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 6 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 107 171
Rank change year-on-year -23 +64 -30
Contract jobs citing Kafka 940 736 626
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.97% 2.51% 1.45%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.95% 11.03% 7.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 582 493 459
10th Percentile £363 £400 £400
25th Percentile £416 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £560 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +3.70% -16.92%
75th Percentile £650 £738 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £464 £477 £489
% change year-on-year -2.68% -2.56% -11.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 4 6
10th Percentile £40.00 £51.09 £22.24
25th Percentile £64.00 £68.84 £23.81
Median hourly rate £70.00 £85.60 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +171.75% -59.62%
75th Percentile £87.25 £93.75 £38.94
90th Percentile £91.50 - £54.50
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 9,445 6,670 8,885
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.83% 22.75% 20.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,251 4,576 6,171
10th Percentile £358 £363 £338
25th Percentile £415 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £650 £650
90th Percentile £726 £784 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 114 238
10th Percentile £35.00 £27.22 £21.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £50.00 £40.08
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £46.84
Median % change year-on-year - +38.77% -27.94%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £82.70 £74.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -24.90%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 6 May 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 -27 814 £530 -9.40% 217
London -12 517 £600 -7.69% 109
Work from Home -12 312 £603 -3.60% 103
UK excluding London -36 291 £464 -2.68% 149
North of England -43 122 £455 -13.33% 38
Yorkshire -29 60 £458 -32.22% 8
South East -25 54 £441 -10.22% 47
North West -54 52 £453 -9.50% 19
Midlands -38 49 £498 +24.69% 17
Scotland -12 35 £450 -4.26% 11
South West -14 29 £538 +4.88% 19
West Midlands -34 27 £520 -5.45% 9
East Midlands -19 22 £425 +18.72% 8
North East -14 16 £450 -3.23% 11
East of England -28 14 £550 +72.85% 13
Wales -15 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
1 129 (13.72%) Apache Spark
2 66 (7.02%) Apache
3 47 (5.00%) Apache Airflow
4 23 (2.45%) Confluence
5 6 (0.64%) Camunda
5 6 (0.64%) Ethereum
5 6 (0.64%) Hyperledger
6 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.53%) MQSeries
6 5 (0.53%) OpenStack
6 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.21%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 4 (0.43%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Bloomberg AIM
1 4 (0.43%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.32%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.21%) Actimize
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 559 (59.47%) AWS
2 279 (29.68%) Azure
3 163 (17.34%) GCP
4 149 (15.85%) GitHub
5 120 (12.77%) Serverless
6 109 (11.60%) Amazon S3
7 108 (11.49%) GitHub Actions
8 89 (9.47%) AWS Lambda
9 77 (8.19%) Amazon EKS
10 65 (6.91%) OpenShift
11 64 (6.81%) Azure DevOps
11 64 (6.81%) Power Platform
12 61 (6.49%) AWS CloudFormation
13 50 (5.32%) Amazon ECS
14 47 (5.00%) Snowflake
15 43 (4.57%) Amazon SQS
16 41 (4.36%) Amazon Kinesis
17 40 (4.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 37 (3.94%) Azure Data Factory
18 37 (3.94%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.13%) Firewall
2 17 (1.81%) HTTP
3 13 (1.38%) SSL
4 9 (0.96%) DNS
5 6 (0.64%) SMS
6 5 (0.53%) FTP
6 5 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.43%) SSH
8 3 (0.32%) VPN
9 2 (0.21%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.21%) MQTT
9 2 (0.21%) NaaS
9 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.21%) WAN
10 1 (0.11%) 4G
10 1 (0.11%) 5G
10 1 (0.11%) Internet
10 1 (0.11%) Network Security
10 1 (0.11%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (20.64%) PostgreSQL
2 133 (14.15%) MongoDB
3 122 (12.98%) NoSQL
4 74 (7.87%) Relational Database
5 61 (6.49%) Big Data
6 58 (6.17%) Apache Cassandra
7 57 (6.06%) Data Warehouse
8 56 (5.96%) Data Lake
9 55 (5.85%) SQL Server
10 51 (5.43%) Power BI
11 49 (5.21%) Redis
12 47 (5.00%) Elasticsearch
13 42 (4.47%) Flink
14 40 (4.26%) DynamoDB
15 38 (4.04%) Amazon Athena
16 36 (3.83%) Hadoop
17 35 (3.72%) Metadata
18 34 (3.62%) Amazon Redshift
19 32 (3.40%) Amazon RDS
20 31 (3.30%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 143 (15.21%) Jenkins
2 127 (13.51%) GitLab
3 119 (12.66%) Git
4 65 (6.91%) JUnit
5 56 (5.96%) JIRA
6 41 (4.36%) Mockito
7 23 (2.45%) Gradle
8 22 (2.34%) Cucumber
9 13 (1.38%) Gatling
9 13 (1.38%) Selenium
10 12 (1.28%) Liquibase
10 12 (1.28%) REST Assured
11 11 (1.17%) JMeter
11 11 (1.17%) Maven
12 10 (1.06%) Jaeger
12 10 (1.06%) Postman
13 8 (0.85%) Artifactory
13 8 (0.85%) CircleCI
13 8 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
14 6 (0.64%) SoapUI
General
1 270 (28.72%) Finance
2 181 (19.26%) Social Skills
3 119 (12.66%) Banking
4 76 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
5 74 (7.87%) Public Sector
6 49 (5.21%) Front Office
7 31 (3.30%) Investment Banking
8 28 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (2.34%) Financial Institution
10 12 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.06%) Marketing
12 9 (0.96%) Law
12 9 (0.96%) Retail
13 8 (0.85%) Publishing
14 7 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (0.64%) Automotive
16 5 (0.53%) Corporate Banking
16 5 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 4 (0.43%) Military
17 4 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 326 (34.68%) Developer
2 221 (23.51%) Senior
3 158 (16.81%) Data Engineer
4 155 (16.49%) Java Developer
5 114 (12.13%) Lead
6 109 (11.60%) Architect
7 101 (10.74%) Senior Developer
8 91 (9.68%) Software Engineer
9 58 (6.17%) Java Engineer
10 53 (5.64%) AWS Architect
11 51 (5.43%) Senior Java Developer
12 48 (5.11%) Full-Stack Developer
13 45 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
14 39 (4.15%) Solutions Architect
15 36 (3.83%) Senior Data Engineer
16 35 (3.72%) AWS Engineer
17 33 (3.51%) Developer/Software Engineer
17 33 (3.51%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 33 (3.51%) Kafka Developer
18 32 (3.40%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 215 (22.87%) Spring
2 195 (20.74%) Spring Boot
3 120 (12.77%) REST
4 111 (11.81%) Node.js
5 110 (11.70%) RESTful
6 108 (11.49%) React
7 78 (8.30%) RabbitMQ
8 69 (7.34%) gRPC
9 55 (5.85%) OpenTelemetry
10 48 (5.11%) GraphQL
10 48 (5.11%) JSON
11 45 (4.79%) Middleware
12 44 (4.68%) PySpark
13 40 (4.26%) AngularJS
13 40 (4.26%) Apache Avro
14 38 (4.04%) Redux
15 35 (3.72%) OAuth
16 31 (3.30%) OpenAPI
16 31 (3.30%) Swagger
17 30 (3.19%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 157 (16.70%) Distributed Systems
2 142 (15.11%) Cloud Native
3 50 (5.32%) Management Information System
4 47 (5.00%) Fixed Income
5 34 (3.62%) Product Ownership
6 25 (2.66%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.23%) Onboarding
8 19 (2.02%) Equities
8 19 (2.02%) Hybrid Cloud
9 17 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.60%) Algorithms
10 15 (1.60%) Derivative
10 15 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
11 12 (1.28%) Clustering
12 11 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 11 (1.17%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 10 (1.06%) Hedge funds
13 10 (1.06%) Market Risk
13 10 (1.06%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 110 (11.70%) Linux
2 57 (6.06%) Unix
3 36 (3.83%) Windows
4 9 (0.96%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.53%) AIX
6 4 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (0.43%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.32%) VMS
7 3 (0.32%) zOS
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
9 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 420 (44.68%) CI/CD
2 324 (34.47%) Microservices
3 309 (32.87%) Agile
4 280 (29.79%) DevOps
5 233 (24.79%) Event-Driven
6 204 (21.70%) Software Engineering
7 203 (21.60%) Observability
8 201 (21.38%) Containerisation
9 172 (18.30%) Data Pipeline
10 166 (17.66%) Analytics
11 162 (17.23%) Data Modelling
12 159 (16.91%) Infrastructure as Code
13 155 (16.49%) Problem-Solving
14 154 (16.38%) Data Engineering
15 150 (15.96%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 143 (15.21%) ETL
17 134 (14.26%) Test Automation
18 116 (12.34%) Full-Stack Development
19 102 (10.85%) Data Governance
20 98 (10.43%) AI
Programming Languages
1 432 (45.96%) Java
2 337 (35.85%) Python
3 285 (30.32%) SQL
4 110 (11.70%) Go
5 103 (10.96%) TypeScript
6 97 (10.32%) JavaScript
7 62 (6.60%) C#
8 44 (4.68%) Bash
9 30 (3.19%) Scala
10 20 (2.13%) PowerShell
11 18 (1.91%) C++
11 18 (1.91%) Rust
12 17 (1.81%) Shell Script
13 13 (1.38%) Bicep
14 11 (1.17%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.96%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.74%) Perl
17 6 (0.64%) Groovy
18 5 (0.53%) Korn
18 5 (0.53%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 216 (22.98%) Security Cleared
2 174 (18.51%) SC Cleared
3 45 (4.79%) Degree
4 28 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.91%) AWS Certification
5 18 (1.91%) Azure Certification
6 17 (1.81%) DV Cleared
7 15 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.28%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.74%) SnowPro
10 4 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.32%) OCP
11 3 (0.32%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.11%) CISSP
13 1 (0.11%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (12.13%) Data Quality
2 48 (5.11%) QA
3 45 (4.79%) GDPR
4 22 (2.34%) Accessibility
5 15 (1.60%) ISO 20022
6 9 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (0.96%) NIST
7 8 (0.85%) NCSC
8 7 (0.74%) PCI DSS
8 7 (0.74%) SEPA
9 4 (0.43%) HL7
9 4 (0.43%) MiFID
9 4 (0.43%) SLA
9 4 (0.43%) WCAG
10 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.21%) EMIR
11 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.21%) PSD2
12 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 320 (34.04%) Docker
2 6 (0.64%) etcd
2 6 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (0.32%) HDFS
4 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
4 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 374 (39.79%) Kubernetes
2 197 (20.96%) Terraform
3 121 (12.87%) Grafana
4 115 (12.23%) Prometheus
5 58 (6.17%) Ansible
6 32 (3.40%) Argo
7 10 (1.06%) Istio
7 10 (1.06%) Kibana
8 9 (0.96%) Fluentd
8 9 (0.96%) Kiali
9 8 (0.85%) linkerd
9 8 (0.85%) logstash
10 7 (0.74%) Puppet
10 7 (0.74%) Rancher
11 5 (0.53%) Podman
12 4 (0.43%) Progress Chef
13 3 (0.32%) QRadar
14 2 (0.21%) Amdocs OSS
14 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 95 (10.11%) Databricks
2 73 (7.77%) Splunk
3 71 (7.55%) Oracle
4 51 (5.43%) Microsoft
5 40 (4.26%) Google
6 34 (3.62%) Confluent
7 25 (2.66%) Informatica
8 21 (2.23%) IBM
9 14 (1.49%) Dynatrace
9 14 (1.49%) Red Hat
10 13 (1.38%) VMware
11 12 (1.28%) Talend
12 11 (1.17%) ServiceNow
13 10 (1.06%) Solace
14 9 (0.96%) AppDynamics
14 9 (0.96%) Salesforce
15 8 (0.85%) Pega
16 7 (0.74%) PagerDuty
16 7 (0.74%) SAP
17 6 (0.64%) Bloomberg