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

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 114 110 176
Rank change year-on-year -4 +66 -64
Contract jobs citing Kafka 874 779 675
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.43% 2.12% 1.45%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.68% 9.77% 6.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 572 471 511
10th Percentile £371 £385 £450
25th Percentile £429 £492 £508
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £635
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -5.51% +1.60%
75th Percentile £675 £725 £775
90th Percentile £750 £810 £825
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 4 10
10th Percentile £37.63 £25.88 £62.48
25th Percentile £43.25 £26.60 £75.31
Median hourly rate £59.25 £32.75 £77.75
Median % change year-on-year +80.92% -57.88% +6.14%
75th Percentile £68.44 £50.94 £84.61
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.88 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £56.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year -29.20% -27.56% +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 8,186 7,970 10,338
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.79% 21.69% 22.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,436 5,031 7,369
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 117 190
10th Percentile £30.15 £22.00 £36.19
25th Percentile £42.50 £36.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £55.25
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.12% -14.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £74.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £54.78
% change year-on-year -3.85% +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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -1 768 £550 -11.74% 483
London 0 504 £600 -7.69% 330
Work from Home +30 316 £584 +6.14% 325
UK excluding London -9 259 £462 -2.84% 197
North of England -22 94 £500 -10.91% 58
South East +15 60 £434 -10.01% 74
Scotland +18 52 £458 +20.71% 11
North West -11 51 £455 -7.24% 50
Midlands -8 44 £500 +17.65% 14
Yorkshire -36 38 £586 -9.81% 8
West Midlands -10 27 £525 +23.53% 12
South West +2 18 £550 -12.70% 19
East Midlands 0 17 £420 +17.98% 2
North East 0 7 £575 -7.89%
East of England -27 2 £519 +63.90% 13

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 69 (7.89%) Apache Spark
2 50 (5.72%) Apache
3 41 (4.69%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (4.00%) Confluence
5 11 (1.26%) Mule
6 9 (1.03%) Anypoint
7 7 (0.80%) Camunda
7 7 (0.80%) JBoss
7 7 (0.80%) MQSeries
8 6 (0.69%) CMS
8 6 (0.69%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.34%) Luigi
10 3 (0.34%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.34%) 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 (0.46%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.23%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.23%) Sketch
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.46%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.34%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.23%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.11%) Actimize
4 1 (0.11%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.11%) Endur
4 1 (0.11%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 439 (50.23%) AWS
2 212 (24.26%) Azure
3 123 (14.07%) GCP
4 117 (13.39%) GitHub
5 91 (10.41%) Serverless
6 76 (8.70%) GitHub Actions
7 68 (7.78%) Amazon S3
8 67 (7.67%) AWS Lambda
9 49 (5.61%) OpenShift
10 43 (4.92%) AWS CloudFormation
10 43 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
11 36 (4.12%) Amazon EKS
12 34 (3.89%) Amazon ECS
12 34 (3.89%) Amazon Kinesis
13 33 (3.78%) Amazon SQS
14 32 (3.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 32 (3.66%) Azure Data Factory
15 28 (3.20%) Snowflake
16 26 (2.97%) Amazon EC2
17 17 (1.95%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) DNS
1 8 (0.92%) HTTP
2 7 (0.80%) AMQP
2 7 (0.80%) DSL
2 7 (0.80%) SSL
3 6 (0.69%) Firewall
3 6 (0.69%) Kerberos
4 5 (0.57%) SSH
5 4 (0.46%) FTP
6 3 (0.34%) MQTT
7 2 (0.23%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.11%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (20.14%) PostgreSQL
2 173 (19.79%) MongoDB
3 121 (13.84%) NoSQL
4 74 (8.47%) Apache Cassandra
5 70 (8.01%) Relational Database
6 62 (7.09%) Big Data
7 49 (5.61%) Redis
8 40 (4.58%) Amazon RDS
8 40 (4.58%) Data Warehouse
8 40 (4.58%) DB2
8 40 (4.58%) SQL Server
9 38 (4.35%) Elasticsearch
10 37 (4.23%) DynamoDB
11 35 (4.00%) Hadoop
12 28 (3.20%) Data Lake
13 24 (2.75%) Amazon Redshift
14 23 (2.63%) Metadata
15 22 (2.52%) MySQL
16 18 (2.06%) Flink
17 17 (1.95%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 181 (20.71%) Jenkins
2 114 (13.04%) GitLab
3 111 (12.70%) JUnit
4 105 (12.01%) Git
5 58 (6.64%) JIRA
6 49 (5.61%) Mockito
7 29 (3.32%) Cucumber
8 25 (2.86%) Gradle
9 24 (2.75%) JMeter
9 24 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (2.52%) Maven
11 21 (2.40%) SonarQube
12 18 (2.06%) Artifactory
13 15 (1.72%) Liquibase
14 12 (1.37%) Subversion
15 11 (1.26%) Gatling
16 10 (1.14%) Bitbucket
16 10 (1.14%) SoapUI
17 7 (0.80%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 7 (0.80%) Cypress.io
General
1 246 (28.15%) Social Skills
2 244 (27.92%) Finance
3 147 (16.82%) Banking
4 105 (12.01%) Analytical Skills
5 73 (8.35%) Investment Banking
6 68 (7.78%) Public Sector
7 50 (5.72%) Front Office
8 12 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
9 9 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.03%) Retail
10 8 (0.92%) Financial Institution
11 7 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (0.80%) Military
11 7 (0.80%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (0.46%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.46%) Retail Banking
14 3 (0.34%) Law
14 3 (0.34%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 353 (40.39%) Developer
2 243 (27.80%) Senior
3 228 (26.09%) Java Developer
4 122 (13.96%) Senior Developer
5 89 (10.18%) Data Engineer
6 85 (9.73%) Lead
7 84 (9.61%) Senior Java Developer
8 82 (9.38%) Software Engineer
9 74 (8.47%) Architect
10 64 (7.32%) DevOps Engineer
11 41 (4.69%) Platform Engineer
12 40 (4.58%) Kafka Developer
13 39 (4.46%) Python Engineer
14 38 (4.35%) AWS Developer
14 38 (4.35%) AWS Engineer
15 35 (4.00%) Kafka Engineer
16 33 (3.78%) Full-Stack Developer
17 31 (3.55%) Java Engineer
17 31 (3.55%) SQL Developer
18 30 (3.43%) Investment Banking Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 202 (23.11%) Spring
2 135 (15.45%) Spring Boot
3 103 (11.78%) REST
4 102 (11.67%) React
5 99 (11.33%) gRPC
6 89 (10.18%) RabbitMQ
7 71 (8.12%) RESTful
8 50 (5.72%) JMS
9 49 (5.61%) ActiveMQ
10 47 (5.38%) Node.js
11 41 (4.69%) AngularJS
12 38 (4.35%) .NET
12 38 (4.35%) GraphQL
13 34 (3.89%) Hibernate
13 34 (3.89%) OAuth
14 33 (3.78%) Keycloak
15 31 (3.55%) Apache NiFi
16 30 (3.43%) Middleware
16 30 (3.43%) SOAP
17 28 (3.20%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 114 (13.04%) Distributed Systems
2 87 (9.95%) Cloud Native
3 45 (5.15%) Equities
4 37 (4.23%) Data Structures
5 30 (3.43%) Management Information System
6 29 (3.32%) Product Ownership
7 27 (3.09%) Fixed Income
8 26 (2.97%) Replication
9 23 (2.63%) Derivative
10 22 (2.52%) Market Risk
11 13 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
11 13 (1.49%) PKI
12 12 (1.37%) Distributed Computing
13 11 (1.26%) Hybrid Cloud
14 10 (1.14%) Algorithms
14 10 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 9 (1.03%) Legacy Applications
15 9 (1.03%) Onboarding
16 8 (0.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 8 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 164 (18.76%) Linux
2 76 (8.70%) Unix
3 20 (2.29%) Windows
4 13 (1.49%) Mac OS X
4 13 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.80%) CentOS
6 3 (0.34%) AIX
7 1 (0.11%) Debian
7 1 (0.11%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.11%) VMS
7 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.11%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 362 (41.42%) Agile
2 356 (40.73%) Microservices
3 345 (39.47%) CI/CD
4 251 (28.72%) Software Engineering
5 238 (27.23%) DevOps
6 210 (24.03%) Problem-Solving
7 156 (17.85%) Containerisation
8 134 (15.33%) TDD
9 131 (14.99%) Open Source
10 127 (14.53%) Event-Driven
11 122 (13.96%) Infrastructure as Code
12 118 (13.50%) Observability
13 117 (13.39%) Test Automation
14 105 (12.01%) Data Pipeline
14 105 (12.01%) SDLC
15 94 (10.76%) Scrum
16 91 (10.41%) Analytics
17 88 (10.07%) Mentoring
18 84 (9.61%) Data Engineering
19 83 (9.50%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 445 (50.92%) Java
2 321 (36.73%) Python
3 240 (27.46%) SQL
4 132 (15.10%) Go
5 62 (7.09%) C#
6 60 (6.86%) JavaScript
7 59 (6.75%) Shell Script
8 51 (5.84%) C++
9 48 (5.49%) Bash
10 42 (4.81%) TypeScript
11 39 (4.46%) Scala
12 15 (1.72%) Perl
13 10 (1.14%) Groovy
13 10 (1.14%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.92%) DataWeave
14 8 (0.92%) T-SQL
15 6 (0.69%) Korn
15 6 (0.69%) R
16 5 (0.57%) RPG IV
16 5 (0.57%) Rust
Qualifications
1 165 (18.88%) Security Cleared
2 146 (16.70%) SC Cleared
3 56 (6.41%) Degree
4 37 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (2.97%) DV Cleared
6 21 (2.40%) AWS Certification
6 21 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 20 (2.29%) Azure Certification
8 17 (1.95%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.92%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (0.80%) Numerate Degree
10 7 (0.80%) OCP
10 7 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.23%) CBAP
11 2 (0.23%) CSPO
11 2 (0.23%) IBM Certification
12 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.11%) SAFe Agilist
12 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
12 1 (0.11%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (5.95%) Data Quality
2 38 (4.35%) QA
3 20 (2.29%) GDPR
4 9 (1.03%) NCSC
5 6 (0.69%) WCAG
6 5 (0.57%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.46%) Accessibility
7 4 (0.46%) HL7
7 4 (0.46%) MiFID
8 3 (0.34%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.34%) EMIR
8 3 (0.34%) SEPA
8 3 (0.34%) SLA
9 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.23%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.23%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.23%) Section 508
10 1 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
System Software
1 289 (33.07%) Docker
2 7 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.46%) HDFS
4 3 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.23%) Active Directory
6 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 335 (38.33%) Kubernetes
2 173 (19.79%) Terraform
3 88 (10.07%) Grafana
4 78 (8.92%) Prometheus
5 73 (8.35%) Ansible
6 17 (1.95%) Argo
6 17 (1.95%) Progress Chef
7 15 (1.72%) Packer
8 9 (1.03%) logstash
9 8 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.80%) Jamf Pro
11 6 (0.69%) Kibana
12 5 (0.57%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.46%) Fluentd
13 4 (0.46%) Hadoop YARN
13 4 (0.46%) Puppet
13 4 (0.46%) Rancher
14 3 (0.34%) Istio
14 3 (0.34%) Oozie
15 2 (0.23%) linkerd
Vendors
1 75 (8.58%) Oracle
2 51 (5.84%) Splunk
3 39 (4.46%) Databricks
4 36 (4.12%) Microsoft
4 36 (4.12%) Sybase
5 29 (3.32%) Google
5 29 (3.32%) IBM
6 28 (3.20%) Confluent
7 27 (3.09%) Dynatrace
8 19 (2.17%) Cloudera
9 18 (2.06%) VMware
10 16 (1.83%) CA Agile Central
10 16 (1.83%) MuleSoft
11 15 (1.72%) Red Hat
12 14 (1.60%) Foundry
12 14 (1.60%) Palantir
13 12 (1.37%) ServiceNow
13 12 (1.37%) TIBCO
14 11 (1.26%) SAP
15 10 (1.14%) Informatica