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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 110 147
Rank change year-on-year -29 +37 -3
Contract jobs citing Kafka 950 740 708
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.50% 1.63%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.70% 10.94% 7.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 561 480 515
10th Percentile £381 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £679
90th Percentile £800 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £493
% change year-on-year -2.11% -3.65% -17.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 3 8
10th Percentile £60.38 £47.14 £22.44
25th Percentile £64.75 £58.98 £25.94
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 £36.31
90th Percentile £92.50 £90.74 £48.80
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 9,793 6,763 9,196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.51% 22.83% 21.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,430 4,617 6,310
10th Percentile £363 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £535
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -3.27% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £768 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 125 272
10th Percentile £30.40 £29.14 £22.50
25th Percentile £51.88 £39.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £51.75
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% +11.11% -20.38%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £82.89 £81.22 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £55.63
% change year-on-year +4.00% +12.36% -14.42%

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 June 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 June 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 16 June 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 -27 820 £545 -0.91% 240
London -20 516 £588 -7.48% 166
UK excluding London -40 315 £465 -2.11% 119
Work from Home -30 277 £575 - 107
North of England -26 141 £453 -9.50% 31
Yorkshire -14 71 £461 -16.14% 4
North West -42 56 £461 -7.80% 22
South East -34 54 £488 +8.33% 26
Scotland -20 46 £450 -4.76% 18
Midlands -51 39 £491 +8.09% 7
South West -14 24 £500 -9.09% 17
North East -18 21 £425 -8.05% 5
West Midlands -55 21 £500 - 3
East Midlands -19 18 £407 +14.40% 4
East of England -23 17 £550 +10.00% 6
Northern Ireland -3 2 - - 11
Wales -13 1 £250 - 5

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
1 127 (13.37%) Apache Spark
2 64 (6.74%) Apache
3 51 (5.37%) Apache Airflow
4 12 (1.26%) Confluence
5 7 (0.74%) Camunda
6 6 (0.63%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.63%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.42%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.11%) JBoss
Applications
1 7 (0.74%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) Bloomberg AIM
2 3 (0.32%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.21%) Endur
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 557 (58.63%) AWS
2 280 (29.47%) Azure
3 170 (17.89%) GCP
4 140 (14.74%) GitHub
5 123 (12.95%) Serverless
6 105 (11.05%) GitHub Actions
7 94 (9.89%) Amazon S3
8 92 (9.68%) AWS Lambda
9 70 (7.37%) OpenShift
10 65 (6.84%) Amazon EKS
11 61 (6.42%) Azure DevOps
12 59 (6.21%) Power Platform
13 51 (5.37%) Snowflake
14 45 (4.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 45 (4.74%) Amazon ECS
15 43 (4.53%) AWS CloudFormation
16 41 (4.32%) dbt
17 39 (4.11%) Amazon SQS
18 34 (3.58%) Amazon Kinesis
19 31 (3.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.58%) Firewall
1 15 (1.58%) HTTP
2 10 (1.05%) Network Security
3 9 (0.95%) DNS
4 7 (0.74%) MQTT
5 6 (0.63%) SSL
6 5 (0.53%) NAS
6 5 (0.53%) SAN
6 5 (0.53%) SMS
7 3 (0.32%) Internet
7 3 (0.32%) TCP/IP
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%) FIX Connectivity
9 1 (0.11%) MIMO
9 1 (0.11%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (19.89%) PostgreSQL
2 150 (15.79%) MongoDB
3 126 (13.26%) NoSQL
4 89 (9.37%) Relational Database
5 62 (6.53%) Big Data
6 55 (5.79%) Data Warehouse
7 53 (5.58%) Data Lake
7 53 (5.58%) Redis
8 52 (5.47%) SQL Server
9 48 (5.05%) Power BI
10 45 (4.74%) Elasticsearch
11 44 (4.63%) Apache Cassandra
12 36 (3.79%) DynamoDB
12 36 (3.79%) Flink
12 36 (3.79%) MySQL
13 32 (3.37%) Amazon Athena
13 32 (3.37%) Hadoop
14 29 (3.05%) Amazon RDS
15 28 (2.95%) Amazon Redshift
15 28 (2.95%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 149 (15.68%) Jenkins
2 127 (13.37%) Git
2 127 (13.37%) GitLab
3 68 (7.16%) JUnit
4 47 (4.95%) JIRA
5 45 (4.74%) Mockito
6 32 (3.37%) Gradle
7 31 (3.26%) Selenium
8 23 (2.42%) Cucumber
8 23 (2.42%) REST Assured
9 20 (2.11%) Gatling
10 17 (1.79%) Liquibase
11 15 (1.58%) Maven
11 15 (1.58%) Postman
11 15 (1.58%) Serenity BDD
12 13 (1.37%) SonarQube
13 7 (0.74%) Jaeger
14 6 (0.63%) Cypress.io
14 6 (0.63%) JMeter
14 6 (0.63%) Snyk
General
1 257 (27.05%) Finance
2 174 (18.32%) Social Skills
3 127 (13.37%) Banking
4 84 (8.84%) Public Sector
5 79 (8.32%) Analytical Skills
6 44 (4.63%) Front Office
7 35 (3.68%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (2.42%) Financial Institution
10 20 (2.11%) Retail
11 15 (1.58%) Law
12 12 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (1.16%) Marketing
14 10 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.95%) Publishing
16 8 (0.84%) Corporate Banking
16 8 (0.84%) Military
17 7 (0.74%) Automotive
17 7 (0.74%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 307 (32.32%) Developer
2 196 (20.63%) Senior
3 156 (16.42%) Java Developer
4 155 (16.32%) Data Engineer
5 116 (12.21%) Lead
6 112 (11.79%) Architect
7 98 (10.32%) Software Engineer
8 84 (8.84%) Senior Developer
9 78 (8.21%) Java Engineer
10 54 (5.68%) AWS Architect
11 48 (5.05%) Senior Java Developer
12 46 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
13 41 (4.32%) Full-Stack Developer
14 40 (4.21%) Solutions Architect
15 37 (3.89%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 33 (3.47%) Lead Developer
16 33 (3.47%) Principal Engineer
17 31 (3.26%) Data Architect
18 30 (3.16%) Java Software Engineer
18 30 (3.16%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (24.84%) Spring
2 225 (23.68%) Spring Boot
3 141 (14.84%) REST
4 129 (13.58%) RESTful
5 126 (13.26%) React
6 97 (10.21%) RabbitMQ
7 93 (9.79%) Node.js
8 62 (6.53%) GraphQL
9 58 (6.11%) OpenTelemetry
10 53 (5.58%) gRPC
11 48 (5.05%) JSON
12 47 (4.95%) Redux
13 43 (4.53%) Middleware
14 42 (4.42%) Apache Avro
15 41 (4.32%) OAuth
16 40 (4.21%) AngularJS
17 39 (4.11%) Swagger
18 38 (4.00%) OpenAPI
18 38 (4.00%) PySpark
19 36 (3.79%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 186 (19.58%) Distributed Systems
2 169 (17.79%) Cloud Native
3 39 (4.11%) Fixed Income
4 38 (4.00%) Product Ownership
5 37 (3.89%) Management Information System
6 29 (3.05%) Data Structures
7 22 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
7 22 (2.32%) Onboarding
8 19 (2.00%) Algorithms
9 18 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.47%) Clustering
11 14 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.47%) Derivative
11 14 (1.47%) Equities
12 13 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 13 (1.37%) Public Cloud
13 12 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
14 11 (1.16%) SWIFT Messaging Network
15 10 (1.05%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 87 (9.16%) Linux
2 53 (5.58%) Unix
3 28 (2.95%) Windows
4 8 (0.84%) Mac OS X
5 7 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.32%) VMS
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
8 2 (0.21%) zOS
9 1 (0.11%) Android
9 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 430 (45.26%) CI/CD
2 360 (37.89%) Microservices
3 304 (32.00%) Agile
4 289 (30.42%) DevOps
5 282 (29.68%) Event-Driven
6 226 (23.79%) Observability
7 206 (21.68%) Containerisation
8 190 (20.00%) Software Engineering
9 189 (19.89%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 171 (18.00%) Data Pipeline
11 163 (17.16%) Infrastructure as Code
12 157 (16.53%) Data Modelling
13 151 (15.89%) Problem-Solving
14 148 (15.58%) Test Automation
15 146 (15.37%) Analytics
16 140 (14.74%) Data Engineering
17 134 (14.11%) ETL
18 112 (11.79%) AI
19 106 (11.16%) Full-Stack Development
19 106 (11.16%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 438 (46.11%) Java
2 327 (34.42%) Python
3 293 (30.84%) SQL
4 119 (12.53%) TypeScript
5 90 (9.47%) Go
6 87 (9.16%) JavaScript
7 52 (5.47%) C#
8 43 (4.53%) Bash
9 26 (2.74%) Scala
10 19 (2.00%) Rust
11 17 (1.79%) PowerShell
12 14 (1.47%) C++
12 14 (1.47%) PL/SQL
13 13 (1.37%) Bicep
14 12 (1.26%) Shell Script
15 10 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
16 9 (0.95%) Kotlin
17 8 (0.84%) Groovy
18 7 (0.74%) PHP
19 6 (0.63%) Perl
Qualifications
1 199 (20.95%) Security Cleared
2 155 (16.32%) SC Cleared
3 51 (5.37%) Degree
4 27 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.89%) DV Cleared
6 17 (1.79%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.26%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.95%) Azure Certification
10 8 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 7 (0.74%) SnowPro
12 3 (0.32%) DBS Check
12 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
13 2 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
14 1 (0.11%) CISSP
14 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.11%) PhD
14 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (10.53%) Data Quality
2 53 (5.58%) QA
3 38 (4.00%) GDPR
4 34 (3.58%) Accessibility
5 19 (2.00%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.95%) NIST
8 8 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.74%) SEPA
10 5 (0.53%) NCSC
11 4 (0.42%) WCAG
12 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.32%) PSD2
13 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.21%) EMIR
13 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.21%) MiFID
13 2 (0.21%) SLA
14 1 (0.11%) Basel III
14 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
System Software
1 318 (33.47%) Docker
2 6 (0.63%) etcd
3 4 (0.42%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) HDFS
5 1 (0.11%) OpenSSH
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 378 (39.79%) Kubernetes
2 199 (20.95%) Terraform
3 127 (13.37%) Prometheus
4 125 (13.16%) Grafana
5 59 (6.21%) Ansible
6 23 (2.42%) Argo
7 13 (1.37%) Istio
8 10 (1.05%) Kibana
9 9 (0.95%) Puppet
10 8 (0.84%) Podman
11 7 (0.74%) Fluentd
12 6 (0.63%) Control-M
12 6 (0.63%) Kiali
12 6 (0.63%) Kustomize
12 6 (0.63%) linkerd
13 5 (0.53%) logstash
13 5 (0.53%) Rancher
14 3 (0.32%) NetBackup
15 2 (0.21%) CA Wily
15 2 (0.21%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 84 (8.84%) Databricks
2 70 (7.37%) Splunk
3 66 (6.95%) Oracle
4 40 (4.21%) Microsoft
5 37 (3.89%) Google
6 28 (2.95%) Confluent
7 23 (2.42%) Informatica
8 18 (1.89%) IBM
9 15 (1.58%) Dynatrace
10 12 (1.26%) Red Hat
10 12 (1.26%) Salesforce
11 11 (1.16%) Solace
12 9 (0.95%) MuleSoft
12 9 (0.95%) ServiceNow
12 9 (0.95%) Sybase
12 9 (0.95%) Talend
13 8 (0.84%) OpenAI
14 7 (0.74%) AppDynamics
15 6 (0.63%) SAP
15 6 (0.63%) Tenable