Kafka Contract Job Trends

Apache Kafka
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Kafka skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 115 175
Rank change year-on-year -7 +60 -60
Contract jobs citing Kafka 863 718 607
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.33% 2.16% 1.41%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.35% 9.90% 6.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 572 431 473
10th Percentile £363 £381 £425
25th Percentile £416 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.12% -2.50% -5.51%
75th Percentile £650 £725 £738
90th Percentile £738 £813 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £475 £525
% change year-on-year -4.74% -9.52% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 6
10th Percentile £37.63 £36.82 £52.42
25th Percentile £40.00 £53.95 £67.81
Median hourly rate £54.00 £85.00 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -36.47% +9.68% +5.80%
75th Percentile £76.75 £90.63 £78.75
90th Percentile £94.50 £92.50 £84.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £85.00 £71.50
% change year-on-year -52.94% +18.88% -2.05%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 8,335 7,252 9,318
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.47% 21.86% 21.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,523 4,605 6,619
10th Percentile £356 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.93% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £770 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 86 173
10th Percentile £31.25 £21.25 £31.40
25th Percentile £44.50 £29.13 £46.18
Median hourly rate £61.00 £62.50 £54.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.40% +14.68% -16.15%
75th Percentile £68.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £62.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year +0.80% +19.05% -19.23%

Kafka
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Kafka job vacancy trend in the UK

Kafka
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Kafka
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Kafka over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Kafka
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Kafka over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka
Top 15 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 within the UK over the 6 months to 1 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
England 0 746 £550 -9.84% 233
London -5 496 £600 -4.00% 136
Work from Home +31 308 £575 - 135
UK excluding London -19 236 £453 -4.74% 124
North of England -35 92 £488 -11.36% 34
South East +12 56 £434 -15.78% 50
North West -23 45 £435 -11.22% 21
Midlands -8 43 £475 +18.75% 5
Scotland +20 41 £456 +20.38% 5
Yorkshire -34 41 £575 -19.30% 12
West Midlands -17 23 £550 -21.43% 3
South West +2 20 £550 -15.38% 15
East Midlands -3 20 £406 +14.04% 2
North East -3 10 £506 -18.91% 1
East of England -30 1 £450 +42.86% 10

Kafka
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 78 (9.04%) Apache Spark
2 47 (5.45%) Apache
3 42 (4.87%) Confluence
4 38 (4.40%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.81%) Mule
6 6 (0.70%) CMS
7 5 (0.58%) Anypoint
8 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.46%) MQSeries
9 3 (0.35%) Camunda
9 3 (0.35%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.23%) JBoss
10 2 (0.23%) Luigi
10 2 (0.23%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.23%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.12%) CICS
11 1 (0.12%) nginx
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.12%) SAS
11 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 4 (0.46%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.23%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.46%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.35%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.35%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.23%) Actimize
3 2 (0.23%) Shopify
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 463 (53.65%) AWS
2 231 (26.77%) Azure
3 148 (17.15%) GitHub
4 119 (13.79%) GCP
5 108 (12.51%) Serverless
6 105 (12.17%) GitHub Actions
7 77 (8.92%) Amazon S3
7 77 (8.92%) AWS Lambda
8 59 (6.84%) AWS CloudFormation
9 58 (6.72%) Amazon EKS
10 49 (5.68%) Azure DevOps
11 44 (5.10%) OpenShift
12 43 (4.98%) Amazon SQS
13 41 (4.75%) Amazon ECS
13 41 (4.75%) Amazon Kinesis
14 39 (4.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 37 (4.29%) Azure Data Factory
16 31 (3.59%) Power Platform
17 28 (3.24%) Amazon EC2
18 24 (2.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.51%) DNS
2 11 (1.27%) SSL
3 10 (1.16%) Firewall
4 7 (0.81%) HTTP
4 7 (0.81%) Kerberos
4 7 (0.81%) SSH
5 6 (0.70%) FTP
6 5 (0.58%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.46%) AMQP
7 4 (0.46%) DSL
7 4 (0.46%) MQTT
8 3 (0.35%) SMS
8 3 (0.35%) VPN
9 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 170 (19.70%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (19.12%) MongoDB
3 131 (15.18%) NoSQL
4 79 (9.15%) Apache Cassandra
5 55 (6.37%) Relational Database
6 52 (6.03%) Redis
7 51 (5.91%) Big Data
8 45 (5.21%) Amazon RDS
9 42 (4.87%) SQL Server
10 41 (4.75%) DynamoDB
11 39 (4.52%) Data Warehouse
11 39 (4.52%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (4.40%) Data Lake
13 32 (3.71%) Hadoop
14 30 (3.48%) DB2
15 27 (3.13%) Amazon Redshift
15 27 (3.13%) Power BI
16 26 (3.01%) Amazon Athena
17 25 (2.90%) Metadata
18 23 (2.67%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 167 (19.35%) Jenkins
2 133 (15.41%) GitLab
3 118 (13.67%) Git
4 86 (9.97%) JUnit
5 61 (7.07%) JIRA
6 46 (5.33%) Mockito
7 25 (2.90%) JMeter
8 24 (2.78%) Cucumber
8 24 (2.78%) Gradle
8 24 (2.78%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (2.43%) SonarQube
10 19 (2.20%) Maven
11 14 (1.62%) Gatling
12 12 (1.39%) SoapUI
13 11 (1.27%) Artifactory
14 10 (1.16%) CircleCI
15 9 (1.04%) Subversion
16 8 (0.93%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 8 (0.93%) TeamCity
17 7 (0.81%) Postman
General
1 235 (27.23%) Finance
2 219 (25.38%) Social Skills
3 138 (15.99%) Banking
4 84 (9.73%) Analytical Skills
5 70 (8.11%) Public Sector
6 60 (6.95%) Investment Banking
7 30 (3.48%) Front Office
8 12 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (1.16%) Financial Institution
10 8 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (0.70%) Law
11 6 (0.70%) Marketing
11 6 (0.70%) Retail
12 5 (0.58%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.35%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.35%) Military
13 3 (0.35%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.23%) Games
14 2 (0.23%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 335 (38.82%) Developer
2 255 (29.55%) Senior
3 203 (23.52%) Java Developer
4 130 (15.06%) Senior Developer
5 98 (11.36%) Data Engineer
6 77 (8.92%) Senior Java Developer
7 76 (8.81%) Lead
8 75 (8.69%) Software Engineer
9 63 (7.30%) DevOps Engineer
10 60 (6.95%) Architect
11 43 (4.98%) Kafka Developer
12 41 (4.75%) AWS Engineer
12 41 (4.75%) Kafka Engineer
13 38 (4.40%) Full-Stack Developer
14 37 (4.29%) AWS Developer
15 36 (4.17%) Python Engineer
16 35 (4.06%) Platform Engineer
17 33 (3.82%) Java Engineer
18 28 (3.24%) Senior Data Engineer
19 24 (2.78%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 199 (23.06%) Spring
2 154 (17.84%) Spring Boot
3 101 (11.70%) gRPC
4 99 (11.47%) REST
5 82 (9.50%) React
6 78 (9.04%) RabbitMQ
7 75 (8.69%) RESTful
8 61 (7.07%) Node.js
9 41 (4.75%) AngularJS
10 40 (4.63%) JMS
11 38 (4.40%) Hibernate
12 37 (4.29%) .NET
12 37 (4.29%) ActiveMQ
13 35 (4.06%) Keycloak
13 35 (4.06%) Middleware
14 34 (3.94%) OAuth
15 33 (3.82%) JSON
15 33 (3.82%) PySpark
16 32 (3.71%) OAuth2
17 28 (3.24%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 121 (14.02%) Distributed Systems
2 93 (10.78%) Cloud Native
3 39 (4.52%) Equities
4 36 (4.17%) Management Information System
5 34 (3.94%) Data Structures
6 26 (3.01%) Product Ownership
7 24 (2.78%) Derivative
8 23 (2.67%) Replication
9 20 (2.32%) Market Risk
10 17 (1.97%) Fixed Income
11 14 (1.62%) Distributed Computing
11 14 (1.62%) Legacy Applications
12 12 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
13 11 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
15 9 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
15 9 (1.04%) Public Cloud
16 8 (0.93%) Algorithms
16 8 (0.93%) Data Fabric
16 8 (0.93%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 163 (18.89%) Linux
2 86 (9.97%) Unix
3 26 (3.01%) Windows
4 13 (1.51%) Mac OS X
5 9 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.81%) CentOS
7 5 (0.58%) AIX
8 3 (0.35%) VMS
9 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 361 (41.83%) CI/CD
2 358 (41.48%) Microservices
3 317 (36.73%) Agile
4 259 (30.01%) DevOps
5 240 (27.81%) Software Engineering
6 185 (21.44%) Problem-Solving
7 176 (20.39%) Containerisation
8 156 (18.08%) Event-Driven
9 151 (17.50%) Infrastructure as Code
10 143 (16.57%) Observability
11 127 (14.72%) Test Automation
12 118 (13.67%) Data Pipeline
12 118 (13.67%) Open Source
13 110 (12.75%) Analytics
14 107 (12.40%) TDD
15 94 (10.89%) Data Engineering
16 90 (10.43%) ETL
17 88 (10.20%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 88 (10.20%) Mentoring
18 83 (9.62%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 418 (48.44%) Java
2 304 (35.23%) Python
3 250 (28.97%) SQL
4 123 (14.25%) Go
5 72 (8.34%) C#
6 64 (7.42%) JavaScript
7 57 (6.60%) Shell Script
8 48 (5.56%) Bash
9 47 (5.45%) C++
10 31 (3.59%) Scala
11 29 (3.36%) TypeScript
12 13 (1.51%) PL/SQL
13 12 (1.39%) Rust
14 11 (1.27%) Perl
15 9 (1.04%) Groovy
15 9 (1.04%) PowerShell
16 8 (0.93%) Korn
17 7 (0.81%) T-SQL
18 5 (0.58%) RPG
18 5 (0.58%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 177 (20.51%) Security Cleared
2 158 (18.31%) SC Cleared
3 46 (5.33%) Degree
4 29 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 29 (3.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (3.24%) Azure Certification
6 22 (2.55%) DV Cleared
7 17 (1.97%) AWS Certification
8 14 (1.62%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.93%) OCP
9 8 (0.93%) Oracle Certification
10 4 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.23%) CBAP
11 2 (0.23%) CSPO
11 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.23%) Numerate Degree
11 2 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.12%) MySQL Certification
12 1 (0.12%) SAFe Agilist
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (7.53%) Data Quality
2 40 (4.63%) QA
3 29 (3.36%) GDPR
4 12 (1.39%) NCSC
5 8 (0.93%) ISO 20022
6 6 (0.70%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.70%) SEPA
6 6 (0.70%) SLA
6 6 (0.70%) WCAG
7 5 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.58%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.46%) MiFID
8 4 (0.46%) NIST
9 3 (0.35%) Def Stans
9 3 (0.35%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.35%) HL7
10 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.23%) EMIR
10 2 (0.23%) ISO 8583
10 2 (0.23%) PSD2
System Software
1 318 (36.85%) Docker
2 8 (0.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.70%) HDFS
4 3 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.23%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 351 (40.67%) Kubernetes
2 204 (23.64%) Terraform
3 101 (11.70%) Grafana
4 85 (9.85%) Prometheus
5 72 (8.34%) Ansible
6 29 (3.36%) Argo
7 16 (1.85%) Progress Chef
8 10 (1.16%) Packer
9 8 (0.93%) Istio
10 7 (0.81%) linkerd
10 7 (0.81%) logstash
11 6 (0.70%) Jamf Pro
12 5 (0.58%) Hadoop YARN
12 5 (0.58%) Kiali
12 5 (0.58%) Puppet
12 5 (0.58%) Rancher
12 5 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (0.46%) Fluentd
13 4 (0.46%) Kibana
14 3 (0.35%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 81 (9.39%) Oracle
2 55 (6.37%) Splunk
3 54 (6.26%) Databricks
4 36 (4.17%) Microsoft
5 33 (3.82%) Confluent
6 31 (3.59%) Google
7 26 (3.01%) IBM
7 26 (3.01%) Sybase
8 24 (2.78%) Dynatrace
8 24 (2.78%) VMware
9 17 (1.97%) Cloudera
10 12 (1.39%) Foundry
10 12 (1.39%) Palantir
10 12 (1.39%) Red Hat
11 10 (1.16%) CA Agile Central
11 10 (1.16%) SAP
11 10 (1.16%) TIBCO
12 9 (1.04%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.93%) Informatica
14 7 (0.81%) MuleSoft