Kafka Contract Job Trends

Apache Kafka
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Kafka skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 103 132 158
Rank change year-on-year +29 +26 -52
Contract jobs citing Kafka 836 705 796
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.54% 1.83% 1.62%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 11.15% 8.17% 7.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 538 467 586
10th Percentile £381 £400 £463
25th Percentile £450 £488 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% +3.17%
75th Percentile £675 £725 £798
90th Percentile £750 £810 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £497 £625
% change year-on-year -6.34% -20.56% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 7 12
10th Percentile £40.58 £24.34 £75.13
25th Percentile £48.56 £26.20 £76.25
Median hourly rate £59.25 £28.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.61% -64.10% +6.12%
75th Percentile £75.31 £33.88 £90.00
90th Percentile £96.13 £39.35 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £28.00 £78.00
% 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 7,498 8,630 10,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.76% 22.41% 22.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,987 5,626 7,855
10th Percentile £350 £350 £375
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £675
90th Percentile £738 £794 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.24% - -4.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 187 176
10th Percentile £31.25 £25.60 £35.94
25th Percentile £41.42 £43.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £54.00 £61.60 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.34% +2.67% -4.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £73.67
90th Percentile £72.40 £74.65 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.25 £65.00 £59.03
% change year-on-year -13.46% +10.11% -6.24%

Kafka
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Kafka as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Kafka 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 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 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 +28 711 £550 -10.20% 270
London +14 464 £605 -6.88% 158
Work from Home +63 278 £575 - 170
UK excluding London +47 273 £465 -6.34% 165
North of England +34 116 £473 -12.90% 52
Scotland +33 71 £470 -1.05% 13
North West +22 61 £465 -11.43% 34
Yorkshire -3 48 £575 +0.44% 12
Midlands +10 38 £435 +2.35% 10
South East +3 33 £435 -3.33% 72
West Midlands +2 22 £500 +17.65% 7
East Midlands +11 15 £420 +17.98% 3
South West +24 9 £550 -3.51% 9
North East - 8 £465 - 6
East of England +4 5 £513 +70.83% 7
Northern Ireland -6 5 £410 -8.89% 1

Kafka
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 72 (8.61%) Apache Spark
2 48 (5.74%) Apache
3 38 (4.55%) Apache Airflow
4 30 (3.59%) Confluence
5 13 (1.56%) Mule
6 10 (1.20%) Anypoint
7 7 (0.84%) CMS
7 7 (0.84%) JBoss
8 6 (0.72%) Camunda
8 6 (0.72%) WebSphere
9 5 (0.60%) MQSeries
10 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.36%) Alfresco
11 3 (0.36%) Luigi
11 3 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.36%) Tomcat
11 3 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.24%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.24%) GemFire
12 2 (0.24%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 8 (0.96%) MS Visio
2 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.24%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 6 (0.72%) SAP PM
2 4 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 3 (0.36%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.36%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.24%) Magento
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle Retail
4 2 (0.24%) SAP CX
4 2 (0.24%) Shopify
5 1 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.12%) Endur
5 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.12%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 374 (44.74%) AWS
2 187 (22.37%) Azure
3 105 (12.56%) GCP
4 85 (10.17%) Serverless
5 63 (7.54%) GitHub
6 62 (7.42%) AWS Lambda
7 57 (6.82%) Amazon S3
8 46 (5.50%) Azure DevOps
9 38 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
9 38 (4.55%) OpenShift
10 30 (3.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 27 (3.23%) Amazon SQS
12 25 (2.99%) Amazon Kinesis
12 25 (2.99%) AWS CloudFormation
12 25 (2.99%) Snowflake
13 23 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
14 22 (2.63%) Amazon ECS
15 19 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
15 19 (2.27%) dbt
15 19 (2.27%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.32%) HTTP
2 7 (0.84%) AMQP
2 7 (0.84%) DSL
2 7 (0.84%) Firewall
2 7 (0.84%) SSL
3 6 (0.72%) DNS
4 4 (0.48%) MQTT
4 4 (0.48%) SSH
5 2 (0.24%) Cisco ISE
5 2 (0.24%) SMS
5 2 (0.24%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.12%) Internet
6 1 (0.12%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (22.73%) PostgreSQL
2 177 (21.17%) MongoDB
3 117 (14.00%) NoSQL
4 107 (12.80%) Relational Database
5 68 (8.13%) Apache Cassandra
6 65 (7.78%) Big Data
7 52 (6.22%) Redis
8 49 (5.86%) DB2
9 46 (5.50%) SQL Server
10 37 (4.43%) Hadoop
11 29 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
12 28 (3.35%) DynamoDB
13 24 (2.87%) Amazon Redshift
13 24 (2.87%) Elasticsearch
14 23 (2.75%) Amazon RDS
14 23 (2.75%) Flink
14 23 (2.75%) Metadata
15 22 (2.63%) BigQuery
15 22 (2.63%) MySQL
16 21 (2.51%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 165 (19.74%) Jenkins
2 126 (15.07%) JUnit
3 98 (11.72%) Git
4 76 (9.09%) GitLab
5 72 (8.61%) Mockito
6 65 (7.78%) JIRA
7 46 (5.50%) Gradle
8 42 (5.02%) Liquibase
9 28 (3.35%) SonarQube
10 22 (2.63%) Maven
11 17 (2.03%) Cucumber
12 16 (1.91%) Artifactory
12 16 (1.91%) Bitbucket
13 15 (1.79%) Subversion
14 12 (1.44%) JMeter
14 12 (1.44%) Selenium
15 11 (1.32%) SoapUI
15 11 (1.32%) TeamCity
16 10 (1.20%) Postman
17 9 (1.08%) ER Studio
General
1 234 (27.99%) Finance
2 222 (26.56%) Social Skills
3 149 (17.82%) Banking
4 108 (12.92%) Analytical Skills
5 93 (11.12%) Public Sector
6 86 (10.29%) Investment Banking
7 55 (6.58%) Front Office
8 21 (2.51%) Telecoms
9 20 (2.39%) Marketing
10 19 (2.27%) Manufacturing
11 17 (2.03%) Electronics
12 12 (1.44%) Financial Institution
13 10 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (1.08%) Retail
15 8 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
16 7 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
17 6 (0.72%) Military
18 4 (0.48%) Police
19 3 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 346 (41.39%) Developer
2 229 (27.39%) Java Developer
3 171 (20.45%) Senior
4 99 (11.84%) Architect
5 93 (11.12%) Senior Developer
6 73 (8.73%) Data Engineer
6 73 (8.73%) Senior Java Developer
7 70 (8.37%) Lead
8 67 (8.01%) Software Engineer
9 47 (5.62%) DevOps Engineer
10 40 (4.78%) Kafka Developer
11 37 (4.43%) SQL Developer
12 36 (4.31%) Python Engineer
13 34 (4.07%) Full-Stack Developer
13 34 (4.07%) Investment Banking Java Developer
13 34 (4.07%) Solutions Architect
14 32 (3.83%) Java Engineer
15 31 (3.71%) Lead Developer
16 29 (3.47%) Data Architect
17 28 (3.35%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (24.88%) Spring
2 140 (16.75%) Spring Boot
3 126 (15.07%) React
4 90 (10.77%) gRPC
5 84 (10.05%) REST
6 68 (8.13%) RabbitMQ
7 66 (7.89%) RESTful
8 54 (6.46%) ActiveMQ
9 49 (5.86%) JMS
10 46 (5.50%) Node.js
10 46 (5.50%) Swagger
11 43 (5.14%) GraphQL
12 37 (4.43%) .NET
12 37 (4.43%) AngularJS
12 37 (4.43%) OAuth
13 34 (4.07%) SOAP
14 33 (3.95%) OpenAPI
15 32 (3.83%) Hibernate
16 27 (3.23%) Apache NiFi
17 26 (3.11%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 106 (12.68%) Distributed Systems
2 66 (7.89%) Cloud Native
3 51 (6.10%) Data Structures
4 48 (5.74%) Equities
5 24 (2.87%) Management Information System
6 22 (2.63%) Derivative
7 20 (2.39%) Market Risk
8 18 (2.15%) Fixed Income
8 18 (2.15%) Replication
9 16 (1.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 16 (1.91%) Product Ownership
10 14 (1.67%) Public Cloud
11 12 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
11 12 (1.44%) IoT
11 12 (1.44%) PKI
12 11 (1.32%) Algorithms
12 11 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.32%) Onboarding
13 10 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
14 8 (0.96%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 141 (16.87%) Linux
2 72 (8.61%) Unix
3 23 (2.75%) Windows
4 12 (1.44%) Mac OS X
4 12 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.60%) CentOS
6 4 (0.48%) AIX
7 1 (0.12%) Android
7 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.12%) Debian
7 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.12%) VMS
7 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 360 (43.06%) Agile
2 359 (42.94%) Microservices
3 283 (33.85%) CI/CD
4 251 (30.02%) DevOps
5 228 (27.27%) Software Engineering
6 192 (22.97%) Problem-Solving
7 150 (17.94%) TDD
8 141 (16.87%) Containerisation
9 126 (15.07%) Event-Driven
9 126 (15.07%) Open Source
10 99 (11.84%) Scrum
11 95 (11.36%) SDLC
12 93 (11.12%) Test Automation
13 91 (10.89%) Data Pipeline
14 86 (10.29%) Migration
15 85 (10.17%) Multithreading
16 79 (9.45%) Observability
17 76 (9.09%) Analytics
17 76 (9.09%) Full-Stack Development
18 75 (8.97%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 432 (51.67%) Java
2 283 (33.85%) Python
3 273 (32.66%) SQL
4 103 (12.32%) Go
5 79 (9.45%) Shell Script
6 66 (7.89%) TypeScript
7 65 (7.78%) JavaScript
8 56 (6.70%) C#
9 46 (5.50%) C++
10 41 (4.90%) Bash
11 30 (3.59%) Scala
12 17 (2.03%) Perl
13 10 (1.20%) Groovy
13 10 (1.20%) PL/SQL
14 9 (1.08%) DataWeave
15 7 (0.84%) T-SQL
16 6 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
17 5 (0.60%) Korn
18 4 (0.48%) Bicep
18 4 (0.48%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 165 (19.74%) Security Cleared
2 145 (17.34%) SC Cleared
3 58 (6.94%) Degree
4 30 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (2.39%) DV Cleared
6 18 (2.15%) AWS Certification
7 13 (1.56%) Master's Degree
8 12 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
8 12 (1.44%) Numerate Degree
9 9 (1.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (0.96%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.72%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.24%) CBAP
12 2 (0.24%) CSPO
12 2 (0.24%) IBM Certification
13 1 (0.12%) ISTQB
13 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMP
13 1 (0.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.19%) Data Quality
2 30 (3.59%) QA
3 25 (2.99%) GDPR
4 8 (0.96%) WCAG
5 7 (0.84%) Accessibility
5 7 (0.84%) ISO 20022
6 6 (0.72%) HIPAA
6 6 (0.72%) PCI DSS
7 5 (0.60%) NCSC
8 4 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.48%) SEPA
9 3 (0.36%) EMIR
9 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.36%) MiFID
10 2 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.24%) HL7
10 2 (0.24%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.24%) Section 508
10 2 (0.24%) SLA
11 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
System Software
1 256 (30.62%) Docker
2 6 (0.72%) HDFS
3 3 (0.36%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 275 (32.89%) Kubernetes
2 122 (14.59%) Terraform
3 58 (6.94%) Prometheus
4 56 (6.70%) Grafana
5 55 (6.58%) Ansible
6 11 (1.32%) Packer
7 9 (1.08%) logstash
8 8 (0.96%) Progress Chef
8 8 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.84%) Kibana
10 6 (0.72%) Argo
11 5 (0.60%) Control-M
11 5 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.60%) Kustomize
12 4 (0.48%) Hadoop YARN
12 4 (0.48%) Istio
13 3 (0.36%) Oozie
13 3 (0.36%) Puppet
14 2 (0.24%) CloudHub
14 2 (0.24%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 81 (9.69%) Oracle
2 50 (5.98%) Splunk
3 43 (5.14%) Sybase
4 40 (4.78%) Microsoft
5 35 (4.19%) Google
5 35 (4.19%) SAP
6 30 (3.59%) Databricks
6 30 (3.59%) IBM
7 26 (3.11%) Dynatrace
8 23 (2.75%) Confluent
9 22 (2.63%) MuleSoft
10 16 (1.91%) CA Agile Central
11 15 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 14 (1.67%) Cloudera
12 14 (1.67%) Informatica
12 14 (1.67%) Palantir
13 13 (1.56%) Salesforce
14 12 (1.44%) Foundry
14 12 (1.44%) TIBCO
15 10 (1.20%) ServiceNow