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 26 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 119 171
Rank change year-on-year -12 +52 -52
Contract jobs citing Kafka 834 705 643
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.21% 2.25% 1.45%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.97% 10.05% 6.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 545 430 509
10th Percentile £363 £381 £423
25th Percentile £416 £469 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £585 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.40% +1.74% -11.54%
75th Percentile £650 £738 £710
90th Percentile £738 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £462 £475 £525
% change year-on-year -2.84% -9.52% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 4 4
10th Percentile £38.58 £42.53 £47.39
25th Percentile £40.00 £68.22 £58.71
Median hourly rate £73.50 £88.75 £71.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.18% +24.13% -3.38%
75th Percentile £95.00 £93.75 £81.00
90th Percentile £99.50 - £86.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £85.00 £71.50
% change year-on-year -52.94% +18.88% -2.05%

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 8,368 7,016 9,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.18% 22.43% 21.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,575 4,448 6,613
10th Percentile £358 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £535 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.21% -0.47% -6.52%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £770 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 91 189
10th Percentile £34.60 £25.09 £25.95
25th Percentile £46.25 £38.38 £46.18
Median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - +13.64% -15.38%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.10 £77.19 £76.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.50 £65.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -0.77% +18.18% -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 26 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 6 months to 26 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 6 months to 26 January 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 -7 733 £550 -10.20% 282
London -3 487 £598 -4.40% 109
Work from Home +18 294 £575 -4.17% 241
UK excluding London -23 221 £462 -2.84% 224
North of England -24 98 £488 -11.36% 39
South East -10 53 £433 -17.62% 96
North West -18 48 £449 -14.57% 27
Yorkshire -20 42 £575 -17.86% 7
Midlands -23 38 £500 +40.45% 11
Scotland +2 28 £463 +22.03% 13
West Midlands -25 22 £550 +21.55% 7
South West -7 20 £550 -15.38% 28
East Midlands -17 16 £402 +12.92% 4
North East -8 12 £463 -25.91% 5
East of England -25 1 £450 +41.07% 27

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 76 (9.11%) Apache Spark
2 42 (5.04%) Apache
3 40 (4.80%) Apache Airflow
4 38 (4.56%) Confluence
5 5 (0.60%) Camunda
5 5 (0.60%) Ethereum
5 5 (0.60%) Hyperledger
6 4 (0.48%) CMS
6 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.36%) MQSeries
7 3 (0.36%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.24%) JBoss
8 2 (0.24%) Luigi
8 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.12%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Pig
9 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.12%) Mule
9 1 (0.12%) Mule ESB
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
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
Cloud Services
1 473 (56.71%) AWS
2 222 (26.62%) Azure
3 154 (18.47%) GitHub
4 128 (15.35%) GCP
5 122 (14.63%) Serverless
6 111 (13.31%) GitHub Actions
7 97 (11.63%) Amazon S3
8 90 (10.79%) AWS Lambda
9 68 (8.15%) Amazon EKS
10 65 (7.79%) AWS CloudFormation
11 45 (5.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 45 (5.40%) Amazon ECS
12 42 (5.04%) Amazon Kinesis
13 40 (4.80%) Amazon SQS
13 40 (4.80%) Power Platform
14 39 (4.68%) OpenShift
15 36 (4.32%) Azure Data Factory
15 36 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
16 32 (3.84%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (2.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.56%) Firewall
2 12 (1.44%) DNS
2 12 (1.44%) HTTP
2 12 (1.44%) SSL
3 7 (0.84%) Kerberos
3 7 (0.84%) SSH
4 6 (0.72%) FTP
4 6 (0.72%) SMS
5 5 (0.60%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.36%) VPN
7 2 (0.24%) MQTT
8 1 (0.12%) Broadband
8 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
8 1 (0.12%) Internet
8 1 (0.12%) NAS
8 1 (0.12%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 166 (19.90%) PostgreSQL
2 153 (18.35%) MongoDB
3 131 (15.71%) NoSQL
4 75 (8.99%) Apache Cassandra
5 50 (6.00%) Relational Database
6 49 (5.88%) Amazon RDS
7 44 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
7 44 (5.28%) Redis
8 43 (5.16%) DynamoDB
8 43 (5.16%) Elasticsearch
9 42 (5.04%) Big Data
10 39 (4.68%) SQL Server
11 37 (4.44%) Data Lake
12 30 (3.60%) Amazon Athena
12 30 (3.60%) Power BI
13 29 (3.48%) Amazon Redshift
14 26 (3.12%) DB2
14 26 (3.12%) Hadoop
15 25 (3.00%) MySQL
16 24 (2.88%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 153 (18.35%) Jenkins
2 133 (15.95%) GitLab
3 104 (12.47%) Git
4 82 (9.83%) JUnit
5 58 (6.95%) JIRA
6 41 (4.92%) Mockito
7 25 (3.00%) JMeter
8 24 (2.88%) Cucumber
8 24 (2.88%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (2.52%) Gradle
10 14 (1.68%) Maven
11 11 (1.32%) Gatling
12 10 (1.20%) Artifactory
12 10 (1.20%) CircleCI
13 9 (1.08%) SoapUI
13 9 (1.08%) SonarQube
14 8 (0.96%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.96%) Postman
15 7 (0.84%) Selenium
16 6 (0.72%) Terragrunt
General
1 226 (27.10%) Finance
2 205 (24.58%) Social Skills
3 124 (14.87%) Banking
4 76 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
5 66 (7.91%) Public Sector
6 46 (5.52%) Investment Banking
7 24 (2.88%) Front Office
8 16 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (1.56%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.08%) Marketing
12 7 (0.84%) Retail
13 5 (0.60%) Aerospace
13 5 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.60%) Law
14 3 (0.36%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.36%) Telecoms
15 2 (0.24%) Games
15 2 (0.24%) Legal
15 2 (0.24%) Military
Job Titles
1 317 (38.01%) Developer
2 246 (29.50%) Senior
3 183 (21.94%) Java Developer
4 124 (14.87%) Senior Developer
5 103 (12.35%) Data Engineer
6 80 (9.59%) Lead
7 75 (8.99%) Senior Java Developer
8 74 (8.87%) Software Engineer
9 63 (7.55%) Architect
10 58 (6.95%) DevOps Engineer
11 42 (5.04%) Full-Stack Developer
12 41 (4.92%) Kafka Developer
13 40 (4.80%) AWS Engineer
14 39 (4.68%) Kafka Engineer
15 37 (4.44%) AWS Developer
16 33 (3.96%) Java Engineer
17 29 (3.48%) AWS Architect
17 29 (3.48%) Senior Data Engineer
18 28 (3.36%) Platform Engineer
18 28 (3.36%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 203 (24.34%) Spring
2 168 (20.14%) Spring Boot
3 99 (11.87%) REST
4 96 (11.51%) gRPC
5 78 (9.35%) RESTful
6 72 (8.63%) React
7 68 (8.15%) RabbitMQ
8 65 (7.79%) Node.js
9 42 (5.04%) AngularJS
10 34 (4.08%) Middleware
11 33 (3.96%) Hibernate
12 32 (3.84%) JMS
12 32 (3.84%) Keycloak
13 30 (3.60%) ActiveMQ
13 30 (3.60%) PySpark
14 29 (3.48%) .NET
15 28 (3.36%) JSON
15 28 (3.36%) OAuth
16 26 (3.12%) OAuth2
17 24 (2.88%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 114 (13.67%) Distributed Systems
2 102 (12.23%) Cloud Native
3 40 (4.80%) Management Information System
4 33 (3.96%) Product Ownership
5 30 (3.60%) Equities
6 28 (3.36%) Data Structures
7 22 (2.64%) Derivative
8 21 (2.52%) Replication
9 18 (2.16%) Market Risk
10 16 (1.92%) Fixed Income
11 14 (1.68%) Legacy Applications
12 13 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
13 12 (1.44%) Distributed Computing
14 11 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
14 11 (1.32%) Onboarding
15 10 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
16 8 (0.96%) Algorithms
16 8 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
16 8 (0.96%) Public Cloud
16 8 (0.96%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 154 (18.47%) Linux
2 79 (9.47%) Unix
3 25 (3.00%) Windows
4 13 (1.56%) Mac OS X
5 7 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.60%) AIX
6 5 (0.60%) CentOS
7 3 (0.36%) VMS
8 2 (0.24%) zOS
9 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 360 (43.17%) CI/CD
2 337 (40.41%) Microservices
3 291 (34.89%) Agile
4 243 (29.14%) DevOps
5 214 (25.66%) Software Engineering
6 176 (21.10%) Containerisation
6 176 (21.10%) Problem-Solving
7 165 (19.78%) Event-Driven
8 145 (17.39%) Infrastructure as Code
9 142 (17.03%) Observability
10 122 (14.63%) Test Automation
11 117 (14.03%) Data Pipeline
12 107 (12.83%) Analytics
12 107 (12.83%) Open Source
13 100 (11.99%) TDD
14 94 (11.27%) ETL
15 93 (11.15%) Data Engineering
16 90 (10.79%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 85 (10.19%) Data Modelling
18 80 (9.59%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 400 (47.96%) Java
2 285 (34.17%) Python
3 239 (28.66%) SQL
4 118 (14.15%) Go
5 69 (8.27%) C#
6 62 (7.43%) JavaScript
7 47 (5.64%) Shell Script
8 44 (5.28%) Bash
9 42 (5.04%) C++
10 38 (4.56%) TypeScript
11 30 (3.60%) Scala
12 16 (1.92%) Rust
13 14 (1.68%) PL/SQL
14 10 (1.20%) PowerShell
15 9 (1.08%) Perl
16 7 (0.84%) Korn
17 6 (0.72%) Groovy
17 6 (0.72%) R
18 5 (0.60%) RPG IV
18 5 (0.60%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 181 (21.70%) Security Cleared
2 161 (19.30%) SC Cleared
3 36 (4.32%) Degree
4 31 (3.72%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (3.24%) Azure Certification
6 19 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
7 18 (2.16%) AWS Certification
8 17 (2.04%) DV Cleared
9 10 (1.20%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.96%) OCP
10 8 (0.96%) Oracle Certification
11 6 (0.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.24%) CBAP
13 2 (0.24%) CSPO
13 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
14 1 (0.12%) SAFe Agilist
14 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (8.39%) Data Quality
2 43 (5.16%) QA
3 31 (3.72%) GDPR
4 10 (1.20%) NCSC
5 9 (1.08%) 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%) JSP 440
System Software
1 307 (36.81%) Docker
2 8 (0.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.48%) HDFS
4 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 344 (41.25%) Kubernetes
2 201 (24.10%) Terraform
3 96 (11.51%) Grafana
4 79 (9.47%) Prometheus
5 66 (7.91%) Ansible
6 29 (3.48%) Argo
7 15 (1.80%) Progress Chef
8 8 (0.96%) Istio
8 8 (0.96%) Kiali
8 8 (0.96%) Packer
9 7 (0.84%) linkerd
9 7 (0.84%) logstash
10 5 (0.60%) Puppet
10 5 (0.60%) Rancher
11 4 (0.48%) Fluentd
11 4 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
11 4 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.36%) Hadoop YARN
13 2 (0.24%) Kibana
13 2 (0.24%) QRadar
Vendors
1 74 (8.87%) Oracle
2 57 (6.83%) Databricks
3 53 (6.35%) Splunk
4 35 (4.20%) Confluent
5 30 (3.60%) Google
5 30 (3.60%) Microsoft
6 28 (3.36%) IBM
7 24 (2.88%) VMware
8 22 (2.64%) Sybase
9 19 (2.28%) Dynatrace
10 13 (1.56%) Cloudera
11 12 (1.44%) Informatica
12 11 (1.32%) Red Hat
13 9 (1.08%) ServiceNow
14 8 (0.96%) Foundry
14 8 (0.96%) Palantir
14 8 (0.96%) SAP
15 7 (0.84%) Atlassian
16 6 (0.72%) CA Agile Central
16 6 (0.72%) PagerDuty