The state of Kubernetes jobs in 2024 Q4

Published in February 2025

What is the average salary for a Kubernetes engineer? Is it lower or higher than a comparable job as a DevOps or SRE?

Which skillsets should one possess to increase their chances of landing a Kubernetes job?

Do Kubernetes jobs allow remote work? If so, what kind of remote work is allowed?

Let's use our State of the Kubernetes job market 2024 report to answer the above questions (and many more). This report will focus primarily on the dataset for the year 2024, with a secondary focus on Q4 2024.

Throughout 2024, we collected 25,121 jobs, then we meticulously filtered and manually tagged 4850 job descriptions 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:

You can also download the full report here:

Table of contents

• How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q4 2024? And how much is the average for 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.
• 65% of all the Kubernetes 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 Q4 2024? And how much is the average for 2024?

For Q4 2024, a Kubernetes job pays an average salary between $123,973 and $184,929 while the average for 2024 has been between $129,573 and $188,071.

Thus, the average worldwide salary is $154,451 for Q4 2024 and $158,822 for 2024.

But it isn't a clear indication of the trend as the above numbers are a simple conversion of all the worldwide salaries to USD.

To better understand job salaries, we need to consider them based on their location.

Where are most of the Kubernetes job offers located?

In North America, and that too by a huge margin.

In Q4 2024, 64% of the jobs we published were from the North American region.

While European job offers, came in at a distant second, with a 31.8% representation.

Job offers from Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific stood at less than 2% each.

North America has had the most Kubernetes job offers throughout 2024.

What's interesting to see is European jobs declined in Q4 2024 by 1-2% (of the 2024 average), while job offers from Latin America increased by 1%.

Suppose we calculate the average representation by location for 2024. In that case, North American jobs average a whopping 62%, European jobs come in at 33%, and jobs from Southeast Asia, Pacific, and Latin America average less than 1%.

What's the average Kubernetes salary in North America?

For the fourth quarter of 2024, the average minimum salary is $139,056, which is 3.33% lower than the average of $143,659 for 2024, while the maximum salary reaches $200,838, which is less by 1.3% than the 2024 average of $203,585.

What's more interesting is, for 2024, 91.50% of the North American jobs pay between $100,000 to $260,000, 5% pay below $100,000 while almost 2% pay above $300,000.

The highest salary recorded in North America for 2024 was an impressive $232,000 for a Director of Platform Engineering position, which was reported in Q3 2024.

These top salaries often include equity and are typically associated with C-level roles.

Have salaries in North America risen in 2024 compared to 2023? If they have, by what percentage? Let's explore.

Comparing the average salaries across the quarters from 2023 to 2024, we find:

• The minimum salary has increased by 6% in 2024, which is more than double the average inflation of 2.95% for the US, and 2.44% for Canada for the same year.
• While the average maximum salary can vary more, it has also increased by 10% from 2023.

What is the average Kubernetes salary in Europe?

Looking at the averages for Q4 2024, the minimum salary offered in Europe stands at €66,176, marginally lesser (0.2%) than the 2024 average of €66,257. The maximum salary is €87,720, again narrowly lower than the 2024 average of €88,063.

For 2024, 65% of the European jobs pay less than €80,000, 35% pay between €80,000-200,000, while only 1% jobs pay more than €200,000.

The highest recorded salary in Europe was up to €230,000 for an Head of Engineering role published in Q3 2024.

Have European salaries increased year-on-year, too? Let's find out

Here are the highlights of the year-on-year comparison:

• The highest average minimum salary for 2023 was €64,023 in Q4 2023, while for 2024, it was €72,863 in Q2 2024.
• The average minimum salary for 2024 comes to be €66,083.75, which is almost 7% more than the average of €61,783 in 2023.
• There appears to have been a surge in average salaries in Q2 2024, which may result from more senior-level, high-paying jobs for that particular quarter.

There is a catch, however. Even though our European dataset now consists of 500+ jobs, we can't ignore the fact that we have simply 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.

Look out for more granular insights in the future as we expand our European dataset.

The Kubernetes job market seeks Software Engineers, DevOps and Platform Engineers.

Of all the jobs we published in Q4 2024, 42% were Software Engineer positions.

DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer and DevSecOps positions were the next popular roles with 9%, 6% and 4% representation.

These were followed by Solution Architect, Machine Learning Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, Engineering Manager, and Data Engineer positions with less than 3% representation each.

For the totality of 2024, Software engineers were still the most popular title, and by a considerable margin

Throughout 2024 we published a total of 4850 jobs, of these, 2033 were Software Engineer positions, making up for 42% of the total jobs.

These were followed by:

• 499 (10%) DevOps Engineer roles.
• 405 (8%) Platform Engineer roles.
• 291 (6%) Site Reliability Engineer roles.
• 206 (4%) DevSecOps Engineer roles.
• 191 (4%) Engineering Manager roles.
• 184 (3%) Data Engineer roles.
• 157 (3%) Solution Architect roles.
• 156 (3%) Machine Learning Engineer.
• 90 (2%) Solution Engineer.

Although Software Engineer positions have been the most popular, the trend has been more interesting for the other job titles since 2023

Here are some of the interesting highlights from the above trend graph:

• DevOps Engineer has been the second most popular job title for all the quarters barring Q4 2023 and Q2 2024 wherein Platform Engineer title took over.
• Site Reliability Engineer titles have averaged 8% through 2023, but have plummeted in 2024, eventually to end at 4% representation by Q4 2024.
• DevSecOps roles have been consistent throughout most quarters in the past two years except for Q4 2023, when they were only 2%.

Besides Software Engineer positions, most in-demand roles are either DevOps, Platform, DevSecOps, or Site Reliability Engineer positions.

65% of all the Kubernetes jobs allow remote work of some sort!

Of all the jobs we published in 2024, 65% of these allow some sort of remote work.

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).

For 2024, 56.3% of the remote jobs require the selected candidate to work remotely within a specified geography, mostly within the country. 43.1% allow for Hybrid work, meaning the employee should show up to the office at a specified frequency, while only 0.6% allow remote working as long the employee adheres to a timezone.

Hybrid working has stood out as the new trend in 2024

Here are some interesting bits we have learned from the hybrid working data in the past two years:

• In Q1 2023, only 19% of the total jobs were Hybrid. This metric now stands at 31.4% in Q4 2024! — a staggering increase of 12% in two years.
• Hybrid jobs averaged 20.02% in 2023, to now averaging 30.58% in 2024. This means that 1 in 3 jobs we posted in 2024 was Hybrid.

Kubernetes jobs with on-call rota

Not all job descriptions explicitly mention the requirement for the employee to be on call (they should, ideally).

For Q4 2024, only 11% of the jobs mentioned a need to be on-call, while the average for 2024 was only 13%, yet we can't exclude that the number is higher.

Most on-call mentions were for remote and hybrid jobs.

Of all the jobs that mentioned an on-call requirement, 51.9% were remote jobs, 24.7% were Hybrid jobs, and 22.2% were jobs from the office.

Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs

Note that every job description mentions more than one technology.

For 2024, Docker is the most popular technology for Kubernetes jobs, with 59% of the total jobs mentioning it.

Distant from the first yet closer together are PostgreSQL and Kafka, with 18% and 17% representation.

Completing the top 5 popular technologies are MySQL and Helm with 11% and 9% of the jobs mentioning it.

Although Docker has always been the most sought-after technological experience, the trends are interestingly different for the others

Here are the key takeaways from the comparison:

• Docker remains the most in-demand technological experience averaging an identical 57% requirement in both 2023 and 2024.
• Kafka and PostgreSQL are far from the top yet closer amongst themselves, trading places through the quarters in 2023 and 2024. Both of these average between 15-20% representation each.
• Another noticeable change is how Mongo has risen in popularity from 1.96% in Q1 2023 to averaging 7% representation in 2024, while Helm has fallen from a high of 13% in Q1 2023 to 7% in Q4 2024.

Which programming languages are in demand the most for Kubernetes jobs?

Whenever a programming language was mentioned in 2024, there was a 56% chance that Python was included.

The next popular languages were Java (36%), Javascript (34%), and Go (30%).

Other languages completing the top ten list are Shell 18%, Typescript 13%, C++ 11%, C# 10%, Ruby 6%, and Scala 5%.

Barring Python, programming languages have traded a few places in popularity since 2023

Here are the key highlights from a year-on-year comparison:

• Python was the most popular programming language even in 2023, but its representation rose from 47.05% in Q1 2023 to a staggering 56.41% in Q4 2024, with the average representation going from 51.66 in 2023 to 56.85% in 2024.
• Java has risen from an average mention of 27.63% in 2023 to 36.14% _in 2024, an _8% increase in a year. At the same time, Shell has fallen in popularity, from being the second most popular language in Q1 and Q2 2023 to being in the fourth spot throughout 2024.

Knowing Python or any of Java, Go, or Javascript would help you land your next Kubernetes job.

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

Of the jobs that cited CI/CD experience in 2024, 80% were generic mentions with no tool specification.

Jenkins was the most popular of the total specific tags for CI/CD tools in 2024, with 35% of the total tags.

A close second was Gitlab with 28%, and Github Actions was a distant third with 11% representation.

CircleCI followed these at 8%, Azure DevOps at 6%, and Spinnaker at 2%.

Has Jenkins always been the most popular CI/CD tool?

Overall, it can be said:

• Jenkins and Gitlab have been close at the top, with Jenkins averaging 32% mentions while Gitlab averaged 28% in 2023. However, in 2024, the average for Gitlab dropped by 2%, while it rose for Jenkins by the same.
• While this is happening, Github actions have risen in popularity from the lows in 2023, maxing at 13% mentions by Q4 2024.
• Azure DevOps had slipped ever so slightly by the end of 2024, with a 6% representation, and CircleCI has maintained consistency in terms of popularity through the last eight quarters.

Observability adoption in Kubernetes

In 2024, Grafana was the most popular tool, with 20% of the total mentions.

A close second and third were Prometheus and Datadog with 19% and 11% 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.

If you are a recruiter, you may better understand what's popular in the Kubernetes job market.

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].