CNCF: Total Number of Cloud Native Developers Reaches 15.6M

November 11, 2025November 11, 2025 Mike Vizard AI cloud adoption, AI developers, API gateways, backend development, cloud developer statistics 2025, cloud monitoring, cloud native, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, cloud-native report, cloud-native trends, cncf, containers, developer experience, developer skills, devops, DX, event-driven architecture, hybrid cloud, IDP, internal developer portals, kubernetes, Kubernetes decline, microservices, ML developers, multicloud, observability tools, serverless computing, service mesh

by Mike Vizard

A report published today by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) estimates there are now 15.6 million developers with cloud native computing skills, of which 9.3 million are focused on backend services.

However, the report also notes that in recent years, there has been a decline in the usage of containers and Kubernetes. The report estimates 52% of developers are using containers, down from 60% in the third quarter of 2020, while the percentage of developers working on backend services based on Kubernetes is now 30%, down from 36% in the third quarter of 2023.

Bob Killen, senior technical program manager for the CNCF, while there has been a decline, the overall scope of the applications being developed using cloud native technologies has expanded. For example, the report estimates that 58% of backend developers are using cloud native technologies, a 9% increase from the first quarter of this year.

Based on a survey of 12,021 developers conducted by SlashData, the report also estimates that 41% of developers who work on artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) applications, roughly 7.1 million, are using cloud-native technologies.

Overall, the report estimates that well over half of DevOps professionals (58%) are now working with cloud native tools and platforms, with adoption of internal developer portals (IDPs) having risen from 23% in the third quarter of 2024 to 27% this year. However, the proportion of developers reporting their organization has a dedicated team for improving developer experience (DX) decreased from 44% to 40%, according to the report.

Among application developers with DevOps expertise, container orchestration (28%), cloud monitoring (33%), and cloud function or serverless computing (26%) are the top technologies employed.

In general, after Kubernetes, the most widely used technologies employed are observability tools (28%), event-driven architectures (27%), and streaming and messaging services (26%).

The report also estimates 46% of developers are building and deploying microservices, with 50% of backend developers using application programming interface (API) gateways. Service meshes, meanwhile, have seen a decrease in adoption rates, from a peak of 18% in the third quarter of 2023 to 8% in the third quarter of this year.

Just under a third (32%) are working on hybrid cloud computing environments, while 26% are building and deploying applications in multicloud computing environments.

There is, of course, a wide range of macroeconomic issues that impact the pace of adoption of new technologies. Many organizations, for example, may not be as aggressively investing in building and deploying new applications as they were when the global economy was more robust. At the same time, the amount of time and funding allocated to training within organizations has also declined for similar reasons.

At the same time, however, the more AI/ML projects are launched, the more likely it becomes that more developers will be exposed to cloud-native technologies, noted Killen.

Regardless of the root cause, the survey makes it clear that finding application developers with cloud-native application expertise will continue to be challenging for some time to come. The issue then becomes determining how many application development projects any organization is going to be able to launch based on the amount of talent and expertise available.