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 29 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 113 118 169
Rank change year-on-year +5 +51 -60
Contract jobs citing Kafka 841 746 722
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.46% 2.03% 1.54%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 10.66% 9.22% 6.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 466 549
10th Percentile £363 £370 £463
25th Percentile £450 £486 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £650
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -7.69% +4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £722 £798
90th Percentile £750 £810 £844
UK excluding London median daily rate £462 £492 £600
% change year-on-year -6.10% -18.08% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 11
10th Percentile £40.58 £26.04 £65.00
25th Percentile £48.56 £27.00 £75.63
Median hourly rate £59.25 £28.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.61% -64.10% +6.48%
75th Percentile £75.31 £38.75 £88.28
90th Percentile £96.13 £68.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £28.00 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -64.10% +6.85%

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 7,889 8,088 10,537
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 23.08% 21.98% 22.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,222 5,124 7,557
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.34% -0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £669
90th Percentile £725 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 131 190
10th Percentile £30.08 £25.09 £36.19
25th Percentile £41.25 £42.38 £46.18
Median hourly rate £54.00 £65.00 £55.53
Median % change year-on-year -16.92% +17.05% -14.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £65.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -7.69% +18.18% -15.38%

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 29 October 2025.

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 29 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Kafka in the UK

Kafka
Top 15 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 29 October 2025. 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 +8 730 £550 -8.68% 441
London +2 473 £600 -7.69% 280
Work from Home +39 291 £575 +7.38% 261
UK excluding London +6 266 £462 -6.10% 292
North of England -7 95 £473 -12.79% 43
Scotland +30 64 £465 +9.41% 7
South East +10 55 £435 -8.42% 205
North West -2 49 £443 -11.54% 26
Midlands +4 45 £500 +17.65% 14
Yorkshire -22 41 £575 +0.44% 10
West Midlands -5 29 £500 +17.65% 8
East Midlands -2 15 £420 +17.98% 6
South West +4 13 £550 -10.57% 11
North East 0 7 £575 +35.29% 7
East of England -22 4 £513 +62.70% 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 68 (8.09%) Apache Spark
2 47 (5.59%) Apache
3 44 (5.23%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (4.04%) Confluence
5 13 (1.55%) Mule
6 10 (1.19%) Anypoint
7 8 (0.95%) Camunda
8 7 (0.83%) CMS
8 7 (0.83%) JBoss
9 6 (0.71%) WebSphere
10 5 (0.59%) MQSeries
11 4 (0.48%) Luigi
11 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.36%) Alfresco
12 3 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
13 2 (0.24%) Apache Solr
13 2 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.24%) SAS
13 2 (0.24%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.24%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (0.24%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.24%) MS Visio
1 2 (0.24%) Sketch
2 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.71%) SAP PM
2 3 (0.36%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.24%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.12%) Endur
4 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.12%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 405 (48.16%) AWS
2 195 (23.19%) Azure
3 117 (13.91%) GCP
4 93 (11.06%) GitHub
4 93 (11.06%) Serverless
5 69 (8.20%) AWS Lambda
6 67 (7.97%) Amazon S3
7 57 (6.78%) GitHub Actions
8 46 (5.47%) OpenShift
9 45 (5.35%) Azure DevOps
10 36 (4.28%) AWS CloudFormation
11 34 (4.04%) Amazon SQS
12 31 (3.69%) Amazon ECS
13 30 (3.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 30 (3.57%) Amazon Kinesis
13 30 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
14 28 (3.33%) Snowflake
15 27 (3.21%) Amazon EKS
16 24 (2.85%) Amazon EC2
17 21 (2.50%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.95%) DNS
2 7 (0.83%) AMQP
2 7 (0.83%) DSL
2 7 (0.83%) SSL
3 6 (0.71%) Firewall
3 6 (0.71%) HTTP
4 5 (0.59%) Kerberos
5 4 (0.48%) MQTT
6 2 (0.24%) SMS
6 2 (0.24%) SSH
6 2 (0.24%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.12%) FTP
7 1 (0.12%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.12%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (21.64%) MongoDB
2 176 (20.93%) PostgreSQL
3 126 (14.98%) NoSQL
4 81 (9.63%) Relational Database
5 71 (8.44%) Apache Cassandra
6 61 (7.25%) Big Data
7 50 (5.95%) Redis
8 46 (5.47%) DB2
9 39 (4.64%) Data Warehouse
10 38 (4.52%) SQL Server
11 37 (4.40%) DynamoDB
12 36 (4.28%) Hadoop
13 35 (4.16%) Amazon RDS
14 31 (3.69%) Elasticsearch
15 25 (2.97%) Data Lake
16 23 (2.73%) BigQuery
17 22 (2.62%) MySQL
18 20 (2.38%) Amazon Redshift
18 20 (2.38%) Metadata
18 20 (2.38%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 168 (19.98%) Jenkins
2 111 (13.20%) JUnit
3 105 (12.49%) Git
4 96 (11.41%) GitLab
5 61 (7.25%) JIRA
6 52 (6.18%) Mockito
7 30 (3.57%) Gradle
8 25 (2.97%) Cucumber
9 24 (2.85%) Maven
10 23 (2.73%) SonarQube
11 20 (2.38%) JMeter
11 20 (2.38%) Liquibase
12 17 (2.02%) Artifactory
12 17 (2.02%) Sonatype Nexus
13 15 (1.78%) Subversion
14 11 (1.31%) Bitbucket
14 11 (1.31%) Gatling
15 10 (1.19%) SoapUI
16 9 (1.07%) ER Studio
17 8 (0.95%) TeamCity
General
1 233 (27.71%) Social Skills
2 217 (25.80%) Finance
3 141 (16.77%) Banking
4 105 (12.49%) Analytical Skills
5 79 (9.39%) Investment Banking
6 66 (7.85%) Public Sector
7 49 (5.83%) Front Office
8 9 (1.07%) Financial Institution
8 9 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (0.95%) Retail
10 7 (0.83%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (0.83%) Military
11 5 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (0.48%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.48%) Retail Banking
12 4 (0.48%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.36%) Back Office
13 3 (0.36%) Law
13 3 (0.36%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 342 (40.67%) Developer
2 224 (26.63%) Java Developer
3 220 (26.16%) Senior
4 116 (13.79%) Senior Developer
5 87 (10.34%) Architect
6 86 (10.23%) Senior Java Developer
7 82 (9.75%) Data Engineer
8 79 (9.39%) Lead
9 77 (9.16%) Software Engineer
10 56 (6.66%) DevOps Engineer
11 38 (4.52%) AWS Developer
12 36 (4.28%) Kafka Developer
12 36 (4.28%) Platform Engineer
13 35 (4.16%) SQL Developer
14 34 (4.04%) Investment Banking Java Developer
14 34 (4.04%) Python Engineer
15 31 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
16 29 (3.45%) Java Engineer
16 29 (3.45%) Lead Developer
17 28 (3.33%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 202 (24.02%) Spring
2 134 (15.93%) Spring Boot
3 106 (12.60%) React
4 101 (12.01%) REST
5 94 (11.18%) gRPC
6 85 (10.11%) RabbitMQ
7 67 (7.97%) RESTful
8 52 (6.18%) ActiveMQ
9 51 (6.06%) JMS
10 44 (5.23%) GraphQL
11 39 (4.64%) .NET
11 39 (4.64%) AngularJS
12 37 (4.40%) Node.js
13 34 (4.04%) Hibernate
14 30 (3.57%) Apache NiFi
14 30 (3.57%) SOAP
15 29 (3.45%) OAuth
16 27 (3.21%) JSON
16 27 (3.21%) Keycloak
16 27 (3.21%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 109 (12.96%) Distributed Systems
2 82 (9.75%) Cloud Native
3 46 (5.47%) Data Structures
4 44 (5.23%) Equities
5 25 (2.97%) Management Information System
6 24 (2.85%) Derivative
7 23 (2.73%) Replication
8 22 (2.62%) Market Risk
8 22 (2.62%) Product Ownership
9 19 (2.26%) Fixed Income
10 14 (1.66%) IoT
11 13 (1.55%) PKI
12 12 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (1.31%) Algorithms
13 11 (1.31%) Distributed Computing
13 11 (1.31%) Onboarding
13 11 (1.31%) Public Cloud
14 9 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
14 9 (1.07%) Legacy Applications
14 9 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 151 (17.95%) Linux
2 75 (8.92%) Unix
3 14 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 14 (1.66%) Windows
4 12 (1.43%) Mac OS X
5 7 (0.83%) CentOS
6 1 (0.12%) AIX
6 1 (0.12%) Android
6 1 (0.12%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.12%) Debian
6 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.12%) VMS
6 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 355 (42.21%) Microservices
2 354 (42.09%) Agile
3 309 (36.74%) CI/CD
4 235 (27.94%) Software Engineering
5 227 (26.99%) DevOps
6 193 (22.95%) Problem-Solving
7 142 (16.88%) TDD
8 138 (16.41%) Containerisation
9 129 (15.34%) Open Source
10 120 (14.27%) Event-Driven
11 107 (12.72%) Observability
12 105 (12.49%) SDLC
13 101 (12.01%) Infrastructure as Code
13 101 (12.01%) Test Automation
14 98 (11.65%) Scrum
15 95 (11.30%) Data Pipeline
16 84 (9.99%) Analytics
17 80 (9.51%) Mentoring
18 78 (9.27%) ETL
19 77 (9.16%) Multithreading
Programming Languages
1 426 (50.65%) Java
2 301 (35.79%) Python
3 258 (30.68%) SQL
4 125 (14.86%) Go
5 73 (8.68%) Shell Script
6 57 (6.78%) C#
7 54 (6.42%) JavaScript
8 49 (5.83%) C++
9 46 (5.47%) Bash
10 40 (4.76%) TypeScript
11 36 (4.28%) Scala
12 16 (1.90%) Perl
13 10 (1.19%) Groovy
14 9 (1.07%) DataWeave
14 9 (1.07%) PL/SQL
15 8 (0.95%) T-SQL
16 6 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
17 5 (0.59%) R
17 5 (0.59%) Rust
18 4 (0.48%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 150 (17.84%) Security Cleared
2 132 (15.70%) SC Cleared
3 63 (7.49%) Degree
4 38 (4.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (2.85%) DV Cleared
6 19 (2.26%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (1.78%) Master's Degree
9 14 (1.66%) Azure Certification
10 9 (1.07%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 9 (1.07%) Numerate Degree
11 5 (0.59%) OCP
11 5 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
12 2 (0.24%) CBAP
12 2 (0.24%) CSPO
12 2 (0.24%) IBM Certification
13 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified Developer
13 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.12%) PMP
13 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (5.83%) Data Quality
2 35 (4.16%) QA
3 21 (2.50%) GDPR
4 7 (0.83%) NCSC
5 6 (0.71%) HIPAA
5 6 (0.71%) ISO 20022
5 6 (0.71%) WCAG
6 5 (0.59%) Accessibility
7 4 (0.48%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.36%) Def Stans
8 3 (0.36%) EMIR
8 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.36%) MiFID
8 3 (0.36%) SEPA
8 3 (0.36%) SLA
9 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.24%) HL7
9 2 (0.24%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.24%) Section 508
10 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 270 (32.10%) Docker
2 4 (0.48%) HDFS
2 4 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.24%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 296 (35.20%) Kubernetes
2 150 (17.84%) Terraform
3 73 (8.68%) Grafana
4 70 (8.32%) Prometheus
5 65 (7.73%) Ansible
6 15 (1.78%) Packer
7 12 (1.43%) Progress Chef
8 8 (0.95%) Argo
8 8 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
9 7 (0.83%) logstash
10 6 (0.71%) Kibana
11 5 (0.59%) Kustomize
12 4 (0.48%) Hadoop YARN
13 3 (0.36%) Control-M
13 3 (0.36%) Oozie
13 3 (0.36%) Rancher
14 2 (0.24%) CloudHub
14 2 (0.24%) Fluentd
14 2 (0.24%) rkt
Vendors
1 78 (9.27%) Oracle
2 47 (5.59%) Splunk
3 40 (4.76%) Sybase
4 36 (4.28%) Databricks
4 36 (4.28%) Microsoft
5 34 (4.04%) Google
6 27 (3.21%) Dynatrace
6 27 (3.21%) IBM
7 22 (2.62%) Confluent
8 19 (2.26%) CA Agile Central
9 18 (2.14%) MuleSoft
10 17 (2.02%) Cloudera
10 17 (2.02%) SAP
11 15 (1.78%) Palantir
11 15 (1.78%) Red Hat
12 14 (1.66%) Foundry
13 12 (1.43%) Informatica
13 12 (1.43%) ServiceNow
13 12 (1.43%) TIBCO
13 12 (1.43%) VMware