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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 103 141
Rank change year-on-year -46 +38 +15
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,025 831 673
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.51% 1.74%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.14% 11.21% 7.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 630 537 466
10th Percentile £369 £385 £400
25th Percentile £423 £450 £476
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £629 £675 £724
90th Percentile £764 £764 £791
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +1.06% -4.67% -17.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 3 9
10th Percentile £56.40 £54.65 £24.87
25th Percentile £65.00 £57.13 £27.00
Median hourly rate £71.25 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £88.75 £71.23 £38.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £75.71 £45.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -2.16% +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 10,113 7,410 8,576
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.90% 22.39% 22.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,579 4,962 5,789
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £663
90th Percentile £738 £741 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 177 236
10th Percentile £28.04 £29.70 £22.63
25th Percentile £41.25 £41.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.88 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.45% +4.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £81.15 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £59.45
% change year-on-year +15.56% -5.39% +1.47%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -41 866 £550 - 496
London -34 517 £575 -7.26% 365
UK excluding London -26 379 £475 +1.06% 200
Work from Home -63 256 £549 -4.52% 213
North of England -22 177 £465 -1.06% 61
Yorkshire +8 88 £475 -13.64% 19
North West -30 69 £430 -8.42% 29
South East -32 63 £489 +12.36% 54
Scotland -23 54 £430 -8.51% 26
Midlands -43 36 £500 +17.51% 13
North East -20 27 £426 -8.49% 13
South West -27 27 £500 -9.09% 26
East of England -1 26 £550 +7.32% 10
West Midlands -49 21 £514 +2.80% 9
East Midlands -15 15 £470 +22.40% 4
Northern Ireland +3 4 - - 11
Wales -14 1 £375 -

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
1 134 (13.07%) Apache Spark
2 72 (7.02%) Apache
3 63 (6.15%) Apache Airflow
4 18 (1.76%) Confluence
5 9 (0.88%) Camunda
6 6 (0.59%) CMS
6 6 (0.59%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.59%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 6 (0.59%) WebSphere
7 5 (0.49%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.39%) PowerExchange
9 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.29%) Mule
10 2 (0.20%) Apache Pig
10 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (0.68%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.20%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.20%) Endur
2 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.098%) Actimize
3 1 (0.098%) Bloomberg AIM
3 1 (0.098%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.098%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.098%) SAP IS-U
3 1 (0.098%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 596 (58.15%) AWS
2 350 (34.15%) Azure
3 219 (21.37%) GCP
4 172 (16.78%) GitHub
5 124 (12.10%) GitHub Actions
6 107 (10.44%) Serverless
7 83 (8.10%) AWS Lambda
8 78 (7.61%) Amazon S3
9 72 (7.02%) Amazon EKS
10 71 (6.93%) Azure DevOps
11 66 (6.44%) Snowflake
12 65 (6.34%) OpenShift
13 54 (5.27%) dbt
14 53 (5.17%) Amazon SQS
15 47 (4.59%) Power Platform
16 43 (4.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 43 (4.20%) Amazon ECS
17 31 (3.02%) Azure Data Factory
17 31 (3.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 30 (2.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.05%) HTTP
2 15 (1.46%) DNS
3 11 (1.07%) Firewall
4 10 (0.98%) Network Security
5 7 (0.68%) MQTT
5 7 (0.68%) SSL
6 6 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.49%) SAN
8 4 (0.39%) NAS
8 4 (0.39%) SSH
9 3 (0.29%) Internet
10 2 (0.20%) 4G
10 2 (0.20%) 5G
10 2 (0.20%) NaaS
10 2 (0.20%) OpenVPN
10 2 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
10 2 (0.20%) WAN
11 1 (0.098%) Broadband
11 1 (0.098%) FIX Connectivity
11 1 (0.098%) MIMO
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (18.54%) PostgreSQL
2 156 (15.22%) MongoDB
3 136 (13.27%) NoSQL
4 99 (9.66%) Relational Database
5 69 (6.73%) Data Warehouse
6 63 (6.15%) Big Data
7 60 (5.85%) SQL Server
8 52 (5.07%) Data Lake
9 47 (4.59%) Redis
10 45 (4.39%) Power BI
11 40 (3.90%) BigQuery
11 40 (3.90%) MySQL
12 37 (3.61%) Flink
13 36 (3.51%) Elasticsearch
14 35 (3.41%) Apache Cassandra
14 35 (3.41%) Metadata
15 31 (3.02%) DynamoDB
16 30 (2.93%) Hadoop
17 28 (2.73%) Amazon Redshift
18 27 (2.63%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 205 (20.00%) Jenkins
2 167 (16.29%) Git
3 142 (13.85%) GitLab
4 76 (7.41%) JUnit
5 61 (5.95%) Mockito
6 56 (5.46%) Gradle
7 45 (4.39%) JIRA
7 45 (4.39%) Selenium
8 32 (3.12%) Cucumber
8 32 (3.12%) Maven
9 24 (2.34%) SonarQube
10 22 (2.15%) Postman
11 19 (1.85%) REST Assured
12 18 (1.76%) Liquibase
13 17 (1.66%) Gatling
13 17 (1.66%) JMeter
14 12 (1.17%) Bitbucket
14 12 (1.17%) Cypress.io
15 11 (1.07%) LoadRunner
15 11 (1.07%) SoapUI
General
1 254 (24.78%) Finance
2 187 (18.24%) Social Skills
3 140 (13.66%) Banking
4 108 (10.54%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (9.76%) Public Sector
6 36 (3.51%) Front Office
7 33 (3.22%) Retail
8 27 (2.63%) Investment Banking
9 18 (1.76%) Financial Institution
9 18 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (1.66%) Telecoms
11 15 (1.46%) Law
12 13 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
13 11 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 10 (0.98%) Billing
15 9 (0.88%) Publishing
16 8 (0.78%) Games
16 8 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.68%) Military
17 7 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 319 (31.12%) Developer
2 203 (19.80%) Senior
3 169 (16.49%) Java Developer
4 144 (14.05%) Data Engineer
5 141 (13.76%) Architect
6 107 (10.44%) Lead
7 80 (7.80%) Software Engineer
8 77 (7.51%) Java Engineer
9 70 (6.83%) Senior Developer
10 59 (5.76%) Solutions Architect
11 49 (4.78%) DevOps Engineer
12 40 (3.90%) Senior Java Developer
13 38 (3.71%) AWS Architect
13 38 (3.71%) Full-Stack Developer
13 38 (3.71%) Python Engineer
14 36 (3.51%) AWS Engineer
14 36 (3.51%) Senior Data Engineer
15 33 (3.22%) Data Architect
15 33 (3.22%) Kafka Engineer
16 32 (3.12%) Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 248 (24.20%) Spring
2 237 (23.12%) Spring Boot
3 204 (19.90%) REST
4 147 (14.34%) RESTful
5 143 (13.95%) React
6 125 (12.20%) RabbitMQ
7 71 (6.93%) JSON
8 66 (6.44%) Node.js
9 59 (5.76%) GraphQL
10 56 (5.46%) OAuth
11 49 (4.78%) PySpark
12 48 (4.68%) OpenTelemetry
13 44 (4.29%) Redux
14 43 (4.20%) .NET
14 43 (4.20%) Swagger
15 42 (4.10%) OpenAPI
16 41 (4.00%) Middleware
16 41 (4.00%) OAuth2
17 40 (3.90%) XML
18 35 (3.41%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 200 (19.51%) Cloud Native
2 199 (19.41%) Distributed Systems
3 43 (4.20%) Product Ownership
4 42 (4.10%) Data Structures
5 35 (3.41%) Enterprise Software
6 30 (2.93%) Algorithms
7 29 (2.83%) Onboarding
8 27 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
9 26 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (2.24%) AI Agents
10 23 (2.24%) Fixed Income
11 21 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 21 (2.05%) Management Information System
12 18 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
12 18 (1.76%) Replication
12 18 (1.76%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 17 (1.66%) Public Cloud
14 15 (1.46%) Equities
14 15 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
15 13 (1.27%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 119 (11.61%) Linux
2 66 (6.44%) Unix
3 27 (2.63%) Windows
4 9 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.68%) Mac OS X
6 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.20%) Android
7 2 (0.20%) Debian
7 2 (0.20%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 2 (0.20%) VMS
8 1 (0.098%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.098%) CentOS
8 1 (0.098%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.098%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 526 (51.32%) CI/CD
2 392 (38.24%) Microservices
3 372 (36.29%) Event-Driven
4 364 (35.51%) Agile
5 354 (34.54%) DevOps
6 261 (25.46%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 245 (23.90%) Observability
8 225 (21.95%) Containerisation
9 208 (20.29%) Test Automation
10 194 (18.93%) Infrastructure as Code
11 188 (18.34%) Data Pipeline
12 187 (18.24%) Software Engineering
13 161 (15.71%) AI
14 156 (15.22%) Data Modelling
15 147 (14.34%) Problem-Solving
16 138 (13.46%) ETL
17 137 (13.37%) Analytics
18 126 (12.29%) Data Engineering
19 121 (11.80%) TDD
20 117 (11.41%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 453 (44.20%) Java
2 355 (34.63%) Python
3 331 (32.29%) SQL
4 114 (11.12%) TypeScript
5 103 (10.05%) JavaScript
6 69 (6.73%) Bash
7 62 (6.05%) Go
8 61 (5.95%) C#
9 39 (3.80%) Scala
10 33 (3.22%) PowerShell
11 28 (2.73%) PL/SQL
12 20 (1.95%) Shell Script
13 16 (1.56%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.07%) Rust
15 10 (0.98%) C++
15 10 (0.98%) Groovy
15 10 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.88%) Bicep
17 7 (0.68%) PHP
18 6 (0.59%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 235 (22.93%) Security Cleared
2 185 (18.05%) SC Cleared
3 53 (5.17%) Degree
4 28 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (1.66%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.07%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.98%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.88%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.68%) Azure Certification
11 6 (0.59%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (0.49%) ISEB
12 5 (0.49%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.29%) PhD
13 3 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
14 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
15 1 (0.098%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (9.46%) Data Quality
2 63 (6.15%) QA
3 42 (4.10%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.93%) GDPR
5 25 (2.44%) ISO 20022
6 10 (0.98%) SEPA
7 8 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
8 6 (0.59%) WCAG
9 4 (0.39%) ISO 15022
9 4 (0.39%) NIST
9 4 (0.39%) SLA
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%) HL7
11 1 (0.098%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 364 (35.51%) Docker
2 7 (0.68%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 6 (0.59%) etcd
4 5 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.20%) HDFS
6 1 (0.098%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 446 (43.51%) Kubernetes
2 207 (20.20%) Terraform
3 124 (12.10%) Grafana
4 112 (10.93%) Prometheus
5 61 (5.95%) Ansible
6 28 (2.73%) Argo
7 24 (2.34%) Control-M
8 12 (1.17%) Istio
8 12 (1.17%) Kibana
9 11 (1.07%) Kustomize
9 11 (1.07%) Podman
9 11 (1.07%) Puppet
10 7 (0.68%) Fluentd
10 7 (0.68%) logstash
11 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
11 5 (0.49%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.49%) Rancher
12 3 (0.29%) Bosun
12 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 108 (10.54%) Oracle
2 93 (9.07%) Databricks
3 55 (5.37%) Splunk
4 54 (5.27%) Google
5 52 (5.07%) Microsoft
6 40 (3.90%) IBM
7 33 (3.22%) Informatica
8 32 (3.12%) Confluent
9 31 (3.02%) Dynatrace
10 18 (1.76%) Salesforce
11 17 (1.66%) MuleSoft
12 16 (1.56%) SAP
12 16 (1.56%) Solace
13 14 (1.37%) OpenAI
14 10 (0.98%) New Relic
14 10 (0.98%) Red Hat
14 10 (0.98%) TIBCO
15 9 (0.88%) ServiceNow
15 9 (0.88%) VMware
16 8 (0.78%) Sybase