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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 101 130
Rank change year-on-year -39 +29 +37
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,093 844 701
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.55% 1.83%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.18% 9.80% 7.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 694 542 456
10th Percentile £375 £376 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £485
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £725
90th Percentile £750 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £467 £497
% change year-on-year +7.07% -5.94% -17.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 4 8
10th Percentile £43.85 £40.58 £24.60
25th Percentile £56.25 £48.56 £26.60
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 £39.13
90th Percentile £94.00 £96.13 £54.43
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 11,903 8,611 9,486
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.69% 26.03% 24.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,828 5,738 6,200
10th Percentile £375 £353 £356
25th Percentile £438 £413 £434
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 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -3.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 286 191 190
10th Percentile £29.07 £31.25 £25.60
25th Percentile £47.35 £41.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -10.71% +2.67%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.50 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.47 £58.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +14.84% -9.62% +10.11%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -44 910 £550 - 1,037
London -31 552 £575 -4.25% 725
UK excluding London -30 393 £500 +7.07% 437
Work from Home -51 279 £550 -4.35% 429
North of England -17 194 £501 +5.37% 155
Yorkshire +4 97 £501 -16.23% 37
North West -23 77 £550 +19.63% 100
South East -48 59 £460 +8.24% 67
Scotland -35 57 £410 -13.68% 65
Midlands -46 39 £500 +14.94% 36
South West -20 28 £525 -4.55% 51
West Midlands -41 27 £700 +40.00% 24
East of England -14 25 £488 -4.88% 22
North East -25 25 £426 -8.49% 18
East Midlands -19 12 £449 +8.07% 12
Northern Ireland +1 4 - - 35
Wales - 1 £375 - 7

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
1 133 (12.17%) Apache Spark
2 77 (7.04%) Apache Airflow
3 72 (6.59%) Apache
4 26 (2.38%) Confluence
5 15 (1.37%) Camunda
6 7 (0.64%) OpenStack
6 7 (0.64%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.55%) CMS
8 5 (0.46%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.37%) Apache Pulsar
9 4 (0.37%) MQSeries
9 4 (0.37%) nginx
9 4 (0.37%) PowerExchange
10 3 (0.27%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.27%) Mule
11 2 (0.18%) Apache Pig
11 2 (0.18%) JBoss
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
12 1 (0.091%) CICS
12 1 (0.091%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 6 (0.55%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.18%) Mingle
3 1 (0.091%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.091%) Gliffy
3 1 (0.091%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.091%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 3 (0.27%) Finacle
3 3 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.27%) Temenos T24
4 2 (0.18%) Endur
4 2 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.091%) Actimize
5 1 (0.091%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.091%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.091%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.091%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.091%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 626 (57.27%) AWS
2 394 (36.05%) Azure
3 256 (23.42%) GCP
4 183 (16.74%) GitHub
5 121 (11.07%) GitHub Actions
6 108 (9.88%) Serverless
7 90 (8.23%) AWS Lambda
8 85 (7.78%) Amazon S3
9 81 (7.41%) Amazon EKS
10 77 (7.04%) Snowflake
11 70 (6.40%) Azure DevOps
12 66 (6.04%) OpenShift
13 52 (4.76%) Amazon SQS
13 52 (4.76%) dbt
14 47 (4.30%) Amazon ECS
15 42 (3.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 38 (3.48%) Power Platform
17 36 (3.29%) Azure Data Factory
18 31 (2.84%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 27 (2.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 30 (2.74%) HTTP
2 20 (1.83%) DNS
3 12 (1.10%) Network Security
4 8 (0.73%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.64%) Firewall
5 7 (0.64%) MQTT
5 7 (0.64%) SSH
6 6 (0.55%) SAN
6 6 (0.55%) SSL
7 5 (0.46%) 4G
7 5 (0.46%) 5G
8 4 (0.37%) NAS
9 3 (0.27%) Internet
10 2 (0.18%) Kerberos
10 2 (0.18%) VPN
11 1 (0.091%) Broadband
11 1 (0.091%) FIX Connectivity
11 1 (0.091%) MIMO
11 1 (0.091%) RTP
11 1 (0.091%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (17.57%) PostgreSQL
2 172 (15.74%) MongoDB
3 137 (12.53%) NoSQL
4 93 (8.51%) Relational Database
5 76 (6.95%) Data Warehouse
6 64 (5.86%) SQL Server
7 60 (5.49%) Redis
8 54 (4.94%) Big Data
9 51 (4.67%) MySQL
10 48 (4.39%) Data Lake
11 44 (4.03%) Elasticsearch
12 39 (3.57%) BigQuery
13 37 (3.39%) Flink
14 36 (3.29%) Power BI
15 31 (2.84%) Metadata
16 27 (2.47%) Delta Lake
17 25 (2.29%) Hadoop
18 24 (2.20%) Amazon Redshift
18 24 (2.20%) DynamoDB
19 22 (2.01%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 216 (19.76%) Jenkins
2 191 (17.47%) Git
3 167 (15.28%) GitLab
4 70 (6.40%) Gradle
4 70 (6.40%) JUnit
5 61 (5.58%) Mockito
6 56 (5.12%) Selenium
7 48 (4.39%) Maven
8 44 (4.03%) JIRA
9 37 (3.39%) Cucumber
10 34 (3.11%) SonarQube
11 26 (2.38%) Postman
11 26 (2.38%) REST Assured
12 22 (2.01%) JMeter
13 19 (1.74%) Bitbucket
14 18 (1.65%) Gatling
15 16 (1.46%) LoadRunner
15 16 (1.46%) SoapUI
16 14 (1.28%) Cypress.io
16 14 (1.28%) Liquibase
General
1 275 (25.16%) Finance
2 209 (19.12%) Social Skills
3 177 (16.19%) Banking
4 110 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
5 102 (9.33%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.84%) Retail
7 27 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (2.47%) Investment Banking
8 21 (1.92%) Front Office
9 17 (1.56%) Financial Institution
9 17 (1.56%) Telecoms
10 12 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.01%) Law
12 10 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
12 10 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.82%) Military
14 8 (0.73%) Billing
14 8 (0.73%) Retail Banking
15 7 (0.64%) Corporate Banking
15 7 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 331 (30.28%) Developer
2 239 (21.87%) Senior
3 186 (17.02%) Java Developer
4 174 (15.92%) Architect
5 129 (11.80%) Data Engineer
6 99 (9.06%) Lead
7 75 (6.86%) Java Engineer
8 73 (6.68%) Senior Developer
9 70 (6.40%) Solutions Architect
10 64 (5.86%) Software Engineer
11 62 (5.67%) DevOps Engineer
12 44 (4.03%) Senior Java Developer
13 43 (3.93%) Full-Stack Developer
13 43 (3.93%) Senior Data Engineer
14 41 (3.75%) Kafka Engineer
15 39 (3.57%) AWS Engineer
16 38 (3.48%) Python Engineer
17 37 (3.39%) Test Engineer
18 36 (3.29%) Python Developer
18 36 (3.29%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (27.26%) Spring Boot
2 296 (27.08%) Spring
3 250 (22.87%) REST
4 234 (21.41%) Terraform
5 154 (14.09%) RESTful
6 133 (12.17%) React
7 118 (10.80%) RabbitMQ
8 73 (6.68%) JSON
9 68 (6.22%) OAuth
10 57 (5.22%) Node.js
11 54 (4.94%) HTML
12 51 (4.67%) PySpark
13 48 (4.39%) GraphQL
14 47 (4.30%) SOAP
15 46 (4.21%) .NET
16 45 (4.12%) Elastic Stack
16 45 (4.12%) Middleware
16 45 (4.12%) OpenTelemetry
17 44 (4.03%) Swagger
17 44 (4.03%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 256 (23.42%) Cloud Native
2 230 (21.04%) Distributed Systems
3 76 (6.95%) Product Ownership
4 44 (4.03%) Data Structures
4 44 (4.03%) Enterprise Software
5 37 (3.39%) Onboarding
6 36 (3.29%) AI Agents
7 34 (3.11%) Self-Motivation
8 27 (2.47%) Greenfield Project
8 27 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
8 27 (2.47%) Replication
8 27 (2.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 26 (2.38%) Algorithms
10 20 (1.83%) Distributed Architecture
10 20 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 19 (1.74%) Public Cloud
12 18 (1.65%) Private Cloud
13 16 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
14 15 (1.37%) Management Information System
15 14 (1.28%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 142 (12.99%) Linux
2 72 (6.59%) Unix
3 23 (2.10%) Windows
4 11 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.55%) Mac OS X
5 6 (0.55%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.37%) CentOS
7 3 (0.27%) VMS
8 2 (0.18%) Android
8 2 (0.18%) Debian
8 2 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.091%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.091%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.091%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 612 (55.99%) CI/CD
2 461 (42.18%) Event-Driven
3 449 (41.08%) Microservices
4 390 (35.68%) DevOps
5 383 (35.04%) Agile
6 321 (29.37%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 285 (26.08%) Observability
8 255 (23.33%) Test Automation
9 240 (21.96%) Infrastructure as Code
10 229 (20.95%) Containerisation
11 200 (18.30%) Software Engineering
12 183 (16.74%) AI
13 166 (15.19%) Data Pipeline
14 151 (13.82%) Problem-Solving
15 145 (13.27%) Data Modelling
16 138 (12.63%) Technical Leadership
17 137 (12.53%) Continuous Improvement
18 130 (11.89%) ETL
19 126 (11.53%) Analytics
20 125 (11.44%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 486 (44.46%) Java
2 374 (34.22%) Python
3 350 (32.02%) SQL
4 108 (9.88%) JavaScript
5 99 (9.06%) TypeScript
6 81 (7.41%) Bash
7 63 (5.76%) C#
8 53 (4.85%) Go
9 42 (3.84%) Scala
10 30 (2.74%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.65%) PL/SQL
12 26 (2.38%) Shell Script
13 25 (2.29%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.01%) Groovy
15 9 (0.82%) C++
16 8 (0.73%) Perl
16 8 (0.73%) PHP
17 7 (0.64%) Bicep
17 7 (0.64%) Rust
18 6 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 265 (24.25%) Security Cleared
2 222 (20.31%) SC Cleared
3 64 (5.86%) Degree
4 42 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (2.38%) DV Cleared
6 14 (1.28%) Azure Certification
7 13 (1.19%) AWS Certification
8 11 (1.01%) ISTQB
8 11 (1.01%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.64%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.64%) ISEB
10 6 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 5 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
12 4 (0.37%) SnowPro
13 3 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.27%) PhD
14 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.091%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (7.87%) Data Quality
2 85 (7.78%) QA
3 44 (4.03%) Accessibility
4 35 (3.20%) ISO 20022
5 21 (1.92%) GDPR
6 15 (1.37%) SEPA
7 6 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.46%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.46%) NIST
8 5 (0.46%) PSD2
8 5 (0.46%) SLA
9 4 (0.37%) WCAG
10 2 (0.18%) Basel III
10 2 (0.18%) EMIR
10 2 (0.18%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.18%) IFRS
10 2 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 384 (35.13%) Docker
2 17 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.73%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.27%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.18%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.18%) HDFS
6 1 (0.091%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 496 (45.38%) Kubernetes
2 142 (12.99%) Grafana
3 121 (11.07%) Prometheus
4 67 (6.13%) Ansible
5 29 (2.65%) Argo
6 26 (2.38%) Control-M
7 15 (1.37%) Istio
7 15 (1.37%) Kibana
8 14 (1.28%) Kustomize
9 12 (1.10%) Puppet
10 9 (0.82%) Podman
11 8 (0.73%) logstash
12 7 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.55%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.55%) Rancher
14 5 (0.46%) Check_MK
15 4 (0.37%) Bosun
15 4 (0.37%) Consul
16 3 (0.27%) Cilium
16 3 (0.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 120 (10.98%) Oracle
2 105 (9.61%) Databricks
3 62 (5.67%) Splunk
4 60 (5.49%) IBM
5 56 (5.12%) Microsoft
6 52 (4.76%) Google
7 40 (3.66%) Dynatrace
8 32 (2.93%) Confluent
9 27 (2.47%) Informatica
10 21 (1.92%) VMware
11 20 (1.83%) MuleSoft
12 19 (1.74%) OpenAI
13 18 (1.65%) SAP
14 15 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 14 (1.28%) Solace
16 13 (1.19%) New Relic
16 13 (1.19%) TIBCO
17 10 (0.91%) Veracode
18 9 (0.82%) Sybase
18 9 (0.82%) WSO2