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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 105 134
Rank change year-on-year -38 +29 +22
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,053 845 693
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.56% 1.80%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 8.89% 10.02% 7.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 663 546 473
10th Percentile £375 £383 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £482
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £725
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -21.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 5 7
10th Percentile £44.78 £42.35 £24.34
25th Percentile £56.38 £53.00 £26.20
Median hourly rate £74.75 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.60% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £86.50 £78.70 £33.88
90th Percentile £93.50 £97.48 £39.35
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 11,843 8,430 9,520
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.69% 25.53% 24.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,765 5,674 6,372
10th Percentile £375 £355 £359
25th Percentile £435 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £634 £629 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +6.63% -5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 182 187
10th Percentile £29.07 £31.25 £25.60
25th Percentile £45.31 £40.88 £43.00
Median hourly rate £66.83 £52.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +27.30% -14.77% -1.44%
75th Percentile £76.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £74.75 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +23.64% -15.38% +8.33%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -40 888 £550 - 496
London -40 534 £563 -6.25% 347
UK excluding London -30 384 £500 +6.61% 226
Work from Home -62 262 £530 -7.83% 232
North of England -28 187 £500 +5.82% 72
Yorkshire +1 94 £500 -13.04% 28
North West -34 74 £544 +16.88% 36
South East -30 62 £460 +5.75% 57
Scotland -30 51 £425 -10.05% 35
Midlands -49 36 £500 +13.51% 11
East of England -9 28 £500 -2.44% 9
South West -30 27 £500 -9.09% 27
North East -29 24 £425 -8.55% 8
West Midlands -47 22 £575 +15.00% 9
East Midlands -13 14 £454 +9.34% 2
Northern Ireland +1 4 - - 14
Wales - 1 £375 - 3

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
1 129 (12.25%) Apache Spark
2 73 (6.93%) Apache Airflow
3 69 (6.55%) Apache
4 24 (2.28%) Confluence
5 16 (1.52%) Camunda
6 7 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.57%) CMS
7 6 (0.57%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.47%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
9 4 (0.38%) MQSeries
9 4 (0.38%) PowerExchange
10 3 (0.28%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.28%) Mule
10 3 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.19%) Apache Pig
11 2 (0.19%) JBoss
11 2 (0.19%) nginx
12 1 (0.095%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 1 (0.095%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 7 (0.66%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.19%) Mingle
3 1 (0.095%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.095%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.28%) Finacle
1 3 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
1 3 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
1 3 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 3 (0.28%) Temenos T24
2 2 (0.19%) Endur
2 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.095%) Actimize
3 1 (0.095%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.095%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.095%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 602 (57.17%) AWS
2 381 (36.18%) Azure
3 248 (23.55%) GCP
4 178 (16.90%) GitHub
5 121 (11.49%) GitHub Actions
6 102 (9.69%) Serverless
7 83 (7.88%) AWS Lambda
8 75 (7.12%) Amazon S3
8 75 (7.12%) Azure DevOps
9 73 (6.93%) Amazon EKS
9 73 (6.93%) Snowflake
10 65 (6.17%) OpenShift
11 52 (4.94%) dbt
12 49 (4.65%) Amazon SQS
13 41 (3.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 41 (3.89%) Power Platform
14 39 (3.70%) Amazon ECS
15 33 (3.13%) Azure Data Factory
16 31 (2.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 28 (2.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.75%) HTTP
2 18 (1.71%) DNS
3 12 (1.14%) Network Security
4 8 (0.76%) Firewall
5 7 (0.66%) MQTT
5 7 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 6 (0.57%) SAN
6 6 (0.57%) SSH
6 6 (0.57%) SSL
7 4 (0.38%) 4G
7 4 (0.38%) 5G
7 4 (0.38%) NAS
8 3 (0.28%) Internet
9 2 (0.19%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.095%) Broadband
10 1 (0.095%) MIMO
10 1 (0.095%) RTP
10 1 (0.095%) VPN
10 1 (0.095%) WAN
10 1 (0.095%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (17.85%) PostgreSQL
2 164 (15.57%) MongoDB
3 135 (12.82%) NoSQL
4 97 (9.21%) Relational Database
5 73 (6.93%) Data Warehouse
6 67 (6.36%) SQL Server
7 56 (5.32%) Big Data
8 53 (5.03%) Redis
9 49 (4.65%) MySQL
10 48 (4.56%) Data Lake
11 41 (3.89%) Elasticsearch
12 40 (3.80%) BigQuery
12 40 (3.80%) Power BI
13 38 (3.61%) Flink
14 31 (2.94%) Metadata
15 26 (2.47%) Amazon Redshift
15 26 (2.47%) Delta Lake
16 25 (2.37%) DynamoDB
16 25 (2.37%) Hadoop
17 24 (2.28%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 213 (20.23%) Jenkins
2 185 (17.57%) Git
3 157 (14.91%) GitLab
4 76 (7.22%) JUnit
5 70 (6.65%) Gradle
6 65 (6.17%) Mockito
7 49 (4.65%) Selenium
8 48 (4.56%) JIRA
9 44 (4.18%) Maven
10 33 (3.13%) SonarQube
11 31 (2.94%) Cucumber
12 25 (2.37%) REST Assured
13 23 (2.18%) Postman
14 18 (1.71%) JMeter
14 18 (1.71%) Liquibase
15 17 (1.61%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.42%) Gatling
17 13 (1.23%) Cypress.io
18 12 (1.14%) LoadRunner
18 12 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 262 (24.88%) Finance
2 206 (19.56%) Social Skills
3 161 (15.29%) Banking
4 110 (10.45%) Analytical Skills
5 99 (9.40%) Public Sector
6 37 (3.51%) Retail
7 24 (2.28%) Investment Banking
8 23 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.71%) Front Office
9 18 (1.71%) Telecoms
10 17 (1.61%) Financial Institution
11 14 (1.33%) Law
12 11 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (0.95%) Publishing
14 9 (0.85%) Billing
14 9 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
14 9 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (0.76%) Games
15 8 (0.76%) Marketing
15 8 (0.76%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 327 (31.05%) Developer
2 221 (20.99%) Senior
3 180 (17.09%) Java Developer
4 155 (14.72%) Architect
5 131 (12.44%) Data Engineer
6 97 (9.21%) Lead
7 71 (6.74%) Java Engineer
8 69 (6.55%) Senior Developer
9 66 (6.27%) Solutions Architect
10 63 (5.98%) Software Engineer
11 60 (5.70%) DevOps Engineer
12 42 (3.99%) Full-Stack Developer
13 41 (3.89%) Senior Java Developer
14 40 (3.80%) Senior Data Engineer
15 37 (3.51%) Python Developer
15 37 (3.51%) Python Engineer
16 36 (3.42%) AWS Engineer
16 36 (3.42%) Kafka Engineer
17 33 (3.13%) AWS Architect
17 33 (3.13%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (27.07%) Spring
2 284 (26.97%) Spring Boot
3 239 (22.70%) REST
4 224 (21.27%) Terraform
5 153 (14.53%) RESTful
6 136 (12.92%) React
7 128 (12.16%) RabbitMQ
8 75 (7.12%) JSON
9 57 (5.41%) OAuth
10 53 (5.03%) Node.js
11 51 (4.84%) HTML
12 50 (4.75%) OpenTelemetry
12 50 (4.75%) PySpark
13 48 (4.56%) GraphQL
14 47 (4.46%) .NET
14 47 (4.46%) Swagger
15 45 (4.27%) OpenAPI
16 41 (3.89%) XML
17 40 (3.80%) Middleware
17 40 (3.80%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 237 (22.51%) Cloud Native
2 216 (20.51%) Distributed Systems
3 64 (6.08%) Product Ownership
4 46 (4.37%) Data Structures
5 42 (3.99%) Enterprise Software
6 36 (3.42%) Onboarding
7 31 (2.94%) AI Agents
8 30 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
9 29 (2.75%) Algorithms
9 29 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 27 (2.56%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 25 (2.37%) Replication
12 22 (2.09%) Greenfield Project
13 21 (1.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 18 (1.71%) Management Information System
15 17 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
15 17 (1.61%) Distributed Architecture
16 16 (1.52%) Public Cloud
17 15 (1.42%) Equities
18 12 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 132 (12.54%) Linux
2 69 (6.55%) Unix
3 25 (2.37%) Windows
4 9 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.57%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.47%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Android
8 2 (0.19%) Debian
8 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.095%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.095%) CentOS
9 1 (0.095%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.095%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.095%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.095%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 582 (55.27%) CI/CD
2 432 (41.03%) Event-Driven
3 427 (40.55%) Microservices
4 385 (36.56%) DevOps
5 379 (35.99%) Agile
6 302 (28.68%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 279 (26.50%) Observability
8 237 (22.51%) Test Automation
9 231 (21.94%) Containerisation
10 225 (21.37%) Infrastructure as Code
11 192 (18.23%) Software Engineering
12 179 (17.00%) Data Pipeline
13 178 (16.90%) AI
14 150 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
15 145 (13.77%) Data Modelling
16 135 (12.82%) ETL
17 128 (12.16%) Technical Leadership
18 127 (12.06%) Analytics
18 127 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
19 124 (11.78%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 469 (44.54%) Java
2 360 (34.19%) Python
3 346 (32.86%) SQL
4 105 (9.97%) TypeScript
5 101 (9.59%) JavaScript
6 79 (7.50%) Bash
7 62 (5.89%) C#
8 48 (4.56%) Go
9 45 (4.27%) Scala
10 31 (2.94%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.75%) PL/SQL
12 23 (2.18%) Kotlin
12 23 (2.18%) Shell Script
13 11 (1.04%) Groovy
14 9 (0.85%) C++
14 9 (0.85%) Perl
15 8 (0.76%) Bicep
15 8 (0.76%) Rust
15 8 (0.76%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.66%) PHP
Qualifications
1 252 (23.93%) Security Cleared
2 204 (19.37%) SC Cleared
3 64 (6.08%) Degree
4 41 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 37 (3.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (1.99%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.04%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.04%) Master's Degree
8 10 (0.95%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.95%) ISTQB
9 6 (0.57%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.57%) ISEB
9 6 (0.57%) SnowPro
10 5 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
11 3 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.28%) PhD
12 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.095%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (8.36%) Data Quality
2 80 (7.60%) QA
3 41 (3.89%) Accessibility
4 34 (3.23%) ISO 20022
5 22 (2.09%) GDPR
6 15 (1.42%) SEPA
7 6 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.57%) WCAG
8 5 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.47%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.47%) PSD2
8 5 (0.47%) SLA
9 3 (0.28%) NIST
10 2 (0.19%) Basel III
10 2 (0.19%) EMIR
10 2 (0.19%) GRC
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.19%) Solvency II
System Software
1 380 (36.09%) Docker
2 12 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.76%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.19%) etcd
5 2 (0.19%) HDFS
6 1 (0.095%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 478 (45.39%) Kubernetes
2 137 (13.01%) Grafana
3 121 (11.49%) Prometheus
4 67 (6.36%) Ansible
5 30 (2.85%) Argo
6 25 (2.37%) Control-M
7 14 (1.33%) Kustomize
8 13 (1.23%) Kibana
9 12 (1.14%) Istio
10 11 (1.04%) Puppet
11 9 (0.85%) Podman
12 8 (0.76%) logstash
13 5 (0.47%) Check_MK
13 5 (0.47%) HP Fortify
13 5 (0.47%) Rancher
14 3 (0.28%) Bosun
14 3 (0.28%) Cilium
14 3 (0.28%) Consul
14 3 (0.28%) Fluentd
14 3 (0.28%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 121 (11.49%) Oracle
2 99 (9.40%) Databricks
3 57 (5.41%) Splunk
4 55 (5.22%) Microsoft
5 54 (5.13%) IBM
6 53 (5.03%) Google
7 36 (3.42%) Dynatrace
8 34 (3.23%) Confluent
9 31 (2.94%) Informatica
10 20 (1.90%) MuleSoft
11 18 (1.71%) OpenAI
11 18 (1.71%) Salesforce
12 17 (1.61%) SAP
13 16 (1.52%) Solace
13 16 (1.52%) VMware
14 12 (1.14%) TIBCO
15 9 (0.85%) New Relic
15 9 (0.85%) Sybase
15 9 (0.85%) Veracode
16 8 (0.76%) WSO2