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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 107 146
Rank change year-on-year -31 +39 -4
Contract jobs citing Kafka 952 743 708
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.50% 1.62%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.72% 10.98% 7.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 560 481 516
10th Percentile £381 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% - -15.38%
75th Percentile £650 £696 £683
90th Percentile £800 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £475 £493
% change year-on-year -1.58% -3.65% -17.83%
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 £95.00 £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 9,799 6,764 9,195
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.47% 22.79% 21.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,435 4,614 6,310
10th Percentile £363 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £535
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -3.74% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £767 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 126 272
10th Percentile £30.50 £29.16 £22.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £39.84 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £51.75
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% +8.70% -20.38%
75th Percentile £74.26 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.18 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £55.63
% change year-on-year +4.00% +12.36% -14.42%

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 17 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 17 June 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 17 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 -32 821 £550 - 387
London -19 515 £588 -6.00% 147
UK excluding London -42 318 £468 -1.58% 367
Work from Home -43 275 £588 +2.17% 360
North of England -22 147 £455 -9.00% 78
Yorkshire -14 72 £461 -16.14% 25
North West -34 61 £475 -5.00% 37
South East -37 51 £494 +9.72% 73
Scotland -22 46 £450 -4.76% 48
Midlands -51 39 £491 +8.09% 34
South West -14 24 £500 -9.09% 30
North East -17 21 £425 -8.05% 16
West Midlands -51 21 £500 - 15
East Midlands -16 18 £407 +14.40% 19
East of England -20 17 £550 +10.00% 43
Northern Ireland -2 2 - - 36
Wales -11 1 £250 - 30

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
1 127 (13.34%) Apache Spark
2 65 (6.83%) Apache
3 51 (5.36%) Apache Airflow
4 13 (1.37%) Confluence
5 7 (0.74%) Camunda
6 6 (0.63%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.63%) Hyperledger
7 5 (0.53%) Apache Pulsar
7 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 7 (0.74%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.21%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Maya
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.32%) Bloomberg AIM
2 3 (0.32%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.21%) Endur
3 2 (0.21%) Shopify
3 2 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 554 (58.19%) AWS
2 279 (29.31%) Azure
3 171 (17.96%) GCP
4 137 (14.39%) GitHub
5 123 (12.92%) Serverless
6 103 (10.82%) GitHub Actions
7 95 (9.98%) Amazon S3
8 92 (9.66%) AWS Lambda
9 70 (7.35%) OpenShift
10 64 (6.72%) Amazon EKS
11 62 (6.51%) Azure DevOps
12 59 (6.20%) Power Platform
13 51 (5.36%) Snowflake
14 46 (4.83%) Amazon ECS
15 45 (4.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 43 (4.52%) AWS CloudFormation
17 42 (4.41%) dbt
18 40 (4.20%) Amazon SQS
19 33 (3.47%) Amazon Kinesis
20 32 (3.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.58%) Firewall
1 15 (1.58%) HTTP
2 10 (1.05%) Network Security
3 9 (0.95%) DNS
4 7 (0.74%) MQTT
5 5 (0.53%) NAS
5 5 (0.53%) SAN
5 5 (0.53%) SMS
5 5 (0.53%) SSL
6 3 (0.32%) Internet
6 3 (0.32%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.21%) NaaS
7 2 (0.21%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (0.21%) WAN
8 1 (0.11%) 4G
8 1 (0.11%) 5G
8 1 (0.11%) FIX Connectivity
8 1 (0.11%) MIMO
8 1 (0.11%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (19.54%) PostgreSQL
2 151 (15.86%) MongoDB
3 127 (13.34%) NoSQL
4 91 (9.56%) Relational Database
5 61 (6.41%) Big Data
6 55 (5.78%) Data Warehouse
7 53 (5.57%) Data Lake
7 53 (5.57%) SQL Server
8 50 (5.25%) Redis
9 48 (5.04%) Power BI
10 45 (4.73%) Elasticsearch
11 42 (4.41%) Apache Cassandra
12 38 (3.99%) MySQL
13 36 (3.78%) DynamoDB
13 36 (3.78%) Flink
14 32 (3.36%) Hadoop
15 31 (3.26%) Amazon Athena
16 29 (3.05%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (3.05%) BigQuery
17 27 (2.84%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 155 (16.28%) Jenkins
2 128 (13.45%) Git
3 127 (13.34%) GitLab
4 69 (7.25%) JUnit
5 47 (4.94%) JIRA
6 46 (4.83%) Mockito
7 35 (3.68%) Gradle
8 31 (3.26%) Selenium
9 23 (2.42%) Cucumber
9 23 (2.42%) REST Assured
10 20 (2.10%) Gatling
11 17 (1.79%) Liquibase
12 15 (1.58%) Maven
12 15 (1.58%) Postman
12 15 (1.58%) Serenity BDD
13 13 (1.37%) SonarQube
14 7 (0.74%) Jaeger
15 6 (0.63%) Cypress.io
15 6 (0.63%) JMeter
15 6 (0.63%) Snyk
General
1 258 (27.10%) Finance
2 177 (18.59%) Social Skills
3 127 (13.34%) Banking
4 85 (8.93%) Public Sector
5 80 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
6 44 (4.62%) Front Office
7 35 (3.68%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (2.31%) Financial Institution
10 20 (2.10%) Retail
11 15 (1.58%) Law
12 13 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (1.16%) Marketing
14 10 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.95%) Publishing
16 8 (0.84%) Corporate Banking
16 8 (0.84%) Military
17 7 (0.74%) Automotive
17 7 (0.74%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 308 (32.35%) Developer
2 198 (20.80%) Senior
3 159 (16.70%) Java Developer
4 154 (16.18%) Data Engineer
5 116 (12.18%) Lead
6 113 (11.87%) Architect
7 99 (10.40%) Software Engineer
8 83 (8.72%) Senior Developer
9 81 (8.51%) Java Engineer
10 54 (5.67%) AWS Architect
11 49 (5.15%) Senior Java Developer
12 43 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
13 41 (4.31%) Solutions Architect
14 40 (4.20%) Full-Stack Developer
15 36 (3.78%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 33 (3.47%) Java Software Engineer
16 33 (3.47%) Lead Developer
16 33 (3.47%) Principal Engineer
17 31 (3.26%) Senior Java Engineer
18 30 (3.15%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (25.42%) Spring
2 231 (24.26%) Spring Boot
3 142 (14.92%) REST
4 131 (13.76%) RESTful
5 129 (13.55%) React
6 99 (10.40%) RabbitMQ
7 93 (9.77%) Node.js
8 63 (6.62%) GraphQL
9 59 (6.20%) OpenTelemetry
10 51 (5.36%) gRPC
11 50 (5.25%) JSON
11 50 (5.25%) Redux
12 43 (4.52%) Middleware
13 41 (4.31%) Apache Avro
13 41 (4.31%) OAuth
14 40 (4.20%) AngularJS
15 39 (4.10%) Swagger
16 38 (3.99%) OpenAPI
17 37 (3.89%) PySpark
18 36 (3.78%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 187 (19.64%) Distributed Systems
2 173 (18.17%) Cloud Native
3 39 (4.10%) Fixed Income
4 38 (3.99%) Management Information System
4 38 (3.99%) Product Ownership
5 30 (3.15%) Data Structures
6 24 (2.52%) Onboarding
7 23 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
8 20 (2.10%) Algorithms
9 18 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
10 15 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.47%) Clustering
11 14 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.47%) Derivative
11 14 (1.47%) Equities
12 13 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 13 (1.37%) Public Cloud
13 11 (1.16%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 10 (1.05%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 86 (9.03%) Linux
2 52 (5.46%) Unix
3 28 (2.94%) Windows
4 8 (0.84%) Mac OS X
5 7 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.32%) VMS
8 2 (0.21%) Debian
8 2 (0.21%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.21%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.21%) zOS
9 1 (0.11%) Android
9 1 (0.11%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 433 (45.48%) CI/CD
2 359 (37.71%) Microservices
3 309 (32.46%) Agile
4 291 (30.57%) DevOps
5 286 (30.04%) Event-Driven
6 225 (23.63%) Observability
7 203 (21.32%) Containerisation
8 192 (20.17%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 190 (19.96%) Software Engineering
10 170 (17.86%) Data Pipeline
11 161 (16.91%) Infrastructure as Code
12 160 (16.81%) Data Modelling
13 152 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
14 150 (15.76%) Test Automation
15 147 (15.44%) Analytics
16 140 (14.71%) Data Engineering
17 134 (14.08%) ETL
18 114 (11.97%) AI
19 106 (11.13%) TDD
20 105 (11.03%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 445 (46.74%) Java
2 324 (34.03%) Python
3 298 (31.30%) SQL
4 120 (12.61%) TypeScript
5 88 (9.24%) Go
6 87 (9.14%) JavaScript
7 52 (5.46%) C#
8 41 (4.31%) Bash
9 25 (2.63%) Scala
10 19 (2.00%) Rust
11 18 (1.89%) PowerShell
12 17 (1.79%) PL/SQL
13 13 (1.37%) Bicep
13 13 (1.37%) C++
13 13 (1.37%) Shell Script
14 12 (1.26%) Kotlin
15 10 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
16 8 (0.84%) Groovy
17 7 (0.74%) PHP
18 6 (0.63%) Perl
Qualifications
1 197 (20.69%) Security Cleared
2 153 (16.07%) SC Cleared
3 50 (5.25%) Degree
4 28 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.89%) DV Cleared
6 17 (1.79%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.26%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.95%) Azure Certification
10 8 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 7 (0.74%) SnowPro
12 3 (0.32%) DBS Check
12 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
13 2 (0.21%) Postgraduate
13 2 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
14 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 1 (0.11%) CISSP
14 1 (0.11%) PhD
14 1 (0.11%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (10.50%) Data Quality
2 54 (5.67%) QA
3 38 (3.99%) GDPR
4 35 (3.68%) Accessibility
5 19 (2.00%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.95%) NIST
8 8 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.74%) SEPA
10 4 (0.42%) WCAG
11 3 (0.32%) ISO 8583
11 3 (0.32%) NCSC
11 3 (0.32%) PSD2
12 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.21%) EMIR
12 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
12 2 (0.21%) MiFID
12 2 (0.21%) SLA
13 1 (0.11%) Basel III
13 1 (0.11%) HL7
System Software
1 322 (33.82%) Docker
2 6 (0.63%) etcd
3 4 (0.42%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 2 (0.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Flume
5 1 (0.11%) HDFS
5 1 (0.11%) OpenSSH
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 378 (39.71%) Kubernetes
2 198 (20.80%) Terraform
3 125 (13.13%) Prometheus
4 123 (12.92%) Grafana
5 57 (5.99%) Ansible
6 20 (2.10%) Argo
7 10 (1.05%) Istio
7 10 (1.05%) Kibana
8 9 (0.95%) Control-M
8 9 (0.95%) Puppet
9 8 (0.84%) Podman
10 7 (0.74%) Fluentd
11 6 (0.63%) Kiali
11 6 (0.63%) Kustomize
12 5 (0.53%) logstash
12 5 (0.53%) Rancher
13 3 (0.32%) linkerd
13 3 (0.32%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.21%) Amdocs OSS
14 2 (0.21%) CA Wily
Vendors
1 84 (8.82%) Databricks
2 68 (7.14%) Oracle
3 67 (7.04%) Splunk
4 40 (4.20%) Microsoft
5 37 (3.89%) Google
6 28 (2.94%) Confluent
7 23 (2.42%) Informatica
8 18 (1.89%) IBM
9 17 (1.79%) Dynatrace
10 12 (1.26%) Salesforce
11 11 (1.16%) Solace
12 10 (1.05%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.95%) Red Hat
13 9 (0.95%) ServiceNow
13 9 (0.95%) Sybase
13 9 (0.95%) Talend
14 8 (0.84%) OpenAI
15 7 (0.74%) AppDynamics
16 6 (0.63%) SAP
16 6 (0.63%) Tenable