Kafka Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Apache Kafka
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Kafka skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 434 197 266
Rank change year-on-year -237 +69 +60
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 183 531 632
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.25% 1.56% 0.94%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.96% 10.46% 5.20%
Number of salaries quoted 135 138 279
10th Percentile £54,885 £44,625 £42,500
25th Percentile £61,250 £52,500 £44,738
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,500 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +5.93% +17.39% -17.86%
75th Percentile £90,625 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £97,500 £91,250
UK median annual salary £85,000 £82,500 £72,500
% change year-on-year +3.03% +13.79% -17.14%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK excluding London

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 requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills in the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 6,187 5,077 12,146
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.53% 14.96% 17.98%
Number of salaries quoted 4,983 3,211 8,830
10th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £33,750
25th Percentile £46,250 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £73,750 £73,125 £68,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £85,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £67,037 £60,000
% change year-on-year -3.04% +11.73% -11.11%

Kafka
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Kafka relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Kafka job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Kafka
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Kafka.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Kafka

Kafka
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Kafka in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 21 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Kafka in the UK excluding London

Kafka
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Kafka within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 21 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North of England -131 55 £75,000 +11.11% 36
South East -66 47 £67,500 -6.25% 44
North West -89 47 £75,000 +11.11% 14
South West -67 24 £85,000 +30.77% 20
Midlands -86 18 £85,000 +25.93% 7
Wales - 18 £70,000 - 2
West Midlands -34 16 £86,250 +43.75% 5
East of England -13 15 £72,500 +1.40% 6
Scotland -79 9 £65,000 +4.00% 14
Yorkshire -42 4 £66,805 -23.65% 14
North East -49 4 £62,500 +31.58% 8
East Midlands -62 2 £71,500 +5.93% 2
Northern Ireland -79 1 - - 5
Kafka
UK

Kafka
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 21 (11.48%) Apache Spark
2 17 (9.29%) Apache Airflow
3 11 (6.01%) Apache
4 3 (1.64%) Anypoint
4 3 (1.64%) BizTalk Server
5 2 (1.09%) ArcGIS
5 2 (1.09%) CICS
6 1 (0.55%) Camunda
6 1 (0.55%) Confluence
6 1 (0.55%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.55%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 123 (67.21%) AWS
2 95 (51.91%) Azure
3 56 (30.60%) GCP
4 33 (18.03%) Serverless
5 29 (15.85%) GitHub
6 25 (13.66%) AWS CloudFormation
7 23 (12.57%) Amazon SQS
7 23 (12.57%) AWS Lambda
8 16 (8.74%) Amazon EventBridge
8 16 (8.74%) Snowflake
9 15 (8.20%) Amazon S3
10 14 (7.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 13 (7.10%) dbt
12 12 (6.56%) Amazon ECS
12 12 (6.56%) GitHub Copilot
13 11 (6.01%) Azure DevOps
14 10 (5.46%) Amazon EKS
14 10 (5.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 9 (4.92%) Power Platform
16 8 (4.37%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 21 (11.48%) MQTT
2 3 (1.64%) Network Security
3 2 (1.09%) Firewall
3 2 (1.09%) SSL
4 1 (0.55%) AMQP
4 1 (0.55%) ATM
4 1 (0.55%) Broadband
4 1 (0.55%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (20.22%) MongoDB
2 34 (18.58%) PostgreSQL
3 31 (16.94%) NoSQL
4 20 (10.93%) SQL Server
5 19 (10.38%) MySQL
6 18 (9.84%) Elasticsearch
7 17 (9.29%) Data Lake
8 13 (7.10%) Data Warehouse
8 13 (7.10%) Relational Database
9 12 (6.56%) Amazon Redshift
10 11 (6.01%) Big Data
10 11 (6.01%) Redis
11 10 (5.46%) Flink
11 10 (5.46%) Looker
12 9 (4.92%) DynamoDB
12 9 (4.92%) Power BI
13 8 (4.37%) BigQuery
14 7 (3.83%) Amazon RDS
14 7 (3.83%) Snowflake Schema
14 7 (3.83%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (21.86%) Git
2 20 (10.93%) Jenkins
3 19 (10.38%) GitLab
4 7 (3.83%) JIRA
4 7 (3.83%) MLflow
5 4 (2.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (2.19%) Bitbucket
5 4 (2.19%) IntelliJ
5 4 (2.19%) JUnit
6 3 (1.64%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.64%) Postman
6 3 (1.64%) Selenium
6 3 (1.64%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.09%) Cucumber
7 2 (1.09%) JMeter
7 2 (1.09%) minitest
7 2 (1.09%) RSpec
8 1 (0.55%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.55%) Mockito
8 1 (0.55%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 32 (17.49%) Social Skills
2 27 (14.75%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (11.48%) Public Sector
4 16 (8.74%) Finance
5 6 (3.28%) Banking
6 4 (2.19%) Advertising
7 3 (1.64%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.64%) Law
8 2 (1.09%) Automotive
8 2 (1.09%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.09%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.55%) Billing
9 1 (0.55%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.55%) Games
9 1 (0.55%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.55%) Japanese Language
9 1 (0.55%) Marketing
9 1 (0.55%) Retail
9 1 (0.55%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 52 (28.42%) Developer
2 48 (26.23%) Senior
3 38 (20.77%) Data Engineer
4 29 (15.85%) Lead
5 23 (12.57%) Java Developer
6 22 (12.02%) Architect
7 18 (9.84%) Senior Data Engineer
8 16 (8.74%) Senior Developer
9 13 (7.10%) Software Engineer
10 12 (6.56%) Full-Stack Developer
11 10 (5.46%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (5.46%) Integration Developer
12 9 (4.92%) Backend Developer
12 9 (4.92%) Principal Engineer
13 8 (4.37%) Full-Stack Java Developer
13 8 (4.37%) Integration Engineer
13 8 (4.37%) Senior Systems Engineer
14 7 (3.83%) Lead Developer
14 7 (3.83%) Python Developer
14 7 (3.83%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (26.23%) Spring
2 47 (25.68%) Spring Boot
3 41 (22.40%) RESTful
4 38 (20.77%) REST
5 31 (16.94%) RabbitMQ
6 22 (12.02%) Hibernate
7 21 (11.48%) JPA
7 21 (11.48%) Node.js
8 16 (8.74%) React
9 14 (7.65%) .NET
10 13 (7.10%) PySpark
11 10 (5.46%) FastAPI
11 10 (5.46%) JWT
11 10 (5.46%) OAuth
11 10 (5.46%) OpenAPI
11 10 (5.46%) Swagger
12 9 (4.92%) PyTorch
12 9 (4.92%) scikit-learn
12 9 (4.92%) TensorFlow
13 8 (4.37%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 53 (28.96%) Cloud Native
2 43 (23.50%) Distributed Systems
3 21 (11.48%) Product Ownership
4 10 (5.46%) Onboarding
4 10 (5.46%) Public Cloud
5 9 (4.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 8 (4.37%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (4.37%) Mainframe
7 7 (3.83%) Clustering
7 7 (3.83%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (3.83%) Robotics
8 5 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (2.19%) Data Structures
9 4 (2.19%) Marketing Technology
9 4 (2.19%) Replication
9 4 (2.19%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.64%) Distributed Computing
10 3 (1.64%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (1.64%) Team-Oriented Environment
11 2 (1.09%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 19 (10.38%) Linux
2 2 (1.09%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (55.74%) CI/CD
2 90 (49.18%) Agile
3 85 (46.45%) Microservices
4 76 (41.53%) DevOps
5 63 (34.43%) Event-Driven
6 53 (28.96%) AI
7 52 (28.42%) Containerisation
8 51 (27.87%) Infrastructure as Code
8 51 (27.87%) Observability
9 45 (24.59%) Analytics
10 42 (22.95%) Data Pipeline
10 42 (22.95%) Mentoring
11 40 (21.86%) Continuous Improvement
12 39 (21.31%) Machine Learning
12 39 (21.31%) Problem-Solving
12 39 (21.31%) Software Engineering
13 36 (19.67%) Scrum
14 32 (17.49%) Data Modelling
15 30 (16.39%) ETL
16 29 (15.85%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 101 (55.19%) Python
2 84 (45.90%) Java
3 78 (42.62%) SQL
4 30 (16.39%) JavaScript
5 21 (11.48%) TypeScript
6 13 (7.10%) Rust
7 11 (6.01%) C#
8 10 (5.46%) Go
8 10 (5.46%) PowerShell
9 9 (4.92%) Scala
10 8 (4.37%) Ruby
11 6 (3.28%) Groovy
11 6 (3.28%) Kotlin
12 5 (2.73%) Bash
12 5 (2.73%) T-SQL
13 4 (2.19%) C++
14 3 (1.64%) DataWeave
14 3 (1.64%) PL/SQL
15 2 (1.09%) Bicep
15 2 (1.09%) C
Qualifications
1 40 (21.86%) Security Cleared
2 28 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 27 (14.75%) Degree
4 15 (8.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (5.46%) DV Cleared
6 8 (4.37%) Azure Certification
7 5 (2.73%) Master's Degree
8 4 (2.19%) MBA
9 1 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (11.48%) Data Quality
2 16 (8.74%) QA
3 9 (4.92%) GDPR
4 7 (3.83%) Accessibility
4 7 (3.83%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 6 (3.28%) WCAG
6 2 (1.09%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.55%) NIST
7 1 (0.55%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.55%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.55%) PSD2
System Software
1 72 (39.34%) Docker
Systems Management
1 86 (46.99%) Kubernetes
2 60 (32.79%) Terraform
3 17 (9.29%) Ansible
3 17 (9.29%) Grafana
4 14 (7.65%) Prometheus
5 6 (3.28%) Puppet
6 5 (2.73%) Kibana
7 4 (2.19%) Argo
7 4 (2.19%) Podman
8 2 (1.09%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 20 (10.93%) Databricks
2 19 (10.38%) Microsoft
3 10 (5.46%) Google
4 9 (4.92%) Oracle
4 9 (4.92%) Splunk
5 8 (4.37%) Dell
6 7 (3.83%) Cloudera
6 7 (3.83%) HubSpot
7 6 (3.28%) Atlassian
8 5 (2.73%) OpenAI
9 4 (2.19%) Adobe
9 4 (2.19%) Confluent
9 4 (2.19%) Dynatrace
9 4 (2.19%) Informatica
9 4 (2.19%) MuleSoft
9 4 (2.19%) NVIDIA
9 4 (2.19%) Pega
10 3 (1.64%) Tenable
10 3 (1.64%) webMethods
11 1 (0.55%) Yahoo!