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 3 November 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Nov 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 115 115
Rank change year-on-year -19 0 +59
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,143 844 746
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.08% 2.46% 2.05%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.36% 9.46% 8.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 758 543 455
10th Percentile £375 £368 £369
25th Percentile £425 £450 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £640 £675 £710
90th Percentile £758 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £490
% change year-on-year +2.54% -5.46% -8.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 4 5
10th Percentile £52.75 £40.58 £26.04
25th Percentile £72.69 £48.56 £27.00
Median hourly rate £85.50 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.30% +111.61% -63.99%
75th Percentile £91.50 £75.31 £38.75
90th Percentile £94.10 £96.13 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £88.75 - £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
3 Nov 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 12,209 8,924 8,870
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 22.20% 26.03% 24.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,073 5,959 5,709
10th Percentile £377 £353 £353
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
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 £720 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £486 £500
% change year-on-year +2.99% -2.90% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 188 121
10th Percentile £29.07 £29.70 £23.80
25th Percentile £49.50 £41.25 £41.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.37% -16.92% +13.04%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.00 £77.50 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.47 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +7.95% -3.85% +17.12%

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 3 November 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 3 November 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 3 November 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 -34 952 £550 - 325
London -27 582 £575 -4.17% 231
UK excluding London -5 404 £475 +2.54% 139
Work from Home -67 277 £550 -4.35% 121
North of England +16 208 £500 +6.50% 39
North West +10 96 £537 +24.16% 33
Yorkshire +12 94 £500 -13.04% 3
Scotland -32 57 £410 -11.83% 12
South East -63 52 £460 +5.75% 42
Midlands -53 42 £425 -15.00% 15
South West -17 29 £600 +9.09% 23
West Midlands -46 28 £700 +40.00% 6
East of England +1 27 £475 -7.32% 7
North East -12 27 £425 -26.09% 3
East Midlands -9 14 £402 -1.95% 9
Northern Ireland - 4 - - 2
Wales - 2 £375 -

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
1Spring29.4%336
1Spring Boot29.4%336
3REST25.6%293
4Terraform21.4%245
5RESTful14.5%166
6React12.0%137
7RabbitMQ10.5%120
8JSON7.2%82
9OAuth6.7%77
10HTML5.8%66
11Node.js5.7%65
12SOAP5.2%59
13XML5.0%57
14AngularJS4.8%55
14PySpark4.8%55
16CSS4.5%52
17GraphQL4.5%51
18OAuth24.2%48
19.NET4.1%47
20Hibernate3.9%45