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 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 110 151
Rank change year-on-year -30 +41 -9
Contract jobs citing Kafka 944 728 694
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.48% 1.59%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.65% 10.83% 7.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 559 475 511
10th Percentile £379 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £675
90th Percentile £800 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £490
% change year-on-year -2.11% -3.06% -14.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 3 8
10th Percentile £60.38 £47.14 £22.44
25th Percentile £64.75 £58.98 £25.94
Median hourly rate £70.00 £78.70 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.05% +181.07% -64.10%
75th Percentile £90.00 £86.23 £36.31
90th Percentile £92.50 £90.74 £48.80
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 9,780 6,720 9,188
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.60% 22.88% 21.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,419 4,600 6,346
10th Percentile £363 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -3.26% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 122 263
10th Percentile £30.93 £29.35 £22.10
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.14 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £60.00 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% +21.21% -23.85%
75th Percentile £73.23 £68.00 £68.38
90th Percentile £81.25 £81.32 £74.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +2.77% +15.00% -15.38%

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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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 -26 813 £539 -4.65% 166
London -21 513 £594 -6.86% 96
UK excluding London -41 310 £465 -2.11% 104
Work from Home -38 281 £575 - 101
North of England -39 138 £455 -9.00% 32
Yorkshire -13 71 £463 -15.91% 4
North West -46 54 £461 -7.80% 23
South East -38 52 £488 +8.33% 28
Scotland -21 45 £450 -4.76% 13
Midlands -57 40 £488 +8.33% 2
South West -10 24 £500 -9.09% 13
West Midlands -55 21 £500 - 1
North East -14 20 £425 -8.05% 5
East Midlands -22 19 £402 +12.92% 1
East of England -16 17 £550 +33.92% 7
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 5
Wales -12 1 £250 - 6

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
1 128 (13.56%) Apache Spark
2 65 (6.89%) Apache
3 51 (5.40%) Apache Airflow
4 13 (1.38%) Confluence
5 7 (0.74%) Camunda
6 6 (0.64%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.64%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.42%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.11%) JBoss
Applications
1 6 (0.64%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) Bloomberg AIM
2 3 (0.32%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.21%) Endur
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 558 (59.11%) AWS
2 276 (29.24%) Azure
3 168 (17.80%) GCP
4 142 (15.04%) GitHub
5 122 (12.92%) Serverless
6 106 (11.23%) GitHub Actions
7 95 (10.06%) Amazon S3
8 91 (9.64%) AWS Lambda
9 67 (7.10%) Amazon EKS
9 67 (7.10%) OpenShift
10 61 (6.46%) Power Platform
11 60 (6.36%) Azure DevOps
12 51 (5.40%) Snowflake
13 47 (4.98%) AWS CloudFormation
14 46 (4.87%) Amazon ECS
15 45 (4.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 41 (4.34%) dbt
17 39 (4.13%) Amazon SQS
18 35 (3.71%) Amazon Kinesis
19 31 (3.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.80%) Firewall
2 13 (1.38%) HTTP
3 10 (1.06%) DNS
4 8 (0.85%) Network Security
5 6 (0.64%) MQTT
5 6 (0.64%) SMS
5 6 (0.64%) SSL
6 5 (0.53%) NAS
6 5 (0.53%) SAN
6 5 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.21%) Internet
7 2 (0.21%) NaaS
7 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (0.21%) WAN
8 1 (0.11%) 4G
8 1 (0.11%) 5G
8 1 (0.11%) Broadband
8 1 (0.11%) FIX Connectivity
8 1 (0.11%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (20.13%) PostgreSQL
2 151 (16.00%) MongoDB
3 124 (13.14%) NoSQL
4 87 (9.22%) Relational Database
5 62 (6.57%) Big Data
6 54 (5.72%) Data Lake
6 54 (5.72%) Data Warehouse
7 51 (5.40%) Redis
7 51 (5.40%) SQL Server
8 49 (5.19%) Power BI
9 44 (4.66%) Apache Cassandra
9 44 (4.66%) Elasticsearch
10 37 (3.92%) DynamoDB
10 37 (3.92%) Flink
11 35 (3.71%) MySQL
12 34 (3.60%) Amazon Athena
13 32 (3.39%) Hadoop
14 30 (3.18%) Amazon RDS
15 29 (3.07%) Amazon Redshift
15 29 (3.07%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 145 (15.36%) Jenkins
2 126 (13.35%) Git
3 125 (13.24%) GitLab
4 66 (6.99%) JUnit
5 50 (5.30%) JIRA
6 45 (4.77%) Mockito
7 31 (3.28%) Gradle
8 29 (3.07%) Selenium
9 23 (2.44%) REST Assured
10 20 (2.12%) Cucumber
10 20 (2.12%) Gatling
11 17 (1.80%) Liquibase
12 15 (1.59%) Serenity BDD
13 14 (1.48%) Maven
13 14 (1.48%) Postman
14 11 (1.17%) SonarQube
15 9 (0.95%) Jaeger
16 7 (0.74%) JMeter
16 7 (0.74%) Snyk
17 5 (0.53%) Artifactory
General
1 254 (26.91%) Finance
2 176 (18.64%) Social Skills
3 126 (13.35%) Banking
4 83 (8.79%) Public Sector
5 77 (8.16%) Analytical Skills
6 45 (4.77%) Front Office
7 35 (3.71%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
9 24 (2.54%) Financial Institution
10 20 (2.12%) Retail
11 15 (1.59%) Law
12 12 (1.27%) Marketing
13 11 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.95%) Publishing
16 8 (0.85%) Corporate Banking
17 7 (0.74%) Automotive
17 7 (0.74%) Military
17 7 (0.74%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 304 (32.20%) Developer
2 197 (20.87%) Senior
3 156 (16.53%) Java Developer
4 154 (16.31%) Data Engineer
5 117 (12.39%) Lead
6 112 (11.86%) Architect
7 94 (9.96%) Software Engineer
8 84 (8.90%) Senior Developer
9 76 (8.05%) Java Engineer
10 55 (5.83%) AWS Architect
11 48 (5.08%) Senior Java Developer
12 46 (4.87%) DevOps Engineer
13 40 (4.24%) Full-Stack Developer
13 40 (4.24%) Solutions Architect
14 34 (3.60%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 33 (3.50%) Principal Engineer
16 32 (3.39%) Lead Developer
17 30 (3.18%) Data Architect
17 30 (3.18%) Kafka Engineer
17 30 (3.18%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (24.89%) Spring
2 223 (23.62%) Spring Boot
3 138 (14.62%) REST
4 125 (13.24%) RESTful
5 121 (12.82%) React
6 95 (10.06%) Node.js
7 92 (9.75%) RabbitMQ
8 60 (6.36%) GraphQL
9 59 (6.25%) OpenTelemetry
10 50 (5.30%) gRPC
11 48 (5.08%) JSON
12 44 (4.66%) Middleware
12 44 (4.66%) Redux
13 42 (4.45%) Apache Avro
14 40 (4.24%) OAuth
15 39 (4.13%) AngularJS
15 39 (4.13%) PySpark
16 38 (4.03%) Swagger
17 37 (3.92%) OpenAPI
18 35 (3.71%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 181 (19.17%) Distributed Systems
2 169 (17.90%) Cloud Native
3 41 (4.34%) Management Information System
4 39 (4.13%) Fixed Income
5 36 (3.81%) Product Ownership
6 25 (2.65%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.22%) Onboarding
8 19 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.59%) Algorithms
10 15 (1.59%) Derivative
10 15 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.48%) Clustering
11 14 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.48%) Equities
12 13 (1.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 12 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
14 11 (1.17%) Public Cloud
14 11 (1.17%) SWIFT Messaging Network
15 10 (1.06%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 88 (9.32%) Linux
2 55 (5.83%) Unix
3 30 (3.18%) Windows
4 8 (0.85%) Mac OS X
5 6 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.32%) VMS
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
8 2 (0.21%) zOS
9 1 (0.11%) Android
9 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 428 (45.34%) CI/CD
2 358 (37.92%) Microservices
3 302 (31.99%) Agile
4 288 (30.51%) DevOps
5 279 (29.56%) Event-Driven
6 226 (23.94%) Observability
7 205 (21.72%) Containerisation
8 189 (20.02%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 188 (19.92%) Software Engineering
10 167 (17.69%) Data Pipeline
11 161 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
12 159 (16.84%) Data Modelling
13 149 (15.78%) Problem-Solving
14 147 (15.57%) Analytics
15 146 (15.47%) Test Automation
16 144 (15.25%) Data Engineering
17 134 (14.19%) ETL
18 108 (11.44%) AI
19 107 (11.33%) Full-Stack Development
20 104 (11.02%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 435 (46.08%) Java
2 326 (34.53%) Python
3 294 (31.14%) SQL
4 117 (12.39%) TypeScript
5 93 (9.85%) Go
6 87 (9.22%) JavaScript
7 55 (5.83%) C#
8 44 (4.66%) Bash
9 26 (2.75%) Scala
10 19 (2.01%) PowerShell
10 19 (2.01%) Rust
11 15 (1.59%) C++
12 14 (1.48%) Shell Script
13 13 (1.38%) Bicep
14 11 (1.17%) PL/SQL
15 10 (1.06%) Search Processing Language
16 8 (0.85%) Kotlin
17 7 (0.74%) Groovy
17 7 (0.74%) PHP
18 6 (0.64%) Perl
Qualifications
1 200 (21.19%) Security Cleared
2 156 (16.53%) SC Cleared
3 51 (5.40%) Degree
4 26 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.91%) AWS Certification
6 17 (1.80%) DV Cleared
7 15 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.27%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (0.85%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.74%) SnowPro
11 3 (0.32%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
13 1 (0.11%) CISSP
13 1 (0.11%) PhD
13 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (10.70%) Data Quality
2 53 (5.61%) QA
3 39 (4.13%) GDPR
4 32 (3.39%) Accessibility
5 19 (2.01%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 10 (1.06%) NIST
7 8 (0.85%) PCI DSS
8 7 (0.74%) SEPA
9 5 (0.53%) NCSC
10 4 (0.42%) SLA
10 4 (0.42%) WCAG
11 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
11 3 (0.32%) PSD2
12 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.21%) EMIR
12 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
12 2 (0.21%) MiFID
13 1 (0.11%) Basel III
13 1 (0.11%) HL7
System Software
1 317 (33.58%) Docker
2 6 (0.64%) etcd
3 2 (0.21%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 2 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
4 1 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 373 (39.51%) Kubernetes
2 199 (21.08%) Terraform
3 127 (13.45%) Grafana
4 126 (13.35%) Prometheus
5 59 (6.25%) Ansible
6 23 (2.44%) Argo
7 12 (1.27%) Istio
8 10 (1.06%) Kibana
9 8 (0.85%) Kiali
9 8 (0.85%) Puppet
10 7 (0.74%) Fluentd
10 7 (0.74%) Podman
11 6 (0.64%) Kustomize
11 6 (0.64%) linkerd
12 5 (0.53%) logstash
12 5 (0.53%) Rancher
13 3 (0.32%) Control-M
13 3 (0.32%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.21%) CA Wily
14 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 86 (9.11%) Databricks
2 73 (7.73%) Splunk
3 65 (6.89%) Oracle
4 40 (4.24%) Microsoft
5 36 (3.81%) Google
6 29 (3.07%) Confluent
7 23 (2.44%) Informatica
8 17 (1.80%) IBM
9 14 (1.48%) Dynatrace
10 12 (1.27%) Salesforce
11 11 (1.17%) Red Hat
11 11 (1.17%) ServiceNow
12 10 (1.06%) Solace
13 9 (0.95%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.95%) Talend
14 8 (0.85%) Sybase
15 7 (0.74%) AppDynamics
16 6 (0.64%) OpenAI
16 6 (0.64%) SAP
16 6 (0.64%) Tenable