Kafka Engineer Contract Job Trends

Kafka Engineer
UK

The median Kafka Engineer daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 534 526 627
Rank change year-on-year -8 +101 +139
Contract jobs requiring a Kafka Engineer 19 36 19
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.058% 0.094% 0.038%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.064% 0.10% 0.040%
Number of daily rates quoted 15 25 14
10th Percentile £445 £385 £499
25th Percentile £581 £513 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £610 £650
Median % change year-on-year +2.46% -6.15% -5.11%
75th Percentile £738 £663 £787
90th Percentile - £748 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £625 £669
% change year-on-year -12.00% -6.54% +7.00%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 29,807 35,446 47,661
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.04% 93.03% 94.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,776 22,034 32,764
10th Percentile £280 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,551 1,735 1,478
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.73 £14.56
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% +1.18% +63.46%
75th Percentile £53.13 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.16 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £40.41
% change year-on-year -44.11% +11.35% +83.69%

Kafka Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Kafka Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Kafka Engineer in the UK

Kafka Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Kafka Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Kafka Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Kafka Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kafka Engineer over the 6 months to 9 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Kafka Engineer in the UK

Kafka Engineer
Top 6 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Kafka Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 9 September 2025. 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
England -1 16 £663 +9.28% 2
London +14 15 £700 +21.74% 1
Work from Home +14 13 £725 +27.19%
UK excluding London -11 1 £550 -12.00% 1
Yorkshire -18 1 £550 -18.52%
North of England -26 1 £550 -18.52%

Kafka Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 9 September 2025, Kafka Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Kafka Engineer in the job title.

1 19 (100.00%) Kafka
2 11 (57.89%) Finance
3 10 (52.63%) Software Engineering
4 9 (47.37%) Agile
5 8 (42.11%) C#
5 8 (42.11%) SQL
6 7 (36.84%) Unix
6 7 (36.84%) Linux
6 7 (36.84%) DevOps
7 6 (31.58%) Social Skills
7 6 (31.58%) CI/CD
7 6 (31.58%) C++
7 6 (31.58%) Java
7 6 (31.58%) Oracle
8 5 (26.32%) Microservices
9 4 (21.05%) Apache Spark
9 4 (21.05%) Docker
9 4 (21.05%) Kubernetes
9 4 (21.05%) Flink
9 4 (21.05%) Data Pipeline
9 4 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
9 4 (21.05%) Azure
9 4 (21.05%) AWS
9 4 (21.05%) Python
9 4 (21.05%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (21.05%) Event-Driven
10 3 (15.79%) Spring
10 3 (15.79%) Fintech
10 3 (15.79%) Terraform
10 3 (15.79%) Apache Beam

Kafka Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 4 (21.05%) Apache Spark
2 1 (5.26%) MQSeries
Cloud Services
1 4 (21.05%) AWS
1 4 (21.05%) Azure
2 2 (10.53%) GCP
3 1 (5.26%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 1 (5.26%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (21.05%) Flink
2 2 (10.53%) NoSQL
2 2 (10.53%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (10.53%) SQL Server
3 1 (5.26%) MongoDB
3 1 (5.26%) Redis
Development Applications
1 2 (10.53%) Jenkins
2 1 (5.26%) GitLab
2 1 (5.26%) Gradle
2 1 (5.26%) JIRA
2 1 (5.26%) JMeter
2 1 (5.26%) Selenium
General
1 11 (57.89%) Finance
2 6 (31.58%) Social Skills
3 2 (10.53%) Documentation Skills
3 2 (10.53%) Public Sector
4 1 (5.26%) Banking
4 1 (5.26%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (100.00%) Kafka
2 3 (15.79%) Apache Beam
2 3 (15.79%) Spark Streaming
2 3 (15.79%) Spring
2 3 (15.79%) Spring Boot
3 2 (10.53%) .NET
4 1 (5.26%) EDIFACT
4 1 (5.26%) Express.js
4 1 (5.26%) gRPC
4 1 (5.26%) JDBC
4 1 (5.26%) JSON
4 1 (5.26%) NestJS
4 1 (5.26%) Node.js
4 1 (5.26%) OAuth
4 1 (5.26%) OAuth2
4 1 (5.26%) OpenID
4 1 (5.26%) Redux
4 1 (5.26%) RESTful
4 1 (5.26%) WireMock
4 1 (5.26%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 4 (21.05%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (5.26%) Educational Technology
2 1 (5.26%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 7 (36.84%) Linux
1 7 (36.84%) Unix
2 1 (5.26%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (52.63%) Software Engineering
2 9 (47.37%) Agile
3 7 (36.84%) DevOps
4 6 (31.58%) CI/CD
5 5 (26.32%) Microservices
6 4 (21.05%) Data Pipeline
6 4 (21.05%) Event-Driven
6 4 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
7 3 (15.79%) Fintech
7 3 (15.79%) High Availability
8 2 (10.53%) API Development
8 2 (10.53%) Cash Management
8 2 (10.53%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 2 (10.53%) Infrastructure as Code
8 2 (10.53%) Migration
8 2 (10.53%) OO
8 2 (10.53%) OOP
8 2 (10.53%) Scrum
8 2 (10.53%) SOLID
8 2 (10.53%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 8 (42.11%) C#
1 8 (42.11%) SQL
2 6 (31.58%) C++
2 6 (31.58%) Java
3 4 (21.05%) Python
4 2 (10.53%) T-SQL
5 1 (5.26%) Bash
5 1 (5.26%) JavaScript
5 1 (5.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 2 (10.53%) SC Cleared
1 2 (10.53%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (10.53%) QA
System Software
1 4 (21.05%) Docker
2 1 (5.26%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 4 (21.05%) Kubernetes
2 3 (15.79%) Terraform
3 2 (10.53%) Ansible
4 1 (5.26%) Argo
4 1 (5.26%) Istio
4 1 (5.26%) linkerd
Vendors
1 6 (31.58%) Oracle
2 2 (10.53%) Confluent
2 2 (10.53%) Salesforce
3 1 (5.26%) Dynatrace
3 1 (5.26%) Splunk