second, third, and fourth spot through the quarters.
The third tier of programming languages consists of Shell, TypeScript, and C++, 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, 46% were generic mentions with no tool specification.
Of the total specific tags for CI/CD tools, Jenkins was the most popular, with 36% of the total tags.
A close second was Gitlab with 31%, and Github Actions was a distant third with 9% representation.
CircleCI followed these at 8%, Azure DevOps at 5%, and Spinnaker at 1%.
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 with average mentions of 31% per quarter, while Gitlab has been consistent in the second spot averaging at 27% mentions each quarter.
Although starting much lower in Q4 2023, Gitlab Actions has been consistent in the third spot, maintaining it through the remaining quarters, while CircleCI has slipped ever so slightly to the fourth spot.
Spinnaker, Travis CI, and Bamboo are in the bottom tier, with an average of less than 2% mentions each quarter.
Observability adoption in Kubernetes
Grafana was the most popular tool with 20% of the total mentions.
A close second and third were Prometheus and Datadog with 19% and 10% representation.
Other notable tools are Splunk 7%, ELK 6%, and Loki 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].
