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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 111 149
Rank change year-on-year -24 +38 -11
Contract jobs citing Kafka 941 705 658
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.96% 2.41% 1.55%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.98% 10.66% 7.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 573 460 487
10th Percentile £363 £400 £400
25th Percentile £420 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +1.85% -16.92%
75th Percentile £650 £719 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £490
% change year-on-year -2.11% -3.06% -10.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 4 6
10th Percentile £48.38 £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 £90.00 £93.75 £38.94
90th Percentile £92.50 - £54.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £78.70 £31.50
% change year-on-year -11.05% +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 9,425 6,613 8,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.62% 22.64% 20.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,218 4,532 6,201
10th Percentile £363 £363 £350
25th Percentile £417 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £624 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 270 109 246
10th Percentile £32.50 £29.21 £21.25
25th Percentile £52.13 £50.00 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%
75th Percentile £71.87 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.10 £82.27 £74.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -15 814 £543 -5.65% 199
London -14 516 £600 -7.69% 123
UK excluding London -40 299 £465 -2.11% 102
Work from Home -18 292 £600 - 92
North of England -36 134 £455 -9.00% 39
Yorkshire -14 67 £460 -16.36% 9
North West -45 56 £450 -10.00% 22
South East -40 47 £488 +1.99% 35
Midlands -44 45 £491 +33.86% 6
Scotland -7 42 £450 -4.76% 7
South West -4 30 £538 +4.88% 11
West Midlands -43 25 £514 -6.55% 4
East Midlands -24 20 £402 +12.92% 2
North East -10 19 £450 -2.70% 8
East of England -21 15 £550 +71.14%
Wales -11 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
1 133 (14.13%) Apache Spark
2 69 (7.33%) Apache
3 48 (5.10%) Apache Airflow
4 21 (2.23%) 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%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.32%) Apache Pulsar
7 3 (0.32%) MQSeries
7 3 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.11%) JBoss
Applications
1 4 (0.43%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Bloomberg AIM
1 4 (0.43%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Actimize
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 555 (58.98%) AWS
2 265 (28.16%) Azure
3 159 (16.90%) GCP
4 145 (15.41%) GitHub
5 125 (13.28%) Serverless
6 104 (11.05%) Amazon S3
7 100 (10.63%) GitHub Actions
8 93 (9.88%) AWS Lambda
9 73 (7.76%) Amazon EKS
10 66 (7.01%) Power Platform
11 63 (6.70%) Azure DevOps
11 63 (6.70%) OpenShift
12 55 (5.84%) AWS CloudFormation
13 48 (5.10%) Amazon ECS
14 47 (4.99%) Snowflake
15 44 (4.68%) Amazon SQS
16 40 (4.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 40 (4.25%) Amazon Kinesis
17 37 (3.93%) dbt
18 36 (3.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.91%) Firewall
2 14 (1.49%) HTTP
3 13 (1.38%) SSL
4 9 (0.96%) DNS
5 6 (0.64%) SMS
6 5 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.43%) NAS
7 4 (0.43%) SAN
8 3 (0.32%) SSH
8 3 (0.32%) VPN
9 2 (0.21%) FTP
9 2 (0.21%) MQTT
9 2 (0.21%) NaaS
9 2 (0.21%) Network Security
9 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.21%) WAN
10 1 (0.11%) 5G
10 1 (0.11%) Broadband
10 1 (0.11%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (20.40%) PostgreSQL
2 152 (16.15%) MongoDB
3 127 (13.50%) NoSQL
4 89 (9.46%) Relational Database
5 63 (6.70%) Big Data
6 57 (6.06%) Data Lake
7 56 (5.95%) Data Warehouse
8 54 (5.74%) Apache Cassandra
9 53 (5.63%) Power BI
9 53 (5.63%) SQL Server
10 50 (5.31%) Redis
11 45 (4.78%) Elasticsearch
12 39 (4.14%) Flink
13 38 (4.04%) DynamoDB
14 37 (3.93%) Amazon Athena
15 36 (3.83%) Hadoop
16 34 (3.61%) MySQL
17 31 (3.29%) Amazon Redshift
18 30 (3.19%) BigQuery
18 30 (3.19%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 143 (15.20%) Jenkins
2 131 (13.92%) GitLab
3 125 (13.28%) Git
4 61 (6.48%) JUnit
5 54 (5.74%) JIRA
6 42 (4.46%) Mockito
7 25 (2.66%) Gradle
7 25 (2.66%) Selenium
8 21 (2.23%) REST Assured
9 20 (2.13%) Gatling
10 19 (2.02%) Cucumber
11 14 (1.49%) Liquibase
11 14 (1.49%) Serenity BDD
12 13 (1.38%) Maven
13 12 (1.28%) Postman
14 10 (1.06%) Jaeger
15 8 (0.85%) SonarQube
16 7 (0.74%) JMeter
16 7 (0.74%) Snyk
17 6 (0.64%) Artifactory
General
1 256 (27.21%) Finance
2 168 (17.85%) Social Skills
3 122 (12.96%) Banking
4 79 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 47 (4.99%) Front Office
6 35 (3.72%) Investment Banking
7 25 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
8 24 (2.55%) Financial Institution
9 12 (1.28%) Marketing
10 10 (1.06%) Law
10 10 (1.06%) Retail
10 10 (1.06%) Telecoms
11 9 (0.96%) Publishing
12 8 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (0.74%) Corporate Banking
14 6 (0.64%) Automotive
15 5 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (0.53%) Military
15 5 (0.53%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 316 (33.58%) Developer
2 207 (22.00%) Senior
3 161 (17.11%) Data Engineer
4 149 (15.83%) Java Developer
5 116 (12.33%) Lead
6 110 (11.69%) Architect
7 96 (10.20%) Senior Developer
8 90 (9.56%) Software Engineer
9 62 (6.59%) Java Engineer
10 54 (5.74%) AWS Architect
11 50 (5.31%) Senior Java Developer
12 44 (4.68%) Full-Stack Developer
13 43 (4.57%) DevOps Engineer
14 40 (4.25%) Solutions Architect
15 36 (3.83%) Senior Data Engineer
16 35 (3.72%) Principal Engineer
17 33 (3.51%) Developer/Software Engineer
18 32 (3.40%) Data Architect
19 31 (3.29%) Full-Stack Engineer
20 29 (3.08%) Kafka Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (23.59%) Spring
2 205 (21.79%) Spring Boot
3 127 (13.50%) REST
4 116 (12.33%) RESTful
5 111 (11.80%) React
6 107 (11.37%) Node.js
7 81 (8.61%) RabbitMQ
8 60 (6.38%) gRPC
9 58 (6.16%) OpenTelemetry
10 56 (5.95%) GraphQL
11 50 (5.31%) JSON
12 45 (4.78%) Middleware
12 45 (4.78%) PySpark
13 42 (4.46%) Apache Avro
14 39 (4.14%) Redux
15 37 (3.93%) AngularJS
16 35 (3.72%) OAuth
16 35 (3.72%) Swagger
17 34 (3.61%) OpenAPI
18 30 (3.19%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 163 (17.32%) Distributed Systems
2 147 (15.62%) Cloud Native
3 45 (4.78%) Management Information System
4 43 (4.57%) Fixed Income
5 32 (3.40%) Product Ownership
6 27 (2.87%) Data Structures
7 19 (2.02%) Equities
7 19 (2.02%) Onboarding
8 17 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
9 16 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.59%) Algorithms
11 14 (1.49%) Derivative
11 14 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
12 13 (1.38%) Clustering
13 12 (1.28%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 11 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
14 11 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 11 (1.17%) Hedge funds
15 9 (0.96%) Public Cloud
15 9 (0.96%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 98 (10.41%) Linux
2 57 (6.06%) Unix
3 33 (3.51%) Windows
4 9 (0.96%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.32%) VMS
6 3 (0.32%) zOS
7 2 (0.21%) AIX
7 2 (0.21%) Debian
7 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.11%) Android
8 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.11%) CentOS
8 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 420 (44.63%) CI/CD
2 338 (35.92%) Microservices
3 294 (31.24%) Agile
4 283 (30.07%) DevOps
5 246 (26.14%) Event-Driven
6 213 (22.64%) Observability
7 196 (20.83%) Containerisation
8 191 (20.30%) Software Engineering
9 169 (17.96%) Data Pipeline
10 165 (17.53%) Data Modelling
11 160 (17.00%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 159 (16.90%) Analytics
13 157 (16.68%) Infrastructure as Code
14 150 (15.94%) Data Engineering
15 148 (15.73%) Problem-Solving
16 141 (14.98%) ETL
16 141 (14.98%) Test Automation
17 109 (11.58%) Full-Stack Development
18 99 (10.52%) Data Governance
19 98 (10.41%) AI
Programming Languages
1 425 (45.16%) Java
2 326 (34.64%) Python
3 284 (30.18%) SQL
4 111 (11.80%) TypeScript
5 105 (11.16%) Go
6 95 (10.10%) JavaScript
7 58 (6.16%) C#
8 42 (4.46%) Bash
9 29 (3.08%) Scala
10 18 (1.91%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.91%) Rust
11 17 (1.81%) C++
12 15 (1.59%) Shell Script
13 14 (1.49%) Bicep
14 10 (1.06%) Search Processing Language
15 9 (0.96%) PL/SQL
16 7 (0.74%) Perl
17 6 (0.64%) PHP
18 5 (0.53%) Groovy
18 5 (0.53%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 216 (22.95%) Security Cleared
2 172 (18.28%) SC Cleared
3 47 (4.99%) Degree
4 27 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.91%) AWS Certification
6 17 (1.81%) DV Cleared
7 16 (1.70%) Azure Certification
8 13 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (1.38%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.74%) SnowPro
10 4 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
10 4 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
11 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.11%) CISSP
12 1 (0.11%) OCP
12 1 (0.11%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.11%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (11.37%) Data Quality
2 48 (5.10%) QA
3 44 (4.68%) GDPR
4 28 (2.98%) Accessibility
5 18 (1.91%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.96%) NIST
8 8 (0.85%) SEPA
9 7 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.64%) NCSC
11 4 (0.43%) SLA
11 4 (0.43%) WCAG
12 3 (0.32%) HL7
12 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.32%) MiFID
13 2 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.21%) EMIR
13 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.21%) PSD2
14 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 327 (34.75%) Docker
2 6 (0.64%) etcd
3 3 (0.32%) HDFS
3 3 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.21%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 370 (39.32%) Kubernetes
2 189 (20.09%) Terraform
3 126 (13.39%) Grafana
4 125 (13.28%) Prometheus
5 52 (5.53%) Ansible
6 27 (2.87%) Argo
7 11 (1.17%) Istio
7 11 (1.17%) Kibana
8 9 (0.96%) Kiali
9 7 (0.74%) Fluentd
9 7 (0.74%) linkerd
10 6 (0.64%) logstash
10 6 (0.64%) Puppet
10 6 (0.64%) Rancher
11 5 (0.53%) Podman
12 2 (0.21%) Amdocs OSS
12 2 (0.21%) Kustomize
12 2 (0.21%) NetBackup
12 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
12 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 96 (10.20%) Databricks
2 77 (8.18%) Splunk
3 68 (7.23%) Oracle
4 46 (4.89%) Microsoft
5 36 (3.83%) Google
6 33 (3.51%) Confluent
7 21 (2.23%) Informatica
8 16 (1.70%) IBM
9 13 (1.38%) Dynatrace
9 13 (1.38%) Red Hat
10 12 (1.28%) Salesforce
11 11 (1.17%) ServiceNow
12 9 (0.96%) Solace
12 9 (0.96%) Talend
13 8 (0.85%) AppDynamics
13 8 (0.85%) VMware
14 7 (0.74%) MuleSoft
14 7 (0.74%) Pega
15 6 (0.64%) Cloudera
15 6 (0.64%) Sybase