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 19 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 117 112 178
Rank change year-on-year -5 +66 -69
Contract jobs citing Kafka 860 769 672
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.41% 2.12% 1.45%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.55% 9.79% 6.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 564 463 512
10th Percentile £372 £379 £450
25th Percentile £449 £488 £512
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £635
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -5.51% +1.60%
75th Percentile £675 £724 £788
90th Percentile £750 £810 £843
UK excluding London median daily rate £462 £475 £525
% change year-on-year -2.84% -9.52% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 5 10
10th Percentile £37.63 £26.04 £62.48
25th Percentile £43.25 £27.00 £75.31
Median hourly rate £59.25 £28.00 £77.75
Median % change year-on-year +111.61% -63.99% +6.14%
75th Percentile £68.44 £38.75 £84.61
90th Percentile £90.00 £68.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.00 £78.00
% change year-on-year +42.86% -64.10% +6.85%

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 8,155 7,857 10,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.84% 21.68% 22.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,422 4,953 7,337
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.64% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 113 190
10th Percentile £30.18 £22.00 £36.19
25th Percentile £42.63 £36.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £55.25
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.12% -14.34%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £74.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £65.00 £54.78
% change year-on-year -3.08% +18.66% -15.72%

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 19 November 2025.

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 19 November 2025.

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 19 November 2025. 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 +1 752 £550 -10.20% 453
London -3 495 £600 -5.88% 325
Work from Home +29 308 £580 +6.42% 273
UK excluding London -2 257 £462 -2.84% 164
North of England -21 91 £478 -13.18% 40
South East +19 60 £434 -9.35% 65
Scotland +23 55 £450 +18.73% 9
North West -10 47 £443 -6.84% 35
Midlands -10 41 £500 +17.65% 16
Yorkshire -37 39 £586 -9.81% 5
West Midlands -11 27 £525 +23.53% 14
South West +8 17 £550 -14.06% 14
East Midlands -10 14 £420 +17.98% 2
North East -3 7 £575 -7.89%
East of England -32 2 £519 +63.90% 11

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 68 (7.91%) Apache Spark
2 48 (5.58%) Apache
3 42 (4.88%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (4.19%) Confluence
5 11 (1.28%) Mule
6 9 (1.05%) Anypoint
7 7 (0.81%) Camunda
7 7 (0.81%) JBoss
7 7 (0.81%) MQSeries
8 6 (0.70%) CMS
8 6 (0.70%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.35%) Luigi
10 3 (0.35%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.35%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.23%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.23%) Apache Solr
11 2 (0.23%) SAS
11 2 (0.23%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.23%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (0.47%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.23%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.23%) Sketch
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.35%) Fidessa
1 3 (0.35%) Oracle 11i
1 3 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.23%) SAP BRIM
3 1 (0.12%) Actimize
3 1 (0.12%) Endur
3 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 426 (49.53%) AWS
2 205 (23.84%) Azure
3 125 (14.53%) GCP
4 111 (12.91%) GitHub
5 89 (10.35%) Serverless
6 71 (8.26%) GitHub Actions
7 67 (7.79%) AWS Lambda
8 66 (7.67%) Amazon S3
9 50 (5.81%) OpenShift
10 43 (5.00%) AWS CloudFormation
11 41 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
12 33 (3.84%) Amazon ECS
12 33 (3.84%) Amazon EKS
12 33 (3.84%) Amazon SQS
13 32 (3.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 32 (3.72%) Amazon Kinesis
14 30 (3.49%) Azure Data Factory
15 28 (3.26%) Snowflake
16 26 (3.02%) Amazon EC2
17 19 (2.21%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.93%) DNS
1 8 (0.93%) HTTP
2 7 (0.81%) AMQP
2 7 (0.81%) DSL
2 7 (0.81%) SSL
3 6 (0.70%) Firewall
3 6 (0.70%) Kerberos
4 4 (0.47%) FTP
4 4 (0.47%) SSH
5 3 (0.35%) MQTT
6 2 (0.23%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.12%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (20.47%) PostgreSQL
2 171 (19.88%) MongoDB
3 121 (14.07%) NoSQL
4 74 (8.60%) Apache Cassandra
5 72 (8.37%) Relational Database
6 61 (7.09%) Big Data
7 49 (5.70%) Redis
8 41 (4.77%) Data Warehouse
9 40 (4.65%) DB2
9 40 (4.65%) SQL Server
10 39 (4.53%) Amazon RDS
11 36 (4.19%) DynamoDB
11 36 (4.19%) Elasticsearch
12 35 (4.07%) Hadoop
13 27 (3.14%) Data Lake
14 24 (2.79%) Amazon Redshift
15 23 (2.67%) Metadata
16 21 (2.44%) BigQuery
16 21 (2.44%) MySQL
17 17 (1.98%) Flink
Development Applications
1 174 (20.23%) Jenkins
2 110 (12.79%) JUnit
3 107 (12.44%) GitLab
4 104 (12.09%) Git
5 60 (6.98%) JIRA
6 48 (5.58%) Mockito
7 30 (3.49%) Cucumber
8 25 (2.91%) Gradle
9 24 (2.79%) JMeter
9 24 (2.79%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (2.56%) Maven
11 21 (2.44%) SonarQube
12 18 (2.09%) Artifactory
13 16 (1.86%) Liquibase
14 12 (1.40%) Subversion
15 11 (1.28%) Gatling
16 10 (1.16%) Bitbucket
16 10 (1.16%) SoapUI
17 7 (0.81%) Cypress.io
17 7 (0.81%) TeamCity
General
1 244 (28.37%) Social Skills
2 239 (27.79%) Finance
3 142 (16.51%) Banking
4 106 (12.33%) Analytical Skills
5 73 (8.49%) Investment Banking
6 64 (7.44%) Public Sector
7 49 (5.70%) Front Office
8 11 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
9 9 (1.05%) Financial Institution
9 9 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.05%) Retail
10 7 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (0.81%) Military
10 7 (0.81%) Telecoms
11 5 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.47%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.47%) Retail Banking
13 3 (0.35%) Law
13 3 (0.35%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 349 (40.58%) Developer
2 239 (27.79%) Senior
3 224 (26.05%) Java Developer
4 120 (13.95%) Senior Developer
5 84 (9.77%) Data Engineer
5 84 (9.77%) Senior Java Developer
6 83 (9.65%) Lead
7 80 (9.30%) Software Engineer
8 74 (8.60%) Architect
9 62 (7.21%) DevOps Engineer
10 40 (4.65%) Kafka Developer
10 40 (4.65%) Platform Engineer
11 38 (4.42%) Python Engineer
12 37 (4.30%) AWS Developer
13 35 (4.07%) AWS Engineer
14 34 (3.95%) Kafka Engineer
15 33 (3.84%) Full-Stack Developer
16 31 (3.60%) Java Engineer
16 31 (3.60%) SQL Developer
17 30 (3.49%) Investment Banking Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (23.26%) Spring
2 132 (15.35%) Spring Boot
3 101 (11.74%) React
3 101 (11.74%) REST
4 99 (11.51%) gRPC
5 88 (10.23%) RabbitMQ
6 69 (8.02%) RESTful
7 48 (5.58%) ActiveMQ
7 48 (5.58%) JMS
8 43 (5.00%) Node.js
9 40 (4.65%) GraphQL
10 39 (4.53%) AngularJS
11 38 (4.42%) .NET
12 34 (3.95%) Hibernate
12 34 (3.95%) OAuth
13 31 (3.60%) Keycloak
14 29 (3.37%) Apache NiFi
14 29 (3.37%) Middleware
14 29 (3.37%) SOAP
15 28 (3.26%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 109 (12.67%) Distributed Systems
2 82 (9.53%) Cloud Native
3 43 (5.00%) Equities
4 40 (4.65%) Data Structures
5 29 (3.37%) Management Information System
6 28 (3.26%) Product Ownership
7 25 (2.91%) Fixed Income
7 25 (2.91%) Replication
8 23 (2.67%) Derivative
9 22 (2.56%) Market Risk
10 13 (1.51%) Greenfield Project
10 13 (1.51%) PKI
11 12 (1.40%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (1.16%) Algorithms
12 10 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
13 9 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
13 9 (1.05%) Legacy Systems
13 9 (1.05%) Onboarding
14 8 (0.93%) Data Fabric
14 8 (0.93%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 161 (18.72%) Linux
2 77 (8.95%) Unix
3 19 (2.21%) Windows
4 13 (1.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (1.40%) Mac OS X
6 7 (0.81%) CentOS
7 3 (0.35%) AIX
8 1 (0.12%) Android
8 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.12%) Debian
8 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.12%) VMS
8 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 355 (41.28%) Agile
2 353 (41.05%) Microservices
3 336 (39.07%) CI/CD
4 248 (28.84%) Software Engineering
5 231 (26.86%) DevOps
6 205 (23.84%) Problem-Solving
7 149 (17.33%) Containerisation
8 134 (15.58%) TDD
9 130 (15.12%) Open Source
10 120 (13.95%) Event-Driven
10 120 (13.95%) Infrastructure as Code
11 117 (13.60%) Observability
12 111 (12.91%) Test Automation
13 104 (12.09%) Data Pipeline
14 101 (11.74%) SDLC
15 92 (10.70%) Scrum
16 90 (10.47%) Analytics
17 87 (10.12%) Mentoring
18 81 (9.42%) ETL
19 80 (9.30%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 435 (50.58%) Java
2 314 (36.51%) Python
3 245 (28.49%) SQL
4 132 (15.35%) Go
5 63 (7.33%) Shell Script
6 61 (7.09%) C#
7 56 (6.51%) JavaScript
8 50 (5.81%) C++
9 49 (5.70%) Bash
10 39 (4.53%) Scala
10 39 (4.53%) TypeScript
11 16 (1.86%) Perl
12 10 (1.16%) Groovy
12 10 (1.16%) PL/SQL
13 8 (0.93%) DataWeave
13 8 (0.93%) T-SQL
14 6 (0.70%) Korn
15 5 (0.58%) R
15 5 (0.58%) RPG
15 5 (0.58%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 154 (17.91%) Security Cleared
2 137 (15.93%) SC Cleared
3 57 (6.63%) Degree
4 38 (4.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (2.79%) DV Cleared
6 20 (2.33%) AWS Certification
7 19 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
8 18 (2.09%) Azure Certification
8 18 (2.09%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.93%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (0.81%) Numerate Degree
10 7 (0.81%) OCP
10 7 (0.81%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.23%) CBAP
11 2 (0.23%) CSPO
11 2 (0.23%) IBM Certification
12 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.12%) PMP
12 1 (0.12%) SAFe Agilist
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (6.05%) Data Quality
2 38 (4.42%) QA
3 19 (2.21%) GDPR
4 9 (1.05%) NCSC
5 6 (0.70%) WCAG
6 5 (0.58%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.47%) Accessibility
7 4 (0.47%) ISO 20022
7 4 (0.47%) MiFID
8 3 (0.35%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.35%) EMIR
8 3 (0.35%) HL7
8 3 (0.35%) SEPA
8 3 (0.35%) SLA
9 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.23%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.23%) Section 508
10 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
System Software
1 281 (32.67%) Docker
2 7 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.47%) HDFS
3 4 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.23%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 327 (38.02%) Kubernetes
2 169 (19.65%) Terraform
3 87 (10.12%) Grafana
4 77 (8.95%) Prometheus
5 73 (8.49%) Ansible
6 17 (1.98%) Progress Chef
7 16 (1.86%) Argo
8 15 (1.74%) Packer
9 9 (1.05%) logstash
10 8 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
12 6 (0.70%) Kibana
13 5 (0.58%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.47%) Fluentd
14 4 (0.47%) Hadoop YARN
14 4 (0.47%) Puppet
14 4 (0.47%) Rancher
15 3 (0.35%) Istio
15 3 (0.35%) Oozie
16 2 (0.23%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 76 (8.84%) Oracle
2 51 (5.93%) Splunk
3 36 (4.19%) Sybase
4 35 (4.07%) Databricks
5 34 (3.95%) Microsoft
6 33 (3.84%) Google
7 30 (3.49%) IBM
8 27 (3.14%) Dynatrace
9 24 (2.79%) Confluent
10 18 (2.09%) Cloudera
10 18 (2.09%) VMware
11 16 (1.86%) CA Agile Central
11 16 (1.86%) MuleSoft
12 15 (1.74%) Red Hat
13 13 (1.51%) Foundry
13 13 (1.51%) Palantir
14 12 (1.40%) ServiceNow
14 12 (1.40%) TIBCO
15 11 (1.28%) SAP
16 10 (1.16%) Informatica