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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 100 143
Rank change year-on-year -43 +43 +4
Contract jobs citing Kafka 994 833 715
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.55% 1.67%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 9.70% 11.28% 7.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 590 540 508
10th Percentile £381 £400 £400
25th Percentile £425 £457 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £573
Median % change year-on-year - -3.93% -11.92%
75th Percentile £650 £696 £700
90th Percentile £800 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +5.85% -4.08% -18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 5 9
10th Percentile £56.65 £44.75 £22.55
25th Percentile £64.50 £53.00 £27.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £62.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +123.21% -64.10%
75th Percentile £90.00 £78.70 £38.75
90th Percentile £95.00 £87.73 £45.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.25 £78.70 £28.00
% change year-on-year -9.47% +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 10,251 7,385 9,195
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.46% 22.60% 21.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,718 4,986 6,286
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.74% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £656
90th Percentile £738 £763 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 277 161 277
10th Percentile £30.00 £29.25 £22.65
25th Percentile £50.00 £39.25 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.07% +1.82% -12.00%
75th Percentile £74.26 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.01 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £58.30
% change year-on-year +4.00% +7.20% -1.24%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -36 853 £550 -0.18% 398
London -31 516 £588 -6.00% 287
UK excluding London -43 357 £498 +5.85% 187
Work from Home -59 278 £572 -0.61% 109
North of England -17 169 £459 -2.19% 43
Yorkshire -6 79 £480 -12.73% 9
North West -37 75 £430 -8.32% 29
South East -55 59 £519 +19.25% 40
Scotland -29 49 £450 -4.26% 15
Midlands -47 41 £500 +13.51% 11
South West -20 27 £500 -9.09% 66
West Midlands -62 25 £500 - 7
North East -16 24 £425 -8.11% 5
East of England -14 17 £550 +10.00% 7
East Midlands -14 16 £459 +28.43% 4
Northern Ireland -2 3 - - 3
Wales -13 2 £313 - 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
1 135 (13.58%) Apache Spark
2 73 (7.34%) Apache
3 60 (6.04%) Apache Airflow
4 19 (1.91%) Confluence
5 7 (0.70%) Camunda
6 6 (0.60%) Ethereum
6 6 (0.60%) Hyperledger
6 6 (0.60%) WebSphere
7 5 (0.50%) Apache Pulsar
8 3 (0.30%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.30%) CMS
8 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.30%) Mule
8 3 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.20%) Apache Pig
9 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 8 (0.80%) CPLEX
2 2 (0.20%) PlantUML
3 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.10%) Maya
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.30%) Bloomberg AIM
2 3 (0.30%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.20%) Endur
3 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.10%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.10%) R3 Corda
4 1 (0.10%) SAP IS-U
4 1 (0.10%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 581 (58.45%) AWS
2 309 (31.09%) Azure
3 196 (19.72%) GCP
4 139 (13.98%) GitHub
5 109 (10.97%) Serverless
6 99 (9.96%) GitHub Actions
7 84 (8.45%) AWS Lambda
8 83 (8.35%) Amazon S3
9 69 (6.94%) OpenShift
10 65 (6.54%) Azure DevOps
11 61 (6.14%) Amazon EKS
12 58 (5.84%) Snowflake
13 49 (4.93%) Power Platform
14 45 (4.53%) dbt
15 43 (4.33%) Amazon ECS
16 38 (3.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 37 (3.72%) Amazon SQS
18 34 (3.42%) AWS CloudFormation
19 30 (3.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 29 (2.92%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.81%) HTTP
2 11 (1.11%) Firewall
3 10 (1.01%) Network Security
4 7 (0.70%) MQTT
4 7 (0.70%) SSL
5 6 (0.60%) DNS
6 5 (0.50%) NAS
6 5 (0.50%) SAN
7 4 (0.40%) Internet
8 3 (0.30%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.20%) NaaS
9 2 (0.20%) OpenVPN
9 2 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.20%) WAN
10 1 (0.10%) 4G
10 1 (0.10%) 5G
10 1 (0.10%) Broadband
10 1 (0.10%) FIX Connectivity
10 1 (0.10%) MIMO
10 1 (0.10%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 179 (18.01%) PostgreSQL
2 162 (16.30%) MongoDB
3 125 (12.58%) NoSQL
4 105 (10.56%) Relational Database
5 70 (7.04%) Big Data
6 63 (6.34%) Data Warehouse
7 59 (5.94%) SQL Server
8 53 (5.33%) Data Lake
9 44 (4.43%) Elasticsearch
10 42 (4.23%) Power BI
11 41 (4.12%) Redis
12 39 (3.92%) Hadoop
13 36 (3.62%) Flink
14 35 (3.52%) MySQL
15 33 (3.32%) Apache Cassandra
16 30 (3.02%) BigQuery
16 30 (3.02%) Metadata
17 28 (2.82%) DynamoDB
18 25 (2.52%) RDBMS
19 24 (2.41%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 168 (16.90%) Jenkins
2 134 (13.48%) Git
3 124 (12.47%) GitLab
4 70 (7.04%) JUnit
5 56 (5.63%) Mockito
6 47 (4.73%) JIRA
7 38 (3.82%) Gradle
8 31 (3.12%) Selenium
9 25 (2.52%) Cucumber
10 23 (2.31%) REST Assured
11 20 (2.01%) Maven
12 18 (1.81%) Gatling
13 17 (1.71%) Liquibase
13 17 (1.71%) Postman
13 17 (1.71%) SonarQube
14 15 (1.51%) Serenity BDD
15 9 (0.91%) Cypress.io
16 7 (0.70%) JMeter
17 6 (0.60%) Snyk
18 5 (0.50%) MLflow
General
1 270 (27.16%) Finance
2 192 (19.32%) Social Skills
3 134 (13.48%) Banking
4 96 (9.66%) Public Sector
5 90 (9.05%) Analytical Skills
6 48 (4.83%) Front Office
7 36 (3.62%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 26 (2.62%) Retail
9 20 (2.01%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.51%) Law
11 14 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.21%) Telecoms
13 10 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
14 9 (0.91%) Billing
14 9 (0.91%) Publishing
15 8 (0.80%) Marketing
15 8 (0.80%) Military
16 7 (0.70%) Automotive
16 7 (0.70%) Games
Job Titles
1 326 (32.80%) Developer
2 196 (19.72%) Senior
3 167 (16.80%) Java Developer
4 148 (14.89%) Data Engineer
5 125 (12.58%) Architect
6 115 (11.57%) Lead
7 97 (9.76%) Software Engineer
8 80 (8.05%) Senior Developer
9 76 (7.65%) Java Engineer
10 52 (5.23%) Solutions Architect
11 49 (4.93%) Senior Java Developer
12 46 (4.63%) AWS Architect
13 44 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
14 41 (4.12%) Full-Stack Developer
15 36 (3.62%) Developer/Software Engineer
16 34 (3.42%) Lead Developer
17 33 (3.32%) Java Software Engineer
17 33 (3.32%) Kafka Engineer
18 32 (3.22%) Principal Engineer
18 32 (3.22%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (25.35%) Spring
2 238 (23.94%) Spring Boot
3 153 (15.39%) REST
4 140 (14.08%) React
5 134 (13.48%) RESTful
6 109 (10.97%) RabbitMQ
7 88 (8.85%) Node.js
8 67 (6.74%) GraphQL
9 62 (6.24%) JSON
10 53 (5.33%) Redux
11 50 (5.03%) OpenTelemetry
12 41 (4.12%) AngularJS
12 41 (4.12%) Swagger
13 40 (4.02%) OpenAPI
14 39 (3.92%) OAuth
15 38 (3.82%) Middleware
16 36 (3.62%) PySpark
17 35 (3.52%) gRPC
18 33 (3.32%) Apache Avro
19 32 (3.22%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 187 (18.81%) Distributed Systems
2 177 (17.81%) Cloud Native
3 40 (4.02%) Product Ownership
4 39 (3.92%) Fixed Income
5 38 (3.82%) Data Structures
6 29 (2.92%) Algorithms
6 29 (2.92%) Management Information System
7 28 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
8 25 (2.52%) Onboarding
9 24 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
10 18 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 16 (1.61%) Hybrid Cloud
12 15 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
12 15 (1.51%) Equities
12 15 (1.51%) Public Cloud
13 14 (1.41%) Clustering
14 13 (1.31%) AI Agents
14 13 (1.31%) Virtual Team
15 12 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 98 (9.86%) Linux
2 54 (5.43%) Unix
3 26 (2.62%) Windows
4 10 (1.01%) Mac OS X
5 7 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.50%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.30%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.20%) Android
8 2 (0.20%) Debian
8 2 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.20%) VMS
8 2 (0.20%) zOS
9 1 (0.10%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.10%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 464 (46.68%) CI/CD
2 370 (37.22%) Microservices
3 341 (34.31%) Agile
4 313 (31.49%) DevOps
5 312 (31.39%) Event-Driven
6 222 (22.33%) Containerisation
7 221 (22.23%) Observability
8 211 (21.23%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 193 (19.42%) Data Pipeline
10 192 (19.32%) Software Engineering
11 165 (16.60%) Infrastructure as Code
12 162 (16.30%) Problem-Solving
13 158 (15.90%) Test Automation
14 153 (15.39%) Data Modelling
15 151 (15.19%) Analytics
16 147 (14.79%) AI
16 147 (14.79%) Data Engineering
17 146 (14.69%) ETL
18 115 (11.57%) TDD
19 108 (10.87%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 463 (46.58%) Java
2 352 (35.41%) Python
3 303 (30.48%) SQL
4 123 (12.37%) TypeScript
5 94 (9.46%) JavaScript
6 82 (8.25%) Go
7 57 (5.73%) C#
8 51 (5.13%) Bash
9 35 (3.52%) Scala
10 26 (2.62%) PowerShell
11 17 (1.71%) PL/SQL
12 16 (1.61%) Kotlin
13 14 (1.41%) Shell Script
14 13 (1.31%) Rust
15 12 (1.21%) C++
16 11 (1.11%) Bicep
17 10 (1.01%) Groovy
17 10 (1.01%) Search Processing Language
18 7 (0.70%) PHP
19 6 (0.60%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 218 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 171 (17.20%) SC Cleared
3 51 (5.13%) Degree
4 31 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (2.11%) DV Cleared
6 18 (1.81%) AWS Certification
6 18 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.61%) Master's Degree
8 8 (0.80%) Azure Certification
9 7 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (0.70%) SnowPro
10 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
10 3 (0.30%) PhD
10 3 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
11 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.10%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.10%) PMP
12 1 (0.10%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 102 (10.26%) Data Quality
2 50 (5.03%) QA
3 41 (4.12%) Accessibility
4 38 (3.82%) GDPR
5 16 (1.61%) ISO 20022
6 8 (0.80%) SEPA
7 7 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.50%) NIST
9 4 (0.40%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.30%) SLA
10 3 (0.30%) WCAG
11 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.20%) EMIR
11 2 (0.20%) IFRS
11 2 (0.20%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.20%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.20%) MiFID
11 2 (0.20%) NCSC
11 2 (0.20%) Solvency II
12 1 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 325 (32.70%) Docker
2 6 (0.60%) Apache ZooKeeper
2 6 (0.60%) etcd
3 2 (0.20%) Apache Flume
3 2 (0.20%) HDFS
3 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.10%) OpenSSH
4 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 404 (40.64%) Kubernetes
2 199 (20.02%) Terraform
3 122 (12.27%) Prometheus
4 118 (11.87%) Grafana
5 61 (6.14%) Ansible
6 21 (2.11%) Argo
7 11 (1.11%) Control-M
7 11 (1.11%) Kibana
8 9 (0.91%) Istio
8 9 (0.91%) Puppet
9 8 (0.80%) Kustomize
9 8 (0.80%) Podman
10 7 (0.70%) Fluentd
11 6 (0.60%) logstash
12 5 (0.50%) Rancher
13 3 (0.30%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.20%) CA Wily
14 2 (0.20%) CloudHub
14 2 (0.20%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 80 (8.05%) Databricks
2 74 (7.44%) Oracle
3 61 (6.14%) Splunk
4 48 (4.83%) Microsoft
5 42 (4.23%) Google
6 26 (2.62%) Informatica
7 23 (2.31%) Confluent
8 16 (1.61%) IBM
9 15 (1.51%) Dynatrace
9 15 (1.51%) MuleSoft
9 15 (1.51%) Salesforce
9 15 (1.51%) Solace
10 10 (1.01%) OpenAI
11 9 (0.91%) SAP
11 9 (0.91%) Talend
12 8 (0.80%) Red Hat
12 8 (0.80%) ServiceNow
12 8 (0.80%) Sybase
13 6 (0.60%) AppDynamics
13 6 (0.60%) Pega