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 8 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 104 140
Rank change year-on-year -45 +36 +12
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,018 838 671
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.55% 1.72%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.94% 11.26% 7.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 630 540 466
10th Percentile £375 £385 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £724
90th Percentile £775 £781 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +5.43% -4.18% -18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 3 9
10th Percentile £56.40 £54.65 £22.55
25th Percentile £65.00 £57.13 £27.00
Median hourly rate £71.25 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £88.75 £71.23 £38.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £75.71 £45.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -2.16% +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 10,238 7,443 8,549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.10% 22.63% 21.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,667 5,008 5,796
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £638 £630 £669
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.50% -6.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 267 171 243
10th Percentile £28.22 £30.00 £22.50
25th Percentile £41.30 £41.00 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +10.00% -16.67%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £81.01 £74.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £57.25
% change year-on-year +13.04% +0.44% -2.29%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 -47 859 £550 - 516
London -39 509 £575 -8.00% 385
UK excluding London -23 380 £495 +5.43% 187
Work from Home -64 264 £550 -4.35% 200
North of England -20 176 £470 +0.11% 49
Yorkshire +3 83 £475 -5.00% 23
North West -31 73 £430 -8.42% 17
South East -34 62 £513 +15.82% 55
Scotland -20 57 £449 -4.57% 28
Midlands -52 37 £500 +19.05% 10
South West -31 28 £500 -9.09% 31
North East -21 27 £426 -8.49% 9
East of England +1 25 £513 +2.50% 4
West Midlands -50 22 £514 +2.80% 7
East Midlands -14 15 £470 +29.66% 3
Northern Ireland +2 3 - - 8
Wales -13 1 £375 - 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 (13.06%) Apache Spark
2 69 (6.78%) Apache
3 60 (5.89%) Apache Airflow
4 18 (1.77%) Confluence
5 9 (0.88%) Camunda
6 6 (0.59%) CMS
6 6 (0.59%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.59%) WebSphere
7 4 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
8 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.29%) Mule
9 2 (0.20%) Apache Pig
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 7 (0.69%) 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 2 (0.20%) Endur
1 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
1 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.098%) Actimize
2 1 (0.098%) Bloomberg AIM
2 1 (0.098%) Fidessa
2 1 (0.098%) FIS Private Capital Suite
2 1 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.098%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.098%) SAP IS-U
2 1 (0.098%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 598 (58.74%) AWS
2 331 (32.51%) Azure
3 201 (19.74%) GCP
4 155 (15.23%) GitHub
5 111 (10.90%) GitHub Actions
6 107 (10.51%) Serverless
7 84 (8.25%) AWS Lambda
8 79 (7.76%) Amazon S3
9 73 (7.17%) Amazon EKS
10 70 (6.88%) OpenShift
11 69 (6.78%) Azure DevOps
12 62 (6.09%) Snowflake
13 52 (5.11%) Amazon SQS
14 48 (4.72%) dbt
15 47 (4.62%) Amazon ECS
16 42 (4.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 42 (4.13%) Power Platform
17 32 (3.14%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (2.95%) Azure Data Factory
18 30 (2.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.06%) HTTP
2 13 (1.28%) DNS
3 10 (0.98%) Firewall
3 10 (0.98%) Network Security
4 7 (0.69%) MQTT
4 7 (0.69%) SSL
5 5 (0.49%) TCP/IP
6 4 (0.39%) NAS
6 4 (0.39%) SAN
7 3 (0.29%) 4G
7 3 (0.29%) 5G
7 3 (0.29%) Internet
7 3 (0.29%) SSH
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%) FIX Connectivity
9 1 (0.098%) MIMO
9 1 (0.098%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (17.98%) PostgreSQL
2 163 (16.01%) MongoDB
3 133 (13.06%) NoSQL
4 101 (9.92%) Relational Database
5 62 (6.09%) Big Data
6 61 (5.99%) Data Warehouse
7 60 (5.89%) SQL Server
8 54 (5.30%) Data Lake
9 45 (4.42%) Redis
10 40 (3.93%) Power BI
11 39 (3.83%) MySQL
12 37 (3.63%) Elasticsearch
13 36 (3.54%) Apache Cassandra
13 36 (3.54%) Flink
14 33 (3.24%) Hadoop
15 32 (3.14%) BigQuery
15 32 (3.14%) DynamoDB
16 31 (3.05%) Metadata
17 25 (2.46%) Delta Lake
17 25 (2.46%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 191 (18.76%) Jenkins
2 159 (15.62%) Git
3 135 (13.26%) GitLab
4 71 (6.97%) JUnit
5 64 (6.29%) Mockito
6 54 (5.30%) Gradle
7 44 (4.32%) JIRA
8 41 (4.03%) Selenium
9 30 (2.95%) Maven
10 29 (2.85%) Cucumber
11 20 (1.96%) REST Assured
11 20 (1.96%) SonarQube
12 18 (1.77%) Liquibase
13 17 (1.67%) Gatling
14 15 (1.47%) Postman
15 12 (1.18%) Bitbucket
16 11 (1.08%) Cypress.io
17 10 (0.98%) Serenity BDD
18 8 (0.79%) JMeter
19 7 (0.69%) Claude Code
General
1 259 (25.44%) Finance
2 181 (17.78%) Social Skills
3 138 (13.56%) Banking
4 103 (10.12%) Public Sector
5 100 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
6 42 (4.13%) Front Office
7 32 (3.14%) Retail
8 29 (2.85%) Investment Banking
9 21 (2.06%) Financial Institution
10 19 (1.87%) Telecoms
11 18 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
13 15 (1.47%) Law
14 12 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.08%) Billing
16 9 (0.88%) Publishing
17 8 (0.79%) Games
17 8 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
17 8 (0.79%) Military
18 7 (0.69%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 331 (32.51%) Developer
2 192 (18.86%) Senior
3 173 (16.99%) Java Developer
4 144 (14.15%) Architect
5 140 (13.75%) Data Engineer
6 103 (10.12%) Lead
7 86 (8.45%) Software Engineer
8 76 (7.47%) Java Engineer
9 74 (7.27%) Senior Developer
10 62 (6.09%) Solutions Architect
11 50 (4.91%) DevOps Engineer
12 43 (4.22%) Senior Java Developer
13 40 (3.93%) AWS Architect
13 40 (3.93%) Full-Stack Developer
14 36 (3.54%) Python Engineer
15 34 (3.34%) AWS Engineer
15 34 (3.34%) Data Architect
16 33 (3.24%) Java Software Engineer
16 33 (3.24%) Kafka Engineer
16 33 (3.24%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (23.97%) Spring
2 232 (22.79%) Spring Boot
3 191 (18.76%) REST
4 148 (14.54%) React
5 143 (14.05%) RESTful
6 119 (11.69%) RabbitMQ
7 78 (7.66%) Node.js
8 70 (6.88%) JSON
9 69 (6.78%) GraphQL
10 53 (5.21%) OAuth
11 52 (5.11%) OpenTelemetry
11 52 (5.11%) Redux
12 45 (4.42%) PySpark
13 44 (4.32%) Swagger
14 43 (4.22%) OpenAPI
15 40 (3.93%) OAuth2
16 38 (3.73%) .NET
16 38 (3.73%) Middleware
17 37 (3.63%) AngularJS
18 36 (3.54%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 197 (19.35%) Distributed Systems
2 194 (19.06%) Cloud Native
3 41 (4.03%) Data Structures
4 40 (3.93%) Product Ownership
5 32 (3.14%) Fixed Income
6 31 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
7 30 (2.95%) Algorithms
8 27 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
9 26 (2.55%) Onboarding
9 26 (2.55%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (2.16%) Management Information System
11 19 (1.87%) AI Agents
11 19 (1.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 17 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
12 17 (1.67%) Public Cloud
13 16 (1.57%) Replication
13 16 (1.57%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 14 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
15 13 (1.28%) Equities
16 12 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 115 (11.30%) Linux
2 64 (6.29%) Unix
3 25 (2.46%) Windows
4 10 (0.98%) Mac OS X
5 9 (0.88%) 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
9 1 (0.098%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.098%) CentOS
9 1 (0.098%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.098%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 500 (49.12%) CI/CD
2 383 (37.62%) Microservices
3 364 (35.76%) Agile
4 358 (35.17%) Event-Driven
5 342 (33.60%) DevOps
6 250 (24.56%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 237 (23.28%) Observability
8 224 (22.00%) Containerisation
9 194 (19.06%) Test Automation
10 191 (18.76%) Software Engineering
11 190 (18.66%) Data Pipeline
12 182 (17.88%) Infrastructure as Code
13 154 (15.13%) AI
14 153 (15.03%) Data Modelling
15 152 (14.93%) Problem-Solving
16 144 (14.15%) Analytics
17 139 (13.65%) ETL
18 132 (12.97%) Data Engineering
19 121 (11.89%) TDD
20 110 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 454 (44.60%) Java
2 354 (34.77%) Python
3 318 (31.24%) SQL
4 122 (11.98%) TypeScript
5 104 (10.22%) JavaScript
6 69 (6.78%) Go
7 67 (6.58%) Bash
8 59 (5.80%) C#
9 36 (3.54%) Scala
10 32 (3.14%) PowerShell
11 24 (2.36%) PL/SQL
12 19 (1.87%) Shell Script
13 17 (1.67%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.08%) Rust
15 10 (0.98%) Bicep
15 10 (0.98%) Groovy
15 10 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.88%) C++
17 7 (0.69%) PHP
18 6 (0.59%) Perl
Qualifications
1 233 (22.89%) Security Cleared
2 182 (17.88%) SC Cleared
3 47 (4.62%) Degree
4 33 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.96%) DV Cleared
7 14 (1.38%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.98%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.88%) Azure Certification
10 6 (0.59%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.39%) ISTQB
12 4 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.29%) PhD
14 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
15 1 (0.098%) CISM
15 1 (0.098%) ITIL Certification
15 1 (0.098%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (9.43%) Data Quality
2 58 (5.70%) QA
3 43 (4.22%) Accessibility
4 31 (3.05%) GDPR
5 24 (2.36%) ISO 20022
6 10 (0.98%) SEPA
7 8 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.59%) WCAG
9 4 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
9 4 (0.39%) NIST
10 3 (0.29%) ISO 15022
10 3 (0.29%) SLA
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
12 1 (0.098%) GRC
System Software
1 356 (34.97%) Docker
2 6 (0.59%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 6 (0.59%) etcd
3 3 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
4 2 (0.20%) HDFS
5 1 (0.098%) OpenSSH
5 1 (0.098%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 438 (43.03%) Kubernetes
2 201 (19.74%) Terraform
3 117 (11.49%) Grafana
4 115 (11.30%) Prometheus
5 61 (5.99%) Ansible
6 27 (2.65%) Argo
7 17 (1.67%) Control-M
8 12 (1.18%) Istio
8 12 (1.18%) Kibana
8 12 (1.18%) Podman
9 10 (0.98%) Puppet
10 9 (0.88%) Kustomize
11 7 (0.69%) Fluentd
11 7 (0.69%) logstash
12 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
12 5 (0.49%) Rancher
13 3 (0.29%) Bosun
13 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.20%) CA Wily
14 2 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 93 (9.14%) Oracle
2 85 (8.35%) Databricks
3 55 (5.40%) Splunk
4 50 (4.91%) Microsoft
5 48 (4.72%) Google
6 29 (2.85%) Confluent
6 29 (2.85%) IBM
7 28 (2.75%) Dynatrace
8 25 (2.46%) Informatica
9 17 (1.67%) MuleSoft
9 17 (1.67%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.38%) OpenAI
10 14 (1.38%) Solace
11 12 (1.18%) SAP
12 9 (0.88%) Red Hat
13 8 (0.79%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.79%) Sybase
13 8 (0.79%) TIBCO
14 7 (0.69%) New Relic
14 7 (0.69%) VMware