Kafka Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Apache Kafka
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Kafka skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 175 145 196
Rank change year-on-year -30 +51 +99
Contract jobs citing Kafka 387 272 184
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.38% 1.76% 1.03%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 8.07% 8.25% 5.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 232 171 126
10th Percentile £331 £325 £356
25th Percentile £405 £401 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £469 £497
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -5.54% -20.56%
75th Percentile £580 £545 £591
90th Percentile £675 £635 £731
UK median daily rate £545 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -0.91% -8.33% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 5
10th Percentile £72.98 - £24.45
25th Percentile £75.56 - £27.00
Median hourly rate £77.00 - £28.00
75th Percentile £81.50 - £29.00
90th Percentile £89.60 - £35.75
UK median hourly rate £77.00 £59.25 £28.00
% change year-on-year +29.96% +111.61% -64.10%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 4,796 3,296 3,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 17.12% 21.31% 19.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,105 2,196 2,162
10th Percentile £355 £318 £325
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.37% -5.00% -2.53%
75th Percentile £600 £560 £608
90th Percentile £675 £644 £685
UK median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 230 128 161
10th Percentile £29.91 £31.99 £27.00
25th Percentile £56.25 £43.00 £43.00
Median hourly rate £67.75 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £76.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.10 £70.00 £74.44
UK median hourly rate £66.66 £53.25 £61.60
% change year-on-year +25.18% -13.56% -2.99%

Kafka
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Kafka relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Kafka job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Kafka
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Kafka.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Kafka

Kafka
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kafka in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kafka in the UK excluding London

Kafka
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Kafka.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Kafka

Kafka
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kafka in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK excluding London

Kafka
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kafka within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 16 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
North of England -21 187 £500 +5.26% 164
Yorkshire -1 95 £501 -12.96% 41
North West -32 73 £550 +17.77% 107
South East -39 62 £460 +5.75% 78
Scotland -35 55 £410 -12.77% 82
Midlands -45 35 £500 +13.51% 43
East of England +1 28 £500 -2.44% 31
South West -28 27 £500 -9.09% 52
North East -23 24 £425 -8.55% 16
West Midlands -51 22 £700 +40.00% 30
East Midlands -11 13 £495 +19.28% 13
Northern Ireland +3 4 - - 38
Wales - 1 £375 - 3
Kafka
UK

Kafka
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 38 (9.82%) Apache Spark
2 17 (4.39%) Apache
3 14 (3.62%) Confluence
4 10 (2.58%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (1.29%) Camunda
6 4 (1.03%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.78%) nginx
7 3 (0.78%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.52%) Apache Pig
8 2 (0.52%) JBoss
9 1 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.26%) Traefik
9 1 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.26%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 6 (1.55%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.26%) FIS Private Capital Suite
1 1 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 191 (49.35%) AWS
2 117 (30.23%) Azure
3 89 (23.00%) GCP
4 54 (13.95%) GitHub
5 47 (12.14%) Serverless
6 35 (9.04%) AWS Lambda
7 32 (8.27%) GitHub Actions
8 31 (8.01%) Amazon EKS
9 30 (7.75%) OpenShift
10 27 (6.98%) Snowflake
11 22 (5.68%) Amazon ECS
11 22 (5.68%) Amazon SQS
11 22 (5.68%) Azure DevOps
12 19 (4.91%) Kong
13 17 (4.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 16 (4.13%) Power Platform
15 15 (3.88%) Amazon S3
16 14 (3.62%) Azure Service Bus
17 13 (3.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 13 (3.36%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 23 (5.94%) HTTP
2 11 (2.84%) DNS
3 8 (2.07%) Network Security
4 6 (1.55%) Firewall
5 5 (1.29%) MQTT
5 5 (1.29%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.03%) NAS
6 4 (1.03%) SAN
7 3 (0.78%) 4G
7 3 (0.78%) 5G
7 3 (0.78%) SSH
7 3 (0.78%) SSL
8 1 (0.26%) Broadband
8 1 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 82 (21.19%) MongoDB
2 61 (15.76%) PostgreSQL
3 59 (15.25%) NoSQL
4 41 (10.59%) Relational Database
5 27 (6.98%) Big Data
6 21 (5.43%) SQL Server
7 20 (5.17%) Redis
8 19 (4.91%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (4.13%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (4.13%) MySQL
9 16 (4.13%) Power BI
9 16 (4.13%) RDBMS
10 15 (3.88%) Data Lake
11 14 (3.62%) Flink
12 11 (2.84%) Apache Cassandra
12 11 (2.84%) DynamoDB
13 10 (2.58%) Hazelcast
14 9 (2.33%) BigQuery
15 8 (2.07%) Couchbase
15 8 (2.07%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 80 (20.67%) Git
2 78 (20.16%) Jenkins
3 62 (16.02%) GitLab
4 30 (7.75%) Selenium
5 21 (5.43%) JIRA
6 20 (5.17%) JUnit
7 18 (4.65%) Gradle
8 17 (4.39%) Mockito
9 15 (3.88%) Maven
10 14 (3.62%) REST Assured
11 12 (3.10%) Bitbucket
11 12 (3.10%) Cucumber
12 11 (2.84%) Postman
12 11 (2.84%) SonarQube
13 8 (2.07%) Gatling
13 8 (2.07%) Serenity BDD
14 7 (1.81%) JMeter
14 7 (1.81%) Sonatype Nexus
15 6 (1.55%) Claude Code
16 4 (1.03%) Snyk
General
1 80 (20.67%) Finance
2 75 (19.38%) Social Skills
3 46 (11.89%) Banking
4 37 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
5 34 (8.79%) Public Sector
6 11 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.33%) Retail
8 8 (2.07%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.07%) Telecoms
9 6 (1.55%) Automotive
10 5 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.29%) Military
11 4 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.78%) Games
12 3 (0.78%) Law
13 2 (0.52%) iGaming
13 2 (0.52%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.26%) International Banking
14 1 (0.26%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 136 (35.14%) Developer
2 71 (18.35%) Java Developer
3 65 (16.80%) Senior
4 40 (10.34%) Architect
5 39 (10.08%) Data Engineer
6 38 (9.82%) Lead
7 33 (8.53%) Software Engineer
8 30 (7.75%) Senior Developer
9 29 (7.49%) Java Engineer
10 27 (6.98%) DevOps Engineer
11 23 (5.94%) Senior Java Developer
12 18 (4.65%) Python Engineer
12 18 (4.65%) Software Developer
13 17 (4.39%) Java Software Engineer
13 17 (4.39%) Kafka Engineer
13 17 (4.39%) Platform Engineer
13 17 (4.39%) Test Engineer
14 16 (4.13%) Python Developer
14 16 (4.13%) Solutions Architect
15 15 (3.88%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (29.20%) Spring Boot
2 112 (28.94%) Spring
3 99 (25.58%) REST
4 73 (18.86%) Terraform
5 61 (15.76%) RabbitMQ
6 54 (13.95%) RESTful
7 44 (11.37%) React
8 39 (10.08%) JSON
9 29 (7.49%) OAuth
10 21 (5.43%) ActiveMQ
10 21 (5.43%) Swagger
11 20 (5.17%) Elastic Stack
11 20 (5.17%) OAuth2
11 20 (5.17%) OpenAPI
12 18 (4.65%) GraphQL
12 18 (4.65%) HTML
13 17 (4.39%) JWT
13 17 (4.39%) Middleware
13 17 (4.39%) OpenTelemetry
13 17 (4.39%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 92 (23.77%) Distributed Systems
2 90 (23.26%) Cloud Native
3 34 (8.79%) Data Structures
4 27 (6.98%) Product Ownership
5 22 (5.68%) Algorithms
6 21 (5.43%) Enterprise Software
7 19 (4.91%) Onboarding
8 15 (3.88%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (3.36%) AI Agents
9 13 (3.36%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (3.10%) Private Cloud
11 11 (2.84%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
12 10 (2.58%) Public Cloud
13 7 (1.81%) Replication
14 5 (1.29%) Autonomous Agent
14 5 (1.29%) Distributed Architecture
14 5 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
14 5 (1.29%) IoT
14 5 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 43 (11.11%) Linux
2 27 (6.98%) Unix
3 10 (2.58%) Windows
4 5 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.03%) Mac OS X
6 2 (0.52%) CentOS
7 1 (0.26%) Android
7 1 (0.26%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.26%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 1 (0.26%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (60.21%) CI/CD
2 171 (44.19%) Microservices
3 153 (39.53%) Event-Driven
4 145 (37.47%) Agile
4 145 (37.47%) DevOps
5 99 (25.58%) Event-Driven Architecture
6 95 (24.55%) Observability
7 94 (24.29%) Test Automation
8 89 (23.00%) Infrastructure as Code
9 74 (19.12%) Software Engineering
10 73 (18.86%) Containerisation
11 71 (18.35%) AI
12 58 (14.99%) Continuous Improvement
12 58 (14.99%) Problem-Solving
13 55 (14.21%) Data Pipeline
14 50 (12.92%) ETL
14 50 (12.92%) Platform Engineering
15 47 (12.14%) Technical Leadership
16 45 (11.63%) TDD
17 42 (10.85%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 174 (44.96%) Java
2 117 (30.23%) SQL
3 113 (29.20%) Python
4 30 (7.75%) Bash
5 26 (6.72%) TypeScript
6 25 (6.46%) JavaScript
7 16 (4.13%) C#
7 16 (4.13%) Kotlin
8 15 (3.88%) Go
9 13 (3.36%) PowerShell
10 11 (2.84%) PL/SQL
11 10 (2.58%) Scala
12 7 (1.81%) Rust
13 6 (1.55%) Kusto Query Language
13 6 (1.55%) Shell Script
14 5 (1.29%) Perl
15 4 (1.03%) Groovy
15 4 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
16 2 (0.52%) Bicep
17 1 (0.26%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 85 (21.96%) Security Cleared
2 59 (15.25%) SC Cleared
3 22 (5.68%) Degree
4 14 (3.62%) DV Cleared
5 12 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.29%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.03%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.78%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.52%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.26%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (8.01%) QA
2 22 (5.68%) Data Quality
3 19 (4.91%) Accessibility
4 5 (1.29%) GDPR
5 4 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.78%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.78%) WCAG
7 2 (0.52%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.26%) NCSC
8 1 (0.26%) NIST
8 1 (0.26%) SEPA
8 1 (0.26%) SLA
System Software
1 139 (35.92%) Docker
2 14 (3.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.52%) Apache Flume
3 2 (0.52%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 2 (0.52%) HDFS
4 1 (0.26%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 188 (48.58%) Kubernetes
2 57 (14.73%) Grafana
3 42 (10.85%) Prometheus
4 31 (8.01%) Ansible
5 22 (5.68%) Argo
6 10 (2.58%) Kustomize
7 9 (2.33%) Control-M
7 9 (2.33%) Podman
8 7 (1.81%) Istio
9 5 (1.29%) Check_MK
9 5 (1.29%) Puppet
10 4 (1.03%) Kibana
10 4 (1.03%) Rancher
11 3 (0.78%) logstash
11 3 (0.78%) NetBackup
12 2 (0.52%) linkerd
13 1 (0.26%) Consul
13 1 (0.26%) Packer
13 1 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.26%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 46 (11.89%) Oracle
2 34 (8.79%) Databricks
3 31 (8.01%) Splunk
4 22 (5.68%) Google
5 20 (5.17%) Dynatrace
6 19 (4.91%) IBM
7 17 (4.39%) Microsoft
7 17 (4.39%) VMware
8 16 (4.13%) Informatica
9 13 (3.36%) MuleSoft
10 9 (2.33%) TIBCO
11 8 (2.07%) Confluent
11 8 (2.07%) WSO2
12 7 (1.81%) Salesforce
13 6 (1.55%) ForgeRock
14 5 (1.29%) Siebel
14 5 (1.29%) Solace
15 4 (1.03%) New Relic
15 4 (1.03%) NVIDIA
15 4 (1.03%) OpenAI