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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 125 137
Rank change year-on-year -48 +12 +51
Contract jobs citing Kafka 57 37 48
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.87% 1.06% 1.08%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.97% 5.61% 6.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 31 27
10th Percentile £283 £288 £352
25th Percentile £349 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £425 £475
Median % change year-on-year +8.24% -10.53% -17.39%
75th Percentile £577 £522 £529
90th Percentile £652 £600 £680
England median daily rate £550 £550 £611
% change year-on-year - -10.02% -5.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £27.00
Median hourly rate - - £28.00
75th Percentile - - £29.00
90th Percentile - - -
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 955 659 780
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 14.55% 18.83% 17.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 607 444 524
10th Percentile £320 £290 £325
25th Percentile £431 £375 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.58% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £552 £625
90th Percentile £730 £624 £675
England median daily rate £535 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +2.88% -5.45% -0.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 17 26
10th Percentile £29.07 £24.69 £41.19
25th Percentile £55.00 - £61.60
Median hourly rate £67.47 £50.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.94% -28.57% +16.67%
75th Percentile £71.00 £55.00 -
90th Percentile £86.78 £58.75 £74.93
England median hourly rate £66.66 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +21.20% -15.38% +8.33%

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 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 29 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 -16 22 £580 +33.33% 3
West Sussex -20 14 £285 -1.04% 7
Surrey -12 9 £460 -27.56% 11
Berkshire -26 8 £358 -31.08% 11
Thames Valley -54 8 £358 -31.08% 18
Middlesex -18 2 - -
East Sussex -1 1 £330 -8.33%
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 (7.02%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 6 (10.53%) CPLEX
2 1 (1.75%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 38 (66.67%) AWS
2 35 (61.40%) Azure
3 21 (36.84%) GCP
4 9 (15.79%) Azure Service Bus
4 9 (15.79%) Boomi
4 9 (15.79%) iPaaS
5 7 (12.28%) Serverless
6 5 (8.77%) GitHub
7 4 (7.02%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (7.02%) Entra ID
7 4 (7.02%) OpenShift
8 3 (5.26%) Amazon S3
8 3 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (5.26%) Snowflake
9 2 (3.51%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (3.51%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (1.75%) Amazon Kinesis
10 1 (1.75%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 1 (1.75%) Azure AKS
10 1 (1.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 9 (15.79%) HTTP
2 5 (8.77%) MQTT
3 4 (7.02%) Network Security
4 1 (1.75%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (31.58%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (26.32%) NoSQL
3 7 (12.28%) MongoDB
3 7 (12.28%) Relational Database
4 5 (8.77%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (7.02%) Big Data
5 4 (7.02%) Couchbase
6 3 (5.26%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (5.26%) DynamoDB
7 2 (3.51%) Redis
8 1 (1.75%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (1.75%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (1.75%) Chroma
8 1 (1.75%) Data Lake
8 1 (1.75%) Db2
8 1 (1.75%) InfluxDB
8 1 (1.75%) Pinecone
8 1 (1.75%) RDBMS
8 1 (1.75%) SQL Server
8 1 (1.75%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 12 (21.05%) Git
2 7 (12.28%) GitLab
3 4 (7.02%) SonarQube
4 3 (5.26%) Postman
5 2 (3.51%) Gradle
5 2 (3.51%) Jenkins
5 2 (3.51%) JUnit
5 2 (3.51%) Maven
5 2 (3.51%) Subversion
6 1 (1.75%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.75%) JIRA
6 1 (1.75%) JMeter
General
1 11 (19.30%) Finance
2 5 (8.77%) Social Skills
3 4 (7.02%) Banking
4 3 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (3.51%) Automotive
5 2 (3.51%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 21 (36.84%) Developer
2 10 (17.54%) Architect
3 8 (14.04%) Java Developer
3 8 (14.04%) Solutions Architect
4 7 (12.28%) Platform Engineer
4 7 (12.28%) Python Developer
5 6 (10.53%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 6 (10.53%) Senior
6 4 (7.02%) Senior Developer
7 3 (5.26%) Automation Tester
7 3 (5.26%) Senior Java Developer
7 3 (5.26%) Tester
8 2 (3.51%) Applications Developer
8 2 (3.51%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 2 (3.51%) Big Data Developer
8 2 (3.51%) Java Engineer
8 2 (3.51%) Senior Applications Developer
9 1 (1.75%) AWS Developer
9 1 (1.75%) DevOps Engineer
9 1 (1.75%) Senior Big Data Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (31.58%) REST
2 17 (29.82%) RabbitMQ
3 15 (26.32%) OpenAPI
3 15 (26.32%) Swagger
4 13 (22.81%) RESTful
5 12 (21.05%) JSON
5 12 (21.05%) XML
6 11 (19.30%) GraphQL
7 10 (17.54%) Middleware
7 10 (17.54%) Spring
7 10 (17.54%) Spring Boot
8 9 (15.79%) ActiveMQ
8 9 (15.79%) EDI
8 9 (15.79%) JWT
8 9 (15.79%) OAuth
8 9 (15.79%) SAML
8 9 (15.79%) SOAP
9 7 (12.28%) FastAPI
10 6 (10.53%) gRPC
10 6 (10.53%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 17 (29.82%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (26.32%) Cloud Native
3 7 (12.28%) Algorithms
3 7 (12.28%) Data Structures
4 5 (8.77%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (7.02%) Product Ownership
6 2 (3.51%) AI Agents
6 2 (3.51%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (1.75%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 11 (19.30%) Linux
2 2 (3.51%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (47.37%) CI/CD
2 24 (42.11%) Containerisation
3 20 (35.09%) Event-Driven
4 19 (33.33%) AI
5 16 (28.07%) Event-Driven Architecture
5 16 (28.07%) Microservices
6 14 (24.56%) DevOps
6 14 (24.56%) DevSecOps
7 13 (22.81%) Agile
8 12 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
8 12 (21.05%) Software Engineering
9 11 (19.30%) Machine Learning
10 10 (17.54%) Continuous Improvement
10 10 (17.54%) Platform Engineering
10 10 (17.54%) TDD
11 9 (15.79%) API Management
11 9 (15.79%) Batch Processing
11 9 (15.79%) Enterprise Architecture
11 9 (15.79%) Integration Patterns
11 9 (15.79%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 26 (45.61%) Python
2 18 (31.58%) Java
3 11 (19.30%) SQL
4 6 (10.53%) Bash
5 5 (8.77%) Go
6 4 (7.02%) Rust
6 4 (7.02%) Shell Script
7 3 (5.26%) Kotlin
8 2 (3.51%) PL/SQL
8 2 (3.51%) TypeScript
9 1 (1.75%) C#
9 1 (1.75%) JavaScript
9 1 (1.75%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 16 (28.07%) Security Cleared
2 11 (19.30%) SC Cleared
3 4 (7.02%) Degree
3 4 (7.02%) DV Cleared
4 3 (5.26%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (15.79%) QA
2 1 (1.75%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 30 (52.63%) Docker
2 1 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 32 (56.14%) Kubernetes
2 6 (10.53%) Grafana
2 6 (10.53%) Prometheus
3 5 (8.77%) Ansible
4 4 (7.02%) Podman
4 4 (7.02%) Puppet
5 1 (1.75%) Argo
5 1 (1.75%) Rancher
Vendors
1 15 (26.32%) Oracle
2 9 (15.79%) Google
2 9 (15.79%) IBM
2 9 (15.79%) Informatica
2 9 (15.79%) MuleSoft
2 9 (15.79%) TIBCO
2 9 (15.79%) WSO2
3 4 (7.02%) NVIDIA
3 4 (7.02%) Tenable
4 3 (5.26%) Splunk
5 2 (3.51%) Ab Initio
5 2 (3.51%) Microsoft
5 2 (3.51%) Salesforce
5 2 (3.51%) Solace
5 2 (3.51%) Teradata
6 1 (1.75%) CA Agile Central
6 1 (1.75%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.75%) Siebel
6 1 (1.75%) VMware