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 16 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 105 164
Rank change year-on-year -19 +59 -29
Contract jobs citing Kafka 946 747 637
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 2.55% 1.45%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.02% 11.24% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 477 480
10th Percentile £363 £400 £387
25th Percentile £415 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £565 £535
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% +5.61% -17.69%
75th Percentile £650 £738 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £480 £487
% change year-on-year -2.60% -1.44% -9.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 4 6
10th Percentile £40.00 £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% -58.82%
75th Percentile £87.25 £93.75 £38.94
90th Percentile £91.50 - £54.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £78.70 £31.50
% change year-on-year -11.41% +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 9,440 6,646 8,929
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 20.56% 22.69% 20.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,297 4,554 6,218
10th Percentile £358 £363 £338
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £757
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +1.42% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 101 191
10th Percentile £35.00 £26.50 £20.47
25th Percentile £52.50 £43.50 £35.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year - +40.75% -28.95%
75th Percentile £71.75 £68.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £84.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year - +40.75% -26.11%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 -25 827 £530 -10.36% 155
London -17 524 £600 -7.69% 107
Work from Home -7 332 £600 -4.00% 70
UK excluding London -48 281 £468 -2.60% 75
North of England -45 122 £463 -11.90% 16
South East -21 60 £435 -15.12% 26
Yorkshire -23 59 £460 -34.29% 4
North West -41 55 £465 -7.00% 12
Midlands -33 51 £500 +36.24% 3
South West -13 30 £550 -12.00% 15
West Midlands -35 30 £525 -12.50% 1
Scotland -17 22 £475 +5.56% 6
East Midlands -22 21 £419 +17.63% 2
North East -14 14 £463 -0.54%
East of England -35 11 £475 +49.28% 7
Wales -15 1 £250 -

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
1 126 (13.32%) Apache Spark
2 66 (6.98%) Apache
3 44 (4.65%) Apache Airflow
4 26 (2.75%) Confluence
5 6 (0.63%) Ethereum
5 6 (0.63%) Hyperledger
6 5 (0.53%) Camunda
6 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.53%) MQSeries
6 5 (0.53%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.42%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.21%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.32%) CPLEX
3 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
4 1 (0.11%) Maya
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Bloomberg AIM
1 4 (0.42%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.32%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.21%) Actimize
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 581 (61.42%) AWS
2 275 (29.07%) Azure
3 165 (17.44%) GCP
4 154 (16.28%) GitHub
5 129 (13.64%) Serverless
6 122 (12.90%) Amazon S3
7 108 (11.42%) GitHub Actions
8 96 (10.15%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (8.46%) Amazon EKS
10 69 (7.29%) AWS CloudFormation
11 64 (6.77%) OpenShift
12 59 (6.24%) Azure DevOps
12 59 (6.24%) Power Platform
13 53 (5.60%) Amazon ECS
14 48 (5.07%) Amazon Kinesis
14 48 (5.07%) Amazon SQS
15 44 (4.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 41 (4.33%) Snowflake
17 40 (4.23%) Azure Data Factory
18 38 (4.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.11%) Firewall
2 16 (1.69%) HTTP
3 12 (1.27%) SSL
4 9 (0.95%) DNS
5 6 (0.63%) FTP
5 6 (0.63%) SMS
5 6 (0.63%) SSH
6 5 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.32%) Kerberos
7 3 (0.32%) VPN
8 2 (0.21%) NaaS
8 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
8 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.21%) WAN
9 1 (0.11%) 4G
9 1 (0.11%) 5G
9 1 (0.11%) Internet
9 1 (0.11%) MIMO
9 1 (0.11%) MQTT
9 1 (0.11%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 200 (21.14%) PostgreSQL
2 132 (13.95%) MongoDB
3 129 (13.64%) NoSQL
4 71 (7.51%) Relational Database
5 67 (7.08%) Apache Cassandra
6 61 (6.45%) Data Lake
7 59 (6.24%) Data Warehouse
8 53 (5.60%) Big Data
9 52 (5.50%) Elasticsearch
10 49 (5.18%) DynamoDB
11 47 (4.97%) Power BI
12 46 (4.86%) Redis
12 46 (4.86%) SQL Server
13 40 (4.23%) Flink
14 38 (4.02%) Amazon Athena
14 38 (4.02%) MySQL
15 37 (3.91%) Amazon RDS
16 35 (3.70%) Hadoop
17 34 (3.59%) Metadata
18 33 (3.49%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 147 (15.54%) Jenkins
2 129 (13.64%) GitLab
3 112 (11.84%) Git
4 67 (7.08%) JUnit
5 58 (6.13%) JIRA
6 35 (3.70%) Mockito
7 26 (2.75%) Cucumber
8 20 (2.11%) Gradle
9 15 (1.59%) JMeter
10 14 (1.48%) Gatling
11 12 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 11 (1.16%) Postman
12 11 (1.16%) REST Assured
12 11 (1.16%) Selenium
13 10 (1.06%) CircleCI
13 10 (1.06%) Maven
14 9 (0.95%) Jaeger
15 8 (0.85%) Artifactory
16 7 (0.74%) Liquibase
17 6 (0.63%) Serenity BDD
General
1 265 (28.01%) Finance
2 182 (19.24%) Social Skills
3 118 (12.47%) Banking
4 73 (7.72%) Public Sector
5 70 (7.40%) Analytical Skills
6 53 (5.60%) Front Office
7 31 (3.28%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
9 18 (1.90%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.06%) Telecoms
11 9 (0.95%) Marketing
12 7 (0.74%) Law
12 7 (0.74%) Retail
13 6 (0.63%) Automotive
13 6 (0.63%) Publishing
14 4 (0.42%) Billing
14 4 (0.42%) Corporate Banking
15 3 (0.32%) Military
15 3 (0.32%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 342 (36.15%) Developer
2 230 (24.31%) Senior
3 168 (17.76%) Java Developer
4 154 (16.28%) Data Engineer
5 115 (12.16%) Lead
6 108 (11.42%) Senior Developer
7 105 (11.10%) Architect
8 97 (10.25%) Software Engineer
9 57 (6.03%) Senior Java Developer
10 54 (5.71%) Java Engineer
11 52 (5.50%) AWS Architect
12 48 (5.07%) Full-Stack Developer
13 47 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
14 40 (4.23%) AWS Engineer
14 40 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
15 38 (4.02%) Senior Data Engineer
16 37 (3.91%) Kafka Developer
17 35 (3.70%) Kafka Engineer
18 33 (3.49%) Developer/Software Engineer
18 33 (3.49%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 212 (22.41%) Spring
2 189 (19.98%) Spring Boot
3 120 (12.68%) REST
4 115 (12.16%) Node.js
5 106 (11.21%) React
6 100 (10.57%) RESTful
7 78 (8.25%) gRPC
8 76 (8.03%) RabbitMQ
9 49 (5.18%) GraphQL
10 48 (5.07%) JSON
10 48 (5.07%) OpenTelemetry
11 43 (4.55%) AngularJS
12 41 (4.33%) Middleware
12 41 (4.33%) PySpark
13 37 (3.91%) Apache Avro
14 35 (3.70%) OAuth
14 35 (3.70%) Redux
15 29 (3.07%) OAuth2
16 27 (2.85%) Keycloak
16 27 (2.85%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 155 (16.38%) Distributed Systems
2 135 (14.27%) Cloud Native
3 50 (5.29%) Fixed Income
4 49 (5.18%) Management Information System
5 38 (4.02%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
7 20 (2.11%) Data Structures
7 20 (2.11%) Onboarding
8 19 (2.01%) Derivative
8 19 (2.01%) Equities
9 16 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
10 14 (1.48%) Algorithms
10 14 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
11 12 (1.27%) Clustering
11 12 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.27%) Market Risk
12 10 (1.06%) Replication
13 9 (0.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 9 (0.95%) Legacy Applications
13 9 (0.95%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 114 (12.05%) Linux
2 57 (6.03%) Unix
3 32 (3.38%) Windows
4 9 (0.95%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.53%) AIX
6 4 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.32%) VMS
7 3 (0.32%) zOS
8 2 (0.21%) Debian
8 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 427 (45.14%) CI/CD
2 330 (34.88%) Microservices
3 316 (33.40%) Agile
4 281 (29.70%) DevOps
5 219 (23.15%) Event-Driven
6 209 (22.09%) Software Engineering
7 201 (21.25%) Observability
8 199 (21.04%) Containerisation
9 172 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
10 167 (17.65%) Data Pipeline
11 166 (17.55%) Infrastructure as Code
12 165 (17.44%) Analytics
13 154 (16.28%) Data Engineering
14 151 (15.96%) Data Modelling
15 145 (15.33%) ETL
16 142 (15.01%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 130 (13.74%) Test Automation
18 119 (12.58%) Full-Stack Development
19 102 (10.78%) Data Governance
20 96 (10.15%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 445 (47.04%) Java
2 329 (34.78%) Python
3 271 (28.65%) SQL
4 124 (13.11%) Go
5 97 (10.25%) TypeScript
6 96 (10.15%) JavaScript
7 62 (6.55%) C#
8 42 (4.44%) Bash
9 35 (3.70%) Scala
10 20 (2.11%) C++
11 18 (1.90%) PowerShell
11 18 (1.90%) Rust
12 17 (1.80%) Shell Script
13 12 (1.27%) Bicep
14 9 (0.95%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.74%) Perl
16 6 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
17 5 (0.53%) Korn
18 4 (0.42%) Groovy
18 4 (0.42%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 212 (22.41%) Security Cleared
2 173 (18.29%) SC Cleared
3 46 (4.86%) Degree
4 31 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (2.33%) AWS Certification
5 22 (2.33%) Azure Certification
6 18 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (1.59%) DV Cleared
8 13 (1.37%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (0.63%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.53%) OCP
11 5 (0.53%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
12 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.11%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.11%) PMP
14 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (11.95%) Data Quality
2 47 (4.97%) QA
3 46 (4.86%) GDPR
4 22 (2.33%) Accessibility
5 13 (1.37%) ISO 20022
6 9 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (0.95%) NIST
7 8 (0.85%) NCSC
8 7 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.53%) SEPA
10 4 (0.42%) HL7
10 4 (0.42%) SLA
10 4 (0.42%) WCAG
11 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
12 2 (0.21%) MiFID
12 2 (0.21%) PSD2
13 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 323 (34.14%) Docker
2 6 (0.63%) etcd
2 6 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (0.32%) HDFS
4 2 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 381 (40.27%) Kubernetes
2 213 (22.52%) Terraform
3 117 (12.37%) Grafana
3 117 (12.37%) Prometheus
4 58 (6.13%) Ansible
5 31 (3.28%) Argo
6 10 (1.06%) Fluentd
6 10 (1.06%) Istio
6 10 (1.06%) Kibana
7 9 (0.95%) Kiali
8 8 (0.85%) linkerd
8 8 (0.85%) logstash
9 7 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 7 (0.74%) Rancher
10 6 (0.63%) Puppet
11 4 (0.42%) Podman
12 3 (0.32%) Packer
13 2 (0.21%) Amdocs OSS
13 2 (0.21%) QRadar
13 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 89 (9.41%) Databricks
2 74 (7.82%) Oracle
3 71 (7.51%) Splunk
4 51 (5.39%) Microsoft
5 43 (4.55%) Google
6 37 (3.91%) Confluent
7 26 (2.75%) Informatica
8 24 (2.54%) IBM
9 16 (1.69%) VMware
10 15 (1.59%) Red Hat
11 14 (1.48%) Dynatrace
12 12 (1.27%) ServiceNow
12 12 (1.27%) Talend
13 11 (1.16%) Solace
14 9 (0.95%) AppDynamics
14 9 (0.95%) Cloudera
14 9 (0.95%) Salesforce
14 9 (0.95%) Sybase
15 8 (0.85%) Denodo
16 7 (0.74%) PagerDuty