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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 103 131
Rank change year-on-year -42 +28 +33
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,060 831 692
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.95% 2.56% 1.81%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.00% 10.00% 7.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 669 535 463
10th Percentile £375 £382 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £486
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £630 £675 £725
90th Percentile £738 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £497
% change year-on-year +6.61% -5.54% -20.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 4 7
10th Percentile £43.85 £40.58 £24.34
25th Percentile £56.25 £48.56 £26.20
Median hourly rate £77.00 £59.25 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.96% +111.61% -64.10%
75th Percentile £87.00 £75.31 £33.88
90th Percentile £94.00 £96.13 £39.35
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 11,783 8,312 9,493
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.65% 25.61% 24.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,748 5,566 6,315
10th Percentile £375 £353 £356
25th Percentile £435 £413 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £634 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -2.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 293 180 187
10th Percentile £29.07 £31.20 £25.60
25th Percentile £49.00 £41.13 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -14.77% -2.99%
75th Percentile £76.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £70.20 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +22.73% -15.38% +4.00%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -47 890 £550 - 1,172
London -35 536 £563 -6.29% 848
UK excluding London -32 386 £500 +6.61% 462
Work from Home -58 269 £530 -7.83% 493
North of England -20 187 £500 +5.26% 155
Yorkshire +10 95 £501 -12.96% 40
North West -32 73 £550 +17.77% 98
South East -34 62 £460 +5.75% 81
Scotland -29 54 £410 -12.77% 75
Midlands -46 35 £500 +13.51% 35
East of England -6 28 £500 -2.44% 26
South West -31 27 £500 -9.09% 47
North East -22 24 £425 -8.55% 17
West Midlands -51 22 £575 +15.00% 24
East Midlands -12 13 £495 +19.28% 11
Northern Ireland +3 4 - - 39
Wales - 1 £375 - 7

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 (12.17%) Apache Spark
2 76 (7.17%) Apache Airflow
3 70 (6.60%) Apache
4 24 (2.26%) Confluence
5 16 (1.51%) Camunda
6 7 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.57%) CMS
7 6 (0.57%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.47%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.38%) Apache Pulsar
9 4 (0.38%) MQSeries
9 4 (0.38%) PowerExchange
10 3 (0.28%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.28%) Mule
10 3 (0.28%) nginx
10 3 (0.28%) WebSphere
11 2 (0.19%) Apache Pig
11 2 (0.19%) JBoss
12 1 (0.094%) Luigi
12 1 (0.094%) Traefik
Applications
1 7 (0.66%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.19%) Mingle
3 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (0.28%) Finacle
1 3 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
1 3 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
1 3 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
1 3 (0.28%) Temenos T24
2 2 (0.19%) Endur
2 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.094%) Actimize
3 1 (0.094%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.094%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.094%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.094%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 603 (56.89%) AWS
2 385 (36.32%) Azure
3 253 (23.87%) GCP
4 175 (16.51%) GitHub
5 120 (11.32%) GitHub Actions
6 100 (9.43%) Serverless
7 83 (7.83%) AWS Lambda
8 75 (7.08%) Amazon S3
8 75 (7.08%) Azure DevOps
9 74 (6.98%) Snowflake
10 73 (6.89%) Amazon EKS
11 66 (6.23%) OpenShift
12 52 (4.91%) dbt
13 48 (4.53%) Amazon SQS
14 42 (3.96%) Amazon ECS
14 42 (3.96%) Power Platform
15 40 (3.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 34 (3.21%) Azure Data Factory
17 31 (2.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 28 (2.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.74%) HTTP
2 19 (1.79%) DNS
3 12 (1.13%) Network Security
4 8 (0.75%) Firewall
4 8 (0.75%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.66%) MQTT
6 6 (0.57%) SAN
6 6 (0.57%) SSH
6 6 (0.57%) SSL
7 4 (0.38%) 4G
7 4 (0.38%) 5G
7 4 (0.38%) NAS
8 3 (0.28%) Internet
9 2 (0.19%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.094%) Broadband
10 1 (0.094%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.094%) MIMO
10 1 (0.094%) RTP
10 1 (0.094%) VPN
10 1 (0.094%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 188 (17.74%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (15.57%) MongoDB
3 134 (12.64%) NoSQL
4 95 (8.96%) Relational Database
5 75 (7.08%) Data Warehouse
6 66 (6.23%) SQL Server
7 55 (5.19%) Redis
8 52 (4.91%) Big Data
9 49 (4.62%) Data Lake
10 48 (4.53%) MySQL
11 41 (3.87%) Power BI
12 40 (3.77%) BigQuery
12 40 (3.77%) Elasticsearch
13 36 (3.40%) Flink
14 32 (3.02%) Metadata
15 28 (2.64%) Delta Lake
16 24 (2.26%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (2.26%) Hadoop
17 23 (2.17%) Apache Cassandra
17 23 (2.17%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 213 (20.09%) Jenkins
2 187 (17.64%) Git
3 159 (15.00%) GitLab
4 73 (6.89%) JUnit
5 69 (6.51%) Gradle
6 62 (5.85%) Mockito
7 49 (4.62%) Selenium
8 47 (4.43%) JIRA
9 45 (4.25%) Maven
10 32 (3.02%) SonarQube
11 30 (2.83%) Cucumber
12 25 (2.36%) REST Assured
13 22 (2.08%) Postman
14 19 (1.79%) JMeter
15 17 (1.60%) Bitbucket
15 17 (1.60%) Liquibase
16 16 (1.51%) Gatling
17 13 (1.23%) Cypress.io
17 13 (1.23%) LoadRunner
18 12 (1.13%) SoapUI
General
1 267 (25.19%) Finance
2 206 (19.43%) Social Skills
3 162 (15.28%) Banking
4 110 (10.38%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (9.43%) Public Sector
6 36 (3.40%) Retail
7 24 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (2.26%) Investment Banking
8 19 (1.79%) Front Office
9 17 (1.60%) Telecoms
10 16 (1.51%) Financial Institution
11 13 (1.23%) Law
12 11 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
13 9 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
13 9 (0.85%) Military
13 9 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.85%) Publishing
14 8 (0.75%) Billing
14 8 (0.75%) Retail Banking
15 7 (0.66%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 327 (30.85%) Developer
2 227 (21.42%) Senior
3 182 (17.17%) Java Developer
4 156 (14.72%) Architect
5 129 (12.17%) Data Engineer
6 98 (9.25%) Lead
7 70 (6.60%) Java Engineer
8 69 (6.51%) Senior Developer
9 63 (5.94%) DevOps Engineer
9 63 (5.94%) Software Engineer
9 63 (5.94%) Solutions Architect
10 44 (4.15%) Full-Stack Developer
11 42 (3.96%) Senior Java Developer
12 41 (3.87%) Senior Data Engineer
13 38 (3.58%) AWS Engineer
14 37 (3.49%) Kafka Engineer
14 37 (3.49%) Python Developer
14 37 (3.49%) Python Engineer
15 33 (3.11%) Test Engineer
16 32 (3.02%) AWS Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (26.70%) Spring Boot
2 282 (26.60%) Spring
3 243 (22.92%) REST
4 226 (21.32%) Terraform
5 154 (14.53%) RESTful
6 136 (12.83%) React
7 125 (11.79%) RabbitMQ
8 75 (7.08%) JSON
9 61 (5.75%) OAuth
10 56 (5.28%) Node.js
11 51 (4.81%) HTML
12 50 (4.72%) PySpark
13 49 (4.62%) OpenTelemetry
14 47 (4.43%) .NET
14 47 (4.43%) GraphQL
15 45 (4.25%) Swagger
16 43 (4.06%) Elastic Stack
16 43 (4.06%) OpenAPI
17 41 (3.87%) Middleware
17 41 (3.87%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 242 (22.83%) Cloud Native
2 223 (21.04%) Distributed Systems
3 69 (6.51%) Product Ownership
4 46 (4.34%) Data Structures
5 45 (4.25%) Enterprise Software
6 37 (3.49%) Onboarding
7 35 (3.30%) AI Agents
8 30 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
9 29 (2.74%) Algorithms
9 29 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 27 (2.55%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 25 (2.36%) Replication
12 23 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
13 21 (1.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 17 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
14 17 (1.60%) Distributed Architecture
14 17 (1.60%) Management Information System
15 16 (1.51%) Public Cloud
16 15 (1.42%) Private Cloud
17 14 (1.32%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 135 (12.74%) Linux
2 70 (6.60%) Unix
3 24 (2.26%) Windows
4 11 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.57%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.47%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.28%) CentOS
7 3 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Android
8 2 (0.19%) Debian
8 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.094%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.094%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.094%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.094%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.094%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 591 (55.75%) CI/CD
2 443 (41.79%) Event-Driven
3 434 (40.94%) Microservices
4 389 (36.70%) DevOps
5 377 (35.57%) Agile
6 308 (29.06%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 286 (26.98%) Observability
8 234 (22.08%) Test Automation
9 232 (21.89%) Containerisation
9 232 (21.89%) Infrastructure as Code
10 194 (18.30%) Software Engineering
11 182 (17.17%) AI
12 174 (16.42%) Data Pipeline
13 150 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
14 147 (13.87%) Data Modelling
15 132 (12.45%) ETL
15 132 (12.45%) Technical Leadership
16 128 (12.08%) Analytics
16 128 (12.08%) Continuous Improvement
17 122 (11.51%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 468 (44.15%) Java
2 364 (34.34%) Python
3 345 (32.55%) SQL
4 103 (9.72%) TypeScript
5 102 (9.62%) JavaScript
6 80 (7.55%) Bash
7 62 (5.85%) C#
8 49 (4.62%) Go
9 42 (3.96%) Scala
10 30 (2.83%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.74%) PL/SQL
12 23 (2.17%) Kotlin
12 23 (2.17%) Shell Script
13 11 (1.04%) Groovy
14 9 (0.85%) Perl
15 8 (0.75%) Bicep
15 8 (0.75%) C++
15 8 (0.75%) Rust
15 8 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.66%) PHP
Qualifications
1 253 (23.87%) Security Cleared
2 205 (19.34%) SC Cleared
3 64 (6.04%) Degree
4 41 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 39 (3.68%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (1.98%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.13%) Azure Certification
8 11 (1.04%) AWS Certification
8 11 (1.04%) Master's Degree
9 10 (0.94%) ISTQB
10 6 (0.57%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.57%) ISEB
10 6 (0.57%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
12 3 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.28%) PhD
13 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.094%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (8.30%) Data Quality
2 80 (7.55%) QA
3 42 (3.96%) Accessibility
4 34 (3.21%) ISO 20022
5 21 (1.98%) GDPR
6 15 (1.42%) SEPA
7 6 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.47%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.47%) PSD2
8 5 (0.47%) SLA
8 5 (0.47%) WCAG
9 3 (0.28%) NIST
10 2 (0.19%) EMIR
10 2 (0.19%) GRC
10 2 (0.19%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS
10 2 (0.19%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.19%) MiFID
10 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 377 (35.57%) Docker
2 16 (1.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.75%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.19%) HDFS
6 1 (0.094%) etcd
6 1 (0.094%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 485 (45.75%) Kubernetes
2 139 (13.11%) Grafana
3 122 (11.51%) Prometheus
4 67 (6.32%) Ansible
5 30 (2.83%) Argo
6 25 (2.36%) Control-M
7 14 (1.32%) Istio
7 14 (1.32%) Kibana
7 14 (1.32%) Kustomize
8 11 (1.04%) Puppet
9 9 (0.85%) Podman
10 8 (0.75%) logstash
11 7 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.57%) Rancher
13 5 (0.47%) Check_MK
13 5 (0.47%) HP Fortify
14 4 (0.38%) Consul
15 3 (0.28%) Bosun
15 3 (0.28%) Cilium
15 3 (0.28%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 124 (11.70%) Oracle
2 102 (9.62%) Databricks
3 59 (5.57%) Splunk
4 57 (5.38%) Microsoft
5 55 (5.19%) IBM
6 53 (5.00%) Google
7 37 (3.49%) Dynatrace
8 33 (3.11%) Confluent
9 31 (2.92%) Informatica
10 20 (1.89%) MuleSoft
10 20 (1.89%) VMware
11 18 (1.70%) OpenAI
12 17 (1.60%) Salesforce
12 17 (1.60%) SAP
13 16 (1.51%) Solace
14 12 (1.13%) TIBCO
15 10 (0.94%) New Relic
16 9 (0.85%) Red Hat
16 9 (0.85%) Sybase
16 9 (0.85%) Veracode