OpenUK details ‘state’ of Kubernetes
Kubernetes we know, UKubernetes (or perhaps it should be uKubernetes) we don’t know so much i.e. the state of the wildly popularised open source container orchestration platform in the UK in terms of its penetration levels, advancement and adoption at the coal face of computing.
OpenUK, the non-profit organisation representing the UK’s open technology sector, recently offered us its Kubernetes Report.
The report goes through the impact that the UK technology community has had on the development, direction and growth of Kubernetes.
UK 5th place
A focus on the UK contribution to Kubernetes sees a shift from 2022 when, according to CNCF, the UK’s contributions were the 5th largest to 2025 where it sits behind the US and China and firmly as Europe’s leader in contributing to Kubernetes.
When it comes to number of contributors and maintainers, the UK is the world’s fourth largest and has some of the top contributors including Tim Bannister who briefly charted as the world’s number one contributor in March 2025.
Always upbeat (almost to a fault perhaps), OpenUK says that considering its size, the UK is certainly “punching above its weight” on a per capita basis.
The report includes content from a number of leaders that were involved in developing the community and code around Kubernetes, including Alexis Richardson, Matt Barker Andrew Martin and Liz Rice.
Alexis was the first Cloud Native Foundation Technical Oversight Committee chair and Liz followed in his footsteps some years later.
Hi again, Hightower
Alexis and Matt also share war stories of the 2014 founding of Kubernetes with meetings in the Hoxton Hotel with Kelsey ‘Mr Keynote’ Hightower and shaping the initial structure of both Kubernetes and a foundation around it.
“The UK community around cloud native technology is vast and the world’s 4th largest, which on a per capita basis means we are really into Kubernetes. Like much of our open source community here in the UK and as with most countries outside of the US, it forms the submarine under our digital economy. This week in London, we see the biggest KubeCon in Europe with over 13,000 registered attendees. Yet, most of the UK’s tech sector are completely unaware of the impact that we have had on this project, assuming that it is a US or international project,” said Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK.
As Matt Barker, Founder of one of the first Kubernetes companies, Jetstack says, “I realised how big of a thing Kubernetes was going to be, as it had a proven track record of scale inside Google. At this point I resolved to either get a job with CoreOS, or I burn the bridges and start a company around Kubernetes.”
Andrew Martin, CEO at Control Plane, discusses the initial approach to security and Kubernetes with the inaugural meeting of what would become the CNCF Technical Advisory Group on Security: “With fewer than 10 people in that room, they sparked a community movement that would bring confidence to Kubernetes deployment for mission-critical systems, in tandem with the code-focused Special Interest Group on Security (SIG Security) and eventually the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). Rory McCune and Liz Rice were instrumental in the group and its interaction with the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC).”
OpenUK is the organisation for the business of open technology, encompassing open source software, open source hardware, open data, open standards and AI openness across the UK.