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 22 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 108 161
Rank change year-on-year -23 +53 -23
Contract jobs citing Kafka 936 703 652
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.44% 1.54%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.89% 10.76% 7.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 571 458 486
10th Percentile £363 £400 £400
25th Percentile £420 £458 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +1.85% -16.92%
75th Percentile £650 £713 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £470 £490
% change year-on-year -1.06% -4.08% -10.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 4 7
10th Percentile £48.38 £51.09 £22.34
25th Percentile £64.00 £68.84 £24.88
Median hourly rate £70.00 £85.60 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +205.71% -64.10%
75th Percentile £90.00 £93.75 £37.63
90th Percentile £92.50 - £51.65
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 9,460 6,532 8,905
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.58% 22.67% 20.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,225 4,475 6,189
10th Percentile £363 £363 £350
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £623 £645 £650
90th Percentile £729 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 273 107 248
10th Percentile £31.33 £29.18 £21.25
25th Percentile £51.25 £50.00 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%
75th Percentile £72.00 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.80 £82.44 £74.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%

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 22 May 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 22 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka
Top 16 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 22 May 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 -15 810 £545 -5.22% 183
London -12 513 £600 -7.69% 112
UK excluding London -40 300 £465 -1.06% 101
Work from Home -12 289 £600 - 84
North of England -37 134 £453 -9.50% 34
Yorkshire -11 71 £463 -15.91% 8
North West -49 52 £441 -11.90% 19
South East -31 50 £488 +1.99% 33
Midlands -52 43 £491 +33.86% 3
Scotland -12 41 £450 -4.76% 4
South West -5 30 £525 -7.69% 10
West Midlands -43 25 £507 -7.82% 2
North East -16 20 £450 -2.70% 7
East Midlands -20 18 £407 +14.40% 1
East of England -21 15 £550 +71.14% 4
Wales -14 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
1 134 (14.32%) Apache Spark
2 69 (7.37%) Apache
3 49 (5.24%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (2.14%) Confluence
5 6 (0.64%) Camunda
5 6 (0.64%) Ethereum
5 6 (0.64%) Hyperledger
6 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.32%) Apache Pulsar
7 3 (0.32%) MQSeries
8 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.11%) JBoss
Applications
1 4 (0.43%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Bloomberg AIM
1 3 (0.32%) Fidessa
1 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.21%) Shopify
2 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.11%) Actimize
3 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.11%) Endur
3 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 550 (58.76%) AWS
2 266 (28.42%) Azure
3 159 (16.99%) GCP
4 144 (15.38%) GitHub
5 127 (13.57%) Serverless
6 102 (10.90%) Amazon S3
7 97 (10.36%) GitHub Actions
8 94 (10.04%) AWS Lambda
9 70 (7.48%) Amazon EKS
10 66 (7.05%) Power Platform
11 63 (6.73%) OpenShift
12 62 (6.62%) Azure DevOps
13 55 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
14 47 (5.02%) Amazon ECS
14 47 (5.02%) Snowflake
15 44 (4.70%) Amazon SQS
16 42 (4.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 38 (4.06%) Amazon Kinesis
18 37 (3.95%) dbt
19 35 (3.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.92%) Firewall
2 14 (1.50%) HTTP
3 13 (1.39%) SSL
4 9 (0.96%) DNS
5 6 (0.64%) Network Security
5 6 (0.64%) SMS
6 5 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.43%) NAS
7 4 (0.43%) SAN
8 3 (0.32%) MQTT
8 3 (0.32%) VPN
9 2 (0.21%) FTP
9 2 (0.21%) NaaS
9 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.21%) SSH
9 2 (0.21%) WAN
10 1 (0.11%) 4G
10 1 (0.11%) 5G
10 1 (0.11%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 191 (20.41%) PostgreSQL
2 155 (16.56%) MongoDB
3 131 (14.00%) NoSQL
4 88 (9.40%) Relational Database
5 63 (6.73%) Big Data
6 57 (6.09%) Data Lake
7 56 (5.98%) Data Warehouse
8 53 (5.66%) Power BI
8 53 (5.66%) SQL Server
9 52 (5.56%) Apache Cassandra
10 50 (5.34%) Redis
11 45 (4.81%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (4.06%) Amazon Athena
12 38 (4.06%) DynamoDB
12 38 (4.06%) Flink
13 36 (3.85%) Hadoop
14 35 (3.74%) MySQL
15 31 (3.31%) Amazon Redshift
16 30 (3.21%) Amazon RDS
16 30 (3.21%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 140 (14.96%) Jenkins
2 130 (13.89%) Git
3 129 (13.78%) GitLab
4 61 (6.52%) JUnit
5 58 (6.20%) JIRA
6 41 (4.38%) Mockito
7 27 (2.88%) Selenium
8 25 (2.67%) Gradle
9 22 (2.35%) REST Assured
10 20 (2.14%) Cucumber
10 20 (2.14%) Gatling
11 15 (1.60%) Serenity BDD
12 14 (1.50%) Liquibase
12 14 (1.50%) Postman
13 13 (1.39%) Maven
14 10 (1.07%) Jaeger
15 9 (0.96%) SonarQube
16 7 (0.75%) JMeter
16 7 (0.75%) Snyk
17 6 (0.64%) Artifactory
General
1 252 (26.92%) Finance
2 167 (17.84%) Social Skills
3 120 (12.82%) Banking
4 76 (8.12%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (8.12%) Public Sector
5 45 (4.81%) Front Office
6 35 (3.74%) Investment Banking
7 27 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.67%) Financial Institution
9 12 (1.28%) Marketing
10 11 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (1.18%) Law
10 11 (1.18%) Retail
11 10 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 9 (0.96%) Publishing
13 7 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
14 6 (0.64%) Automotive
14 6 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (0.53%) Military
15 5 (0.53%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 313 (33.44%) Developer
2 203 (21.69%) Senior
3 158 (16.88%) Data Engineer
4 148 (15.81%) Java Developer
5 117 (12.50%) Lead
6 107 (11.43%) Architect
7 93 (9.94%) Senior Developer
8 90 (9.62%) Software Engineer
9 65 (6.94%) Java Engineer
10 52 (5.56%) AWS Architect
11 50 (5.34%) Senior Java Developer
12 44 (4.70%) Full-Stack Developer
13 43 (4.59%) DevOps Engineer
14 38 (4.06%) Solutions Architect
15 35 (3.74%) Principal Engineer
16 34 (3.63%) Senior Data Engineer
17 33 (3.53%) Developer/Software Engineer
18 32 (3.42%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 31 (3.31%) Data Architect
20 29 (3.10%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 226 (24.15%) Spring
2 209 (22.33%) Spring Boot
3 128 (13.68%) REST
4 118 (12.61%) RESTful
5 113 (12.07%) React
6 104 (11.11%) Node.js
7 82 (8.76%) RabbitMQ
8 58 (6.20%) GraphQL
8 58 (6.20%) gRPC
8 58 (6.20%) OpenTelemetry
9 52 (5.56%) JSON
10 45 (4.81%) Middleware
11 43 (4.59%) PySpark
12 42 (4.49%) Apache Avro
13 39 (4.17%) Redux
14 37 (3.95%) AngularJS
14 37 (3.95%) OAuth
15 34 (3.63%) Swagger
16 33 (3.53%) OpenAPI
17 32 (3.42%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 163 (17.41%) Distributed Systems
2 150 (16.03%) Cloud Native
3 44 (4.70%) Management Information System
4 41 (4.38%) Fixed Income
5 32 (3.42%) Product Ownership
6 27 (2.88%) Data Structures
7 19 (2.03%) Onboarding
8 17 (1.82%) Equities
8 17 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (1.50%) Algorithms
10 14 (1.50%) Derivative
10 14 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
11 13 (1.39%) Clustering
12 12 (1.28%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 11 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (1.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 11 (1.18%) Hedge funds
14 10 (1.07%) CMDB
15 9 (0.96%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 96 (10.26%) Linux
2 55 (5.88%) Unix
3 32 (3.42%) Windows
4 8 (0.85%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.32%) VMS
6 3 (0.32%) zOS
7 2 (0.21%) AIX
7 2 (0.21%) Debian
7 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.11%) Android
8 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.11%) CentOS
8 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 423 (45.19%) CI/CD
2 340 (36.32%) Microservices
3 291 (31.09%) Agile
4 285 (30.45%) DevOps
5 246 (26.28%) Event-Driven
6 218 (23.29%) Observability
7 197 (21.05%) Containerisation
8 189 (20.19%) Software Engineering
9 172 (18.38%) Data Pipeline
10 165 (17.63%) Data Modelling
11 162 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
12 159 (16.99%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 157 (16.77%) Analytics
14 148 (15.81%) Data Engineering
15 147 (15.71%) Problem-Solving
16 140 (14.96%) ETL
16 140 (14.96%) Test Automation
17 111 (11.86%) Full-Stack Development
18 103 (11.00%) AI
19 98 (10.47%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 420 (44.87%) Java
2 321 (34.29%) Python
3 289 (30.88%) SQL
4 109 (11.65%) TypeScript
5 101 (10.79%) Go
6 93 (9.94%) JavaScript
7 58 (6.20%) C#
8 43 (4.59%) Bash
9 28 (2.99%) Scala
10 19 (2.03%) Rust
11 18 (1.92%) PowerShell
12 16 (1.71%) C++
13 15 (1.60%) Shell Script
14 13 (1.39%) Bicep
15 10 (1.07%) PL/SQL
15 10 (1.07%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.75%) Perl
17 6 (0.64%) PHP
18 5 (0.53%) C
18 5 (0.53%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 207 (22.12%) Security Cleared
2 163 (17.41%) SC Cleared
3 48 (5.13%) Degree
4 25 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (1.82%) AWS Certification
6 16 (1.71%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 13 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (1.39%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.75%) SnowPro
10 4 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.21%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
13 1 (0.11%) CISSP
13 1 (0.11%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (11.43%) Data Quality
2 50 (5.34%) QA
3 43 (4.59%) GDPR
4 28 (2.99%) Accessibility
5 19 (2.03%) ISO 20022
6 11 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.96%) NIST
8 8 (0.85%) SEPA
9 7 (0.75%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.64%) NCSC
11 4 (0.43%) SLA
11 4 (0.43%) WCAG
12 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.32%) MiFID
13 2 (0.21%) EMIR
13 2 (0.21%) HL7
13 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.21%) PSD2
14 1 (0.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 325 (34.72%) Docker
2 6 (0.64%) etcd
3 3 (0.32%) HDFS
3 3 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.21%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 368 (39.32%) Kubernetes
2 195 (20.83%) Terraform
3 126 (13.46%) Grafana
3 126 (13.46%) Prometheus
4 59 (6.30%) Ansible
5 26 (2.78%) Argo
6 11 (1.18%) Istio
6 11 (1.18%) Kibana
7 9 (0.96%) Kiali
8 7 (0.75%) Fluentd
8 7 (0.75%) linkerd
8 7 (0.75%) Puppet
9 6 (0.64%) logstash
9 6 (0.64%) Podman
9 6 (0.64%) Rancher
10 5 (0.53%) Kustomize
11 2 (0.21%) Amdocs OSS
11 2 (0.21%) NetBackup
11 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
11 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 93 (9.94%) Databricks
2 76 (8.12%) Splunk
3 70 (7.48%) Oracle
4 45 (4.81%) Microsoft
5 36 (3.85%) Google
6 29 (3.10%) Confluent
7 21 (2.24%) Informatica
8 16 (1.71%) IBM
9 13 (1.39%) Dynatrace
9 13 (1.39%) Red Hat
10 12 (1.28%) Salesforce
11 11 (1.18%) ServiceNow
12 9 (0.96%) Solace
12 9 (0.96%) Talend
13 8 (0.85%) VMware
14 7 (0.75%) AppDynamics
14 7 (0.75%) MuleSoft
15 6 (0.64%) Pega
15 6 (0.64%) Sybase
16 5 (0.53%) SAP