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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 103 138
Rank change year-on-year -44 +35 +18
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,030 839 675
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.56% 1.74%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 8.80% 10.12% 7.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 637 541 468
10th Percentile £371 £385 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £599
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -8.10% -7.92%
75th Percentile £630 £675 £719
90th Percentile £753 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 4 9
10th Percentile £44.78 £40.58 £24.87
25th Percentile £56.38 £48.56 £27.00
Median hourly rate £71.25 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.25% +111.61% -64.10%
75th Percentile £83.00 £67.49 £38.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £74.22 £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 11,706 8,290 9,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.80% 25.31% 24.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,705 5,607 6,426
10th Percentile £375 £354 £356
25th Percentile £431 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £633 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +6.21% -5.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 182 205
10th Percentile £29.07 £30.30 £23.80
25th Percentile £45.00 £40.88 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £53.25 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +22.07% -13.56% -2.22%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £87.96 £78.33 £74.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +22.73% -12.00% +4.17%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 -44 870 £550 - 842
London -35 512 £563 -6.25% 619
UK excluding London -23 389 £500 +6.61% 334
Work from Home -62 261 £545 -2.68% 354
North of England -9 187 £500 +6.61% 101
Yorkshire +4 96 £500 -9.09% 31
North West -38 72 £537 +14.50% 52
South East -30 61 £513 +17.82% 80
Scotland -28 53 £425 -9.57% 53
Midlands -45 42 £500 +19.05% 26
East of England +1 28 £500 -2.44% 10
West Midlands -41 27 £517 +3.40% 20
North East -22 26 £425 -8.55% 18
South West -28 26 £500 -9.09% 45
East Midlands -14 15 £447 +9.02% 6
Northern Ireland -1 4 - - 19
Wales - 1 £375 - 1

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
1 133 (12.91%) Apache Spark
2 70 (6.80%) Apache
3 68 (6.60%) Apache Airflow
4 21 (2.04%) Confluence
5 13 (1.26%) Camunda
6 8 (0.78%) OpenStack
7 7 (0.68%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (0.58%) CMS
9 5 (0.49%) 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%) JBoss
12 2 (0.19%) MQSeries
12 2 (0.19%) nginx
12 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application 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
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%) 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
1 602 (58.45%) AWS
2 363 (35.24%) Azure
3 231 (22.43%) GCP
4 172 (16.70%) GitHub
5 121 (11.75%) GitHub Actions
6 102 (9.90%) Serverless
7 80 (7.77%) AWS Lambda
8 77 (7.48%) Amazon S3
9 73 (7.09%) Azure DevOps
10 70 (6.80%) Amazon EKS
10 70 (6.80%) OpenShift
11 68 (6.60%) Snowflake
12 52 (5.05%) Amazon SQS
13 51 (4.95%) dbt
14 47 (4.56%) Power Platform
15 41 (3.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 38 (3.69%) Amazon ECS
17 33 (3.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 32 (3.11%) Azure Data Factory
19 28 (2.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 27 (2.62%) HTTP
2 18 (1.75%) 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 (0.49%) SAN
8 4 (0.39%) 4G
8 4 (0.39%) 5G
8 4 (0.39%) NAS
9 3 (0.29%) Internet
10 2 (0.19%) OpenVPN
11 1 (0.097%) FIX Connectivity
11 1 (0.097%) MIMO
11 1 (0.097%) NaaS
11 1 (0.097%) Reverse Proxy
11 1 (0.097%) RTP
11 1 (0.097%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (17.67%) PostgreSQL
2 163 (15.83%) MongoDB
3 140 (13.59%) NoSQL
4 97 (9.42%) Relational Database
5 72 (6.99%) Data Warehouse
6 65 (6.31%) SQL Server
7 59 (5.73%) Big Data
8 54 (5.24%) Data Lake
9 53 (5.15%) Redis
10 46 (4.47%) Power BI
11 41 (3.98%) BigQuery
11 41 (3.98%) MySQL
12 36 (3.50%) Elasticsearch
12 36 (3.50%) Metadata
13 35 (3.40%) Flink
14 30 (2.91%) Apache Cassandra
15 29 (2.82%) Amazon Redshift
16 28 (2.72%) Delta Lake
16 28 (2.72%) DynamoDB
17 26 (2.52%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 212 (20.58%) Jenkins
2 175 (16.99%) Git
3 153 (14.85%) GitLab
4 74 (7.18%) JUnit
5 62 (6.02%) Gradle
5 62 (6.02%) Mockito
6 49 (4.76%) Selenium
7 45 (4.37%) JIRA
8 39 (3.79%) Maven
9 32 (3.11%) SonarQube
10 26 (2.52%) Cucumber
11 23 (2.23%) REST Assured
12 22 (2.14%) Postman
13 18 (1.75%) Liquibase
14 17 (1.65%) JMeter
15 16 (1.55%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.46%) Gatling
17 13 (1.26%) Cypress.io
18 11 (1.07%) LoadRunner
18 11 (1.07%) SoapUI
General
1 249 (24.17%) Finance
2 190 (18.45%) Social Skills
3 142 (13.79%) Banking
4 108 (10.49%) Analytical Skills
5 102 (9.90%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.30%) Retail
7 25 (2.43%) Front Office
8 24 (2.33%) Investment Banking
9 19 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 18 (1.75%) Financial Institution
10 18 (1.75%) Telecoms
11 15 (1.46%) Law
12 12 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
13 10 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.87%) Billing
14 9 (0.87%) Publishing
15 8 (0.78%) Games
16 7 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.68%) Military
16 7 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 318 (30.87%) Developer
2 205 (19.90%) Senior
3 174 (16.89%) Java Developer
4 141 (13.69%) Architect
5 140 (13.59%) Data Engineer
6 105 (10.19%) Lead
7 75 (7.28%) Software Engineer
8 73 (7.09%) Java Engineer
9 66 (6.41%) Senior Developer
10 59 (5.73%) Solutions Architect
11 57 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
12 40 (3.88%) Full-Stack Developer
13 39 (3.79%) Senior Data Engineer
13 39 (3.79%) Senior Java Developer
14 37 (3.59%) Python Engineer
15 36 (3.50%) AWS Architect
15 36 (3.50%) AWS Engineer
15 36 (3.50%) Kafka Engineer
16 35 (3.40%) Python Developer
17 33 (3.20%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (26.02%) Spring
2 265 (25.73%) Spring Boot
3 219 (21.26%) REST
4 217 (21.07%) Terraform
5 146 (14.17%) RESTful
6 141 (13.69%) React
7 122 (11.84%) RabbitMQ
8 73 (7.09%) JSON
9 58 (5.63%) Node.js
10 57 (5.53%) OAuth
11 52 (5.05%) OpenTelemetry
12 51 (4.95%) GraphQL
12 51 (4.95%) PySpark
13 47 (4.56%) HTML
14 44 (4.27%) .NET
15 42 (4.08%) OAuth2
15 42 (4.08%) Swagger
16 40 (3.88%) Elastic Stack
16 40 (3.88%) OpenAPI
16 40 (3.88%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 215 (20.87%) Cloud Native
2 206 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
3 55 (5.34%) Product Ownership
4 44 (4.27%) Data Structures
5 40 (3.88%) Enterprise Software
6 35 (3.40%) Onboarding
7 29 (2.82%) Algorithms
7 29 (2.82%) Self-Motivation
8 27 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
9 24 (2.33%) AI Agents
10 22 (2.14%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 21 (2.04%) Management Information System
12 20 (1.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 20 (1.94%) Replication
13 17 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
14 16 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
14 16 (1.55%) Public Cloud
15 15 (1.46%) Equities
15 15 (1.46%) Fixed Income
16 13 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 128 (12.43%) Linux
2 68 (6.60%) Unix
3 27 (2.62%) Windows
4 10 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.58%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.49%) 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
1 556 (53.98%) CI/CD
2 404 (39.22%) Microservices
3 394 (38.25%) Event-Driven
4 372 (36.12%) Agile
4 372 (36.12%) DevOps
5 274 (26.60%) Event-Driven Architecture
6 265 (25.73%) Observability
7 222 (21.55%) Containerisation
8 216 (20.97%) Test Automation
9 210 (20.39%) Infrastructure as Code
10 193 (18.74%) Software Engineering
11 187 (18.16%) Data Pipeline
12 166 (16.12%) AI
13 156 (15.15%) Data Modelling
14 142 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
15 139 (13.50%) ETL
16 134 (13.01%) Analytics
17 124 (12.04%) Data Engineering
18 123 (11.94%) Continuous Improvement
19 120 (11.65%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 454 (44.08%) Java
2 363 (35.24%) Python
3 341 (33.11%) SQL
4 110 (10.68%) TypeScript
5 105 (10.19%) JavaScript
6 79 (7.67%) Bash
7 60 (5.83%) C#
8 55 (5.34%) Go
9 41 (3.98%) Scala
10 36 (3.50%) PowerShell
11 28 (2.72%) PL/SQL
12 23 (2.23%) Shell Script
13 20 (1.94%) Kotlin
14 12 (1.17%) Search Processing Language
15 10 (0.97%) Bicep
15 10 (0.97%) Groovy
16 9 (0.87%) C++
16 9 (0.87%) Rust
17 7 (0.68%) PHP
18 6 (0.58%) Perl
Qualifications
1 242 (23.50%) Security Cleared
2 192 (18.64%) SC Cleared
3 58 (5.63%) Degree
4 35 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
5 33 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (1.75%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.07%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.97%) ISTQB
8 10 (0.97%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.78%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.68%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.58%) ISEB
12 5 (0.49%) 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
16 1 (0.097%) ITIL Certification
16 1 (0.097%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (9.42%) Data Quality
2 63 (6.12%) QA
3 43 (4.17%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.91%) ISO 20022
5 29 (2.82%) GDPR
6 12 (1.17%) SEPA
7 8 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
8 6 (0.58%) WCAG
9 5 (0.49%) 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%) IFRS
12 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.19%) MiFID
12 2 (0.19%) Solvency II
13 1 (0.097%) HL7
System Software
1 372 (36.12%) 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
1 455 (44.17%) Kubernetes
2 132 (12.82%) Grafana
3 120 (11.65%) Prometheus
4 69 (6.70%) Ansible
5 30 (2.91%) Argo
6 25 (2.43%) Control-M
7 12 (1.17%) Istio
7 12 (1.17%) Kibana
8 11 (1.07%) Kustomize
8 11 (1.07%) Puppet
9 10 (0.97%) Podman
10 8 (0.78%) logstash
11 7 (0.68%) Fluentd
12 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
12 5 (0.49%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.49%) Rancher
13 3 (0.29%) Bosun
13 3 (0.29%) Consul
13 3 (0.29%) NetBackup
13 3 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 113 (10.97%) Oracle
2 98 (9.51%) Databricks
3 62 (6.02%) Splunk
4 56 (5.44%) Microsoft
5 53 (5.15%) Google
6 48 (4.66%) IBM
7 34 (3.30%) Dynatrace
8 33 (3.20%) Informatica
9 32 (3.11%) Confluent
10 17 (1.65%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.65%) Salesforce
11 16 (1.55%) SAP
12 15 (1.46%) OpenAI
12 15 (1.46%) Solace
13 13 (1.26%) VMware
14 10 (0.97%) Red Hat
14 10 (0.97%) TIBCO
15 9 (0.87%) New Relic
16 7 (0.68%) ServiceNow
16 7 (0.68%) Veracode