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 8 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 445 199 249
Rank change year-on-year -246 +50 +49
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 207 513 590
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.27% 1.49% 0.99%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 3.17% 10.49% 5.67%
Number of salaries quoted 149 128 245
10th Percentile £53,750 £43,750 £42,500
25th Percentile £61,250 £52,500 £44,738
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% +17.39% -17.86%
75th Percentile £87,500 £77,813 £71,250
90th Percentile £97,500 £97,500 £87,500
UK median annual salary £85,000 £82,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year +3.03% +17.86% -17.65%

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 6,533 4,891 10,412
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.56% 14.20% 17.54%
Number of salaries quoted 5,167 3,040 7,265
10th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £35,000
25th Percentile £46,250 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £74,750 £73,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £85,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £67,500 £62,000
% change year-on-year -3.70% +8.87% -8.15%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 -135 61 £75,000 +11.88% 49
South East -59 49 £67,500 -6.90% 55
North West -89 48 £75,000 +11.11% 17
South West -70 32 £85,000 +36.00% 31
Midlands -77 20 £85,000 +25.93% 10
Wales - 20 £70,000 - 3
West Midlands -34 18 £85,000 +41.67% 7
East of England -25 17 £72,500 +1.40% 4
Scotland -80 13 £65,000 +13.04% 28
North East -48 9 £65,000 +36.84% 9
Yorkshire -39 4 £66,805 -10.93% 23
East Midlands -62 2 £71,500 +5.93% 3
Northern Ireland -84 1 - - 8
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 29 (14.01%) Apache Spark
2 20 (9.66%) Apache Airflow
3 17 (8.21%) Apache
4 3 (1.45%) Anypoint
4 3 (1.45%) BizTalk Server
5 2 (0.97%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.97%) CICS
5 2 (0.97%) Confluence
6 1 (0.48%) JBoss
6 1 (0.48%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.48%) PegaRULES
6 1 (0.48%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 136 (65.70%) AWS
2 109 (52.66%) Azure
3 63 (30.43%) GCP
4 37 (17.87%) Serverless
5 32 (15.46%) GitHub
6 28 (13.53%) AWS CloudFormation
7 25 (12.08%) Amazon SQS
7 25 (12.08%) AWS Lambda
8 18 (8.70%) Amazon S3
9 17 (8.21%) Amazon ECS
9 17 (8.21%) Snowflake
10 16 (7.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 16 (7.73%) Amazon EventBridge
10 16 (7.73%) dbt
11 13 (6.28%) GitHub Copilot
12 12 (5.80%) Amazon EKS
13 11 (5.31%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (5.31%) Datadog
14 10 (4.83%) GitHub Actions
14 10 (4.83%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 24 (11.59%) MQTT
2 5 (2.42%) Network Security
3 2 (0.97%) Firewall
3 2 (0.97%) SSL
4 1 (0.48%) ATM
4 1 (0.48%) Broadband
4 1 (0.48%) LAN
4 1 (0.48%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (22.22%) MongoDB
2 38 (18.36%) PostgreSQL
3 33 (15.94%) NoSQL
4 22 (10.63%) MySQL
4 22 (10.63%) SQL Server
5 20 (9.66%) Elasticsearch
6 17 (8.21%) Data Lake
7 15 (7.25%) Flink
8 14 (6.76%) Data Warehouse
8 14 (6.76%) Relational Database
9 13 (6.28%) Big Data
10 12 (5.80%) Amazon Redshift
11 11 (5.31%) Looker
11 11 (5.31%) Redis
12 10 (4.83%) BigQuery
12 10 (4.83%) Power BI
13 9 (4.35%) DynamoDB
14 8 (3.86%) Tableau
15 7 (3.38%) Amazon RDS
15 7 (3.38%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 48 (23.19%) Git
2 24 (11.59%) GitLab
2 24 (11.59%) Jenkins
3 8 (3.86%) JIRA
4 7 (3.38%) MLflow
5 4 (1.93%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (1.93%) Bitbucket
5 4 (1.93%) IntelliJ
5 4 (1.93%) JUnit
6 3 (1.45%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.45%) Postman
6 3 (1.45%) Selenium
6 3 (1.45%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.97%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.97%) JMeter
7 2 (0.97%) minitest
7 2 (0.97%) RSpec
8 1 (0.48%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.48%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.48%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 34 (16.43%) Social Skills
2 31 (14.98%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (12.08%) Public Sector
4 21 (10.14%) Finance
5 8 (3.86%) Banking
5 8 (3.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (2.90%) Law
7 4 (1.93%) Advertising
7 4 (1.93%) Aerospace
8 3 (1.45%) Marketing
9 2 (0.97%) Automotive
9 2 (0.97%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.48%) Billing
10 1 (0.48%) Games
10 1 (0.48%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.48%) Japanese Language
10 1 (0.48%) Military
10 1 (0.48%) Retail
10 1 (0.48%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.48%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 58 (28.02%) Developer
2 50 (24.15%) Senior
3 49 (23.67%) Data Engineer
4 34 (16.43%) Lead
5 26 (12.56%) Java Developer
6 24 (11.59%) Architect
7 20 (9.66%) Senior Data Engineer
8 16 (7.73%) Senior Developer
8 16 (7.73%) Software Engineer
9 13 (6.28%) Full-Stack Developer
10 11 (5.31%) Kafka Engineer
11 10 (4.83%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (4.83%) Integration Developer
12 9 (4.35%) Full-Stack Java Developer
12 9 (4.35%) Principal Engineer
12 9 (4.35%) Python Engineer
13 8 (3.86%) Backend Developer
13 8 (3.86%) Integration Engineer
13 8 (3.86%) Python Developer
13 8 (3.86%) Senior Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (25.12%) Spring
2 51 (24.64%) Spring Boot
3 48 (23.19%) RESTful
4 40 (19.32%) REST
5 37 (17.87%) RabbitMQ
6 25 (12.08%) Hibernate
7 24 (11.59%) JPA
7 24 (11.59%) Node.js
8 17 (8.21%) .NET
9 16 (7.73%) React
10 15 (7.25%) PySpark
11 13 (6.28%) FastAPI
11 13 (6.28%) OpenAPI
11 13 (6.28%) Swagger
12 12 (5.80%) Apache NiFi
13 10 (4.83%) JWT
13 10 (4.83%) OAuth
14 9 (4.35%) Keycloak
14 9 (4.35%) PyTorch
14 9 (4.35%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 64 (30.92%) Cloud Native
2 47 (22.71%) Distributed Systems
3 25 (12.08%) Product Ownership
4 12 (5.80%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (5.31%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (5.31%) Public Cloud
6 10 (4.83%) Onboarding
7 8 (3.86%) Mainframe
8 7 (3.38%) Clustering
8 7 (3.38%) Data Structures
8 7 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (3.38%) Robotics
8 7 (3.38%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.90%) Distributed Computing
9 6 (2.90%) Virtual Team
10 5 (2.42%) Algorithms
10 5 (2.42%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (1.93%) IoT
11 4 (1.93%) Marketing Technology
11 4 (1.93%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 22 (10.63%) Linux
2 4 (1.93%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (56.04%) CI/CD
2 101 (48.79%) Agile
3 90 (43.48%) Microservices
4 86 (41.55%) DevOps
5 69 (33.33%) Event-Driven
6 63 (30.43%) Infrastructure as Code
7 61 (29.47%) AI
8 58 (28.02%) Containerisation
9 54 (26.09%) Analytics
9 54 (26.09%) Observability
10 53 (25.60%) Data Pipeline
11 51 (24.64%) Mentoring
12 49 (23.67%) Software Engineering
13 46 (22.22%) Problem-Solving
14 43 (20.77%) Machine Learning
15 40 (19.32%) Scrum
16 38 (18.36%) ETL
17 37 (17.87%) Continuous Improvement
17 37 (17.87%) Data Modelling
18 34 (16.43%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 116 (56.04%) Python
2 96 (46.38%) Java
3 80 (38.65%) SQL
4 33 (15.94%) JavaScript
5 24 (11.59%) TypeScript
6 13 (6.28%) Go
6 13 (6.28%) Rust
7 12 (5.80%) C#
8 10 (4.83%) PowerShell
9 9 (4.35%) Scala
10 8 (3.86%) Groovy
10 8 (3.86%) Ruby
11 6 (2.90%) Kotlin
12 5 (2.42%) Bash
12 5 (2.42%) T-SQL
13 4 (1.93%) C++
14 3 (1.45%) DataWeave
14 3 (1.45%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.97%) Bicep
15 2 (0.97%) C
Qualifications
1 53 (25.60%) Security Cleared
2 35 (16.91%) SC Cleared
3 28 (13.53%) Degree
4 16 (7.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (6.76%) DV Cleared
6 12 (5.80%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.90%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.93%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.93%) MBA
9 3 (1.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.48%) HND
11 1 (0.48%) OCP
11 1 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (12.08%) Data Quality
2 19 (9.18%) QA
3 10 (4.83%) GDPR
4 8 (3.86%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 7 (3.38%) Accessibility
6 6 (2.90%) WCAG
7 3 (1.45%) NIST
7 3 (1.45%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.97%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.48%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.48%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.48%) PSD2
System Software
1 86 (41.55%) Docker
2 1 (0.48%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 100 (48.31%) Kubernetes
2 69 (33.33%) Terraform
3 21 (10.14%) Grafana
4 20 (9.66%) Ansible
5 18 (8.70%) Prometheus
6 7 (3.38%) Argo
6 7 (3.38%) Puppet
7 5 (2.42%) Kibana
7 5 (2.42%) Podman
8 2 (0.97%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 23 (11.11%) Databricks
2 20 (9.66%) Microsoft
3 14 (6.76%) Splunk
4 11 (5.31%) Google
5 9 (4.35%) Dynatrace
6 8 (3.86%) Dell
6 8 (3.86%) Oracle
7 7 (3.38%) Atlassian
7 7 (3.38%) Cloudera
7 7 (3.38%) HubSpot
8 6 (2.90%) Confluent
9 5 (2.42%) MuleSoft
9 5 (2.42%) OpenAI
10 4 (1.93%) Adobe
10 4 (1.93%) Informatica
10 4 (1.93%) NVIDIA
11 3 (1.45%) Pega
11 3 (1.45%) Tenable
11 3 (1.45%) webMethods
12 2 (0.97%) Sparx