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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 471 201 258
Rank change year-on-year -270 +57 -5
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 116 489 742
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.17% 1.67% 1.07%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.25% 9.56% 5.40%
Number of salaries quoted 71 163 321
10th Percentile £53,750 £48,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £58,125 £56,250 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +16.67% -10.45%
75th Percentile £95,000 £91,250 £77,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £108,000 £91,250
UK median annual salary £95,000 £82,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year +15.15% +10.00% -15.24%

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 5,166 5,116 13,732
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 7.79% 17.43% 19.84%
Number of salaries quoted 4,062 3,422 10,308
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 £88,148 £87,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £65,250 £60,000
% change year-on-year -0.38% +8.75% -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 18 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 18 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 -153 44 £90,000 +24.14% 36
South East -60 39 £65,000 -10.34% 37
North West -93 30 £95,000 +33.81% 19
Yorkshire -50 11 £70,000 -9.68% 9
Midlands -91 11 £87,500 +27.27% 7
West Midlands -41 10 £87,500 +12.90% 5
East of England -31 9 £62,500 -19.35% 1
South West -75 8 £75,000 +11.11% 13
Scotland -74 7 £65,000 -3.70% 8
North East -41 3 - - 8
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 2
East Midlands -72 1 - - 2
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 19 (16.38%) Apache Airflow
2 18 (15.52%) Apache Spark
3 9 (7.76%) Apache
3 9 (7.76%) OpenStack
4 2 (1.72%) Apache Qpid
4 2 (1.72%) CICS
5 1 (0.86%) Apache Synapse
5 1 (0.86%) Camunda
5 1 (0.86%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 82 (70.69%) AWS
2 54 (46.55%) Azure
3 36 (31.03%) GCP
4 25 (21.55%) Serverless
5 17 (14.66%) Amazon ECS
6 16 (13.79%) Amazon EKS
7 15 (12.93%) Amazon S3
7 15 (12.93%) dbt
7 15 (12.93%) Snowflake
8 14 (12.07%) Amazon SQS
9 12 (10.34%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (8.62%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (8.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 9 (7.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (6.90%) Power Platform
13 7 (6.03%) GitHub
14 6 (5.17%) Amazon EventBridge
14 6 (5.17%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (5.17%) Datadog
15 5 (4.31%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 10 (8.62%) MQTT
2 3 (2.59%) HTTP
2 3 (2.59%) Network Security
3 2 (1.72%) Firewall
3 2 (1.72%) SSL
4 1 (0.86%) AMQP
4 1 (0.86%) Broadband
4 1 (0.86%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (20.69%) NoSQL
2 19 (16.38%) MongoDB
3 17 (14.66%) Data Lake
3 17 (14.66%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (12.07%) Elasticsearch
5 13 (11.21%) Relational Database
5 13 (11.21%) SQL Server
6 11 (9.48%) Data Warehouse
7 10 (8.62%) Amazon Redshift
7 10 (8.62%) BigQuery
7 10 (8.62%) Looker
8 8 (6.90%) DynamoDB
8 8 (6.90%) Power BI
8 8 (6.90%) Tableau
9 7 (6.03%) Flink
9 7 (6.03%) Snowflake Schema
10 6 (5.17%) Amazon RDS
10 6 (5.17%) Redis
11 4 (3.45%) Big Data
11 4 (3.45%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 28 (24.14%) Git
2 18 (15.52%) Jenkins
3 9 (7.76%) GitLab
3 9 (7.76%) JIRA
4 7 (6.03%) MLflow
5 6 (5.17%) JUnit
6 4 (3.45%) SonarQube
7 3 (2.59%) Eclipse
7 3 (2.59%) IntelliJ
8 2 (1.72%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.86%) JMeter
9 1 (0.86%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.86%) Mockito
9 1 (0.86%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.86%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.86%) Selenium
9 1 (0.86%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.86%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.86%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.86%) TestNG
General
1 22 (18.97%) Social Skills
2 19 (16.38%) Finance
3 14 (12.07%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (3.45%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.59%) Banking
6 2 (1.72%) Games
6 2 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.72%) Law
6 2 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (0.86%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.86%) Automotive
7 1 (0.86%) Marketing
7 1 (0.86%) Retail
7 1 (0.86%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 26 (22.41%) Developer
2 25 (21.55%) Data Engineer
2 25 (21.55%) Senior
3 19 (16.38%) Architect
4 15 (12.93%) Lead
5 14 (12.07%) Java Developer
6 9 (7.76%) Full-Stack Developer
7 8 (6.90%) Senior Data Engineer
7 8 (6.90%) Senior Systems Engineer
8 7 (6.03%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 7 (6.03%) Full-Stack Java Developer
8 7 (6.03%) Systems Engineer
9 6 (5.17%) Integration Developer
9 6 (5.17%) Integration Engineer
9 6 (5.17%) Lead Developer
10 5 (4.31%) Integration Architect
10 5 (4.31%) Java Engineer
10 5 (4.31%) Lead Data Engineer
10 5 (4.31%) Principal Engineer
10 5 (4.31%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (30.17%) REST
2 27 (23.28%) Spring
3 24 (20.69%) Spring Boot
4 17 (14.66%) Node.js
4 17 (14.66%) RESTful
5 14 (12.07%) React
6 13 (11.21%) Elastic Stack
7 12 (10.34%) RabbitMQ
8 9 (7.76%) .NET
8 9 (7.76%) gRPC
8 9 (7.76%) Mustache
9 8 (6.90%) AngularJS
9 8 (6.90%) Middleware
9 8 (6.90%) SOAP
9 8 (6.90%) Web Services
10 7 (6.03%) JSON
10 7 (6.03%) OAuth
10 7 (6.03%) PySpark
10 7 (6.03%) scikit-learn
10 7 (6.03%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 37 (31.90%) Distributed Systems
2 24 (20.69%) Cloud Native
3 14 (12.07%) Product Ownership
4 7 (6.03%) Clustering
4 7 (6.03%) Onboarding
4 7 (6.03%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.59%) Distributed Computing
5 3 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (2.59%) Replication
5 3 (2.59%) Robotics
5 3 (2.59%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 2 (1.72%) Data Structures
6 2 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.72%) Mainframe
7 1 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.86%) IoT
7 1 (0.86%) NHS
7 1 (0.86%) Social Media
7 1 (0.86%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 8 (6.90%) Linux
2 1 (0.86%) Android
2 1 (0.86%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (54.31%) CI/CD
2 61 (52.59%) Agile
3 56 (48.28%) Microservices
4 41 (35.34%) Event-Driven
5 35 (30.17%) DevOps
6 34 (29.31%) Observability
7 32 (27.59%) AI
7 32 (27.59%) Analytics
7 32 (27.59%) Containerisation
7 32 (27.59%) Data Modelling
8 29 (25.00%) Scrum
9 28 (24.14%) Data Pipeline
9 28 (24.14%) Infrastructure as Code
10 25 (21.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 25 (21.55%) Machine Learning
11 24 (20.69%) Data Engineering
12 23 (19.83%) Mentoring
13 22 (18.97%) ETL
14 19 (16.38%) Test Automation
15 18 (15.52%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 68 (58.62%) Python
2 55 (47.41%) SQL
3 51 (43.97%) Java
4 31 (26.72%) JavaScript
5 19 (16.38%) TypeScript
6 12 (10.34%) Rust
7 9 (7.76%) C#
8 6 (5.17%) Groovy
9 5 (4.31%) Scala
10 4 (3.45%) T-SQL
11 3 (2.59%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.72%) Bicep
12 2 (1.72%) C++
12 2 (1.72%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.86%) C
13 1 (0.86%) Embedded C
13 1 (0.86%) Embedded C++
13 1 (0.86%) Go
13 1 (0.86%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 19 (16.38%) Security Cleared
2 14 (12.07%) SC Cleared
3 13 (11.21%) Degree
4 6 (5.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (3.45%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.86%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (13.79%) Data Quality
2 10 (8.62%) QA
3 7 (6.03%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 7 (6.03%) GDPR
4 1 (0.86%) Accessibility
System Software
1 46 (39.66%) Docker
Systems Management
1 52 (44.83%) Kubernetes
2 37 (31.90%) Terraform
3 12 (10.34%) Ansible
4 9 (7.76%) Grafana
4 9 (7.76%) Prometheus
5 6 (5.17%) Puppet
6 4 (3.45%) Podman
7 3 (2.59%) Kibana
8 2 (1.72%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.86%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 21 (18.10%) Databricks
2 13 (11.21%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.03%) Cloudera
3 7 (6.03%) Dell
3 7 (6.03%) Oracle
4 6 (5.17%) HubSpot
5 5 (4.31%) Pega
6 4 (3.45%) NVIDIA
7 3 (2.59%) Confluent
7 3 (2.59%) Google
7 3 (2.59%) Tenable
8 1 (0.86%) Automation Anywhere
8 1 (0.86%) IBM
8 1 (0.86%) Informatica
8 1 (0.86%) Rollbar
8 1 (0.86%) ServiceNow
8 1 (0.86%) Splunk
8 1 (0.86%) UiPath