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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 239 204 173
Rank change year-on-year -35 -31 -49
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 145 268 486
As % of all permanent jobs with remote/hybrid work options 0.92% 1.64% 1.89%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.19% 5.25% 6.28%
Number of salaries quoted 114 202 404
10th Percentile £59,142 £53,368 £50,686
25th Percentile £73,125 £56,250 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £88,500 £79,632
Median % change year-on-year +12.99% +11.14% -6.32%
75th Percentile £132,500 £115,000 £97,500
90th Percentile £152,500 £138,750 £112,125
UK median annual salary £95,000 £85,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +11.76% +6.25% -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 2,795 5,101 7,737
As % of all permanent jobs with a WFH option 17.80% 31.30% 30.06%
Number of salaries quoted 2,121 3,252 6,710
10th Percentile £41,250 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £51,875 £52,000 £48,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £66,750 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.12% +6.80% -3.85%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £107,500 £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 28 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 (15.17%) Apache
1 22 (15.17%) Apache Airflow
1 22 (15.17%) Apache Spark
2 5 (3.45%) Apache Pulsar
3 3 (2.07%) Luigi
4 2 (1.38%) Confluence
5 1 (0.69%) OpenStack
Business Applications
1 2 (1.38%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.69%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 107 (73.79%) AWS
2 59 (40.69%) Azure
3 58 (40.00%) GCP
4 25 (17.24%) Amazon EKS
5 24 (16.55%) GitHub
6 21 (14.48%) Amazon Kinesis
7 18 (12.41%) SaaS
8 17 (11.72%) Azure Service Bus
9 16 (11.03%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (10.34%) Amazon SQS
10 15 (10.34%) Serverless
11 14 (9.66%) Amazon S3
12 13 (8.97%) AWS Lambda
13 10 (6.90%) dbt
14 6 (4.14%) Azure Data Factory
15 5 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 5 (3.45%) AWS CloudFormation
15 5 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
15 5 (3.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 5 (3.45%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.38%) Broadband
2 1 (0.69%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (17.24%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (14.48%) NoSQL
3 16 (11.03%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (10.34%) MongoDB
5 14 (9.66%) Tableau
6 10 (6.90%) Flink
7 9 (6.21%) Apache Iceberg
7 9 (6.21%) Metadata
8 8 (5.52%) Amazon Athena
8 8 (5.52%) Amazon QuickSight
8 8 (5.52%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (5.52%) MySQL
9 7 (4.83%) Data Lake
9 7 (4.83%) DynamoDB
10 5 (3.45%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (3.45%) BigQuery
10 5 (3.45%) Redis
10 5 (3.45%) SQL Server
11 4 (2.76%) Apache Cassandra
11 4 (2.76%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 20 (13.79%) Git
2 16 (11.03%) Jenkins
3 7 (4.83%) JMeter
4 6 (4.14%) git-flow
5 5 (3.45%) Cucumber
5 5 (3.45%) Cypress.io
6 4 (2.76%) GitLab
6 4 (2.76%) Selenium
7 3 (2.07%) JUnit
7 3 (2.07%) LoadRunner
7 3 (2.07%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.38%) JIRA
8 2 (1.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.69%) Gradle
9 1 (0.69%) Maven
9 1 (0.69%) MLflow
9 1 (0.69%) Mockito
9 1 (0.69%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.69%) WebDriver
General
1 35 (24.14%) Finance
2 28 (19.31%) Social Skills
3 20 (13.79%) Telecoms
4 16 (11.03%) Banking
5 13 (8.97%) Front Office
6 7 (4.83%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (4.14%) Public Sector
8 5 (3.45%) Financial Institution
8 5 (3.45%) Law
8 5 (3.45%) Retail
9 3 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (2.07%) Legal
10 2 (1.38%) Billing
10 2 (1.38%) Electronics
10 2 (1.38%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.38%) Marketing
10 2 (1.38%) Tech for Good
11 1 (0.69%) Analytical Skills
11 1 (0.69%) Games
11 1 (0.69%) International Banking
Job Titles
1 40 (27.59%) Senior
2 34 (23.45%) Lead
3 29 (20.00%) Data Engineer
4 26 (17.93%) Developer
5 21 (14.48%) Software Engineer
6 15 (10.34%) Principal Engineer
7 11 (7.59%) DevOps Engineer
7 11 (7.59%) Lead Data Engineer
8 10 (6.90%) Kafka Engineer
8 10 (6.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 9 (6.21%) Full-Stack Developer
9 9 (6.21%) Java Developer
9 9 (6.21%) Senior Developer
10 8 (5.52%) Principal Software Engineer
10 8 (5.52%) Python Engineer
10 8 (5.52%) Senior Software Engineer
11 7 (4.83%) Applications Engineer
11 7 (4.83%) AWS Engineer
11 7 (4.83%) Java Engineer
12 6 (4.14%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (22.76%) React
2 28 (19.31%) RESTful
3 23 (15.86%) RabbitMQ
4 22 (15.17%) Spring
5 20 (13.79%) Spring Boot
6 18 (12.41%) Node.js
7 17 (11.72%) REST
8 16 (11.03%) gRPC
9 14 (9.66%) .NET
10 10 (6.90%) WebSockets
11 9 (6.21%) CSS
12 8 (5.52%) HTML
12 8 (5.52%) OAuth
12 8 (5.52%) OAuth2
13 7 (4.83%) PySpark
14 6 (4.14%) Jest
14 6 (4.14%) Material-UI
15 5 (3.45%) AWS CDK
15 5 (3.45%) GraphQL
15 5 (3.45%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 47 (32.41%) Cloud Native
2 43 (29.66%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (6.21%) AI Agents
4 8 (5.52%) Product Ownership
4 8 (5.52%) Self-Motivation
5 7 (4.83%) Data Structures
6 6 (4.14%) Algorithms
6 6 (4.14%) Fixed Income
7 3 (2.07%) Blog
7 3 (2.07%) Derivative
7 3 (2.07%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (1.38%) Legacy Code
8 2 (1.38%) Renewable Energy
8 2 (1.38%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.69%) Client/Server
9 1 (0.69%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.69%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.69%) Video on Demand
9 1 (0.69%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 10 (6.90%) Android
2 7 (4.83%) Linux
3 1 (0.69%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.69%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (52.41%) CI/CD
2 70 (48.28%) Microservices
3 62 (42.76%) DevOps
4 57 (39.31%) Agile
5 42 (28.97%) AI
5 42 (28.97%) Event-Driven
6 37 (25.52%) Data Engineering
7 34 (23.45%) Analytics
8 33 (22.76%) Mentoring
8 33 (22.76%) Software Engineering
9 31 (21.38%) Data Pipeline
10 29 (20.00%) Data Modelling
10 29 (20.00%) Machine Learning
11 27 (18.62%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 27 (18.62%) Low Latency
12 26 (17.93%) ETL
12 26 (17.93%) Problem-Solving
13 25 (17.24%) Full-Stack Development
14 24 (16.55%) Computer Science
15 22 (15.17%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 68 (46.90%) Java
2 59 (40.69%) Python
3 43 (29.66%) SQL
4 26 (17.93%) Go
5 21 (14.48%) TypeScript
6 20 (13.79%) C#
7 16 (11.03%) JavaScript
8 12 (8.28%) Scala
9 10 (6.90%) Bash
10 8 (5.52%) C++
11 3 (2.07%) Groovy
12 2 (1.38%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.69%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.69%) Korn
13 1 (0.69%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.69%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 24 (16.55%) Degree
2 23 (15.86%) Computer Science Degree
3 14 (9.66%) Security Cleared
4 12 (8.28%) SC Cleared
5 5 (3.45%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.38%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.38%) AWS Certified Developer
6 2 (1.38%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (15.86%) Data Quality
2 7 (4.83%) QA
3 5 (3.45%) GDPR
4 2 (1.38%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.38%) PCI DSS
4 2 (1.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 44 (30.34%) Docker
2 1 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 51 (35.17%) Kubernetes
2 18 (12.41%) Terraform
3 10 (6.90%) Argo
4 8 (5.52%) Ansible
5 6 (4.14%) Grafana
5 6 (4.14%) Kibana
5 6 (4.14%) Prometheus
6 4 (2.76%) Progress Chef
7 3 (2.07%) HP Fortify
8 2 (1.38%) Control-M
8 2 (1.38%) Puppet
9 1 (0.69%) Icinga
9 1 (0.69%) Istio
9 1 (0.69%) Nagios
Vendors
1 15 (10.34%) Databricks
2 6 (4.14%) Google
3 5 (3.45%) Ericsson
3 5 (3.45%) Mavenir
3 5 (3.45%) Nokia
4 3 (2.07%) IBM
4 3 (2.07%) Oracle
4 3 (2.07%) Solace
4 3 (2.07%) VMware
5 2 (1.38%) Microsoft
5 2 (1.38%) OpenAI
5 2 (1.38%) SAP
6 1 (0.69%) Foundry
6 1 (0.69%) Informatica
6 1 (0.69%) Palantir
6 1 (0.69%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.69%) Splunk