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 15 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 127 136
Rank change year-on-year -34 +9 +43
Contract jobs citing Kafka 62 32 49
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.94% 0.93% 1.07%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 6.30% 5.06% 6.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 50 28 27
10th Percentile £289 £284 £352
25th Percentile £349 £372 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £435 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.75% -3.33% -25.00%
75th Percentile £572 £531 £492
90th Percentile £658 £600 £535
England median daily rate £550 £550 £622
% change year-on-year - -11.58% -7.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 5
10th Percentile - - £24.45
25th Percentile - - £27.00
Median hourly rate - - £28.00
75th Percentile - - £29.00
90th Percentile - - £35.75
England median hourly rate £72.50 £59.25 £28.00
% change year-on-year +22.36% +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 984 633 803
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.86% 18.41% 17.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 627 427 550
10th Percentile £324 £293 £325
25th Percentile £431 £383 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.58% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £555 £619
90th Percentile £725 £625 £675
England median daily rate £530 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +2.02% -5.55% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 16 29
10th Percentile £29.07 £22.78 £27.00
25th Percentile £54.84 £49.06 £56.65
Median hourly rate £68.11 £50.00 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +36.22% -18.83% +2.67%
75th Percentile £70.13 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.44 £58.13 £74.89
England median hourly rate £67.47 £54.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +24.94% -13.60% -3.85%

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 15 September 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 15 September 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 -25 26 £574 +31.95% 7
West Sussex -21 14 £290 +2.56% 8
Berkshire -24 9 £358 -31.08% 9
Thames Valley -44 9 £358 -31.08% 20
Surrey -8 8 £460 -27.56% 12
Middlesex -17 2 - - 1
East Sussex - 1 £330 - 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 4 (6.45%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.61%) IBM HTTP Server
2 1 (1.61%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 1 (1.61%) WebSphere
2 1 (1.61%) WebSphere Application Server
2 1 (1.61%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (11.29%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 40 (64.52%) AWS
2 35 (56.45%) Azure
3 19 (30.65%) GCP
4 8 (12.90%) Azure Service Bus
4 8 (12.90%) Boomi
4 8 (12.90%) iPaaS
5 7 (11.29%) Serverless
6 5 (8.06%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (6.45%) Entra ID
7 4 (6.45%) GitHub
7 4 (6.45%) OpenShift
8 3 (4.84%) Amazon S3
8 3 (4.84%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (4.84%) Snowflake
9 2 (3.23%) Amazon EKS
10 1 (1.61%) Amazon Kinesis
10 1 (1.61%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 1 (1.61%) Azure AKS
10 1 (1.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 1 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 9 (14.52%) HTTP
2 5 (8.06%) MQTT
3 4 (6.45%) Network Security
4 1 (1.61%) Broadband
4 1 (1.61%) DNS
4 1 (1.61%) Firewall
4 1 (1.61%) SSL
4 1 (1.61%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (35.48%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (27.42%) NoSQL
3 9 (14.52%) MongoDB
4 8 (12.90%) Relational Database
5 5 (8.06%) Couchbase
5 5 (8.06%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (6.45%) Big Data
7 3 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (4.84%) DynamoDB
8 2 (3.23%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (3.23%) Db2
8 2 (3.23%) RDBMS
9 1 (1.61%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (1.61%) Chroma
9 1 (1.61%) Data Lake
9 1 (1.61%) InfluxDB
9 1 (1.61%) Milvus
9 1 (1.61%) Redis
9 1 (1.61%) SQL Server
9 1 (1.61%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 13 (20.97%) Git
2 8 (12.90%) GitLab
3 4 (6.45%) Postman
3 4 (6.45%) SonarQube
4 3 (4.84%) Jenkins
5 2 (3.23%) Gradle
5 2 (3.23%) JIRA
5 2 (3.23%) JMeter
5 2 (3.23%) JUnit
5 2 (3.23%) Maven
5 2 (3.23%) Subversion
6 1 (1.61%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.61%) Introscope
6 1 (1.61%) Oracle Forms
General
1 10 (16.13%) Finance
2 6 (9.68%) Automotive
3 5 (8.06%) Social Skills
4 4 (6.45%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (6.45%) Banking
5 3 (4.84%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 26 (41.94%) Developer
2 9 (14.52%) Architect
2 9 (14.52%) Java Developer
3 7 (11.29%) Platform Engineer
3 7 (11.29%) Python Developer
3 7 (11.29%) Senior
3 7 (11.29%) Solutions Architect
4 6 (9.68%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 5 (8.06%) Salesforce Developer
6 4 (6.45%) Senior Developer
7 3 (4.84%) Automation Tester
7 3 (4.84%) Senior Java Developer
7 3 (4.84%) Tester
8 2 (3.23%) Applications Developer
8 2 (3.23%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 2 (3.23%) Big Data Developer
8 2 (3.23%) Java Engineer
8 2 (3.23%) Middleware Engineer
8 2 (3.23%) Senior Applications Developer
8 2 (3.23%) Senior Middleware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (29.03%) RabbitMQ
1 18 (29.03%) REST
2 15 (24.19%) OpenAPI
2 15 (24.19%) Swagger
3 14 (22.58%) RESTful
4 12 (19.35%) JSON
4 12 (19.35%) XML
5 11 (17.74%) GraphQL
5 11 (17.74%) Spring
5 11 (17.74%) Spring Boot
6 10 (16.13%) Middleware
7 8 (12.90%) ActiveMQ
7 8 (12.90%) EDI
7 8 (12.90%) JWT
7 8 (12.90%) OAuth
7 8 (12.90%) SAML
7 8 (12.90%) SOAP
8 7 (11.29%) Django
8 7 (11.29%) FastAPI
8 7 (11.29%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 17 (27.42%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (24.19%) Cloud Native
3 9 (14.52%) Algorithms
3 9 (14.52%) Data Structures
4 5 (8.06%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (8.06%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (6.45%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.23%) AI Agents
6 2 (3.23%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.61%) Clustering
7 1 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.61%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 12 (19.35%) Linux
2 3 (4.84%) Unix
3 1 (1.61%) Oracle Linux
3 1 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (1.61%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (1.61%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (45.16%) CI/CD
2 24 (38.71%) Containerisation
3 18 (29.03%) AI
3 18 (29.03%) Event-Driven
3 18 (29.03%) Microservices
4 16 (25.81%) DevOps
5 14 (22.58%) DevSecOps
5 14 (22.58%) Event-Driven Architecture
5 14 (22.58%) Migration
6 13 (20.97%) Agile
7 12 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
7 12 (19.35%) Software Engineering
7 12 (19.35%) TDD
8 11 (17.74%) Platform Engineering
9 10 (16.13%) Machine Learning
10 9 (14.52%) Continuous Improvement
11 8 (12.90%) Analytics
11 8 (12.90%) API Design
11 8 (12.90%) Enterprise Architecture
11 8 (12.90%) Webhook
Programming Languages
1 27 (43.55%) Python
2 19 (30.65%) Java
3 10 (16.13%) SQL
4 7 (11.29%) Bash
5 4 (6.45%) Go
5 4 (6.45%) Rust
5 4 (6.45%) Shell Script
6 3 (4.84%) Kotlin
7 2 (3.23%) JavaScript
7 2 (3.23%) PL/SQL
7 2 (3.23%) PowerShell
7 2 (3.23%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.61%) C#
8 1 (1.61%) Jython
8 1 (1.61%) Perl
Qualifications
1 17 (27.42%) Security Cleared
2 11 (17.74%) SC Cleared
3 4 (6.45%) Degree
3 4 (6.45%) DV Cleared
4 3 (4.84%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (14.52%) QA
2 1 (1.61%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 30 (48.39%) Docker
2 1 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 32 (51.61%) Kubernetes
2 6 (9.68%) Ansible
2 6 (9.68%) Grafana
2 6 (9.68%) Prometheus
3 4 (6.45%) Podman
3 4 (6.45%) Puppet
4 1 (1.61%) Argo
4 1 (1.61%) CA Wily
4 1 (1.61%) Rancher
4 1 (1.61%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 20 (32.26%) Oracle
2 9 (14.52%) IBM
3 8 (12.90%) Google
3 8 (12.90%) Informatica
3 8 (12.90%) MuleSoft
3 8 (12.90%) TIBCO
3 8 (12.90%) WSO2
4 6 (9.68%) Salesforce
5 5 (8.06%) Siebel
6 4 (6.45%) NVIDIA
6 4 (6.45%) Tenable
7 3 (4.84%) Solace
7 3 (4.84%) Splunk
8 2 (3.23%) Ab Initio
8 2 (3.23%) Microsoft
8 2 (3.23%) Teradata
9 1 (1.61%) AppDynamics
9 1 (1.61%) CA Agile Central
9 1 (1.61%) Red Hat
9 1 (1.61%) VMware