Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Salary in 2025

CKA Certification

$130K
Average Salary
85,000+
Open Positions
+38% year-over-year
Job Growth
Very High
Market Demand

Salary Ranges by Experience Level

Entry Level

$110K - $130K

0-2 years experience

Mid-Level

$130K - $150K

2-5 years experience

Senior Level

$150K - $180K

5+ years experience

💰 Median Salary: $128K/year

Kubernetes adopted by 88% of enterprises

Salary by Location - Top 5 Cities

1
San Francisco, CA
$165,000 - $195,000
2
Seattle, WA
$155,000 - $185,000
3
New York, NY
$150,000 - $180,000
4
Austin, TX
$140,000 - $170,000
5
Boston, MA
$145,000 - $175,000

Key Factors Affecting Salary

Cloud Platform Expertise

+25-35%

EKS, AKS, GKE managed Kubernetes experience

GitOps / CI/CD

+20-30%

ArgoCD, Flux, Tekton pipeline skills

Service Mesh

+18-25%

Istio, Linkerd, advanced networking

Security

+15-25%

RBAC, Pod Security, network policies

Skills That Increase Your Salary

Helm / GitOps

+$15,000 - $22,000

Package management, ArgoCD, Flux

Observability

+$12,000 - $20,000

Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack

Service Mesh

+$10,000 - $18,000

Istio, Linkerd implementation

Multi-Cloud K8s

+$12,000 - $20,000

EKS, AKS, GKE expertise

Career Progression & Salary Growth

Entry Level

Junior Kubernetes Engineer

0-2 years

$110,000 - $130,000
Mid Level

Kubernetes Administrator

2-5 years

$130,000 - $150,000
Senior Level

Senior K8s / Platform Engineer

5-8 years

$150,000 - $170,000
Lead Level

Lead Platform Engineer / Architect

8+ years

$170,000 - $210,000+

Salary Comparison with Similar Roles

RoleAverage SalaryDifference
DevOps Engineer$125,000-4%
Site Reliability Engineer$145,000+12%
Cloud Engineer$120,000-8%
Docker Admin (no K8s)$105,000-19%

Top Paying Industries

Technology / SaaS

Demand: Very High

$145,000

FinTech

Demand: Very High

$150,000

E-commerce

Demand: High

$135,000

Media / Streaming

Demand: High

$140,000

Gaming

Demand: High

$138,000

Salary by Company Size

Startup (1-50 employees)$120,000
Small (51-200 employees)$128,000
Medium (201-1000 employees)$135,000
Large (1001-5000 employees)$142,000
Enterprise (5000+ employees)$150,000

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