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 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 114 173
Rank change year-on-year -10 +59 -52
Contract jobs citing Kafka 843 687 608
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.30% 2.19% 1.42%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.31% 9.96% 6.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 553 417 477
10th Percentile £363 £382 £425
25th Percentile £413 £488 £493
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year -9.40% -2.50% -7.69%
75th Percentile £650 £725 £719
90th Percentile £738 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £475 £533
% change year-on-year -3.68% -10.88% -11.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 4
10th Percentile £37.63 £36.82 £47.39
25th Percentile £40.00 £53.95 £58.71
Median hourly rate £54.00 £85.00 £71.50
Median % change year-on-year -36.47% +18.88% -2.05%
75th Percentile £76.75 £90.63 £81.00
90th Percentile £94.50 £92.50 £86.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £85.00 £71.50
% change year-on-year -52.94% +18.88% -2.05%

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 8,174 6,896 9,224
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.34% 21.99% 21.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,416 4,383 6,550
10th Percentile £356 £353 £356
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.12% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 81 168
10th Percentile £33.00 £21.25 £28.28
25th Percentile £45.00 £33.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £54.53
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +14.62% -16.11%
75th Percentile £68.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £54.53
% change year-on-year - +14.62% -16.11%

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 13 January 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 13 January 2026.

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 13 January 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 -5 733 £550 -9.02% 302
London +1 487 £578 -7.60% 104
Work from Home +27 294 £575 -0.69% 247
UK excluding London -14 226 £458 -3.68% 244
North of England -29 94 £488 -11.36% 42
South East 0 52 £433 -16.02% 105
North West -21 45 £435 -14.29% 23
Midlands -15 43 £475 +33.43% 17
Yorkshire -19 43 £575 -19.30% 13
Scotland +6 34 £463 +22.03% 7
West Midlands -22 22 £550 +21.55% 6
East Midlands -2 21 £402 +12.92% 11
South West -10 19 £550 -15.38% 27
North East -4 10 £506 -18.91% 6
East of England -31 1 £450 +42.86% 33

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 74 (8.78%) Apache Spark
2 44 (5.22%) Apache
3 41 (4.86%) Confluence
4 36 (4.27%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.59%) CMS
5 5 (0.59%) Mule
6 4 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.47%) MQSeries
7 3 (0.36%) Anypoint
7 3 (0.36%) Camunda
7 3 (0.36%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.24%) JBoss
8 2 (0.24%) Luigi
8 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.24%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.12%) CICS
9 1 (0.12%) nginx
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.12%) SAS
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 4 (0.47%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.24%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.47%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.36%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.24%) Actimize
3 2 (0.24%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.24%) Shopify
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) Bloomberg AIM
4 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 466 (55.28%) AWS
2 221 (26.22%) Azure
3 152 (18.03%) GitHub
4 118 (14.00%) GCP
5 117 (13.88%) Serverless
6 111 (13.17%) GitHub Actions
7 86 (10.20%) Amazon S3
8 85 (10.08%) AWS Lambda
9 62 (7.35%) AWS CloudFormation
10 61 (7.24%) Amazon EKS
11 45 (5.34%) Amazon SQS
12 44 (5.22%) Amazon ECS
12 44 (5.22%) Amazon Kinesis
13 43 (5.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 42 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
15 41 (4.86%) OpenShift
16 33 (3.91%) Azure Data Factory
16 33 (3.91%) Power Platform
17 30 (3.56%) Amazon EC2
18 22 (2.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.54%) DNS
2 12 (1.42%) Firewall
3 11 (1.30%) SSL
4 7 (0.83%) Kerberos
4 7 (0.83%) SSH
5 6 (0.71%) FTP
5 6 (0.71%) HTTP
6 5 (0.59%) SMS
6 5 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.36%) VPN
8 2 (0.24%) AMQP
8 2 (0.24%) DSL
8 2 (0.24%) MQTT
9 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 163 (19.34%) PostgreSQL
2 154 (18.27%) MongoDB
3 130 (15.42%) NoSQL
4 79 (9.37%) Apache Cassandra
5 50 (5.93%) Relational Database
6 49 (5.81%) Redis
7 47 (5.58%) Amazon RDS
7 47 (5.58%) Big Data
8 42 (4.98%) DynamoDB
8 42 (4.98%) SQL Server
9 39 (4.63%) Elasticsearch
10 38 (4.51%) Data Lake
11 35 (4.15%) Data Warehouse
12 31 (3.68%) Hadoop
13 28 (3.32%) DB2
14 27 (3.20%) Amazon Athena
14 27 (3.20%) Amazon Redshift
14 27 (3.20%) Power BI
15 25 (2.97%) Amazon Aurora
16 24 (2.85%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 160 (18.98%) Jenkins
2 131 (15.54%) GitLab
3 109 (12.93%) Git
4 80 (9.49%) JUnit
5 57 (6.76%) JIRA
6 43 (5.10%) Mockito
7 24 (2.85%) Cucumber
7 24 (2.85%) JMeter
7 24 (2.85%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (2.61%) Gradle
9 18 (2.14%) SonarQube
10 15 (1.78%) Maven
11 13 (1.54%) Gatling
12 10 (1.19%) Artifactory
12 10 (1.19%) SoapUI
13 9 (1.07%) CircleCI
14 7 (0.83%) Jaeger
14 7 (0.83%) TeamCity
15 6 (0.71%) Liquibase
15 6 (0.71%) Subversion
General
1 228 (27.05%) Finance
2 206 (24.44%) Social Skills
3 128 (15.18%) Banking
4 78 (9.25%) Analytical Skills
5 68 (8.07%) Public Sector
6 52 (6.17%) Investment Banking
7 27 (3.20%) Front Office
8 13 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (1.42%) Financial Institution
10 8 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (0.95%) Marketing
11 6 (0.71%) Retail
12 5 (0.59%) Aerospace
12 5 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.59%) Law
13 3 (0.36%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.36%) Military
13 3 (0.36%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.24%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.24%) Games
Job Titles
1 319 (37.84%) Developer
2 254 (30.13%) Senior
3 188 (22.30%) Java Developer
4 127 (15.07%) Senior Developer
5 100 (11.86%) Data Engineer
6 76 (9.02%) Software Engineer
7 75 (8.90%) Lead
8 74 (8.78%) Senior Java Developer
9 62 (7.35%) Architect
9 62 (7.35%) DevOps Engineer
10 41 (4.86%) AWS Engineer
10 41 (4.86%) Kafka Developer
11 39 (4.63%) Kafka Engineer
12 38 (4.51%) Full-Stack Developer
13 37 (4.39%) AWS Developer
14 34 (4.03%) Platform Engineer
15 32 (3.80%) Python Engineer
16 31 (3.68%) Java Engineer
17 29 (3.44%) Senior Data Engineer
18 25 (2.97%) AWS Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 190 (22.54%) Spring
2 154 (18.27%) Spring Boot
3 100 (11.86%) gRPC
4 96 (11.39%) REST
5 78 (9.25%) React
6 73 (8.66%) RabbitMQ
6 73 (8.66%) RESTful
7 61 (7.24%) Node.js
8 37 (4.39%) AngularJS
9 35 (4.15%) .NET
9 35 (4.15%) Hibernate
9 35 (4.15%) JMS
9 35 (4.15%) Middleware
10 33 (3.91%) Keycloak
11 32 (3.80%) ActiveMQ
11 32 (3.80%) JSON
11 32 (3.80%) OAuth
12 31 (3.68%) PySpark
13 30 (3.56%) OAuth2
14 26 (3.08%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 117 (13.88%) Distributed Systems
2 95 (11.27%) Cloud Native
3 38 (4.51%) Management Information System
4 34 (4.03%) Equities
5 30 (3.56%) Data Structures
6 25 (2.97%) Product Ownership
7 23 (2.73%) Derivative
7 23 (2.73%) Replication
8 18 (2.14%) Market Risk
9 16 (1.90%) Fixed Income
10 15 (1.78%) Legacy Applications
11 14 (1.66%) Distributed Computing
12 12 (1.42%) Hybrid Cloud
13 10 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
13 10 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
14 9 (1.07%) Onboarding
14 9 (1.07%) Public Cloud
15 8 (0.95%) Data Fabric
15 8 (0.95%) Data Protection Act
15 8 (0.95%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 160 (18.98%) Linux
2 83 (9.85%) Unix
3 26 (3.08%) Windows
4 13 (1.54%) Mac OS X
5 8 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.71%) CentOS
7 5 (0.59%) AIX
8 3 (0.36%) VMS
9 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 353 (41.87%) CI/CD
2 349 (41.40%) Microservices
3 300 (35.59%) Agile
4 251 (29.77%) DevOps
5 234 (27.76%) Software Engineering
6 174 (20.64%) Problem-Solving
7 171 (20.28%) Containerisation
8 155 (18.39%) Event-Driven
9 146 (17.32%) Infrastructure as Code
10 143 (16.96%) Observability
11 122 (14.47%) Test Automation
12 115 (13.64%) Open Source
13 113 (13.40%) Data Pipeline
14 105 (12.46%) Analytics
15 100 (11.86%) TDD
16 90 (10.68%) Data Engineering
17 88 (10.44%) ETL
17 88 (10.44%) Event-Driven Architecture
18 84 (9.96%) Mentoring
19 78 (9.25%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 399 (47.33%) Java
2 290 (34.40%) Python
3 242 (28.71%) SQL
4 123 (14.59%) Go
5 74 (8.78%) C#
6 61 (7.24%) JavaScript
7 51 (6.05%) Shell Script
8 46 (5.46%) Bash
8 46 (5.46%) C++
9 30 (3.56%) Scala
10 29 (3.44%) TypeScript
11 15 (1.78%) Rust
12 14 (1.66%) PL/SQL
13 11 (1.30%) Perl
14 10 (1.19%) PowerShell
15 7 (0.83%) Groovy
15 7 (0.83%) Korn
16 6 (0.71%) T-SQL
17 5 (0.59%) RPG
17 5 (0.59%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 177 (21.00%) Security Cleared
2 159 (18.86%) SC Cleared
3 41 (4.86%) Degree
4 29 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (3.20%) Azure Certification
6 25 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 21 (2.49%) DV Cleared
8 16 (1.90%) AWS Certification
9 13 (1.54%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.95%) OCP
10 8 (0.95%) Oracle Certification
11 4 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.24%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.24%) CBAP
12 2 (0.24%) CSPO
12 2 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.12%) MySQL Certification
13 1 (0.12%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (7.83%) Data Quality
2 44 (5.22%) QA
3 31 (3.68%) GDPR
4 11 (1.30%) NCSC
5 9 (1.07%) ISO 20022
6 6 (0.71%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.71%) PCI DSS
6 6 (0.71%) SEPA
6 6 (0.71%) SLA
6 6 (0.71%) WCAG
7 5 (0.59%) NIST
8 3 (0.36%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.36%) HL7
8 3 (0.36%) MiFID
9 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.24%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.24%) ISO 8583
9 2 (0.24%) PSD2
10 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 313 (37.13%) Docker
2 8 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.71%) HDFS
4 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 344 (40.81%) Kubernetes
2 201 (23.84%) Terraform
3 97 (11.51%) Grafana
4 80 (9.49%) Prometheus
5 68 (8.07%) Ansible
6 29 (3.44%) Argo
7 16 (1.90%) Progress Chef
8 8 (0.95%) Istio
8 8 (0.95%) Packer
9 7 (0.83%) Kiali
9 7 (0.83%) linkerd
10 6 (0.71%) logstash
11 5 (0.59%) Hadoop YARN
11 5 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.59%) Puppet
11 5 (0.59%) Rancher
11 5 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
12 4 (0.47%) Fluentd
13 3 (0.36%) Kibana
13 3 (0.36%) Oozie
Vendors
1 79 (9.37%) Oracle
2 53 (6.29%) Databricks
2 53 (6.29%) Splunk
3 35 (4.15%) Confluent
4 33 (3.91%) Microsoft
5 31 (3.68%) Google
6 27 (3.20%) IBM
7 24 (2.85%) Sybase
7 24 (2.85%) VMware
8 22 (2.61%) Dynatrace
9 17 (2.02%) Cloudera
10 12 (1.42%) Foundry
10 12 (1.42%) Palantir
11 11 (1.30%) Red Hat
12 9 (1.07%) Informatica
12 9 (1.07%) SAP
12 9 (1.07%) ServiceNow
12 9 (1.07%) TIBCO
13 7 (0.83%) CA Agile Central
14 6 (0.71%) Salesforce