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 4 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 126 146
Rank change year-on-year -30 +20 +32
Contract jobs citing Kafka 53 28 46
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.91% 0.93% 0.83%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 6.25% 5.68% 6.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 16 30
10th Percentile £321 £294 £311
25th Percentile £360 £338 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £492 £475
Median % change year-on-year -8.44% +3.47% -21.16%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £499
90th Percentile £575 £631 £613
England median daily rate £530 £585 £550
% change year-on-year -9.40% +6.36% -15.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 4
10th Percentile - - £24.03
25th Percentile - - £25.94
Median hourly rate £40.00 - £31.50
75th Percentile - - £36.31
90th Percentile - - £38.68
England median hourly rate £70.00 £85.60 £31.50
% change year-on-year -18.22% +171.75% -59.62%

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 848 493 706
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.57% 16.43% 12.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 575 313 464
10th Percentile £326 £350 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £613 £594 £619
90th Percentile £688 £663 £659
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 18 37
10th Percentile £41.84 £29.31 £35.00
25th Percentile £46.25 £50.00 £56.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £56.25 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +2.22% -8.69% -4.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.25 £70.00
90th Percentile - £67.78 £76.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 -5 30 £456 -10.98% 5
Thames Valley -38 13 £488 -15.22% 5
Berkshire -26 11 £439 -13.12% 2
West Sussex -18 4 £500 +66.67% 1
Sussex - 2 £323 -
East Sussex - 2 £386 - 1
Oxfordshire - 2 £550 - 2
Surrey -14 1 - - 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 8 (15.09%) Apache Spark
2 2 (3.77%) Apache Pulsar
2 2 (3.77%) IBM HTTP Server
2 2 (3.77%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 2 (3.77%) WebSphere
2 2 (3.77%) WebSphere Application Server
2 2 (3.77%) WebSphere Portal
3 1 (1.89%) OpenStack
Applications
1 3 (5.66%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (1.89%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 37 (69.81%) AWS
2 23 (43.40%) Azure
3 18 (33.96%) OpenShift
4 17 (32.08%) GitHub
5 11 (20.75%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (18.87%) GCP
7 9 (16.98%) Amazon S3
8 8 (15.09%) Serverless
9 6 (11.32%) Amazon EKS
9 6 (11.32%) AWS Lambda
9 6 (11.32%) Snowflake
10 4 (7.55%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (5.66%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (3.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 2 (3.77%) Apigee
12 2 (3.77%) AWS KMS
12 2 (3.77%) Azure AKS
12 2 (3.77%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 2 (3.77%) Kong
12 2 (3.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 4 (7.55%) Firewall
2 2 (3.77%) DNS
2 2 (3.77%) HTTP
2 2 (3.77%) SSL
2 2 (3.77%) TCP/IP
3 1 (1.89%) Kerberos
3 1 (1.89%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (67.92%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (30.19%) NoSQL
3 12 (22.64%) Relational Database
4 11 (20.75%) Redis
5 9 (16.98%) Big Data
5 9 (16.98%) DynamoDB
6 8 (15.09%) MongoDB
7 7 (13.21%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (5.66%) HBase
9 2 (3.77%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (3.77%) Data Lake
9 2 (3.77%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (3.77%) SQL Server
10 1 (1.89%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (1.89%) Couchbase
10 1 (1.89%) DB2
10 1 (1.89%) Delta Lake
10 1 (1.89%) RDBMS
10 1 (1.89%) Spark SQL
10 1 (1.89%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 15 (28.30%) GitLab
2 13 (24.53%) Jenkins
3 10 (18.87%) Git
4 7 (13.21%) Cucumber
4 7 (13.21%) JUnit
4 7 (13.21%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (9.43%) JMeter
6 3 (5.66%) Artifactory
6 3 (5.66%) Gradle
6 3 (5.66%) JIRA
7 2 (3.77%) Introscope
8 1 (1.89%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (1.89%) Postman
General
1 17 (32.08%) Finance
2 14 (26.42%) Social Skills
3 6 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (9.43%) Automotive
4 5 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.89%) Banking
5 1 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 30 (56.60%) Developer
2 17 (32.08%) Java Developer
3 10 (18.87%) DevOps Engineer
4 7 (13.21%) Senior
5 5 (9.43%) Full-Stack Developer
5 5 (9.43%) Salesforce Developer
6 4 (7.55%) Full-Stack Java Developer
6 4 (7.55%) Java Engineer
6 4 (7.55%) Senior Developer
7 3 (5.66%) Applications Developer
7 3 (5.66%) AWS Developer
7 3 (5.66%) Data Engineer
7 3 (5.66%) Python Developer
7 3 (5.66%) Senior Java Developer
8 2 (3.77%) AWS Engineer
8 2 (3.77%) Big Data Developer
8 2 (3.77%) Java Applications Developer
8 2 (3.77%) Middleware Engineer
8 2 (3.77%) Senior Applications Developer
8 2 (3.77%) Senior Middleware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (35.85%) Spring
2 14 (26.42%) Spring Boot
3 10 (18.87%) Keycloak
4 8 (15.09%) RabbitMQ
5 5 (9.43%) React
5 5 (9.43%) REST
6 4 (7.55%) OpenAPI
6 4 (7.55%) Swagger
7 3 (5.66%) Django
7 3 (5.66%) FastAPI
7 3 (5.66%) Flask
7 3 (5.66%) Hibernate
7 3 (5.66%) NumPy
7 3 (5.66%) OAuth
7 3 (5.66%) OAuth2
7 3 (5.66%) Pandas
7 3 (5.66%) PySpark
7 3 (5.66%) pytest
7 3 (5.66%) RESTful
8 2 (3.77%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 7 (13.21%) Cloud Native
2 5 (9.43%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (9.43%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (7.55%) Algorithms
3 4 (7.55%) Data Structures
4 2 (3.77%) Clustering
4 2 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (3.77%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.89%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.89%) Chip and PIN
5 1 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.89%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (1.89%) EMV
Operating Systems
1 11 (20.75%) Linux
2 6 (11.32%) Unix
3 4 (7.55%) Windows
4 2 (3.77%) Oracle Linux
4 2 (3.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (3.77%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 2 (3.77%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (75.47%) CI/CD
2 25 (47.17%) Containerisation
3 20 (37.74%) Agile
4 18 (33.96%) DevOps
5 15 (28.30%) Platform Engineering
6 14 (26.42%) Microservices
7 13 (24.53%) Infrastructure as Code
7 13 (24.53%) Migration
7 13 (24.53%) Observability
8 11 (20.75%) Problem-Solving
8 11 (20.75%) Software Engineering
9 9 (16.98%) ETL
9 9 (16.98%) GitOps
10 7 (13.21%) Full-Stack Development
10 7 (13.21%) High Availability
10 7 (13.21%) Software Testing
10 7 (13.21%) TDD
11 6 (11.32%) DevSecOps
11 6 (11.32%) Event-Driven
11 6 (11.32%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 25 (47.17%) Java
2 22 (41.51%) Python
3 11 (20.75%) Bash
4 9 (16.98%) SQL
5 7 (13.21%) PowerShell
6 5 (9.43%) JavaScript
7 4 (7.55%) Go
8 3 (5.66%) Bicep
9 2 (3.77%) Jython
9 2 (3.77%) Kotlin
9 2 (3.77%) Perl
9 2 (3.77%) Scala
10 1 (1.89%) Rust
10 1 (1.89%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 15 (28.30%) Security Cleared
2 13 (24.53%) SC Cleared
3 3 (5.66%) Degree
3 3 (5.66%) OCP
3 3 (5.66%) Oracle Certification
4 2 (3.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (3.77%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.89%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.89%) PMI Certification
5 1 (1.89%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (9.43%) NCSC
2 3 (5.66%) Data Quality
2 3 (5.66%) QA
3 2 (3.77%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.89%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.89%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 17 (32.08%) Docker
2 6 (11.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 33 (62.26%) Kubernetes
2 19 (35.85%) Ansible
3 15 (28.30%) Grafana
3 15 (28.30%) Terraform
4 14 (26.42%) Prometheus
5 10 (18.87%) Argo
6 8 (15.09%) Istio
6 8 (15.09%) linkerd
7 4 (7.55%) Progress Chef
8 3 (5.66%) Rancher
9 2 (3.77%) CA Wily
9 2 (3.77%) Tivoli
10 1 (1.89%) Packer
10 1 (1.89%) Podman
10 1 (1.89%) Puppet
Vendors
1 13 (24.53%) VMware
2 12 (22.64%) Splunk
3 8 (15.09%) Oracle
3 8 (15.09%) Red Hat
4 5 (9.43%) Ab Initio
4 5 (9.43%) Salesforce
4 5 (9.43%) Siebel
4 5 (9.43%) Teradata
5 3 (5.66%) Databricks
5 3 (5.66%) Microsoft
6 2 (3.77%) AppDynamics
6 2 (3.77%) IBM
7 1 (1.89%) CA Agile Central
7 1 (1.89%) Solace