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 7 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 447 202 273
Rank change year-on-year -245 +71 +5
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 224 492 486
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.27% 1.43% 0.86%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 3.07% 10.40% 4.52%
Number of salaries quoted 158 116 216
10th Percentile £54,491 £43,750 -
25th Percentile £62,407 £52,188 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% +17.39% -17.86%
75th Percentile £85,000 £79,688 £67,813
90th Percentile £97,500 £98,125 £85,000
UK median annual salary £80,000 £82,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year -3.03% +17.86% -17.65%

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 7,297 4,732 10,745
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.90% 13.71% 18.92%
Number of salaries quoted 5,726 2,874 6,864
10th Percentile £38,998 £32,725 £35,000
25th Percentile £47,500 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £56,517
Median % change year-on-year - +6.16% -5.81%
75th Percentile £76,075 £73,750 £70,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £86,250 £80,000
UK median annual salary £67,500 £70,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -3.57% +7.69% -3.70%

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 7 September 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 7 September 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 -129 71 £75,000 +7.14% 108
North West -79 54 £75,000 +7.14% 54
South East -61 43 £67,500 -5.59% 68
South West -78 35 £85,000 +30.77% 43
Midlands -78 28 £85,000 +25.93% 24
West Midlands -35 26 £85,000 +41.67% 17
Wales - 22 £70,000 - 4
East of England -30 20 £72,500 -15.45% 11
Scotland -87 13 £65,000 +13.04% 55
North East -62 11 £65,000 +36.84% 14
Yorkshire -46 6 £78,500 +4.67% 40
East Midlands -70 2 £71,500 +5.93% 7
Northern Ireland -90 1 - - 24
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 28 (12.50%) Apache Spark
2 18 (8.04%) Apache
3 14 (6.25%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.34%) Anypoint
4 3 (1.34%) BizTalk Server
4 3 (1.34%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.89%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.89%) Confluence
6 1 (0.45%) JBoss
6 1 (0.45%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 142 (63.39%) AWS
2 113 (50.45%) Azure
3 57 (25.45%) GCP
4 38 (16.96%) Serverless
5 32 (14.29%) AWS CloudFormation
6 31 (13.84%) GitHub
7 26 (11.61%) AWS Lambda
8 25 (11.16%) Amazon SQS
9 20 (8.93%) Amazon S3
10 18 (8.04%) Amazon ECS
11 16 (7.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 16 (7.14%) Amazon EventBridge
12 13 (5.80%) Azure Service Bus
12 13 (5.80%) GitHub Copilot
12 13 (5.80%) Snowflake
13 12 (5.36%) Azure Data Factory
14 11 (4.91%) Amazon EKS
14 11 (4.91%) Datadog
15 9 (4.02%) dbt
15 9 (4.02%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 25 (11.16%) MQTT
2 5 (2.23%) Network Security
3 2 (0.89%) 4G
3 2 (0.89%) 5G
3 2 (0.89%) DNS
3 2 (0.89%) HTTP
3 2 (0.89%) SSH
3 2 (0.89%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.45%) ATM
4 1 (0.45%) Firewall
4 1 (0.45%) LAN
4 1 (0.45%) SSL
4 1 (0.45%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (23.66%) MongoDB
2 44 (19.64%) PostgreSQL
3 40 (17.86%) NoSQL
4 28 (12.50%) MySQL
5 21 (9.38%) SQL Server
6 18 (8.04%) Elasticsearch
7 16 (7.14%) Data Lake
8 14 (6.25%) Big Data
8 14 (6.25%) Flink
8 14 (6.25%) Relational Database
9 12 (5.36%) Redis
10 11 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
11 10 (4.46%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (4.46%) DynamoDB
12 8 (3.57%) Amazon RDS
12 8 (3.57%) Power BI
13 7 (3.13%) BigQuery
14 6 (2.68%) Looker
14 6 (2.68%) Tableau
15 5 (2.23%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 50 (22.32%) Git
2 24 (10.71%) GitLab
3 22 (9.82%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.57%) JIRA
5 5 (2.23%) MLflow
5 5 (2.23%) Selenium
6 4 (1.79%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (1.79%) Bitbucket
6 4 (1.79%) JUnit
7 3 (1.34%) Postman
7 3 (1.34%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.89%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.89%) JMeter
8 2 (0.89%) minitest
8 2 (0.89%) RSpec
9 1 (0.45%) ERwin
9 1 (0.45%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.45%) Maven
9 1 (0.45%) Mockito
9 1 (0.45%) TeamCity
General
1 33 (14.73%) Analytical Skills
1 33 (14.73%) Social Skills
2 30 (13.39%) Public Sector
3 23 (10.27%) Finance
4 12 (5.36%) Banking
5 10 (4.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (3.13%) Law
7 5 (2.23%) Games
8 4 (1.79%) Advertising
8 4 (1.79%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.79%) Marketing
8 4 (1.79%) Publishing
9 3 (1.34%) iGaming
9 3 (1.34%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.89%) Automotive
10 2 (0.89%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.45%) Billing
11 1 (0.45%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.45%) Military
11 1 (0.45%) Retail
Job Titles
1 71 (31.70%) Developer
2 67 (29.91%) Senior
3 49 (21.88%) Data Engineer
4 36 (16.07%) Lead
5 30 (13.39%) Java Developer
6 27 (12.05%) Senior Developer
7 25 (11.16%) Architect
8 22 (9.82%) Senior Data Engineer
9 21 (9.38%) Software Engineer
10 14 (6.25%) Kafka Engineer
10 14 (6.25%) Python Developer
11 12 (5.36%) Backend Developer
11 12 (5.36%) Python Engineer
12 11 (4.91%) Senior Python Developer
13 10 (4.46%) Full-Stack Developer
13 10 (4.46%) Integration Developer
13 10 (4.46%) Java Engineer
13 10 (4.46%) Principal Engineer
14 9 (4.02%) Azure Engineer
14 9 (4.02%) Elasticsearch Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (29.91%) Spring
2 66 (29.46%) Terraform
3 64 (28.57%) Spring Boot
4 55 (24.55%) RESTful
5 51 (22.77%) RabbitMQ
6 45 (20.09%) REST
7 29 (12.95%) Hibernate
8 27 (12.05%) JPA
8 27 (12.05%) Node.js
9 19 (8.48%) FastAPI
9 19 (8.48%) React
10 17 (7.59%) .NET
10 17 (7.59%) OpenAPI
10 17 (7.59%) Swagger
11 16 (7.14%) PySpark
12 12 (5.36%) Apache NiFi
12 12 (5.36%) Keycloak
13 10 (4.46%) JWT
13 10 (4.46%) OAuth
14 8 (3.57%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 71 (31.70%) Cloud Native
2 55 (24.55%) Distributed Systems
3 28 (12.50%) Product Ownership
4 14 (6.25%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (6.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (4.46%) Onboarding
5 10 (4.46%) Self-Motivation
6 9 (4.02%) Public Cloud
6 9 (4.02%) Virtual Team
7 8 (3.57%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (3.13%) Greenfield Project
8 7 (3.13%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (3.13%) Robotics
9 6 (2.68%) Data Structures
9 6 (2.68%) Mainframe
10 5 (2.23%) AI Agents
10 5 (2.23%) Algorithms
10 5 (2.23%) Clustering
11 4 (1.79%) Podcast
11 4 (1.79%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 24 (10.71%) Linux
2 4 (1.79%) Windows
3 1 (0.45%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (56.25%) CI/CD
2 107 (47.77%) Agile
3 101 (45.09%) Microservices
4 98 (43.75%) DevOps
5 89 (39.73%) Event-Driven
6 72 (32.14%) Infrastructure as Code
7 69 (30.80%) Containerisation
7 69 (30.80%) Software Engineering
8 62 (27.68%) AI
8 62 (27.68%) Mentoring
9 57 (25.45%) Observability
10 52 (23.21%) Problem-Solving
11 51 (22.77%) Data Pipeline
12 49 (21.88%) Analytics
13 41 (18.30%) Continuous Improvement
13 41 (18.30%) Scrum
14 40 (17.86%) Technical Leadership
15 39 (17.41%) ETL
15 39 (17.41%) Roadmaps
16 38 (16.96%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 118 (52.68%) Python
2 111 (49.55%) Java
3 75 (33.48%) SQL
4 30 (13.39%) JavaScript
5 29 (12.95%) TypeScript
6 16 (7.14%) Go
7 12 (5.36%) C#
8 10 (4.46%) PowerShell
8 10 (4.46%) Rust
9 8 (3.57%) Groovy
9 8 (3.57%) Ruby
9 8 (3.57%) Scala
10 7 (3.13%) Bash
11 6 (2.68%) Kotlin
12 5 (2.23%) T-SQL
13 4 (1.79%) Shell Script
14 3 (1.34%) C++
14 3 (1.34%) DataWeave
15 2 (0.89%) Bicep
15 2 (0.89%) C
Qualifications
1 58 (25.89%) Security Cleared
2 38 (16.96%) SC Cleared
3 26 (11.61%) Degree
4 17 (7.59%) Computer Science Degree
4 17 (7.59%) DV Cleared
5 15 (6.70%) Azure Certification
6 6 (2.68%) AWS Certification
7 5 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (2.23%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.79%) MBA
9 3 (1.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.45%) HND
11 1 (0.45%) OCP
11 1 (0.45%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (10.27%) Data Quality
2 21 (9.38%) QA
3 8 (3.57%) GDPR
4 7 (3.13%) Accessibility
5 6 (2.68%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 6 (2.68%) WCAG
6 3 (1.34%) NIST
6 3 (1.34%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.89%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.45%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.45%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.45%) PSD2
System Software
1 91 (40.63%) Docker
2 1 (0.45%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 106 (47.32%) Kubernetes
2 24 (10.71%) Grafana
3 20 (8.93%) Prometheus
4 16 (7.14%) Ansible
5 7 (3.13%) Argo
6 6 (2.68%) Puppet
7 5 (2.23%) Kibana
7 5 (2.23%) Podman
8 1 (0.45%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (9.38%) Databricks
2 20 (8.93%) Microsoft
3 18 (8.04%) Splunk
4 10 (4.46%) Dynatrace
5 9 (4.02%) Google
6 8 (3.57%) Oracle
7 7 (3.13%) Atlassian
7 7 (3.13%) HubSpot
7 7 (3.13%) OpenAI
8 6 (2.68%) Dell
9 5 (2.23%) Cloudera
9 5 (2.23%) MuleSoft
10 4 (1.79%) Adobe
10 4 (1.79%) Informatica
10 4 (1.79%) NVIDIA
11 3 (1.34%) Confluent
11 3 (1.34%) Tenable
11 3 (1.34%) webMethods
12 2 (0.89%) Sparx
13 1 (0.45%) YouTube