The state of Kubernetes jobs in 2025 Q2

Published in August 2025

Has the average salary for a Kubernetes Engineer increased in the second quarter of 2025?

Do Platform Engineer roles still pay the highest average salaries?

What are the in-demand skill sets for applicants so far in 2025?

Has In-office work been resurrected with all the return-to-office policies? Where does this leave remote work?

The answers to all the above questions (and plenty more you may have) await in our State of the Kubernetes job market report for Q2 2025.

During the second quarter of 2025, we gathered over 1,200 job postings, carefully sifting through them to analyze and categorize 386 job descriptions that:

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

Please take the above factors into account when reviewing the numbers.

Let's begin!

You can also download the full report here:

This quarter's report has been brought to you by LearnKube — get started on your Kubernetes journey through comprehensive online, in-person or remote training.

Table of contents

• How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q2 2025?
• Where are the most Kubernetes job offers from?
• 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.
• 68% of all the Kubernetes jobs allow remote work of some sort!
• Kubernetes jobs with on-call rota
• Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs
• Which are the most in-demand programming languages 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 Q2 2025?

The average Kubernetes job salary for the second quarter of 2025 starts with a minimum average of $138,406 and a maximum average of $195,266.

This brings the average Kubernetes job salary to $166,836 globally.

Please note that these numbers aren't indicative of the trend, as we have converted all the salaries in our dataset (regardless of location) into USD.

To get a more accurate view of the salaries, we must look at them according to the geography.

Before analyzing salaries, though, let's first see the frequency of Kubernetes jobs according to locations.

Where are the most Kubernetes job offers from?

For Q2 2025, most Kubernetes offers came from where they have come from in recent times — from North America.

In Q2 2025, a staggering 66.89% of the jobs we published were from the North American region.

European job offers came in at a distant second with 22.64% of the jobs.

The lowest-frequency Kubernetes jobs were in Southeast Asia (4.41%), the Pacific (3.98%), and Latin America (2.77%).

Year-on-year, North American jobs have risen by 3.29%, while European jobs have declined by 0.56%.

Meanwhile, in Q2 2025, jobs from Latin American, Pacific, and Southeast Asian have increased ever so slightly (though the base frequency of these jobs is lower, to begin with).

What's the average Kubernetes salary in North America?

For the second quarter of 2025, the average minimum salary for North American Kubernetes jobs is $141,280, while the maximum average is $199,856, bringing the average wage to $170,568.

What's interesting is that year over year, the minimum average salary has decreased by 4.46%, the maximum average by 4.80%, and the average salary by 4.66% from the numbers in Q2 2024.

During the same time, inflation in North America grew by an average of 3.11%

What could be the reason for this decline?

We don't know. The data from the remaining quarters for 2025 will give us a clearer picture.

If we break down the average salaries into ranges, we get a clearer view of the trend:

The key takeaways from the distribution are:

• 56% of the North American Kubernetes jobs pay between $100,000 and $180,000, 5.50% pay below $100,000, and 28% pay between $180,000 and $240,000 annually.
• What's also interesting to note is how 6.88% of these jobs pay between $240,000 and $300,000 while a minority 2.47% of the jobs pay above $300,000.

However, the ranges were different for the same quarter in 2024

Here are the most important bits from the year-on-year comparison:

• The primary difference between the two quarters is how Q2 2025 had 10% fewer jobs paying between $180k-$240k, and 7% more roles paying between $100k-$180k when compared to Q2 2024 — highlighting the reason for the 4-5% lower salaries year-on-year.
• While jobs paying above $240k to $300k were almost similar between the two quarters, Q2 2025 had almost 70% more roles paying below $100,000 — another contributor to the lower average salaries for the second quarter of 2025.

Again, we'll need to analyze at least another quarter of 2025 to understand why North American salaries may have declined.

What is the average Kubernetes salary in Europe?

For Q2 2025, the average European salaries start with a minimum salary of €81,767, a maximum of €101,742, and a mean salary of €91,754.5.

What's good to see is that European salaries have increased year-on-year!

Interestingly, while average salaries have decreased in North America, they have increased slightly in Europe.

Compared to Q2 2024, the minimum average salary has increased by 8.7% (was €75,225.64), the maximum average by just 0.01% (was €101,727), and the mean by 3.70% (was €88,476.32).

Let's break down European salaries further to get a clearer picture

For the second quarter of 2025, 11.11% of the European jobs pay below €60,000, 72% pay between €60,000 to €120,000, and 16.66% pay above €120,000.

European salaries were distributed almost similarly in Q2 2024 as well

There is a catch, however.

Even though our European dataset now contains twice as many jobs as before, 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 of varied economies, 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 Q2 2025, 47% were Software Engineer positions.

DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, and DevSecOps Engineer positions were next in popularity with 9%, 8% and 4% representation.

These were followed by 3.62% of Site Reliability Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, and Data Engineer positions, with Solution Architect and Engineering Manager roles completing the top ten most popular positions for Q2 2025.

Software engineer positions were the most popular title in Q2 2024 as well, but as for the others, there has been a noticeable change.

The key points to note in the year-on-year comparison are:

• While Q2 2025 had 7.5% more Software Engineer positions, the numbers were far better for almost every other significant title in Q2 2024.
• There were almost 30% more Platform Engineers, 100% more Site Reliability Engineers, and 70% more Data Engineers in the second quarter of 2024 compared to Q2 2025.

68% of all the Kubernetes jobs allow remote work of some sort!

Of all the jobs we published in Q2 2025, 68.36% of these allow some sort of remote work.

However, remote mentions don't equal fully remote work!

More than 60% 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 Q2 2025, 59.2% of the remote jobs require the selected candidate to work remotely within a specified geography, mainly within the country. 40% allow for Hybrid work, meaning the employee should arrive at the office at a specified frequency.

Only 0.38% of the jobs were remote without any restrictions, while the same percentage of jobs were remotely restricted within a specific timezone.

Even with all the return to office policies trend, In-office work may not be heading to a resurrection, or so it seems.

We've traced all the working modes data, right from Q1 2023, to get a better understanding of the trends:

• From Q1 2023 to Q4 2023, remote jobs averaged 44.69%, but these declined to an average of 37% for the year 2024, to eventually average 41% in the first two quarters of 2025. Overall, it can be said that while remote jobs declined in 2024 from the heights of 2023, we may see a lot more remote jobs in 2025, but they may be restricted (more on this later).
• It's interesting to see how the frequency of Hybrid jobs escalated rapidly after the end of 2023, averaging 28.11% since Q1 2024 to Q2 2025. If Return to office policies escalate further in 2025, we may see a rise in Hybrid roles. What's also visible is how In-Office roles grew exponentially after Q2 2024, peaking at Q4 2024 but settling to an average frequency. Perhaps this is a backlash from strict In-office work?

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 Q2 2025, only 12.17% of the jobs mentioned a need to be on-call, 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, 57.4% were remote, 29.8% were Hybrid, and 12.8% were In-Office positions.

Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs

Note that every job description mentions more than one technology.

For the second quarter of 2025, Docker is the most popular technology for Kubernetes jobs, with 60.62% of the total jobs mentioning it.

Distant from the first yet closer together are PostgreSQL and Kafka, with 17% and 14% representation.

The top 5 popular technologies are completed by Helm and MySQL, with 11% and 10% of the jobs mentioning them, respectively.

Year on Year, things weren't so different after all

Although not much has changed year-on-year, here are the noteworthy differences:

• Docker has become popular by 5% now in Q2 2025, PostgreSQL has lost 5% in popularity, while DynamoDB has almost doubled in popularity in 2025 so far.
• Otherwise, the change for the most popular technologies has been between 2% and 3% at most, which is negligible.

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

For the second quarter of 2025, 62% of the jobs mentioned a need for Python experience. Do note that multiple programming languages were mentioned in most job descriptions.

The next popular languages were Javascript (39%), Go (36%), and Java (34%).

Other languages completing the top ten list are Typescript 18%, Shell 17%, C++ 10%, C# 9%, Rust 6%, GraphQL 5%.

Let's take a look back at how the popularity has changed (or hasn't) for the most in-demand programming languages

Let's discuss the key changes in programming language trends:

• Python averaged 53% in 2023, 57% in 2024, and so far in 2025, it has averaged a stagerring 62% representation!
• JavaScript has been on a steady rise through the quarters, even surpassing Java in popularity.
• There are three tiers of popularity for programming languages: Python at the very top, Java, Golang, and JavaScript exchanging places now and then, and then every other programming language starting with TypeScript.

The takeaway is simple: If you can learn just one programming language, choose Python. If you have the bandwidth for more, start with Golang, Java, or JavaScript.

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

Of the jobs that cited CI/CD experience in Q2 2025, a staggering 50% were generic mentions with no tool specification.

For the first time, of the total specific tags for CI/CD tools, Gitlab was the most popular, surpassing Jenkins, usually at the top, with 31% of the total tags.

A close second was Jenkins, with 29% mentions, and Github Actions was a distant third, with 16% representation.

AzureDevOps followed these at 6%, CircleCI at 4%, and Concourse at 2%.

Observability adoption in Kubernetes

In Q2 2025, Prometheus was the most popular tool, with 21% of the total mentions.

A close second but a distant third were Grafana and Datadog with 20% and 14% representation.

Other notable tools are Splunk 10%, ELK 7%, AWS CloudWatch 4%, and Loki 2%.

Summary

We hope you've learned what tools/technologies/skill sets, and preferences are in demand in the current Cloud-native/Kubernetes job market.

If you are a recruiter, you may better understand what's popular in the current market and how you can structure the requirements for the current/future roles.

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 hello@kube.careers.