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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 459 195 260
Rank change year-on-year -264 +65 -4
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 123 486 740
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.18% 1.66% 1.07%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.37% 9.67% 5.39%
Number of salaries quoted 78 160 320
10th Percentile £53,750 £50,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £59,500 £57,500 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £73,750 £70,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.36% +16.67% -11.11%
75th Percentile £95,000 £92,500 £77,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £108,750 £91,250
UK median annual salary £95,000 £82,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year +15.15% +10.00% -16.20%

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 5,190 5,028 13,736
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 7.78% 17.20% 19.82%
Number of salaries quoted 4,077 3,346 10,302
10th Percentile £35,000 £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 £88,750 £87,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year - +8.33% -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 21 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 21 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 -144 48 £80,000 +8.47% 31
South East -62 41 £65,000 -10.34% 34
North West -93 34 £87,500 +23.25% 16
Yorkshire -46 11 £70,000 -12.50% 9
East of England -25 10 £67,500 -9.40% 3
Midlands -89 10 £87,500 +27.27% 4
West Midlands -62 9 £87,500 +12.90% 3
South West -70 9 £75,000 +11.11% 12
Scotland -68 6 £65,000 -3.70% 4
North East -43 3 - - 6
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 2
Northern Ireland -50 1 - - 4
East Midlands -62 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 18 (14.63%) Apache Airflow
1 18 (14.63%) Apache Spark
2 10 (8.13%) Apache
3 9 (7.32%) OpenStack
4 2 (1.63%) Apache Qpid
4 2 (1.63%) CICS
5 1 (0.81%) Apache Synapse
5 1 (0.81%) Camunda
5 1 (0.81%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 86 (69.92%) AWS
2 54 (43.90%) Azure
3 36 (29.27%) GCP
4 29 (23.58%) Serverless
5 19 (15.45%) Amazon S3
6 18 (14.63%) Amazon ECS
7 16 (13.01%) Amazon EKS
8 15 (12.20%) Amazon SQS
8 15 (12.20%) Snowflake
9 14 (11.38%) dbt
10 13 (10.57%) AWS CloudFormation
10 13 (10.57%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (8.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (7.32%) GitHub
13 8 (6.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 8 (6.50%) Power Platform
14 7 (5.69%) Amazon EventBridge
14 7 (5.69%) Datadog
15 6 (4.88%) Amazon Kinesis
15 6 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 12 (9.76%) MQTT
2 3 (2.44%) HTTP
2 3 (2.44%) Network Security
3 2 (1.63%) Firewall
3 2 (1.63%) SSL
4 1 (0.81%) AMQP
4 1 (0.81%) Broadband
4 1 (0.81%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (21.14%) NoSQL
2 19 (15.45%) MongoDB
2 19 (15.45%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (14.63%) Data Lake
4 14 (11.38%) Elasticsearch
5 13 (10.57%) Data Warehouse
5 13 (10.57%) Relational Database
6 12 (9.76%) Amazon Redshift
6 12 (9.76%) SQL Server
7 10 (8.13%) BigQuery
7 10 (8.13%) Looker
8 9 (7.32%) DynamoDB
9 8 (6.50%) Power BI
9 8 (6.50%) Tableau
10 7 (5.69%) Amazon RDS
10 7 (5.69%) Flink
10 7 (5.69%) Redis
10 7 (5.69%) Snowflake Schema
11 6 (4.88%) Big Data
12 4 (3.25%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 31 (25.20%) Git
2 19 (15.45%) Jenkins
3 10 (8.13%) GitLab
4 9 (7.32%) JIRA
5 7 (5.69%) JUnit
5 7 (5.69%) MLflow
6 4 (3.25%) SonarQube
7 3 (2.44%) Cucumber
7 3 (2.44%) Eclipse
7 3 (2.44%) IntelliJ
8 2 (1.63%) JMeter
9 1 (0.81%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.81%) Mockito
9 1 (0.81%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.81%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.81%) Selenium
9 1 (0.81%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.81%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.81%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.81%) TestNG
General
1 22 (17.89%) Social Skills
2 17 (13.82%) Finance
3 14 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (3.25%) Public Sector
5 2 (1.63%) Advertising
5 2 (1.63%) Games
5 2 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (1.63%) Law
5 2 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (0.81%) Aerospace
6 1 (0.81%) Automotive
6 1 (0.81%) Banking
6 1 (0.81%) Marketing
6 1 (0.81%) Retail
6 1 (0.81%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 30 (24.39%) Developer
2 27 (21.95%) Data Engineer
2 27 (21.95%) Senior
3 20 (16.26%) Architect
4 17 (13.82%) Lead
5 16 (13.01%) Java Developer
6 9 (7.32%) Full-Stack Developer
6 9 (7.32%) Senior Data Engineer
7 8 (6.50%) Senior Systems Engineer
8 7 (5.69%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 7 (5.69%) Full-Stack Java Developer
8 7 (5.69%) Integration Developer
8 7 (5.69%) Integration Engineer
8 7 (5.69%) Lead Developer
8 7 (5.69%) Systems Engineer
9 6 (4.88%) Java Engineer
9 6 (4.88%) Senior Developer
10 5 (4.07%) Integration Architect
10 5 (4.07%) Principal Engineer
10 5 (4.07%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (28.46%) REST
2 29 (23.58%) Spring
3 26 (21.14%) Spring Boot
4 18 (14.63%) Node.js
4 18 (14.63%) RESTful
5 14 (11.38%) React
6 13 (10.57%) Elastic Stack
6 13 (10.57%) RabbitMQ
7 9 (7.32%) .NET
7 9 (7.32%) gRPC
7 9 (7.32%) Mustache
8 8 (6.50%) AngularJS
8 8 (6.50%) Middleware
8 8 (6.50%) PySpark
8 8 (6.50%) SOAP
8 8 (6.50%) Web Services
9 7 (5.69%) JSON
9 7 (5.69%) OAuth
9 7 (5.69%) scikit-learn
9 7 (5.69%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 39 (31.71%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (21.14%) Cloud Native
3 15 (12.20%) Product Ownership
4 8 (6.50%) Public Cloud
5 7 (5.69%) Clustering
5 7 (5.69%) Onboarding
6 4 (3.25%) Robotics
7 3 (2.44%) Distributed Computing
7 3 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (2.44%) Replication
7 3 (2.44%) Team-Oriented Environment
8 2 (1.63%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.63%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (1.63%) Mainframe
9 1 (0.81%) Anti-Piracy
9 1 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.81%) NHS
9 1 (0.81%) Social Media
9 1 (0.81%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 9 (7.32%) Linux
2 1 (0.81%) Android
2 1 (0.81%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (55.28%) CI/CD
2 66 (53.66%) Agile
3 62 (50.41%) Microservices
4 43 (34.96%) Event-Driven
5 37 (30.08%) DevOps
6 35 (28.46%) Containerisation
6 35 (28.46%) Observability
7 33 (26.83%) AI
7 33 (26.83%) Analytics
7 33 (26.83%) Data Modelling
8 31 (25.20%) Infrastructure as Code
9 30 (24.39%) Scrum
10 28 (22.76%) Data Pipeline
10 28 (22.76%) Machine Learning
11 26 (21.14%) Mentoring
12 25 (20.33%) Continuous Improvement
13 21 (17.07%) Data Engineering
13 21 (17.07%) ETL
13 21 (17.07%) Test Automation
14 19 (15.45%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 73 (59.35%) Python
2 57 (46.34%) SQL
3 55 (44.72%) Java
4 33 (26.83%) JavaScript
5 20 (16.26%) TypeScript
6 13 (10.57%) Rust
7 9 (7.32%) C#
8 7 (5.69%) Scala
9 6 (4.88%) Groovy
10 4 (3.25%) T-SQL
11 3 (2.44%) Go
11 3 (2.44%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.63%) Bicep
12 2 (1.63%) C++
12 2 (1.63%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.81%) C
13 1 (0.81%) Embedded C
13 1 (0.81%) Embedded C++
13 1 (0.81%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.81%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 22 (17.89%) Security Cleared
2 16 (13.01%) Degree
2 16 (13.01%) SC Cleared
3 8 (6.50%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (3.25%) DV Cleared
5 1 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 1 (0.81%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (13.01%) Data Quality
2 10 (8.13%) QA
3 7 (5.69%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 7 (5.69%) GDPR
4 1 (0.81%) Accessibility
System Software
1 49 (39.84%) Docker
Systems Management
1 55 (44.72%) Kubernetes
2 40 (32.52%) Terraform
3 13 (10.57%) Ansible
4 10 (8.13%) Grafana
5 9 (7.32%) Prometheus
6 6 (4.88%) Puppet
7 4 (3.25%) Kibana
7 4 (3.25%) Podman
8 2 (1.63%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.81%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 19 (15.45%) Databricks
2 14 (11.38%) Microsoft
3 8 (6.50%) Oracle
4 7 (5.69%) Cloudera
4 7 (5.69%) Dell
4 7 (5.69%) HubSpot
5 5 (4.07%) Pega
6 4 (3.25%) NVIDIA
7 3 (2.44%) Confluent
7 3 (2.44%) Google
7 3 (2.44%) Tenable
8 2 (1.63%) Splunk
9 1 (0.81%) Atlassian
9 1 (0.81%) Automation Anywhere
9 1 (0.81%) IBM
9 1 (0.81%) Informatica
9 1 (0.81%) Rollbar
9 1 (0.81%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.81%) UiPath