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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 102 138
Rank change year-on-year -45 +36 +19
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,034 842 680
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.59% 1.78%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 8.84% 10.16% 7.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 644 543 467
10th Percentile £371 £385 £400
25th Percentile £424 £450 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £724
90th Percentile £737 £750 £796
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.50% -4.77% -19.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 9
10th Percentile £45.70 £42.35 £24.87
25th Percentile £56.50 £53.00 £27.00
Median hourly rate £72.50 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £87.50 £78.70 £38.75
90th Percentile £93.00 £97.48 £45.95
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 11,701 8,291 9,415
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.82% 25.51% 24.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,710 5,586 6,363
10th Percentile £375 £355 £356
25th Percentile £433 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £634 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 186 195
10th Percentile £29.07 £30.50 £26.16
25th Percentile £45.31 £40.88 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £53.25 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +22.07% -13.56% -1.44%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.88 £79.35 £74.72
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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -44 873 £550 - 888
London -40 518 £563 -6.25% 660
UK excluding London -28 388 £500 +6.50% 356
Work from Home -57 261 £530 -7.83% 382
North of England -17 185 £500 +5.82% 102
Yorkshire +4 95 £500 -14.89% 32
North West -37 71 £544 +16.38% 55
South East -37 62 £465 +6.90% 80
Scotland -34 53 £425 -9.57% 59
Midlands -45 41 £500 +16.01% 22
East of England +2 28 £500 -2.44% 12
South West -25 26 £500 -9.09% 52
West Midlands -45 26 £514 +2.80% 16
North East -25 24 £425 -8.55% 15
East Midlands -18 15 £447 +9.02% 6
Northern Ireland +2 4 - - 26
Wales - 1 £375 - 4

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
1 132 (12.77%) Apache Spark
2 70 (6.77%) Apache
2 70 (6.77%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.32%) Confluence
4 16 (1.55%) Camunda
5 7 (0.68%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 6 (0.58%) CMS
6 6 (0.58%) OpenStack
7 5 (0.48%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.39%) PowerExchange
8 4 (0.39%) WebSphere
9 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.29%) Mule
10 2 (0.19%) Apache Pig
10 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.19%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.19%) nginx
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (0.68%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.097%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 3 (0.29%) Finacle
1 3 (0.29%) FLEXCUBE
1 3 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 3 (0.29%) Temenos T24
2 2 (0.19%) Endur
2 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.097%) Actimize
3 1 (0.097%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.097%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.097%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.097%) SAP IS-U
3 1 (0.097%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 594 (57.45%) AWS
2 374 (36.17%) Azure
3 237 (22.92%) GCP
4 171 (16.54%) GitHub
5 120 (11.61%) GitHub Actions
6 101 (9.77%) Serverless
7 82 (7.93%) AWS Lambda
8 76 (7.35%) Azure DevOps
9 73 (7.06%) Snowflake
10 72 (6.96%) Amazon S3
11 70 (6.77%) Amazon EKS
11 70 (6.77%) OpenShift
12 52 (5.03%) dbt
13 48 (4.64%) Amazon SQS
14 46 (4.45%) Power Platform
15 40 (3.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 35 (3.38%) Amazon ECS
17 34 (3.29%) Azure Data Factory
18 33 (3.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 29 (2.80%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.80%) HTTP
2 18 (1.74%) DNS
3 11 (1.06%) Firewall
3 11 (1.06%) Network Security
4 8 (0.77%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.68%) MQTT
5 7 (0.68%) SSL
6 6 (0.58%) SSH
7 5 (0.48%) SAN
8 4 (0.39%) 4G
8 4 (0.39%) 5G
8 4 (0.39%) NAS
9 3 (0.29%) Internet
10 1 (0.097%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.097%) MIMO
10 1 (0.097%) NaaS
10 1 (0.097%) Reverse Proxy
10 1 (0.097%) RTP
10 1 (0.097%) VPN
10 1 (0.097%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (17.70%) PostgreSQL
2 157 (15.18%) MongoDB
3 137 (13.25%) NoSQL
4 95 (9.19%) Relational Database
5 73 (7.06%) Data Warehouse
6 64 (6.19%) SQL Server
7 58 (5.61%) Big Data
8 55 (5.32%) Redis
9 50 (4.84%) Data Lake
10 45 (4.35%) Power BI
11 44 (4.26%) MySQL
12 41 (3.97%) BigQuery
13 38 (3.68%) Elasticsearch
14 37 (3.58%) Flink
15 32 (3.09%) Metadata
16 29 (2.80%) Delta Lake
17 26 (2.51%) Amazon Redshift
17 26 (2.51%) Apache Cassandra
17 26 (2.51%) DynamoDB
17 26 (2.51%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 209 (20.21%) Jenkins
2 177 (17.12%) Git
3 153 (14.80%) GitLab
4 75 (7.25%) JUnit
5 68 (6.58%) Gradle
6 63 (6.09%) Mockito
7 49 (4.74%) JIRA
7 49 (4.74%) Selenium
8 42 (4.06%) Maven
9 32 (3.09%) SonarQube
10 28 (2.71%) Cucumber
11 25 (2.42%) REST Assured
12 23 (2.22%) Postman
13 19 (1.84%) Liquibase
14 18 (1.74%) JMeter
15 17 (1.64%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.45%) Gatling
17 13 (1.26%) Cypress.io
18 12 (1.16%) LoadRunner
18 12 (1.16%) SoapUI
General
1 247 (23.89%) Finance
2 195 (18.86%) Social Skills
3 151 (14.60%) Banking
4 107 (10.35%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (9.67%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.29%) Retail
7 24 (2.32%) Investment Banking
8 21 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.74%) Front Office
9 18 (1.74%) Telecoms
10 17 (1.64%) Financial Institution
11 15 (1.45%) Law
12 11 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (0.97%) Publishing
14 9 (0.87%) Billing
14 9 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (0.77%) Games
15 8 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.68%) Military
16 7 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 317 (30.66%) Developer
2 212 (20.50%) Senior
3 174 (16.83%) Java Developer
4 143 (13.83%) Architect
5 136 (13.15%) Data Engineer
6 98 (9.48%) Lead
7 70 (6.77%) Java Engineer
8 68 (6.58%) Senior Developer
9 64 (6.19%) Software Engineer
10 62 (6.00%) Solutions Architect
11 59 (5.71%) DevOps Engineer
12 40 (3.87%) Full-Stack Developer
13 39 (3.77%) Senior Data Engineer
13 39 (3.77%) Senior Java Developer
14 37 (3.58%) Python Engineer
15 36 (3.48%) AWS Engineer
15 36 (3.48%) Kafka Engineer
15 36 (3.48%) Python Developer
16 35 (3.38%) AWS Architect
17 33 (3.19%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (26.60%) Spring
1 275 (26.60%) Spring Boot
2 227 (21.95%) REST
3 220 (21.28%) Terraform
4 147 (14.22%) RESTful
5 134 (12.96%) React
6 125 (12.09%) RabbitMQ
7 74 (7.16%) JSON
8 57 (5.51%) OAuth
9 51 (4.93%) OpenTelemetry
10 50 (4.84%) Node.js
10 50 (4.84%) PySpark
11 48 (4.64%) HTML
12 46 (4.45%) .NET
12 46 (4.45%) GraphQL
12 46 (4.45%) Swagger
13 44 (4.26%) OpenAPI
14 40 (3.87%) Middleware
14 40 (3.87%) OAuth2
15 39 (3.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 227 (21.95%) Cloud Native
2 209 (20.21%) Distributed Systems
3 55 (5.32%) Product Ownership
4 46 (4.45%) Data Structures
5 42 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
6 35 (3.38%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.90%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (2.80%) Algorithms
9 28 (2.71%) AI Agents
10 27 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
11 24 (2.32%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 21 (2.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 21 (2.03%) Management Information System
12 21 (2.03%) Replication
13 18 (1.74%) Greenfield Project
14 16 (1.55%) Public Cloud
15 15 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
15 15 (1.45%) Equities
16 14 (1.35%) Distributed Architecture
17 12 (1.16%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 127 (12.28%) Linux
2 68 (6.58%) Unix
3 28 (2.71%) Windows
4 10 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.58%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.39%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.29%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Android
8 2 (0.19%) Debian
8 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.19%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.19%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.097%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.097%) CentOS
9 1 (0.097%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.097%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 566 (54.74%) CI/CD
2 412 (39.85%) Microservices
3 411 (39.75%) Event-Driven
4 374 (36.17%) DevOps
5 369 (35.69%) Agile
6 285 (27.56%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 275 (26.60%) Observability
8 230 (22.24%) Test Automation
9 225 (21.76%) Containerisation
10 214 (20.70%) Infrastructure as Code
11 186 (17.99%) Software Engineering
12 184 (17.79%) Data Pipeline
13 174 (16.83%) AI
14 153 (14.80%) Data Modelling
15 143 (13.83%) Problem-Solving
16 137 (13.25%) ETL
17 131 (12.67%) Analytics
18 126 (12.19%) Continuous Improvement
19 121 (11.70%) Data Engineering
19 121 (11.70%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 458 (44.29%) Java
2 360 (34.82%) Python
3 346 (33.46%) SQL
4 102 (9.86%) TypeScript
5 96 (9.28%) JavaScript
6 80 (7.74%) Bash
7 62 (6.00%) C#
8 47 (4.55%) Go
9 42 (4.06%) Scala
10 33 (3.19%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.80%) PL/SQL
12 22 (2.13%) Kotlin
12 22 (2.13%) Shell Script
13 12 (1.16%) Search Processing Language
14 11 (1.06%) Groovy
15 10 (0.97%) Bicep
16 9 (0.87%) C++
16 9 (0.87%) Rust
17 8 (0.77%) Perl
18 7 (0.68%) PHP
Qualifications
1 245 (23.69%) Security Cleared
2 197 (19.05%) SC Cleared
3 61 (5.90%) Degree
4 37 (3.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.06%) Master's Degree
8 10 (0.97%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.97%) ISTQB
9 9 (0.87%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.68%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.58%) ISEB
12 5 (0.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 4 (0.39%) DBS Check
14 3 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.29%) PhD
14 3 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
15 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
15 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 1 (0.097%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (9.28%) Data Quality
2 72 (6.96%) QA
3 42 (4.06%) Accessibility
4 32 (3.09%) ISO 20022
5 25 (2.42%) GDPR
6 14 (1.35%) SEPA
7 8 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.58%) WCAG
9 5 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (0.48%) ISO 15022
10 4 (0.39%) PSD2
10 4 (0.39%) SLA
11 3 (0.29%) NIST
12 2 (0.19%) Basel III
12 2 (0.19%) EMIR
12 2 (0.19%) GRC
12 2 (0.19%) IFRS
12 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.19%) MiFID
12 2 (0.19%) Solvency II
System Software
1 370 (35.78%) Docker
2 9 (0.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (0.68%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 6 (0.58%) etcd
5 3 (0.29%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
6 2 (0.19%) HDFS
7 1 (0.097%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 461 (44.58%) Kubernetes
2 134 (12.96%) Grafana
3 121 (11.70%) Prometheus
4 69 (6.67%) Ansible
5 31 (3.00%) Argo
6 25 (2.42%) Control-M
7 13 (1.26%) Kustomize
8 12 (1.16%) Istio
8 12 (1.16%) Kibana
9 11 (1.06%) Puppet
10 10 (0.97%) Podman
11 8 (0.77%) logstash
12 7 (0.68%) Fluentd
13 6 (0.58%) Rancher
14 5 (0.48%) Check_MK
14 5 (0.48%) HP Fortify
15 3 (0.29%) Bosun
15 3 (0.29%) Consul
15 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
15 3 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 117 (11.32%) Oracle
2 101 (9.77%) Databricks
3 62 (6.00%) Splunk
4 57 (5.51%) Microsoft
5 54 (5.22%) Google
6 53 (5.13%) IBM
7 35 (3.38%) Dynatrace
8 33 (3.19%) Informatica
9 32 (3.09%) Confluent
10 18 (1.74%) MuleSoft
11 17 (1.64%) OpenAI
11 17 (1.64%) Salesforce
12 16 (1.55%) SAP
12 16 (1.55%) Solace
13 13 (1.26%) VMware
14 11 (1.06%) TIBCO
15 10 (0.97%) Red Hat
16 9 (0.87%) New Relic
16 9 (0.87%) Veracode
17 8 (0.77%) Sybase