Kafka Contract Job Trends in the South East

Apache Kafka
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Kafka skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 126 133
Rank change year-on-year -43 +7 +41
Contract jobs citing Kafka 65 38 55
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.98% 1.09% 1.11%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 6.76% 6.45% 7.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 50 32 30
10th Percentile £295 £288 £358
25th Percentile £349 £389 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £443 £466
Median % change year-on-year +15.82% -5.04% -16.04%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £495
90th Percentile £658 £600 £526
England median daily rate £550 £550 £600
% change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 6
10th Percentile - - £24.88
25th Percentile - - £27.00
Median hourly rate - - £28.00
75th Percentile - - £33.50
90th Percentile - - £37.63
England median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +12.00% +123.21% -64.10%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
South East

Kafka falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 961 589 751
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.44% 16.83% 15.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 606 407 515
10th Percentile £313 £302 £318
25th Percentile £425 £400 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -9.52% -
75th Percentile £623 £575 £625
90th Percentile £700 £625 £670
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 21 35
10th Percentile £35.50 £20.85 £27.30
25th Percentile £51.25 £32.31 £55.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -18.83% +2.67%
75th Percentile - £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.96 £58.75 £76.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year +18.18% -2.22% -6.25%

Kafka
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Kafka relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Kafka job vacancy trend in the South East

Kafka
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kafka.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kafka

Kafka
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kafka in the South East over the 6 months to 3 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kafka in the South East

Kafka
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kafka.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kafka

Kafka
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kafka within the South East region over the 6 months to 3 August 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Hampshire -22 29 £567 +30.23% 8
Thames Valley -43 15 £358 -36.44% 6
Berkshire -21 14 £358 -35.00% 2
West Sussex -18 10 £294 +1.91% 5
Surrey -18 3 £460 -27.56% 6
Middlesex -14 2 - -
East Sussex - 2 £326 - 1
Sussex - 2 £323 -
Oxfordshire - 1 - - 2
Kafka
England

Kafka
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 5 (7.69%) Apache Spark
2 2 (3.08%) IBM HTTP Server
2 2 (3.08%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 2 (3.08%) WebSphere
2 2 (3.08%) WebSphere Application Server
2 2 (3.08%) WebSphere Portal
3 1 (1.54%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.54%) Apache Pulsar
3 1 (1.54%) OpenStack
Applications
1 8 (12.31%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (1.54%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 42 (64.62%) AWS
2 34 (52.31%) Azure
3 18 (27.69%) GCP
4 9 (13.85%) Serverless
5 7 (10.77%) Amazon S3
6 6 (9.23%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (7.69%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (7.69%) OpenShift
8 4 (6.15%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (6.15%) Entra ID
8 4 (6.15%) GitHub
8 4 (6.15%) Snowflake
9 3 (4.62%) Azure Service Bus
9 3 (4.62%) Boomi
9 3 (4.62%) iPaaS
10 2 (3.08%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 2 (3.08%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (3.08%) Azure AKS
11 1 (1.54%) Azure API Management
11 1 (1.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 5 (7.69%) HTTP
1 5 (7.69%) MQTT
2 4 (6.15%) Network Security
3 3 (4.62%) Firewall
4 2 (3.08%) DNS
4 2 (3.08%) SSL
4 2 (3.08%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.54%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (41.54%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (30.77%) NoSQL
3 13 (20.00%) Relational Database
4 10 (15.38%) MongoDB
5 7 (10.77%) Big Data
6 6 (9.23%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (9.23%) DynamoDB
7 5 (7.69%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (4.62%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (4.62%) Couchbase
8 3 (4.62%) Data Lake
8 3 (4.62%) Redis
8 3 (4.62%) SQL Server
9 2 (3.08%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (3.08%) Db2
9 2 (3.08%) RDBMS
10 1 (1.54%) InfluxDB
10 1 (1.54%) Pinecone
10 1 (1.54%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 16 (24.62%) Git
2 11 (16.92%) GitLab
3 8 (12.31%) Jenkins
4 4 (6.15%) JIRA
4 4 (6.15%) Postman
4 4 (6.15%) SonarQube
5 2 (3.08%) Introscope
5 2 (3.08%) JMeter
6 1 (1.54%) Gradle
6 1 (1.54%) JUnit
6 1 (1.54%) Maven
6 1 (1.54%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (1.54%) Subversion
General
1 10 (15.38%) Finance
1 10 (15.38%) Social Skills
2 7 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (9.23%) Automotive
4 4 (6.15%) Banking
4 4 (6.15%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.54%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 31 (47.69%) Developer
2 11 (16.92%) Java Developer
3 8 (12.31%) Python Developer
4 7 (10.77%) Platform Engineer
4 7 (10.77%) Senior
5 6 (9.23%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 5 (7.69%) Salesforce Developer
7 4 (6.15%) Architect
8 3 (4.62%) Data Engineer
8 3 (4.62%) Middleware Engineer
8 3 (4.62%) Senior Middleware Engineer
9 2 (3.08%) Applications Developer
9 2 (3.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 2 (3.08%) Automation Tester
9 2 (3.08%) Big Data Developer
9 2 (3.08%) DevOps Engineer
9 2 (3.08%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 2 (3.08%) Senior Developer
9 2 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
9 2 (3.08%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (26.15%) RabbitMQ
2 15 (23.08%) REST
2 15 (23.08%) RESTful
3 13 (20.00%) Spring
4 12 (18.46%) OpenAPI
4 12 (18.46%) Swagger
5 11 (16.92%) Spring Boot
6 8 (12.31%) Django
6 8 (12.31%) FastAPI
6 8 (12.31%) Flask
6 8 (12.31%) NumPy
6 8 (12.31%) Pandas
6 8 (12.31%) pytest
7 7 (10.77%) GraphQL
7 7 (10.77%) gRPC
7 7 (10.77%) JSON
7 7 (10.77%) XML
8 6 (9.23%) Keycloak
8 6 (9.23%) Middleware
9 5 (7.69%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 13 (20.00%) Cloud Native
1 13 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
2 10 (15.38%) Algorithms
2 10 (15.38%) Data Structures
3 5 (7.69%) Legacy Systems
4 4 (6.15%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (6.15%) Product Ownership
5 2 (3.08%) AI Agents
5 2 (3.08%) Clustering
5 2 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (3.08%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (3.08%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.54%) Chip and PIN
6 1 (1.54%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 14 (21.54%) Linux
2 5 (7.69%) Unix
3 3 (4.62%) Windows
4 2 (3.08%) Oracle Linux
4 2 (3.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (3.08%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (56.92%) CI/CD
2 30 (46.15%) Containerisation
3 21 (32.31%) Microservices
4 19 (29.23%) Agile
4 19 (29.23%) DevOps
5 18 (27.69%) AI
6 16 (24.62%) Event-Driven
6 16 (24.62%) Migration
6 16 (24.62%) Problem-Solving
6 16 (24.62%) Software Engineering
7 14 (21.54%) DevSecOps
7 14 (21.54%) Platform Engineering
7 14 (21.54%) TDD
8 10 (15.38%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 10 (15.38%) Machine Learning
8 10 (15.38%) Scrum
9 9 (13.85%) Analytics
9 9 (13.85%) Continuous Improvement
10 8 (12.31%) Data Analytics
10 8 (12.31%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 34 (52.31%) Python
2 19 (29.23%) Java
3 11 (16.92%) SQL
4 10 (15.38%) Bash
5 6 (9.23%) Go
5 6 (9.23%) PowerShell
6 4 (6.15%) Rust
6 4 (6.15%) Shell Script
7 3 (4.62%) JavaScript
7 3 (4.62%) Kotlin
7 3 (4.62%) TypeScript
8 2 (3.08%) Jython
8 2 (3.08%) Perl
8 2 (3.08%) PL/SQL
8 2 (3.08%) Scala
9 1 (1.54%) Bicep
9 1 (1.54%) C#
Qualifications
1 19 (29.23%) Security Cleared
2 13 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 6 (9.23%) Degree
4 5 (7.69%) DV Cleared
5 4 (6.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (1.54%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.54%) PMI Certification
7 1 (1.54%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (9.23%) QA
2 2 (3.08%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.54%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (1.54%) ISO 20022
3 1 (1.54%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 37 (56.92%) Docker
2 2 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 38 (58.46%) Kubernetes
2 9 (13.85%) Grafana
2 9 (13.85%) Prometheus
3 8 (12.31%) Ansible
3 8 (12.31%) Terraform
4 4 (6.15%) Podman
4 4 (6.15%) Puppet
5 3 (4.62%) Argo
6 2 (3.08%) CA Wily
6 2 (3.08%) Rancher
6 2 (3.08%) Tivoli
7 1 (1.54%) Istio
7 1 (1.54%) linkerd
Vendors
1 14 (21.54%) Oracle
2 6 (9.23%) Salesforce
3 5 (7.69%) IBM
3 5 (7.69%) Siebel
4 4 (6.15%) NVIDIA
4 4 (6.15%) Splunk
4 4 (6.15%) Tenable
5 3 (4.62%) Ab Initio
5 3 (4.62%) Google
5 3 (4.62%) Informatica
5 3 (4.62%) MuleSoft
5 3 (4.62%) Solace
5 3 (4.62%) Teradata
5 3 (4.62%) TIBCO
5 3 (4.62%) WSO2
6 2 (3.08%) AppDynamics
6 2 (3.08%) CA Agile Central
6 2 (3.08%) Databricks
6 2 (3.08%) Red Hat
6 2 (3.08%) VMware