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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 101 140
Rank change year-on-year -40 +39 +13
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,018 845 694
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.59% 1.69%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.95% 11.45% 7.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 612 546 491
10th Percentile £381 £385 £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 £709
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 17 4 9
10th Percentile £56.55 £43.38 £22.55
25th Percentile £64.00 £49.56 £27.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.14% +111.61% -64.10%
75th Percentile £85.00 £67.49 £38.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £74.22 £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 10,235 7,379 8,828
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.41% 22.59% 21.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,677 4,985 6,032
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £543
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -6.45% -1.36%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £664
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £500
% change year-on-year +5.87% -5.54% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 155 260
10th Percentile £29.07 £30.10 £23.70
25th Percentile £46.39 £38.52 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £74.82 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.61 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £62.50 £58.30
% change year-on-year +8.00% +7.20% -0.87%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -40 868 £550 - 313
London -38 510 £575 -8.00% 213
UK excluding London -31 382 £500 +6.61% 146
Work from Home -56 286 £551 -4.26% 114
North of England -16 177 £485 +4.30% 37
Yorkshire -6 81 £500 - 13
North West -27 78 £453 -3.52% 15
South East -43 65 £513 +17.82% 51
Scotland -22 50 £450 -4.26% 18
Midlands -53 42 £500 +13.51% 8
South West -22 30 £500 -9.09% 23
North East -17 27 £426 -8.00% 9
West Midlands -56 26 £500 - 5
East of England -10 23 £550 +10.00% 6
East Midlands -13 16 £459 +31.38% 3
Northern Ireland +3 3 - - 4
Wales -15 2 £313 - 1

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
1 135 (13.26%) Apache Spark
2 73 (7.17%) Apache
3 62 (6.09%) Apache Airflow
4 17 (1.67%) Confluence
5 6 (0.59%) Camunda
5 6 (0.59%) CMS
5 6 (0.59%) WebSphere
6 5 (0.49%) Apache Pulsar
7 4 (0.39%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.29%) Mule
9 2 (0.20%) Ethereum
9 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) JBoss
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 (0.79%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.20%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.098%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.098%) Maya
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) 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 (0.098%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.098%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.098%) SAP IS-U
3 1 (0.098%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 605 (59.43%) AWS
2 315 (30.94%) Azure
3 202 (19.84%) GCP
4 149 (14.64%) GitHub
5 105 (10.31%) Serverless
6 102 (10.02%) GitHub Actions
7 83 (8.15%) Amazon S3
8 82 (8.06%) AWS Lambda
9 73 (7.17%) OpenShift
10 65 (6.39%) Amazon EKS
11 63 (6.19%) Azure DevOps
12 60 (5.89%) Snowflake
13 51 (5.01%) Amazon SQS
14 47 (4.62%) Amazon ECS
14 47 (4.62%) dbt
15 44 (4.32%) Power Platform
16 42 (4.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 37 (3.63%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (2.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 27 (2.65%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.47%) HTTP
2 10 (0.98%) Firewall
2 10 (0.98%) Network Security
3 7 (0.69%) MQTT
4 6 (0.59%) DNS
4 6 (0.59%) SSL
5 5 (0.49%) NAS
5 5 (0.49%) SAN
6 4 (0.39%) Internet
7 3 (0.29%) 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 (0.098%) 4G
9 1 (0.098%) 5G
9 1 (0.098%) FIX Connectivity
9 1 (0.098%) MIMO
9 1 (0.098%) SSH
9 1 (0.098%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (18.17%) PostgreSQL
2 171 (16.80%) MongoDB
3 128 (12.57%) NoSQL
4 108 (10.61%) Relational Database
5 68 (6.68%) Big Data
6 61 (5.99%) Data Warehouse
7 59 (5.80%) SQL Server
8 56 (5.50%) Data Lake
9 44 (4.32%) Redis
10 43 (4.22%) MySQL
11 41 (4.03%) Power BI
12 39 (3.83%) Elasticsearch
12 39 (3.83%) Hadoop
13 38 (3.73%) Apache Cassandra
14 37 (3.63%) Flink
15 35 (3.44%) Metadata
16 32 (3.14%) BigQuery
16 32 (3.14%) DynamoDB
17 25 (2.46%) RDBMS
18 23 (2.26%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 180 (17.68%) Jenkins
2 143 (14.05%) Git
3 130 (12.77%) GitLab
4 71 (6.97%) JUnit
5 61 (5.99%) Mockito
6 45 (4.42%) Gradle
7 41 (4.03%) JIRA
8 36 (3.54%) Selenium
9 27 (2.65%) Cucumber
10 24 (2.36%) Maven
10 24 (2.36%) REST Assured
11 20 (1.96%) Gatling
12 18 (1.77%) SonarQube
13 17 (1.67%) Liquibase
14 16 (1.57%) Postman
15 15 (1.47%) Serenity BDD
16 10 (0.98%) Cypress.io
17 7 (0.69%) JMeter
18 6 (0.59%) Claude Code
18 6 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 270 (26.52%) Finance
2 186 (18.27%) Social Skills
3 136 (13.36%) Banking
4 102 (10.02%) Public Sector
5 93 (9.14%) Analytical Skills
6 48 (4.72%) Front Office
7 35 (3.44%) Investment Banking
8 29 (2.85%) Retail
9 24 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (1.77%) Financial Institution
11 16 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (1.47%) Law
13 14 (1.38%) Telecoms
14 10 (0.98%) Billing
15 9 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
15 9 (0.88%) Publishing
16 8 (0.79%) Military
17 7 (0.69%) Automotive
17 7 (0.69%) Games
Job Titles
1 334 (32.81%) Developer
2 197 (19.35%) Senior
3 173 (16.99%) Java Developer
4 142 (13.95%) Data Engineer
5 140 (13.75%) Architect
6 112 (11.00%) Lead
7 98 (9.63%) Software Engineer
8 82 (8.06%) Senior Developer
9 78 (7.66%) Java Engineer
10 58 (5.70%) Solutions Architect
11 51 (5.01%) Senior Java Developer
12 47 (4.62%) DevOps Engineer
13 43 (4.22%) AWS Architect
14 39 (3.83%) Full-Stack Developer
15 36 (3.54%) Data Architect
15 36 (3.54%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 36 (3.54%) Lead Developer
16 35 (3.44%) Java Software Engineer
17 33 (3.24%) AWS Engineer
17 33 (3.24%) Kafka Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (24.95%) Spring
2 242 (23.77%) Spring Boot
3 168 (16.50%) REST
4 145 (14.24%) React
5 141 (13.85%) RESTful
6 115 (11.30%) RabbitMQ
7 87 (8.55%) Node.js
8 70 (6.88%) GraphQL
9 67 (6.58%) JSON
10 57 (5.60%) Redux
11 53 (5.21%) OpenTelemetry
12 42 (4.13%) OAuth
12 42 (4.13%) Swagger
13 41 (4.03%) OpenAPI
14 37 (3.63%) Middleware
15 36 (3.54%) PySpark
16 35 (3.44%) AngularJS
17 34 (3.34%) OAuth2
18 33 (3.24%) Apache Avro
18 33 (3.24%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 207 (20.33%) Distributed Systems
2 186 (18.27%) Cloud Native
3 41 (4.03%) Data Structures
4 39 (3.83%) Fixed Income
5 36 (3.54%) Product Ownership
6 30 (2.95%) Algorithms
7 29 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
8 27 (2.65%) Management Information System
9 24 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (2.26%) Onboarding
10 23 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (1.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 18 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
13 17 (1.67%) Hybrid Cloud
14 16 (1.57%) AI Agents
14 16 (1.57%) Public Cloud
15 14 (1.38%) Clustering
15 14 (1.38%) Equities
16 13 (1.28%) Distributed Architecture
16 13 (1.28%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 107 (10.51%) Linux
2 58 (5.70%) Unix
3 27 (2.65%) Windows
4 10 (0.98%) Mac OS X
5 8 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.29%) 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 (0.098%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.098%) CentOS
9 1 (0.098%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 483 (47.45%) CI/CD
2 390 (38.31%) Microservices
3 355 (34.87%) Agile
4 338 (33.20%) Event-Driven
5 325 (31.93%) DevOps
6 240 (23.58%) Observability
7 235 (23.08%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 223 (21.91%) Containerisation
9 196 (19.25%) Software Engineering
10 192 (18.86%) Data Pipeline
11 175 (17.19%) Infrastructure as Code
12 173 (16.99%) Test Automation
13 159 (15.62%) Problem-Solving
14 157 (15.42%) Data Modelling
15 156 (15.32%) AI
16 155 (15.23%) Analytics
17 146 (14.34%) ETL
18 142 (13.95%) Data Engineering
19 125 (12.28%) TDD
20 110 (10.81%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 473 (46.46%) Java
2 352 (34.58%) Python
3 311 (30.55%) SQL
4 126 (12.38%) TypeScript
5 94 (9.23%) JavaScript
6 81 (7.96%) Go
7 56 (5.50%) Bash
8 53 (5.21%) C#
9 35 (3.44%) Scala
10 26 (2.55%) PowerShell
11 20 (1.96%) PL/SQL
12 17 (1.67%) Kotlin
12 17 (1.67%) Shell Script
13 12 (1.18%) Rust
14 11 (1.08%) Bicep
15 10 (0.98%) C++
15 10 (0.98%) Groovy
15 10 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.69%) PHP
17 6 (0.59%) Perl
Qualifications
1 227 (22.30%) Security Cleared
2 173 (16.99%) SC Cleared
3 50 (4.91%) Degree
4 32 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (2.06%) DV Cleared
6 19 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.57%) Master's Degree
8 15 (1.47%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.69%) Azure Certification
9 7 (0.69%) SnowPro
10 5 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.29%) PhD
11 3 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.098%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.098%) PMP
13 1 (0.098%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (10.12%) Data Quality
2 54 (5.30%) QA
3 47 (4.62%) Accessibility
4 35 (3.44%) GDPR
5 18 (1.77%) ISO 20022
6 9 (0.88%) SEPA
7 7 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.49%) WCAG
9 4 (0.39%) NIST
9 4 (0.39%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.29%) ISO 15022
10 3 (0.29%) SLA
11 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.20%) EMIR
11 2 (0.20%) IFRS
11 2 (0.20%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.20%) MiFID
11 2 (0.20%) NCSC
11 2 (0.20%) Solvency II
12 1 (0.098%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 344 (33.79%) Docker
2 6 (0.59%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 6 (0.59%) etcd
3 3 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
4 2 (0.20%) HDFS
5 1 (0.098%) OpenSSH
5 1 (0.098%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 423 (41.55%) Kubernetes
2 204 (20.04%) Terraform
3 126 (12.38%) Prometheus
4 124 (12.18%) Grafana
5 60 (5.89%) Ansible
6 21 (2.06%) Argo
7 14 (1.38%) Control-M
8 12 (1.18%) Kibana
9 11 (1.08%) Podman
10 10 (0.98%) Istio
11 9 (0.88%) Puppet
12 7 (0.69%) Fluentd
12 7 (0.69%) Kustomize
13 6 (0.59%) logstash
14 5 (0.49%) Rancher
15 4 (0.39%) Check_MK
16 3 (0.29%) Bosun
16 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
17 2 (0.20%) Amdocs OSS
17 2 (0.20%) CloudHub
Vendors
1 83 (8.15%) Oracle
2 79 (7.76%) Databricks
3 60 (5.89%) Splunk
4 48 (4.72%) Microsoft
5 47 (4.62%) Google
6 27 (2.65%) Confluent
7 26 (2.55%) Informatica
8 20 (1.96%) IBM
9 18 (1.77%) Dynatrace
10 15 (1.47%) MuleSoft
10 15 (1.47%) Salesforce
10 15 (1.47%) Solace
11 11 (1.08%) OpenAI
12 10 (0.98%) SAP
13 9 (0.88%) Red Hat
13 9 (0.88%) Talend
14 8 (0.79%) ServiceNow
14 8 (0.79%) Sybase
15 6 (0.59%) Denodo
15 6 (0.59%) Pega