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 29 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 165 121 141
Rank change year-on-year -44 +20 +39
Contract jobs citing Kafka 52 35 62
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.83% 1.12% 1.09%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.73% 6.48% 7.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 27 38
10th Percentile £311 £288 £361
25th Percentile £349 £376 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £435 £475
Median % change year-on-year +14.94% -8.42% -13.64%
75th Percentile £569 £569 £497
90th Percentile £682 £593 £534
England median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -11.54%
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 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -11.05% +181.07% -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 907 540 787
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.48% 17.32% 13.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 359 522
10th Percentile £325 £321 £325
25th Percentile £420 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £588 £622
90th Percentile £700 £638 £651
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 23 48
10th Percentile £38.25 £22.10 £35.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £35.05 £56.65
Median hourly rate £66.25 £50.00 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +32.50% -18.83% -2.61%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.72 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.21 £62.03 £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £58.15
% change year-on-year +8.33% +3.18% -10.54%

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 29 June 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 29 June 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 -16 23 £550 +26.44% 6
Thames Valley -45 16 £358 -36.44% 4
Berkshire -22 14 £358 -32.71% 1
West Sussex -19 6 £399 +38.37% 1
Sussex - 2 £323 -
Oxfordshire - 2 £550 - 3
Surrey -25 1 - -
East Sussex - 1 £323 -
Middlesex - 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 (15.38%) Apache Spark
2 2 (3.85%) Apache Pulsar
2 2 (3.85%) IBM HTTP Server
2 2 (3.85%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 2 (3.85%) WebSphere
2 2 (3.85%) WebSphere Application Server
2 2 (3.85%) WebSphere Portal
3 1 (1.92%) OpenStack
Applications
1 8 (15.38%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (1.92%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 30 (57.69%) AWS
2 25 (48.08%) Azure
3 14 (26.92%) GCP
4 11 (21.15%) Serverless
5 9 (17.31%) Amazon S3
6 8 (15.38%) OpenShift
7 7 (13.46%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (11.54%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (11.54%) Snowflake
9 5 (9.62%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (9.62%) GitHub
10 4 (7.69%) Entra ID
11 3 (5.77%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 2 (3.85%) Apigee
12 2 (3.85%) Azure AKS
12 2 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
12 2 (3.85%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 2 (3.85%) Kong
12 2 (3.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (9.62%) MQTT
2 4 (7.69%) Firewall
2 4 (7.69%) Network Security
3 2 (3.85%) DNS
3 2 (3.85%) HTTP
3 2 (3.85%) SSL
3 2 (3.85%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (51.92%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (38.46%) NoSQL
3 15 (28.85%) Relational Database
4 10 (19.23%) MongoDB
5 9 (17.31%) Big Data
6 8 (15.38%) DynamoDB
7 7 (13.46%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (7.69%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (7.69%) Redis
9 2 (3.85%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (3.85%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (3.85%) Couchbase
9 2 (3.85%) Data Lake
9 2 (3.85%) Db2
9 2 (3.85%) RDBMS
9 2 (3.85%) SQL Server
10 1 (1.92%) Delta Lake
10 1 (1.92%) Power BI
10 1 (1.92%) Spark SQL
10 1 (1.92%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 15 (28.85%) Git
2 11 (21.15%) GitLab
3 7 (13.46%) Jenkins
4 4 (7.69%) Postman
4 4 (7.69%) SonarQube
5 3 (5.77%) JIRA
6 2 (3.85%) Introscope
6 2 (3.85%) JMeter
7 1 (1.92%) Oracle Forms
General
1 14 (26.92%) Social Skills
2 11 (21.15%) Finance
3 8 (15.38%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (11.54%) Automotive
5 4 (7.69%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.92%) Banking
6 1 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 30 (57.69%) Developer
2 11 (21.15%) Java Developer
3 8 (15.38%) Python Developer
4 6 (11.54%) Senior
5 5 (9.62%) Salesforce Developer
6 4 (7.69%) Data Engineer
6 4 (7.69%) DevSecOps Engineer
7 3 (5.77%) Applications Developer
7 3 (5.77%) DevOps Engineer
7 3 (5.77%) Middleware Engineer
7 3 (5.77%) Platform Engineer
7 3 (5.77%) Senior Middleware Engineer
8 2 (3.85%) Big Data Developer
8 2 (3.85%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 2 (3.85%) Java Applications Developer
8 2 (3.85%) Project Manager
8 2 (3.85%) Senior Applications Developer
8 2 (3.85%) Senior Developer
9 1 (1.92%) Salesforce Engineer
9 1 (1.92%) Senior Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (28.85%) RESTful
2 13 (25.00%) RabbitMQ
2 13 (25.00%) Spring
3 12 (23.08%) Spring Boot
4 9 (17.31%) OpenAPI
4 9 (17.31%) Swagger
5 8 (15.38%) Django
5 8 (15.38%) FastAPI
5 8 (15.38%) Flask
5 8 (15.38%) NumPy
5 8 (15.38%) Pandas
5 8 (15.38%) pytest
6 7 (13.46%) Keycloak
6 7 (13.46%) REST
7 6 (11.54%) React
8 5 (9.62%) gRPC
9 4 (7.69%) Jinja
9 4 (7.69%) JSON
9 4 (7.69%) Protocol Buffers
9 4 (7.69%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (23.08%) Cloud Native
2 10 (19.23%) Algorithms
2 10 (19.23%) Data Structures
3 8 (15.38%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (9.62%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (7.69%) Product Ownership
6 3 (5.77%) Onboarding
7 2 (3.85%) Clustering
7 2 (3.85%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (3.85%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.92%) Chip and PIN
8 1 (1.92%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (1.92%) EMV
Operating Systems
1 11 (21.15%) Linux
2 6 (11.54%) Unix
3 4 (7.69%) Windows
4 2 (3.85%) Oracle Linux
4 2 (3.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (3.85%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (57.69%) CI/CD
2 29 (55.77%) Containerisation
3 19 (36.54%) Microservices
4 18 (34.62%) DevOps
5 17 (32.69%) Agile
5 17 (32.69%) Migration
6 14 (26.92%) Problem-Solving
6 14 (26.92%) Software Engineering
7 12 (23.08%) TDD
8 11 (21.15%) Platform Engineering
9 10 (19.23%) Infrastructure as Code
10 9 (17.31%) AI
10 9 (17.31%) Analytics
10 9 (17.31%) ETL
11 8 (15.38%) Data Analytics
11 8 (15.38%) Mathematics
11 8 (15.38%) OOP
11 8 (15.38%) Performance Optimisation
11 8 (15.38%) Scrum
11 8 (15.38%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 25 (48.08%) Python
2 18 (34.62%) Java
3 12 (23.08%) SQL
4 7 (13.46%) Bash
5 6 (11.54%) PowerShell
6 4 (7.69%) Go
6 4 (7.69%) Rust
6 4 (7.69%) Shell Script
7 3 (5.77%) Bicep
7 3 (5.77%) JavaScript
8 2 (3.85%) Jython
8 2 (3.85%) Kotlin
8 2 (3.85%) Perl
8 2 (3.85%) PL/SQL
8 2 (3.85%) Scala
8 2 (3.85%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 11 (21.15%) Security Cleared
2 9 (17.31%) SC Cleared
3 7 (13.46%) Degree
4 5 (9.62%) DV Cleared
5 4 (7.69%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (1.92%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.92%) PMI Certification
7 1 (1.92%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.69%) QA
2 3 (5.77%) Data Quality
3 2 (3.85%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.92%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (1.92%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.92%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 25 (48.08%) Docker
2 2 (3.85%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 28 (53.85%) Kubernetes
2 11 (21.15%) Grafana
2 11 (21.15%) Prometheus
2 11 (21.15%) Terraform
3 9 (17.31%) Ansible
4 4 (7.69%) Podman
4 4 (7.69%) Puppet
5 3 (5.77%) Argo
6 2 (3.85%) CA Wily
6 2 (3.85%) Istio
6 2 (3.85%) linkerd
6 2 (3.85%) Rancher
6 2 (3.85%) Tivoli
7 1 (1.92%) Packer
Vendors
1 10 (19.23%) Oracle
2 6 (11.54%) Salesforce
3 5 (9.62%) Ab Initio
3 5 (9.62%) Siebel
3 5 (9.62%) Splunk
3 5 (9.62%) Teradata
4 4 (7.69%) NVIDIA
4 4 (7.69%) Tenable
5 3 (5.77%) Databricks
5 3 (5.77%) Solace
6 2 (3.85%) AppDynamics
6 2 (3.85%) IBM
6 2 (3.85%) Red Hat
6 2 (3.85%) VMware
7 1 (1.92%) CA Agile Central
7 1 (1.92%) Microsoft