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 31 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 107 149
Rank change year-on-year -30 +42 -11
Contract jobs citing Kafka 933 721 684
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.48% 1.59%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.66% 10.81% 7.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 555 472 506
10th Percentile £381 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £548
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% +0.46% -15.77%
75th Percentile £650 £706 £675
90th Percentile £800 £825 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £494
% change year-on-year - -3.80% -13.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 7
10th Percentile £50.05 £47.14 £22.34
25th Percentile £64.00 £58.98 £24.88
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 £37.63
90th Percentile £92.00 £90.74 £51.65
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 9,656 6,669 9,034
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.66% 22.91% 21.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,339 4,571 6,270
10th Percentile £363 £360 £350
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.77% -2.62% -2.73%
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 283 117 254
10th Percentile £31.33 £29.18 £21.81
25th Percentile £51.63 £39.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £47.97
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +30.30% -26.21%
75th Percentile £73.00 £68.75 £66.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £81.15 £74.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £48.43
% change year-on-year - +34.21% -25.49%

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 31 May 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 31 May 2026.

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 31 May 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 -27 804 £550 -2.65% 77
London -18 509 £600 -7.69% 37
UK excluding London -40 299 £475 - 62
Work from Home -25 286 £600 +2.39% 38
North of England -43 133 £460 -8.00% 20
Yorkshire -19 71 £463 -15.91% 5
North West -48 51 £450 -10.00% 11
South East -37 50 £488 +5.06% 24
Scotland -10 44 £450 -4.76% 3
Midlands -44 41 £491 +13.98% 1
South West -14 28 £500 -9.09% 7
West Midlands -51 23 £507 +1.40% 1
North East -11 20 £450 -2.70% 4
East Midlands -20 18 £407 +14.40%
East of England -24 16 £550 +33.92% 1
Wales -13 1 £250 - 2

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 (14.26%) Apache Spark
2 69 (7.40%) Apache
3 51 (5.47%) Apache Airflow
4 17 (1.82%) Confluence
5 7 (0.75%) Camunda
6 6 (0.64%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.64%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.54%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.43%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.43%) 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%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) JBoss
Applications
1 4 (0.43%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) Bloomberg AIM
2 3 (0.32%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) Endur
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 551 (59.06%) AWS
2 267 (28.62%) Azure
3 163 (17.47%) GCP
4 143 (15.33%) GitHub
5 121 (12.97%) Serverless
6 102 (10.93%) GitHub Actions
7 98 (10.50%) Amazon S3
8 91 (9.75%) AWS Lambda
9 67 (7.18%) Amazon EKS
10 64 (6.86%) OpenShift
11 63 (6.75%) Power Platform
12 61 (6.54%) Azure DevOps
13 51 (5.47%) AWS CloudFormation
14 50 (5.36%) Snowflake
15 45 (4.82%) Amazon ECS
16 44 (4.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 41 (4.39%) Amazon SQS
17 41 (4.39%) dbt
18 36 (3.86%) Amazon Kinesis
19 34 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.93%) Firewall
2 12 (1.29%) HTTP
3 10 (1.07%) DNS
4 9 (0.96%) SSL
5 7 (0.75%) Network Security
6 6 (0.64%) SMS
7 5 (0.54%) NAS
7 5 (0.54%) SAN
7 5 (0.54%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.32%) MQTT
9 2 (0.21%) FTP
9 2 (0.21%) NaaS
9 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.21%) SSH
9 2 (0.21%) WAN
10 1 (0.11%) 4G
10 1 (0.11%) Broadband
10 1 (0.11%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.11%) MIMO
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (20.26%) PostgreSQL
2 150 (16.08%) MongoDB
3 124 (13.29%) NoSQL
4 83 (8.90%) Relational Database
5 62 (6.65%) Big Data
6 55 (5.89%) Data Lake
7 54 (5.79%) Data Warehouse
8 52 (5.57%) SQL Server
9 51 (5.47%) Apache Cassandra
9 51 (5.47%) Power BI
10 48 (5.14%) Redis
11 47 (5.04%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (4.07%) Flink
13 37 (3.97%) Amazon Athena
13 37 (3.97%) DynamoDB
14 36 (3.86%) MySQL
15 35 (3.75%) Hadoop
16 30 (3.22%) Amazon Redshift
16 30 (3.22%) BigQuery
17 29 (3.11%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 145 (15.54%) Jenkins
2 131 (14.04%) GitLab
3 129 (13.83%) Git
4 64 (6.86%) JUnit
5 56 (6.00%) JIRA
6 45 (4.82%) Mockito
7 30 (3.22%) Selenium
8 29 (3.11%) Gradle
9 24 (2.57%) REST Assured
10 21 (2.25%) Cucumber
11 20 (2.14%) Gatling
12 17 (1.82%) Liquibase
13 15 (1.61%) Postman
13 15 (1.61%) Serenity BDD
14 14 (1.50%) Maven
15 11 (1.18%) SonarQube
16 10 (1.07%) Jaeger
17 7 (0.75%) JMeter
17 7 (0.75%) Snyk
18 6 (0.64%) Artifactory
General
1 253 (27.12%) Finance
2 167 (17.90%) Social Skills
3 124 (13.29%) Banking
4 78 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 76 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
6 45 (4.82%) Front Office
7 35 (3.75%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (2.68%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.82%) Retail
11 13 (1.39%) Law
12 12 (1.29%) Marketing
13 11 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.96%) Publishing
16 7 (0.75%) Automotive
16 7 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
16 7 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 7 (0.75%) Military
17 6 (0.64%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 302 (32.37%) Developer
2 202 (21.65%) Senior
3 158 (16.93%) Data Engineer
4 151 (16.18%) Java Developer
5 119 (12.75%) Lead
6 110 (11.79%) Architect
7 92 (9.86%) Software Engineer
8 91 (9.75%) Senior Developer
9 69 (7.40%) Java Engineer
10 52 (5.57%) AWS Architect
11 50 (5.36%) Senior Java Developer
12 45 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
13 40 (4.29%) Full-Stack Developer
13 40 (4.29%) Solutions Architect
14 34 (3.64%) Principal Engineer
15 33 (3.54%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 33 (3.54%) Senior Data Engineer
16 31 (3.32%) Data Architect
16 31 (3.32%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 30 (3.22%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (24.33%) Spring
2 210 (22.51%) Spring Boot
3 131 (14.04%) REST
4 117 (12.54%) RESTful
5 115 (12.33%) React
6 100 (10.72%) Node.js
7 86 (9.22%) RabbitMQ
8 58 (6.22%) GraphQL
8 58 (6.22%) OpenTelemetry
9 56 (6.00%) gRPC
10 48 (5.14%) JSON
11 43 (4.61%) Middleware
12 42 (4.50%) Apache Avro
13 40 (4.29%) PySpark
13 40 (4.29%) Redux
14 39 (4.18%) OAuth
15 37 (3.97%) AngularJS
16 36 (3.86%) Swagger
17 35 (3.75%) OpenAPI
18 34 (3.64%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 166 (17.79%) Distributed Systems
2 159 (17.04%) Cloud Native
3 43 (4.61%) Management Information System
4 39 (4.18%) Fixed Income
5 33 (3.54%) Product Ownership
6 24 (2.57%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.25%) Onboarding
8 16 (1.71%) Equities
8 16 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (1.61%) Derivative
9 15 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
9 15 (1.61%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (1.50%) Algorithms
10 14 (1.50%) Clustering
11 12 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 11 (1.18%) Hedge funds
12 11 (1.18%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 10 (1.07%) CMDB
13 10 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 92 (9.86%) Linux
2 54 (5.79%) Unix
3 31 (3.32%) Windows
4 8 (0.86%) Mac OS X
5 6 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.64%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.32%) VMS
6 3 (0.32%) zOS
7 2 (0.21%) Debian
7 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.11%) Android
8 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.11%) CentOS
8 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 428 (45.87%) CI/CD
2 349 (37.41%) Microservices
3 293 (31.40%) Agile
4 279 (29.90%) DevOps
5 259 (27.76%) Event-Driven
6 219 (23.47%) Observability
7 196 (21.01%) Containerisation
8 191 (20.47%) Software Engineering
9 171 (18.33%) Data Pipeline
10 169 (18.11%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 163 (17.47%) Data Modelling
12 160 (17.15%) Infrastructure as Code
13 150 (16.08%) Analytics
14 145 (15.54%) Data Engineering
14 145 (15.54%) Problem-Solving
14 145 (15.54%) Test Automation
15 141 (15.11%) ETL
16 107 (11.47%) Full-Stack Development
17 100 (10.72%) AI
18 95 (10.18%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 422 (45.23%) Java
2 318 (34.08%) Python
3 294 (31.51%) SQL
4 114 (12.22%) TypeScript
5 100 (10.72%) Go
6 90 (9.65%) JavaScript
7 58 (6.22%) C#
8 45 (4.82%) Bash
9 28 (3.00%) Scala
10 20 (2.14%) PowerShell
11 19 (2.04%) Rust
12 16 (1.71%) C++
13 15 (1.61%) Shell Script
14 13 (1.39%) Bicep
15 10 (1.07%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.96%) PL/SQL
17 6 (0.64%) Kotlin
17 6 (0.64%) Perl
17 6 (0.64%) PHP
18 5 (0.54%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 201 (21.54%) Security Cleared
2 158 (16.93%) SC Cleared
3 52 (5.57%) Degree
4 25 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (1.82%) AWS Certification
6 16 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (1.71%) DV Cleared
7 13 (1.39%) Master's Degree
8 11 (1.18%) Azure Certification
9 7 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.75%) SnowPro
10 4 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.32%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.11%) CISSP
13 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.11%) OCP
13 1 (0.11%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (11.15%) Data Quality
2 50 (5.36%) QA
3 41 (4.39%) GDPR
4 30 (3.22%) Accessibility
5 19 (2.04%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.96%) NIST
8 8 (0.86%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.75%) SEPA
10 5 (0.54%) NCSC
11 4 (0.43%) SLA
11 4 (0.43%) WCAG
12 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.32%) PSD2
13 2 (0.21%) EMIR
13 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.21%) MiFID
14 1 (0.11%) Basel III
14 1 (0.11%) HL7
14 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 322 (34.51%) Docker
2 6 (0.64%) etcd
3 3 (0.32%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.21%) HDFS
4 2 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 367 (39.34%) Kubernetes
2 195 (20.90%) Terraform
3 128 (13.72%) Prometheus
4 127 (13.61%) Grafana
5 57 (6.11%) Ansible
6 24 (2.57%) Argo
7 12 (1.29%) Istio
8 11 (1.18%) Kibana
9 9 (0.96%) Kiali
10 7 (0.75%) Fluentd
10 7 (0.75%) Puppet
11 6 (0.64%) Kustomize
11 6 (0.64%) linkerd
11 6 (0.64%) logstash
11 6 (0.64%) Podman
12 5 (0.54%) Rancher
13 3 (0.32%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.21%) CA Wily
14 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 89 (9.54%) Databricks
2 76 (8.15%) Splunk
3 66 (7.07%) Oracle
4 42 (4.50%) Microsoft
5 36 (3.86%) Google
6 28 (3.00%) Confluent
7 23 (2.47%) Informatica
8 17 (1.82%) IBM
9 13 (1.39%) Dynatrace
9 13 (1.39%) Salesforce
10 12 (1.29%) Red Hat
11 11 (1.18%) ServiceNow
12 9 (0.96%) MuleSoft
12 9 (0.96%) Solace
12 9 (0.96%) Talend
13 7 (0.75%) AppDynamics
13 7 (0.75%) Sybase
14 6 (0.64%) Pega
14 6 (0.64%) VMware
15 5 (0.54%) Teradata