Kafka Engineer Job Trends

Kafka Engineer
UK

The median Kafka Engineer salary in the UK is £97,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 9 September 2025.

The table below provides salary benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 650 791 768
Rank change year-on-year +141 -23 +421
Permanent jobs requiring a Kafka Engineer 19 5 15
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.038% 0.006% 0.024%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.043% 0.007% 0.025%
Number of salaries quoted 15 5 13
10th Percentile - £105,000 £73,500
25th Percentile £78,750 £108,750 £80,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £97,500 £112,500 £90,000
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +25.00% +14.29%
75th Percentile £107,500 £116,250 £100,000
90th Percentile £111,250 £120,000 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £67,500 £112,500 -
% change year-on-year -40.00% - -

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 44,463 74,630 59,545
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.68% 95.24% 93.56%
Number of salaries quoted 26,177 45,718 45,807
10th Percentile £28,250 £30,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £40,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £73,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £92,500 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -

Kafka Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Kafka Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Kafka Engineer in the UK

Kafka Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Kafka Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Kafka Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Kafka Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Kafka Engineer over the 6 months to 9 September 2025.

Salary histogram for Kafka Engineer in the UK

Kafka Engineer
Top 7 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Kafka Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 9 September 2025. 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 +107 15 £97,500 -13.33% 2
London +92 11 £105,000 -6.67% 1
UK excluding London +98 5 £67,500 -40.00% 1
Scotland - 4 - -
Work from Home - 3 £100,000 -
East Midlands - 1 £67,500 -
Midlands - 1 £67,500 -

Kafka Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 9 September 2025, Kafka Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Kafka Engineer in the job title.

1 19 (100.00%) Kafka
2 17 (89.47%) AWS
2 17 (89.47%) Agile
2 17 (89.47%) Kubernetes
3 16 (84.21%) Microservices
4 15 (78.95%) Spring Boot
4 15 (78.95%) Spring
4 15 (78.95%) Software Engineering
4 15 (78.95%) Java
4 15 (78.95%) Finance
5 13 (68.42%) Docker
6 12 (63.16%) Fintech
7 11 (57.89%) Spring WebFlux
7 11 (57.89%) Akka
7 11 (57.89%) Concurrent Programming
7 11 (57.89%) RxJava
7 11 (57.89%) Multithreading
7 11 (57.89%) BDD
7 11 (57.89%) TDD
7 11 (57.89%) Pair Programming
7 11 (57.89%) Financial Institution
8 9 (47.37%) High Availability
9 8 (42.11%) MongoDB
10 7 (36.84%) RabbitMQ
10 7 (36.84%) ActiveMQ
10 7 (36.84%) JMS
11 6 (31.58%) Terraform
12 5 (26.32%) GitHub
12 5 (26.32%) Law
12 5 (26.32%) Cloud Native

Kafka Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (15.79%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (5.26%) Apache
2 1 (5.26%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 17 (89.47%) AWS
2 5 (26.32%) GitHub
3 3 (15.79%) Azure
4 1 (5.26%) Amazon Kinesis
4 1 (5.26%) SaaS
4 1 (5.26%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (42.11%) MongoDB
2 4 (21.05%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (21.05%) Relational Database
3 1 (5.26%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (5.26%) NoSQL
3 1 (5.26%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 4 (21.05%) Jenkins
General
1 15 (78.95%) Finance
2 11 (57.89%) Financial Institution
3 5 (26.32%) Law
4 4 (21.05%) Banking
4 4 (21.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 4 (21.05%) Private Banking
5 1 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (100.00%) Kafka
2 15 (78.95%) Spring
2 15 (78.95%) Spring Boot
3 11 (57.89%) Akka
3 11 (57.89%) RxJava
3 11 (57.89%) Spring WebFlux
4 7 (36.84%) ActiveMQ
4 7 (36.84%) JMS
4 7 (36.84%) RabbitMQ
5 4 (21.05%) AngularJS
5 4 (21.05%) RESTful
6 1 (5.26%) Great Expectations
6 1 (5.26%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 5 (26.32%) Cloud Native
2 4 (21.05%) Distributed Applications
3 1 (5.26%) Data Structures
3 1 (5.26%) Legacy Code
3 1 (5.26%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (89.47%) Agile
2 16 (84.21%) Microservices
3 15 (78.95%) Software Engineering
4 12 (63.16%) Fintech
5 11 (57.89%) BDD
5 11 (57.89%) Concurrent Programming
5 11 (57.89%) Multithreading
5 11 (57.89%) Pair Programming
5 11 (57.89%) TDD
6 9 (47.37%) High Availability
7 5 (26.32%) CI/CD
8 4 (21.05%) Decision-Making
8 4 (21.05%) Full-Stack Development
8 4 (21.05%) Functional Testing
8 4 (21.05%) Investment Management
8 4 (21.05%) Operational Stability
8 4 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
8 4 (21.05%) SDLC
8 4 (21.05%) Tech Ops
8 4 (21.05%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 15 (78.95%) Java
2 4 (21.05%) Python
2 4 (21.05%) SQL
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (5.26%) GDPR
System Software
1 13 (68.42%) Docker
Systems Management
1 17 (89.47%) Kubernetes
2 6 (31.58%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (15.79%) Databricks