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 10 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 109 127
Rank change year-on-year -31 +18 +37
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,112 826 742
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.04% 2.49% 1.96%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.39% 9.61% 7.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 717 531 474
10th Percentile £376 £375 £363
25th Percentile £425 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £599
Median % change year-on-year - -8.10% -7.92%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £724
90th Percentile £762 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £465 £484
% change year-on-year +7.53% -3.83% -19.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 5
10th Percentile £51.75 £40.58 £26.04
25th Percentile £67.50 £48.56 £27.00
Median hourly rate £81.00 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.71% +111.61% -64.10%
75th Percentile £89.06 £75.31 £38.75
90th Percentile £94.50 £96.13 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £82.25 - £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 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 11,840 8,596 9,395
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.69% 25.95% 24.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,770 5,701 6,067
10th Percentile £380 £356 £355
25th Percentile £440 £413 £429
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 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 188 183
10th Percentile £29.07 £30.18 £25.60
25th Percentile £50.38 £39.56 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £51.97 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.07% -20.05% +8.33%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £70.60 £74.79
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.47 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +22.67% -15.38% +10.11%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 -42 921 £550 - 972
London -32 566 £575 -4.17% 710
UK excluding London -11 396 £500 +7.53% 360
Work from Home -46 281 £550 -4.35% 394
North of England -3 198 £503 +7.03% 116
Yorkshire +17 92 £501 -12.96% 25
North West -17 86 £550 +21.61% 77
Scotland -22 62 £410 -13.68% 58
South East -62 53 £460 +5.75% 51
Midlands -49 36 £500 +5.26% 29
South West -9 29 £575 +4.55% 32
East of England -10 28 £488 -4.88% 22
West Midlands -44 27 £700 +40.00% 23
North East -24 25 £426 -26.00% 14
East Midlands -20 9 £400 -3.61% 6
Northern Ireland - 4 - - 45
Wales - 1 £375 - 7

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
1 130 (11.69%) Apache Spark
2 80 (7.19%) Apache Airflow
3 77 (6.92%) Apache
4 28 (2.52%) Confluence
5 15 (1.35%) Camunda
6 7 (0.63%) nginx
6 7 (0.63%) OpenStack
6 7 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 5 (0.45%) Apache Pulsar
7 5 (0.45%) CMS
7 5 (0.45%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.36%) PowerExchange
9 3 (0.27%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.27%) MQSeries
9 3 (0.27%) Mule
9 3 (0.27%) Traefik
10 2 (0.18%) Apache Pig
10 2 (0.18%) JBoss
10 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 6 (0.54%) CPLEX
2 3 (0.27%) Mingle
3 2 (0.18%) Gliffy
4 1 (0.090%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 3 (0.27%) Finacle
3 3 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.27%) Temenos T24
4 2 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.18%) Endur
4 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.090%) Actimize
5 1 (0.090%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.090%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.090%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.090%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.090%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.090%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 639 (57.46%) AWS
2 408 (36.69%) Azure
3 273 (24.55%) GCP
4 190 (17.09%) GitHub
5 128 (11.51%) GitHub Actions
6 105 (9.44%) Serverless
7 90 (8.09%) Amazon S3
8 86 (7.73%) AWS Lambda
9 83 (7.46%) Amazon EKS
10 77 (6.92%) Snowflake
11 67 (6.03%) Azure DevOps
12 63 (5.67%) OpenShift
13 52 (4.68%) dbt
14 51 (4.59%) Amazon SQS
15 48 (4.32%) Amazon ECS
16 44 (3.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 37 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
18 35 (3.15%) Power Platform
19 31 (2.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
20 29 (2.61%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 30 (2.70%) HTTP
2 25 (2.25%) DNS
3 14 (1.26%) Network Security
4 9 (0.81%) Firewall
4 9 (0.81%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.63%) MQTT
5 7 (0.63%) SSH
5 7 (0.63%) SSL
6 6 (0.54%) SAN
7 5 (0.45%) 4G
7 5 (0.45%) 5G
8 4 (0.36%) NAS
9 3 (0.27%) Internet
9 3 (0.27%) Reverse Proxy
9 3 (0.27%) VPN
10 2 (0.18%) Broadband
10 2 (0.18%) Kerberos
11 1 (0.090%) RTP
11 1 (0.090%) Software-Defined Networking
11 1 (0.090%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (17.00%) PostgreSQL
2 171 (15.38%) MongoDB
3 139 (12.50%) NoSQL
4 95 (8.54%) Relational Database
5 76 (6.83%) Data Warehouse
6 62 (5.58%) SQL Server
7 60 (5.40%) Redis
8 54 (4.86%) MySQL
9 48 (4.32%) Data Lake
10 47 (4.23%) Big Data
11 42 (3.78%) Elasticsearch
12 39 (3.51%) BigQuery
13 38 (3.42%) Flink
14 33 (2.97%) Power BI
15 30 (2.70%) Metadata
16 29 (2.61%) Delta Lake
17 27 (2.43%) Amazon Redshift
18 22 (1.98%) Hadoop
18 22 (1.98%) RDBMS
19 21 (1.89%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 225 (20.23%) Jenkins
2 199 (17.90%) Git
3 173 (15.56%) GitLab
4 73 (6.56%) JUnit
5 71 (6.38%) Gradle
6 61 (5.49%) Mockito
7 57 (5.13%) Selenium
8 49 (4.41%) JIRA
9 48 (4.32%) Maven
10 40 (3.60%) Cucumber
11 36 (3.24%) SonarQube
12 26 (2.34%) Postman
13 25 (2.25%) REST Assured
14 23 (2.07%) Bitbucket
15 21 (1.89%) JMeter
16 17 (1.53%) Gatling
17 16 (1.44%) LoadRunner
17 16 (1.44%) SoapUI
18 15 (1.35%) Cypress.io
18 15 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 284 (25.54%) Finance
2 213 (19.15%) Social Skills
3 193 (17.36%) Banking
4 111 (9.98%) Analytical Skills
5 102 (9.17%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.78%) Retail
7 36 (3.24%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (2.07%) Front Office
10 21 (1.89%) Financial Institution
11 18 (1.62%) Telecoms
12 11 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (0.99%) Law
13 10 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.81%) Military
15 8 (0.72%) Billing
16 7 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
16 7 (0.63%) Games
16 7 (0.63%) Marketing
16 7 (0.63%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 331 (29.77%) Developer
2 236 (21.22%) Senior
3 187 (16.82%) Java Developer
4 177 (15.92%) Architect
5 132 (11.87%) Data Engineer
6 101 (9.08%) Lead
7 78 (7.01%) Java Engineer
8 71 (6.38%) Solutions Architect
9 68 (6.12%) Senior Developer
10 64 (5.76%) DevOps Engineer
10 64 (5.76%) Software Engineer
11 49 (4.41%) Full-Stack Developer
12 44 (3.96%) Senior Data Engineer
13 40 (3.60%) Senior Java Developer
14 38 (3.42%) AWS Engineer
14 38 (3.42%) Python Engineer
15 37 (3.33%) Senior Java Engineer
16 36 (3.24%) Test Engineer
17 35 (3.15%) Kafka Engineer
17 35 (3.15%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (27.70%) Spring
1 308 (27.70%) Spring Boot
2 261 (23.47%) REST
3 236 (21.22%) Terraform
4 158 (14.21%) RESTful
5 133 (11.96%) React
6 117 (10.52%) RabbitMQ
7 72 (6.47%) OAuth
8 69 (6.21%) JSON
9 60 (5.40%) HTML
10 57 (5.13%) Node.js
11 54 (4.86%) PySpark
12 49 (4.41%) GraphQL
13 48 (4.32%) SOAP
14 47 (4.23%) CSS
15 46 (4.14%) XML
16 45 (4.05%) .NET
16 45 (4.05%) Elastic Stack
16 45 (4.05%) Middleware
17 43 (3.87%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 269 (24.19%) Cloud Native
2 239 (21.49%) Distributed Systems
3 79 (7.10%) Product Ownership
4 51 (4.59%) Enterprise Software
5 44 (3.96%) Data Structures
6 37 (3.33%) AI Agents
7 35 (3.15%) Onboarding
8 33 (2.97%) Self-Motivation
9 27 (2.43%) Greenfield Project
9 27 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
9 27 (2.43%) Replication
10 26 (2.34%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 25 (2.25%) Algorithms
12 22 (1.98%) Distributed Architecture
13 21 (1.89%) Public Cloud
14 20 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
15 18 (1.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 17 (1.53%) PKI
16 17 (1.53%) Private Cloud
17 14 (1.26%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 145 (13.04%) Linux
2 71 (6.38%) Unix
3 27 (2.43%) Windows
4 12 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.45%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.45%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.36%) CentOS
7 2 (0.18%) Android
7 2 (0.18%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.18%) VMS
8 1 (0.090%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.090%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.090%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 633 (56.92%) CI/CD
2 474 (42.63%) Event-Driven
3 465 (41.82%) Microservices
4 405 (36.42%) DevOps
5 403 (36.24%) Agile
6 331 (29.77%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 287 (25.81%) Observability
8 271 (24.37%) Test Automation
9 247 (22.21%) Infrastructure as Code
10 227 (20.41%) Containerisation
11 214 (19.24%) Software Engineering
12 188 (16.91%) AI
13 167 (15.02%) Data Pipeline
14 157 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
15 146 (13.13%) Data Modelling
16 145 (13.04%) Technical Leadership
17 143 (12.86%) Continuous Improvement
18 129 (11.60%) ETL
19 127 (11.42%) TDD
20 126 (11.33%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 500 (44.96%) Java
2 380 (34.17%) Python
3 367 (33.00%) SQL
4 113 (10.16%) JavaScript
5 96 (8.63%) TypeScript
6 88 (7.91%) Bash
7 67 (6.03%) C#
8 54 (4.86%) Go
9 41 (3.69%) Scala
10 32 (2.88%) PowerShell
11 31 (2.79%) PL/SQL
12 28 (2.52%) Shell Script
13 25 (2.25%) Kotlin
14 11 (0.99%) C++
14 11 (0.99%) Groovy
15 8 (0.72%) Perl
15 8 (0.72%) PHP
16 7 (0.63%) Bicep
16 7 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.54%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 273 (24.55%) Security Cleared
2 225 (20.23%) SC Cleared
3 67 (6.03%) Degree
4 45 (4.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 44 (3.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 30 (2.70%) DV Cleared
7 15 (1.35%) Azure Certification
8 13 (1.17%) AWS Certification
9 12 (1.08%) Master's Degree
10 11 (0.99%) ISTQB
11 7 (0.63%) DBS Check
11 7 (0.63%) ISEB
11 7 (0.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 5 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 5 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.27%) PhD
13 3 (0.27%) SnowPro
14 2 (0.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 1 (0.090%) FFIEC
15 1 (0.090%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 94 (8.45%) Data Quality
2 87 (7.82%) QA
3 44 (3.96%) Accessibility
4 33 (2.97%) ISO 20022
5 20 (1.80%) GDPR
6 14 (1.26%) SEPA
7 6 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.45%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.45%) NIST
8 5 (0.45%) PSD2
9 4 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.36%) SLA
9 4 (0.36%) WCAG
10 2 (0.18%) Basel III
10 2 (0.18%) GRC
10 2 (0.18%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.18%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 389 (34.98%) Docker
2 16 (1.44%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.72%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 4 (0.36%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.18%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.18%) HDFS
6 1 (0.090%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 515 (46.31%) Kubernetes
2 144 (12.95%) Grafana
3 123 (11.06%) Prometheus
4 67 (6.03%) Ansible
5 28 (2.52%) Argo
6 27 (2.43%) Control-M
7 17 (1.53%) Istio
8 16 (1.44%) Kustomize
9 14 (1.26%) Kibana
9 14 (1.26%) Puppet
10 9 (0.81%) Podman
11 8 (0.72%) logstash
12 7 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.54%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.45%) Check_MK
14 5 (0.45%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.45%) Rancher
15 4 (0.36%) Bosun
15 4 (0.36%) HAProxy
16 3 (0.27%) Consul
Vendors
1 124 (11.15%) Oracle
2 107 (9.62%) Databricks
3 62 (5.58%) Google
3 62 (5.58%) IBM
3 62 (5.58%) Splunk
4 57 (5.13%) Microsoft
5 40 (3.60%) Dynatrace
6 31 (2.79%) Confluent
7 28 (2.52%) Informatica
8 20 (1.80%) MuleSoft
8 20 (1.80%) SAP
8 20 (1.80%) VMware
9 19 (1.71%) OpenAI
10 15 (1.35%) TIBCO
11 13 (1.17%) New Relic
11 13 (1.17%) Salesforce
12 12 (1.08%) Solace
13 10 (0.90%) Sybase
13 10 (0.90%) Veracode
13 10 (0.90%) WSO2