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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 108 171
Rank change year-on-year -12 +63 -45
Contract jobs citing Kafka 930 754 628
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.18% 2.47% 1.41%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.99% 10.89% 6.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 458 484
10th Percentile £361 £373 £400
25th Percentile £416 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% +4.55% -15.38%
75th Percentile £675 £738 £675
90th Percentile £800 £838 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £462 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -1.81% -6.00% -10.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 3
10th Percentile £42.40 £52.23 £25.35
25th Percentile £64.00 £71.69 £30.79
Median hourly rate £69.72 £88.75 £42.19
Median % change year-on-year -21.44% +110.36% -43.75%
75th Percentile £81.75 £93.75 £54.77
90th Percentile £94.50 - £60.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.72 £85.00 £43.37
% change year-on-year -21.51% +96.01% -40.60%

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 9,313 6,923 9,078
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.83% 22.71% 20.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,221 4,544 6,332
10th Percentile £358 £363 £338
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.89%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 233 87 222
10th Percentile £35.00 £26.25 £20.77
25th Percentile £52.50 £38.88 £40.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £48.72
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +28.28% -25.05%
75th Percentile £72.00 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £81.45 £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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -15 814 £550 -8.33% 180
London -18 525 £603 -7.31% 104
Work from Home +8 346 £601 -1.84% 95
UK excluding London -43 258 £462 -1.81% 109
North of England -35 114 £475 -9.52% 33
South East -13 62 £433 -15.61% 40
North West -18 58 £465 -2.11% 18
Yorkshire -31 47 £470 -35.17% 11
Midlands -36 43 £500 +40.45% 10
South West -11 27 £550 -13.73% 16
West Midlands -34 26 £550 -8.33% 7
Scotland -3 25 £475 +18.82% 7
East Midlands -19 17 £402 +12.92% 3
North East -4 16 £506 -6.62% 4
East of England -37 5 £500 +57.23% 2
Wales -3 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
1 107 (11.51%) Apache Spark
2 57 (6.13%) Apache
3 42 (4.52%) Apache Airflow
4 33 (3.55%) Confluence
5 6 (0.65%) Ethereum
5 6 (0.65%) Hyperledger
5 6 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.54%) Camunda
6 5 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.54%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.32%) CMS
7 3 (0.32%) MQSeries
7 3 (0.32%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.22%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.22%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.22%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.11%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.11%) JBoss
9 1 (0.11%) Luigi
Applications
1 5 (0.54%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.22%) 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 (0.22%) Actimize
3 2 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.22%) 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
1 574 (61.72%) AWS
2 243 (26.13%) Azure
3 166 (17.85%) GitHub
4 159 (17.10%) GCP
5 126 (13.55%) Serverless
6 117 (12.58%) GitHub Actions
7 114 (12.26%) Amazon S3
8 91 (9.78%) AWS Lambda
9 78 (8.39%) Amazon EKS
10 72 (7.74%) AWS CloudFormation
11 58 (6.24%) Amazon ECS
12 52 (5.59%) OpenShift
13 48 (5.16%) Amazon SQS
14 47 (5.05%) Power Platform
15 41 (4.41%) Amazon Kinesis
16 40 (4.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 37 (3.98%) Amazon EC2
17 37 (3.98%) Azure Data Factory
17 37 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
18 31 (3.33%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.61%) Firewall
2 13 (1.40%) HTTP
3 10 (1.08%) DNS
3 10 (1.08%) SSL
4 6 (0.65%) FTP
4 6 (0.65%) Kerberos
4 6 (0.65%) SMS
4 6 (0.65%) SSH
5 3 (0.32%) TCP/IP
5 3 (0.32%) VPN
6 2 (0.22%) MQTT
6 2 (0.22%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.11%) 4G
7 1 (0.11%) 5G
7 1 (0.11%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.11%) Internet
7 1 (0.11%) NaaS
7 1 (0.11%) NAS
7 1 (0.11%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.11%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (20.32%) PostgreSQL
2 154 (16.56%) MongoDB
3 139 (14.95%) NoSQL
4 80 (8.60%) Apache Cassandra
5 70 (7.53%) Relational Database
6 57 (6.13%) Data Warehouse
7 53 (5.70%) Data Lake
8 51 (5.48%) Elasticsearch
9 45 (4.84%) Big Data
9 45 (4.84%) DynamoDB
9 45 (4.84%) SQL Server
10 44 (4.73%) Amazon RDS
11 41 (4.41%) Redis
12 35 (3.76%) Amazon Athena
12 35 (3.76%) Power BI
13 34 (3.66%) Hadoop
14 32 (3.44%) Amazon Redshift
14 32 (3.44%) Flink
14 32 (3.44%) MySQL
15 30 (3.23%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 161 (17.31%) Jenkins
2 138 (14.84%) GitLab
3 105 (11.29%) Git
4 84 (9.03%) JUnit
5 60 (6.45%) JIRA
6 34 (3.66%) Mockito
7 31 (3.33%) Cucumber
8 25 (2.69%) JMeter
9 24 (2.58%) Sonatype Nexus
10 20 (2.15%) Gradle
11 18 (1.94%) Gatling
12 15 (1.61%) Maven
13 11 (1.18%) Artifactory
13 11 (1.18%) Selenium
14 10 (1.08%) CircleCI
14 10 (1.08%) REST Assured
15 9 (0.97%) Jaeger
16 8 (0.86%) Postman
17 6 (0.65%) Serenity BDD
17 6 (0.65%) SonarQube
General
1 274 (29.46%) Finance
2 205 (22.04%) Social Skills
3 135 (14.52%) Banking
4 77 (8.28%) Analytical Skills
5 63 (6.77%) Public Sector
6 59 (6.34%) Front Office
7 43 (4.62%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
9 18 (1.94%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.08%) Marketing
11 7 (0.75%) Retail
11 7 (0.75%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.54%) Law
13 4 (0.43%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.43%) Military
14 3 (0.32%) Billing
14 3 (0.32%) Corporate Banking
14 3 (0.32%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 356 (38.28%) Developer
2 258 (27.74%) Senior
3 189 (20.32%) Java Developer
4 132 (14.19%) Data Engineer
5 125 (13.44%) Lead
5 125 (13.44%) Senior Developer
6 106 (11.40%) Software Engineer
7 86 (9.25%) Architect
8 72 (7.74%) Senior Java Developer
9 50 (5.38%) Java Engineer
10 48 (5.16%) Full-Stack Developer
11 45 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
12 43 (4.62%) AWS Architect
13 41 (4.41%) Kafka Developer
14 38 (4.09%) AWS Engineer
15 37 (3.98%) AWS Developer
16 35 (3.76%) Senior Data Engineer
17 34 (3.66%) Kafka Engineer
18 33 (3.55%) Developer/Software Engineer
19 32 (3.44%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (23.87%) Spring
2 191 (20.54%) Spring Boot
3 114 (12.26%) REST
4 107 (11.51%) Node.js
5 106 (11.40%) React
6 95 (10.22%) gRPC
7 89 (9.57%) RESTful
8 75 (8.06%) RabbitMQ
9 50 (5.38%) AngularJS
10 46 (4.95%) GraphQL
11 43 (4.62%) Middleware
12 37 (3.98%) JSON
13 34 (3.66%) OpenTelemetry
14 33 (3.55%) Redux
15 32 (3.44%) PySpark
16 31 (3.33%) Hibernate
17 29 (3.12%) Keycloak
17 29 (3.12%) OAuth
18 27 (2.90%) OAuth2
19 25 (2.69%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 143 (15.38%) Distributed Systems
2 125 (13.44%) Cloud Native
3 49 (5.27%) Fixed Income
4 42 (4.52%) Management Information System
5 35 (3.76%) Product Ownership
6 26 (2.80%) Data Structures
7 23 (2.47%) Derivative
8 22 (2.37%) Equities
8 22 (2.37%) Hybrid Cloud
9 16 (1.72%) Market Risk
10 15 (1.61%) Legacy Applications
11 13 (1.40%) Algorithms
11 13 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.40%) Replication
12 12 (1.29%) Onboarding
13 10 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
14 9 (0.97%) Distributed Computing
15 8 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
15 8 (0.86%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 141 (15.16%) Linux
2 67 (7.20%) Unix
3 27 (2.90%) Windows
4 9 (0.97%) Mac OS X
5 5 (0.54%) AIX
6 4 (0.43%) CentOS
6 4 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.32%) zOS
8 2 (0.22%) VMS
9 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.11%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 398 (42.80%) CI/CD
2 351 (37.74%) Microservices
3 324 (34.84%) Agile
4 255 (27.42%) DevOps
5 238 (25.59%) Software Engineering
6 192 (20.65%) Event-Driven
7 190 (20.43%) Problem-Solving
8 181 (19.46%) Containerisation
9 176 (18.92%) Observability
10 154 (16.56%) Infrastructure as Code
11 151 (16.24%) Analytics
12 138 (14.84%) Data Pipeline
13 134 (14.41%) Data Engineering
14 127 (13.66%) Test Automation
15 125 (13.44%) ETL
16 124 (13.33%) Data Modelling
17 115 (12.37%) Event-Driven Architecture
18 110 (11.83%) Full-Stack Development
19 108 (11.61%) Open Source
20 100 (10.75%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 466 (50.11%) Java
2 322 (34.62%) Python
3 269 (28.92%) SQL
4 147 (15.81%) Go
5 97 (10.43%) JavaScript
6 79 (8.49%) TypeScript
7 67 (7.20%) C#
8 36 (3.87%) Bash
9 33 (3.55%) Shell Script
10 32 (3.44%) C++
11 27 (2.90%) Scala
12 19 (2.04%) Rust
13 13 (1.40%) PowerShell
14 11 (1.18%) PL/SQL
15 8 (0.86%) Bicep
16 7 (0.75%) Korn
16 7 (0.75%) Perl
17 5 (0.54%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.54%) RPG
17 5 (0.54%) RPG IV
Qualifications
1 203 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 175 (18.82%) SC Cleared
3 48 (5.16%) Degree
4 33 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (3.01%) Azure Certification
6 26 (2.80%) AWS Certification
7 21 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 19 (2.04%) DV Cleared
9 14 (1.51%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (0.86%) OCP
10 8 (0.86%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
11 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.22%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.11%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.11%) PMP
13 1 (0.11%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (10.43%) Data Quality
2 47 (5.05%) QA
3 40 (4.30%) GDPR
4 16 (1.72%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.18%) NCSC
6 9 (0.97%) ISO 20022
7 8 (0.86%) NIST
8 7 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.54%) SEPA
9 5 (0.54%) SLA
10 3 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.32%) Def Stans
10 3 (0.32%) HL7
10 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.22%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.22%) MiFID
11 2 (0.22%) PSD2
11 2 (0.22%) WCAG
12 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
System Software
1 321 (34.52%) Docker
2 8 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.22%) HDFS
3 2 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.11%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 370 (39.78%) Kubernetes
2 212 (22.80%) Terraform
3 108 (11.61%) Grafana
4 101 (10.86%) Prometheus
5 57 (6.13%) Ansible
6 25 (2.69%) Argo
7 14 (1.51%) Progress Chef
8 10 (1.08%) Istio
9 9 (0.97%) Kiali
10 8 (0.86%) linkerd
11 6 (0.65%) Packer
12 5 (0.54%) logstash
12 5 (0.54%) Puppet
13 4 (0.43%) Kibana
13 4 (0.43%) Rancher
14 3 (0.32%) Fluentd
14 3 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
14 3 (0.32%) Podman
15 2 (0.22%) rkt
15 2 (0.22%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 76 (8.17%) Databricks
1 76 (8.17%) Oracle
2 61 (6.56%) Splunk
3 39 (4.19%) Google
4 35 (3.76%) Microsoft
5 30 (3.23%) Confluent
6 26 (2.80%) IBM
7 24 (2.58%) VMware
8 19 (2.04%) Informatica
9 16 (1.72%) Sybase
10 15 (1.61%) Dynatrace
11 11 (1.18%) Red Hat
11 11 (1.18%) ServiceNow
12 10 (1.08%) Cloudera
13 9 (0.97%) Talend
14 8 (0.86%) Atlassian
15 7 (0.75%) AppDynamics
15 7 (0.75%) Bloomberg
15 7 (0.75%) PagerDuty
16 6 (0.65%) Palantir