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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 115 165
Rank change year-on-year -13 +50 -41
Contract jobs citing Kafka 841 704 612
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 2.21% 1.44%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.13% 10.01% 6.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 555 432 480
10th Percentile £363 £381 £425
25th Percentile £413 £487 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year -9.40% -2.50% -7.69%
75th Percentile £650 £738 £720
90th Percentile £738 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £533
% change year-on-year -5.26% -10.88% -11.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 4
10th Percentile £37.63 £36.82 £47.39
25th Percentile £40.00 £53.95 £58.71
Median hourly rate £54.00 £85.00 £71.50
Median % change year-on-year -36.47% +18.88% -2.05%
75th Percentile £76.75 £90.63 £81.00
90th Percentile £94.50 £92.50 £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 8,298 7,033 9,221
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.31% 22.08% 21.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,521 4,471 6,497
10th Percentile £356 £353 £356
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 84 172
10th Percentile £32.44 £22.00 £28.63
25th Percentile £44.50 £36.31 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +13.64% -15.38%
75th Percentile £68.00 £65.19 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £76.53 £77.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year - +13.64% -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -9 735 £550 -9.02% 266
London 0 488 £575 -8.00% 105
Work from Home +22 295 £575 -0.86% 176
UK excluding London -16 226 £450 -5.26% 203
North of England -20 95 £488 -11.36% 39
South East -2 53 £433 -16.02% 89
North West -14 46 £441 -13.10% 25
Midlands -15 43 £475 +33.43% 11
Yorkshire -28 42 £575 -19.30% 9
Scotland +3 32 £450 +18.73% 5
West Midlands -24 22 £550 +21.55% 3
East Midlands -10 21 £402 +12.92% 8
South West -5 19 £550 -15.38% 20
North East -8 11 £475 -23.91% 5
East of England -33 1 £450 +42.86% 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 80 (9.51%) Apache Spark
2 45 (5.35%) Apache
3 40 (4.76%) Confluence
4 39 (4.64%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.59%) CMS
5 5 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.48%) MQSeries
6 4 (0.48%) Mule
7 3 (0.36%) Camunda
7 3 (0.36%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.24%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.24%) JBoss
8 2 (0.24%) Luigi
8 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.24%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.12%) IIS
9 1 (0.12%) Mule ESB
9 1 (0.12%) nginx
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
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%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.24%) Actimize
3 2 (0.24%) Bloomberg AIM
3 2 (0.24%) Shopify
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 473 (56.24%) AWS
2 220 (26.16%) Azure
3 153 (18.19%) GitHub
4 123 (14.63%) GCP
5 119 (14.15%) Serverless
6 110 (13.08%) GitHub Actions
7 90 (10.70%) Amazon S3
8 87 (10.34%) AWS Lambda
9 64 (7.61%) Amazon EKS
9 64 (7.61%) AWS CloudFormation
10 48 (5.71%) Amazon ECS
11 44 (5.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 44 (5.23%) Amazon Kinesis
12 41 (4.88%) Amazon SQS
13 39 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
13 39 (4.64%) OpenShift
14 36 (4.28%) Azure Data Factory
14 36 (4.28%) Power Platform
15 31 (3.69%) Amazon EC2
16 24 (2.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.55%) DNS
1 13 (1.55%) Firewall
2 12 (1.43%) SSL
3 7 (0.83%) Kerberos
3 7 (0.83%) SSH
4 6 (0.71%) FTP
4 6 (0.71%) HTTP
5 5 (0.59%) SMS
5 5 (0.59%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.36%) VPN
7 2 (0.24%) MQTT
8 1 (0.12%) AMQP
8 1 (0.12%) DSL
8 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (20.10%) PostgreSQL
2 155 (18.43%) MongoDB
3 132 (15.70%) NoSQL
4 75 (8.92%) Apache Cassandra
5 52 (6.18%) Relational Database
6 48 (5.71%) Amazon RDS
6 48 (5.71%) Big Data
7 45 (5.35%) Redis
8 43 (5.11%) DynamoDB
9 42 (4.99%) SQL Server
10 40 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
10 40 (4.76%) Elasticsearch
11 39 (4.64%) Data Lake
12 31 (3.69%) Hadoop
13 29 (3.45%) Amazon Redshift
14 28 (3.33%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (3.33%) DB2
14 28 (3.33%) Power BI
15 26 (3.09%) Amazon Aurora
16 25 (2.97%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 160 (19.02%) Jenkins
2 133 (15.81%) GitLab
3 103 (12.25%) Git
4 79 (9.39%) JUnit
5 54 (6.42%) JIRA
6 42 (4.99%) Mockito
7 24 (2.85%) Sonatype Nexus
8 23 (2.73%) Cucumber
8 23 (2.73%) JMeter
9 22 (2.62%) Gradle
10 14 (1.66%) Maven
10 14 (1.66%) SonarQube
11 12 (1.43%) Gatling
12 10 (1.19%) Artifactory
12 10 (1.19%) CircleCI
13 9 (1.07%) SoapUI
14 8 (0.95%) Jaeger
15 6 (0.71%) Liquibase
15 6 (0.71%) TeamCity
15 6 (0.71%) Terragrunt
General
1 229 (27.23%) Finance
2 210 (24.97%) Social Skills
3 128 (15.22%) Banking
4 79 (9.39%) Analytical Skills
5 68 (8.09%) Public Sector
6 51 (6.06%) Investment Banking
7 27 (3.21%) Front Office
8 14 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (1.55%) Financial Institution
10 8 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (0.95%) Marketing
11 6 (0.71%) Retail
12 5 (0.59%) Aerospace
12 5 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.59%) Law
13 3 (0.36%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.36%) Military
13 3 (0.36%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.24%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.24%) Games
Job Titles
1 319 (37.93%) Developer
2 251 (29.85%) Senior
3 188 (22.35%) Java Developer
4 124 (14.74%) Senior Developer
5 102 (12.13%) Data Engineer
6 75 (8.92%) Lead
7 74 (8.80%) Senior Java Developer
8 73 (8.68%) Software Engineer
9 63 (7.49%) Architect
10 62 (7.37%) DevOps Engineer
11 42 (4.99%) Kafka Developer
12 41 (4.88%) AWS Engineer
13 40 (4.76%) Full-Stack Developer
14 39 (4.64%) Kafka Engineer
15 38 (4.52%) AWS Developer
16 32 (3.80%) Java Engineer
17 31 (3.69%) Senior Data Engineer
18 30 (3.57%) Platform Engineer
18 30 (3.57%) Python Engineer
19 27 (3.21%) AWS Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (23.19%) Spring
2 161 (19.14%) Spring Boot
3 95 (11.30%) REST
4 94 (11.18%) gRPC
5 73 (8.68%) React
5 73 (8.68%) RESTful
6 71 (8.44%) RabbitMQ
7 63 (7.49%) Node.js
8 36 (4.28%) Middleware
9 35 (4.16%) AngularJS
9 35 (4.16%) JMS
10 34 (4.04%) Hibernate
11 33 (3.92%) Keycloak
12 32 (3.80%) .NET
12 32 (3.80%) PySpark
13 31 (3.69%) ActiveMQ
14 29 (3.45%) OAuth
15 28 (3.33%) JSON
16 27 (3.21%) OAuth2
17 24 (2.85%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 115 (13.67%) Distributed Systems
2 98 (11.65%) Cloud Native
3 40 (4.76%) Management Information System
4 34 (4.04%) Equities
5 30 (3.57%) Data Structures
6 27 (3.21%) Product Ownership
7 24 (2.85%) Derivative
8 22 (2.62%) Replication
9 19 (2.26%) Market Risk
10 16 (1.90%) Fixed Income
11 15 (1.78%) Distributed Computing
11 15 (1.78%) Legacy Applications
12 13 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
13 11 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
14 10 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.19%) Onboarding
15 9 (1.07%) Public Cloud
16 8 (0.95%) Algorithms
16 8 (0.95%) Data Protection Act
16 8 (0.95%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 159 (18.91%) Linux
2 82 (9.75%) Unix
3 26 (3.09%) Windows
4 13 (1.55%) Mac OS X
5 8 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.71%) CentOS
7 5 (0.59%) AIX
8 3 (0.36%) VMS
9 2 (0.24%) zOS
10 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 362 (43.04%) CI/CD
2 341 (40.55%) Microservices
3 295 (35.08%) Agile
4 250 (29.73%) DevOps
5 225 (26.75%) Software Engineering
6 179 (21.28%) Containerisation
7 176 (20.93%) Problem-Solving
8 157 (18.67%) Event-Driven
9 150 (17.84%) Infrastructure as Code
10 141 (16.77%) Observability
11 121 (14.39%) Test Automation
12 118 (14.03%) Data Pipeline
13 110 (13.08%) Open Source
14 108 (12.84%) Analytics
15 101 (12.01%) TDD
16 94 (11.18%) Data Engineering
17 92 (10.94%) ETL
18 87 (10.34%) Event-Driven Architecture
19 83 (9.87%) Mentoring
20 82 (9.75%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 403 (47.92%) Java
2 290 (34.48%) Python
3 248 (29.49%) SQL
4 120 (14.27%) Go
5 71 (8.44%) C#
6 60 (7.13%) JavaScript
7 50 (5.95%) Shell Script
8 47 (5.59%) Bash
9 44 (5.23%) C++
10 31 (3.69%) Scala
10 31 (3.69%) TypeScript
11 16 (1.90%) Rust
12 14 (1.66%) PL/SQL
13 11 (1.31%) Perl
14 10 (1.19%) PowerShell
15 7 (0.83%) Korn
16 6 (0.71%) Groovy
16 6 (0.71%) R
16 6 (0.71%) T-SQL
17 5 (0.59%) RPG
Qualifications
1 181 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 162 (19.26%) SC Cleared
3 41 (4.88%) Degree
4 29 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (3.33%) Azure Certification
6 24 (2.85%) Computer Science Degree
7 20 (2.38%) DV Cleared
8 18 (2.14%) AWS Certification
9 12 (1.43%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.95%) OCP
10 8 (0.95%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.24%) CBAP
12 2 (0.24%) CSPO
12 2 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMP
13 1 (0.12%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (8.20%) Data Quality
2 44 (5.23%) QA
3 30 (3.57%) GDPR
4 11 (1.31%) NCSC
5 9 (1.07%) ISO 20022
6 6 (0.71%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.71%) NIST
6 6 (0.71%) PCI DSS
6 6 (0.71%) SEPA
6 6 (0.71%) SLA
7 4 (0.48%) WCAG
8 3 (0.36%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.36%) HL7
8 3 (0.36%) MiFID
9 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.24%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.24%) ISO 8583
9 2 (0.24%) PSD2
10 1 (0.12%) EMIR
System Software
1 311 (36.98%) Docker
2 8 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.71%) HDFS
4 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 344 (40.90%) Kubernetes
2 203 (24.14%) Terraform
3 97 (11.53%) Grafana
4 79 (9.39%) Prometheus
5 69 (8.20%) Ansible
6 29 (3.45%) Argo
7 16 (1.90%) Progress Chef
8 9 (1.07%) Packer
9 8 (0.95%) Istio
9 8 (0.95%) Kiali
10 7 (0.83%) linkerd
11 6 (0.71%) logstash
12 5 (0.59%) Hadoop YARN
12 5 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
12 5 (0.59%) Puppet
12 5 (0.59%) Rancher
12 5 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (0.48%) Fluentd
14 3 (0.36%) Kibana
14 3 (0.36%) Oozie
Vendors
1 76 (9.04%) Oracle
2 55 (6.54%) Databricks
2 55 (6.54%) Splunk
3 35 (4.16%) Confluent
4 32 (3.80%) Microsoft
5 30 (3.57%) Google
6 28 (3.33%) IBM
7 24 (2.85%) Sybase
7 24 (2.85%) VMware
8 20 (2.38%) Dynatrace
9 15 (1.78%) Cloudera
10 11 (1.31%) Informatica
10 11 (1.31%) Red Hat
11 10 (1.19%) Foundry
11 10 (1.19%) Palantir
12 9 (1.07%) SAP
12 9 (1.07%) ServiceNow
13 7 (0.83%) Atlassian
14 6 (0.71%) Bloomberg
14 6 (0.71%) Salesforce