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 16 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 120 115 172
Rank change year-on-year -5 +57 -58
Contract jobs citing Kafka 886 726 630
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.41% 2.12% 1.43%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.73% 9.69% 6.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 432 483
10th Percentile £363 £381 £430
25th Percentile £418 £488 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £675 £725 £750
90th Percentile £747 £810 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £521
% change year-on-year -5.26% -8.87% -13.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 4 7
10th Percentile £38.58 £28.65 £54.94
25th Percentile £40.00 £33.54 £70.00
Median hourly rate £59.25 £61.25 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.27% -20.97% +5.80%
75th Percentile £72.25 £89.06 £78.75
90th Percentile £88.30 £91.88 £83.25
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 8,255 7,492 9,760
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.49% 21.89% 22.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,473 4,760 6,939
10th Percentile £351 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.64% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 201 101 175
10th Percentile £30.75 £21.25 £31.55
25th Percentile £43.00 £36.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £61.00 £62.50 £54.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.40% +14.68% -16.15%
75th Percentile £67.00 £65.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.87 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.25 £65.00 £52.20
% change year-on-year -1.15% +24.53% -19.70%

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 16 December 2025.

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 16 December 2025.

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 16 December 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 -1 772 £550 -10.20% 143
London -2 506 £600 -4.00% 82
Work from Home +32 317 £600 +4.35% 171
UK excluding London -3 257 £450 -5.26% 103
North of England -12 103 £470 -18.17% 31
North West -13 57 £435 -9.84% 19
South East +1 56 £433 -14.78% 36
Scotland +23 46 £458 +24.49% 8
Midlands -7 45 £500 +25.00% 7
Yorkshire -30 41 £575 -17.86% 9
West Midlands -14 26 £550 -21.43% 7
South West +5 23 £550 -15.38% 11
East Midlands -1 19 £420 +17.98%
North East -6 9 £538 -13.90% 3
East of England -37 1 £450 +42.86% 5

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 72 (8.13%) Apache Spark
2 50 (5.64%) Apache
3 40 (4.51%) Confluence
4 39 (4.40%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (1.13%) Mule
6 8 (0.90%) Anypoint
7 6 (0.68%) CMS
8 5 (0.56%) JBoss
8 5 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.45%) Camunda
9 4 (0.45%) MQSeries
10 3 (0.34%) Luigi
10 3 (0.34%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.34%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.23%) SharePoint
11 2 (0.23%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.11%) IIS
12 1 (0.11%) SAS
12 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 4 (0.45%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.23%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.45%) Fidessa
1 4 (0.45%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.23%) Actimize
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.11%) Endur
4 1 (0.11%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 459 (51.81%) AWS
2 224 (25.28%) Azure
3 140 (15.80%) GitHub
4 121 (13.66%) GCP
5 96 (10.84%) Serverless
6 90 (10.16%) GitHub Actions
7 70 (7.90%) Amazon S3
8 68 (7.67%) AWS Lambda
9 56 (6.32%) AWS CloudFormation
10 52 (5.87%) Amazon EKS
11 48 (5.42%) Azure DevOps
12 40 (4.51%) Amazon ECS
12 40 (4.51%) Amazon SQS
12 40 (4.51%) OpenShift
13 35 (3.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 35 (3.95%) Amazon Kinesis
14 34 (3.84%) Azure Data Factory
15 29 (3.27%) Amazon EC2
16 25 (2.82%) Snowflake
17 23 (2.60%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.47%) SSL
2 10 (1.13%) DNS
2 10 (1.13%) Firewall
3 9 (1.02%) HTTP
4 7 (0.79%) AMQP
4 7 (0.79%) DSL
4 7 (0.79%) Kerberos
4 7 (0.79%) SSH
5 5 (0.56%) FTP
6 4 (0.45%) MQTT
6 4 (0.45%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.34%) VPN
8 1 (0.11%) HTTPS
8 1 (0.11%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (19.41%) MongoDB
1 172 (19.41%) PostgreSQL
2 129 (14.56%) NoSQL
3 73 (8.24%) Apache Cassandra
4 64 (7.22%) Relational Database
5 54 (6.09%) Big Data
6 43 (4.85%) Redis
6 43 (4.85%) SQL Server
7 42 (4.74%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (4.40%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (4.29%) Data Warehouse
10 37 (4.18%) DynamoDB
11 35 (3.95%) DB2
12 34 (3.84%) Data Lake
12 34 (3.84%) Hadoop
13 25 (2.82%) Metadata
14 21 (2.37%) Amazon Redshift
14 21 (2.37%) Power BI
15 19 (2.14%) Amazon Athena
15 19 (2.14%) Flink
Development Applications
1 178 (20.09%) Jenkins
2 131 (14.79%) GitLab
3 121 (13.66%) Git
4 96 (10.84%) JUnit
5 66 (7.45%) JIRA
6 46 (5.19%) Mockito
7 31 (3.50%) Cucumber
8 25 (2.82%) JMeter
9 24 (2.71%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (2.48%) Gradle
10 22 (2.48%) SonarQube
11 20 (2.26%) Maven
12 12 (1.35%) Gatling
12 12 (1.35%) SoapUI
13 11 (1.24%) Artifactory
13 11 (1.24%) Subversion
14 9 (1.02%) CircleCI
14 9 (1.02%) Liquibase
15 8 (0.90%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 8 (0.90%) TeamCity
General
1 252 (28.44%) Finance
2 234 (26.41%) Social Skills
3 139 (15.69%) Banking
4 96 (10.84%) Analytical Skills
5 74 (8.35%) Public Sector
6 63 (7.11%) Investment Banking
7 48 (5.42%) Front Office
8 13 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (0.90%) Financial Institution
9 8 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (0.79%) Retail
11 5 (0.56%) Aerospace
11 5 (0.56%) Law
11 5 (0.56%) Military
12 4 (0.45%) Marketing
12 4 (0.45%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.34%) Back Office
13 3 (0.34%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.23%) Games
Job Titles
1 360 (40.63%) Developer
2 248 (27.99%) Senior
3 216 (24.38%) Java Developer
4 126 (14.22%) Senior Developer
5 90 (10.16%) Data Engineer
6 85 (9.59%) Lead
6 85 (9.59%) Software Engineer
7 79 (8.92%) Senior Java Developer
8 61 (6.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 60 (6.77%) Architect
10 42 (4.74%) AWS Engineer
11 41 (4.63%) Kafka Developer
12 39 (4.40%) Kafka Engineer
13 38 (4.29%) AWS Developer
13 38 (4.29%) Python Engineer
14 37 (4.18%) Platform Engineer
15 36 (4.06%) Full-Stack Developer
16 32 (3.61%) Java Engineer
17 26 (2.93%) Senior Data Engineer
17 26 (2.93%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 203 (22.91%) Spring
2 154 (17.38%) Spring Boot
3 102 (11.51%) REST
4 100 (11.29%) gRPC
5 98 (11.06%) React
6 90 (10.16%) RabbitMQ
7 82 (9.26%) RESTful
8 64 (7.22%) Node.js
9 44 (4.97%) ActiveMQ
10 42 (4.74%) JMS
11 40 (4.51%) AngularJS
12 39 (4.40%) .NET
13 34 (3.84%) Hibernate
13 34 (3.84%) Keycloak
14 33 (3.72%) GraphQL
15 30 (3.39%) JSON
15 30 (3.39%) Middleware
15 30 (3.39%) OAuth
16 29 (3.27%) SOAP
17 27 (3.05%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 117 (13.21%) Distributed Systems
2 89 (10.05%) Cloud Native
3 42 (4.74%) Equities
4 37 (4.18%) Data Structures
5 33 (3.72%) Management Information System
6 31 (3.50%) Fixed Income
7 28 (3.16%) Product Ownership
8 23 (2.60%) Replication
9 22 (2.48%) Derivative
10 21 (2.37%) Market Risk
11 13 (1.47%) Distributed Computing
12 12 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
12 12 (1.35%) Legacy Applications
13 11 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
13 11 (1.24%) PKI
14 10 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
15 9 (1.02%) Algorithms
16 8 (0.90%) IoT
16 8 (0.90%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 171 (19.30%) Linux
2 84 (9.48%) Unix
3 26 (2.93%) Windows
4 13 (1.47%) Mac OS X
5 12 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.90%) CentOS
7 5 (0.56%) AIX
8 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.23%) zOS
9 1 (0.11%) Debian
9 1 (0.11%) VMS
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 362 (40.86%) Microservices
2 360 (40.63%) CI/CD
3 354 (39.95%) Agile
4 253 (28.56%) Software Engineering
5 247 (27.88%) DevOps
6 203 (22.91%) Problem-Solving
7 170 (19.19%) Containerisation
8 143 (16.14%) Event-Driven
9 138 (15.58%) Infrastructure as Code
10 131 (14.79%) Observability
11 122 (13.77%) TDD
11 122 (13.77%) Test Automation
12 119 (13.43%) Open Source
13 114 (12.87%) Data Pipeline
14 103 (11.63%) Analytics
15 95 (10.72%) SDLC
16 92 (10.38%) Data Engineering
17 89 (10.05%) Mentoring
18 86 (9.71%) ETL
18 86 (9.71%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 438 (49.44%) Java
2 325 (36.68%) Python
3 246 (27.77%) SQL
4 140 (15.80%) Go
5 69 (7.79%) C#
6 68 (7.67%) JavaScript
7 60 (6.77%) Shell Script
8 51 (5.76%) C++
9 50 (5.64%) Bash
10 37 (4.18%) TypeScript
11 31 (3.50%) Scala
12 14 (1.58%) Perl
13 13 (1.47%) PL/SQL
14 9 (1.02%) Groovy
14 9 (1.02%) Rust
15 8 (0.90%) Korn
15 8 (0.90%) PowerShell
15 8 (0.90%) T-SQL
16 7 (0.79%) DataWeave
17 6 (0.68%) R
Qualifications
1 174 (19.64%) Security Cleared
2 151 (17.04%) SC Cleared
3 49 (5.53%) Degree
4 30 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 26 (2.93%) Azure Certification
7 25 (2.82%) DV Cleared
8 19 (2.14%) AWS Certification
9 14 (1.58%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.90%) OCP
10 8 (0.90%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.45%) Numerate Degree
13 2 (0.23%) CBAP
13 2 (0.23%) CSPO
13 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
14 1 (0.11%) Postgraduate
14 1 (0.11%) SAFe Agilist
14 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (6.55%) Data Quality
2 42 (4.74%) QA
3 24 (2.71%) GDPR
4 10 (1.13%) NCSC
5 5 (0.56%) MiFID
5 5 (0.56%) SLA
6 4 (0.45%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.45%) SEPA
6 4 (0.45%) WCAG
7 3 (0.34%) Def Stans
7 3 (0.34%) EMIR
7 3 (0.34%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.34%) HL7
7 3 (0.34%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.23%) NIST
8 2 (0.23%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
System Software
1 312 (35.21%) Docker
2 8 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.68%) HDFS
4 3 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.23%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 350 (39.50%) Kubernetes
2 193 (21.78%) Terraform
3 94 (10.61%) Grafana
4 78 (8.80%) Prometheus
5 72 (8.13%) Ansible
6 22 (2.48%) Argo
7 17 (1.92%) Progress Chef
8 13 (1.47%) Packer
9 10 (1.13%) logstash
10 7 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (0.79%) Kibana
11 5 (0.56%) Hadoop YARN
11 5 (0.56%) Puppet
11 5 (0.56%) Rancher
11 5 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
12 4 (0.45%) Fluentd
12 4 (0.45%) Istio
13 3 (0.34%) Kustomize
13 3 (0.34%) linkerd
13 3 (0.34%) Oozie
Vendors
1 81 (9.14%) Oracle
2 52 (5.87%) Splunk
3 45 (5.08%) Databricks
4 39 (4.40%) Microsoft
5 30 (3.39%) IBM
5 30 (3.39%) Sybase
6 28 (3.16%) Google
7 26 (2.93%) Confluent
8 20 (2.26%) VMware
9 19 (2.14%) Dynatrace
10 18 (2.03%) Cloudera
11 14 (1.58%) CA Agile Central
11 14 (1.58%) ServiceNow
12 13 (1.47%) Foundry
12 13 (1.47%) Palantir
13 12 (1.35%) Red Hat
14 10 (1.13%) MuleSoft
14 10 (1.13%) SAP
14 10 (1.13%) TIBCO
15 8 (0.90%) Informatica