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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 97 138
Rank change year-on-year -47 +41 +15
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,025 854 673
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.58% 1.72%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.00% 11.43% 7.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 628 553 469
10th Percentile £376 £386 £400
25th Percentile £425 £455 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £588
Median % change year-on-year -0.09% -6.38% -9.62%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £719
90th Percentile £798 £813 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 3 9
10th Percentile £56.50 £54.65 £22.55
25th Percentile £64.75 £57.13 £27.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £86.25 £71.23 £38.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £75.71 £45.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.50 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -7.88% +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 10,250 7,469 8,585
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.21% 22.56% 21.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,681 5,046 5,854
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £505 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.96% -8.18% -
75th Percentile £638 £637 £663
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 270 164 248
10th Percentile £28.33 £30.08 £22.50
25th Percentile £41.59 £40.75 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +2.33% -10.42%
75th Percentile £73.46 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.36 £79.61 £74.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £58.60
% change year-on-year +15.56% -4.01% +1.04%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -46 869 £550 - 426
London -36 510 £575 -8.00% 318
UK excluding London -33 390 £500 +6.61% 160
Work from Home -59 282 £550 -4.35% 176
North of England -15 180 £485 +4.19% 42
Yorkshire +1 82 £498 -0.50% 16
North West -37 76 £430 -8.42% 19
South East -42 65 £513 +15.82% 47
Scotland -19 56 £447 -4.89% 19
Midlands -51 41 £500 +19.05% 8
North East -16 29 £463 +0.05% 7
South West -26 28 £500 -9.09% 23
West Midlands -55 25 £500 - 6
East of England +2 24 £550 +10.00% 7
East Midlands -16 16 £459 +26.48% 2
Northern Ireland 0 3 - - 9
Wales -12 2 £313 - 6

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
1 137 (13.37%) Apache Spark
2 75 (7.32%) Apache
3 62 (6.05%) Apache Airflow
4 19 (1.85%) Confluence
5 7 (0.68%) Camunda
6 6 (0.59%) CMS
6 6 (0.59%) WebSphere
7 5 (0.49%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.39%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.29%) Mule
10 2 (0.20%) Apache Pig
10 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) JBoss
10 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 8 (0.78%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.20%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.098%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.098%) Maya
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
2 2 (0.20%) Endur
2 2 (0.20%) Fidessa
2 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.098%) Actimize
3 1 (0.098%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.098%) SAP IS-U
3 1 (0.098%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 611 (59.61%) AWS
2 321 (31.32%) Azure
3 205 (20.00%) GCP
4 146 (14.24%) GitHub
5 105 (10.24%) Serverless
6 104 (10.15%) GitHub Actions
7 82 (8.00%) AWS Lambda
8 79 (7.71%) Amazon S3
9 73 (7.12%) OpenShift
10 70 (6.83%) Amazon EKS
11 65 (6.34%) Azure DevOps
12 59 (5.76%) Snowflake
13 52 (5.07%) Amazon SQS
14 48 (4.68%) Amazon ECS
14 48 (4.68%) dbt
15 44 (4.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 43 (4.20%) Power Platform
17 36 (3.51%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (2.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 28 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.56%) HTTP
2 10 (0.98%) Firewall
2 10 (0.98%) Network Security
3 8 (0.78%) DNS
4 7 (0.68%) MQTT
4 7 (0.68%) SSL
5 4 (0.39%) NAS
5 4 (0.39%) SAN
6 3 (0.29%) Internet
6 3 (0.29%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.20%) NaaS
7 2 (0.20%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (0.20%) WAN
8 1 (0.098%) 4G
8 1 (0.098%) 5G
8 1 (0.098%) FIX Connectivity
8 1 (0.098%) MIMO
8 1 (0.098%) SSH
8 1 (0.098%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (18.24%) PostgreSQL
2 164 (16.00%) MongoDB
3 130 (12.68%) NoSQL
4 106 (10.34%) Relational Database
5 66 (6.44%) Big Data
6 62 (6.05%) SQL Server
7 61 (5.95%) Data Warehouse
8 54 (5.27%) Data Lake
9 44 (4.29%) Redis
10 40 (3.90%) MySQL
10 40 (3.90%) Power BI
11 39 (3.80%) Flink
12 38 (3.71%) Apache Cassandra
13 37 (3.61%) Hadoop
14 35 (3.41%) BigQuery
14 35 (3.41%) Elasticsearch
15 33 (3.22%) DynamoDB
16 32 (3.12%) Metadata
17 26 (2.54%) Amazon Redshift
18 25 (2.44%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 182 (17.76%) Jenkins
2 144 (14.05%) Git
3 130 (12.68%) GitLab
4 73 (7.12%) JUnit
5 65 (6.34%) Mockito
6 49 (4.78%) Gradle
7 42 (4.10%) JIRA
8 31 (3.02%) Selenium
9 27 (2.63%) Cucumber
10 25 (2.44%) Maven
11 21 (2.05%) REST Assured
12 18 (1.76%) Liquibase
12 18 (1.76%) SonarQube
13 15 (1.46%) Gatling
14 13 (1.27%) Postman
15 10 (0.98%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.98%) Cypress.io
15 10 (0.98%) Serenity BDD
16 7 (0.68%) Claude Code
17 6 (0.59%) MLflow
General
1 272 (26.54%) Finance
2 179 (17.46%) Social Skills
3 138 (13.46%) Banking
4 103 (10.05%) Public Sector
5 96 (9.37%) Analytical Skills
6 50 (4.88%) Front Office
7 31 (3.02%) Investment Banking
8 29 (2.83%) Retail
9 21 (2.05%) Financial Institution
10 20 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (1.56%) Telecoms
13 15 (1.46%) Law
14 11 (1.07%) Billing
14 11 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
15 9 (0.88%) Publishing
16 8 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
16 8 (0.78%) Military
17 7 (0.68%) Marketing
17 7 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 338 (32.98%) Developer
2 191 (18.63%) Senior
3 177 (17.27%) Java Developer
4 148 (14.44%) Data Engineer
5 141 (13.76%) Architect
6 112 (10.93%) Lead
7 96 (9.37%) Software Engineer
8 76 (7.41%) Java Engineer
9 75 (7.32%) Senior Developer
10 59 (5.76%) Solutions Architect
11 48 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
12 45 (4.39%) Senior Java Developer
13 41 (4.00%) AWS Architect
13 41 (4.00%) Full-Stack Developer
14 37 (3.61%) Lead Developer
15 36 (3.51%) Data Architect
15 36 (3.51%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 36 (3.51%) Java Software Engineer
15 36 (3.51%) Python Engineer
16 33 (3.22%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (23.90%) Spring
2 235 (22.93%) Spring Boot
3 179 (17.46%) REST
4 153 (14.93%) React
5 142 (13.85%) RESTful
6 116 (11.32%) RabbitMQ
7 85 (8.29%) Node.js
8 71 (6.93%) GraphQL
9 68 (6.63%) JSON
10 60 (5.85%) Redux
11 55 (5.37%) OpenTelemetry
12 48 (4.68%) OAuth
13 45 (4.39%) PySpark
14 44 (4.29%) Swagger
15 43 (4.20%) OpenAPI
16 37 (3.61%) AngularJS
16 37 (3.61%) OAuth2
17 35 (3.41%) Middleware
18 34 (3.32%) .NET
19 32 (3.12%) Apache Avro
Miscellaneous
1 209 (20.39%) Distributed Systems
2 193 (18.83%) Cloud Native
3 44 (4.29%) Data Structures
4 40 (3.90%) Fixed Income
5 37 (3.61%) Product Ownership
6 33 (3.22%) Algorithms
7 31 (3.02%) Enterprise Software
8 25 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
8 25 (2.44%) Management Information System
8 25 (2.44%) Onboarding
8 25 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
9 21 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 19 (1.85%) AI Agents
11 17 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (1.66%) Public Cloud
12 16 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
13 15 (1.46%) Replication
14 14 (1.37%) Distributed Architecture
14 14 (1.37%) Equities
15 13 (1.27%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 108 (10.54%) Linux
2 61 (5.95%) Unix
3 28 (2.73%) Windows
4 10 (0.98%) Mac OS X
5 8 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.29%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.20%) Android
8 2 (0.20%) Debian
8 2 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.20%) VMS
8 2 (0.20%) zOS
9 1 (0.098%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.098%) CentOS
9 1 (0.098%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 493 (48.10%) CI/CD
2 390 (38.05%) Microservices
3 363 (35.41%) Agile
4 351 (34.24%) Event-Driven
5 330 (32.20%) DevOps
6 249 (24.29%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 239 (23.32%) Observability
8 228 (22.24%) Containerisation
9 201 (19.61%) Software Engineering
10 196 (19.12%) Data Pipeline
11 179 (17.46%) Infrastructure as Code
11 179 (17.46%) Test Automation
12 161 (15.71%) AI
13 159 (15.51%) Problem-Solving
14 157 (15.32%) Data Modelling
15 155 (15.12%) Analytics
16 144 (14.05%) ETL
17 140 (13.66%) Data Engineering
18 124 (12.10%) TDD
19 113 (11.02%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 467 (45.56%) Java
2 361 (35.22%) Python
3 324 (31.61%) SQL
4 130 (12.68%) TypeScript
5 98 (9.56%) JavaScript
6 80 (7.80%) Go
7 60 (5.85%) Bash
8 57 (5.56%) C#
9 36 (3.51%) Scala
10 28 (2.73%) PowerShell
11 24 (2.34%) PL/SQL
12 19 (1.85%) Kotlin
13 17 (1.66%) Shell Script
14 11 (1.07%) C++
14 11 (1.07%) Rust
15 10 (0.98%) Bicep
15 10 (0.98%) Groovy
15 10 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.68%) PHP
17 6 (0.59%) Perl
Qualifications
1 227 (22.15%) Security Cleared
2 175 (17.07%) SC Cleared
3 49 (4.78%) Degree
4 33 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 22 (2.15%) DV Cleared
7 16 (1.56%) AWS Certification
8 13 (1.27%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.68%) Azure Certification
10 6 (0.59%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
12 3 (0.29%) PhD
12 3 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
14 1 (0.098%) ITIL Certification
14 1 (0.098%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.098%) PMP
14 1 (0.098%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (9.95%) Data Quality
2 57 (5.56%) QA
3 46 (4.49%) Accessibility
4 31 (3.02%) GDPR
5 20 (1.95%) ISO 20022
6 10 (0.98%) SEPA
7 6 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.59%) WCAG
8 4 (0.39%) NIST
9 3 (0.29%) ISO 15022
9 3 (0.29%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.29%) SLA
10 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.20%) EMIR
10 2 (0.20%) IFRS
10 2 (0.20%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.20%) MiFID
10 2 (0.20%) NCSC
10 2 (0.20%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.098%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 354 (34.54%) Docker
2 6 (0.59%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 6 (0.59%) etcd
3 3 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
4 2 (0.20%) HDFS
5 1 (0.098%) OpenSSH
5 1 (0.098%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 437 (42.63%) Kubernetes
2 204 (19.90%) Terraform
3 116 (11.32%) Prometheus
4 115 (11.22%) Grafana
5 61 (5.95%) Ansible
6 26 (2.54%) Argo
7 16 (1.56%) Control-M
8 12 (1.17%) Kibana
8 12 (1.17%) Podman
9 10 (0.98%) Istio
10 9 (0.88%) Puppet
11 7 (0.68%) Fluentd
11 7 (0.68%) Kustomize
12 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
12 5 (0.49%) logstash
12 5 (0.49%) Rancher
13 3 (0.29%) Bosun
13 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.20%) Consul
14 2 (0.20%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 88 (8.59%) Oracle
2 82 (8.00%) Databricks
3 56 (5.46%) Splunk
4 48 (4.68%) Google
5 47 (4.59%) Microsoft
6 28 (2.73%) Confluent
7 25 (2.44%) Dynatrace
8 24 (2.34%) Informatica
9 22 (2.15%) IBM
10 17 (1.66%) Salesforce
11 16 (1.56%) Solace
12 15 (1.46%) MuleSoft
13 14 (1.37%) OpenAI
14 10 (0.98%) SAP
15 9 (0.88%) Red Hat
16 8 (0.78%) ServiceNow
16 8 (0.78%) Sybase
17 7 (0.68%) Talend
17 7 (0.68%) VMware
18 6 (0.59%) TIBCO