Kafka Contract Job Trends

Apache Kafka
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs citing Kafka skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 November 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Nov 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 118 115
Rank change year-on-year -21 -3 +61
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,146 847 746
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.08% 2.45% 2.05%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.38% 9.42% 8.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 758 546 455
10th Percentile £374 £365 £369
25th Percentile £425 £450 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £710
90th Percentile £752 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £462 £490
% change year-on-year +2.93% -5.82% -8.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 4 5
10th Percentile £53.25 £40.58 £26.04
25th Percentile £74.13 £48.56 £27.00
Median hourly rate £86.00 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.15% +111.61% -63.99%
75th Percentile £92.00 £75.31 £38.75
90th Percentile £93.80 £96.13 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 - £28.00
% change year-on-year - - -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 citing technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

6 months to
4 Nov 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 12,222 8,988 8,869
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 22.20% 26.03% 24.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,087 6,012 5,708
10th Percentile £377 £353 £353
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £720 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £486 £500
% change year-on-year +2.99% -2.90% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 189 121
10th Percentile £29.07 £29.80 £23.80
25th Percentile £50.38 £41.25 £41.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.37% -16.92% +13.04%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.00 £77.50 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.47 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +7.95% -3.85% +17.12%

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 4 November 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 for jobs citing Kafka over the 6 months to 4 November 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 4 November 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
Job Ads
Past 6 Months
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -30 955 £550 - 218
London -30 584 £575 -4.17% 140
UK excluding London -10 405 £475 +2.93% 114
Work from Home -68 279 £550 -4.35% 89
North of England +22 209 £500 +6.50% 35
North West +2 97 £537 +24.16% 32
Yorkshire +15 94 £500 -13.04% 1
Scotland -30 57 £410 -11.83% 5
South East -64 52 £460 +5.75% 42
Midlands -37 42 £425 -15.00% 10
South West -16 30 £600 +9.09% 16
West Midlands -44 28 £700 +40.00% 6
North East -12 27 £425 -26.09% 2
East of England -6 26 £475 -7.32% 5
East Midlands -13 14 £402 -1.95% 4
Northern Ireland - 4 - - 2
Wales - 2 £375 -

Kafka Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards

RankSkillShareJob Ads
1Spring29.8%341
1Spring Boot29.8%341
3REST25.8%296
4Terraform21.3%244
5RESTful14.8%170
6React12.6%144
7RabbitMQ10.9%125
8JSON7.2%82
9OAuth7.1%81
10HTML6.1%70
11Node.js5.7%65
12SOAP5.1%59
13XML5.0%57
14AngularJS4.9%56
14CSS4.9%56
16PySpark4.6%53
17GraphQL4.5%52
17OAuth24.5%52
19.NET4.2%48
20Hibernate3.9%45