DPDK Job Trends

Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring DPDK skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 646 710 -
Rank change year-on-year +64 - -
Permanent jobs citing DPDK 5 2 0
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.008% 0.004% -
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 0.071% 0.017% -
Number of salaries quoted 3 2 0
10th Percentile £74,200 - -
25th Percentile £77,500 - -
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £86,000 £100,000 -
Median % change year-on-year -14.00% - -
75th Percentile £107,000 - -
90th Percentile £117,800 - -
UK excluding London median annual salary £82,500 - -

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK

DPDK falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 7,029 11,479 13,848
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 11.78% 21.52% 24.75%
Number of salaries quoted 5,224 6,737 11,320
10th Percentile £35,575 £40,000 £40,000
25th Percentile £50,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.70%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £84,056
90th Percentile £110,000 £108,750 £105,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £57,500 £57,500

DPDK
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing DPDK relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

DPDK job vacancy trend in the UK

DPDK
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DPDK.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DPDK

DPDK
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing DPDK over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Salary histogram for DPDK in the UK

DPDK
Top 6 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing DPDK within the UK over the 6 months to 13 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England - 5 £86,000 - 41
North West - 3 £82,500 - 4
UK excluding London - 3 £82,500 - 42
North of England - 3 £82,500 - 9
Work from Home +66 2 £120,000 +20.00% 2
London - 2 £120,000 - 3

DPDK
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 3 (60.00%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) AWS
1 2 (40.00%) GitHub
2 1 (20.00%) AWS CloudFormation
2 1 (20.00%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 2 (40.00%) DHCP
1 2 (40.00%) DNS
1 2 (40.00%) HTTP
1 2 (40.00%) SSL
Development Applications
1 2 (40.00%) CircleCI
General
1 3 (60.00%) Banking
2 2 (40.00%) Finance
Job Titles
1 3 (60.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Java Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Rust Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Senior
2 1 (20.00%) Senior Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (60.00%) eBPF
2 1 (20.00%) NETCONF
2 1 (20.00%) RESTCONF
2 1 (20.00%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 3 (60.00%) Cloud Native
2 2 (40.00%) Cyber Threat
2 2 (40.00%) Data Protection Act
2 2 (40.00%) Hybrid Cloud
3 1 (20.00%) FPGA
3 1 (20.00%) NVMe
Operating Systems
1 2 (40.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (100.00%) CI/CD
1 5 (100.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 3 (60.00%) Open Source
2 3 (60.00%) Virtual Infrastructure
3 2 (40.00%) Concurrent Programming
3 2 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (40.00%) Data Protection
3 2 (40.00%) Event-Driven
3 2 (40.00%) Fintech
3 2 (40.00%) High Availability
3 2 (40.00%) Low Latency
3 2 (40.00%) Memory Management
3 2 (40.00%) Microservices
3 2 (40.00%) Multithreading
3 2 (40.00%) Ultra-Low Latency
3 2 (40.00%) Zero Trust
4 1 (20.00%) Data Modelling
4 1 (20.00%) DevOps
4 1 (20.00%) Incident Response
4 1 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 3 (60.00%) Python
2 2 (40.00%) C
2 2 (40.00%) C++
2 2 (40.00%) Rust
3 1 (20.00%) Java
System Software
1 3 (60.00%) KVM
1 3 (60.00%) QEMU
2 2 (40.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (60.00%) Ansible
1 3 (60.00%) Kubernetes
1 3 (60.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (60.00%) SaltStack
2 2 (40.00%) Solarflare