Kafka Contract Job Trends

Apache Kafka
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs citing Kafka skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 117 124
Rank change year-on-year -20 +7 +45
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,141 827 737
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 2.47% 1.98%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.38% 9.46% 8.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 747 535 461
10th Percentile £380 £369 £363
25th Percentile £425 £444 £482
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £723
90th Percentile £762 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £452 £490
% change year-on-year +7.24% -7.70% -18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 5
10th Percentile £51.75 £40.58 £26.04
25th Percentile £67.50 £48.56 £27.00
Median hourly rate £81.00 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.71% +111.61% -64.10%
75th Percentile £89.06 £75.31 £38.75
90th Percentile £94.50 £96.13 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £82.25 - £28.00
% change year-on-year - - -64.10%

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 citing technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

6 months to
23 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 12,169 8,744 9,147
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 22.06% 26.09% 24.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,024 5,820 5,894
10th Percentile £375 £356 £356
25th Percentile £438 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 310 184 150
10th Percentile £29.07 £29.30 £25.36
25th Percentile £50.88 £40.75 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £50.72 £64.18
Median % change year-on-year +28.15% -20.97% +10.18%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £91.10 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.49 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +22.70% -15.38% +15.95%

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 23 October 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 for jobs citing Kafka over the 6 months to 23 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka Top 17 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 23 October 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
Job Ads
Past 6 Months
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -36 942 £550 - 709
London -30 581 £575 -4.17% 493
UK excluding London -10 402 £485 +7.24% 292
Work from Home -61 281 £550 -4.35% 317
North of England +10 205 £501 +6.82% 103
Yorkshire +11 95 £500 -13.04% 22
North West -8 94 £537 +23.45% 69
Scotland -31 62 £418 -10.22% 45
South East -60 51 £460 +5.75% 38
Midlands -42 41 £425 -15.00% 18
East of England -5 27 £475 -7.32% 19
South West -21 27 £600 +9.09% 29
West Midlands -45 27 £700 +40.00% 12
North East -20 25 £426 -26.00% 12
East Midlands -14 14 £402 -4.29% 6
Northern Ireland - 4 - - 36
Wales - 2 £375 - 5

Kafka Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards

RankSkillShareJob Ads
1Spring Boot28.4%324
2Spring28.3%323
3REST24.0%274
4Terraform21.1%241
5RESTful14.3%163
6React11.8%135
7RabbitMQ10.5%120
8JSON6.9%79
9OAuth6.6%75
10HTML5.3%61
11Node.js5.3%60
12PySpark4.9%56
13SOAP4.6%52
14GraphQL4.5%51
14XML4.5%51
16.NET4.4%50
17CSS4.2%48
18OAuth24.1%47
19AngularJS4.0%46
20OpenTelemetry3.9%45