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 24 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 118 115 174
Rank change year-on-year -3 +59 -60
Contract jobs citing Kafka 879 735 615
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.38% 2.17% 1.42%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.61% 9.87% 6.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 588 439 476
10th Percentile £363 £383 £425
25th Percentile £418 £486 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £598 £625
Median % change year-on-year -7.95% -4.40% -
75th Percentile £675 £725 £741
90th Percentile £741 £813 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £475 £524
% change year-on-year -4.74% -9.31% -12.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 3 7
10th Percentile £38.58 £36.82 £54.94
25th Percentile £40.00 £53.95 £70.00
Median hourly rate £59.25 £85.00 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.29% +9.68% +5.80%
75th Percentile £72.25 £90.63 £78.75
90th Percentile £88.30 £92.50 £83.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £85.00 £71.50
% change year-on-year -52.94% +18.88% -2.05%

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 8,287 7,447 9,465
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.40% 21.94% 21.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,481 4,725 6,715
10th Percentile £353 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £543 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.45% -1.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 199 92 172
10th Percentile £31.15 £21.33 £32.30
25th Percentile £43.80 £34.56 £46.18
Median hourly rate £58.73 £62.50 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.04% +16.82% -17.69%
75th Percentile £67.00 £65.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.99 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £65.00 £52.20
% change year-on-year -3.08% +24.53% -19.70%

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 24 December 2025.

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 24 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka
Top 15 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 24 December 2025. 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 -1 760 £550 -10.20% 410
London 0 507 £600 -4.00% 148
Work from Home +31 320 £600 +4.35% 344
UK excluding London -13 244 £453 -4.74% 306
North of England -35 92 £488 -15.22% 74
South East +11 59 £433 -16.02% 89
North West -24 46 £435 -9.84% 41
Scotland +18 45 £456 +20.38% 8
Midlands -15 43 £500 +25.00% 48
Yorkshire -23 40 £575 -19.30% 26
West Midlands -9 26 £550 -21.43% 26
South West +6 21 £550 -15.38% 39
East Midlands -4 17 £420 +17.98% 18
North East -3 10 £506 -18.91% 7
East of England -29 1 £450 +42.86% 39

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 77 (8.76%) Apache Spark
2 50 (5.69%) Apache
3 43 (4.89%) Confluence
4 38 (4.32%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (1.14%) Mule
6 8 (0.91%) Anypoint
7 6 (0.68%) CMS
8 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.46%) MQSeries
10 3 (0.34%) Camunda
10 3 (0.34%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.34%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.23%) JBoss
11 2 (0.23%) Luigi
11 2 (0.23%) SharePoint
11 2 (0.23%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.11%) IIS
12 1 (0.11%) SAS
12 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 4 (0.46%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.23%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.46%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.34%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.34%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.23%) Actimize
3 2 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.11%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 461 (52.45%) AWS
2 230 (26.17%) Azure
3 142 (16.15%) GitHub
4 119 (13.54%) GCP
5 102 (11.60%) Serverless
6 98 (11.15%) GitHub Actions
7 72 (8.19%) Amazon S3
7 72 (8.19%) AWS Lambda
8 57 (6.48%) AWS CloudFormation
9 54 (6.14%) Amazon EKS
10 50 (5.69%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (4.89%) OpenShift
12 41 (4.66%) Amazon SQS
13 38 (4.32%) Amazon ECS
14 36 (4.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 36 (4.10%) Amazon Kinesis
15 35 (3.98%) Azure Data Factory
16 29 (3.30%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (3.19%) Power Platform
18 22 (2.50%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.25%) SSL
2 10 (1.14%) DNS
3 9 (1.02%) Firewall
4 7 (0.80%) AMQP
4 7 (0.80%) DSL
4 7 (0.80%) HTTP
4 7 (0.80%) Kerberos
4 7 (0.80%) SSH
5 6 (0.68%) FTP
6 5 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.46%) MQTT
8 3 (0.34%) VPN
9 2 (0.23%) SMS
10 1 (0.11%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (19.23%) MongoDB
1 169 (19.23%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (14.33%) NoSQL
3 75 (8.53%) Apache Cassandra
4 59 (6.71%) Relational Database
5 53 (6.03%) Big Data
6 45 (5.12%) Redis
7 43 (4.89%) Amazon RDS
7 43 (4.89%) Elasticsearch
8 40 (4.55%) SQL Server
9 38 (4.32%) Data Warehouse
10 36 (4.10%) Data Lake
10 36 (4.10%) DynamoDB
11 33 (3.75%) Hadoop
12 32 (3.64%) DB2
13 25 (2.84%) Amazon Redshift
13 25 (2.84%) Metadata
13 25 (2.84%) Power BI
14 24 (2.73%) Amazon Athena
15 21 (2.39%) Flink
Development Applications
1 168 (19.11%) Jenkins
2 131 (14.90%) GitLab
3 120 (13.65%) Git
4 88 (10.01%) JUnit
5 63 (7.17%) JIRA
6 46 (5.23%) Mockito
7 25 (2.84%) JMeter
8 24 (2.73%) Cucumber
8 24 (2.73%) Sonatype Nexus
9 22 (2.50%) Gradle
9 22 (2.50%) SonarQube
10 19 (2.16%) Maven
11 12 (1.37%) Gatling
11 12 (1.37%) SoapUI
12 11 (1.25%) Artifactory
13 10 (1.14%) CircleCI
13 10 (1.14%) Subversion
14 8 (0.91%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 8 (0.91%) Liquibase
14 8 (0.91%) TeamCity
General
1 244 (27.76%) Finance
2 226 (25.71%) Social Skills
3 137 (15.59%) Banking
4 88 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 73 (8.30%) Public Sector
6 62 (7.05%) Investment Banking
7 43 (4.89%) Front Office
8 13 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (1.14%) Financial Institution
10 8 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (0.91%) Retail
11 6 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (0.68%) Law
12 5 (0.57%) Aerospace
12 5 (0.57%) Marketing
13 4 (0.46%) Military
14 3 (0.34%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.34%) Telecoms
15 2 (0.23%) Back Office
15 2 (0.23%) Games
Job Titles
1 348 (39.59%) Developer
2 253 (28.78%) Senior
3 208 (23.66%) Java Developer
4 128 (14.56%) Senior Developer
5 95 (10.81%) Data Engineer
6 88 (10.01%) Software Engineer
7 85 (9.67%) Lead
8 77 (8.76%) Senior Java Developer
9 64 (7.28%) DevOps Engineer
10 59 (6.71%) Architect
11 43 (4.89%) Kafka Developer
12 41 (4.66%) AWS Engineer
13 39 (4.44%) Kafka Engineer
14 38 (4.32%) Full-Stack Developer
15 37 (4.21%) Python Engineer
16 36 (4.10%) Platform Engineer
17 34 (3.87%) AWS Developer
17 34 (3.87%) Java Engineer
18 28 (3.19%) Senior Data Engineer
19 26 (2.96%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (22.75%) Spring
2 149 (16.95%) Spring Boot
3 98 (11.15%) REST
4 97 (11.04%) gRPC
5 93 (10.58%) React
6 84 (9.56%) RabbitMQ
7 74 (8.42%) RESTful
8 70 (7.96%) Node.js
9 42 (4.78%) ActiveMQ
9 42 (4.78%) AngularJS
9 42 (4.78%) JMS
10 37 (4.21%) .NET
11 36 (4.10%) Keycloak
12 34 (3.87%) Hibernate
13 32 (3.64%) JSON
14 31 (3.53%) Middleware
14 31 (3.53%) OAuth
14 31 (3.53%) PySpark
15 28 (3.19%) GraphQL
15 28 (3.19%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 118 (13.42%) Distributed Systems
2 90 (10.24%) Cloud Native
3 42 (4.78%) Equities
4 36 (4.10%) Data Structures
5 34 (3.87%) Management Information System
6 30 (3.41%) Fixed Income
7 27 (3.07%) Product Ownership
8 23 (2.62%) Replication
9 22 (2.50%) Derivative
10 20 (2.28%) Market Risk
11 14 (1.59%) Distributed Computing
12 13 (1.48%) Legacy Applications
13 12 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
14 11 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
15 10 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 10 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
16 8 (0.91%) Data Fabric
16 8 (0.91%) IoT
16 8 (0.91%) Onboarding
16 8 (0.91%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 166 (18.89%) Linux
2 84 (9.56%) Unix
3 25 (2.84%) Windows
4 13 (1.48%) Mac OS X
5 10 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.80%) CentOS
7 5 (0.57%) AIX
8 3 (0.34%) VMS
9 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.23%) zOS
10 1 (0.11%) Debian
10 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 361 (41.07%) CI/CD
2 353 (40.16%) Microservices
3 339 (38.57%) Agile
4 257 (29.24%) DevOps
5 253 (28.78%) Software Engineering
6 192 (21.84%) Problem-Solving
7 173 (19.68%) Containerisation
8 152 (17.29%) Event-Driven
9 146 (16.61%) Infrastructure as Code
10 138 (15.70%) Observability
11 125 (14.22%) Test Automation
12 118 (13.42%) Open Source
13 117 (13.31%) Data Pipeline
14 113 (12.86%) TDD
15 107 (12.17%) Analytics
16 96 (10.92%) Data Engineering
17 90 (10.24%) Mentoring
17 90 (10.24%) SDLC
18 88 (10.01%) ETL
19 85 (9.67%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 433 (49.26%) Java
2 318 (36.18%) Python
3 242 (27.53%) SQL
4 137 (15.59%) Go
5 75 (8.53%) JavaScript
6 71 (8.08%) C#
7 59 (6.71%) Shell Script
8 52 (5.92%) Bash
9 50 (5.69%) C++
10 39 (4.44%) TypeScript
11 33 (3.75%) Scala
12 13 (1.48%) Perl
13 12 (1.37%) PL/SQL
14 10 (1.14%) Rust
15 9 (1.02%) Groovy
15 9 (1.02%) PowerShell
16 8 (0.91%) Korn
17 7 (0.80%) DataWeave
17 7 (0.80%) T-SQL
18 5 (0.57%) RPG
Qualifications
1 181 (20.59%) Security Cleared
2 161 (18.32%) SC Cleared
3 48 (5.46%) Degree
4 29 (3.30%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (2.96%) Azure Certification
5 26 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 24 (2.73%) DV Cleared
7 18 (2.05%) AWS Certification
8 14 (1.59%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.91%) OCP
9 8 (0.91%) Oracle Certification
10 5 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.34%) Numerate Degree
12 2 (0.23%) CBAP
12 2 (0.23%) CSPO
12 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified Developer
13 1 (0.11%) MySQL Certification
13 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 34 (3.87%) QA
3 28 (3.19%) GDPR
4 12 (1.37%) NCSC
5 6 (0.68%) SLA
6 5 (0.57%) Accessibility
6 5 (0.57%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.57%) WCAG
7 4 (0.46%) MiFID
7 4 (0.46%) SEPA
8 3 (0.34%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.34%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.34%) HL7
9 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.23%) EMIR
9 2 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.23%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.11%) ISO 15022
10 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
System Software
1 317 (36.06%) Docker
2 8 (0.91%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.68%) HDFS
4 3 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.23%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 354 (40.27%) Kubernetes
2 200 (22.75%) Terraform
3 100 (11.38%) Grafana
4 84 (9.56%) Prometheus
5 76 (8.65%) Ansible
6 27 (3.07%) Argo
7 16 (1.82%) Progress Chef
8 11 (1.25%) Packer
9 10 (1.14%) logstash
10 8 (0.91%) Istio
11 7 (0.80%) Kibana
11 7 (0.80%) linkerd
12 6 (0.68%) Jamf Pro
13 5 (0.57%) Hadoop YARN
13 5 (0.57%) Puppet
13 5 (0.57%) Rancher
13 5 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.46%) Fluentd
14 4 (0.46%) Kiali
15 3 (0.34%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 81 (9.22%) Oracle
2 55 (6.26%) Splunk
3 49 (5.57%) Databricks
4 34 (3.87%) Microsoft
5 30 (3.41%) Google
6 29 (3.30%) Confluent
7 28 (3.19%) Sybase
8 27 (3.07%) IBM
9 24 (2.73%) VMware
10 21 (2.39%) Dynatrace
11 18 (2.05%) Cloudera
12 14 (1.59%) Red Hat
13 13 (1.48%) Foundry
13 13 (1.48%) Palantir
14 12 (1.37%) ServiceNow
15 11 (1.25%) CA Agile Central
16 10 (1.14%) MuleSoft
16 10 (1.14%) SAP
16 10 (1.14%) TIBCO
17 8 (0.91%) Informatica