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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 110 157
Rank change year-on-year -31 +47 -23
Contract jobs citing Kafka 930 709 680
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.47% 1.59%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.70% 10.84% 7.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 554 465 505
10th Percentile £380 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £675
90th Percentile £800 £830 £771
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 7
10th Percentile £50.05 £47.14 £22.34
25th Percentile £64.00 £58.98 £24.88
Median hourly rate £70.00 £78.70 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.05% +181.07% -64.10%
75th Percentile £90.00 £86.23 £37.63
90th Percentile £92.00 £90.74 £51.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -11.05% +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 9,587 6,543 9,008
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.60% 22.76% 21.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,291 4,496 6,268
10th Percentile £363 £363 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -2.34% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 106 251
10th Percentile £31.03 £28.29 £21.73
25th Percentile £51.25 £39.84 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +31.58% -26.92%
75th Percentile £73.00 £68.75 £65.64
90th Percentile £81.00 £81.18 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £48.43
% change year-on-year - +34.21% -25.49%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -25 802 £550 -2.65% 84
London -18 508 £600 -7.69% 43
UK excluding London -40 298 £475 - 62
Work from Home -20 285 £600 +2.39% 42
North of England -35 132 £460 -8.00% 20
Yorkshire -14 71 £463 -15.91% 4
South East -31 50 £488 +5.06% 23
North West -40 50 £450 -10.00% 12
Scotland -11 44 £450 -4.76% 2
Midlands -46 41 £491 +23.12% 1
South West -12 28 £500 -9.09% 8
West Midlands -51 23 £507 -3.43% 1
North East -15 20 £450 -2.70% 4
East Midlands -22 18 £407 +14.40%
East of England -21 16 £550 +33.92% 2
Wales -12 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 (14.30%) Apache Spark
2 69 (7.42%) Apache
3 50 (5.38%) Apache Airflow
4 17 (1.83%) Confluence
5 7 (0.75%) Camunda
6 6 (0.65%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.65%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.54%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.43%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.32%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.22%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.11%) JBoss
Applications
1 4 (0.43%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.22%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Bloomberg AIM
1 3 (0.32%) Fidessa
1 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.22%) Shopify
2 2 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.11%) Endur
3 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
3 1 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 549 (59.03%) AWS
2 263 (28.28%) Azure
3 162 (17.42%) GCP
4 142 (15.27%) GitHub
5 121 (13.01%) Serverless
6 101 (10.86%) GitHub Actions
7 98 (10.54%) Amazon S3
8 91 (9.78%) AWS Lambda
9 67 (7.20%) Amazon EKS
10 64 (6.88%) OpenShift
11 63 (6.77%) Power Platform
12 61 (6.56%) Azure DevOps
13 51 (5.48%) AWS CloudFormation
14 48 (5.16%) Snowflake
15 45 (4.84%) Amazon ECS
16 44 (4.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 41 (4.41%) Amazon SQS
18 39 (4.19%) dbt
19 36 (3.87%) Amazon Kinesis
20 33 (3.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.94%) Firewall
2 12 (1.29%) HTTP
3 10 (1.08%) DNS
4 9 (0.97%) SSL
5 7 (0.75%) Network Security
6 6 (0.65%) SMS
7 5 (0.54%) NAS
7 5 (0.54%) SAN
7 5 (0.54%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.32%) MQTT
9 2 (0.22%) FTP
9 2 (0.22%) NaaS
9 2 (0.22%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.22%) SSH
9 2 (0.22%) WAN
10 1 (0.11%) Broadband
10 1 (0.11%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.11%) MIMO
10 1 (0.11%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (20.32%) PostgreSQL
2 150 (16.13%) MongoDB
3 124 (13.33%) NoSQL
4 83 (8.92%) Relational Database
5 62 (6.67%) Big Data
6 55 (5.91%) Data Lake
7 54 (5.81%) Data Warehouse
8 52 (5.59%) SQL Server
9 51 (5.48%) Apache Cassandra
9 51 (5.48%) Power BI
10 48 (5.16%) Redis
11 47 (5.05%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (4.09%) Flink
13 37 (3.98%) Amazon Athena
13 37 (3.98%) DynamoDB
14 36 (3.87%) MySQL
15 35 (3.76%) Hadoop
16 30 (3.23%) Amazon Redshift
16 30 (3.23%) BigQuery
17 29 (3.12%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 145 (15.59%) Jenkins
2 131 (14.09%) GitLab
3 129 (13.87%) Git
4 64 (6.88%) JUnit
5 56 (6.02%) JIRA
6 45 (4.84%) Mockito
7 30 (3.23%) Selenium
8 29 (3.12%) Gradle
9 24 (2.58%) REST Assured
10 21 (2.26%) Cucumber
11 20 (2.15%) Gatling
12 17 (1.83%) Liquibase
13 15 (1.61%) Postman
13 15 (1.61%) Serenity BDD
14 14 (1.51%) Maven
15 11 (1.18%) SonarQube
16 10 (1.08%) Jaeger
17 7 (0.75%) JMeter
17 7 (0.75%) Snyk
18 6 (0.65%) Artifactory
General
1 253 (27.20%) Finance
2 166 (17.85%) Social Skills
3 123 (13.23%) Banking
4 78 (8.39%) Public Sector
5 76 (8.17%) Analytical Skills
6 45 (4.84%) Front Office
7 35 (3.76%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (2.69%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.51%) Retail
11 13 (1.40%) Law
12 12 (1.29%) Marketing
13 11 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.97%) Publishing
16 7 (0.75%) Automotive
16 7 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
16 7 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 7 (0.75%) Military
17 6 (0.65%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 302 (32.47%) Developer
2 202 (21.72%) Senior
3 157 (16.88%) Data Engineer
4 151 (16.24%) Java Developer
5 119 (12.80%) Lead
6 110 (11.83%) Architect
7 92 (9.89%) Software Engineer
8 91 (9.78%) Senior Developer
9 68 (7.31%) Java Engineer
10 52 (5.59%) AWS Architect
11 50 (5.38%) Senior Java Developer
12 45 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
13 40 (4.30%) Full-Stack Developer
13 40 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
14 33 (3.55%) Developer/Software Engineer
14 33 (3.55%) Principal Engineer
14 33 (3.55%) Senior Data Engineer
15 31 (3.33%) Data Architect
15 31 (3.33%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 30 (3.23%) Kafka Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 225 (24.19%) Spring
2 208 (22.37%) Spring Boot
3 131 (14.09%) REST
4 117 (12.58%) RESTful
5 115 (12.37%) React
6 100 (10.75%) Node.js
7 86 (9.25%) RabbitMQ
8 58 (6.24%) GraphQL
8 58 (6.24%) OpenTelemetry
9 56 (6.02%) gRPC
10 48 (5.16%) JSON
11 43 (4.62%) Middleware
12 42 (4.52%) Apache Avro
13 40 (4.30%) PySpark
13 40 (4.30%) Redux
14 39 (4.19%) OAuth
15 37 (3.98%) AngularJS
16 36 (3.87%) Swagger
17 35 (3.76%) OpenAPI
18 34 (3.66%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 166 (17.85%) Distributed Systems
2 158 (16.99%) Cloud Native
3 43 (4.62%) Management Information System
4 39 (4.19%) Fixed Income
5 32 (3.44%) Product Ownership
6 24 (2.58%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.26%) Onboarding
8 17 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
9 16 (1.72%) Equities
10 15 (1.61%) Derivative
10 15 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (1.61%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.51%) Algorithms
11 14 (1.51%) Clustering
12 12 (1.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 11 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (1.18%) Hedge funds
13 11 (1.18%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 10 (1.08%) CMDB
14 10 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 92 (9.89%) Linux
2 54 (5.81%) Unix
3 31 (3.33%) Windows
4 8 (0.86%) Mac OS X
5 6 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.65%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.32%) VMS
6 3 (0.32%) zOS
7 2 (0.22%) Debian
7 2 (0.22%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.22%) 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
1 426 (45.81%) CI/CD
2 348 (37.42%) Microservices
3 293 (31.51%) Agile
4 278 (29.89%) DevOps
5 255 (27.42%) Event-Driven
6 218 (23.44%) Observability
7 196 (21.08%) Containerisation
8 191 (20.54%) Software Engineering
9 169 (18.17%) Data Pipeline
10 168 (18.06%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 162 (17.42%) Data Modelling
12 160 (17.20%) Infrastructure as Code
13 149 (16.02%) Analytics
14 145 (15.59%) Problem-Solving
15 144 (15.48%) Test Automation
16 143 (15.38%) Data Engineering
17 139 (14.95%) ETL
18 107 (11.51%) Full-Stack Development
19 100 (10.75%) AI
20 95 (10.22%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 421 (45.27%) Java
2 316 (33.98%) Python
3 292 (31.40%) SQL
4 114 (12.26%) TypeScript
5 100 (10.75%) Go
6 90 (9.68%) JavaScript
7 58 (6.24%) C#
8 45 (4.84%) Bash
9 28 (3.01%) Scala
10 20 (2.15%) PowerShell
11 19 (2.04%) Rust
12 16 (1.72%) C++
13 15 (1.61%) Shell Script
14 13 (1.40%) Bicep
15 10 (1.08%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.97%) PL/SQL
17 6 (0.65%) Perl
17 6 (0.65%) PHP
18 5 (0.54%) Groovy
18 5 (0.54%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 202 (21.72%) Security Cleared
2 159 (17.10%) SC Cleared
3 52 (5.59%) Degree
4 25 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (1.83%) AWS Certification
6 16 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (1.72%) DV Cleared
7 13 (1.40%) Master's Degree
8 11 (1.18%) Azure Certification
9 7 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.75%) SnowPro
10 4 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.32%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.22%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.22%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.11%) CISSP
13 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.11%) OCP
13 1 (0.11%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (11.08%) Data Quality
2 49 (5.27%) QA
3 41 (4.41%) GDPR
4 30 (3.23%) Accessibility
5 19 (2.04%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.97%) NIST
8 7 (0.75%) PCI DSS
8 7 (0.75%) SEPA
9 5 (0.54%) NCSC
10 4 (0.43%) SLA
10 4 (0.43%) WCAG
11 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.22%) EMIR
12 2 (0.22%) ISO 15022
12 2 (0.22%) MiFID
12 2 (0.22%) PSD2
13 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 322 (34.62%) Docker
2 6 (0.65%) etcd
3 3 (0.32%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.22%) HDFS
4 2 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 365 (39.25%) Kubernetes
2 194 (20.86%) Terraform
3 128 (13.76%) Prometheus
4 127 (13.66%) Grafana
5 57 (6.13%) Ansible
6 24 (2.58%) Argo
7 12 (1.29%) Istio
8 11 (1.18%) Kibana
9 9 (0.97%) Kiali
10 7 (0.75%) Fluentd
10 7 (0.75%) Puppet
11 6 (0.65%) Kustomize
11 6 (0.65%) linkerd
11 6 (0.65%) logstash
11 6 (0.65%) Podman
12 5 (0.54%) Rancher
13 3 (0.32%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.22%) CA Wily
14 2 (0.22%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.22%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 89 (9.57%) Databricks
2 76 (8.17%) Splunk
3 66 (7.10%) Oracle
4 42 (4.52%) Microsoft
5 36 (3.87%) Google
6 28 (3.01%) Confluent
7 22 (2.37%) Informatica
8 17 (1.83%) IBM
9 13 (1.40%) Dynatrace
9 13 (1.40%) Salesforce
10 12 (1.29%) Red Hat
11 11 (1.18%) ServiceNow
12 9 (0.97%) Solace
12 9 (0.97%) Talend
13 8 (0.86%) MuleSoft
14 7 (0.75%) AppDynamics
14 7 (0.75%) Sybase
15 6 (0.65%) Pega
15 6 (0.65%) VMware
16 5 (0.54%) Teradata