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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 106 173
Rank change year-on-year -16 +67 -47
Contract jobs citing Kafka 935 744 631
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.52% 1.41%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.10% 11.04% 6.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 597 452 485
10th Percentile £363 £375 £400
25th Percentile £418 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +4.55% -15.38%
75th Percentile £675 £738 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £462 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -1.70% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 4 5
10th Percentile £47.20 £52.23 £27.04
25th Percentile £64.25 £71.69 £35.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £88.75 £42.19
Median % change year-on-year -21.13% +110.36% -43.75%
75th Percentile £87.25 £93.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £93.50 - £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.44 £85.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -18.31% +70.00% -31.51%

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 9,255 6,741 9,077
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.75% 22.87% 20.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,181 4,483 6,311
10th Percentile £358 £363 £338
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -7.08%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £498
% change year-on-year - +0.50% -2.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 235 94 222
10th Percentile £35.10 £26.25 £20.77
25th Percentile £52.50 £39.75 £39.94
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £48.72
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +28.28% -25.05%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £81.88 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £48.72
% change year-on-year - +33.42% -25.05%

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 March 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 March 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 11 March 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 -14 817 £550 -8.33% 165
London -13 522 £603 -7.31% 103
Work from Home +1 352 £600 - 85
UK excluding London -52 262 £462 -1.70% 99
North of England -40 114 £475 -9.52% 31
South East -17 61 £434 -14.74% 41
North West -34 56 £475 - 16
Yorkshire -39 48 £460 -35.44% 10
Midlands -41 48 £500 +38.31% 8
West Midlands -36 31 £550 -8.33% 5
South West -4 28 £550 -12.00% 12
Scotland 0 25 £475 +16.42% 6
North East -2 17 £475 -12.38% 5
East Midlands -30 17 £402 +12.92% 3
East of England -36 5 £500 +57.23% 1
Wales -8 1 £250 - 2

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
1 114 (12.19%) Apache Spark
2 59 (6.31%) Apache
3 42 (4.49%) Apache Airflow
4 32 (3.42%) Confluence
5 7 (0.75%) Palantir Foundry
6 6 (0.64%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.64%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.53%) Camunda
7 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
7 5 (0.53%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.43%) WebSphere
9 3 (0.32%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.21%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.21%) CMS
10 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.21%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.11%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.11%) IBM HTTP Server
11 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 5 (0.53%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Bloomberg AIM
1 4 (0.43%) Fidessa
1 4 (0.43%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
3 2 (0.21%) Actimize
3 2 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 579 (61.93%) AWS
2 248 (26.52%) Azure
3 170 (18.18%) GitHub
4 159 (17.01%) GCP
5 126 (13.48%) Serverless
6 121 (12.94%) GitHub Actions
7 116 (12.41%) Amazon S3
8 91 (9.73%) AWS Lambda
9 80 (8.56%) Amazon EKS
10 70 (7.49%) AWS CloudFormation
11 59 (6.31%) OpenShift
12 57 (6.10%) Amazon ECS
13 52 (5.56%) Power Platform
14 49 (5.24%) Amazon SQS
15 41 (4.39%) Amazon Kinesis
15 41 (4.39%) Azure Data Factory
15 41 (4.39%) Azure DevOps
16 40 (4.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 37 (3.96%) Amazon EC2
18 35 (3.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.93%) Firewall
2 14 (1.50%) HTTP
3 11 (1.18%) DNS
3 11 (1.18%) SSL
4 6 (0.64%) FTP
4 6 (0.64%) Kerberos
4 6 (0.64%) SMS
4 6 (0.64%) SSH
5 4 (0.43%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.32%) VPN
7 2 (0.21%) MQTT
7 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.11%) 4G
8 1 (0.11%) 5G
8 1 (0.11%) Internet
8 1 (0.11%) NaaS
8 1 (0.11%) NAS
8 1 (0.11%) SAN
8 1 (0.11%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (20.64%) PostgreSQL
2 149 (15.94%) MongoDB
3 134 (14.33%) NoSQL
4 80 (8.56%) Apache Cassandra
5 67 (7.17%) Relational Database
6 59 (6.31%) Data Warehouse
7 56 (5.99%) Data Lake
8 51 (5.45%) Elasticsearch
9 49 (5.24%) Big Data
10 46 (4.92%) DynamoDB
11 42 (4.49%) Amazon RDS
11 42 (4.49%) Redis
11 42 (4.49%) SQL Server
12 40 (4.28%) Power BI
13 37 (3.96%) Hadoop
14 35 (3.74%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (3.42%) Flink
15 32 (3.42%) MySQL
16 31 (3.32%) BigQuery
16 31 (3.32%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 161 (17.22%) Jenkins
2 141 (15.08%) GitLab
3 103 (11.02%) Git
4 82 (8.77%) JUnit
5 62 (6.63%) JIRA
6 32 (3.42%) Cucumber
7 29 (3.10%) Mockito
8 25 (2.67%) JMeter
9 24 (2.57%) Sonatype Nexus
10 19 (2.03%) Gatling
11 18 (1.93%) Gradle
12 13 (1.39%) Maven
13 11 (1.18%) Artifactory
14 10 (1.07%) CircleCI
14 10 (1.07%) REST Assured
14 10 (1.07%) Selenium
15 9 (0.96%) Jaeger
16 8 (0.86%) Postman
17 6 (0.64%) Serenity BDD
17 6 (0.64%) SonarQube
General
1 265 (28.34%) Finance
2 199 (21.28%) Social Skills
3 133 (14.22%) Banking
4 74 (7.91%) Analytical Skills
5 67 (7.17%) Public Sector
6 59 (6.31%) Front Office
7 42 (4.49%) Investment Banking
8 23 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 17 (1.82%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (0.96%) Marketing
12 7 (0.75%) Telecoms
13 6 (0.64%) Law
13 6 (0.64%) Retail
14 4 (0.43%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.43%) Military
15 3 (0.32%) Billing
15 3 (0.32%) Corporate Banking
15 3 (0.32%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 348 (37.22%) Developer
2 257 (27.49%) Senior
3 184 (19.68%) Java Developer
4 137 (14.65%) Data Engineer
5 125 (13.37%) Lead
6 123 (13.16%) Senior Developer
7 105 (11.23%) Software Engineer
8 90 (9.63%) Architect
9 69 (7.38%) Senior Java Developer
10 51 (5.45%) Java Engineer
11 46 (4.92%) DevOps Engineer
11 46 (4.92%) Full-Stack Developer
12 44 (4.71%) AWS Architect
13 40 (4.28%) Kafka Developer
14 39 (4.17%) AWS Engineer
15 37 (3.96%) AWS Developer
16 36 (3.85%) Senior Data Engineer
17 34 (3.64%) Kafka Engineer
18 33 (3.53%) Developer/Software Engineer
18 33 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 215 (22.99%) Spring
2 184 (19.68%) Spring Boot
3 116 (12.41%) REST
4 107 (11.44%) Node.js
5 102 (10.91%) React
6 98 (10.48%) gRPC
7 85 (9.09%) RESTful
8 76 (8.13%) RabbitMQ
9 47 (5.03%) AngularJS
10 45 (4.81%) GraphQL
11 43 (4.60%) Middleware
12 37 (3.96%) JSON
12 37 (3.96%) OpenTelemetry
13 35 (3.74%) PySpark
14 33 (3.53%) Redux
15 31 (3.32%) Keycloak
16 29 (3.10%) OAuth
17 28 (2.99%) Hibernate
18 27 (2.89%) OAuth2
19 25 (2.67%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 145 (15.51%) Distributed Systems
2 125 (13.37%) Cloud Native
3 49 (5.24%) Fixed Income
4 45 (4.81%) Management Information System
5 35 (3.74%) Product Ownership
6 23 (2.46%) Data Structures
7 22 (2.35%) Derivative
7 22 (2.35%) Hybrid Cloud
8 21 (2.25%) Equities
9 16 (1.71%) Market Risk
9 16 (1.71%) Onboarding
10 15 (1.60%) Legacy Applications
11 12 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.18%) Replication
13 10 (1.07%) Algorithms
13 10 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
14 9 (0.96%) Clustering
15 8 (0.86%) Virtual Team
16 7 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 133 (14.22%) Linux
2 64 (6.84%) Unix
3 32 (3.42%) Windows
4 8 (0.86%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.53%) AIX
6 4 (0.43%) CentOS
6 4 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.32%) zOS
8 2 (0.21%) VMS
9 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.11%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.11%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 406 (43.42%) CI/CD
2 343 (36.68%) Microservices
3 324 (34.65%) Agile
4 263 (28.13%) DevOps
5 232 (24.81%) Software Engineering
6 190 (20.32%) Event-Driven
7 188 (20.11%) Problem-Solving
8 185 (19.79%) Observability
9 178 (19.04%) Containerisation
10 160 (17.11%) Analytics
11 157 (16.79%) Infrastructure as Code
12 143 (15.29%) Data Pipeline
13 141 (15.08%) Data Engineering
14 133 (14.22%) Data Modelling
15 129 (13.80%) ETL
15 129 (13.80%) Test Automation
16 116 (12.41%) Event-Driven Architecture
17 110 (11.76%) Open Source
18 109 (11.66%) Full-Stack Development
19 100 (10.70%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 459 (49.09%) Java
2 324 (34.65%) Python
3 271 (28.98%) SQL
4 149 (15.94%) Go
5 97 (10.37%) JavaScript
6 80 (8.56%) TypeScript
7 65 (6.95%) C#
8 38 (4.06%) Bash
9 29 (3.10%) Shell Script
10 28 (2.99%) C++
11 27 (2.89%) Scala
12 19 (2.03%) Rust
13 15 (1.60%) PowerShell
14 10 (1.07%) Bicep
14 10 (1.07%) PL/SQL
15 8 (0.86%) Perl
16 7 (0.75%) Korn
17 5 (0.53%) Groovy
17 5 (0.53%) RPG
17 5 (0.53%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 210 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 180 (19.25%) SC Cleared
3 48 (5.13%) Degree
4 34 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (2.78%) Azure Certification
6 23 (2.46%) AWS Certification
7 21 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 19 (2.03%) DV Cleared
9 14 (1.50%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.86%) OCP
10 8 (0.86%) Oracle Certification
11 7 (0.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
12 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
13 2 (0.21%) SnowPro
14 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.11%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 104 (11.12%) Data Quality
2 47 (5.03%) QA
3 44 (4.71%) GDPR
4 18 (1.93%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.18%) NCSC
6 9 (0.96%) ISO 20022
6 9 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 8 (0.86%) NIST
8 7 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.53%) SEPA
9 5 (0.53%) SLA
10 3 (0.32%) Def Stans
10 3 (0.32%) HL7
10 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.21%) MiFID
11 2 (0.21%) PSD2
11 2 (0.21%) WCAG
12 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
System Software
1 321 (34.33%) Docker
2 9 (0.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (0.43%) etcd
4 2 (0.21%) HDFS
4 2 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 374 (40.00%) Kubernetes
2 214 (22.89%) Terraform
3 112 (11.98%) Grafana
4 108 (11.55%) Prometheus
5 59 (6.31%) Ansible
6 26 (2.78%) Argo
7 14 (1.50%) Progress Chef
8 10 (1.07%) Istio
9 9 (0.96%) Kiali
10 8 (0.86%) linkerd
11 7 (0.75%) Fluentd
12 6 (0.64%) Packer
12 6 (0.64%) Rancher
13 5 (0.53%) Puppet
14 4 (0.43%) Kibana
14 4 (0.43%) logstash
14 4 (0.43%) Podman
15 3 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
16 2 (0.21%) rkt
16 2 (0.21%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 81 (8.66%) Databricks
2 74 (7.91%) Oracle
3 66 (7.06%) Splunk
4 42 (4.49%) Google
5 37 (3.96%) Microsoft
6 28 (2.99%) Confluent
7 25 (2.67%) IBM
7 25 (2.67%) VMware
8 22 (2.35%) Informatica
9 16 (1.71%) Sybase
10 15 (1.60%) Dynatrace
11 12 (1.28%) Red Hat
11 12 (1.28%) ServiceNow
12 10 (1.07%) Cloudera
13 9 (0.96%) Talend
14 8 (0.86%) AppDynamics
14 8 (0.86%) Atlassian
15 7 (0.75%) Bloomberg
15 7 (0.75%) PagerDuty
15 7 (0.75%) SAP