The state of Kubernetes jobs in 2025 Q3
Published in October 2025
162,643 was the average global salary for Kubernetes jobs in the first half of 2025, has it increased in Q3 2025? Or has the average gone down?
Have Return-to-Office policies impacted cloud-native roles working modes? How remotely open are jobs in the latter part of 2025?
Our State of the Kubernetes Jobs Report for Q3 2025 provides answers to the above questions and many more you may have.
During the third quarter of 2025, we gathered over 1,200 job postings, carefully sifting through them to analyze and categorize 509 job descriptions that:
- Require Kubernetes experience.
- Mention a clear salary range.
- Are listed by companies (and not recruitment agencies).
Please consider the above factors 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.
How much does a Kubernetes job pay in Q3 2025?
The average minimum salary for a Kubernetes role is $140,982, with a maximum of $202,453, as of the third quarter of 2025.
This brings the mean global salary for Kubernetes jobs to $171,717.
While a metric such as the global Kubernetes jobs average salary provides a universal gauge of wages, we need granular insights based on specific regions to determine the current pay scale trends.
Further into the report, we have analysed average salaries based on specific regions.
Before that, we'll determine which region has the highest frequency of Kubernetes jobs.
Where are most of the Kubernetes job offers located?
North America has been the land of opportunity for most Kubernetes jobs, even in Q3 2025 (it has been the most popular location in previous quarters as well), as we had 68.24% of the total jobs coming from the region.
It isn't such a surprise since the sheer size of the US IT sector is massive! How massive? It currently stands at a valuation of $490.86 Billion, and is estimated to reach $691.57 Billion by 2030.
European job offers came in at a distant second, with only 20.57% of the jobs published from that region.
At the bottom tier of Kubernetes job frequency were South East Asia (6.60%), Pacific (3.13%), and Latin America, with 1.59% of the positions.
What's the average Kubernetes salary in North America?
For the third quarter of 2025, the average minimum salary for North American Kubernetes jobs is $145,718, while the maximum average is $210,249, resulting in a mean salary of $177,983.
What's interesting to see is that year-on-year, the minimum average salary has increased by 5.79%, the maximum average by 4.33%, and the mean salary by 4.92% from the numbers in Q3 2024.
While the average inflation in North America during the same period was 3.12%
Let's break down the average salaries into ranges to get a clearer view of the trend.
The key takeaways from the distribution are:
- 51.16% of the North American Kubernetes jobs pay between $100,000 and $180,000, 5.07% pay below $100,000, and 33.40% pay between $180,000 and $240,000 annually.
- What's also interesting to note is how 5.71% of these jobs pay between $240,000 and $300,000 while a minority 4.65% of the jobs pay above $300,000.
What's interesting to see is that for the first two quarters of 2025, the average salaries have declined by 5-6% when compared to their 2024 counterparts.
If we break down the average North American salaries for the first three quarters of 2025, we understand where the 10% difference for Q3 comes from
Here is how Q3 2025 stands out in terms of the best average salaries:
- It has the least percentage of jobs paying below $100,000, while also showing the least percentile between the salary range of $100,000-$180,000.
- The real differentiation begins as we go higher in the salary ranges:
- 5% more roles paying between $180k-$240k.
- At least twice the number of roles paying above $300,000.
Keep an eye out for our thorough salary analysis for all four quarters of 2025 in our Q4 2025 report.
What is the average Kubernetes salary in Europe?
For Q3 2025, the average European salaries start with a minimum of €81,722, a maximum of €102,504, and a mean salary of €92,113
What's good to see is that European salaries have increased year-on-year!
While North American average salaries increased by 5-6%, European salaries increased by 15-19%
Compared to Q3 2024, the minimum average salary has increased by 15.31% (was €69,136), the maximum average by 19.01% (was €91,126), and the mean by 14.95% (was €80,131).
If we break down European salaries into ranges for the first three quarters of 2025, things get really interesting!
What separates Q3 2025 from the first two quarters is that almost 24% of the jobs in this quarter paid between €120,000 - €200,000, while only 15% of these roles paid below €60,000.
There is a catch, though. Even though our European dataset now consists of 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 with varied economies, cost of living, and technological status.
Look out for more granular insights in the future as we expand our European dataset.
The most sought-after Kubernetes positions are: Software Engineer > DevOps Engineer > Platform Engineer.
Of all the jobs we published in Q3 2025, 43.02% were Software Engineer positions.
DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, and Site Reliability Engineer positions were the next popular roles with 9.43%, 9.03% and 6.09% representation.
These were followed by Data Engineer, DevSecOps Engineer, Solution Architect, and Engineering Manager positions with a range of 3-4% depiction.
While Software Engineer positions have made up 40-45% of the total Kubernetes roles over the past two years, there have been noticeable differences for other popular roles through the quarters
67% of all the Kubernetes jobs allow remote work of some sort!
67.60% of the jobs published in Q3 2025 permit some form of remote work.
However, remote mentions don't equal fully remote work!
More than 65% 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 Q3 2025, 66.86% of the remote jobs require the selected candidate to work remotely but within a specified geography, and mostly within the country. 32.41% allow for Hybrid work, meaning the employee should show up to the office at a specified frequency.
Only 0.29% of the jobs were remote without any restrictions, while the same percentage of jobs were 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 Q3 2023, to get a better understanding of the trends:
- Remote work declined from late 2023 till the end of 2024, and it has resurrected in 2025, but this revival comes with the condition of 98% of these roles being restricted within a geography, mostly within a country.
- While Hybrid work did emerge as a good alternative as remote roles with no restriction declined drastically, it also seems to be on the decline in 2025, averaging 23% in three quarters.
- Return-to-Office policies from tech giants such as JP Morgan, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc., may suggest others will follow suit, but that hasn't been the case with cloud-native roles. While In-Office requirement jobs peaked at 40% in Q1 2025, they have decreased to 32% in Q3 2025.
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 Q3 2025, only 16.30% 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, 57.8% were remote jobs, 25.3% were Hybrid jobs, and 16.9% were office-based jobs.
Popular technologies for Kubernetes jobs
Note that every job description mentions more than one technology.
For the third quarter of 2025, Docker is the most popular technology for Kubernetes jobs, with 60.92% of the total jobs mentioning it.
Distant from the first yet closer together are Kafka and PostgreSQL, with 14% and 13% representation.
Completing the top 5 popular technologies are Helm and Spark with 13% and 9% of the jobs mentioning it.
Which programming languages are in demand the most for Kubernetes jobs?
For the third quarter of 2025, a staggering 63.45% of the jobs mentioned a need for Python experience.
Do note that multiple programming languages were mentioned in a majority of the job descriptions.
The next popular languages were Golang (43%), Java (40%), and Javascript (37%).
Other languages completing the top ten list are Typescript 20%, Shell 16%, C++ 12%, Scala 9%, C# 8.44%, Rust 7.46%, and C 6.28%.
What CI/CD tools are popular in Kubernetes job descriptions?
Of the jobs that cited CI/CD experience in Q3 2025, a staggering 50% were generic mentions with no tool specification.
Of the total specific tags for CI/CD tools, Jenkins was the most popular, with 33.46% of the total tags.
A close second was Gitlab, with 22.70% mentions, and Github Actions was a close third, with 22.31% representation.
Azure DevOps then followed at 8.36%, CircleCI at 5.17%, and CodePipeline at 2%.
Observability adoption in Kubernetes
In Q3 2025, Prometheus was the most popular tool, accounting for 25% of total mentions.
A close second but a distant third were Grafana and Datadog with 21% and 13% representation.
Other notable tools are Splunk 6%, AWS CloudWatch 3%, New Relic 3%, and Loki 2%.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you learned all the skills/tools and expertise companies seek when hiring a Kubernetes Engineer.
If you are a recruiter, you may gain a better understanding of what's in demand in the Kubernetes job market.
We'd love to hear your feedback on whether you liked what you read (or didn't).
You can reach us at hello@kube.careers.
