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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 101 143
Rank change year-on-year -43 +42 +11
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,003 843 702
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.57% 1.68%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.79% 11.37% 7.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 597 542 498
10th Percentile £381 £388 £400
25th Percentile £425 £455 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -11.54%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £705
90th Percentile £800 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -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 10,242 7,414 8,936
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.40% 22.60% 21.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,688 5,005 6,121
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £540
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -5.56% -1.82%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £660
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £500
% change year-on-year +5.80% -5.49% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 270 154 265
10th Percentile £29.91 £30.08 £22.60
25th Percentile £50.00 £38.16 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.01 £74.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £58.30
% change year-on-year +4.00% +7.20% -1.24%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -43 854 £550 - 213
London -33 507 £588 -6.00% 134
UK excluding London -47 372 £500 +6.61% 119
Work from Home -55 282 £551 -4.26% 73
North of England -21 170 £465 - 36
Yorkshire -8 80 £498 -0.50% 13
North West -36 75 £430 -7.92% 13
South East -47 62 £513 +17.82% 39
Scotland -29 50 £450 -4.26% 11
Midlands -40 42 £500 +13.51% 8
South West -20 31 £500 -9.09% 17
West Midlands -57 26 £500 - 6
North East -18 24 £425 -8.05% 10
East of England -1 22 £550 +10.00% 6
East Midlands -13 16 £459 +28.43% 2
Northern Ireland 0 3 - - 1
Wales -14 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
1 133 (13.26%) Apache Spark
2 74 (7.38%) Apache
3 63 (6.28%) Apache Airflow
4 17 (1.69%) Confluence
5 6 (0.60%) Camunda
5 6 (0.60%) Ethereum
5 6 (0.60%) Hyperledger
5 6 (0.60%) WebSphere
6 5 (0.50%) Apache Pulsar
6 5 (0.50%) CMS
7 4 (0.40%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.30%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.30%) Mule
9 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
9 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
1 589 (58.72%) AWS
2 312 (31.11%) Azure
3 198 (19.74%) GCP
4 143 (14.26%) GitHub
5 104 (10.37%) Serverless
6 101 (10.07%) GitHub Actions
7 83 (8.28%) Amazon S3
8 81 (8.08%) AWS Lambda
9 72 (7.18%) OpenShift
10 63 (6.28%) Azure DevOps
11 60 (5.98%) Snowflake
12 59 (5.88%) Amazon EKS
13 47 (4.69%) dbt
14 45 (4.49%) Power Platform
15 44 (4.39%) Amazon SQS
16 43 (4.29%) Amazon ECS
17 39 (3.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 33 (3.29%) AWS CloudFormation
19 29 (2.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 28 (2.79%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.79%) 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
1 175 (17.45%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (16.45%) MongoDB
3 125 (12.46%) NoSQL
4 106 (10.57%) Relational Database
5 68 (6.78%) Big Data
6 61 (6.08%) Data Warehouse
7 58 (5.78%) SQL Server
8 54 (5.38%) Data Lake
9 41 (4.09%) Power BI
10 40 (3.99%) Redis
11 39 (3.89%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (3.79%) Hadoop
13 37 (3.69%) Apache Cassandra
13 37 (3.69%) Flink
14 36 (3.59%) MySQL
15 34 (3.39%) Metadata
16 32 (3.19%) BigQuery
17 27 (2.69%) DynamoDB
18 24 (2.39%) RDBMS
19 23 (2.29%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 175 (17.45%) Jenkins
2 140 (13.96%) Git
3 126 (12.56%) GitLab
4 73 (7.28%) JUnit
5 59 (5.88%) Mockito
6 46 (4.59%) JIRA
7 44 (4.39%) Gradle
8 35 (3.49%) Selenium
9 27 (2.69%) Cucumber
10 24 (2.39%) Maven
10 24 (2.39%) REST Assured
11 19 (1.89%) Gatling
12 18 (1.79%) SonarQube
13 17 (1.69%) Liquibase
13 17 (1.69%) Postman
14 15 (1.50%) Serenity BDD
15 9 (0.90%) Cypress.io
16 7 (0.70%) JMeter
17 6 (0.60%) Claude Code
17 6 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 269 (26.82%) Finance
2 185 (18.44%) Social Skills
3 138 (13.76%) Banking
4 95 (9.47%) Public Sector
5 92 (9.17%) Analytical Skills
6 48 (4.79%) Front Office
7 35 (3.49%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.69%) Retail
9 25 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (1.79%) Financial Institution
11 15 (1.50%) Law
12 14 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (1.30%) Telecoms
14 10 (1.00%) Billing
15 9 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.90%) Publishing
16 8 (0.80%) Military
16 8 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.70%) Automotive
17 7 (0.70%) Games
Job Titles
1 328 (32.70%) Developer
2 195 (19.44%) Senior
3 172 (17.15%) Java Developer
4 144 (14.36%) Data Engineer
5 134 (13.36%) Architect
6 114 (11.37%) Lead
7 96 (9.57%) Software Engineer
8 81 (8.08%) Senior Developer
9 75 (7.48%) Java Engineer
10 56 (5.58%) Solutions Architect
11 50 (4.99%) Senior Java Developer
12 45 (4.49%) DevOps Engineer
13 44 (4.39%) AWS Architect
14 38 (3.79%) Full-Stack Developer
15 36 (3.59%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 35 (3.49%) Lead Developer
17 33 (3.29%) Data Architect
17 33 (3.29%) Java Software Engineer
17 33 (3.29%) Kafka Engineer
17 33 (3.29%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (25.02%) Spring
2 237 (23.63%) Spring Boot
3 161 (16.05%) REST
4 143 (14.26%) React
5 135 (13.46%) RESTful
6 112 (11.17%) RabbitMQ
7 84 (8.37%) Node.js
8 69 (6.88%) GraphQL
9 66 (6.58%) JSON
10 56 (5.58%) Redux
11 50 (4.99%) OpenTelemetry
12 41 (4.09%) Swagger
13 40 (3.99%) OAuth
13 40 (3.99%) OpenAPI
14 39 (3.89%) AngularJS
15 37 (3.69%) gRPC
15 37 (3.69%) Middleware
16 34 (3.39%) PySpark
17 33 (3.29%) Apache Avro
17 33 (3.29%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 194 (19.34%) Distributed Systems
2 177 (17.65%) Cloud Native
3 41 (4.09%) Data Structures
4 39 (3.89%) Fixed Income
4 39 (3.89%) Product Ownership
5 30 (2.99%) Algorithms
6 28 (2.79%) Enterprise Software
6 28 (2.79%) Management Information System
7 24 (2.39%) Onboarding
8 23 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
9 21 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
10 18 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
10 18 (1.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 16 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
12 15 (1.50%) AI Agents
12 15 (1.50%) Public Cloud
13 14 (1.40%) Clustering
13 14 (1.40%) Equities
14 13 (1.30%) Replication
15 12 (1.20%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 103 (10.27%) Linux
2 56 (5.58%) Unix
3 27 (2.69%) Windows
4 10 (1.00%) Mac OS X
5 8 (0.80%) 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%) CentOS
9 1 (0.100%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 469 (46.76%) CI/CD
2 374 (37.29%) Microservices
3 348 (34.70%) Agile
4 322 (32.10%) Event-Driven
5 312 (31.11%) DevOps
6 227 (22.63%) Observability
7 220 (21.93%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 215 (21.44%) Containerisation
9 191 (19.04%) Data Pipeline
10 190 (18.94%) Software Engineering
11 167 (16.65%) Test Automation
12 166 (16.55%) Infrastructure as Code
13 157 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
14 155 (15.45%) Data Modelling
15 153 (15.25%) Analytics
16 151 (15.05%) AI
17 146 (14.56%) ETL
18 142 (14.16%) Data Engineering
19 119 (11.86%) TDD
20 109 (10.87%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 467 (46.56%) Java
2 353 (35.19%) Python
3 307 (30.61%) SQL
4 125 (12.46%) TypeScript
5 93 (9.27%) JavaScript
6 81 (8.08%) Go
7 55 (5.48%) Bash
8 54 (5.38%) C#
9 34 (3.39%) Scala
10 26 (2.59%) PowerShell
11 19 (1.89%) PL/SQL
12 17 (1.69%) Kotlin
13 16 (1.60%) 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%) Perl
Qualifications
1 220 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 169 (16.85%) SC Cleared
3 50 (4.99%) Degree
4 32 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (2.09%) DV Cleared
6 19 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.60%) Master's Degree
8 15 (1.50%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.70%) Azure Certification
9 7 (0.70%) SnowPro
10 5 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.30%) PhD
11 3 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.100%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.100%) PMP
13 1 (0.100%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (10.27%) Data Quality
2 52 (5.18%) QA
3 45 (4.49%) Accessibility
4 36 (3.59%) GDPR
5 17 (1.69%) 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
8 4 (0.40%) WCAG
9 3 (0.30%) SLA
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%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 329 (32.80%) 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
1 408 (40.68%) Kubernetes
2 197 (19.64%) Terraform
3 123 (12.26%) Prometheus
4 121 (12.06%) Grafana
5 61 (6.08%) Ansible
6 21 (2.09%) 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%) Sysdig
15 2 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 79 (7.88%) Oracle
2 78 (7.78%) Databricks
3 59 (5.88%) Splunk
4 48 (4.79%) Microsoft
5 45 (4.49%) Google
6 25 (2.49%) Confluent
6 25 (2.49%) Informatica
7 18 (1.79%) 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%) Red Hat
11 9 (0.90%) Talend
12 8 (0.80%) ServiceNow
12 8 (0.80%) Sybase
13 6 (0.60%) Denodo
13 6 (0.60%) Pega