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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 102 134
Rank change year-on-year -38 +32 +22
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,060 839 701
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.54% 1.82%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 8.95% 9.93% 7.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 666 540 475
10th Percentile £375 £383 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £484
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £725
90th Percentile £738 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 5 7
10th Percentile £43.85 £42.35 £24.34
25th Percentile £56.25 £53.00 £26.20
Median hourly rate £77.00 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.20% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £87.00 £78.70 £33.88
90th Percentile £94.00 £97.48 £39.35
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 11,845 8,450 9,555
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.71% 25.60% 24.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,776 5,680 6,380
10th Percentile £375 £355 £357
25th Percentile £435 £413 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £634 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +6.32% -5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 293 183 187
10th Percentile £29.07 £31.25 £25.60
25th Percentile £49.00 £41.00 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -14.77% -1.44%
75th Percentile £76.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £74.50 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -15.38% +8.33%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 -49 890 £550 - 668
London -38 534 £563 -6.25% 486
UK excluding London -33 388 £500 +6.61% 280
Work from Home -57 265 £530 -7.83% 924
North of England -26 188 £500 +5.26% 87
Yorkshire 0 95 £500 -13.04% 29
North West -35 74 £550 +17.77% 48
South East -27 63 £460 +5.75% 62
Scotland -36 54 £410 -13.23% 49
Midlands -52 35 £500 +13.51% 20
East of England +2 28 £500 -2.44% 12
South West -25 27 £500 -9.09% 25
North East -29 24 £425 -8.55% 10
West Midlands -49 22 £575 +15.00% 16
East Midlands -18 13 £495 +19.28% 4
Northern Ireland +2 4 - - 24
Wales - 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
1 130 (12.26%) Apache Spark
2 76 (7.17%) Apache Airflow
3 71 (6.70%) Apache
4 24 (2.26%) Confluence
5 16 (1.51%) Camunda
6 7 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.57%) CMS
7 6 (0.57%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.47%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
9 4 (0.38%) MQSeries
9 4 (0.38%) PowerExchange
10 3 (0.28%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.28%) Mule
10 3 (0.28%) nginx
10 3 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.19%) Apache Pig
11 2 (0.19%) JBoss
12 1 (0.094%) Luigi
12 1 (0.094%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 7 (0.66%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.19%) Mingle
3 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.28%) Finacle
1 3 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
1 3 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
1 3 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 3 (0.28%) Temenos T24
2 2 (0.19%) Endur
2 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.094%) Actimize
3 1 (0.094%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.094%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.094%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.094%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 605 (57.08%) AWS
2 380 (35.85%) Azure
3 249 (23.49%) GCP
4 177 (16.70%) GitHub
5 120 (11.32%) GitHub Actions
6 103 (9.72%) Serverless
7 84 (7.92%) AWS Lambda
8 76 (7.17%) Amazon S3
9 75 (7.08%) Azure DevOps
10 73 (6.89%) Amazon EKS
10 73 (6.89%) Snowflake
11 67 (6.32%) OpenShift
12 51 (4.81%) dbt
13 48 (4.53%) Amazon SQS
14 42 (3.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 42 (3.96%) Amazon ECS
14 42 (3.96%) Power Platform
15 34 (3.21%) Azure Data Factory
16 31 (2.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 28 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.74%) HTTP
2 19 (1.79%) DNS
3 12 (1.13%) Network Security
4 8 (0.75%) Firewall
4 8 (0.75%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.66%) MQTT
6 6 (0.57%) SAN
6 6 (0.57%) SSH
6 6 (0.57%) SSL
7 4 (0.38%) 4G
7 4 (0.38%) 5G
7 4 (0.38%) NAS
8 3 (0.28%) Internet
9 2 (0.19%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.094%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.094%) MIMO
10 1 (0.094%) NaaS
10 1 (0.094%) RTP
10 1 (0.094%) VPN
10 1 (0.094%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 191 (18.02%) PostgreSQL
2 166 (15.66%) MongoDB
3 137 (12.92%) NoSQL
4 96 (9.06%) Relational Database
5 76 (7.17%) Data Warehouse
6 67 (6.32%) SQL Server
7 55 (5.19%) Big Data
8 54 (5.09%) Redis
9 51 (4.81%) Data Lake
10 50 (4.72%) MySQL
11 41 (3.87%) Elasticsearch
11 41 (3.87%) Power BI
12 40 (3.77%) BigQuery
13 38 (3.58%) Flink
14 32 (3.02%) Metadata
15 28 (2.64%) Delta Lake
16 26 (2.45%) Amazon Redshift
17 25 (2.36%) DynamoDB
18 24 (2.26%) Apache Cassandra
18 24 (2.26%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 214 (20.19%) Jenkins
2 186 (17.55%) Git
3 160 (15.09%) GitLab
4 75 (7.08%) JUnit
5 70 (6.60%) Gradle
6 64 (6.04%) Mockito
7 49 (4.62%) Selenium
8 48 (4.53%) JIRA
9 45 (4.25%) Maven
10 33 (3.11%) SonarQube
11 31 (2.92%) Cucumber
12 25 (2.36%) REST Assured
13 23 (2.17%) Postman
14 18 (1.70%) JMeter
14 18 (1.70%) Liquibase
15 17 (1.60%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.42%) Gatling
17 13 (1.23%) Cypress.io
18 12 (1.13%) LoadRunner
18 12 (1.13%) SoapUI
General
1 266 (25.09%) Finance
2 208 (19.62%) Social Skills
3 161 (15.19%) Banking
4 109 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
5 101 (9.53%) Public Sector
6 37 (3.49%) Retail
7 24 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (2.26%) Investment Banking
8 19 (1.79%) Front Office
9 18 (1.70%) Telecoms
10 16 (1.51%) Financial Institution
11 14 (1.32%) Law
12 11 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
13 9 (0.85%) Billing
13 9 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
13 9 (0.85%) Military
13 9 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.85%) Publishing
14 8 (0.75%) Marketing
14 8 (0.75%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 328 (30.94%) Developer
2 225 (21.23%) Senior
3 182 (17.17%) Java Developer
4 157 (14.81%) Architect
5 131 (12.36%) Data Engineer
6 97 (9.15%) Lead
7 71 (6.70%) Java Engineer
7 71 (6.70%) Senior Developer
8 66 (6.23%) Solutions Architect
9 64 (6.04%) Software Engineer
10 61 (5.75%) DevOps Engineer
11 43 (4.06%) Full-Stack Developer
12 42 (3.96%) Senior Java Developer
13 40 (3.77%) Senior Data Engineer
14 37 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
14 37 (3.49%) Python Developer
14 37 (3.49%) Python Engineer
15 36 (3.40%) Kafka Engineer
16 33 (3.11%) AWS Architect
16 33 (3.11%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 286 (26.98%) Spring
1 286 (26.98%) Spring Boot
2 243 (22.92%) REST
3 224 (21.13%) Terraform
4 155 (14.62%) RESTful
5 137 (12.92%) React
6 127 (11.98%) RabbitMQ
7 75 (7.08%) JSON
8 61 (5.75%) OAuth
9 57 (5.38%) Node.js
10 52 (4.91%) PySpark
11 51 (4.81%) HTML
12 49 (4.62%) GraphQL
12 49 (4.62%) OpenTelemetry
13 47 (4.43%) .NET
13 47 (4.43%) Swagger
14 45 (4.25%) OpenAPI
15 41 (3.87%) Elastic Stack
15 41 (3.87%) XML
16 40 (3.77%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 242 (22.83%) Cloud Native
2 220 (20.75%) Distributed Systems
3 64 (6.04%) Product Ownership
4 46 (4.34%) Data Structures
5 45 (4.25%) Enterprise Software
6 35 (3.30%) AI Agents
6 35 (3.30%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (2.74%) Algorithms
8 29 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
9 27 (2.55%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 25 (2.36%) Replication
11 23 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
12 21 (1.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 17 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
13 17 (1.60%) Distributed Architecture
13 17 (1.60%) Management Information System
14 16 (1.51%) Public Cloud
15 14 (1.32%) Equities
16 12 (1.13%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 133 (12.55%) Linux
2 70 (6.60%) Unix
3 24 (2.26%) Windows
4 10 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.57%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.47%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Android
8 2 (0.19%) CentOS
8 2 (0.19%) Debian
8 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.094%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.094%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.094%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.094%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.094%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 590 (55.66%) CI/CD
2 439 (41.42%) Event-Driven
3 433 (40.85%) Microservices
4 390 (36.79%) DevOps
5 381 (35.94%) Agile
6 308 (29.06%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 282 (26.60%) Observability
8 238 (22.45%) Test Automation
9 232 (21.89%) Containerisation
10 228 (21.51%) Infrastructure as Code
11 195 (18.40%) Software Engineering
12 184 (17.36%) AI
13 177 (16.70%) Data Pipeline
14 151 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
15 146 (13.77%) Data Modelling
16 135 (12.74%) ETL
17 130 (12.26%) Technical Leadership
18 128 (12.08%) Analytics
18 128 (12.08%) Continuous Improvement
19 123 (11.60%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 474 (44.72%) Java
2 365 (34.43%) Python
3 348 (32.83%) SQL
4 105 (9.91%) TypeScript
5 101 (9.53%) JavaScript
6 80 (7.55%) Bash
7 62 (5.85%) C#
8 49 (4.62%) Go
9 45 (4.25%) Scala
10 31 (2.92%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.74%) PL/SQL
12 23 (2.17%) Kotlin
12 23 (2.17%) Shell Script
13 11 (1.04%) Groovy
14 9 (0.85%) C++
14 9 (0.85%) Perl
15 8 (0.75%) Bicep
15 8 (0.75%) Rust
15 8 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.66%) PHP
Qualifications
1 253 (23.87%) Security Cleared
2 204 (19.25%) SC Cleared
3 64 (6.04%) Degree
4 41 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (3.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (1.98%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.04%) AWS Certification
7 11 (1.04%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.04%) Master's Degree
8 10 (0.94%) ISTQB
9 6 (0.57%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.57%) ISEB
9 6 (0.57%) SnowPro
10 5 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
11 3 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.28%) PhD
12 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.094%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (8.40%) Data Quality
2 81 (7.64%) QA
3 43 (4.06%) Accessibility
4 34 (3.21%) ISO 20022
5 22 (2.08%) GDPR
6 15 (1.42%) SEPA
7 6 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.57%) WCAG
8 5 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.47%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.47%) PSD2
8 5 (0.47%) SLA
9 3 (0.28%) NIST
10 2 (0.19%) EMIR
10 2 (0.19%) GRC
10 2 (0.19%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.19%) MiFID
10 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 380 (35.85%) Docker
2 13 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.75%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.19%) HDFS
6 1 (0.094%) etcd
6 1 (0.094%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 482 (45.47%) Kubernetes
2 138 (13.02%) Grafana
3 122 (11.51%) Prometheus
4 67 (6.32%) Ansible
5 30 (2.83%) Argo
6 25 (2.36%) Control-M
7 14 (1.32%) Kustomize
8 13 (1.23%) Istio
8 13 (1.23%) Kibana
9 11 (1.04%) Puppet
10 9 (0.85%) Podman
11 8 (0.75%) logstash
12 6 (0.57%) Rancher
12 6 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (0.47%) Check_MK
13 5 (0.47%) HP Fortify
14 4 (0.38%) Consul
15 3 (0.28%) Bosun
15 3 (0.28%) Cilium
15 3 (0.28%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 123 (11.60%) Oracle
2 101 (9.53%) Databricks
3 58 (5.47%) Splunk
4 55 (5.19%) Microsoft
5 54 (5.09%) IBM
6 53 (5.00%) Google
7 37 (3.49%) Dynatrace
8 34 (3.21%) Confluent
9 31 (2.92%) Informatica
10 20 (1.89%) MuleSoft
11 18 (1.70%) OpenAI
11 18 (1.70%) Salesforce
12 17 (1.60%) SAP
12 17 (1.60%) VMware
13 16 (1.51%) Solace
14 12 (1.13%) TIBCO
15 9 (0.85%) New Relic
15 9 (0.85%) Sybase
15 9 (0.85%) Veracode
16 8 (0.75%) WSO2