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 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 171 122 130
Rank change year-on-year -49 +8 +52
Contract jobs citing Kafka 52 45 47
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.80% 1.28% 1.09%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.51% 6.88% 6.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 39 26
10th Percentile £283 £285 £378
25th Percentile £343 £365 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £435 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.75% -8.42% -17.39%
75th Percentile £575 £503 £531
90th Percentile £691 £580 £681
England median daily rate £550 £550 £600
% change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £27.00
Median hourly rate - - £28.00
75th Percentile - - £29.00
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £77.00 £59.25 £28.00
% change year-on-year +29.96% +111.61% -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 944 654 771
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.46% 18.53% 17.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 588 443 509
10th Percentile £320 £286 £330
25th Percentile £435 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.58% -9.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £565 £625
90th Percentile £732 £625 £675
England median daily rate £538 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +3.37% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 17 27
10th Percentile £29.07 £24.69 £43.88
25th Percentile £52.81 - £61.60
Median hourly rate £67.47 £50.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +34.94% -20.00% -
75th Percentile £70.75 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £58.75 £71.95
England median hourly rate £67.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +21.82% -15.38% +8.33%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 -32 18 £580 +33.33% 4
West Sussex -17 14 £285 +0.80% 7
Surrey -13 9 £460 -27.56% 6
Berkshire -25 7 £358 -30.24% 11
Thames Valley -47 7 £358 -30.24% 19
Middlesex -18 2 - -
East Sussex 0 1 £330 -41.59% 1
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 1 (1.92%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 6 (11.54%) CPLEX
2 1 (1.92%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 33 (63.46%) AWS
1 33 (63.46%) Azure
2 19 (36.54%) GCP
3 9 (17.31%) Azure Service Bus
3 9 (17.31%) Boomi
3 9 (17.31%) iPaaS
4 5 (9.62%) GitHub
5 4 (7.69%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (7.69%) Entra ID
5 4 (7.69%) Serverless
6 2 (3.85%) Amazon EKS
6 2 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (1.92%) Amazon Kinesis
7 1 (1.92%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 1 (1.92%) Azure AI
7 1 (1.92%) Azure AKS
7 1 (1.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 9 (17.31%) HTTP
2 5 (9.62%) MQTT
3 4 (7.69%) Network Security
4 1 (1.92%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (26.92%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (21.15%) NoSQL
3 7 (13.46%) MongoDB
4 5 (9.62%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (7.69%) Couchbase
5 4 (7.69%) Relational Database
6 2 (3.85%) Redis
7 1 (1.92%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (1.92%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (1.92%) Chroma
7 1 (1.92%) Data Lake
7 1 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.92%) Db2
7 1 (1.92%) InfluxDB
7 1 (1.92%) Milvus
7 1 (1.92%) Pinecone
7 1 (1.92%) RDBMS
7 1 (1.92%) SQL Server
7 1 (1.92%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 12 (23.08%) Git
2 7 (13.46%) GitLab
3 4 (7.69%) SonarQube
4 3 (5.77%) Postman
5 2 (3.85%) Gradle
5 2 (3.85%) Jenkins
5 2 (3.85%) JUnit
5 2 (3.85%) Maven
5 2 (3.85%) Subversion
6 1 (1.92%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.92%) JIRA
6 1 (1.92%) JMeter
General
1 7 (13.46%) Finance
2 4 (7.69%) Banking
3 3 (5.77%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (5.77%) Social Skills
4 2 (3.85%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.92%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 16 (30.77%) Developer
2 10 (19.23%) Architect
3 8 (15.38%) Solutions Architect
4 7 (13.46%) Platform Engineer
4 7 (13.46%) Python Developer
5 6 (11.54%) DevSecOps Engineer
6 5 (9.62%) Java Developer
7 4 (7.69%) Senior
8 3 (5.77%) Automation Tester
8 3 (5.77%) Tester
9 2 (3.85%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 2 (3.85%) Java Engineer
9 2 (3.85%) Senior Developer
9 2 (3.85%) Senior Java Developer
10 1 (1.92%) Backend Developer
10 1 (1.92%) Data Engineer
10 1 (1.92%) Integration Developer
10 1 (1.92%) Middleware Engineer
10 1 (1.92%) Senior Messaging Engineer
10 1 (1.92%) Senior Middleware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (34.62%) REST
2 17 (32.69%) RabbitMQ
3 15 (28.85%) OpenAPI
3 15 (28.85%) Swagger
4 13 (25.00%) RESTful
5 12 (23.08%) JSON
5 12 (23.08%) XML
6 11 (21.15%) GraphQL
7 10 (19.23%) Middleware
8 9 (17.31%) ActiveMQ
8 9 (17.31%) EDI
8 9 (17.31%) JWT
8 9 (17.31%) OAuth
8 9 (17.31%) SAML
8 9 (17.31%) SOAP
9 7 (13.46%) FastAPI
9 7 (13.46%) Spring Boot
10 6 (11.54%) gRPC
10 6 (11.54%) NumPy
10 6 (11.54%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 17 (32.69%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (28.85%) Cloud Native
3 7 (13.46%) Algorithms
3 7 (13.46%) Data Structures
4 5 (9.62%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (7.69%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.85%) AI Agents
6 2 (3.85%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.92%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 11 (21.15%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (46.15%) CI/CD
2 21 (40.38%) Containerisation
3 20 (38.46%) Event-Driven
4 19 (36.54%) AI
5 16 (30.77%) Event-Driven Architecture
6 15 (28.85%) Microservices
7 14 (26.92%) DevOps
7 14 (26.92%) DevSecOps
8 13 (25.00%) Agile
9 12 (23.08%) Problem-Solving
9 12 (23.08%) Software Engineering
10 11 (21.15%) Machine Learning
11 10 (19.23%) Continuous Improvement
11 10 (19.23%) TDD
12 9 (17.31%) API Design
12 9 (17.31%) API Management
12 9 (17.31%) Batch Processing
12 9 (17.31%) Enterprise Architecture
12 9 (17.31%) Integration Patterns
12 9 (17.31%) Webhook
Programming Languages
1 24 (46.15%) Python
2 14 (26.92%) Java
3 8 (15.38%) SQL
4 6 (11.54%) Bash
5 5 (9.62%) Go
6 4 (7.69%) Rust
6 4 (7.69%) Shell Script
7 3 (5.77%) Kotlin
8 2 (3.85%) PL/SQL
8 2 (3.85%) TypeScript
9 1 (1.92%) C#
9 1 (1.92%) JavaScript
9 1 (1.92%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 16 (30.77%) Security Cleared
2 11 (21.15%) SC Cleared
3 4 (7.69%) Degree
3 4 (7.69%) DV Cleared
4 3 (5.77%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (17.31%) QA
2 1 (1.92%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 28 (53.85%) Docker
2 1 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 28 (53.85%) Kubernetes
2 6 (11.54%) Grafana
2 6 (11.54%) Prometheus
3 5 (9.62%) Ansible
4 4 (7.69%) Podman
4 4 (7.69%) Puppet
5 1 (1.92%) Argo
5 1 (1.92%) Rancher
Vendors
1 14 (26.92%) Oracle
2 9 (17.31%) Google
2 9 (17.31%) IBM
2 9 (17.31%) Informatica
2 9 (17.31%) MuleSoft
2 9 (17.31%) TIBCO
2 9 (17.31%) WSO2
3 4 (7.69%) NVIDIA
3 4 (7.69%) Tenable
4 3 (5.77%) Splunk
5 2 (3.85%) Microsoft
5 2 (3.85%) Solace
6 1 (1.92%) CA Agile Central
6 1 (1.92%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.92%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.92%) VMware