State of Kubernetes jobs, Q3 2026
26,135 live postings name Kubernetes, from — employers. Every number here is measured on postings read straight from ten applicant tracking systems, and every denominator is stated.
Demand
Title search finds a fraction of the demand
A search of job titles for “Kubernetes” returns 321 postings. A search of the whole posting returns 26,135. Both numbers are correct and they answer different questions: the first counts roles named after the technology, the second counts employers who ask for the skill. Reports that count titles understate skill demand by about 81 times.
How it compares
| Technology | Postings | Employers | New this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kubernetes | 26,135 | — | 1,305 |
| Terraform | 14,580 | — | 802 |
| Docker | 20,189 | — | 1,134 |
| AWS | 47,326 | — | 2,409 |
| Python | 78,277 | — | 4,014 |
Pay, where the employer publishes it
| Technology | Postings with a range | 25th | Median | 75th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kubernetes (this report) | 1,127 | $150k | $175k | $200k |
| Terraform | 694 | $145k | $170k | $200k |
| Docker | 578 | $129k | $160k | $185k |
| AWS | 1,733 | $142k | $170k | $200k |
| Python | 3,283 | $139k | $168k | $200k |
Annual ranges in US dollars only. Percentiles are computed on the lower bound of the advertised range, over the postings that publish one — 1,127 of 26,135 for Kubernetes. Postings that disclose nothing are excluded, not counted as zero.
Where the work is
Who is hiring
How long these postings stay up
Half of the postings that carry a publication date have been live for 63 days or more, and 52.1% have been live for more than sixty days. 7.4% were published in the last seven days. The denominator is 17,642 postings; the rest come from sources that publish no date.
A long-lived posting is not proof that a role is unreal. Intent is not observable from outside a company. It does mean the advertisement has been in the market for a while, which is worth weighing before spending an evening on an application.
Remote is named on 42.7% of the postings that state a work arrangement (3,707 of 8,680).
Where these sources come from
Job postings read straight from employer applicant tracking systems — ten platforms, named.
Take the numbers
The tables behind this report are published as CSV under CC BY 4.0 on the open data page. The same index answers queries live through the API.
Hiring Index, hiringindex.org, measured 2026-09-09.