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 19 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 103 142
Rank change year-on-year -36 +39 +2
Contract jobs citing Kafka 952 758 719
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 2.54% 1.64%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.66% 11.12% 7.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 561 493 524
10th Percentile £376 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £683
90th Percentile £800 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £470 £493
% change year-on-year -1.06% -4.67% -17.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 9
10th Percentile £61.10 £47.14 £22.55
25th Percentile £65.00 £58.98 £27.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £78.70 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.05% +181.07% -64.10%
75th Percentile £90.00 £86.23 £38.75
90th Percentile £95.00 £90.74 £45.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -11.05% +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 9,851 6,815 9,286
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.49% 22.85% 21.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,467 4,652 6,374
10th Percentile £363 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £537
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -4.22% -2.43%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 126 276
10th Percentile £30.50 £29.16 £22.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £39.84 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £51.75
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% +8.70% -20.38%
75th Percentile £74.26 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.18 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year +4.00% +11.11% -13.46%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 -32 821 £550 - 144
London -25 513 £588 -6.00% 92
UK excluding London -55 320 £465 -1.06% 82
Work from Home -40 274 £600 +4.35% 76
North of England -28 147 £447 -4.79% 20
Yorkshire -17 71 £463 -15.91% 3
North West -38 63 £447 -4.69% 14
South East -46 51 £488 +10.17% 27
Scotland -20 46 £450 -5.26% 9
Midlands -53 39 £491 +9.17% 6
South West -9 26 £500 -9.09% 11
West Midlands -57 21 £500 - 4
North East -21 20 £425 -8.11% 3
East Midlands -15 18 £407 +14.08% 2
East of England -21 17 £550 +10.00% 4
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 4
Wales -15 1 £250 - 2

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
1 125 (13.13%) Apache Spark
2 64 (6.72%) Apache
3 52 (5.46%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (1.47%) Confluence
5 7 (0.74%) Camunda
6 6 (0.63%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.63%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.53%) Apache Pulsar
7 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 8 (0.84%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) Bloomberg AIM
2 3 (0.32%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.21%) Endur
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 554 (58.19%) AWS
2 277 (29.10%) Azure
3 172 (18.07%) GCP
4 135 (14.18%) GitHub
5 120 (12.61%) Serverless
6 101 (10.61%) GitHub Actions
7 94 (9.87%) Amazon S3
8 91 (9.56%) AWS Lambda
9 69 (7.25%) OpenShift
10 64 (6.72%) Amazon EKS
11 61 (6.41%) Azure DevOps
12 55 (5.78%) Power Platform
13 51 (5.36%) Snowflake
14 45 (4.73%) Amazon ECS
15 44 (4.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 41 (4.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 41 (4.31%) dbt
17 39 (4.10%) Amazon SQS
18 32 (3.36%) Amazon Kinesis
19 30 (3.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.58%) HTTP
2 13 (1.37%) Firewall
3 10 (1.05%) Network Security
4 8 (0.84%) DNS
5 7 (0.74%) MQTT
6 5 (0.53%) NAS
6 5 (0.53%) SAN
6 5 (0.53%) SSL
7 4 (0.42%) SMS
8 3 (0.32%) Internet
9 2 (0.21%) NaaS
9 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.21%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.21%) WAN
10 1 (0.11%) 4G
10 1 (0.11%) 5G
10 1 (0.11%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.11%) MIMO
10 1 (0.11%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (19.33%) PostgreSQL
2 154 (16.18%) MongoDB
3 127 (13.34%) NoSQL
4 94 (9.87%) Relational Database
5 62 (6.51%) Big Data
6 55 (5.78%) SQL Server
7 54 (5.67%) Data Warehouse
8 52 (5.46%) Data Lake
9 49 (5.15%) Redis
10 45 (4.73%) Power BI
11 43 (4.52%) Elasticsearch
12 42 (4.41%) Apache Cassandra
13 36 (3.78%) DynamoDB
13 36 (3.78%) MySQL
14 35 (3.68%) Flink
15 33 (3.47%) Hadoop
16 29 (3.05%) Amazon Athena
17 28 (2.94%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (2.94%) BigQuery
18 27 (2.84%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 156 (16.39%) Jenkins
2 126 (13.24%) GitLab
3 124 (13.03%) Git
4 69 (7.25%) JUnit
5 47 (4.94%) Mockito
6 45 (4.73%) JIRA
7 35 (3.68%) Gradle
8 31 (3.26%) Selenium
9 24 (2.52%) Cucumber
10 23 (2.42%) REST Assured
11 20 (2.10%) Gatling
12 17 (1.79%) Liquibase
13 15 (1.58%) Maven
13 15 (1.58%) Postman
13 15 (1.58%) Serenity BDD
14 13 (1.37%) SonarQube
15 6 (0.63%) Cypress.io
15 6 (0.63%) Jaeger
15 6 (0.63%) JMeter
15 6 (0.63%) Snyk
General
1 259 (27.21%) Finance
2 178 (18.70%) Social Skills
3 127 (13.34%) Banking
4 85 (8.93%) Public Sector
5 80 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
6 45 (4.73%) Front Office
7 35 (3.68%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (2.21%) Financial Institution
9 21 (2.21%) Retail
10 14 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 14 (1.47%) Law
11 10 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
11 10 (1.05%) Marketing
11 10 (1.05%) Telecoms
12 9 (0.95%) Publishing
13 8 (0.84%) Corporate Banking
13 8 (0.84%) Military
14 7 (0.74%) Automotive
14 7 (0.74%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 311 (32.67%) Developer
2 198 (20.80%) Senior
3 158 (16.60%) Java Developer
4 151 (15.86%) Data Engineer
5 117 (12.29%) Lead
6 116 (12.18%) Architect
7 99 (10.40%) Software Engineer
8 83 (8.72%) Senior Developer
9 80 (8.40%) Java Engineer
10 55 (5.78%) AWS Architect
11 48 (5.04%) Senior Java Developer
12 43 (4.52%) Solutions Architect
13 40 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
13 40 (4.20%) Full-Stack Developer
14 36 (3.78%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 33 (3.47%) Lead Developer
16 32 (3.36%) Java Software Engineer
16 32 (3.36%) Principal Engineer
17 31 (3.26%) Senior Java Engineer
18 30 (3.15%) Kafka Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 240 (25.21%) Spring
2 229 (24.05%) Spring Boot
3 140 (14.71%) REST
4 131 (13.76%) RESTful
5 128 (13.45%) React
6 100 (10.50%) RabbitMQ
7 90 (9.45%) Node.js
8 63 (6.62%) GraphQL
9 57 (5.99%) OpenTelemetry
10 51 (5.36%) gRPC
10 51 (5.36%) JSON
11 50 (5.25%) Redux
12 42 (4.41%) Middleware
13 41 (4.31%) OAuth
14 40 (4.20%) AngularJS
14 40 (4.20%) Apache Avro
15 39 (4.10%) Swagger
16 38 (3.99%) OpenAPI
17 36 (3.78%) OAuth2
18 35 (3.68%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 189 (19.85%) Distributed Systems
2 175 (18.38%) Cloud Native
3 39 (4.10%) Fixed Income
4 37 (3.89%) Management Information System
4 37 (3.89%) Product Ownership
5 33 (3.47%) Data Structures
6 23 (2.42%) Algorithms
6 23 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
6 23 (2.42%) Onboarding
7 18 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
8 15 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
8 15 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
9 14 (1.47%) Clustering
9 14 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
9 14 (1.47%) Derivative
9 14 (1.47%) Equities
10 13 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 13 (1.37%) Public Cloud
11 10 (1.05%) Hedge funds
11 10 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 86 (9.03%) Linux
2 51 (5.36%) Unix
3 27 (2.84%) Windows
4 8 (0.84%) Mac OS X
5 7 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.32%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.32%) VMS
8 2 (0.21%) Debian
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.21%) zOS
9 1 (0.11%) Android
9 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 430 (45.17%) CI/CD
2 363 (38.13%) Microservices
3 311 (32.67%) Agile
4 287 (30.15%) DevOps
5 285 (29.94%) Event-Driven
6 220 (23.11%) Observability
7 202 (21.22%) Containerisation
8 193 (20.27%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 189 (19.85%) Software Engineering
10 170 (17.86%) Data Pipeline
11 156 (16.39%) Data Modelling
11 156 (16.39%) Infrastructure as Code
12 151 (15.86%) Problem-Solving
13 149 (15.65%) Test Automation
14 148 (15.55%) Analytics
15 137 (14.39%) Data Engineering
16 134 (14.08%) ETL
17 117 (12.29%) AI
18 106 (11.13%) TDD
19 104 (10.92%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 442 (46.43%) Java
2 323 (33.93%) Python
3 295 (30.99%) SQL
4 118 (12.39%) TypeScript
5 87 (9.14%) Go
6 85 (8.93%) JavaScript
7 54 (5.67%) C#
8 39 (4.10%) Bash
9 25 (2.63%) Scala
10 19 (2.00%) PowerShell
11 18 (1.89%) Rust
12 17 (1.79%) PL/SQL
13 14 (1.47%) C++
14 12 (1.26%) Bicep
14 12 (1.26%) Kotlin
14 12 (1.26%) Shell Script
15 10 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
16 8 (0.84%) Groovy
17 7 (0.74%) PHP
18 6 (0.63%) Perl
Qualifications
1 195 (20.48%) Security Cleared
2 151 (15.86%) SC Cleared
3 49 (5.15%) Degree
4 28 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.89%) AWS Certification
5 18 (1.89%) DV Cleared
6 16 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.26%) Master's Degree
8 9 (0.95%) Azure Certification
9 8 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (0.74%) SnowPro
11 3 (0.32%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
13 1 (0.11%) CISSP
13 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.11%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (10.29%) Data Quality
2 56 (5.88%) QA
3 36 (3.78%) GDPR
4 34 (3.57%) Accessibility
5 18 (1.89%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.95%) NIST
8 8 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.74%) SEPA
10 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
10 3 (0.32%) PSD2
10 3 (0.32%) WCAG
11 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.21%) EMIR
11 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.21%) MiFID
11 2 (0.21%) NCSC
12 1 (0.11%) Basel III
12 1 (0.11%) HL7
12 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
System Software
1 317 (33.30%) Docker
2 6 (0.63%) etcd
3 4 (0.42%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) HDFS
5 1 (0.11%) OpenSSH
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 372 (39.08%) Kubernetes
2 194 (20.38%) Terraform
3 120 (12.61%) Prometheus
4 117 (12.29%) Grafana
5 56 (5.88%) Ansible
6 18 (1.89%) Argo
7 10 (1.05%) Kibana
8 9 (0.95%) Control-M
8 9 (0.95%) Istio
8 9 (0.95%) Puppet
9 8 (0.84%) Podman
10 7 (0.74%) Fluentd
11 6 (0.63%) Kustomize
12 5 (0.53%) Kiali
12 5 (0.53%) logstash
12 5 (0.53%) Rancher
13 3 (0.32%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.21%) CA Wily
14 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 81 (8.51%) Databricks
2 68 (7.14%) Oracle
3 64 (6.72%) Splunk
4 40 (4.20%) Microsoft
5 36 (3.78%) Google
6 27 (2.84%) Confluent
7 23 (2.42%) Informatica
8 18 (1.89%) IBM
9 15 (1.58%) Dynatrace
10 13 (1.37%) Salesforce
11 11 (1.16%) Solace
12 10 (1.05%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.95%) OpenAI
13 9 (0.95%) Sybase
13 9 (0.95%) Talend
14 8 (0.84%) Red Hat
14 8 (0.84%) ServiceNow
15 7 (0.74%) SAP
16 6 (0.63%) AppDynamics
16 6 (0.63%) Pega