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

6 months to
8 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 130 132
Rank change year-on-year -43 +2 +49
Contract jobs citing Kafka 61 32 49
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.92% 0.92% 1.06%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 6.21% 5.03% 6.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 29 27
10th Percentile £279 £285 £354
25th Percentile £343 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £435 £466
Median % change year-on-year +6.32% -6.65% -20.68%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £492
90th Percentile £674 £600 £535
England median daily rate £550 £550 £611
% change year-on-year - -10.02% -8.43%
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 £71.25 £62.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +14.00% +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 983 636 805
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.89% 18.34% 17.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 624 435 553
10th Percentile £323 £296 £325
25th Percentile £429 £385 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.58% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £555 £625
90th Percentile £725 £625 £675
England median daily rate £530 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +1.92% -5.45% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 17 30
10th Percentile £38.25 £24.69 £27.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £46.25 £56.86
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £62.05
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -19.42% +4.51%
75th Percentile £70.25 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.63 £58.00 £74.88
England median hourly rate £67.50 £54.35 £62.50
% change year-on-year +24.20% -13.04% -

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 8 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 8 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 -18 26 £574 +31.95% 8
West Sussex -18 12 £285 +0.80% 4
Berkshire -25 11 £358 -33.49% 9
Thames Valley -48 11 £358 -33.49% 14
Surrey -12 7 £460 -27.56% 7
Middlesex -20 2 - - 1
East Sussex - 1 £330 -
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 (6.56%) Apache Spark
2 2 (3.28%) IBM HTTP Server
2 2 (3.28%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 2 (3.28%) WebSphere
2 2 (3.28%) WebSphere Application Server
2 2 (3.28%) WebSphere Portal
3 1 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 7 (11.48%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 40 (65.57%) AWS
2 34 (55.74%) Azure
3 18 (29.51%) GCP
4 7 (11.48%) Azure Service Bus
4 7 (11.48%) Boomi
4 7 (11.48%) iPaaS
4 7 (11.48%) Serverless
5 5 (8.20%) Azure DevOps
5 5 (8.20%) GitHub
6 4 (6.56%) Amazon S3
6 4 (6.56%) Entra ID
6 4 (6.56%) OpenShift
7 3 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (4.92%) Snowflake
8 2 (3.28%) Amazon EKS
9 1 (1.64%) Amazon Kinesis
9 1 (1.64%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (1.64%) Azure AKS
9 1 (1.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 1 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 9 (14.75%) HTTP
2 5 (8.20%) MQTT
3 4 (6.56%) Network Security
4 2 (3.28%) DNS
4 2 (3.28%) Firewall
4 2 (3.28%) SSL
4 2 (3.28%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.64%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (34.43%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (29.51%) NoSQL
3 9 (14.75%) MongoDB
3 9 (14.75%) Relational Database
4 5 (8.20%) Big Data
4 5 (8.20%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (6.56%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (6.56%) DynamoDB
6 3 (4.92%) Couchbase
7 2 (3.28%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (3.28%) Apache Cassandra
7 2 (3.28%) Data Lake
7 2 (3.28%) Db2
7 2 (3.28%) RDBMS
7 2 (3.28%) SQL Server
8 1 (1.64%) Chroma
8 1 (1.64%) InfluxDB
8 1 (1.64%) Milvus
8 1 (1.64%) Pinecone
8 1 (1.64%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 14 (22.95%) Git
2 10 (16.39%) GitLab
3 5 (8.20%) Jenkins
4 4 (6.56%) Postman
4 4 (6.56%) SonarQube
5 3 (4.92%) JIRA
6 2 (3.28%) Gradle
6 2 (3.28%) Introscope
6 2 (3.28%) JMeter
6 2 (3.28%) JUnit
6 2 (3.28%) Maven
6 2 (3.28%) Subversion
7 1 (1.64%) Bitbucket
7 1 (1.64%) Oracle Forms
General
1 8 (13.11%) Finance
2 6 (9.84%) Automotive
2 6 (9.84%) Social Skills
3 5 (8.20%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (6.56%) Banking
5 3 (4.92%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 24 (39.34%) Developer
2 8 (13.11%) Architect
3 7 (11.48%) Java Developer
3 7 (11.48%) Platform Engineer
3 7 (11.48%) Python Developer
4 6 (9.84%) DevSecOps Engineer
4 6 (9.84%) Senior
4 6 (9.84%) Solutions Architect
5 5 (8.20%) Salesforce Developer
6 3 (4.92%) Automation Tester
6 3 (4.92%) Middleware Engineer
6 3 (4.92%) Senior Middleware Engineer
6 3 (4.92%) Tester
7 2 (3.28%) Applications Developer
7 2 (3.28%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 2 (3.28%) Big Data Developer
7 2 (3.28%) Data Engineer
7 2 (3.28%) Java Engineer
7 2 (3.28%) Senior Applications Developer
7 2 (3.28%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (29.51%) RabbitMQ
2 17 (27.87%) REST
3 14 (22.95%) OpenAPI
3 14 (22.95%) RESTful
3 14 (22.95%) Swagger
4 11 (18.03%) JSON
4 11 (18.03%) Spring
4 11 (18.03%) XML
5 10 (16.39%) GraphQL
5 10 (16.39%) Middleware
6 9 (14.75%) Spring Boot
7 7 (11.48%) ActiveMQ
7 7 (11.48%) Django
7 7 (11.48%) EDI
7 7 (11.48%) Flask
7 7 (11.48%) NumPy
7 7 (11.48%) OAuth
7 7 (11.48%) Pandas
7 7 (11.48%) pytest
7 7 (11.48%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (26.23%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (22.95%) Cloud Native
3 9 (14.75%) Algorithms
3 9 (14.75%) Data Structures
4 5 (8.20%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (8.20%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (6.56%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.28%) AI Agents
6 2 (3.28%) Clustering
6 2 (3.28%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (3.28%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.64%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 13 (21.31%) Linux
2 4 (6.56%) Unix
3 2 (3.28%) Oracle Linux
3 2 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (3.28%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 2 (3.28%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (49.18%) CI/CD
2 24 (39.34%) Containerisation
3 19 (31.15%) AI
4 17 (27.87%) DevOps
4 17 (27.87%) Event-Driven
5 16 (26.23%) Microservices
6 15 (24.59%) Migration
7 14 (22.95%) Agile
7 14 (22.95%) DevSecOps
8 13 (21.31%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 13 (21.31%) Problem-Solving
8 13 (21.31%) Software Engineering
9 12 (19.67%) Platform Engineering
9 12 (19.67%) TDD
10 10 (16.39%) Machine Learning
11 9 (14.75%) Continuous Improvement
12 8 (13.11%) Analytics
12 8 (13.11%) Integration Patterns
13 7 (11.48%) Technical Leadership
13 7 (11.48%) Webhook
Programming Languages
1 29 (47.54%) Python
2 18 (29.51%) Java
3 11 (18.03%) SQL
4 9 (14.75%) Bash
5 4 (6.56%) Go
5 4 (6.56%) PowerShell
5 4 (6.56%) Rust
5 4 (6.56%) Shell Script
6 3 (4.92%) Kotlin
7 2 (3.28%) JavaScript
7 2 (3.28%) Jython
7 2 (3.28%) Perl
7 2 (3.28%) PL/SQL
7 2 (3.28%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.64%) C#
8 1 (1.64%) Scala
Qualifications
1 17 (27.87%) Security Cleared
2 11 (18.03%) SC Cleared
3 4 (6.56%) Degree
3 4 (6.56%) DV Cleared
4 3 (4.92%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (14.75%) QA
2 1 (1.64%) Actionable Recommendations
2 1 (1.64%) Data Quality
System Software
1 30 (49.18%) Docker
2 1 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 32 (52.46%) Kubernetes
2 7 (11.48%) Ansible
3 6 (9.84%) Grafana
3 6 (9.84%) Prometheus
4 4 (6.56%) Podman
4 4 (6.56%) Puppet
5 2 (3.28%) CA Wily
5 2 (3.28%) Tivoli
6 1 (1.64%) Argo
6 1 (1.64%) Rancher
Vendors
1 18 (29.51%) Oracle
2 9 (14.75%) IBM
3 7 (11.48%) Google
3 7 (11.48%) Informatica
3 7 (11.48%) MuleSoft
3 7 (11.48%) TIBCO
3 7 (11.48%) WSO2
4 6 (9.84%) Salesforce
5 5 (8.20%) Siebel
6 4 (6.56%) NVIDIA
6 4 (6.56%) Tenable
7 3 (4.92%) Solace
7 3 (4.92%) Splunk
8 2 (3.28%) Ab Initio
8 2 (3.28%) AppDynamics
8 2 (3.28%) Red Hat
8 2 (3.28%) Teradata
9 1 (1.64%) CA Agile Central
9 1 (1.64%) Databricks
9 1 (1.64%) VMware