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 13 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 106 142
Rank change year-on-year -38 +36 +11
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,023 827 670
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.51% 1.72%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.11% 11.23% 7.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 630 530 464
10th Percentile £370 £385 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.41% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £719
90th Percentile £775 £781 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +1.28% -4.29% -18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 3 10
10th Percentile £56.40 £54.65 £22.65
25th Percentile £65.00 £57.13 £25.80
Median hourly rate £71.25 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £88.75 £71.23 £37.81
90th Percentile £90.00 £75.71 £43.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -2.16% +181.07% -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 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 10,118 7,367 8,577
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.96% 22.37% 22.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,590 4,943 5,790
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -9.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £632 £663
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £500
% change year-on-year +6.61% -6.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 174 243
10th Percentile £28.04 £29.48 £22.55
25th Percentile £41.28 £40.88 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.37% -1.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £81.01 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £58.91
% change year-on-year +18.18% -6.63% +0.54%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 -42 868 £550 - 551
London -37 520 £575 -8.00% 414
UK excluding London -33 378 £475 +1.28% 197
Work from Home -62 260 £550 -4.35% 215
North of England -9 177 £465 -0.85% 52
Yorkshire +7 87 £475 -5.00% 22
North West -33 70 £430 -8.42% 20
South East -34 61 £513 +17.82% 52
Scotland -23 54 £430 -8.51% 32
Midlands -54 36 £500 +19.05% 18
South West -22 28 £500 -9.09% 28
North East -20 27 £426 -8.49% 10
East of England -1 26 £550 +7.32% 4
West Midlands -42 21 £514 +2.80% 14
East Midlands -17 15 £470 +29.66% 4
Northern Ireland +5 4 - - 9
Wales -12 1 £375 - 3

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
1 130 (12.71%) Apache Spark
2 72 (7.04%) Apache
3 61 (5.96%) Apache Airflow
4 18 (1.76%) Confluence
5 9 (0.88%) Camunda
6 6 (0.59%) CMS
6 6 (0.59%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.59%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 6 (0.59%) WebSphere
7 5 (0.49%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
9 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.29%) Mule
10 2 (0.20%) Apache Pig
10 2 (0.20%) JBoss
10 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (0.68%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.20%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.098%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.20%) Endur
2 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.098%) Actimize
3 1 (0.098%) Bloomberg AIM
3 1 (0.098%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.098%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.098%) SAP IS-U
3 1 (0.098%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 599 (58.55%) AWS
2 341 (33.33%) Azure
3 213 (20.82%) GCP
4 169 (16.52%) GitHub
5 123 (12.02%) GitHub Actions
6 106 (10.36%) Serverless
7 82 (8.02%) AWS Lambda
8 76 (7.43%) Amazon S3
9 73 (7.14%) Amazon EKS
10 69 (6.74%) Azure DevOps
11 65 (6.35%) OpenShift
11 65 (6.35%) Snowflake
12 52 (5.08%) Amazon SQS
13 48 (4.69%) dbt
14 44 (4.30%) Amazon ECS
15 43 (4.20%) Power Platform
16 42 (4.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 31 (3.03%) Azure Data Factory
18 29 (2.83%) AWS CloudFormation
19 27 (2.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.05%) HTTP
2 14 (1.37%) DNS
3 11 (1.08%) Firewall
4 10 (0.98%) Network Security
5 7 (0.68%) MQTT
5 7 (0.68%) SSL
6 5 (0.49%) SAN
6 5 (0.49%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.39%) NAS
7 4 (0.39%) SSH
8 3 (0.29%) 4G
8 3 (0.29%) 5G
8 3 (0.29%) Internet
9 2 (0.20%) NaaS
9 2 (0.20%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.20%) WAN
10 1 (0.098%) Broadband
10 1 (0.098%) MIMO
10 1 (0.098%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (18.28%) PostgreSQL
2 158 (15.44%) MongoDB
3 134 (13.10%) NoSQL
4 100 (9.78%) Relational Database
5 66 (6.45%) Data Warehouse
6 63 (6.16%) Big Data
7 60 (5.87%) SQL Server
8 53 (5.18%) Data Lake
9 46 (4.50%) Redis
10 41 (4.01%) Power BI
11 39 (3.81%) MySQL
12 37 (3.62%) Flink
13 36 (3.52%) Elasticsearch
13 36 (3.52%) Metadata
14 35 (3.42%) Apache Cassandra
14 35 (3.42%) BigQuery
15 31 (3.03%) DynamoDB
15 31 (3.03%) Hadoop
16 26 (2.54%) Delta Lake
16 26 (2.54%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 203 (19.84%) Jenkins
2 166 (16.23%) Git
3 138 (13.49%) GitLab
4 74 (7.23%) JUnit
5 60 (5.87%) Mockito
6 55 (5.38%) Gradle
7 45 (4.40%) JIRA
8 44 (4.30%) Selenium
9 32 (3.13%) Cucumber
10 31 (3.03%) Maven
11 24 (2.35%) SonarQube
12 22 (2.15%) Postman
13 20 (1.96%) REST Assured
14 18 (1.76%) Gatling
14 18 (1.76%) Liquibase
15 16 (1.56%) JMeter
16 12 (1.17%) Bitbucket
17 11 (1.08%) Cypress.io
17 11 (1.08%) LoadRunner
17 11 (1.08%) SoapUI
General
1 258 (25.22%) Finance
2 185 (18.08%) Social Skills
3 140 (13.69%) Banking
4 107 (10.46%) Analytical Skills
5 98 (9.58%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.20%) Front Office
7 33 (3.23%) Retail
8 27 (2.64%) Investment Banking
9 18 (1.76%) Financial Institution
9 18 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.76%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.47%) Law
11 13 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
12 12 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (1.08%) Billing
14 9 (0.88%) Publishing
15 8 (0.78%) Games
15 8 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (0.78%) Military
16 7 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 326 (31.87%) Developer
2 201 (19.65%) Senior
3 170 (16.62%) Java Developer
4 141 (13.78%) Data Engineer
5 139 (13.59%) Architect
6 110 (10.75%) Lead
7 86 (8.41%) Software Engineer
8 79 (7.72%) Java Engineer
9 70 (6.84%) Senior Developer
10 58 (5.67%) Solutions Architect
11 49 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
12 40 (3.91%) Full-Stack Developer
12 40 (3.91%) Senior Java Developer
13 38 (3.71%) AWS Architect
13 38 (3.71%) Python Engineer
14 36 (3.52%) Senior Data Engineer
15 35 (3.42%) AWS Engineer
16 34 (3.32%) Lead Developer
17 33 (3.23%) Java Software Engineer
17 33 (3.23%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 248 (24.24%) Spring
2 237 (23.17%) Spring Boot
3 200 (19.55%) REST
4 150 (14.66%) React
5 146 (14.27%) RESTful
6 124 (12.12%) RabbitMQ
7 75 (7.33%) Node.js
8 70 (6.84%) JSON
9 68 (6.65%) GraphQL
10 55 (5.38%) OAuth
11 52 (5.08%) Redux
12 48 (4.69%) OpenTelemetry
13 46 (4.50%) PySpark
14 43 (4.20%) Middleware
14 43 (4.20%) Swagger
15 42 (4.11%) .NET
15 42 (4.11%) OpenAPI
16 41 (4.01%) OAuth2
17 40 (3.91%) XML
18 37 (3.62%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 196 (19.16%) Cloud Native
2 195 (19.06%) Distributed Systems
3 42 (4.11%) Data Structures
4 41 (4.01%) Product Ownership
5 34 (3.32%) Enterprise Software
6 31 (3.03%) Fixed Income
7 30 (2.93%) Algorithms
8 27 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
8 27 (2.64%) Onboarding
9 26 (2.54%) Self-Motivation
10 21 (2.05%) AI Agents
10 21 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 21 (2.05%) Management Information System
11 18 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (1.76%) Replication
12 17 (1.66%) Public Cloud
12 17 (1.66%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 15 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
14 14 (1.37%) Equities
15 12 (1.17%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 118 (11.53%) Linux
2 64 (6.26%) Unix
3 25 (2.44%) Windows
4 9 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.68%) Mac OS X
6 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.20%) Android
7 2 (0.20%) Debian
7 2 (0.20%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 2 (0.20%) VMS
8 1 (0.098%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.098%) CentOS
8 1 (0.098%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.098%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 517 (50.54%) CI/CD
2 387 (37.83%) Microservices
3 370 (36.17%) Agile
4 365 (35.68%) Event-Driven
5 351 (34.31%) DevOps
6 258 (25.22%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 238 (23.26%) Observability
8 223 (21.80%) Containerisation
9 203 (19.84%) Test Automation
10 192 (18.77%) Software Engineering
11 188 (18.38%) Data Pipeline
12 184 (17.99%) Infrastructure as Code
13 159 (15.54%) AI
14 153 (14.96%) Data Modelling
15 146 (14.27%) Problem-Solving
16 138 (13.49%) Analytics
17 135 (13.20%) ETL
18 126 (12.32%) Data Engineering
19 118 (11.53%) TDD
20 114 (11.14%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 460 (44.97%) Java
2 357 (34.90%) Python
3 325 (31.77%) SQL
4 122 (11.93%) TypeScript
5 110 (10.75%) JavaScript
6 69 (6.74%) Go
7 68 (6.65%) Bash
8 58 (5.67%) C#
9 39 (3.81%) Scala
10 33 (3.23%) PowerShell
11 24 (2.35%) PL/SQL
12 20 (1.96%) Shell Script
13 16 (1.56%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.08%) Rust
15 10 (0.98%) Groovy
15 10 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.88%) Bicep
16 9 (0.88%) C++
17 7 (0.68%) PHP
18 6 (0.59%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 235 (22.97%) Security Cleared
2 185 (18.08%) SC Cleared
3 54 (5.28%) Degree
4 28 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (1.76%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.98%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.78%) Azure Certification
9 8 (0.78%) ISTQB
10 6 (0.59%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.39%) ISEB
12 4 (0.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 4 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.29%) PhD
14 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
15 1 (0.098%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (9.29%) Data Quality
2 60 (5.87%) QA
3 43 (4.20%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.93%) GDPR
5 25 (2.44%) ISO 20022
6 10 (0.98%) SEPA
7 8 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
8 6 (0.59%) WCAG
9 4 (0.39%) ISO 15022
9 4 (0.39%) NIST
9 4 (0.39%) SLA
10 2 (0.20%) EMIR
10 2 (0.20%) IFRS
10 2 (0.20%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.20%) MiFID
10 2 (0.20%) NCSC
10 2 (0.20%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.098%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.098%) NIST 800
System Software
1 364 (35.58%) Docker
2 7 (0.68%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 6 (0.59%) etcd
4 3 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.20%) HDFS
6 1 (0.098%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 442 (43.21%) Kubernetes
2 202 (19.75%) Terraform
3 123 (12.02%) Grafana
4 112 (10.95%) Prometheus
5 60 (5.87%) Ansible
6 28 (2.74%) Argo
7 22 (2.15%) Control-M
8 12 (1.17%) Istio
8 12 (1.17%) Kibana
9 11 (1.08%) Podman
9 11 (1.08%) Puppet
10 10 (0.98%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.68%) Fluentd
11 7 (0.68%) logstash
12 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
12 5 (0.49%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.49%) Rancher
13 3 (0.29%) Bosun
13 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
13 3 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 101 (9.87%) Oracle
2 89 (8.70%) Databricks
3 54 (5.28%) Splunk
4 52 (5.08%) Google
4 52 (5.08%) Microsoft
5 39 (3.81%) IBM
6 32 (3.13%) Confluent
7 30 (2.93%) Dynatrace
8 28 (2.74%) Informatica
9 17 (1.66%) MuleSoft
9 17 (1.66%) Salesforce
10 16 (1.56%) SAP
11 15 (1.47%) Solace
12 14 (1.37%) OpenAI
13 10 (0.98%) New Relic
13 10 (0.98%) Red Hat
14 9 (0.88%) ServiceNow
15 8 (0.78%) Sybase
15 8 (0.78%) TIBCO
16 7 (0.68%) VMware