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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 103 137
Rank change year-on-year -39 +34 +23
Contract jobs citing Kafka 1,053 840 703
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.55% 1.82%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 8.94% 9.96% 7.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 663 543 475
10th Percentile £375 £382 £400
25th Percentile £425 £450 £485
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £725
90th Percentile £738 £750 £810
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.50% -4.77% -19.51%
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 11,772 8,431 9,587
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 21.65% 25.61% 24.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,730 5,662 6,398
10th Percentile £375 £354 £356
25th Percentile £435 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +6.74% -5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 181 187
10th Percentile £29.07 £31.25 £25.60
25th Percentile £48.45 £40.75 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.83 £52.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +25.39% -14.77% -1.83%
75th Percentile £76.25 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.00 £74.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.75 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +23.18% -15.38% +6.12%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -48 884 £550 - 696
London -41 531 £563 -6.25% 511
UK excluding London -27 385 £500 +6.50% 282
Work from Home -54 264 £530 -7.83% 940
North of England -20 186 £500 +5.26% 96
Yorkshire +4 93 £500 -13.04% 30
North West -43 74 £550 +17.27% 56
South East -32 62 £460 +5.75% 61
Scotland -37 54 £410 -13.23% 46
Midlands -45 35 £500 +13.51% 18
East of England +2 28 £500 -2.44% 10
South West -24 27 £500 -9.09% 27
North East -25 24 £425 -8.55% 10
West Midlands -46 22 £575 +15.00% 15
East Midlands -17 13 £495 +19.28% 3
Northern Ireland +2 4 - - 23
Wales - 1 £375 - 3

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
1 128 (12.16%) Apache Spark
2 75 (7.12%) Apache Airflow
3 70 (6.65%) Apache
4 24 (2.28%) Confluence
5 16 (1.52%) 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 (0.095%) Luigi
12 1 (0.095%) Traefik
Applications
1 7 (0.66%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.19%) Mingle
3 1 (0.095%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.095%) 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 (0.095%) Actimize
3 1 (0.095%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.095%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.095%) SAP IS-U
Cloud Services
1 599 (56.89%) AWS
2 379 (35.99%) Azure
3 247 (23.46%) GCP
4 175 (16.62%) GitHub
5 119 (11.30%) GitHub Actions
6 101 (9.59%) Serverless
7 83 (7.88%) AWS Lambda
8 75 (7.12%) Amazon S3
8 75 (7.12%) Azure DevOps
9 73 (6.93%) Amazon EKS
9 73 (6.93%) Snowflake
10 66 (6.27%) OpenShift
11 51 (4.84%) dbt
12 48 (4.56%) Amazon SQS
13 42 (3.99%) Amazon ECS
13 42 (3.99%) Power Platform
14 41 (3.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 34 (3.23%) Azure Data Factory
16 31 (2.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 28 (2.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 29 (2.75%) HTTP
2 19 (1.80%) DNS
3 12 (1.14%) Network Security
4 8 (0.76%) Firewall
4 8 (0.76%) 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 (0.095%) Broadband
10 1 (0.095%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.095%) MIMO
10 1 (0.095%) RTP
10 1 (0.095%) VPN
10 1 (0.095%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (17.95%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (15.67%) MongoDB
3 134 (12.73%) NoSQL
4 95 (9.02%) Relational Database
5 74 (7.03%) Data Warehouse
6 66 (6.27%) SQL Server
7 54 (5.13%) Redis
8 52 (4.94%) Big Data
9 49 (4.65%) Data Lake
9 49 (4.65%) MySQL
10 41 (3.89%) Power BI
11 40 (3.80%) BigQuery
11 40 (3.80%) Elasticsearch
12 36 (3.42%) Flink
13 32 (3.04%) Metadata
14 28 (2.66%) Delta Lake
15 24 (2.28%) Amazon Redshift
15 24 (2.28%) DynamoDB
15 24 (2.28%) Hadoop
16 23 (2.18%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 213 (20.23%) Jenkins
2 185 (17.57%) Git
3 159 (15.10%) GitLab
4 75 (7.12%) JUnit
5 70 (6.65%) Gradle
6 64 (6.08%) Mockito
7 49 (4.65%) Selenium
8 48 (4.56%) JIRA
9 45 (4.27%) Maven
10 33 (3.13%) SonarQube
11 31 (2.94%) Cucumber
12 25 (2.37%) REST Assured
13 23 (2.18%) Postman
14 18 (1.71%) JMeter
14 18 (1.71%) Liquibase
15 17 (1.61%) Bitbucket
16 15 (1.42%) Gatling
17 13 (1.23%) Cypress.io
18 12 (1.14%) LoadRunner
18 12 (1.14%) SoapUI
General
1 266 (25.26%) Finance
2 206 (19.56%) Social Skills
3 161 (15.29%) Banking
4 107 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
5 101 (9.59%) Public Sector
6 36 (3.42%) Retail
7 24 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (2.28%) Investment Banking
8 19 (1.80%) Front Office
9 17 (1.61%) Telecoms
10 16 (1.52%) Financial Institution
11 14 (1.33%) 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 (0.76%) Billing
14 8 (0.76%) Marketing
14 8 (0.76%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 327 (31.05%) Developer
2 224 (21.27%) Senior
3 182 (17.28%) Java Developer
4 154 (14.62%) Architect
5 128 (12.16%) Data Engineer
6 96 (9.12%) Lead
7 71 (6.74%) Java Engineer
8 70 (6.65%) Senior Developer
9 64 (6.08%) Software Engineer
10 63 (5.98%) Solutions Architect
11 61 (5.79%) DevOps Engineer
12 43 (4.08%) Full-Stack Developer
13 42 (3.99%) Senior Java Developer
14 40 (3.80%) Senior Data Engineer
15 37 (3.51%) AWS Engineer
15 37 (3.51%) Python Developer
15 37 (3.51%) Python Engineer
16 36 (3.42%) Kafka Engineer
17 33 (3.13%) Test Engineer
18 32 (3.04%) AWS Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 286 (27.16%) Spring Boot
2 285 (27.07%) Spring
3 241 (22.89%) REST
4 223 (21.18%) Terraform
5 155 (14.72%) RESTful
6 137 (13.01%) React
7 125 (11.87%) RabbitMQ
8 75 (7.12%) JSON
9 61 (5.79%) OAuth
10 57 (5.41%) Node.js
11 51 (4.84%) HTML
12 50 (4.75%) PySpark
13 49 (4.65%) OpenTelemetry
14 47 (4.46%) .NET
14 47 (4.46%) GraphQL
15 46 (4.37%) Swagger
16 44 (4.18%) OpenAPI
17 41 (3.89%) Elastic Stack
17 41 (3.89%) XML
18 40 (3.80%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 240 (22.79%) Cloud Native
2 219 (20.80%) Distributed Systems
3 64 (6.08%) Product Ownership
4 46 (4.37%) Data Structures
5 45 (4.27%) Enterprise Software
6 35 (3.32%) AI Agents
6 35 (3.32%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
8 29 (2.75%) Algorithms
8 29 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
9 27 (2.56%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 25 (2.37%) Replication
11 23 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
12 21 (1.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 17 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
13 17 (1.61%) Distributed Architecture
13 17 (1.61%) Management Information System
14 16 (1.52%) Public Cloud
15 14 (1.33%) Equities
16 12 (1.14%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 133 (12.63%) Linux
2 70 (6.65%) Unix
3 24 (2.28%) Windows
4 10 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.57%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.47%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.28%) VMS
8 2 (0.19%) Android
8 2 (0.19%) CentOS
8 2 (0.19%) Debian
8 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.095%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.095%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.095%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.095%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.095%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 586 (55.65%) CI/CD
2 436 (41.41%) Event-Driven
3 432 (41.03%) Microservices
4 388 (36.85%) DevOps
5 379 (35.99%) Agile
6 305 (28.96%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 280 (26.59%) Observability
8 236 (22.41%) Test Automation
9 232 (22.03%) Containerisation
10 227 (21.56%) Infrastructure as Code
11 194 (18.42%) Software Engineering
12 182 (17.28%) AI
13 173 (16.43%) Data Pipeline
14 149 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
15 144 (13.68%) Data Modelling
16 133 (12.63%) ETL
17 130 (12.35%) Technical Leadership
18 128 (12.16%) Analytics
19 127 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
20 123 (11.68%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 470 (44.63%) Java
2 360 (34.19%) Python
3 344 (32.67%) SQL
4 104 (9.88%) TypeScript
5 101 (9.59%) JavaScript
6 79 (7.50%) Bash
7 62 (5.89%) C#
8 49 (4.65%) Go
9 41 (3.89%) Scala
10 30 (2.85%) PowerShell
11 29 (2.75%) PL/SQL
12 23 (2.18%) Kotlin
12 23 (2.18%) Shell Script
13 11 (1.04%) Groovy
14 9 (0.85%) Perl
15 8 (0.76%) Bicep
15 8 (0.76%) C++
15 8 (0.76%) Rust
15 8 (0.76%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.66%) PHP
Qualifications
1 252 (23.93%) Security Cleared
2 203 (19.28%) SC Cleared
3 64 (6.08%) Degree
4 41 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (1.99%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.04%) AWS Certification
7 11 (1.04%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.04%) Master's Degree
8 10 (0.95%) ISTQB
9 6 (0.57%) DBS Check
9 6 (0.57%) ISEB
9 6 (0.57%) SnowPro
10 5 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
11 3 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.28%) PhD
12 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.095%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (8.26%) Data Quality
2 81 (7.69%) QA
3 43 (4.08%) Accessibility
4 34 (3.23%) ISO 20022
5 22 (2.09%) GDPR
6 15 (1.42%) SEPA
7 6 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.57%) WCAG
8 5 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.47%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.47%) PSD2
8 5 (0.47%) SLA
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
1 378 (35.90%) Docker
2 13 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (0.76%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.19%) Apache Flume
5 2 (0.19%) HDFS
6 1 (0.095%) etcd
6 1 (0.095%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 481 (45.68%) Kubernetes
2 136 (12.92%) Grafana
3 120 (11.40%) Prometheus
4 67 (6.36%) Ansible
5 30 (2.85%) Argo
6 25 (2.37%) Control-M
7 14 (1.33%) Kustomize
8 13 (1.23%) Istio
8 13 (1.23%) Kibana
9 11 (1.04%) Puppet
10 9 (0.85%) Podman
11 8 (0.76%) logstash
12 6 (0.57%) Rancher
12 6 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
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
1 123 (11.68%) Oracle
2 100 (9.50%) Databricks
3 57 (5.41%) Splunk
4 55 (5.22%) Microsoft
5 54 (5.13%) IBM
6 53 (5.03%) Google
7 36 (3.42%) Dynatrace
8 33 (3.13%) Confluent
9 31 (2.94%) Informatica
10 20 (1.90%) MuleSoft
11 18 (1.71%) OpenAI
12 17 (1.61%) Salesforce
12 17 (1.61%) SAP
12 17 (1.61%) VMware
13 16 (1.52%) Solace
14 12 (1.14%) TIBCO
15 9 (0.85%) New Relic
15 9 (0.85%) Sybase
15 9 (0.85%) Veracode
16 8 (0.76%) WSO2