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 4 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 108 169
Rank change year-on-year -17 +61 -31
Contract jobs citing Kafka 958 734 639
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.12% 2.51% 1.45%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.09% 11.09% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 603 464 484
10th Percentile £363 £400 £400
25th Percentile £416 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £560 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +3.70% -16.92%
75th Percentile £651 £738 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £489
% change year-on-year -2.11% -2.86% -11.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 4 7
10th Percentile £40.00 £51.09 £22.34
25th Percentile £64.00 £68.84 £24.88
Median hourly rate £70.00 £85.60 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +144.57% -53.33%
75th Percentile £87.25 £93.75 £42.39
90th Percentile £91.50 - £54.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £78.70 £31.50
% change year-on-year -11.41% +149.84% -59.62%

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 9,495 6,620 8,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.03% 22.65% 20.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,329 4,527 6,271
10th Percentile £358 £363 £331
25th Percentile £414 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.81% -0.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 98 171
10th Percentile £35.05 £26.25 £20.47
25th Percentile £52.50 £43.13 £31.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.78% +35.79% -26.92%
75th Percentile £71.75 £68.75 £62.96
90th Percentile £81.00 £85.43 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%

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 4 April 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 4 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka
Top 16 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 4 April 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 -16 843 £539 -9.83% 194
London -14 536 £600 -7.69% 123
Work from Home -8 339 £600 -4.00% 90
UK excluding London -51 278 £465 -2.11% 101
North of England -48 123 £461 -12.14% 33
South East -16 61 £434 -15.37% 31
Yorkshire -21 59 £460 -35.03% 6
North West -45 57 £465 -7.00% 22
Midlands -43 47 £500 +36.24% 5
South West -9 31 £550 -12.00% 16
West Midlands -35 30 £550 -8.33% 4
Scotland -18 22 £475 +7.95% 7
East Midlands -24 17 £407 +14.40% 1
North East -12 13 £450 -3.23% 5
East of England -34 11 £475 +49.28% 9
Wales -14 1 £250 - 2

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
1 126 (13.15%) Apache Spark
2 67 (6.99%) Apache
3 49 (5.11%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (2.92%) Confluence
5 6 (0.63%) Ethereum
5 6 (0.63%) Hyperledger
5 6 (0.63%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.52%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.42%) Camunda
7 4 (0.42%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.31%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.21%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 5 (0.52%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.21%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.10%) Maya
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.10%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Bloomberg AIM
1 4 (0.42%) Fidessa
1 4 (0.42%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.21%) Actimize
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.10%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.10%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.10%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 593 (61.90%) AWS
2 278 (29.02%) Azure
3 167 (17.43%) GCP
4 161 (16.81%) GitHub
5 129 (13.47%) Serverless
6 121 (12.63%) Amazon S3
7 111 (11.59%) GitHub Actions
8 94 (9.81%) AWS Lambda
9 77 (8.04%) Amazon EKS
10 71 (7.41%) AWS CloudFormation
11 65 (6.78%) OpenShift
12 60 (6.26%) Power Platform
13 55 (5.74%) Azure DevOps
14 54 (5.64%) Amazon ECS
15 52 (5.43%) Amazon SQS
16 48 (5.01%) Amazon Kinesis
17 43 (4.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 43 (4.49%) Snowflake
18 42 (4.38%) Azure Data Factory
19 38 (3.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.09%) Firewall
2 16 (1.67%) HTTP
3 12 (1.25%) SSL
4 10 (1.04%) DNS
5 6 (0.63%) FTP
5 6 (0.63%) SMS
5 6 (0.63%) SSH
6 5 (0.52%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.42%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.31%) VPN
9 2 (0.21%) NaaS
9 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.21%) WAN
10 1 (0.10%) 4G
10 1 (0.10%) 5G
10 1 (0.10%) Internet
10 1 (0.10%) MQTT
10 1 (0.10%) NAS
10 1 (0.10%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (20.46%) PostgreSQL
2 136 (14.20%) MongoDB
3 133 (13.88%) NoSQL
4 72 (7.52%) Apache Cassandra
5 71 (7.41%) Relational Database
6 66 (6.89%) Data Warehouse
7 61 (6.37%) Data Lake
8 53 (5.53%) Big Data
9 51 (5.32%) Elasticsearch
10 50 (5.22%) DynamoDB
11 48 (5.01%) Power BI
12 43 (4.49%) SQL Server
13 42 (4.38%) Redis
14 38 (3.97%) Amazon RDS
14 38 (3.97%) Flink
15 37 (3.86%) Hadoop
15 37 (3.86%) MySQL
16 36 (3.76%) Amazon Athena
17 35 (3.65%) Metadata
18 32 (3.34%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 152 (15.87%) Jenkins
2 129 (13.47%) GitLab
3 113 (11.80%) Git
4 74 (7.72%) JUnit
5 60 (6.26%) JIRA
6 35 (3.65%) Mockito
7 29 (3.03%) Cucumber
8 23 (2.40%) Gradle
9 19 (1.98%) JMeter
10 17 (1.77%) Gatling
11 15 (1.57%) Sonatype Nexus
12 12 (1.25%) Maven
13 11 (1.15%) Postman
13 11 (1.15%) REST Assured
13 11 (1.15%) Selenium
14 10 (1.04%) CircleCI
15 9 (0.94%) Artifactory
15 9 (0.94%) Jaeger
16 7 (0.73%) Liquibase
17 6 (0.63%) Serenity BDD
General
1 270 (28.18%) Finance
2 193 (20.15%) Social Skills
3 124 (12.94%) Banking
4 72 (7.52%) Public Sector
5 70 (7.31%) Analytical Skills
6 56 (5.85%) Front Office
7 33 (3.44%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
9 19 (1.98%) Financial Institution
10 9 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (0.94%) Marketing
10 9 (0.94%) Telecoms
11 8 (0.84%) Law
12 6 (0.63%) Automotive
12 6 (0.63%) Retail
13 4 (0.42%) Billing
13 4 (0.42%) Publishing
14 3 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
14 3 (0.31%) Military
14 3 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 342 (35.70%) Developer
2 249 (25.99%) Senior
3 171 (17.85%) Java Developer
4 155 (16.18%) Data Engineer
5 119 (12.42%) Lead
6 116 (12.11%) Senior Developer
7 104 (10.86%) Architect
8 99 (10.33%) Software Engineer
9 62 (6.47%) Senior Java Developer
10 54 (5.64%) Java Engineer
11 49 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
12 47 (4.91%) AWS Architect
13 46 (4.80%) Full-Stack Developer
14 40 (4.18%) AWS Engineer
14 40 (4.18%) Senior Data Engineer
14 40 (4.18%) Solutions Architect
15 37 (3.86%) Kafka Developer
16 33 (3.44%) Data Architect
16 33 (3.44%) Developer/Software Engineer
17 32 (3.34%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 210 (21.92%) Spring
2 187 (19.52%) Spring Boot
3 118 (12.32%) REST
4 113 (11.80%) Node.js
5 105 (10.96%) React
6 95 (9.92%) RESTful
7 88 (9.19%) gRPC
8 77 (8.04%) RabbitMQ
9 48 (5.01%) GraphQL
10 47 (4.91%) OpenTelemetry
11 46 (4.80%) JSON
12 45 (4.70%) AngularJS
13 42 (4.38%) PySpark
14 40 (4.18%) Middleware
15 35 (3.65%) Redux
16 34 (3.55%) OAuth
17 33 (3.44%) Apache Avro
18 30 (3.13%) Keycloak
19 29 (3.03%) OAuth2
20 27 (2.82%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 161 (16.81%) Distributed Systems
2 140 (14.61%) Cloud Native
3 50 (5.22%) Fixed Income
4 47 (4.91%) Management Information System
5 36 (3.76%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
7 19 (1.98%) Data Structures
7 19 (1.98%) Derivative
7 19 (1.98%) Equities
7 19 (1.98%) Onboarding
8 17 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (1.36%) Market Risk
10 12 (1.25%) Algorithms
10 12 (1.25%) Clustering
10 12 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
11 10 (1.04%) Legacy Applications
12 9 (0.94%) Replication
13 8 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
13 8 (0.84%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 118 (12.32%) Linux
2 60 (6.26%) Unix
3 33 (3.44%) Windows
4 9 (0.94%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.52%) AIX
6 4 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.31%) VMS
7 3 (0.31%) zOS
8 2 (0.21%) CentOS
8 2 (0.21%) Debian
8 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 426 (44.47%) CI/CD
2 335 (34.97%) Microservices
3 325 (33.92%) Agile
4 285 (29.75%) DevOps
5 219 (22.86%) Software Engineering
6 213 (22.23%) Event-Driven
7 204 (21.29%) Observability
8 192 (20.04%) Containerisation
9 173 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
10 168 (17.54%) Analytics
10 168 (17.54%) Data Pipeline
10 168 (17.54%) Infrastructure as Code
11 155 (16.18%) Data Engineering
11 155 (16.18%) Data Modelling
12 150 (15.66%) ETL
13 135 (14.09%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 131 (13.67%) Test Automation
15 115 (12.00%) Full-Stack Development
16 104 (10.86%) Data Governance
17 103 (10.75%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 454 (47.39%) Java
2 341 (35.59%) Python
3 277 (28.91%) SQL
4 133 (13.88%) Go
5 96 (10.02%) JavaScript
6 94 (9.81%) TypeScript
7 63 (6.58%) C#
8 41 (4.28%) Bash
9 33 (3.44%) Scala
10 23 (2.40%) C++
11 20 (2.09%) Shell Script
12 17 (1.77%) PowerShell
13 16 (1.67%) Rust
14 12 (1.25%) Bicep
15 9 (0.94%) PL/SQL
16 8 (0.84%) Perl
17 6 (0.63%) Korn
17 6 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
18 5 (0.52%) Groovy
19 3 (0.31%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 215 (22.44%) Security Cleared
2 177 (18.48%) SC Cleared
3 45 (4.70%) Degree
4 31 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (2.51%) Azure Certification
6 21 (2.19%) AWS Certification
7 18 (1.88%) DV Cleared
8 17 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
9 13 (1.36%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (0.63%) OCP
10 6 (0.63%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (0.52%) SnowPro
12 3 (0.31%) AWS Certified Developer
12 3 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.31%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.10%) MySQL Certification
14 1 (0.10%) SAFe Agilist
14 1 (0.10%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 120 (12.53%) Data Quality
2 51 (5.32%) QA
3 47 (4.91%) GDPR
4 21 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.15%) ISO 20022
6 9 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (0.94%) NCSC
6 9 (0.94%) NIST
7 7 (0.73%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.63%) SEPA
9 5 (0.52%) SLA
10 4 (0.42%) HL7
10 4 (0.42%) WCAG
11 3 (0.31%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
12 2 (0.21%) MiFID
12 2 (0.21%) PSD2
13 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.10%) SOC 2
System Software
1 325 (33.92%) Docker
2 6 (0.63%) etcd
2 6 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.21%) HDFS
3 2 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.10%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 383 (39.98%) Kubernetes
2 217 (22.65%) Terraform
3 117 (12.21%) Grafana
3 117 (12.21%) Prometheus
4 59 (6.16%) Ansible
5 29 (3.03%) Argo
6 10 (1.04%) Fluentd
6 10 (1.04%) Istio
7 9 (0.94%) Kiali
7 9 (0.94%) Progress Chef
8 8 (0.84%) linkerd
9 7 (0.73%) Rancher
10 6 (0.63%) Kibana
10 6 (0.63%) logstash
10 6 (0.63%) Puppet
11 4 (0.42%) Packer
11 4 (0.42%) Podman
12 2 (0.21%) Amdocs OSS
12 2 (0.21%) QRadar
12 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 88 (9.19%) Databricks
2 78 (8.14%) Oracle
3 71 (7.41%) Splunk
4 50 (5.22%) Microsoft
5 43 (4.49%) Google
6 33 (3.44%) Confluent
7 27 (2.82%) Informatica
8 26 (2.71%) IBM
9 17 (1.77%) VMware
10 15 (1.57%) Dynatrace
10 15 (1.57%) Red Hat
11 13 (1.36%) ServiceNow
11 13 (1.36%) Talend
12 11 (1.15%) Cloudera
13 10 (1.04%) Sybase
14 9 (0.94%) AppDynamics
14 9 (0.94%) Salesforce
14 9 (0.94%) Solace
15 8 (0.84%) SAP
16 7 (0.73%) Bloomberg