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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 146 98 137
Rank change year-on-year -48 +39 +19
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,032 842 687
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.59% 1.78%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 8.83% 10.16% 7.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 643 541 473
10th Percentile £369 £385 £400
25th Percentile £421 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £723
90th Percentile £737 £750 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £492
% change year-on-year +6.50% -4.48% -19.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 9
10th Percentile £45.70 £42.35 £24.87
25th Percentile £56.50 £53.00 £27.00
Median hourly rate £72.50 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £87.50 £78.70 £38.75
90th Percentile £93.00 £97.48 £45.95
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 11,690 8,286 9,493
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.81% 25.48% 24.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,697 5,589 6,415
10th Percentile £375 £354 £356
25th Percentile £432 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £633 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £504 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +6.00% -5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 185 196
10th Percentile £29.07 £30.45 £26.30
25th Percentile £45.00 £41.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.00 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +20.37% -12.34% -1.44%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.75 £79.48 £74.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -46 871 £550 - 898
London -43 513 £563 -6.25% 659
UK excluding London -31 392 £500 +6.50% 368
Work from Home -62 259 £530 -7.83% 381
North of England -24 187 £500 +5.26% 106
Yorkshire +6 97 £500 -14.89% 32
North West -40 71 £544 +15.88% 57
South East -34 64 £489 +12.36% 81
Scotland -35 53 £425 -9.57% 60
Midlands -48 42 £500 +17.51% 26
East of England 0 28 £500 -2.44% 12
West Midlands -40 27 £517 +3.40% 19
South West -27 26 £500 -9.09% 52
North East -28 24 £425 -8.55% 17
East Midlands -14 15 £447 +9.02% 7
Northern Ireland +2 4 - - 28
Wales - 1 £375 - 4

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
1 131 (12.69%) Apache Spark
2 69 (6.69%) Apache
3 68 (6.59%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (2.13%) Confluence
5 15 (1.45%) Camunda
6 8 (0.78%) OpenStack
7 7 (0.68%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (0.58%) CMS
9 5 (0.48%) SharePoint
10 4 (0.39%) Apache Pulsar
10 4 (0.39%) PowerExchange
10 4 (0.39%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.29%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.29%) Mule
12 2 (0.19%) Apache Pig
12 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
12 2 (0.19%) MQSeries
12 2 (0.19%) nginx
12 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (0.68%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.097%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.19%) Endur
2 2 (0.19%) Finacle
2 2 (0.19%) FLEXCUBE
2 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.19%) Temenos T24
3 1 (0.097%) Actimize
3 1 (0.097%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.097%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.097%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.097%) SAP IS-U
3 1 (0.097%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 594 (57.56%) AWS
2 371 (35.95%) Azure
3 233 (22.58%) GCP
4 173 (16.76%) GitHub
5 121 (11.72%) GitHub Actions
6 102 (9.88%) Serverless
7 81 (7.85%) AWS Lambda
8 76 (7.36%) Amazon S3
8 76 (7.36%) Azure DevOps
9 72 (6.98%) Amazon EKS
10 71 (6.88%) Snowflake
11 70 (6.78%) OpenShift
12 52 (5.04%) dbt
13 50 (4.84%) Amazon SQS
14 46 (4.46%) Power Platform
15 41 (3.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 38 (3.68%) Amazon ECS
17 34 (3.29%) Azure Data Factory
18 33 (3.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 29 (2.81%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.81%) HTTP
2 18 (1.74%) DNS
3 11 (1.07%) Firewall
3 11 (1.07%) Network Security
4 8 (0.78%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.68%) MQTT
5 7 (0.68%) SSL
6 6 (0.58%) SSH
7 5 (0.48%) SAN
8 4 (0.39%) 4G
8 4 (0.39%) 5G
8 4 (0.39%) NAS
9 3 (0.29%) Internet
10 1 (0.097%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.097%) MIMO
10 1 (0.097%) NaaS
10 1 (0.097%) Reverse Proxy
10 1 (0.097%) RTP
10 1 (0.097%) VPN
10 1 (0.097%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (17.83%) PostgreSQL
2 156 (15.12%) MongoDB
3 138 (13.37%) NoSQL
4 97 (9.40%) Relational Database
5 73 (7.07%) Data Warehouse
6 64 (6.20%) SQL Server
7 59 (5.72%) Big Data
8 54 (5.23%) Redis
9 52 (5.04%) Data Lake
10 45 (4.36%) Power BI
11 44 (4.26%) MySQL
12 40 (3.88%) BigQuery
13 37 (3.59%) Elasticsearch
14 36 (3.49%) Flink
15 34 (3.29%) Metadata
16 29 (2.81%) Delta Lake
17 28 (2.71%) Amazon Redshift
17 28 (2.71%) DynamoDB
18 26 (2.52%) Apache Cassandra
18 26 (2.52%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 211 (20.45%) Jenkins
2 178 (17.25%) Git
3 154 (14.92%) GitLab
4 73 (7.07%) JUnit
5 66 (6.40%) Gradle
6 61 (5.91%) Mockito
7 49 (4.75%) Selenium
8 47 (4.55%) JIRA
9 40 (3.88%) Maven
10 31 (3.00%) SonarQube
11 28 (2.71%) Cucumber
12 24 (2.33%) REST Assured
13 23 (2.23%) Postman
14 19 (1.84%) Liquibase
15 18 (1.74%) JMeter
16 17 (1.65%) Bitbucket
17 15 (1.45%) Gatling
18 13 (1.26%) Cypress.io
19 12 (1.16%) LoadRunner
19 12 (1.16%) SoapUI
General
1 243 (23.55%) Finance
2 196 (18.99%) Social Skills
3 147 (14.24%) Banking
4 108 (10.47%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (9.69%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.29%) Retail
7 24 (2.33%) Investment Banking
8 20 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 18 (1.74%) Telecoms
10 17 (1.65%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.65%) Front Office
11 15 (1.45%) Law
12 12 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (0.97%) Billing
13 10 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.87%) Publishing
15 8 (0.78%) Games
15 8 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.68%) Military
16 7 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 313 (30.33%) Developer
2 209 (20.25%) Senior
3 172 (16.67%) Java Developer
4 144 (13.95%) Architect
5 138 (13.37%) Data Engineer
6 97 (9.40%) Lead
7 70 (6.78%) Java Engineer
8 66 (6.40%) Senior Developer
9 63 (6.10%) Software Engineer
9 63 (6.10%) Solutions Architect
10 58 (5.62%) DevOps Engineer
11 39 (3.78%) Full-Stack Developer
11 39 (3.78%) Senior Data Engineer
12 38 (3.68%) Senior Java Developer
13 37 (3.59%) Python Engineer
14 36 (3.49%) AWS Architect
14 36 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
14 36 (3.49%) Kafka Engineer
14 36 (3.49%) Python Developer
15 33 (3.20%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (26.45%) Spring
1 273 (26.45%) Spring Boot
2 224 (21.71%) REST
3 219 (21.22%) Terraform
4 147 (14.24%) RESTful
5 135 (13.08%) React
6 124 (12.02%) RabbitMQ
7 74 (7.17%) JSON
8 56 (5.43%) OAuth
9 52 (5.04%) PySpark
10 51 (4.94%) OpenTelemetry
11 50 (4.84%) Node.js
12 47 (4.55%) HTML
13 46 (4.46%) .NET
13 46 (4.46%) GraphQL
13 46 (4.46%) Swagger
14 44 (4.26%) OpenAPI
15 40 (3.88%) Middleware
15 40 (3.88%) OAuth2
16 39 (3.78%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 225 (21.80%) Cloud Native
2 209 (20.25%) Distributed Systems
3 55 (5.33%) Product Ownership
4 45 (4.36%) Data Structures
5 41 (3.97%) Enterprise Software
6 35 (3.39%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.91%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (2.81%) Algorithms
9 27 (2.62%) AI Agents
9 27 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (2.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 21 (2.03%) Management Information System
12 20 (1.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 20 (1.94%) Replication
13 18 (1.74%) Greenfield Project
14 17 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
15 16 (1.55%) Public Cloud
16 15 (1.45%) Equities
17 13 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
18 12 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 126 (12.21%) Linux
2 67 (6.49%) Unix
3 28 (2.71%) Windows
4 10 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.58%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.39%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.29%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Android
8 2 (0.19%) Debian
8 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.19%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.19%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.097%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.097%) CentOS
9 1 (0.097%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.097%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (54.65%) CI/CD
2 409 (39.63%) Event-Driven
3 408 (39.53%) Microservices
4 371 (35.95%) DevOps
5 369 (35.76%) Agile
6 284 (27.52%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 272 (26.36%) Observability
8 226 (21.90%) Test Automation
9 222 (21.51%) Containerisation
10 214 (20.74%) Infrastructure as Code
11 187 (18.12%) Software Engineering
12 184 (17.83%) Data Pipeline
13 174 (16.86%) AI
14 155 (15.02%) Data Modelling
15 143 (13.86%) Problem-Solving
16 138 (13.37%) ETL
17 133 (12.89%) Analytics
18 126 (12.21%) Continuous Improvement
19 123 (11.92%) Data Engineering
20 120 (11.63%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 456 (44.19%) Java
2 358 (34.69%) Python
3 344 (33.33%) SQL
4 101 (9.79%) TypeScript
5 97 (9.40%) JavaScript
6 80 (7.75%) Bash
7 62 (6.01%) C#
8 47 (4.55%) Go
9 43 (4.17%) Scala
10 35 (3.39%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.81%) PL/SQL
12 22 (2.13%) Kotlin
13 21 (2.03%) Shell Script
14 12 (1.16%) Search Processing Language
15 10 (0.97%) Bicep
15 10 (0.97%) Groovy
16 9 (0.87%) C++
16 9 (0.87%) Rust
17 8 (0.78%) Perl
18 7 (0.68%) PHP
Qualifications
1 244 (23.64%) Security Cleared
2 196 (18.99%) SC Cleared
3 60 (5.81%) Degree
4 36 (3.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.07%) AWS Certification
7 11 (1.07%) Master's Degree
8 10 (0.97%) ISTQB
9 9 (0.87%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.68%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.58%) ISEB
12 5 (0.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 4 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.39%) DBS Check
14 3 (0.29%) PhD
14 3 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
15 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
15 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 1 (0.097%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (9.21%) Data Quality
2 70 (6.78%) QA
3 43 (4.17%) Accessibility
4 31 (3.00%) ISO 20022
5 26 (2.52%) GDPR
6 13 (1.26%) SEPA
7 8 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
8 6 (0.58%) WCAG
9 5 (0.48%) ISO 15022
10 4 (0.39%) SLA
11 3 (0.29%) NIST
11 3 (0.29%) PSD2
12 2 (0.19%) Basel III
12 2 (0.19%) EMIR
12 2 (0.19%) GRC
12 2 (0.19%) IFRS
12 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.19%) MiFID
12 2 (0.19%) Solvency II
System Software
1 368 (35.66%) Docker
2 9 (0.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (0.68%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 6 (0.58%) etcd
5 3 (0.29%) Active Directory
6 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
6 2 (0.19%) HDFS
7 1 (0.097%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 458 (44.38%) Kubernetes
2 134 (12.98%) Grafana
3 121 (11.72%) Prometheus
4 69 (6.69%) Ansible
5 31 (3.00%) Argo
6 25 (2.42%) Control-M
7 13 (1.26%) Kustomize
8 12 (1.16%) Istio
8 12 (1.16%) Kibana
9 11 (1.07%) Puppet
10 10 (0.97%) Podman
11 8 (0.78%) logstash
12 7 (0.68%) Fluentd
13 5 (0.48%) Check_MK
13 5 (0.48%) HP Fortify
13 5 (0.48%) Rancher
14 3 (0.29%) Bosun
14 3 (0.29%) Consul
14 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
14 3 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 116 (11.24%) Oracle
2 101 (9.79%) Databricks
3 62 (6.01%) Splunk
4 56 (5.43%) Microsoft
5 54 (5.23%) Google
6 51 (4.94%) IBM
7 34 (3.29%) Dynatrace
8 33 (3.20%) Informatica
9 32 (3.10%) Confluent
10 18 (1.74%) MuleSoft
11 17 (1.65%) Salesforce
12 16 (1.55%) OpenAI
12 16 (1.55%) SAP
13 15 (1.45%) Solace
14 13 (1.26%) VMware
15 11 (1.07%) TIBCO
16 10 (0.97%) Red Hat
17 9 (0.87%) New Relic
18 8 (0.78%) Veracode
19 7 (0.68%) Talend