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 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 101 144
Rank change year-on-year -43 +43 +6
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,002 842 710
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.59% 1.67%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.76% 11.48% 7.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 594 543 503
10th Percentile £377 £393 £400
25th Percentile £425 £457 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £700
90th Percentile £796 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +5.43% -4.18% -18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 5 9
10th Percentile £56.65 £44.75 £22.55
25th Percentile £64.50 £53.00 £27.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £90.00 £78.70 £38.75
90th Percentile £95.00 £87.73 £45.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.25 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -9.47% +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 10,266 7,335 9,087
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.51% 22.58% 21.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,717 4,951 6,252
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.70% -2.23%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £656
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 159 274
10th Percentile £30.00 £29.21 £22.50
25th Percentile £50.00 £38.52 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - -12.35%
75th Percentile £74.63 £67.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.01 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £58.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +7.76% -1.74%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 -39 856 £550 - 214
London -30 510 £588 -6.00% 128
UK excluding London -44 367 £495 +5.43% 124
Work from Home -58 284 £551 -4.26% 82
North of England -27 169 £465 - 30
Yorkshire -7 80 £498 -0.50% 7
North West -38 75 £430 -8.32% 16
South East -39 62 £513 +17.82% 45
Scotland -29 49 £450 -4.26% 6
Midlands -57 42 £500 +13.51% 10
South West -14 29 £500 -9.09% 22
West Midlands -52 26 £500 - 6
North East -21 23 £425 -8.05% 7
East of England -8 21 £550 +10.00% 7
East Midlands -11 16 £459 +28.43% 4
Northern Ireland -2 3 - - 3
Wales -7 2 £313 - 3

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
1 132 (13.17%) Apache Spark
2 73 (7.29%) Apache
3 61 (6.09%) Apache Airflow
4 18 (1.80%) Confluence
5 8 (0.80%) Camunda
6 6 (0.60%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.60%) Hyperledger
6 6 (0.60%) WebSphere
7 5 (0.50%) Apache Pulsar
7 5 (0.50%) CMS
8 4 (0.40%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.30%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.30%) Mule
10 2 (0.20%) Apache Pig
10 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 8 (0.80%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.20%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.100%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.100%) Maya
3 1 (0.100%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.100%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
2 2 (0.20%) Endur
2 2 (0.20%) Fidessa
2 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.100%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.100%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.100%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.100%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.100%) SAP IS-U
3 1 (0.100%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 587 (58.58%) AWS
2 310 (30.94%) Azure
3 199 (19.86%) GCP
4 140 (13.97%) GitHub
5 104 (10.38%) Serverless
6 99 (9.88%) GitHub Actions
7 84 (8.38%) Amazon S3
8 80 (7.98%) AWS Lambda
9 70 (6.99%) OpenShift
10 63 (6.29%) Azure DevOps
11 60 (5.99%) Amazon EKS
12 58 (5.79%) Snowflake
13 47 (4.69%) Power Platform
14 46 (4.59%) dbt
15 44 (4.39%) Amazon SQS
16 42 (4.19%) Amazon ECS
17 38 (3.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 32 (3.19%) AWS CloudFormation
19 29 (2.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 27 (2.69%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.90%) HTTP
2 10 (1.00%) Firewall
2 10 (1.00%) Network Security
3 7 (0.70%) MQTT
4 6 (0.60%) DNS
4 6 (0.60%) SSL
5 5 (0.50%) NAS
5 5 (0.50%) SAN
6 4 (0.40%) Internet
7 3 (0.30%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.20%) NaaS
8 2 (0.20%) OpenVPN
8 2 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.20%) WAN
9 1 (0.100%) 4G
9 1 (0.100%) 5G
9 1 (0.100%) FIX Connectivity
9 1 (0.100%) MIMO
9 1 (0.100%) SSH
9 1 (0.100%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (17.56%) PostgreSQL
2 161 (16.07%) MongoDB
3 123 (12.28%) NoSQL
4 103 (10.28%) Relational Database
5 68 (6.79%) Big Data
6 61 (6.09%) Data Warehouse
7 58 (5.79%) SQL Server
8 54 (5.39%) Data Lake
9 42 (4.19%) Elasticsearch
9 42 (4.19%) Power BI
10 40 (3.99%) Redis
11 39 (3.89%) Apache Cassandra
12 38 (3.79%) Hadoop
13 37 (3.69%) Flink
14 34 (3.39%) MySQL
15 32 (3.19%) BigQuery
15 32 (3.19%) Metadata
16 27 (2.69%) DynamoDB
17 24 (2.40%) Amazon Athena
18 23 (2.30%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 173 (17.27%) Jenkins
2 137 (13.67%) Git
3 125 (12.48%) GitLab
4 71 (7.09%) JUnit
5 57 (5.69%) Mockito
6 47 (4.69%) JIRA
7 43 (4.29%) Gradle
8 35 (3.49%) Selenium
9 27 (2.69%) Cucumber
10 24 (2.40%) REST Assured
11 23 (2.30%) Maven
12 19 (1.90%) Gatling
13 18 (1.80%) SonarQube
14 17 (1.70%) Liquibase
14 17 (1.70%) Postman
15 15 (1.50%) Serenity BDD
16 9 (0.90%) Cypress.io
17 7 (0.70%) JMeter
18 6 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
19 5 (0.50%) Snyk
General
1 267 (26.65%) Finance
2 187 (18.66%) Social Skills
3 138 (13.77%) Banking
4 94 (9.38%) Public Sector
5 90 (8.98%) Analytical Skills
6 47 (4.69%) Front Office
7 35 (3.49%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.69%) Retail
9 25 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
10 19 (1.90%) Financial Institution
11 15 (1.50%) Law
12 14 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (1.30%) Telecoms
14 10 (1.00%) Billing
14 10 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.90%) Publishing
16 8 (0.80%) Marketing
16 8 (0.80%) Military
16 8 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.70%) Games
Job Titles
1 330 (32.93%) Developer
2 194 (19.36%) Senior
3 171 (17.07%) Java Developer
4 146 (14.57%) Data Engineer
5 131 (13.07%) Architect
6 116 (11.58%) Lead
7 97 (9.68%) Software Engineer
8 81 (8.08%) Senior Developer
9 75 (7.49%) Java Engineer
10 56 (5.59%) Solutions Architect
11 49 (4.89%) Senior Java Developer
12 45 (4.49%) AWS Architect
13 44 (4.39%) DevOps Engineer
14 39 (3.89%) Full-Stack Developer
15 36 (3.59%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 35 (3.49%) Lead Developer
17 33 (3.29%) Java Software Engineer
17 33 (3.29%) Kafka Engineer
18 32 (3.19%) Principal Engineer
18 32 (3.19%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (25.25%) Spring
2 238 (23.75%) Spring Boot
3 160 (15.97%) REST
4 142 (14.17%) React
5 133 (13.27%) RESTful
6 109 (10.88%) RabbitMQ
7 86 (8.58%) Node.js
8 68 (6.79%) GraphQL
9 63 (6.29%) JSON
10 56 (5.59%) Redux
11 49 (4.89%) OpenTelemetry
12 41 (4.09%) AngularJS
12 41 (4.09%) Swagger
13 40 (3.99%) OpenAPI
14 39 (3.89%) gRPC
14 39 (3.89%) OAuth
15 36 (3.59%) Middleware
16 34 (3.39%) PySpark
17 33 (3.29%) Apache Avro
18 32 (3.19%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 193 (19.26%) Distributed Systems
2 177 (17.66%) Cloud Native
3 40 (3.99%) Data Structures
4 39 (3.89%) Fixed Income
4 39 (3.89%) Product Ownership
5 29 (2.89%) Algorithms
6 27 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
6 27 (2.69%) Management Information System
7 24 (2.40%) Onboarding
8 23 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
9 20 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
10 18 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (1.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 16 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
13 15 (1.50%) Public Cloud
14 14 (1.40%) AI Agents
14 14 (1.40%) Clustering
14 14 (1.40%) Equities
15 12 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
15 12 (1.20%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 100 (9.98%) Linux
2 54 (5.39%) Unix
3 27 (2.69%) Windows
4 10 (1.00%) Mac OS X
5 7 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.50%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.30%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.20%) Android
8 2 (0.20%) Debian
8 2 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.20%) VMS
8 2 (0.20%) zOS
9 1 (0.100%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.100%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 464 (46.31%) CI/CD
2 372 (37.13%) Microservices
3 349 (34.83%) Agile
4 320 (31.94%) Event-Driven
5 312 (31.14%) DevOps
6 224 (22.36%) Observability
7 218 (21.76%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 212 (21.16%) Containerisation
9 192 (19.16%) Software Engineering
10 191 (19.06%) Data Pipeline
11 164 (16.37%) Infrastructure as Code
12 163 (16.27%) Test Automation
13 158 (15.77%) Problem-Solving
14 155 (15.47%) Data Modelling
15 153 (15.27%) Analytics
16 148 (14.77%) AI
17 145 (14.47%) ETL
18 143 (14.27%) Data Engineering
19 118 (11.78%) TDD
20 110 (10.98%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 468 (46.71%) Java
2 352 (35.13%) Python
3 304 (30.34%) SQL
4 123 (12.28%) TypeScript
5 92 (9.18%) JavaScript
6 83 (8.28%) Go
7 56 (5.59%) C#
8 53 (5.29%) Bash
9 35 (3.49%) Scala
10 26 (2.59%) PowerShell
11 19 (1.90%) PL/SQL
12 17 (1.70%) Kotlin
13 14 (1.40%) Shell Script
14 12 (1.20%) Rust
15 11 (1.10%) Bicep
15 11 (1.10%) C++
16 10 (1.00%) Groovy
16 10 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
17 7 (0.70%) PHP
18 6 (0.60%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 221 (22.06%) Security Cleared
2 170 (16.97%) SC Cleared
3 50 (4.99%) Degree
4 32 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (2.00%) DV Cleared
6 19 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.60%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.60%) Master's Degree
8 7 (0.70%) Azure Certification
8 7 (0.70%) SnowPro
9 6 (0.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
10 3 (0.30%) PhD
10 3 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
11 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.100%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.100%) PMP
12 1 (0.100%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (10.18%) Data Quality
2 51 (5.09%) QA
3 42 (4.19%) Accessibility
4 38 (3.79%) GDPR
5 17 (1.70%) ISO 20022
6 9 (0.90%) SEPA
7 7 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.40%) NIST
8 4 (0.40%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.30%) SLA
9 3 (0.30%) WCAG
10 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.20%) EMIR
10 2 (0.20%) IFRS
10 2 (0.20%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.20%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.20%) MiFID
10 2 (0.20%) NCSC
10 2 (0.20%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.100%) PMO
System Software
1 327 (32.63%) Docker
2 6 (0.60%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 6 (0.60%) etcd
3 3 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
4 2 (0.20%) HDFS
5 1 (0.100%) OpenSSH
5 1 (0.100%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 406 (40.52%) Kubernetes
2 196 (19.56%) Terraform
3 120 (11.98%) Prometheus
4 117 (11.68%) Grafana
5 59 (5.89%) Ansible
6 21 (2.10%) Argo
7 13 (1.30%) Control-M
8 12 (1.20%) Kibana
9 10 (1.00%) Istio
9 10 (1.00%) Podman
10 9 (0.90%) Puppet
11 7 (0.70%) Fluentd
11 7 (0.70%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.60%) logstash
13 5 (0.50%) Rancher
14 3 (0.30%) Check_MK
14 3 (0.30%) NetBackup
15 2 (0.20%) CA Wily
15 2 (0.20%) CloudHub
15 2 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 78 (7.78%) Databricks
2 76 (7.58%) Oracle
3 59 (5.89%) Splunk
4 48 (4.79%) Microsoft
5 44 (4.39%) Google
6 24 (2.40%) Confluent
6 24 (2.40%) Informatica
7 17 (1.70%) IBM
8 16 (1.60%) Dynatrace
9 15 (1.50%) MuleSoft
9 15 (1.50%) Salesforce
9 15 (1.50%) Solace
10 10 (1.00%) OpenAI
10 10 (1.00%) SAP
11 9 (0.90%) Talend
12 8 (0.80%) Red Hat
12 8 (0.80%) ServiceNow
12 8 (0.80%) Sybase
13 6 (0.60%) Pega
14 5 (0.50%) Cloudera