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 14 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 473 179 278
Rank change year-on-year -294 +99 +45
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 132 556 716
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.20% 1.87% 0.92%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.40% 11.09% 4.91%
Number of salaries quoted 92 159 318
10th Percentile £53,750 £47,900 £42,500
25th Percentile £60,813 £55,000 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £70,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +16.67% -13.60%
75th Percentile £93,750 £91,250 £76,875
90th Percentile £97,500 £105,750 £91,250
UK median annual salary £90,000 £82,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +10.00% -16.67%

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 5,511 5,015 14,574
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.25% 16.91% 18.63%
Number of salaries quoted 4,427 3,155 10,774
10th Percentile £36,250 £32,193 £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 £89,250 £87,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £66,253 £60,000
% change year-on-year -1.89% +10.42% -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 14 June 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 14 June 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 -162 45 £80,000 +16.36% 27
South East -65 42 £67,500 -6.90% 26
North West -102 36 £80,000 +18.52% 19
South West -71 12 £75,000 +11.11% 14
East of England -30 11 £72,500 +1.40% 6
Midlands -82 11 £87,500 +27.27% 2
West Midlands -42 9 £87,500 +25.00%
Wales - 7 £70,000 - 2
Yorkshire -56 5 £90,000 +12.50% 5
Scotland -79 5 £65,000 -3.70% 8
North East -47 4 £62,500 +31.58% 3
East Midlands -64 2 £71,500 +5.93% 2
Northern Ireland -43 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 17 (12.88%) Apache Airflow
2 16 (12.12%) Apache Spark
3 10 (7.58%) Apache
4 4 (3.03%) OpenStack
5 2 (1.52%) Apache Qpid
5 2 (1.52%) CICS
6 1 (0.76%) Camunda
6 1 (0.76%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 92 (69.70%) AWS
2 60 (45.45%) Azure
3 39 (29.55%) GCP
4 29 (21.97%) Serverless
5 18 (13.64%) AWS Lambda
6 16 (12.12%) Amazon S3
6 16 (12.12%) AWS CloudFormation
7 15 (11.36%) Amazon SQS
7 15 (11.36%) GitHub
8 14 (10.61%) Amazon ECS
8 14 (10.61%) dbt
8 14 (10.61%) Snowflake
9 13 (9.85%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (8.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (6.82%) Amazon EventBridge
11 9 (6.82%) Power Platform
12 8 (6.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 7 (5.30%) Datadog
14 6 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
15 5 (3.79%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 15 (11.36%) MQTT
2 3 (2.27%) Network Security
3 2 (1.52%) Firewall
3 2 (1.52%) SSL
4 1 (0.76%) AMQP
4 1 (0.76%) Broadband
4 1 (0.76%) HTTP
4 1 (0.76%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (22.73%) NoSQL
2 25 (18.94%) MongoDB
3 20 (15.15%) PostgreSQL
4 17 (12.88%) Data Lake
5 15 (11.36%) SQL Server
6 14 (10.61%) Elasticsearch
7 13 (9.85%) Data Warehouse
8 11 (8.33%) Amazon Redshift
9 10 (7.58%) Looker
10 9 (6.82%) DynamoDB
10 9 (6.82%) Power BI
10 9 (6.82%) Redis
10 9 (6.82%) Relational Database
11 8 (6.06%) BigQuery
11 8 (6.06%) Flink
11 8 (6.06%) Tableau
12 7 (5.30%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (5.30%) MySQL
12 7 (5.30%) Snowflake Schema
13 5 (3.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 30 (22.73%) Git
2 14 (10.61%) Jenkins
3 12 (9.09%) GitLab
4 7 (5.30%) JIRA
4 7 (5.30%) MLflow
5 5 (3.79%) JUnit
6 4 (3.03%) IntelliJ
7 3 (2.27%) Cucumber
7 3 (2.27%) Eclipse
7 3 (2.27%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (1.52%) Bitbucket
8 2 (1.52%) JMeter
9 1 (0.76%) Karma Test Runner
9 1 (0.76%) Mockito
9 1 (0.76%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.76%) Selenium
9 1 (0.76%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.76%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.76%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 21 (15.91%) Social Skills
2 15 (11.36%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (9.85%) Finance
4 7 (5.30%) Public Sector
5 4 (3.03%) Advertising
6 3 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (1.52%) Banking
7 2 (1.52%) Games
7 2 (1.52%) Law
8 1 (0.76%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.76%) Automotive
8 1 (0.76%) Marketing
8 1 (0.76%) Retail
8 1 (0.76%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 35 (26.52%) Developer
2 32 (24.24%) Senior
3 28 (21.21%) Data Engineer
4 20 (15.15%) Lead
5 18 (13.64%) Architect
6 16 (12.12%) Java Developer
7 10 (7.58%) Senior Data Engineer
8 9 (6.82%) Senior Developer
9 8 (6.06%) Backend Developer
9 8 (6.06%) Senior Systems Engineer
10 7 (5.30%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 7 (5.30%) Integration Developer
10 7 (5.30%) Integration Engineer
10 7 (5.30%) Lead Developer
10 7 (5.30%) Systems Engineer
11 6 (4.55%) Full-Stack Developer
11 6 (4.55%) Java Engineer
11 6 (4.55%) Principal Engineer
11 6 (4.55%) Software Engineer
12 5 (3.79%) Lead Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (25.00%) REST
1 33 (25.00%) Spring
2 30 (22.73%) Spring Boot
3 21 (15.91%) RESTful
4 19 (14.39%) Node.js
5 18 (13.64%) RabbitMQ
6 13 (9.85%) React
7 12 (9.09%) .NET
8 9 (6.82%) PyTorch
8 9 (6.82%) scikit-learn
8 9 (6.82%) TensorFlow
9 8 (6.06%) AngularJS
9 8 (6.06%) PySpark
9 8 (6.06%) SOAP
10 7 (5.30%) .NET Framework
10 7 (5.30%) gRPC
10 7 (5.30%) Hibernate
10 7 (5.30%) JPA
10 7 (5.30%) Middleware
10 7 (5.30%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 39 (29.55%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (27.27%) Cloud Native
3 15 (11.36%) Product Ownership
4 8 (6.06%) Onboarding
4 8 (6.06%) Public Cloud
5 7 (5.30%) Clustering
6 5 (3.79%) Robotics
7 4 (3.03%) Data Structures
7 4 (3.03%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (3.03%) Mainframe
7 4 (3.03%) Replication
8 3 (2.27%) Distributed Computing
8 3 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (2.27%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 2 (1.52%) Algorithms
9 2 (1.52%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.52%) Virtual Team
10 1 (0.76%) Marketing Technology
10 1 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 11 (8.33%) Linux
2 1 (0.76%) Android
2 1 (0.76%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.76%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (56.06%) CI/CD
2 70 (53.03%) Agile
3 65 (49.24%) Microservices
4 49 (37.12%) Event-Driven
5 45 (34.09%) DevOps
6 41 (31.06%) AI
6 41 (31.06%) Observability
7 39 (29.55%) Containerisation
8 37 (28.03%) Infrastructure as Code
9 33 (25.00%) Analytics
10 31 (23.48%) Data Modelling
11 30 (22.73%) Data Pipeline
11 30 (22.73%) Machine Learning
12 29 (21.97%) Mentoring
13 28 (21.21%) Continuous Improvement
14 27 (20.45%) Scrum
15 22 (16.67%) Data Engineering
15 22 (16.67%) Test Automation
16 21 (15.91%) Data Science
16 21 (15.91%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 77 (58.33%) Python
2 65 (49.24%) SQL
3 59 (44.70%) Java
4 27 (20.45%) JavaScript
5 21 (15.91%) TypeScript
6 13 (9.85%) Rust
7 10 (7.58%) C#
8 7 (5.30%) Groovy
8 7 (5.30%) Scala
9 5 (3.79%) Go
9 5 (3.79%) PowerShell
9 5 (3.79%) T-SQL
10 4 (3.03%) C++
11 3 (2.27%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.52%) Bash
12 2 (1.52%) Bicep
12 2 (1.52%) Kotlin
12 2 (1.52%) Ruby
13 1 (0.76%) C
13 1 (0.76%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 25 (18.94%) Security Cleared
2 19 (14.39%) Degree
3 17 (12.88%) SC Cleared
4 11 (8.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (3.79%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.52%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.76%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (12.88%) Data Quality
2 11 (8.33%) QA
3 7 (5.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 7 (5.30%) GDPR
4 4 (3.03%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.52%) WCAG
System Software
1 53 (40.15%) Docker
Systems Management
1 62 (46.97%) Kubernetes
2 45 (34.09%) Terraform
3 13 (9.85%) Ansible
4 12 (9.09%) Grafana
5 10 (7.58%) Prometheus
6 6 (4.55%) Puppet
7 5 (3.79%) Kibana
8 4 (3.03%) Podman
9 2 (1.52%) Argo
9 2 (1.52%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 18 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 17 (12.88%) Databricks
3 9 (6.82%) Oracle
4 7 (5.30%) Cloudera
4 7 (5.30%) Dell
4 7 (5.30%) HubSpot
5 5 (3.79%) Google
6 4 (3.03%) Confluent
6 4 (3.03%) NVIDIA
6 4 (3.03%) Pega
6 4 (3.03%) Splunk
7 3 (2.27%) OpenAI
7 3 (2.27%) Tenable
8 2 (1.52%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.52%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.76%) Adobe
9 1 (0.76%) Automation Anywhere
9 1 (0.76%) Informatica
9 1 (0.76%) Rollbar
9 1 (0.76%) ServiceNow