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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 109 153
Rank change year-on-year -34 +44 -12
Contract jobs citing Kafka 920 713 681
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 2.47% 1.59%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.60% 10.82% 7.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 468 500
10th Percentile £378 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £675
90th Percentile £800 £825 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £475 £490
% change year-on-year -0.53% -3.06% -14.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 8
10th Percentile £61.10 £47.14 £22.44
25th Percentile £65.00 £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 £92.00 £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 9,586 6,592 9,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.59% 22.87% 21.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,298 4,509 6,249
10th Percentile £363 £359 £350
25th Percentile £423 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £536
Median % change year-on-year +0.86% -2.85% -2.59%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 117 254
10th Percentile £31.03 £29.18 £21.81
25th Percentile £52.50 £39.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +31.58% -26.92%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.75 £65.95
90th Percentile £81.00 £81.15 £74.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £48.43
% change year-on-year - +34.21% -25.49%

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 4 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 4 June 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 4 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 -28 794 £550 -0.36% 244
London -17 500 £600 -7.69% 162
UK excluding London -47 302 £473 -0.53% 121
Work from Home -28 278 £588 +1.12% 182
North of England -37 135 £458 -8.50% 39
Yorkshire -24 71 £463 -15.91% 9
North West -32 53 £463 -7.50% 26
South East -40 51 £488 +8.33% 28
Scotland -15 45 £450 -5.26% 10
Midlands -51 40 £488 +13.11% 5
South West -17 26 £500 -9.09% 16
West Midlands -52 22 £500 - 4
North East -14 20 £426 -8.00% 4
East Midlands -21 18 £407 +14.40% 1
East of England -24 17 £550 +33.92% 6
Wales -15 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
1 130 (14.13%) Apache Spark
2 67 (7.28%) Apache
3 51 (5.54%) Apache Airflow
4 16 (1.74%) Confluence
5 7 (0.76%) Camunda
6 6 (0.65%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.65%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.54%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.43%) Apache Pulsar
8 4 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.22%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.22%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.22%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) JBoss
Applications
1 5 (0.54%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.22%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.33%) Bloomberg AIM
2 3 (0.33%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.22%) Shopify
3 2 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) Endur
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 545 (59.24%) AWS
2 264 (28.70%) Azure
3 161 (17.50%) GCP
4 142 (15.43%) GitHub
5 123 (13.37%) Serverless
6 103 (11.20%) GitHub Actions
7 96 (10.43%) Amazon S3
8 91 (9.89%) AWS Lambda
9 68 (7.39%) Amazon EKS
10 65 (7.07%) OpenShift
11 60 (6.52%) Azure DevOps
11 60 (6.52%) Power Platform
12 49 (5.33%) Snowflake
13 48 (5.22%) AWS CloudFormation
14 47 (5.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 46 (5.00%) Amazon ECS
16 41 (4.46%) dbt
17 38 (4.13%) Amazon SQS
18 37 (4.02%) Amazon Kinesis
19 31 (3.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.96%) Firewall
2 12 (1.30%) HTTP
3 10 (1.09%) DNS
4 8 (0.87%) Network Security
4 8 (0.87%) SSL
5 6 (0.65%) SMS
6 5 (0.54%) NAS
6 5 (0.54%) SAN
6 5 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.43%) MQTT
8 2 (0.22%) NaaS
8 2 (0.22%) OpenVPN
8 2 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.22%) WAN
9 1 (0.11%) 4G
9 1 (0.11%) Broadband
9 1 (0.11%) FTP
9 1 (0.11%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.11%) MIMO
9 1 (0.11%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (20.33%) PostgreSQL
2 151 (16.41%) MongoDB
3 124 (13.48%) NoSQL
4 84 (9.13%) Relational Database
5 62 (6.74%) Big Data
6 54 (5.87%) Data Warehouse
7 52 (5.65%) Data Lake
8 50 (5.43%) SQL Server
9 49 (5.33%) Redis
10 48 (5.22%) Power BI
11 47 (5.11%) Elasticsearch
12 46 (5.00%) Apache Cassandra
13 37 (4.02%) DynamoDB
13 37 (4.02%) Flink
14 35 (3.80%) Amazon Athena
14 35 (3.80%) Hadoop
14 35 (3.80%) MySQL
15 30 (3.26%) Amazon Redshift
16 29 (3.15%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (3.04%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 142 (15.43%) Jenkins
2 127 (13.80%) GitLab
3 126 (13.70%) Git
4 61 (6.63%) JUnit
5 53 (5.76%) JIRA
6 44 (4.78%) Mockito
7 29 (3.15%) Gradle
7 29 (3.15%) Selenium
8 23 (2.50%) REST Assured
9 20 (2.17%) Gatling
10 19 (2.07%) Cucumber
11 17 (1.85%) Liquibase
12 15 (1.63%) Serenity BDD
13 14 (1.52%) Maven
13 14 (1.52%) Postman
14 12 (1.30%) SonarQube
15 10 (1.09%) Jaeger
16 7 (0.76%) JMeter
16 7 (0.76%) Snyk
17 5 (0.54%) Artifactory
General
1 247 (26.85%) Finance
2 166 (18.04%) Social Skills
3 124 (13.48%) Banking
4 77 (8.37%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (8.37%) Public Sector
5 45 (4.89%) Front Office
6 34 (3.70%) Investment Banking
7 27 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.72%) Financial Institution
9 17 (1.85%) Retail
10 14 (1.52%) Law
11 12 (1.30%) Marketing
12 11 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 9 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (0.98%) Publishing
15 7 (0.76%) Automotive
15 7 (0.76%) Corporate Banking
15 7 (0.76%) Military
16 6 (0.65%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 297 (32.28%) Developer
2 197 (21.41%) Senior
3 156 (16.96%) Data Engineer
4 149 (16.20%) Java Developer
5 116 (12.61%) Lead
6 110 (11.96%) Architect
7 91 (9.89%) Software Engineer
8 88 (9.57%) Senior Developer
9 69 (7.50%) Java Engineer
10 52 (5.65%) AWS Architect
11 50 (5.43%) Senior Java Developer
12 45 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
13 40 (4.35%) Full-Stack Developer
13 40 (4.35%) Solutions Architect
14 33 (3.59%) Developer/Software Engineer
14 33 (3.59%) Principal Engineer
14 33 (3.59%) Senior Data Engineer
15 31 (3.37%) Data Architect
15 31 (3.37%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 30 (3.26%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 226 (24.57%) Spring
2 210 (22.83%) Spring Boot
3 130 (14.13%) REST
4 120 (13.04%) RESTful
5 115 (12.50%) React
6 97 (10.54%) Node.js
7 89 (9.67%) RabbitMQ
8 58 (6.30%) GraphQL
8 58 (6.30%) OpenTelemetry
9 52 (5.65%) gRPC
10 48 (5.22%) JSON
11 43 (4.67%) Middleware
12 41 (4.46%) Apache Avro
12 41 (4.46%) Redux
13 39 (4.24%) PySpark
14 38 (4.13%) OAuth
15 37 (4.02%) AngularJS
15 37 (4.02%) Swagger
16 36 (3.91%) OpenAPI
17 33 (3.59%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 168 (18.26%) Distributed Systems
2 161 (17.50%) Cloud Native
3 42 (4.57%) Management Information System
4 38 (4.13%) Fixed Income
5 34 (3.70%) Product Ownership
6 25 (2.72%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.28%) Onboarding
8 17 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
9 16 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.63%) Algorithms
10 15 (1.63%) Equities
10 15 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.52%) Clustering
11 14 (1.52%) Derivative
12 12 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
12 12 (1.30%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 11 (1.20%) Hedge funds
13 11 (1.20%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 10 (1.09%) CMDB
14 10 (1.09%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 89 (9.67%) Linux
2 52 (5.65%) Unix
3 30 (3.26%) Windows
4 8 (0.87%) Mac OS X
5 6 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.65%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.33%) VMS
6 3 (0.33%) zOS
7 2 (0.22%) Debian
7 2 (0.22%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.11%) Android
8 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.11%) CentOS
8 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 423 (45.98%) CI/CD
2 349 (37.93%) Microservices
3 289 (31.41%) Agile
4 277 (30.11%) DevOps
5 261 (28.37%) Event-Driven
6 218 (23.70%) Observability
7 199 (21.63%) Containerisation
8 185 (20.11%) Software Engineering
9 173 (18.80%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 167 (18.15%) Data Pipeline
11 159 (17.28%) Data Modelling
11 159 (17.28%) Infrastructure as Code
12 147 (15.98%) Analytics
13 143 (15.54%) Problem-Solving
13 143 (15.54%) Test Automation
14 141 (15.33%) Data Engineering
15 137 (14.89%) ETL
16 107 (11.63%) Full-Stack Development
17 100 (10.87%) AI
18 95 (10.33%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 414 (45.00%) Java
2 318 (34.57%) Python
3 289 (31.41%) SQL
4 112 (12.17%) TypeScript
5 95 (10.33%) Go
6 87 (9.46%) JavaScript
7 54 (5.87%) C#
8 46 (5.00%) Bash
9 26 (2.83%) Scala
10 20 (2.17%) PowerShell
10 20 (2.17%) Rust
11 15 (1.63%) C++
11 15 (1.63%) Shell Script
12 13 (1.41%) Bicep
13 10 (1.09%) PL/SQL
13 10 (1.09%) Search Processing Language
14 7 (0.76%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.76%) PHP
15 6 (0.65%) Perl
16 5 (0.54%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 200 (21.74%) Security Cleared
2 158 (17.17%) SC Cleared
3 53 (5.76%) Degree
4 23 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.96%) DV Cleared
6 17 (1.85%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (1.41%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.98%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (0.76%) SnowPro
11 4 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.33%) DBS Check
13 2 (0.22%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.22%) Postgraduate
13 2 (0.22%) 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
1 101 (10.98%) Data Quality
2 50 (5.43%) QA
3 39 (4.24%) GDPR
4 30 (3.26%) Accessibility
5 19 (2.07%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.98%) NIST
8 8 (0.87%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.76%) SEPA
10 5 (0.54%) NCSC
11 4 (0.43%) SLA
11 4 (0.43%) WCAG
12 3 (0.33%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.33%) PSD2
13 2 (0.22%) EMIR
13 2 (0.22%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.22%) MiFID
14 1 (0.11%) Basel III
14 1 (0.11%) HL7
14 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 318 (34.57%) Docker
2 6 (0.65%) etcd
3 3 (0.33%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.22%) HDFS
4 2 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 366 (39.78%) Kubernetes
2 194 (21.09%) Terraform
3 129 (14.02%) Grafana
3 129 (14.02%) Prometheus
4 59 (6.41%) Ansible
5 24 (2.61%) Argo
6 12 (1.30%) Istio
7 11 (1.20%) Kibana
8 9 (0.98%) Kiali
9 8 (0.87%) Puppet
10 7 (0.76%) Fluentd
10 7 (0.76%) Podman
11 6 (0.65%) Kustomize
11 6 (0.65%) linkerd
11 6 (0.65%) logstash
12 5 (0.54%) Rancher
13 3 (0.33%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.22%) CA Wily
14 2 (0.22%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.22%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 86 (9.35%) Databricks
2 73 (7.93%) Splunk
3 64 (6.96%) Oracle
4 41 (4.46%) Microsoft
5 35 (3.80%) Google
6 29 (3.15%) Confluent
7 23 (2.50%) Informatica
8 17 (1.85%) IBM
9 14 (1.52%) Dynatrace
10 13 (1.41%) Salesforce
11 12 (1.30%) Red Hat
12 11 (1.20%) ServiceNow
13 9 (0.98%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.98%) Solace
13 9 (0.98%) Talend
14 7 (0.76%) AppDynamics
14 7 (0.76%) Sybase
15 6 (0.65%) Pega
15 6 (0.65%) Tenable
15 6 (0.65%) VMware