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 19 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 105 167
Rank change year-on-year -24 +62 -31
Contract jobs citing Kafka 949 748 639
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.05% 2.54% 1.46%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.05% 11.21% 7.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 593 482 475
10th Percentile £363 £400 £383
25th Percentile £416 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £560 £535
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +4.67% -17.69%
75th Percentile £650 £734 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £477 £489
% change year-on-year -2.41% -2.56% -8.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 4 6
10th Percentile £40.00 £51.09 £22.24
25th Percentile £64.00 £68.84 £23.81
Median hourly rate £70.00 £85.60 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +171.75% -58.82%
75th Percentile £87.25 £93.75 £38.94
90th Percentile £91.50 - £54.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £78.70 £31.50
% change year-on-year -11.41% +149.84% -59.62%

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 9,443 6,673 8,921
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 20.45% 22.68% 20.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,288 4,575 6,210
10th Percentile £358 £363 £338
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -0.06% -4.49%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £726 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £491 £500
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 102 199
10th Percentile £35.00 £27.14 £20.72
25th Percentile £52.50 £50.27 £36.96
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year - +40.75% -28.95%
75th Percentile £71.13 £68.75 £64.38
90th Percentile £81.00 £83.90 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -24.00%

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 19 April 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 19 April 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 19 April 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 -28 829 £537 -8.21% 197
London -14 525 £600 -7.69% 110
Work from Home -4 331 £600 -4.00% 81
UK excluding London -56 284 £465 -2.41% 124
North of England -49 124 £458 -12.86% 30
Yorkshire -23 60 £458 -34.64% 8
South East -16 59 £443 -13.02% 38
North West -52 54 £465 -7.00% 20
Midlands -34 51 £500 +37.93% 8
South West -11 30 £550 -12.00% 23
West Midlands -38 30 £525 -12.50% 2
Scotland -19 24 £475 +5.56% 9
East Midlands -21 21 £419 +17.30% 6
North East -10 16 £450 -3.23% 2
East of England -31 11 £475 +49.28% 11
Wales -9 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
1 127 (13.38%) Apache Spark
2 65 (6.85%) Apache
3 45 (4.74%) Apache Airflow
4 26 (2.74%) Confluence
5 6 (0.63%) Ethereum
5 6 (0.63%) Hyperledger
6 5 (0.53%) Camunda
6 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.53%) MQSeries
6 5 (0.53%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.42%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.21%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.32%) CPLEX
3 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
4 1 (0.11%) Maya
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Bloomberg AIM
1 4 (0.42%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.32%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.21%) Actimize
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 579 (61.01%) AWS
2 272 (28.66%) Azure
3 164 (17.28%) GCP
4 155 (16.33%) GitHub
5 129 (13.59%) Serverless
6 122 (12.86%) Amazon S3
7 109 (11.49%) GitHub Actions
8 96 (10.12%) AWS Lambda
9 81 (8.54%) Amazon EKS
10 69 (7.27%) AWS CloudFormation
11 62 (6.53%) OpenShift
12 60 (6.32%) Power Platform
13 58 (6.11%) Azure DevOps
14 53 (5.58%) Amazon ECS
15 49 (5.16%) Amazon SQS
16 47 (4.95%) Amazon Kinesis
17 44 (4.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 43 (4.53%) Snowflake
19 40 (4.21%) Azure Data Factory
20 38 (4.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.11%) Firewall
2 17 (1.79%) HTTP
3 12 (1.26%) SSL
4 9 (0.95%) DNS
5 6 (0.63%) FTP
5 6 (0.63%) SMS
5 6 (0.63%) SSH
6 5 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.32%) Kerberos
7 3 (0.32%) VPN
8 2 (0.21%) NaaS
8 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
8 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.21%) WAN
9 1 (0.11%) 4G
9 1 (0.11%) 5G
9 1 (0.11%) Internet
9 1 (0.11%) MIMO
9 1 (0.11%) MQTT
9 1 (0.11%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 200 (21.07%) PostgreSQL
2 135 (14.23%) MongoDB
3 130 (13.70%) NoSQL
4 72 (7.59%) Relational Database
5 66 (6.95%) Apache Cassandra
6 60 (6.32%) Data Lake
7 58 (6.11%) Data Warehouse
8 55 (5.80%) Big Data
9 52 (5.48%) Elasticsearch
10 49 (5.16%) DynamoDB
11 48 (5.06%) Power BI
11 48 (5.06%) Redis
12 46 (4.85%) SQL Server
13 41 (4.32%) Flink
14 38 (4.00%) Amazon Athena
14 38 (4.00%) Amazon RDS
15 37 (3.90%) MySQL
16 35 (3.69%) Hadoop
17 34 (3.58%) Metadata
18 33 (3.48%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 149 (15.70%) Jenkins
2 130 (13.70%) GitLab
3 117 (12.33%) Git
4 66 (6.95%) JUnit
5 58 (6.11%) JIRA
6 35 (3.69%) Mockito
7 25 (2.63%) Cucumber
8 21 (2.21%) Gradle
9 14 (1.48%) Gatling
9 14 (1.48%) JMeter
10 11 (1.16%) Maven
10 11 (1.16%) Postman
10 11 (1.16%) REST Assured
10 11 (1.16%) Selenium
10 11 (1.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 10 (1.05%) CircleCI
11 10 (1.05%) Jaeger
12 8 (0.84%) Artifactory
13 7 (0.74%) Liquibase
14 6 (0.63%) Serenity BDD
General
1 266 (28.03%) Finance
2 185 (19.49%) Social Skills
3 116 (12.22%) Banking
4 74 (7.80%) Public Sector
5 72 (7.59%) Analytical Skills
6 53 (5.58%) Front Office
7 30 (3.16%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 18 (1.90%) Financial Institution
10 12 (1.26%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.16%) Marketing
12 10 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (0.74%) Law
13 7 (0.74%) Retail
14 6 (0.63%) Automotive
14 6 (0.63%) Publishing
15 4 (0.42%) Billing
15 4 (0.42%) Corporate Banking
15 4 (0.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.32%) Military
Job Titles
1 341 (35.93%) Developer
2 231 (24.34%) Senior
3 168 (17.70%) Java Developer
4 154 (16.23%) Data Engineer
5 117 (12.33%) Lead
6 108 (11.38%) Senior Developer
7 106 (11.17%) Architect
8 97 (10.22%) Software Engineer
9 58 (6.11%) Senior Java Developer
10 54 (5.69%) Java Engineer
11 52 (5.48%) AWS Architect
12 48 (5.06%) DevOps Engineer
12 48 (5.06%) Full-Stack Developer
13 41 (4.32%) AWS Engineer
14 40 (4.21%) Solutions Architect
15 38 (4.00%) Senior Data Engineer
16 36 (3.79%) Kafka Developer
17 35 (3.69%) Kafka Engineer
18 33 (3.48%) Developer/Software Engineer
19 32 (3.37%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 212 (22.34%) Spring
2 190 (20.02%) Spring Boot
3 120 (12.64%) REST
4 115 (12.12%) Node.js
5 105 (11.06%) React
6 102 (10.75%) RESTful
7 78 (8.22%) gRPC
8 76 (8.01%) RabbitMQ
9 50 (5.27%) OpenTelemetry
10 49 (5.16%) GraphQL
11 48 (5.06%) JSON
12 43 (4.53%) AngularJS
13 41 (4.32%) Middleware
13 41 (4.32%) PySpark
14 38 (4.00%) Apache Avro
15 37 (3.90%) OAuth
16 34 (3.58%) Redux
17 30 (3.16%) OAuth2
18 28 (2.95%) Keycloak
18 28 (2.95%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 156 (16.44%) Distributed Systems
2 136 (14.33%) Cloud Native
3 50 (5.27%) Fixed Income
4 49 (5.16%) Management Information System
5 38 (4.00%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.32%) Hybrid Cloud
7 21 (2.21%) Data Structures
8 20 (2.11%) Onboarding
9 19 (2.00%) Equities
10 18 (1.90%) Derivative
11 16 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
12 14 (1.48%) Algorithms
12 14 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.26%) Clustering
13 12 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
13 12 (1.26%) Market Risk
14 11 (1.16%) Replication
15 9 (0.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 9 (0.95%) Legacy Applications
15 9 (0.95%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 113 (11.91%) Linux
2 57 (6.01%) Unix
3 33 (3.48%) Windows
4 9 (0.95%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.53%) AIX
6 4 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.32%) VMS
7 3 (0.32%) zOS
8 2 (0.21%) Debian
8 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 428 (45.10%) CI/CD
2 331 (34.88%) Microservices
3 320 (33.72%) Agile
4 281 (29.61%) DevOps
5 220 (23.18%) Event-Driven
6 210 (22.13%) Software Engineering
7 204 (21.50%) Observability
8 201 (21.18%) Containerisation
9 172 (18.12%) Problem-Solving
10 168 (17.70%) Data Pipeline
10 168 (17.70%) Infrastructure as Code
11 163 (17.18%) Analytics
12 155 (16.33%) Data Engineering
13 151 (15.91%) Data Modelling
14 145 (15.28%) ETL
15 143 (15.07%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 130 (13.70%) Test Automation
17 117 (12.33%) Full-Stack Development
18 101 (10.64%) Data Governance
19 97 (10.22%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 446 (47.00%) Java
2 335 (35.30%) Python
3 271 (28.56%) SQL
4 125 (13.17%) Go
5 97 (10.22%) JavaScript
6 96 (10.12%) TypeScript
7 61 (6.43%) C#
8 43 (4.53%) Bash
9 34 (3.58%) Scala
10 20 (2.11%) C++
11 18 (1.90%) PowerShell
11 18 (1.90%) Rust
12 17 (1.79%) Shell Script
13 12 (1.26%) Bicep
14 9 (0.95%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.74%) Perl
16 6 (0.63%) Groovy
16 6 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
17 5 (0.53%) Korn
18 4 (0.42%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 214 (22.55%) Security Cleared
2 175 (18.44%) SC Cleared
3 46 (4.85%) Degree
4 31 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (2.32%) Azure Certification
6 21 (2.21%) AWS Certification
7 18 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (1.58%) DV Cleared
9 13 (1.37%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (0.74%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.53%) OCP
11 5 (0.53%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
12 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 1 (0.11%) MySQL Certification
14 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (11.80%) Data Quality
2 47 (4.95%) QA
3 46 (4.85%) GDPR
4 22 (2.32%) Accessibility
5 13 (1.37%) ISO 20022
6 9 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (0.95%) NIST
7 8 (0.84%) NCSC
8 7 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.53%) SEPA
10 4 (0.42%) HL7
10 4 (0.42%) SLA
10 4 (0.42%) WCAG
11 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
12 2 (0.21%) MiFID
12 2 (0.21%) PSD2
13 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 327 (34.46%) Docker
2 6 (0.63%) etcd
2 6 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (0.32%) HDFS
4 2 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 384 (40.46%) Kubernetes
2 216 (22.76%) Terraform
3 120 (12.64%) Grafana
3 120 (12.64%) Prometheus
4 58 (6.11%) Ansible
5 32 (3.37%) Argo
6 10 (1.05%) Fluentd
6 10 (1.05%) Istio
6 10 (1.05%) Kibana
7 9 (0.95%) Kiali
8 8 (0.84%) linkerd
8 8 (0.84%) logstash
8 8 (0.84%) Rancher
9 6 (0.63%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.63%) Puppet
10 4 (0.42%) Podman
11 3 (0.32%) Packer
12 2 (0.21%) CA Wily
12 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
12 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 90 (9.48%) Databricks
2 73 (7.69%) Oracle
3 72 (7.59%) Splunk
4 50 (5.27%) Microsoft
5 43 (4.53%) Google
6 37 (3.90%) Confluent
7 26 (2.74%) Informatica
8 23 (2.42%) IBM
9 15 (1.58%) Dynatrace
9 15 (1.58%) Red Hat
9 15 (1.58%) VMware
10 13 (1.37%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.26%) Talend
12 10 (1.05%) Solace
13 9 (0.95%) AppDynamics
13 9 (0.95%) Cloudera
13 9 (0.95%) Denodo
13 9 (0.95%) Salesforce
13 9 (0.95%) Sybase
14 7 (0.74%) SAP