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 5 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 192 278
Rank change year-on-year -264 +86 +33
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 156 544 678
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.22% 1.67% 0.89%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.64% 10.66% 4.84%
Number of salaries quoted 115 148 312
10th Percentile £53,000 £45,875 £42,500
25th Percentile £59,500 £53,063 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £67,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% +12.50% -13.60%
75th Percentile £93,750 £90,625 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £106,125 £91,250
UK median annual salary £87,500 £85,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year +2.94% +13.33% -14.29%

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 5,915 5,104 14,003
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.42% 15.65% 18.47%
Number of salaries quoted 4,772 3,226 10,411
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 £73,750 £68,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £86,250 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £67,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -3.70% +12.50% -10.45%

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 5 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 5 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 -141 51 £75,000 +11.11% 37
South East -70 45 £67,500 -6.90% 37
North West -96 45 £75,000 +11.11% 22
South West -82 15 £85,000 +25.93% 20
East of England -21 14 £72,500 +1.40% 4
Midlands -82 13 £86,250 +27.78% 16
Wales - 13 £70,000 - 2
West Midlands -37 11 £87,500 +34.62% 8
Scotland -84 6 £65,000 -3.70% 10
North East -45 4 £62,500 +31.58% 6
Yorkshire -36 2 £90,000 -26.69% 10
East Midlands -64 2 £71,500 +5.93% 8
Northern Ireland -62 1 - - 4
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 16 (10.26%) Apache Airflow
1 16 (10.26%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.77%) Apache
3 2 (1.28%) Apache Qpid
3 2 (1.28%) CICS
4 1 (0.64%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.64%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.64%) BizTalk Server
4 1 (0.64%) Camunda
4 1 (0.64%) Confluence
4 1 (0.64%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.64%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 105 (67.31%) AWS
2 77 (49.36%) Azure
3 49 (31.41%) GCP
4 31 (19.87%) Serverless
5 22 (14.10%) AWS Lambda
6 21 (13.46%) AWS CloudFormation
6 21 (13.46%) GitHub
7 17 (10.90%) Amazon SQS
8 14 (8.97%) Amazon S3
8 14 (8.97%) Snowflake
9 13 (8.33%) dbt
10 12 (7.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 12 (7.69%) Amazon EventBridge
11 11 (7.05%) Amazon ECS
11 11 (7.05%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (5.77%) Power Platform
13 8 (5.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 8 (5.13%) GitHub Copilot
14 7 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (4.49%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 19 (12.18%) MQTT
2 3 (1.92%) Network Security
3 2 (1.28%) Firewall
3 2 (1.28%) SSL
4 1 (0.64%) AMQP
4 1 (0.64%) ATM
4 1 (0.64%) Broadband
4 1 (0.64%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (20.51%) MongoDB
2 31 (19.87%) NoSQL
3 25 (16.03%) PostgreSQL
4 17 (10.90%) Data Lake
4 17 (10.90%) SQL Server
5 16 (10.26%) Elasticsearch
6 13 (8.33%) Data Warehouse
7 12 (7.69%) MySQL
8 11 (7.05%) Amazon Redshift
9 10 (6.41%) Looker
10 9 (5.77%) DynamoDB
10 9 (5.77%) Flink
10 9 (5.77%) Power BI
10 9 (5.77%) Redis
10 9 (5.77%) Relational Database
11 8 (5.13%) BigQuery
11 8 (5.13%) Tableau
12 7 (4.49%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (4.49%) Snowflake Schema
13 5 (3.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 33 (21.15%) Git
2 15 (9.62%) Jenkins
3 14 (8.97%) GitLab
4 7 (4.49%) JIRA
4 7 (4.49%) MLflow
5 4 (2.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (2.56%) Bitbucket
5 4 (2.56%) IntelliJ
5 4 (2.56%) JUnit
6 3 (1.92%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.92%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.92%) Postman
6 3 (1.92%) Selenium
6 3 (1.92%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.28%) JMeter
8 1 (0.64%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.64%) Mockito
8 1 (0.64%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.64%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.64%) TeamCity
General
1 27 (17.31%) Social Skills
2 20 (12.82%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (8.97%) Finance
4 12 (7.69%) Public Sector
5 4 (2.56%) Advertising
5 4 (2.56%) Banking
6 3 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.92%) Law
7 2 (1.28%) Aerospace
7 2 (1.28%) Automotive
7 2 (1.28%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.64%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.64%) Games
8 1 (0.64%) Italian Language
8 1 (0.64%) Japanese Language
8 1 (0.64%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 42 (26.92%) Developer
2 36 (23.08%) Senior
3 30 (19.23%) Data Engineer
4 25 (16.03%) Lead
5 22 (14.10%) Architect
6 19 (12.18%) Java Developer
7 12 (7.69%) Senior Data Engineer
8 11 (7.05%) Senior Developer
9 9 (5.77%) DevOps Engineer
9 9 (5.77%) Full-Stack Developer
9 9 (5.77%) Software Engineer
10 8 (5.13%) Backend Developer
10 8 (5.13%) Integration Developer
10 8 (5.13%) Integration Engineer
10 8 (5.13%) Senior Systems Engineer
11 7 (4.49%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 7 (4.49%) Lead Developer
11 7 (4.49%) Systems Engineer
12 6 (3.85%) Integration Architect
12 6 (3.85%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (25.64%) Spring
2 38 (24.36%) Spring Boot
3 34 (21.79%) REST
4 32 (20.51%) RESTful
5 27 (17.31%) RabbitMQ
6 20 (12.82%) Node.js
7 17 (10.90%) Hibernate
8 16 (10.26%) JPA
9 14 (8.97%) .NET
10 13 (8.33%) React
11 9 (5.77%) OpenAPI
11 9 (5.77%) PyTorch
11 9 (5.77%) scikit-learn
11 9 (5.77%) Swagger
11 9 (5.77%) TensorFlow
12 8 (5.13%) FastAPI
12 8 (5.13%) JWT
12 8 (5.13%) OAuth
12 8 (5.13%) PySpark
12 8 (5.13%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 46 (29.49%) Cloud Native
2 40 (25.64%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (10.90%) Product Ownership
4 10 (6.41%) Onboarding
5 8 (5.13%) Public Cloud
6 7 (4.49%) Clustering
7 6 (3.85%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (3.85%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (3.85%) Mainframe
7 6 (3.85%) Robotics
8 5 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (2.56%) Data Structures
9 4 (2.56%) Replication
9 4 (2.56%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.92%) Marketing Technology
10 3 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (1.92%) Team-Oriented Environment
11 2 (1.28%) Algorithms
11 2 (1.28%) Distributed Computing
11 2 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 17 (10.90%) Linux
2 2 (1.28%) Windows
3 1 (0.64%) Android
3 1 (0.64%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 89 (57.05%) CI/CD
2 80 (51.28%) Agile
3 72 (46.15%) Microservices
4 60 (38.46%) DevOps
5 58 (37.18%) Event-Driven
6 48 (30.77%) AI
6 48 (30.77%) Observability
7 47 (30.13%) Containerisation
8 45 (28.85%) Infrastructure as Code
9 37 (23.72%) Analytics
10 34 (21.79%) Machine Learning
11 33 (21.15%) Mentoring
12 32 (20.51%) Continuous Improvement
12 32 (20.51%) Data Pipeline
12 32 (20.51%) Scrum
13 30 (19.23%) Data Modelling
13 30 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
14 27 (17.31%) Software Engineering
15 24 (15.38%) Roadmaps
15 24 (15.38%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 86 (55.13%) Python
2 70 (44.87%) Java
3 69 (44.23%) SQL
4 26 (16.67%) JavaScript
5 21 (13.46%) TypeScript
6 14 (8.97%) Rust
7 10 (6.41%) C#
8 9 (5.77%) PowerShell
9 8 (5.13%) Go
10 7 (4.49%) Scala
11 6 (3.85%) Groovy
12 5 (3.21%) Bash
12 5 (3.21%) T-SQL
13 4 (2.56%) C++
13 4 (2.56%) Kotlin
13 4 (2.56%) Ruby
14 3 (1.92%) PL/SQL
15 2 (1.28%) Bicep
15 2 (1.28%) C
16 1 (0.64%) DataWeave
Qualifications
1 31 (19.87%) Security Cleared
2 22 (14.10%) Degree
2 22 (14.10%) SC Cleared
3 13 (8.33%) Computer Science Degree
4 7 (4.49%) DV Cleared
5 4 (2.56%) Master's Degree
6 3 (1.92%) Azure Certification
6 3 (1.92%) MBA
7 1 (0.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.64%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (11.54%) Data Quality
2 14 (8.97%) QA
3 7 (4.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 7 (4.49%) GDPR
4 6 (3.85%) Accessibility
5 4 (2.56%) WCAG
6 1 (0.64%) NIST
6 1 (0.64%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.64%) SOC 2
System Software
1 64 (41.03%) Docker
Systems Management
1 78 (50.00%) Kubernetes
2 54 (34.62%) Terraform
3 15 (9.62%) Ansible
3 15 (9.62%) Grafana
4 12 (7.69%) Prometheus
5 6 (3.85%) Puppet
6 5 (3.21%) Kibana
7 4 (2.56%) Argo
7 4 (2.56%) Podman
8 2 (1.28%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 18 (11.54%) Microsoft
2 17 (10.90%) Databricks
3 9 (5.77%) Oracle
4 8 (5.13%) Dell
4 8 (5.13%) Splunk
5 7 (4.49%) Cloudera
5 7 (4.49%) HubSpot
6 6 (3.85%) Google
7 4 (2.56%) Atlassian
7 4 (2.56%) Confluent
7 4 (2.56%) Dynatrace
7 4 (2.56%) NVIDIA
7 4 (2.56%) OpenAI
7 4 (2.56%) Pega
8 3 (1.92%) Adobe
8 3 (1.92%) Tenable
9 2 (1.28%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.64%) Automation Anywhere
10 1 (0.64%) Rollbar
10 1 (0.64%) ServiceNow