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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 148 106 140
Rank change year-on-year -42 +34 +16
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,014 837 671
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.54% 1.72%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.00% 11.29% 7.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 626 537 467
10th Percentile £375 £385 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £534 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £723
90th Percentile £775 £777 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +3.41% -4.29% -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 10,137 7,412 8,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.98% 22.51% 22.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,603 4,984 5,799
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £412 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £638 £630 £663
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £500
% change year-on-year +6.61% -6.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 171 241
10th Percentile £28.11 £30.00 £22.50
25th Percentile £41.33 £41.00 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £81.01 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £58.91
% change year-on-year +13.04% -2.39% +0.16%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -46 855 £550 - 572
London -41 511 £575 -8.00% 421
UK excluding London -23 376 £485 +3.41% 207
Work from Home -68 262 £550 -4.35% 225
North of England -18 173 £465 -0.85% 57
Yorkshire 0 82 £474 -5.20% 26
North West -26 71 £429 -8.53% 22
South East -44 62 £513 +17.82% 59
Scotland -26 56 £450 -4.26% 29
Midlands -57 37 £500 +19.05% 17
North East -20 27 £426 -8.49% 9
South West -23 27 £500 -9.09% 33
East of England -2 25 £513 - 4
West Midlands -53 22 £514 +2.80% 13
East Midlands -14 15 £470 +29.66% 4
Northern Ireland +4 4 - - 6
Wales -11 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
1 131 (12.92%) Apache Spark
2 70 (6.90%) Apache
3 60 (5.92%) Apache Airflow
4 18 (1.78%) Confluence
5 9 (0.89%) Camunda
6 6 (0.59%) CMS
6 6 (0.59%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.59%) WebSphere
7 4 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
8 3 (0.30%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.30%) Mule
8 3 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
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%) SharePoint
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 (0.099%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.099%) Maya
3 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.20%) Endur
1 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
1 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.099%) Actimize
2 1 (0.099%) Bloomberg AIM
2 1 (0.099%) Fidessa
2 1 (0.099%) FIS Private Capital Suite
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.099%) SAP IS-U
2 1 (0.099%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 595 (58.68%) AWS
2 334 (32.94%) Azure
3 204 (20.12%) GCP
4 160 (15.78%) GitHub
5 115 (11.34%) GitHub Actions
6 107 (10.55%) Serverless
7 83 (8.19%) AWS Lambda
8 77 (7.59%) Amazon S3
9 72 (7.10%) Amazon EKS
10 68 (6.71%) Azure DevOps
10 68 (6.71%) OpenShift
11 64 (6.31%) Snowflake
12 52 (5.13%) Amazon SQS
13 48 (4.73%) dbt
14 46 (4.54%) Amazon ECS
15 42 (4.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 41 (4.04%) Power Platform
17 31 (3.06%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (2.96%) Azure Data Factory
19 28 (2.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.07%) HTTP
2 14 (1.38%) DNS
3 11 (1.08%) Firewall
4 10 (0.99%) Network Security
5 7 (0.69%) MQTT
5 7 (0.69%) SSL
6 5 (0.49%) SAN
6 5 (0.49%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.39%) NAS
7 4 (0.39%) SSH
8 3 (0.30%) 4G
8 3 (0.30%) 5G
8 3 (0.30%) Internet
9 2 (0.20%) NaaS
9 2 (0.20%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.20%) WAN
10 1 (0.099%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.099%) MIMO
10 1 (0.099%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (18.15%) PostgreSQL
2 158 (15.58%) MongoDB
3 133 (13.12%) NoSQL
4 101 (9.96%) Relational Database
5 63 (6.21%) Big Data
6 62 (6.11%) Data Warehouse
7 60 (5.92%) SQL Server
8 50 (4.93%) Data Lake
9 45 (4.44%) Redis
10 39 (3.85%) Elasticsearch
10 39 (3.85%) MySQL
10 39 (3.85%) Power BI
11 36 (3.55%) Flink
12 35 (3.45%) Apache Cassandra
13 33 (3.25%) BigQuery
13 33 (3.25%) Hadoop
14 32 (3.16%) DynamoDB
14 32 (3.16%) Metadata
15 26 (2.56%) Delta Lake
15 26 (2.56%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 194 (19.13%) Jenkins
2 162 (15.98%) Git
3 134 (13.21%) GitLab
4 71 (7.00%) JUnit
5 60 (5.92%) Mockito
6 55 (5.42%) Gradle
7 45 (4.44%) JIRA
8 42 (4.14%) Selenium
9 31 (3.06%) Maven
10 30 (2.96%) Cucumber
11 21 (2.07%) SonarQube
12 20 (1.97%) REST Assured
13 18 (1.78%) Gatling
13 18 (1.78%) Liquibase
14 17 (1.68%) Postman
15 12 (1.18%) Bitbucket
16 11 (1.08%) Cypress.io
17 10 (0.99%) JMeter
17 10 (0.99%) Serenity BDD
18 7 (0.69%) Claude Code
General
1 259 (25.54%) Finance
2 180 (17.75%) Social Skills
3 139 (13.71%) Banking
4 102 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (9.86%) Public Sector
6 42 (4.14%) Front Office
7 33 (3.25%) Retail
8 29 (2.86%) Investment Banking
9 21 (2.07%) Financial Institution
10 18 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 18 (1.78%) Telecoms
11 15 (1.48%) Law
12 14 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
13 12 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (1.08%) Billing
15 9 (0.89%) Publishing
16 8 (0.79%) Games
16 8 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.69%) Marketing
17 7 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 327 (32.25%) Developer
2 194 (19.13%) Senior
3 169 (16.67%) Java Developer
4 143 (14.10%) Architect
5 138 (13.61%) Data Engineer
6 104 (10.26%) Lead
7 85 (8.38%) Software Engineer
8 77 (7.59%) Java Engineer
9 71 (7.00%) Senior Developer
10 61 (6.02%) Solutions Architect
11 48 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
12 41 (4.04%) Senior Java Developer
13 40 (3.94%) AWS Architect
14 39 (3.85%) Full-Stack Developer
15 37 (3.65%) Python Engineer
16 34 (3.35%) AWS Engineer
16 34 (3.35%) Data Architect
17 33 (3.25%) Java Software Engineer
17 33 (3.25%) Kafka Engineer
17 33 (3.25%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (24.06%) Spring
2 233 (22.98%) Spring Boot
3 193 (19.03%) REST
4 149 (14.69%) React
5 143 (14.10%) RESTful
6 120 (11.83%) RabbitMQ
7 76 (7.50%) Node.js
8 68 (6.71%) GraphQL
8 68 (6.71%) JSON
9 55 (5.42%) OAuth
10 52 (5.13%) OpenTelemetry
10 52 (5.13%) Redux
11 46 (4.54%) PySpark
12 44 (4.34%) Swagger
13 43 (4.24%) OpenAPI
14 41 (4.04%) OAuth2
15 40 (3.94%) .NET
16 39 (3.85%) Middleware
17 37 (3.65%) AngularJS
17 37 (3.65%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 192 (18.93%) Cloud Native
1 192 (18.93%) Distributed Systems
2 42 (4.14%) Data Structures
3 41 (4.04%) Product Ownership
4 34 (3.35%) Enterprise Software
5 33 (3.25%) Fixed Income
6 30 (2.96%) Algorithms
7 27 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
7 27 (2.66%) Onboarding
8 26 (2.56%) Self-Motivation
9 22 (2.17%) Management Information System
10 20 (1.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 19 (1.87%) AI Agents
12 18 (1.78%) Replication
13 17 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
13 17 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 16 (1.58%) SWIFT Messaging Network
15 14 (1.38%) Equities
16 13 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
17 12 (1.18%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 111 (10.95%) Linux
2 60 (5.92%) Unix
3 24 (2.37%) Windows
4 9 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.69%) Mac OS X
6 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.30%) 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 (0.099%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.099%) CentOS
9 1 (0.099%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.099%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (49.51%) CI/CD
2 380 (37.48%) Microservices
3 363 (35.80%) Agile
4 359 (35.40%) Event-Driven
5 343 (33.83%) DevOps
6 252 (24.85%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 235 (23.18%) Observability
8 223 (21.99%) Containerisation
9 193 (19.03%) Software Engineering
9 193 (19.03%) Test Automation
10 189 (18.64%) Data Pipeline
11 181 (17.85%) Infrastructure as Code
12 154 (15.19%) AI
13 150 (14.79%) Data Modelling
14 147 (14.50%) Problem-Solving
15 141 (13.91%) Analytics
16 135 (13.31%) ETL
17 128 (12.62%) Data Engineering
18 117 (11.54%) TDD
19 111 (10.95%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 453 (44.67%) Java
2 353 (34.81%) Python
3 320 (31.56%) SQL
4 122 (12.03%) TypeScript
5 106 (10.45%) JavaScript
6 69 (6.80%) Go
7 67 (6.61%) Bash
8 59 (5.82%) C#
9 36 (3.55%) Scala
10 32 (3.16%) PowerShell
11 24 (2.37%) PL/SQL
12 19 (1.87%) Shell Script
13 16 (1.58%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.08%) Rust
15 10 (0.99%) Bicep
15 10 (0.99%) Groovy
15 10 (0.99%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.89%) C++
17 7 (0.69%) PHP
18 6 (0.59%) Perl
Qualifications
1 233 (22.98%) Security Cleared
2 182 (17.95%) SC Cleared
3 48 (4.73%) Degree
4 29 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.97%) DV Cleared
7 13 (1.28%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.99%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.79%) Azure Certification
10 6 (0.59%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (0.49%) ISTQB
12 4 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.30%) PhD
14 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
15 1 (0.099%) CISM
15 1 (0.099%) ITIL Certification
15 1 (0.099%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (9.47%) Data Quality
2 59 (5.82%) QA
3 43 (4.24%) Accessibility
4 31 (3.06%) GDPR
5 24 (2.37%) ISO 20022
6 10 (0.99%) SEPA
7 8 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.59%) WCAG
9 5 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.39%) NIST
10 4 (0.39%) SLA
11 3 (0.30%) ISO 15022
12 2 (0.20%) EMIR
12 2 (0.20%) IFRS
12 2 (0.20%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.20%) MiFID
12 2 (0.20%) NCSC
12 2 (0.20%) Solvency II
13 1 (0.099%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.099%) PSD2
System Software
1 360 (35.50%) Docker
2 7 (0.69%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 6 (0.59%) etcd
4 3 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.20%) HDFS
6 1 (0.099%) OpenSSH
6 1 (0.099%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 439 (43.29%) Kubernetes
2 200 (19.72%) Terraform
3 119 (11.74%) Grafana
4 114 (11.24%) Prometheus
5 60 (5.92%) Ansible
6 28 (2.76%) Argo
7 18 (1.78%) Control-M
8 12 (1.18%) Istio
9 11 (1.08%) Kibana
9 11 (1.08%) Podman
10 10 (0.99%) Puppet
11 9 (0.89%) Kustomize
12 7 (0.69%) Fluentd
12 7 (0.69%) logstash
13 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
13 5 (0.49%) Rancher
14 3 (0.30%) Bosun
14 3 (0.30%) NetBackup
14 3 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
15 2 (0.20%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 94 (9.27%) Oracle
2 84 (8.28%) Databricks
3 54 (5.33%) Splunk
4 49 (4.83%) Microsoft
5 47 (4.64%) Google
6 32 (3.16%) IBM
7 30 (2.96%) Confluent
8 29 (2.86%) Dynatrace
9 25 (2.47%) Informatica
10 17 (1.68%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 15 (1.48%) Solace
12 14 (1.38%) OpenAI
13 13 (1.28%) SAP
14 9 (0.89%) Red Hat
14 9 (0.89%) ServiceNow
15 8 (0.79%) New Relic
15 8 (0.79%) Sybase
15 8 (0.79%) TIBCO
16 7 (0.69%) VMware