Hybrid/Remote Kafka Job Trends

Apache Kafka
UK > Work from Home

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for remote or hybrid work requiring Kafka skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 236 197 180
Rank change year-on-year -39 -17 -63
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 147 270 493
As % of all permanent jobs with remote/hybrid work options 0.93% 1.67% 1.87%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.21% 5.34% 6.23%
Number of salaries quoted 116 203 409
10th Percentile £57,691 £53,485 £50,686
25th Percentile £74,375 £56,250 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £87,000 £79,632
Median % change year-on-year +14.94% +9.25% -6.32%
75th Percentile £132,500 £115,000 £97,500
90th Percentile £152,500 £138,750 £111,250
UK median annual salary £95,000 £84,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +13.10% +5.00% -5.88%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
Work from Home

Kafka 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 with remote or hybrid options 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 2,824 5,060 7,910
As % of all permanent jobs with a WFH option 17.86% 31.22% 30.07%
Number of salaries quoted 2,135 3,238 6,859
10th Percentile £41,250 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £52,000 £52,500 £47,788
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £66,350 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.73% +6.16% -3.85%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £108,250 £110,000 £97,500
UK median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -7.41%

Kafka
Job Vacancy Trend for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Kafka and offering remote or hybrid work options relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Kafka job vacancy trend for remote/hybrid jobs

Kafka
Salary Trend for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Salary distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Kafka.

Salary distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Kafka

Kafka
Salary Histogram for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Salary distribution for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Kafka over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Kafka salary histogram for jobs with remote/hybrid work options

Kafka
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Remote/Hybrid Jobs 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 22 (14.97%) Apache
1 22 (14.97%) Apache Airflow
1 22 (14.97%) Apache Spark
2 5 (3.40%) Apache Pulsar
3 3 (2.04%) Luigi
4 2 (1.36%) Confluence
5 1 (0.68%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.68%) Palantir Foundry
Business Applications
1 2 (1.36%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.68%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 110 (74.83%) AWS
2 60 (40.82%) Azure
3 59 (40.14%) GCP
4 25 (17.01%) Amazon EKS
4 25 (17.01%) GitHub
5 22 (14.97%) Amazon Kinesis
6 17 (11.56%) Azure Service Bus
6 17 (11.56%) SaaS
7 16 (10.88%) GitHub Actions
7 16 (10.88%) Serverless
8 15 (10.20%) Amazon S3
8 15 (10.20%) Amazon SQS
9 14 (9.52%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (6.80%) dbt
11 6 (4.08%) Azure Data Factory
12 5 (3.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (3.40%) Amazon MSK
12 5 (3.40%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (3.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.36%) AMQP
1 2 (1.36%) Broadband
2 1 (0.68%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (17.01%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (14.97%) NoSQL
3 15 (10.20%) Data Warehouse
3 15 (10.20%) Tableau
4 13 (8.84%) MongoDB
5 10 (6.80%) Apache Iceberg
5 10 (6.80%) Flink
5 10 (6.80%) Metadata
6 9 (6.12%) Amazon Athena
6 9 (6.12%) Amazon QuickSight
6 9 (6.12%) Amazon Redshift
7 8 (5.44%) MySQL
8 7 (4.76%) Data Lake
8 7 (4.76%) DynamoDB
9 5 (3.40%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (3.40%) BigQuery
9 5 (3.40%) Redis
9 5 (3.40%) SQL Server
10 4 (2.72%) Apache Cassandra
10 4 (2.72%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 22 (14.97%) Git
2 16 (10.88%) Jenkins
3 7 (4.76%) JMeter
4 6 (4.08%) git-flow
5 5 (3.40%) Cucumber
5 5 (3.40%) Cypress.io
5 5 (3.40%) GitLab
6 4 (2.72%) Selenium
7 3 (2.04%) JUnit
7 3 (2.04%) LoadRunner
7 3 (2.04%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.36%) JIRA
8 2 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.68%) Gradle
9 1 (0.68%) Maven
9 1 (0.68%) MLflow
9 1 (0.68%) Mockito
9 1 (0.68%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.68%) WebDriver
General
1 35 (23.81%) Finance
2 29 (19.73%) Social Skills
3 20 (13.61%) Telecoms
4 16 (10.88%) Banking
5 13 (8.84%) Front Office
6 7 (4.76%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (4.08%) Public Sector
8 5 (3.40%) Financial Institution
8 5 (3.40%) Retail
9 4 (2.72%) Law
10 3 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (2.04%) Legal
10 3 (2.04%) Marketing
11 2 (1.36%) Billing
11 2 (1.36%) Electronics
11 2 (1.36%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.36%) Tech for Good
12 1 (0.68%) Analytical Skills
12 1 (0.68%) Games
12 1 (0.68%) International Banking
Job Titles
1 41 (27.89%) Senior
2 36 (24.49%) Lead
3 29 (19.73%) Data Engineer
4 26 (17.69%) Developer
5 21 (14.29%) Software Engineer
6 15 (10.20%) Principal Engineer
7 12 (8.16%) Lead Data Engineer
8 11 (7.48%) DevOps Engineer
9 10 (6.80%) Kafka Engineer
9 10 (6.80%) Senior Developer
9 10 (6.80%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 9 (6.12%) Full-Stack Developer
11 8 (5.44%) Java Developer
11 8 (5.44%) Java Engineer
11 8 (5.44%) Principal Software Engineer
11 8 (5.44%) Senior Software Engineer
12 7 (4.76%) Applications Engineer
12 7 (4.76%) AWS Engineer
12 7 (4.76%) Python Engineer
13 6 (4.08%) AWS DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (22.45%) React
2 29 (19.73%) RESTful
3 24 (16.33%) Spring
4 23 (15.65%) RabbitMQ
5 22 (14.97%) Spring Boot
6 19 (12.93%) Node.js
6 19 (12.93%) REST
7 16 (10.88%) gRPC
8 15 (10.20%) .NET
9 10 (6.80%) WebSockets
10 9 (6.12%) CSS
11 8 (5.44%) HTML
11 8 (5.44%) OAuth
11 8 (5.44%) OAuth2
12 7 (4.76%) PySpark
13 6 (4.08%) Jest
13 6 (4.08%) Material-UI
14 5 (3.40%) AWS CDK
14 5 (3.40%) GraphQL
14 5 (3.40%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 48 (32.65%) Cloud Native
2 43 (29.25%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (6.12%) AI Agents
3 9 (6.12%) Product Ownership
3 9 (6.12%) Self-Motivation
4 6 (4.08%) Algorithms
4 6 (4.08%) Data Structures
4 6 (4.08%) Fixed Income
5 3 (2.04%) Blog
5 3 (2.04%) Derivative
5 3 (2.04%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (1.36%) Renewable Energy
6 2 (1.36%) Virtual Team
7 1 (0.68%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.68%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.68%) Hackathon
7 1 (0.68%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.68%) Video on Demand
7 1 (0.68%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 10 (6.80%) Android
2 7 (4.76%) Linux
3 1 (0.68%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.68%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (54.42%) CI/CD
2 72 (48.98%) Microservices
3 64 (43.54%) DevOps
4 56 (38.10%) Agile
5 44 (29.93%) Event-Driven
6 41 (27.89%) AI
7 37 (25.17%) Data Engineering
8 35 (23.81%) Analytics
9 34 (23.13%) Software Engineering
10 33 (22.45%) Mentoring
11 31 (21.09%) Data Pipeline
12 29 (19.73%) Data Modelling
12 29 (19.73%) Machine Learning
13 28 (19.05%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 27 (18.37%) Low Latency
14 27 (18.37%) Problem-Solving
15 26 (17.69%) ETL
16 25 (17.01%) Computer Science
16 25 (17.01%) Full-Stack Development
17 23 (15.65%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 68 (46.26%) Java
2 61 (41.50%) Python
3 45 (30.61%) SQL
4 26 (17.69%) Go
5 22 (14.97%) TypeScript
6 20 (13.61%) C#
7 16 (10.88%) JavaScript
8 12 (8.16%) Scala
9 11 (7.48%) Bash
10 8 (5.44%) C++
11 3 (2.04%) Groovy
12 2 (1.36%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.68%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.68%) Korn
13 1 (0.68%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.68%) Rust
13 1 (0.68%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 26 (17.69%) Degree
2 24 (16.33%) Computer Science Degree
3 15 (10.20%) Security Cleared
4 13 (8.84%) SC Cleared
5 5 (3.40%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.36%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.36%) AWS Certified Developer
6 2 (1.36%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (16.33%) Data Quality
2 8 (5.44%) QA
3 5 (3.40%) GDPR
4 2 (1.36%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.36%) PCI DSS
4 2 (1.36%) SOC 2
System Software
1 46 (31.29%) Docker
2 1 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 53 (36.05%) Kubernetes
2 19 (12.93%) Terraform
3 10 (6.80%) Argo
4 9 (6.12%) Ansible
5 7 (4.76%) Grafana
5 7 (4.76%) Prometheus
6 6 (4.08%) Kibana
7 4 (2.72%) Progress Chef
8 3 (2.04%) HP Fortify
9 2 (1.36%) Control-M
9 2 (1.36%) Puppet
10 1 (0.68%) Icinga
10 1 (0.68%) Istio
10 1 (0.68%) Nagios
Vendors
1 15 (10.20%) Databricks
2 6 (4.08%) Google
3 5 (3.40%) Ericsson
3 5 (3.40%) Mavenir
3 5 (3.40%) Nokia
4 4 (2.72%) Oracle
5 3 (2.04%) IBM
5 3 (2.04%) Solace
5 3 (2.04%) VMware
6 2 (1.36%) Microsoft
6 2 (1.36%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.36%) SAP
7 1 (0.68%) Foundry
7 1 (0.68%) Informatica
7 1 (0.68%) Palantir
7 1 (0.68%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.68%) Splunk