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 19 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 131 175
Rank change year-on-year +3 +44 +4
Contract jobs citing Kafka 53 33 28
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.21% 1.00% 0.55%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 7.78% 6.27% 3.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 16 21
10th Percentile £360 £351 £313
25th Percentile £365 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £433 £513 £535
Median % change year-on-year -15.61% -4.21% -11.57%
75th Percentile £477 £675 £638
90th Percentile £535 £688 £719
England median daily rate £550 £610 £600
% change year-on-year -9.84% +1.67% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
Median hourly rate £40.00 - -
England median hourly rate £54.00 £85.00 £71.50
% change year-on-year -36.47% +18.88% -2.05%

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 681 526 788
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 15.54% 15.96% 15.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 483 324 440
10th Percentile £293 £347 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £526 £524
Median % change year-on-year -6.51% +0.48% -4.77%
75th Percentile £582 £638 £610
90th Percentile £675 £675 £678
England median daily rate £515 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.36% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 11 39
10th Percentile £40.00 £54.63 £53.85
25th Percentile £46.25 £57.44 £55.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.13 £75.14
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.87 £78.00
England median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £54.53
% change year-on-year -4.00% +14.62% -16.11%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 +4 32 £433 -13.50% 11
Berkshire -16 10 £450 -33.33% 34
Thames Valley -25 10 £450 -14.29% 39
East Sussex +7 5 £508 +43.46% 5
West Sussex -8 5 £360 +69.41% 5
Surrey -8 1 - - 8
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 5 (9.43%) Confluence
2 1 (1.89%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.89%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 34 (64.15%) AWS
1 34 (64.15%) GitHub
2 24 (45.28%) GitHub Actions
3 21 (39.62%) OpenShift
4 11 (20.75%) Azure
5 8 (15.09%) Serverless
6 7 (13.21%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (11.32%) AWS CloudFormation
7 6 (11.32%) Datadog
7 6 (11.32%) OCI
8 5 (9.43%) GCP
9 2 (3.77%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 2 (3.77%) IaaS
9 2 (3.77%) PaaS
10 1 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
10 1 (1.89%) Amazon SQS
10 1 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (1.89%) Azure Monitor
10 1 (1.89%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 5 (9.43%) Kerberos
2 1 (1.89%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (62.26%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (41.51%) NoSQL
3 12 (22.64%) MongoDB
4 11 (20.75%) Couchbase
5 10 (18.87%) Redis
6 8 (15.09%) HBase
7 7 (13.21%) DynamoDB
8 6 (11.32%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (11.32%) Amazon Redshift
9 5 (9.43%) Apache Cassandra
10 4 (7.55%) Elasticsearch
11 3 (5.66%) Big Data
12 1 (1.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 1 (1.89%) Data Lake
12 1 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
12 1 (1.89%) Metadata
12 1 (1.89%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 28 (52.83%) Jenkins
2 17 (32.08%) Cucumber
2 17 (32.08%) GitLab
2 17 (32.08%) JUnit
2 17 (32.08%) Sonatype Nexus
3 11 (20.75%) Git
4 10 (18.87%) JMeter
5 8 (15.09%) Artifactory
5 8 (15.09%) Gradle
6 7 (13.21%) JIRA
7 3 (5.66%) Maven
8 1 (1.89%) Gatling
8 1 (1.89%) Poetry
8 1 (1.89%) Pylint
8 1 (1.89%) SonarQube
8 1 (1.89%) Subversion
General
1 11 (20.75%) Finance
2 8 (15.09%) Social Skills
3 5 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (5.66%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.89%) Banking
5 1 (1.89%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 23 (43.40%) Developer
2 18 (33.96%) Java Developer
3 13 (24.53%) Senior
4 12 (22.64%) DevOps Engineer
5 11 (20.75%) Senior Developer
6 7 (13.21%) Full-Stack Developer
6 7 (13.21%) Full-Stack Java Developer
6 7 (13.21%) Senior Java Developer
7 6 (11.32%) AWS Developer
7 6 (11.32%) Data Engineer
7 6 (11.32%) Java Engineer
7 6 (11.32%) Lead
8 5 (9.43%) Platform Engineer
9 4 (7.55%) AWS Engineer
9 4 (7.55%) Kafka Developer
10 3 (5.66%) Software Engineer
11 2 (3.77%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 2 (3.77%) Kafka Engineer
11 2 (3.77%) Project Leader
11 2 (3.77%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (35.85%) Spring
2 14 (26.42%) RabbitMQ
2 14 (26.42%) Spring Boot
3 9 (16.98%) Keycloak
3 9 (16.98%) REST
4 8 (15.09%) Hibernate
5 5 (9.43%) Elastic Stack
6 2 (3.77%) AngularJS
6 2 (3.77%) gRPC
6 2 (3.77%) Jinja
6 2 (3.77%) YAML
7 1 (1.89%) Apache NiFi
7 1 (1.89%) Express.js
7 1 (1.89%) GraphQL
7 1 (1.89%) MERN Stack
7 1 (1.89%) Node.js
7 1 (1.89%) PySpark
7 1 (1.89%) pytest
7 1 (1.89%) React
Miscellaneous
1 6 (11.32%) Replication
2 2 (3.77%) Distributed Architecture
2 2 (3.77%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (1.89%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 21 (39.62%) Linux
2 7 (13.21%) Unix
3 2 (3.77%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (75.47%) CI/CD
2 19 (35.85%) Observability
3 17 (32.08%) Agile
4 16 (30.19%) Containerisation
4 16 (30.19%) Microservices
5 15 (28.30%) Infrastructure as Code
6 14 (26.42%) DevOps
6 14 (26.42%) Platform Engineering
7 10 (18.87%) Full-Stack Development
7 10 (18.87%) Test Automation
8 9 (16.98%) Problem-Solving
9 7 (13.21%) Event-Driven
9 7 (13.21%) GitOps
9 7 (13.21%) High Availability
9 7 (13.21%) TDD
10 6 (11.32%) Continuous Integration
10 6 (11.32%) Regression Testing
10 6 (11.32%) Security Patching
10 6 (11.32%) SOA
10 6 (11.32%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 26 (49.06%) Java
2 22 (41.51%) Python
3 8 (15.09%) Bash
3 8 (15.09%) Go
4 7 (13.21%) Shell Script
5 3 (5.66%) JavaScript
6 2 (3.77%) SQL
7 1 (1.89%) Bicep
7 1 (1.89%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.89%) Rust
7 1 (1.89%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 14 (26.42%) SC Cleared
1 14 (26.42%) Security Cleared
2 8 (15.09%) OCP
2 8 (15.09%) Oracle Certification
3 6 (11.32%) Degree
4 5 (9.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (3.77%) AWS Certification
6 1 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.89%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (9.43%) NCSC
2 3 (5.66%) Def Stans
3 2 (3.77%) QA
System Software
1 10 (18.87%) Docker
2 5 (9.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (3.77%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 35 (66.04%) Kubernetes
2 23 (43.40%) Ansible
3 19 (35.85%) Grafana
3 19 (35.85%) Terraform
4 13 (24.53%) Prometheus
5 9 (16.98%) Progress Chef
6 7 (13.21%) Argo
7 6 (11.32%) Istio
7 6 (11.32%) linkerd
8 2 (3.77%) logstash
8 2 (3.77%) Packer
8 2 (3.77%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (1.89%) Podman
9 1 (1.89%) Puppet
9 1 (1.89%) Rancher
Vendors
1 19 (35.85%) VMware
2 9 (16.98%) Splunk
3 7 (13.21%) Red Hat
4 6 (11.32%) Confluent
4 6 (11.32%) IBM
5 5 (9.43%) Atlassian
6 3 (5.66%) Google
7 2 (3.77%) CA Agile Central
7 2 (3.77%) Microsoft
8 1 (1.89%) Ab Initio
8 1 (1.89%) Databricks
8 1 (1.89%) Teradata