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 30 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 184 273
Rank change year-on-year -272 +89 -5
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 128 525 729
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.19% 1.82% 1.01%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.39% 10.61% 5.20%
Number of salaries quoted 86 159 313
10th Percentile £53,750 £49,600 £42,500
25th Percentile £59,500 £56,875 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £70,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +16.67% -11.11%
75th Percentile £94,688 £92,500 £77,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £109,500 £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 5,352 4,949 14,007
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 7.94% 17.13% 19.39%
Number of salaries quoted 4,272 3,182 10,478
10th Percentile £36,250 £32,500 £33,750
25th Percentile £46,250 £46,000 £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 £88,750 £87,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £66,212 £60,000
% change year-on-year -1.83% +10.35% -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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -170 47 £80,000 +14.29% 25
South East -65 41 £67,500 -6.90% 23
North West -96 36 £80,000 +16.36% 16
South West -71 12 £75,000 +11.11% 10
Midlands -97 11 £87,500 +25.00% 7
East of England -25 10 £72,500 +1.40% 1
West Midlands -55 9 £87,500 +12.90% 5
Yorkshire -55 8 £80,000 - 5
Scotland -78 5 £65,000 -3.70% 6
Wales - 4 £55,000 - 2
North East -46 3 - - 4
East Midlands -61 2 £71,500 +5.93% 2
Northern Ireland -52 1 - - 10
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 (12.50%) Apache Airflow
1 16 (12.50%) Apache Spark
2 10 (7.81%) Apache
3 7 (5.47%) OpenStack
4 2 (1.56%) Apache Qpid
4 2 (1.56%) CICS
5 1 (0.78%) Camunda
5 1 (0.78%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 86 (67.19%) AWS
2 54 (42.19%) Azure
3 35 (27.34%) GCP
4 29 (22.66%) Serverless
5 17 (13.28%) Amazon S3
6 16 (12.50%) Amazon ECS
7 15 (11.72%) Amazon EKS
7 15 (11.72%) AWS Lambda
8 14 (10.94%) Amazon SQS
8 14 (10.94%) Snowflake
9 13 (10.16%) AWS CloudFormation
9 13 (10.16%) dbt
9 13 (10.16%) GitHub
10 10 (7.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (6.25%) Power Platform
12 7 (5.47%) Amazon EventBridge
12 7 (5.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 7 (5.47%) Datadog
13 6 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
14 5 (3.91%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 14 (10.94%) MQTT
2 3 (2.34%) Network Security
3 2 (1.56%) Firewall
3 2 (1.56%) HTTP
3 2 (1.56%) SSL
4 1 (0.78%) AMQP
4 1 (0.78%) Broadband
4 1 (0.78%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (21.88%) NoSQL
2 22 (17.19%) MongoDB
3 20 (15.63%) PostgreSQL
4 18 (14.06%) Data Lake
5 14 (10.94%) Elasticsearch
5 14 (10.94%) SQL Server
6 13 (10.16%) Data Warehouse
7 11 (8.59%) Amazon Redshift
7 11 (8.59%) Relational Database
8 10 (7.81%) Looker
9 9 (7.03%) BigQuery
9 9 (7.03%) DynamoDB
10 8 (6.25%) Flink
10 8 (6.25%) Power BI
10 8 (6.25%) Tableau
11 7 (5.47%) Amazon RDS
11 7 (5.47%) Redis
11 7 (5.47%) Snowflake Schema
12 5 (3.91%) Big Data
12 5 (3.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 32 (25.00%) Git
2 18 (14.06%) Jenkins
3 12 (9.38%) GitLab
4 9 (7.03%) JIRA
5 7 (5.47%) JUnit
5 7 (5.47%) MLflow
6 4 (3.13%) Cucumber
6 4 (3.13%) IntelliJ
7 3 (2.34%) Eclipse
7 3 (2.34%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (1.56%) Bitbucket
8 2 (1.56%) JMeter
8 2 (1.56%) Postman
9 1 (0.78%) Mockito
9 1 (0.78%) Selenium
9 1 (0.78%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.78%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.78%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.78%) TestNG
General
1 20 (15.63%) Social Skills
2 15 (11.72%) Finance
3 12 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (3.13%) Advertising
5 3 (2.34%) Public Sector
6 2 (1.56%) Banking
6 2 (1.56%) Games
6 2 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.56%) Law
7 1 (0.78%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.78%) Automotive
7 1 (0.78%) Marketing
7 1 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (0.78%) Retail
7 1 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 33 (25.78%) Developer
2 30 (23.44%) Senior
3 27 (21.09%) Data Engineer
4 18 (14.06%) Architect
4 18 (14.06%) Java Developer
5 17 (13.28%) Lead
6 9 (7.03%) Senior Data Engineer
7 8 (6.25%) Senior Developer
7 8 (6.25%) Senior Systems Engineer
8 7 (5.47%) Backend Developer
8 7 (5.47%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 7 (5.47%) Full-Stack Developer
8 7 (5.47%) Integration Developer
8 7 (5.47%) Integration Engineer
8 7 (5.47%) Lead Developer
8 7 (5.47%) Systems Engineer
9 6 (4.69%) Java Engineer
9 6 (4.69%) Principal Engineer
9 6 (4.69%) Software Engineer
10 5 (3.91%) Integration Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (26.56%) REST
2 31 (24.22%) Spring
3 28 (21.88%) Spring Boot
4 19 (14.84%) RESTful
5 17 (13.28%) Node.js
6 14 (10.94%) RabbitMQ
6 14 (10.94%) React
7 11 (8.59%) .NET
7 11 (8.59%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (6.25%) AngularJS
8 8 (6.25%) gRPC
8 8 (6.25%) PySpark
8 8 (6.25%) SOAP
9 7 (5.47%) .NET Framework
9 7 (5.47%) Apache NiFi
9 7 (5.47%) JSON
9 7 (5.47%) Middleware
9 7 (5.47%) Mustache
9 7 (5.47%) OAuth
9 7 (5.47%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 39 (30.47%) Distributed Systems
2 31 (24.22%) Cloud Native
3 14 (10.94%) Product Ownership
4 8 (6.25%) Public Cloud
5 7 (5.47%) Clustering
5 7 (5.47%) Onboarding
6 5 (3.91%) Robotics
7 4 (3.13%) Replication
8 3 (2.34%) Distributed Computing
8 3 (2.34%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (2.34%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 2 (1.56%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.56%) Mainframe
10 1 (0.78%) Anti-Piracy
10 1 (0.78%) IoT
10 1 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.78%) Social Media
10 1 (0.78%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 11 (8.59%) Linux
2 1 (0.78%) Android
2 1 (0.78%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.78%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (57.03%) CI/CD
2 68 (53.13%) Agile
3 64 (50.00%) Microservices
4 46 (35.94%) Event-Driven
5 43 (33.59%) DevOps
6 39 (30.47%) AI
7 37 (28.91%) Containerisation
7 37 (28.91%) Observability
8 33 (25.78%) Analytics
8 33 (25.78%) Infrastructure as Code
9 31 (24.22%) Data Modelling
10 30 (23.44%) Data Pipeline
11 28 (21.88%) Machine Learning
12 27 (21.09%) Continuous Improvement
12 27 (21.09%) Scrum
13 26 (20.31%) Mentoring
14 22 (17.19%) Test Automation
15 21 (16.41%) Data Engineering
15 21 (16.41%) ETL
16 19 (14.84%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 74 (57.81%) Python
2 62 (48.44%) SQL
3 57 (44.53%) Java
4 30 (23.44%) JavaScript
5 21 (16.41%) TypeScript
6 13 (10.16%) Rust
7 11 (8.59%) C#
8 7 (5.47%) Groovy
8 7 (5.47%) Scala
9 5 (3.91%) Go
9 5 (3.91%) PowerShell
9 5 (3.91%) T-SQL
10 3 (2.34%) PL/SQL
11 2 (1.56%) Bash
11 2 (1.56%) Bicep
11 2 (1.56%) C++
11 2 (1.56%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.78%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.78%) Embedded C++
12 1 (0.78%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 24 (18.75%) Security Cleared
2 18 (14.06%) Degree
3 16 (12.50%) SC Cleared
4 10 (7.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.78%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (13.28%) Data Quality
2 10 (7.81%) QA
3 7 (5.47%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 7 (5.47%) GDPR
4 1 (0.78%) Accessibility
System Software
1 50 (39.06%) Docker
Systems Management
1 59 (46.09%) Kubernetes
2 40 (31.25%) Terraform
3 14 (10.94%) Ansible
4 11 (8.59%) Grafana
5 9 (7.03%) Prometheus
6 6 (4.69%) Puppet
7 5 (3.91%) Kibana
8 4 (3.13%) Podman
9 2 (1.56%) Argo
9 2 (1.56%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 17 (13.28%) Databricks
2 15 (11.72%) Microsoft
3 10 (7.81%) Oracle
4 7 (5.47%) Cloudera
4 7 (5.47%) Dell
4 7 (5.47%) HubSpot
5 5 (3.91%) Pega
6 4 (3.13%) NVIDIA
6 4 (3.13%) Splunk
7 3 (2.34%) Confluent
7 3 (2.34%) Google
7 3 (2.34%) Tenable
8 2 (1.56%) Atlassian
9 1 (0.78%) Automation Anywhere
9 1 (0.78%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.78%) Informatica
9 1 (0.78%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.78%) Rollbar
9 1 (0.78%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.78%) UiPath