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 3 months leading up to 23 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

3 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 104 161
Rank change year-on-year -22 +57 -31
Contract jobs citing Kafka 429 321 289
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 2.43% 1.36%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.81% 10.76% 6.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 281 206 214
10th Percentile £358 £400 £373
25th Percentile £402 £470 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £599 £534
Median % change year-on-year -12.32% +12.13% -17.85%
75th Percentile £650 £750 £674
90th Percentile £738 £838 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -14.29% +5.00% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 0
10th Percentile £40.00 - -
25th Percentile £46.50 £91.25 -
Median hourly rate £73.50 £92.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -20.54% - -
75th Percentile £91.00 £93.75 -
90th Percentile £95.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 - -

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 4,374 2,984 4,231
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.10% 22.62% 19.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,951 2,038 2,926
10th Percentile £352 £364 £325
25th Percentile £413 £430 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £531 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.75% +1.19% -7.08%
75th Percentile £615 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £777 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -8.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 51 58
10th Percentile £41.25 £26.25 £20.77
25th Percentile £52.50 £55.31 £31.44
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £50.47
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +28.80% -22.36%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £78.47 £71.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.50 £65.00 £50.47
% change year-on-year -2.31% +28.80% -19.26%

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 3 months to 23 January 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 3 months to 23 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka
Top 15 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 3 months to 23 January 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 3 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 3 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -22 370 £530 -15.20% 319
London -10 255 £600 -4.38% 94
Work from Home +17 163 £538 -28.33% 286
UK excluding London -61 95 £450 -14.29% 278
North of England -53 39 £455 -27.20% 48
Midlands -16 24 £450 +12.50% 17
South East -19 23 £433 -17.81% 106
North West -33 19 £455 -13.33% 29
Yorkshire -35 17 £450 -37.93% 10
South West -12 15 £550 -15.38% 33
West Midlands -18 12 £550 - 9
East Midlands -21 12 £402 +0.50% 8
Scotland -1 5 £500 +17.65% 14
North East -9 5 £450 -34.51% 9
East of England -26 1 £450 +40.02% 43

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 78 (9.30%) Apache Spark
2 44 (5.24%) Apache
3 39 (4.65%) Apache Airflow
4 38 (4.53%) Confluence
5 5 (0.60%) Camunda
5 5 (0.60%) CMS
5 5 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.48%) Ethereum
6 4 (0.48%) Hyperledger
7 3 (0.36%) MQSeries
7 3 (0.36%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.24%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.24%) JBoss
8 2 (0.24%) Luigi
8 2 (0.24%) Mule
8 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Pig
9 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.12%) Mule ESB
9 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (0.48%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.24%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.48%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.24%) Actimize
3 2 (0.24%) Bloomberg AIM
3 2 (0.24%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.24%) Shopify
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 475 (56.62%) AWS
2 222 (26.46%) Azure
3 153 (18.24%) GitHub
4 125 (14.90%) GCP
5 121 (14.42%) Serverless
6 110 (13.11%) GitHub Actions
7 94 (11.20%) Amazon S3
8 89 (10.61%) AWS Lambda
9 67 (7.99%) Amazon EKS
10 65 (7.75%) AWS CloudFormation
11 46 (5.48%) Amazon ECS
12 44 (5.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 44 (5.24%) Amazon Kinesis
13 40 (4.77%) Amazon SQS
14 39 (4.65%) Power Platform
15 38 (4.53%) OpenShift
16 37 (4.41%) Azure Data Factory
16 37 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
17 31 (3.69%) Amazon EC2
18 24 (2.86%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.55%) DNS
1 13 (1.55%) Firewall
2 12 (1.43%) SSL
3 11 (1.31%) HTTP
4 7 (0.83%) Kerberos
4 7 (0.83%) SSH
5 6 (0.72%) FTP
5 6 (0.72%) SMS
6 5 (0.60%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.36%) VPN
8 2 (0.24%) MQTT
9 1 (0.12%) AMQP
9 1 (0.12%) DSL
9 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (19.67%) PostgreSQL
2 152 (18.12%) MongoDB
3 132 (15.73%) NoSQL
4 77 (9.18%) Apache Cassandra
5 50 (5.96%) Relational Database
6 49 (5.84%) Amazon RDS
7 44 (5.24%) Big Data
7 44 (5.24%) Redis
8 43 (5.13%) DynamoDB
9 42 (5.01%) Elasticsearch
10 41 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
11 39 (4.65%) SQL Server
12 38 (4.53%) Data Lake
13 30 (3.58%) Amazon Athena
14 29 (3.46%) Amazon Redshift
14 29 (3.46%) Power BI
15 28 (3.34%) Hadoop
16 26 (3.10%) Amazon Aurora
16 26 (3.10%) DB2
17 23 (2.74%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 155 (18.47%) Jenkins
2 132 (15.73%) GitLab
3 102 (12.16%) Git
4 82 (9.77%) JUnit
5 57 (6.79%) JIRA
6 42 (5.01%) Mockito
7 24 (2.86%) Cucumber
7 24 (2.86%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (2.62%) Gradle
8 22 (2.62%) JMeter
9 14 (1.67%) Maven
10 11 (1.31%) Gatling
11 10 (1.19%) Artifactory
11 10 (1.19%) CircleCI
11 10 (1.19%) SonarQube
12 9 (1.07%) SoapUI
13 8 (0.95%) Jaeger
14 6 (0.72%) Terragrunt
15 5 (0.60%) Postman
15 5 (0.60%) Subversion
General
1 227 (27.06%) Finance
2 206 (24.55%) Social Skills
3 126 (15.02%) Banking
4 78 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
5 66 (7.87%) Public Sector
6 46 (5.48%) Investment Banking
7 24 (2.86%) Front Office
8 15 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (1.67%) Financial Institution
10 9 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (1.07%) Marketing
11 7 (0.83%) Retail
12 5 (0.60%) Aerospace
12 5 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.60%) Law
13 3 (0.36%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.36%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.24%) Games
14 2 (0.24%) Legal
14 2 (0.24%) Military
Job Titles
1 323 (38.50%) Developer
2 247 (29.44%) Senior
3 187 (22.29%) Java Developer
4 124 (14.78%) Senior Developer
5 102 (12.16%) Data Engineer
6 79 (9.42%) Lead
7 75 (8.94%) Senior Java Developer
8 71 (8.46%) Software Engineer
9 65 (7.75%) Architect
10 59 (7.03%) DevOps Engineer
11 42 (5.01%) Full-Stack Developer
12 41 (4.89%) Kafka Developer
13 40 (4.77%) AWS Engineer
14 39 (4.65%) Kafka Engineer
15 37 (4.41%) AWS Developer
16 32 (3.81%) Java Engineer
17 30 (3.58%) Senior Data Engineer
18 29 (3.46%) AWS Architect
18 29 (3.46%) Platform Engineer
19 28 (3.34%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 201 (23.96%) Spring
2 167 (19.90%) Spring Boot
3 99 (11.80%) REST
4 98 (11.68%) gRPC
5 77 (9.18%) RESTful
6 71 (8.46%) React
7 67 (7.99%) RabbitMQ
8 65 (7.75%) Node.js
9 41 (4.89%) AngularJS
10 34 (4.05%) Hibernate
10 34 (4.05%) Middleware
11 33 (3.93%) Keycloak
12 32 (3.81%) JMS
13 31 (3.69%) ActiveMQ
14 30 (3.58%) PySpark
15 29 (3.46%) .NET
15 29 (3.46%) OAuth
16 28 (3.34%) JSON
17 27 (3.22%) OAuth2
18 24 (2.86%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 118 (14.06%) Distributed Systems
2 100 (11.92%) Cloud Native
3 40 (4.77%) Management Information System
4 31 (3.69%) Product Ownership
5 30 (3.58%) Equities
6 28 (3.34%) Data Structures
7 22 (2.62%) Derivative
8 21 (2.50%) Replication
9 18 (2.15%) Market Risk
10 16 (1.91%) Fixed Income
11 15 (1.79%) Legacy Applications
12 14 (1.67%) Distributed Computing
13 13 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
14 11 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
14 11 (1.31%) Onboarding
15 10 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
16 8 (0.95%) Algorithms
16 8 (0.95%) Data Protection Act
16 8 (0.95%) Public Cloud
16 8 (0.95%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 155 (18.47%) Linux
2 81 (9.65%) Unix
3 25 (2.98%) Windows
4 13 (1.55%) Mac OS X
5 8 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.72%) CentOS
7 5 (0.60%) AIX
8 3 (0.36%) VMS
9 2 (0.24%) zOS
10 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 360 (42.91%) CI/CD
2 339 (40.41%) Microservices
3 290 (34.56%) Agile
4 247 (29.44%) DevOps
5 216 (25.74%) Software Engineering
6 177 (21.10%) Containerisation
7 176 (20.98%) Problem-Solving
8 162 (19.31%) Event-Driven
9 148 (17.64%) Infrastructure as Code
10 142 (16.92%) Observability
11 120 (14.30%) Test Automation
12 116 (13.83%) Data Pipeline
13 109 (12.99%) Open Source
14 107 (12.75%) Analytics
15 98 (11.68%) TDD
16 95 (11.32%) Data Engineering
17 92 (10.97%) ETL
18 90 (10.73%) Event-Driven Architecture
19 82 (9.77%) Data Modelling
20 81 (9.65%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 400 (47.68%) Java
2 284 (33.85%) Python
3 240 (28.61%) SQL
4 118 (14.06%) Go
5 70 (8.34%) C#
6 59 (7.03%) JavaScript
7 48 (5.72%) Shell Script
8 44 (5.24%) Bash
9 43 (5.13%) C++
10 34 (4.05%) TypeScript
11 32 (3.81%) Scala
12 16 (1.91%) Rust
13 14 (1.67%) PL/SQL
14 9 (1.07%) Perl
14 9 (1.07%) PowerShell
15 7 (0.83%) Korn
16 6 (0.72%) Groovy
16 6 (0.72%) R
17 5 (0.60%) Bicep
17 5 (0.60%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 180 (21.45%) Security Cleared
2 161 (19.19%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.29%) Degree
4 31 (3.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (3.34%) Azure Certification
6 20 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
7 19 (2.26%) AWS Certification
8 17 (2.03%) DV Cleared
9 10 (1.19%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.95%) OCP
10 8 (0.95%) Oracle Certification
11 6 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.24%) CBAP
12 2 (0.24%) CSPO
12 2 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (8.22%) Data Quality
2 43 (5.13%) QA
3 30 (3.58%) GDPR
4 11 (1.31%) NCSC
5 9 (1.07%) ISO 20022
6 6 (0.72%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.72%) NIST
6 6 (0.72%) PCI DSS
6 6 (0.72%) SEPA
7 5 (0.60%) SLA
8 3 (0.36%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.36%) HL7
8 3 (0.36%) WCAG
9 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.24%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.24%) ISO 8583
9 2 (0.24%) MiFID
9 2 (0.24%) PSD2
10 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 310 (36.95%) Docker
2 8 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.72%) HDFS
4 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 344 (41.00%) Kubernetes
2 204 (24.31%) Terraform
3 96 (11.44%) Grafana
4 79 (9.42%) Prometheus
5 69 (8.22%) Ansible
6 29 (3.46%) Argo
7 16 (1.91%) Progress Chef
8 9 (1.07%) Packer
9 8 (0.95%) Istio
9 8 (0.95%) Kiali
10 7 (0.83%) linkerd
11 6 (0.72%) logstash
12 5 (0.60%) Hadoop YARN
12 5 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
12 5 (0.60%) Puppet
12 5 (0.60%) Rancher
13 4 (0.48%) Fluentd
13 4 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
14 3 (0.36%) Oozie
15 2 (0.24%) QRadar
Vendors
1 75 (8.94%) Oracle
2 57 (6.79%) Databricks
3 54 (6.44%) Splunk
4 35 (4.17%) Confluent
5 32 (3.81%) Microsoft
6 30 (3.58%) Google
7 28 (3.34%) IBM
8 24 (2.86%) VMware
9 22 (2.62%) Sybase
10 19 (2.26%) Dynatrace
11 13 (1.55%) Cloudera
12 11 (1.31%) Informatica
12 11 (1.31%) Red Hat
13 9 (1.07%) SAP
13 9 (1.07%) ServiceNow
14 8 (0.95%) Foundry
14 8 (0.95%) Palantir
15 7 (0.83%) Atlassian
16 6 (0.72%) CA Agile Central
16 6 (0.72%) Salesforce