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 18 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 102 134
Rank change year-on-year -40 +32 +22
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,067 836 701
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.96% 2.54% 1.82%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.06% 9.81% 7.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 674 536 462
10th Percentile £375 £381 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £485
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £547 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -0.55% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £637 £675 £725
90th Percentile £738 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £493
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.87% -21.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 4 7
10th Percentile £43.85 £40.58 £24.34
25th Percentile £56.25 £48.56 £26.20
Median hourly rate £77.00 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.96% +111.61% -64.10%
75th Percentile £87.00 £75.31 £33.88
90th Percentile £94.00 £96.13 £39.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 - £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 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 11,775 8,520 9,597
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.64% 25.86% 24.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,736 5,696 6,345
10th Percentile £375 £354 £356
25th Percentile £438 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £734 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +6.26% -5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 187 189
10th Percentile £29.07 £31.25 £25.60
25th Percentile £49.75 £41.42 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.83 £54.70 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +20.35% -11.20% -1.44%
75th Percentile £76.25 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.20 £74.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.39% -11.54% +8.33%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -40 892 £550 - 1,004
London -38 531 £575 -4.17% 699
UK excluding London -27 393 £500 +6.61% 418
Work from Home -53 277 £545 -5.22% 413
North of England -16 189 £500 +5.26% 145
Yorkshire +9 96 £501 -14.63% 37
North West -33 74 £550 +18.28% 93
South East -32 63 £460 +5.75% 69
Scotland -35 55 £410 -13.23% 67
Midlands -48 36 £500 +14.94% 30
East of England -5 29 £488 -4.88% 25
South West -15 29 £500 -9.09% 46
North East -30 24 £425 -8.55% 15
West Midlands -43 23 £700 +40.00% 24
East Midlands -17 13 £495 +17.86% 6
Northern Ireland +2 4 - - 32
Wales - 1 £375 - 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
1 129 (12.09%) Apache Spark
2 76 (7.12%) Apache Airflow
3 67 (6.28%) Apache
4 24 (2.25%) Confluence
5 16 (1.50%) Camunda
6 7 (0.66%) OpenStack
6 7 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.56%) CMS
8 5 (0.47%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.37%) Apache Pulsar
9 4 (0.37%) MQSeries
9 4 (0.37%) PowerExchange
10 3 (0.28%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.28%) Mule
10 3 (0.28%) nginx
10 3 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.19%) Apache Pig
11 2 (0.19%) JBoss
12 1 (0.094%) IBM HTTP Server
12 1 (0.094%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 6 (0.56%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.19%) Mingle
3 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (0.28%) Finacle
2 3 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
2 3 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.28%) Temenos T24
3 2 (0.19%) Endur
3 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.094%) Actimize
4 1 (0.094%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.094%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.094%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.094%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 611 (57.26%) AWS
2 387 (36.27%) Azure
3 256 (23.99%) GCP
4 175 (16.40%) GitHub
5 119 (11.15%) GitHub Actions
6 101 (9.47%) Serverless
7 84 (7.87%) AWS Lambda
8 75 (7.03%) Amazon EKS
8 75 (7.03%) Amazon S3
9 74 (6.94%) Snowflake
10 71 (6.65%) Azure DevOps
11 67 (6.28%) OpenShift
12 51 (4.78%) dbt
13 49 (4.59%) Amazon SQS
14 43 (4.03%) Amazon ECS
15 40 (3.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 39 (3.66%) Power Platform
17 35 (3.28%) Azure Data Factory
18 31 (2.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 27 (2.53%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 31 (2.91%) HTTP
2 20 (1.87%) DNS
3 12 (1.12%) Network Security
4 9 (0.84%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.66%) Firewall
5 7 (0.66%) MQTT
5 7 (0.66%) SSH
6 6 (0.56%) SAN
6 6 (0.56%) SSL
7 5 (0.47%) 4G
7 5 (0.47%) 5G
8 4 (0.37%) NAS
9 3 (0.28%) Internet
10 2 (0.19%) Kerberos
11 1 (0.094%) Broadband
11 1 (0.094%) FIX Connectivity
11 1 (0.094%) MIMO
11 1 (0.094%) RTP
11 1 (0.094%) VPN
11 1 (0.094%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (17.53%) PostgreSQL
2 166 (15.56%) MongoDB
3 131 (12.28%) NoSQL
4 93 (8.72%) Relational Database
5 74 (6.94%) Data Warehouse
6 66 (6.19%) SQL Server
7 57 (5.34%) Redis
8 53 (4.97%) Big Data
9 49 (4.59%) Data Lake
9 49 (4.59%) MySQL
10 42 (3.94%) Elasticsearch
11 39 (3.66%) BigQuery
12 38 (3.56%) Power BI
13 34 (3.19%) Flink
14 33 (3.09%) Metadata
15 27 (2.53%) Delta Lake
16 25 (2.34%) Hadoop
17 24 (2.25%) Amazon Redshift
17 24 (2.25%) DynamoDB
18 23 (2.16%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 214 (20.06%) Jenkins
2 185 (17.34%) Git
3 162 (15.18%) GitLab
4 71 (6.65%) JUnit
5 67 (6.28%) Gradle
6 60 (5.62%) Mockito
7 52 (4.87%) Selenium
8 46 (4.31%) Maven
9 45 (4.22%) JIRA
10 32 (3.00%) SonarQube
11 31 (2.91%) Cucumber
12 24 (2.25%) REST Assured
13 22 (2.06%) Postman
14 19 (1.78%) JMeter
15 18 (1.69%) Bitbucket
16 16 (1.50%) Gatling
17 15 (1.41%) Liquibase
18 13 (1.22%) Cypress.io
18 13 (1.22%) LoadRunner
19 12 (1.12%) SoapUI
General
1 266 (24.93%) Finance
2 207 (19.40%) Social Skills
3 164 (15.37%) Banking
4 113 (10.59%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (9.37%) Public Sector
6 37 (3.47%) Retail
7 25 (2.34%) Investment Banking
8 24 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (1.78%) Front Office
10 18 (1.69%) Telecoms
11 16 (1.50%) Financial Institution
12 13 (1.22%) Law
13 11 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
14 10 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.84%) Military
15 9 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.75%) Billing
16 8 (0.75%) Publishing
16 8 (0.75%) Retail Banking
17 7 (0.66%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 328 (30.74%) Developer
2 230 (21.56%) Senior
3 184 (17.24%) Java Developer
4 164 (15.37%) Architect
5 128 (12.00%) Data Engineer
6 97 (9.09%) Lead
7 70 (6.56%) Java Engineer
7 70 (6.56%) Senior Developer
8 67 (6.28%) Solutions Architect
9 63 (5.90%) Software Engineer
10 62 (5.81%) DevOps Engineer
11 44 (4.12%) Full-Stack Developer
12 43 (4.03%) Senior Java Developer
13 42 (3.94%) Senior Data Engineer
14 38 (3.56%) AWS Engineer
14 38 (3.56%) Python Engineer
15 37 (3.47%) Kafka Engineer
16 35 (3.28%) Python Developer
17 34 (3.19%) AWS Architect
18 33 (3.09%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (26.71%) Spring
1 285 (26.71%) Spring Boot
2 246 (23.06%) REST
3 226 (21.18%) Terraform
4 154 (14.43%) RESTful
5 132 (12.37%) React
6 125 (11.72%) RabbitMQ
7 74 (6.94%) JSON
8 61 (5.72%) OAuth
9 57 (5.34%) Node.js
10 52 (4.87%) HTML
11 50 (4.69%) OpenTelemetry
11 50 (4.69%) PySpark
12 49 (4.59%) GraphQL
13 46 (4.31%) .NET
14 44 (4.12%) Elastic Stack
15 43 (4.03%) Swagger
16 42 (3.94%) Middleware
16 42 (3.94%) XML
17 41 (3.84%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 245 (22.96%) Cloud Native
2 226 (21.18%) Distributed Systems
3 73 (6.84%) Product Ownership
4 44 (4.12%) Data Structures
4 44 (4.12%) Enterprise Software
5 39 (3.66%) Onboarding
6 35 (3.28%) AI Agents
7 30 (2.81%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
9 27 (2.53%) Algorithms
9 27 (2.53%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 26 (2.44%) Replication
11 24 (2.25%) Greenfield Project
12 19 (1.78%) Distributed Architecture
12 19 (1.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 17 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
13 17 (1.59%) Public Cloud
14 16 (1.50%) Management Information System
14 16 (1.50%) Private Cloud
15 14 (1.31%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 137 (12.84%) Linux
2 70 (6.56%) Unix
3 24 (2.25%) Windows
4 11 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.56%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.47%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.28%) CentOS
7 3 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Android
8 2 (0.19%) Debian
8 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.094%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.094%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.094%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.094%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.094%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 590 (55.30%) CI/CD
2 451 (42.27%) Event-Driven
3 436 (40.86%) Microservices
4 386 (36.18%) DevOps
5 377 (35.33%) Agile
6 316 (29.62%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 284 (26.62%) Observability
8 237 (22.21%) Infrastructure as Code
8 237 (22.21%) Test Automation
9 231 (21.65%) Containerisation
10 193 (18.09%) Software Engineering
11 179 (16.78%) AI
12 172 (16.12%) Data Pipeline
13 153 (14.34%) Problem-Solving
14 145 (13.59%) Data Modelling
15 134 (12.56%) Technical Leadership
16 132 (12.37%) ETL
17 130 (12.18%) Continuous Improvement
18 125 (11.72%) Analytics
19 119 (11.15%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 472 (44.24%) Java
2 361 (33.83%) Python
3 340 (31.87%) SQL
4 102 (9.56%) JavaScript
5 101 (9.47%) TypeScript
6 82 (7.69%) Bash
7 60 (5.62%) C#
8 51 (4.78%) Go
9 42 (3.94%) Scala
10 30 (2.81%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.72%) PL/SQL
12 26 (2.44%) Shell Script
13 24 (2.25%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.03%) Groovy
15 9 (0.84%) Perl
16 8 (0.75%) C++
16 8 (0.75%) Rust
16 8 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
17 7 (0.66%) Bicep
17 7 (0.66%) PHP
Qualifications
1 256 (23.99%) Security Cleared
2 209 (19.59%) SC Cleared
3 64 (6.00%) Degree
4 41 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 40 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 23 (2.16%) DV Cleared
7 13 (1.22%) Azure Certification
8 12 (1.12%) Master's Degree
9 11 (1.03%) AWS Certification
10 10 (0.94%) ISTQB
11 6 (0.56%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.56%) ISEB
12 5 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 5 (0.47%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 3 (0.28%) PhD
14 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.094%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (8.25%) Data Quality
2 84 (7.87%) QA
3 42 (3.94%) Accessibility
4 34 (3.19%) ISO 20022
5 20 (1.87%) GDPR
6 15 (1.41%) SEPA
7 5 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
7 5 (0.47%) ISO 15022
7 5 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.47%) PSD2
7 5 (0.47%) SLA
7 5 (0.47%) WCAG
8 4 (0.37%) NIST
9 2 (0.19%) EMIR
9 2 (0.19%) GRC
9 2 (0.19%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.19%) IFRS
9 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.19%) MiFID
9 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 377 (35.33%) Docker
2 17 (1.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.75%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.19%) HDFS
6 1 (0.094%) etcd
6 1 (0.094%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 488 (45.74%) Kubernetes
2 141 (13.21%) Grafana
3 124 (11.62%) Prometheus
4 69 (6.47%) Ansible
5 30 (2.81%) Argo
6 25 (2.34%) Control-M
7 14 (1.31%) Istio
7 14 (1.31%) Kibana
7 14 (1.31%) Kustomize
8 11 (1.03%) Puppet
9 9 (0.84%) Podman
10 8 (0.75%) logstash
11 7 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.56%) Rancher
13 5 (0.47%) Check_MK
13 5 (0.47%) HP Fortify
14 4 (0.37%) Bosun
14 4 (0.37%) Consul
15 3 (0.28%) Cilium
15 3 (0.28%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 123 (11.53%) Oracle
2 101 (9.47%) Databricks
3 60 (5.62%) Splunk
4 56 (5.25%) IBM
5 55 (5.15%) Microsoft
6 52 (4.87%) Google
7 37 (3.47%) Dynatrace
8 31 (2.91%) Confluent
9 30 (2.81%) Informatica
10 21 (1.97%) MuleSoft
10 21 (1.97%) VMware
11 18 (1.69%) OpenAI
12 17 (1.59%) Salesforce
13 16 (1.50%) SAP
14 15 (1.41%) Solace
15 13 (1.22%) TIBCO
16 11 (1.03%) New Relic
17 9 (0.84%) Sybase
17 9 (0.84%) Veracode
17 9 (0.84%) WSO2