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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 108 133
Rank change year-on-year -33 +25 +35
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,090 826 701
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.00% 2.53% 1.85%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.22% 9.76% 7.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 694 532 457
10th Percentile £377 £375 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £485
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £725
90th Percentile £750 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -17.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 5
10th Percentile £42.93 £40.58 £26.04
25th Percentile £55.00 £48.56 £27.00
Median hourly rate £74.75 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.16% +111.61% -64.10%
75th Percentile £85.50 £75.31 £38.75
90th Percentile £94.20 £96.13 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 - £28.00
% change year-on-year - - -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 11,826 8,466 9,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.65% 25.97% 24.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,778 5,636 6,115
10th Percentile £375 £354 £356
25th Percentile £438 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -4.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 277 187 187
10th Percentile £28.64 £31.25 £25.60
25th Percentile £50.00 £41.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.70 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.83% -12.48% +4.17%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £70.80 £74.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.47 £58.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +14.84% -9.62% +10.53%

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 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 -43 906 £550 - 866
London -34 554 £575 -4.17% 589
UK excluding London -21 388 £500 +6.38% 370
Work from Home -44 277 £550 -4.76% 379
North of England -19 191 £502 +0.35% 136
Yorkshire +2 95 £501 -16.15% 33
North West -30 76 £550 +18.28% 87
Scotland -34 58 £406 -14.53% 63
South East -48 57 £460 +8.24% 46
Midlands -44 39 £500 +12.99% 28
South West -20 28 £550 - 41
West Midlands -41 27 £700 +40.00% 21
North East -21 25 £426 -33.25% 16
East of England -7 24 £488 -4.88% 19
East Midlands -21 12 £449 +8.07% 7
Northern Ireland +5 4 - - 30
Wales - 1 £375 - 8

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
1 129 (11.83%) Apache Spark
2 78 (7.16%) Apache Airflow
3 74 (6.79%) Apache
4 26 (2.39%) Confluence
5 15 (1.38%) Camunda
6 7 (0.64%) OpenStack
6 7 (0.64%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.55%) CMS
8 5 (0.46%) Apache Pulsar
8 5 (0.46%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.37%) MQSeries
9 4 (0.37%) nginx
9 4 (0.37%) PowerExchange
10 3 (0.28%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.28%) Mule
11 2 (0.18%) Apache Pig
11 2 (0.18%) JBoss
11 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
12 1 (0.092%) CICS
12 1 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 6 (0.55%) CPLEX
2 3 (0.28%) Mingle
3 1 (0.092%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.092%) Gliffy
3 1 (0.092%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.092%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 3 (0.28%) Finacle
3 3 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.28%) Temenos T24
4 2 (0.18%) Endur
4 2 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.092%) Actimize
5 1 (0.092%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.092%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.092%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.092%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.092%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 623 (57.16%) AWS
2 393 (36.06%) Azure
3 257 (23.58%) GCP
4 180 (16.51%) GitHub
5 120 (11.01%) GitHub Actions
6 106 (9.72%) Serverless
7 88 (8.07%) AWS Lambda
8 86 (7.89%) Amazon S3
9 81 (7.43%) Amazon EKS
10 77 (7.06%) Snowflake
11 68 (6.24%) Azure DevOps
12 66 (6.06%) OpenShift
13 52 (4.77%) dbt
14 50 (4.59%) Amazon SQS
15 47 (4.31%) Amazon ECS
16 42 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 36 (3.30%) Power Platform
18 34 (3.12%) Azure Data Factory
19 31 (2.84%) Google Kubernetes Engine
20 26 (2.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 30 (2.75%) HTTP
2 21 (1.93%) DNS
3 12 (1.10%) Network Security
4 9 (0.83%) TCP/IP
5 8 (0.73%) Firewall
6 7 (0.64%) MQTT
6 7 (0.64%) SSH
6 7 (0.64%) SSL
7 6 (0.55%) SAN
8 5 (0.46%) 4G
8 5 (0.46%) 5G
9 4 (0.37%) NAS
10 3 (0.28%) Internet
10 3 (0.28%) VPN
11 2 (0.18%) Kerberos
12 1 (0.092%) Broadband
12 1 (0.092%) MIMO
12 1 (0.092%) RTP
12 1 (0.092%) Software-Defined Networking
12 1 (0.092%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (17.43%) PostgreSQL
2 171 (15.69%) MongoDB
3 139 (12.75%) NoSQL
4 93 (8.53%) Relational Database
5 76 (6.97%) Data Warehouse
6 63 (5.78%) SQL Server
7 61 (5.60%) Redis
8 52 (4.77%) Big Data
9 50 (4.59%) MySQL
10 47 (4.31%) Data Lake
11 44 (4.04%) Elasticsearch
12 39 (3.58%) BigQuery
13 37 (3.39%) Flink
14 34 (3.12%) Power BI
15 30 (2.75%) Metadata
16 27 (2.48%) Delta Lake
17 25 (2.29%) Amazon Redshift
18 24 (2.20%) Hadoop
19 22 (2.02%) DynamoDB
19 22 (2.02%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 217 (19.91%) Jenkins
2 189 (17.34%) Git
3 167 (15.32%) GitLab
4 71 (6.51%) JUnit
5 70 (6.42%) Gradle
6 60 (5.50%) Mockito
7 56 (5.14%) Selenium
8 48 (4.40%) Maven
9 46 (4.22%) JIRA
10 38 (3.49%) Cucumber
11 34 (3.12%) SonarQube
12 26 (2.39%) Postman
12 26 (2.39%) REST Assured
13 22 (2.02%) JMeter
14 20 (1.83%) Bitbucket
15 18 (1.65%) Gatling
16 16 (1.47%) LoadRunner
16 16 (1.47%) SoapUI
17 15 (1.38%) Sonatype Nexus
18 14 (1.28%) Liquibase
General
1 276 (25.32%) Finance
2 207 (18.99%) Social Skills
3 181 (16.61%) Banking
4 110 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
5 101 (9.27%) Public Sector
6 42 (3.85%) Retail
7 29 (2.66%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 22 (2.02%) Front Office
10 17 (1.56%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.56%) Telecoms
11 12 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.01%) Law
13 10 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.83%) Documentation Skills
14 9 (0.83%) Military
15 8 (0.73%) Billing
15 8 (0.73%) Retail Banking
16 7 (0.64%) Corporate Banking
16 7 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 330 (30.28%) Developer
2 239 (21.93%) Senior
3 185 (16.97%) Java Developer
4 173 (15.87%) Architect
5 127 (11.65%) Data Engineer
6 99 (9.08%) Lead
7 75 (6.88%) Java Engineer
8 72 (6.61%) Senior Developer
9 68 (6.24%) Solutions Architect
10 63 (5.78%) Software Engineer
11 60 (5.50%) DevOps Engineer
12 47 (4.31%) Full-Stack Developer
13 43 (3.94%) Senior Data Engineer
13 43 (3.94%) Senior Java Developer
14 40 (3.67%) Kafka Engineer
15 38 (3.49%) Python Engineer
16 37 (3.39%) AWS Engineer
16 37 (3.39%) Python Developer
16 37 (3.39%) Test Engineer
17 36 (3.30%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 300 (27.52%) Spring Boot
2 299 (27.43%) Spring
3 251 (23.03%) REST
4 231 (21.19%) Terraform
5 154 (14.13%) RESTful
6 132 (12.11%) React
7 118 (10.83%) RabbitMQ
8 70 (6.42%) JSON
9 69 (6.33%) OAuth
10 56 (5.14%) HTML
10 56 (5.14%) Node.js
11 51 (4.68%) PySpark
12 48 (4.40%) GraphQL
13 47 (4.31%) Elastic Stack
13 47 (4.31%) SOAP
14 45 (4.13%) .NET
14 45 (4.13%) Middleware
14 45 (4.13%) OpenTelemetry
15 44 (4.04%) XML
16 43 (3.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 255 (23.39%) Cloud Native
2 231 (21.19%) Distributed Systems
3 76 (6.97%) Product Ownership
4 45 (4.13%) Enterprise Software
5 43 (3.94%) Data Structures
6 36 (3.30%) AI Agents
6 36 (3.30%) Onboarding
7 34 (3.12%) Self-Motivation
8 27 (2.48%) Greenfield Project
8 27 (2.48%) Replication
8 27 (2.48%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 26 (2.39%) Algorithms
10 25 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
11 20 (1.83%) Distributed Architecture
11 20 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 20 (1.83%) Public Cloud
12 18 (1.65%) Private Cloud
13 16 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
14 15 (1.38%) Management Information System
14 15 (1.38%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 144 (13.21%) Linux
2 72 (6.61%) Unix
3 24 (2.20%) Windows
4 11 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.55%) Mac OS X
5 6 (0.55%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.37%) CentOS
7 3 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.18%) Android
8 2 (0.18%) Debian
9 1 (0.092%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.092%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.092%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.092%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 613 (56.24%) CI/CD
2 455 (41.74%) Event-Driven
3 449 (41.19%) Microservices
4 389 (35.69%) DevOps
5 382 (35.05%) Agile
6 320 (29.36%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 285 (26.15%) Observability
8 255 (23.39%) Test Automation
9 240 (22.02%) Infrastructure as Code
10 228 (20.92%) Containerisation
11 199 (18.26%) Software Engineering
12 185 (16.97%) AI
13 162 (14.86%) Data Pipeline
14 150 (13.76%) Problem-Solving
15 141 (12.94%) Data Modelling
16 139 (12.75%) Continuous Improvement
16 139 (12.75%) Technical Leadership
17 129 (11.83%) ETL
18 123 (11.28%) TDD
19 121 (11.10%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 489 (44.86%) Java
2 373 (34.22%) Python
3 355 (32.57%) SQL
4 110 (10.09%) JavaScript
5 95 (8.72%) TypeScript
6 82 (7.52%) Bash
7 65 (5.96%) C#
8 53 (4.86%) Go
9 43 (3.94%) Scala
10 30 (2.75%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.66%) PL/SQL
12 27 (2.48%) Shell Script
13 25 (2.29%) Kotlin
14 11 (1.01%) Groovy
15 10 (0.92%) C++
16 8 (0.73%) Perl
16 8 (0.73%) PHP
17 7 (0.64%) Rust
18 6 (0.55%) Bicep
18 6 (0.55%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 263 (24.13%) Security Cleared
2 219 (20.09%) SC Cleared
3 64 (5.87%) Degree
4 42 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 27 (2.48%) DV Cleared
6 14 (1.28%) Azure Certification
7 13 (1.19%) AWS Certification
8 11 (1.01%) ISTQB
8 11 (1.01%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.64%) DBS Check
9 7 (0.64%) ISEB
10 6 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 5 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
12 3 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.28%) PhD
12 3 (0.28%) SnowPro
13 1 (0.092%) CISSP
13 1 (0.092%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (7.98%) QA
2 83 (7.61%) Data Quality
3 44 (4.04%) Accessibility
4 35 (3.21%) ISO 20022
5 20 (1.83%) GDPR
6 15 (1.38%) SEPA
7 6 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.46%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.46%) NIST
8 5 (0.46%) PSD2
8 5 (0.46%) SLA
9 4 (0.37%) WCAG
10 2 (0.18%) Basel III
10 2 (0.18%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.18%) IFRS
10 2 (0.18%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.18%) MiFID
10 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 386 (35.41%) Docker
2 17 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.73%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.18%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.18%) HDFS
6 1 (0.092%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 499 (45.78%) Kubernetes
2 142 (13.03%) Grafana
3 121 (11.10%) Prometheus
4 69 (6.33%) Ansible
5 30 (2.75%) Argo
6 26 (2.39%) Control-M
7 16 (1.47%) Kibana
8 15 (1.38%) Istio
9 14 (1.28%) Kustomize
10 13 (1.19%) Puppet
11 9 (0.83%) logstash
11 9 (0.83%) Podman
12 7 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.55%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.55%) Rancher
14 5 (0.46%) Check_MK
15 4 (0.37%) Bosun
15 4 (0.37%) Consul
15 4 (0.37%) Progress Chef
16 3 (0.28%) Cilium
Vendors
1 119 (10.92%) Oracle
2 104 (9.54%) Databricks
3 63 (5.78%) Splunk
4 60 (5.50%) IBM
5 54 (4.95%) Microsoft
6 53 (4.86%) Google
7 39 (3.58%) Dynatrace
8 32 (2.94%) Confluent
9 26 (2.39%) Informatica
10 21 (1.93%) VMware
11 19 (1.74%) MuleSoft
11 19 (1.74%) OpenAI
12 18 (1.65%) SAP
13 14 (1.28%) Solace
14 13 (1.19%) New Relic
14 13 (1.19%) Salesforce
14 13 (1.19%) TIBCO
15 10 (0.92%) Veracode
16 9 (0.83%) Sybase
16 9 (0.83%) WSO2