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 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 150 104 140
Rank change year-on-year -46 +36 +13
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,029 828 670
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.51% 1.73%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.11% 11.22% 7.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 632 535 465
10th Percentile £369 £386 £400
25th Percentile £424 £451 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £630 £675 £725
90th Percentile £762 £768 £791
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +1.06% -4.67% -17.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 3 9
10th Percentile £56.40 £54.65 £24.87
25th Percentile £65.00 £57.13 £27.00
Median hourly rate £71.25 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £88.75 £71.23 £38.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £75.71 £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 10,177 7,379 8,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.97% 22.39% 22.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,619 4,943 5,786
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £412 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £663
90th Percentile £738 £741 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 176 242
10th Percentile £28.15 £29.63 £22.86
25th Percentile £41.35 £41.13 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.44 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.40% +3.69% -12.50%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.92 £81.18 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £58.91
% change year-on-year +18.18% -6.63% +0.54%

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 15 August 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 15 August 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 15 August 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 -40 870 £550 - 783
London -32 518 £575 -7.26% 620
UK excluding London -21 382 £475 +1.06% 247
Work from Home -64 257 £550 -4.43% 311
North of England -13 180 £470 -0.11% 59
Yorkshire +4 90 £475 -13.64% 23
North West -41 70 £430 -8.42% 27
South East -37 63 £489 +12.36% 60
Scotland -27 54 £430 -8.51% 45
Midlands -43 36 £500 +17.51% 19
North East -21 27 £426 -8.49% 9
South West -35 27 £500 -9.09% 37
East of England 0 26 £550 +7.32% 7
West Midlands -42 21 £514 +2.80% 15
East Midlands -14 15 £470 +22.40% 4
Northern Ireland +2 4 - - 19
Wales -13 1 £375 - 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
1 136 (13.22%) Apache Spark
2 73 (7.09%) Apache
3 64 (6.22%) Apache Airflow
4 18 (1.75%) Confluence
5 9 (0.87%) Camunda
6 6 (0.58%) CMS
6 6 (0.58%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.58%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 6 (0.58%) WebSphere
7 5 (0.49%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.39%) PowerExchange
9 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.29%) Mule
10 2 (0.19%) JBoss
10 2 (0.19%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.19%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (0.68%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.19%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.097%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.19%) Endur
2 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.097%) Actimize
3 1 (0.097%) Bloomberg AIM
3 1 (0.097%) Fidessa
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
1 598 (58.11%) AWS
2 350 (34.01%) Azure
3 219 (21.28%) GCP
4 173 (16.81%) GitHub
5 124 (12.05%) GitHub Actions
6 108 (10.50%) Serverless
7 84 (8.16%) AWS Lambda
8 79 (7.68%) Amazon S3
9 72 (7.00%) Amazon EKS
10 71 (6.90%) Azure DevOps
11 66 (6.41%) OpenShift
11 66 (6.41%) Snowflake
12 54 (5.25%) dbt
13 53 (5.15%) Amazon SQS
14 47 (4.57%) Power Platform
15 43 (4.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 43 (4.18%) Amazon ECS
16 31 (3.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 31 (3.01%) Azure Data Factory
16 31 (3.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.04%) HTTP
2 15 (1.46%) DNS
3 11 (1.07%) Firewall
4 10 (0.97%) Network Security
5 7 (0.68%) MQTT
5 7 (0.68%) SSL
6 6 (0.58%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.49%) SAN
8 4 (0.39%) NAS
8 4 (0.39%) SSH
9 3 (0.29%) 4G
9 3 (0.29%) 5G
9 3 (0.29%) Internet
10 2 (0.19%) NaaS
10 2 (0.19%) OpenVPN
10 2 (0.19%) Reverse Proxy
10 2 (0.19%) WAN
11 1 (0.097%) FIX Connectivity
11 1 (0.097%) MIMO
11 1 (0.097%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (18.46%) PostgreSQL
2 158 (15.35%) MongoDB
3 135 (13.12%) NoSQL
4 99 (9.62%) Relational Database
5 70 (6.80%) Data Warehouse
6 63 (6.12%) Big Data
7 60 (5.83%) SQL Server
8 53 (5.15%) Data Lake
9 47 (4.57%) Redis
10 45 (4.37%) Power BI
11 40 (3.89%) BigQuery
11 40 (3.89%) MySQL
12 37 (3.60%) Elasticsearch
12 37 (3.60%) Flink
13 36 (3.50%) Metadata
14 35 (3.40%) Apache Cassandra
15 31 (3.01%) DynamoDB
15 31 (3.01%) Hadoop
16 29 (2.82%) Amazon Redshift
17 27 (2.62%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 205 (19.92%) Jenkins
2 169 (16.42%) Git
3 142 (13.80%) GitLab
4 75 (7.29%) JUnit
5 60 (5.83%) Mockito
6 56 (5.44%) Gradle
7 46 (4.47%) Selenium
8 45 (4.37%) JIRA
9 32 (3.11%) Cucumber
9 32 (3.11%) Maven
10 24 (2.33%) SonarQube
11 22 (2.14%) Postman
12 20 (1.94%) REST Assured
13 18 (1.75%) Gatling
13 18 (1.75%) Liquibase
14 17 (1.65%) JMeter
15 12 (1.17%) Bitbucket
15 12 (1.17%) Cypress.io
16 11 (1.07%) LoadRunner
16 11 (1.07%) SoapUI
General
1 255 (24.78%) Finance
2 186 (18.08%) Social Skills
3 141 (13.70%) Banking
4 109 (10.59%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (9.72%) Public Sector
6 36 (3.50%) Front Office
7 33 (3.21%) Retail
8 27 (2.62%) Investment Banking
9 18 (1.75%) Financial Institution
9 18 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.75%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.46%) Law
11 13 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
12 12 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (1.07%) Billing
14 9 (0.87%) Publishing
15 8 (0.78%) Games
15 8 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (0.78%) Military
16 7 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 319 (31.00%) Developer
2 204 (19.83%) Senior
3 168 (16.33%) Java Developer
4 146 (14.19%) Data Engineer
5 141 (13.70%) Architect
6 108 (10.50%) Lead
7 80 (7.77%) Software Engineer
8 78 (7.58%) Java Engineer
9 70 (6.80%) Senior Developer
10 59 (5.73%) Solutions Architect
11 49 (4.76%) DevOps Engineer
12 40 (3.89%) Senior Java Developer
13 38 (3.69%) AWS Architect
13 38 (3.69%) Full-Stack Developer
13 38 (3.69%) Python Engineer
14 37 (3.60%) AWS Engineer
14 37 (3.60%) Senior Data Engineer
15 33 (3.21%) Data Architect
15 33 (3.21%) Kafka Engineer
15 33 (3.21%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (24.20%) Spring
2 238 (23.13%) Spring Boot
3 204 (19.83%) REST
4 146 (14.19%) RESTful
5 143 (13.90%) React
6 124 (12.05%) RabbitMQ
7 71 (6.90%) JSON
8 66 (6.41%) Node.js
9 59 (5.73%) GraphQL
10 55 (5.34%) OAuth
11 49 (4.76%) PySpark
12 48 (4.66%) OpenTelemetry
13 44 (4.28%) Redux
14 43 (4.18%) .NET
14 43 (4.18%) Swagger
15 42 (4.08%) Middleware
15 42 (4.08%) OpenAPI
16 40 (3.89%) OAuth2
16 40 (3.89%) XML
17 35 (3.40%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 200 (19.44%) Distributed Systems
2 199 (19.34%) Cloud Native
3 43 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 42 (4.08%) Data Structures
5 35 (3.40%) Enterprise Software
6 30 (2.92%) Algorithms
7 29 (2.82%) Onboarding
8 27 (2.62%) Self-Motivation
9 26 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (2.24%) AI Agents
10 23 (2.24%) Fixed Income
11 21 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 21 (2.04%) Management Information System
12 19 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
13 18 (1.75%) Replication
13 18 (1.75%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 17 (1.65%) Public Cloud
15 15 (1.46%) Equities
15 15 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
16 13 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 120 (11.66%) Linux
2 66 (6.41%) Unix
3 27 (2.62%) Windows
4 9 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.68%) Mac OS X
6 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.19%) Android
7 2 (0.19%) Debian
7 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.19%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.19%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 2 (0.19%) VMS
8 1 (0.097%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.097%) CentOS
8 1 (0.097%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.097%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 527 (51.21%) CI/CD
2 392 (38.10%) Microservices
3 371 (36.05%) Event-Driven
4 364 (35.37%) Agile
5 355 (34.50%) DevOps
6 260 (25.27%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 246 (23.91%) Observability
8 224 (21.77%) Containerisation
9 208 (20.21%) Test Automation
10 194 (18.85%) Infrastructure as Code
11 189 (18.37%) Data Pipeline
12 188 (18.27%) Software Engineering
13 162 (15.74%) AI
14 156 (15.16%) Data Modelling
15 148 (14.38%) Problem-Solving
16 139 (13.51%) ETL
17 138 (13.41%) Analytics
18 128 (12.44%) Data Engineering
19 120 (11.66%) TDD
20 116 (11.27%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 455 (44.22%) Java
2 358 (34.79%) Python
3 332 (32.26%) SQL
4 114 (11.08%) TypeScript
5 103 (10.01%) JavaScript
6 69 (6.71%) Bash
7 62 (6.03%) Go
8 61 (5.93%) C#
9 39 (3.79%) Scala
10 33 (3.21%) PowerShell
11 28 (2.72%) PL/SQL
12 20 (1.94%) Shell Script
13 16 (1.55%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.07%) Rust
15 10 (0.97%) C++
15 10 (0.97%) Groovy
15 10 (0.97%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.87%) Bicep
17 7 (0.68%) PHP
18 6 (0.58%) Perl
Qualifications
1 236 (22.93%) Security Cleared
2 186 (18.08%) SC Cleared
3 54 (5.25%) Degree
4 28 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (1.75%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.07%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.97%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.87%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.68%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.58%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (0.49%) ISEB
12 5 (0.49%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.29%) PhD
13 3 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
14 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
14 2 (0.19%) Postgraduate
15 1 (0.097%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (9.52%) Data Quality
2 63 (6.12%) QA
3 43 (4.18%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.92%) GDPR
5 25 (2.43%) ISO 20022
6 10 (0.97%) SEPA
7 8 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
8 6 (0.58%) WCAG
9 4 (0.39%) ISO 15022
9 4 (0.39%) NIST
9 4 (0.39%) SLA
10 2 (0.19%) EMIR
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.19%) MiFID
10 2 (0.19%) NCSC
10 2 (0.19%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.097%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.097%) PSD2
System Software
1 364 (35.37%) Docker
2 7 (0.68%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 6 (0.58%) etcd
4 5 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.19%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.19%) HDFS
6 1 (0.097%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 447 (43.44%) Kubernetes
2 208 (20.21%) Terraform
3 125 (12.15%) Grafana
4 113 (10.98%) Prometheus
5 61 (5.93%) Ansible
6 28 (2.72%) Argo
7 24 (2.33%) Control-M
8 12 (1.17%) Istio
8 12 (1.17%) Kibana
9 11 (1.07%) Kustomize
9 11 (1.07%) Podman
9 11 (1.07%) Puppet
10 7 (0.68%) Fluentd
10 7 (0.68%) logstash
11 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
11 5 (0.49%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.49%) Rancher
12 3 (0.29%) Bosun
12 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 108 (10.50%) Oracle
2 93 (9.04%) Databricks
3 56 (5.44%) Splunk
4 54 (5.25%) Google
5 52 (5.05%) Microsoft
6 40 (3.89%) IBM
7 33 (3.21%) Informatica
8 32 (3.11%) Confluent
9 31 (3.01%) Dynatrace
10 18 (1.75%) Salesforce
11 17 (1.65%) MuleSoft
12 16 (1.55%) SAP
12 16 (1.55%) Solace
13 14 (1.36%) OpenAI
14 10 (0.97%) New Relic
14 10 (0.97%) Red Hat
14 10 (0.97%) TIBCO
15 9 (0.87%) ServiceNow
15 9 (0.87%) VMware
16 8 (0.78%) Sybase