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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 150 104 141
Rank change year-on-year -46 +37 +17
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,021 822 673
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.50% 1.74%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.08% 11.18% 7.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 628 531 466
10th Percentile £369 £385 £400
25th Percentile £420 £450 £476
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £626 £675 £724
90th Percentile £766 £756 £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 10,132 7,350 8,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.92% 22.36% 22.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,588 4,921 5,784
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 £630 £663
90th Percentile £738 £745 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 177 232
10th Percentile £28.04 £29.70 £22.53
25th Percentile £41.25 £41.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.88 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.45% -0.23% -8.33%
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 £61.60
% change year-on-year +15.56% -8.69% +5.14%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -43 862 £550 - 162
London -34 514 £575 -7.26% 102
UK excluding London -23 378 £475 +1.06% 112
Work from Home -56 257 £549 -3.26% 90
North of England -25 176 £465 -1.06% 26
Yorkshire 0 89 £475 -13.64% 11
North West -39 68 £430 -8.42% 8
South East -45 63 £489 +12.36% 42
Scotland -24 54 £430 -8.51% 6
Midlands -49 36 £500 +17.51% 6
South West -26 27 £500 -9.09% 16
East of England -4 26 £550 +7.32% 3
North East -18 26 £425 -8.55% 7
West Midlands -43 21 £514 +2.80% 3
East Midlands -17 15 £470 +22.40% 3
Northern Ireland +3 4 - - 12
Wales -18 1 £375 - 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 (13.03%) Apache Spark
2 71 (6.95%) Apache
3 62 (6.07%) 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%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (0.69%) 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%) 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 (58.37%) AWS
2 350 (34.28%) Azure
3 220 (21.55%) GCP
4 172 (16.85%) GitHub
5 124 (12.14%) GitHub Actions
6 107 (10.48%) Serverless
7 83 (8.13%) AWS Lambda
8 78 (7.64%) Amazon S3
9 71 (6.95%) Amazon EKS
9 71 (6.95%) Azure DevOps
10 66 (6.46%) Snowflake
11 65 (6.37%) OpenShift
12 54 (5.29%) dbt
13 53 (5.19%) Amazon SQS
14 46 (4.51%) Power Platform
15 43 (4.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 42 (4.11%) Amazon ECS
17 31 (3.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 30 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (2.94%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.06%) HTTP
2 15 (1.47%) DNS
3 11 (1.08%) Firewall
4 10 (0.98%) Network Security
5 7 (0.69%) MQTT
5 7 (0.69%) 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%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (18.51%) PostgreSQL
2 156 (15.28%) MongoDB
3 137 (13.42%) NoSQL
4 99 (9.70%) Relational Database
5 68 (6.66%) Data Warehouse
6 62 (6.07%) Big Data
7 60 (5.88%) SQL Server
8 52 (5.09%) Data Lake
9 48 (4.70%) Redis
10 45 (4.41%) Power BI
11 40 (3.92%) BigQuery
11 40 (3.92%) MySQL
12 37 (3.62%) Flink
13 36 (3.53%) Metadata
14 35 (3.43%) Elasticsearch
15 34 (3.33%) Apache Cassandra
16 31 (3.04%) DynamoDB
17 30 (2.94%) Hadoop
18 28 (2.74%) Amazon Redshift
19 27 (2.64%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 206 (20.18%) Jenkins
2 168 (16.45%) Git
3 142 (13.91%) GitLab
4 76 (7.44%) JUnit
5 60 (5.88%) Mockito
6 56 (5.48%) Gradle
7 46 (4.51%) JIRA
8 45 (4.41%) Selenium
9 32 (3.13%) Cucumber
9 32 (3.13%) Maven
10 24 (2.35%) SonarQube
11 22 (2.15%) Postman
12 19 (1.86%) REST Assured
13 18 (1.76%) Liquibase
14 17 (1.67%) Gatling
14 17 (1.67%) JMeter
15 13 (1.27%) Bitbucket
16 12 (1.18%) Cypress.io
17 11 (1.08%) LoadRunner
17 11 (1.08%) SoapUI
General
1 256 (25.07%) Finance
2 187 (18.32%) Social Skills
3 142 (13.91%) Banking
4 107 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
5 99 (9.70%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.33%) Front Office
7 33 (3.23%) Retail
8 27 (2.64%) Investment Banking
9 18 (1.76%) Financial Institution
9 18 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (1.67%) Telecoms
11 15 (1.47%) Law
12 12 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
13 11 (1.08%) 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 (0.69%) Marketing
17 7 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 317 (31.05%) Developer
2 203 (19.88%) Senior
3 168 (16.45%) Java Developer
4 142 (13.91%) Architect
4 142 (13.91%) Data Engineer
5 108 (10.58%) Lead
6 79 (7.74%) Software Engineer
7 75 (7.35%) Java Engineer
8 69 (6.76%) Senior Developer
9 60 (5.88%) Solutions Architect
10 49 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
11 40 (3.92%) Senior Java Developer
12 39 (3.82%) AWS Architect
13 38 (3.72%) Full-Stack Developer
14 37 (3.62%) Python Engineer
15 36 (3.53%) AWS Engineer
15 36 (3.53%) Senior Data Engineer
16 33 (3.23%) Data Architect
16 33 (3.23%) Kafka Engineer
17 32 (3.13%) Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (24.19%) Spring
2 237 (23.21%) Spring Boot
3 204 (19.98%) REST
4 148 (14.50%) RESTful
5 144 (14.10%) React
6 125 (12.24%) RabbitMQ
7 71 (6.95%) JSON
8 65 (6.37%) Node.js
9 59 (5.78%) GraphQL
10 56 (5.48%) OAuth
11 49 (4.80%) PySpark
12 48 (4.70%) OpenTelemetry
13 44 (4.31%) Redux
14 43 (4.21%) .NET
14 43 (4.21%) Swagger
15 42 (4.11%) OpenAPI
16 41 (4.02%) OAuth2
17 40 (3.92%) XML
18 39 (3.82%) Middleware
19 36 (3.53%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 199 (19.49%) Cloud Native
2 197 (19.29%) Distributed Systems
3 44 (4.31%) Product Ownership
4 42 (4.11%) Data Structures
5 36 (3.53%) Enterprise Software
6 30 (2.94%) Onboarding
7 29 (2.84%) Algorithms
8 27 (2.64%) Self-Motivation
9 26 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (2.25%) AI Agents
10 23 (2.25%) Fixed Income
11 21 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 21 (2.06%) Management Information System
12 18 (1.76%) Replication
12 18 (1.76%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 17 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
13 17 (1.67%) Public Cloud
14 15 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
15 14 (1.37%) Equities
16 13 (1.27%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 119 (11.66%) Linux
2 66 (6.46%) Unix
3 27 (2.64%) Windows
4 9 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.59%) 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 (51.52%) CI/CD
2 391 (38.30%) Microservices
3 374 (36.63%) Event-Driven
4 364 (35.65%) Agile
5 354 (34.67%) DevOps
6 262 (25.66%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 246 (24.09%) Observability
8 223 (21.84%) Containerisation
9 207 (20.27%) Test Automation
10 195 (19.10%) Infrastructure as Code
11 187 (18.32%) Data Pipeline
12 186 (18.22%) Software Engineering
13 160 (15.67%) AI
14 155 (15.18%) Data Modelling
15 146 (14.30%) Problem-Solving
16 137 (13.42%) ETL
17 136 (13.32%) Analytics
18 125 (12.24%) Data Engineering
19 120 (11.75%) TDD
20 118 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 449 (43.98%) Java
2 354 (34.67%) Python
3 329 (32.22%) SQL
4 114 (11.17%) TypeScript
5 104 (10.19%) JavaScript
6 70 (6.86%) Bash
7 61 (5.97%) C#
7 61 (5.97%) Go
8 39 (3.82%) Scala
9 33 (3.23%) PowerShell
10 28 (2.74%) PL/SQL
11 20 (1.96%) Shell Script
12 16 (1.57%) Kotlin
13 11 (1.08%) Rust
14 10 (0.98%) C++
14 10 (0.98%) Groovy
14 10 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
15 9 (0.88%) Bicep
16 7 (0.69%) PHP
17 6 (0.59%) Perl
Qualifications
1 234 (22.92%) Security Cleared
2 184 (18.02%) SC Cleared
3 53 (5.19%) Degree
4 28 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (1.67%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.98%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.88%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.69%) 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 (9.50%) Data Quality
2 64 (6.27%) QA
3 42 (4.11%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.94%) GDPR
5 25 (2.45%) 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%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.098%) GRC
System Software
1 364 (35.65%) Docker
2 7 (0.69%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 6 (0.59%) etcd
3 6 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
4 2 (0.20%) HDFS
5 1 (0.098%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 446 (43.68%) Kubernetes
2 207 (20.27%) Terraform
3 124 (12.14%) Grafana
4 112 (10.97%) Prometheus
5 61 (5.97%) Ansible
6 28 (2.74%) Argo
7 24 (2.35%) Control-M
8 12 (1.18%) Istio
8 12 (1.18%) Kibana
9 11 (1.08%) Kustomize
9 11 (1.08%) Podman
9 11 (1.08%) Puppet
10 7 (0.69%) Fluentd
10 7 (0.69%) 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 (10.58%) Oracle
2 92 (9.01%) Databricks
3 55 (5.39%) Splunk
4 54 (5.29%) Google
5 52 (5.09%) Microsoft
6 40 (3.92%) IBM
7 34 (3.33%) Informatica
8 33 (3.23%) Confluent
9 31 (3.04%) Dynatrace
10 18 (1.76%) Salesforce
11 17 (1.67%) MuleSoft
12 16 (1.57%) SAP
13 15 (1.47%) Solace
14 14 (1.37%) OpenAI
15 10 (0.98%) New Relic
15 10 (0.98%) Red Hat
15 10 (0.98%) TIBCO
15 10 (0.98%) VMware
16 9 (0.88%) ServiceNow
17 8 (0.78%) Sybase