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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 442 197 272
Rank change year-on-year -245 +75 +40
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 178 540 671
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.25% 1.61% 0.91%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.91% 10.51% 4.98%
Number of salaries quoted 132 146 305
10th Percentile £53,750 £45,625 £42,500
25th Percentile £60,813 £52,688 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,750 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.81% +17.39% -17.20%
75th Percentile £91,875 £90,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £103,750 £91,250
UK median annual salary £85,000 £82,500 £73,750
% change year-on-year +3.03% +11.86% -15.71%

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 6,110 5,136 13,475
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.60% 15.28% 18.35%
Number of salaries quoted 4,924 3,253 9,911
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% -9.77%

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 11 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 11 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 -145 55 £75,000 +11.11% 30
South East -60 49 £65,000 -10.34% 43
North West -90 47 £75,000 +11.11% 19
South West -73 21 £85,000 +25.93% 21
Midlands -86 18 £85,000 +25.93% 8
West Midlands -32 16 £86,250 +43.75% 5
East of England -18 14 £72,500 +1.40% 8
Wales - 14 £70,000 - 3
Scotland -84 9 £65,000 -3.70% 7
Yorkshire -32 4 £66,805 -40.02% 7
North East -51 4 £62,500 +31.58% 4
East Midlands -69 2 £71,500 +5.93% 3
Northern Ireland -74 1 - - 1
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 22 (12.36%) Apache Spark
2 17 (9.55%) Apache Airflow
3 14 (7.87%) Apache
4 2 (1.12%) Anypoint
4 2 (1.12%) Apache Qpid
4 2 (1.12%) BizTalk Server
4 2 (1.12%) CICS
5 1 (0.56%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.56%) Camunda
5 1 (0.56%) Confluence
5 1 (0.56%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.56%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 116 (65.17%) AWS
2 88 (49.44%) Azure
3 53 (29.78%) GCP
4 33 (18.54%) Serverless
5 26 (14.61%) GitHub
6 23 (12.92%) AWS CloudFormation
6 23 (12.92%) AWS Lambda
7 19 (10.67%) Amazon SQS
8 16 (8.99%) Amazon S3
8 16 (8.99%) Snowflake
9 14 (7.87%) Amazon EventBridge
10 13 (7.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 13 (7.30%) dbt
11 12 (6.74%) GitHub Copilot
12 11 (6.18%) Amazon ECS
12 11 (6.18%) Amazon EKS
13 10 (5.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 10 (5.62%) Power Platform
14 8 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (4.49%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 20 (11.24%) MQTT
2 3 (1.69%) Network Security
3 2 (1.12%) Firewall
3 2 (1.12%) SSL
4 1 (0.56%) AMQP
4 1 (0.56%) ATM
4 1 (0.56%) Broadband
4 1 (0.56%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (21.91%) MongoDB
2 34 (19.10%) NoSQL
3 29 (16.29%) PostgreSQL
4 20 (11.24%) SQL Server
5 18 (10.11%) Data Lake
6 17 (9.55%) Elasticsearch
7 16 (8.99%) MySQL
8 14 (7.87%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (6.74%) Amazon Redshift
10 11 (6.18%) Redis
11 10 (5.62%) Big Data
11 10 (5.62%) Looker
11 10 (5.62%) Power BI
11 10 (5.62%) Relational Database
12 9 (5.06%) DynamoDB
12 9 (5.06%) Flink
13 8 (4.49%) BigQuery
13 8 (4.49%) Tableau
14 7 (3.93%) Amazon RDS
14 7 (3.93%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 37 (20.79%) Git
2 18 (10.11%) Jenkins
3 15 (8.43%) GitLab
4 7 (3.93%) JIRA
4 7 (3.93%) MLflow
5 4 (2.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (2.25%) Bitbucket
5 4 (2.25%) IntelliJ
5 4 (2.25%) JUnit
6 3 (1.69%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.69%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.69%) Postman
6 3 (1.69%) Selenium
6 3 (1.69%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.12%) JMeter
8 1 (0.56%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.56%) Mockito
8 1 (0.56%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.56%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.56%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 30 (16.85%) Social Skills
2 22 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
3 19 (10.67%) Public Sector
4 16 (8.99%) Finance
5 5 (2.81%) Banking
6 4 (2.25%) Advertising
7 3 (1.69%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.69%) Law
8 2 (1.12%) Automotive
8 2 (1.12%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.56%) Billing
9 1 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.56%) Games
9 1 (0.56%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.56%) Japanese Language
9 1 (0.56%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.56%) Marketing
9 1 (0.56%) Retail
9 1 (0.56%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 47 (26.40%) Developer
2 43 (24.16%) Senior
3 40 (22.47%) Data Engineer
4 28 (15.73%) Lead
5 22 (12.36%) Architect
5 22 (12.36%) Java Developer
6 17 (9.55%) Senior Data Engineer
7 12 (6.74%) Full-Stack Developer
7 12 (6.74%) Senior Developer
7 12 (6.74%) Software Engineer
8 9 (5.06%) Backend Developer
8 9 (5.06%) DevOps Engineer
8 9 (5.06%) Integration Developer
8 9 (5.06%) Principal Engineer
9 8 (4.49%) Full-Stack Java Developer
9 8 (4.49%) Integration Engineer
9 8 (4.49%) Senior Systems Engineer
10 7 (3.93%) Java Engineer
10 7 (3.93%) Lead Developer
10 7 (3.93%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (25.84%) Spring
2 44 (24.72%) Spring Boot
3 38 (21.35%) REST
4 35 (19.66%) RESTful
5 28 (15.73%) RabbitMQ
6 21 (11.80%) Hibernate
6 21 (11.80%) Node.js
7 20 (11.24%) JPA
8 14 (7.87%) .NET
8 14 (7.87%) React
9 12 (6.74%) PySpark
10 10 (5.62%) Apache NiFi
11 9 (5.06%) FastAPI
11 9 (5.06%) JWT
11 9 (5.06%) OAuth
11 9 (5.06%) OpenAPI
11 9 (5.06%) PyTorch
11 9 (5.06%) scikit-learn
11 9 (5.06%) Swagger
11 9 (5.06%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 49 (27.53%) Cloud Native
2 42 (23.60%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (10.67%) Product Ownership
4 10 (5.62%) Onboarding
4 10 (5.62%) Public Cloud
5 7 (3.93%) Clustering
5 7 (3.93%) Enterprise Software
5 7 (3.93%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (3.93%) Mainframe
5 7 (3.93%) Robotics
6 6 (3.37%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (2.81%) Distributed Computing
8 4 (2.25%) Data Structures
8 4 (2.25%) Replication
8 4 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (2.25%) Virtual Team
9 3 (1.69%) Marketing Technology
9 3 (1.69%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 2 (1.12%) AI Agents
10 2 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 19 (10.67%) Linux
2 2 (1.12%) Windows
3 1 (0.56%) Android
3 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (55.06%) CI/CD
2 89 (50.00%) Agile
3 81 (45.51%) Microservices
4 71 (39.89%) DevOps
5 59 (33.15%) Event-Driven
6 53 (29.78%) AI
7 50 (28.09%) Analytics
7 50 (28.09%) Observability
8 49 (27.53%) Containerisation
9 48 (26.97%) Infrastructure as Code
10 42 (23.60%) Data Pipeline
11 40 (22.47%) Machine Learning
12 39 (21.91%) Continuous Improvement
13 38 (21.35%) Mentoring
14 36 (20.22%) Scrum
15 34 (19.10%) Data Modelling
16 33 (18.54%) Problem-Solving
16 33 (18.54%) Software Engineering
17 32 (17.98%) ETL
18 30 (16.85%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 102 (57.30%) Python
2 83 (46.63%) Java
3 79 (44.38%) SQL
4 27 (15.17%) JavaScript
5 21 (11.80%) TypeScript
6 15 (8.43%) Rust
7 11 (6.18%) C#
8 9 (5.06%) Go
8 9 (5.06%) Groovy
8 9 (5.06%) PowerShell
8 9 (5.06%) Scala
9 6 (3.37%) Kotlin
10 5 (2.81%) Bash
10 5 (2.81%) Ruby
10 5 (2.81%) T-SQL
11 4 (2.25%) C++
12 3 (1.69%) PL/SQL
13 2 (1.12%) Bicep
13 2 (1.12%) C
13 2 (1.12%) DataWeave
Qualifications
1 43 (24.16%) Security Cleared
2 30 (16.85%) SC Cleared
3 25 (14.04%) Degree
4 13 (7.30%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (6.18%) DV Cleared
6 6 (3.37%) Azure Certification
7 4 (2.25%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.69%) MBA
9 1 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (11.80%) Data Quality
2 14 (7.87%) QA
3 9 (5.06%) GDPR
4 7 (3.93%) Accessibility
4 7 (3.93%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 5 (2.81%) WCAG
6 1 (0.56%) NIST
6 1 (0.56%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.56%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.56%) PSD2
6 1 (0.56%) SOC 2
System Software
1 70 (39.33%) Docker
Systems Management
1 83 (46.63%) Kubernetes
2 58 (32.58%) Terraform
3 16 (8.99%) Ansible
3 16 (8.99%) Grafana
4 13 (7.30%) Prometheus
5 6 (3.37%) Puppet
6 5 (2.81%) Kibana
7 4 (2.25%) Argo
7 4 (2.25%) Podman
8 2 (1.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 19 (10.67%) Databricks
1 19 (10.67%) Microsoft
2 9 (5.06%) Oracle
3 8 (4.49%) Dell
3 8 (4.49%) Google
3 8 (4.49%) Splunk
4 7 (3.93%) Cloudera
4 7 (3.93%) HubSpot
5 5 (2.81%) Atlassian
5 5 (2.81%) Informatica
5 5 (2.81%) OpenAI
6 4 (2.25%) Confluent
6 4 (2.25%) Dynatrace
6 4 (2.25%) NVIDIA
6 4 (2.25%) Pega
7 3 (1.69%) Adobe
7 3 (1.69%) MuleSoft
7 3 (1.69%) Tenable
8 2 (1.12%) webMethods
9 1 (0.56%) Yahoo!