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 23 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 461 180 274
Rank change year-on-year -281 +94 +52
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 142 551 702
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.21% 1.82% 0.89%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.48% 11.02% 4.77%
Number of salaries quoted 103 158 317
10th Percentile £52,750 £46,250 £42,500
25th Percentile £59,500 £53,750 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £70,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +16.67% -13.95%
75th Percentile £93,750 £91,875 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £106,125 £91,250
UK median annual salary £87,500 £82,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year +6.06% +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 5,716 5,000 14,706
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.38% 16.48% 18.56%
Number of salaries quoted 4,623 3,150 10,933
10th Percentile £37,250 £32,498 £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 £87,500 £80,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £66,340 £60,000
% change year-on-year -2.02% +10.57% -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 23 June 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 23 June 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 -148 49 £75,000 +9.09% 25
South East -60 43 £67,500 -6.90% 23
North West -84 41 £75,000 +11.11% 18
East of England -22 14 £72,500 +1.40% 3
South West -76 13 £85,000 +25.93% 11
Midlands -97 12 £87,500 +29.63% 6
West Midlands -43 10 £87,500 +34.62% 5
Wales - 8 £70,000 - 1
Scotland -83 5 £65,000 -3.70% 7
Yorkshire -43 4 £90,000 +12.50% 4
North East -54 4 £62,500 +31.58% 3
East Midlands -64 2 £71,500 +5.93% 1
Northern Ireland -49 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 17 (11.97%) Apache Airflow
2 16 (11.27%) Apache Spark
3 9 (6.34%) Apache
4 3 (2.11%) OpenStack
5 2 (1.41%) Apache Qpid
5 2 (1.41%) CICS
6 1 (0.70%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.70%) Camunda
6 1 (0.70%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 97 (68.31%) AWS
2 69 (48.59%) Azure
3 44 (30.99%) GCP
4 30 (21.13%) Serverless
5 19 (13.38%) AWS Lambda
6 17 (11.97%) AWS CloudFormation
6 17 (11.97%) GitHub
7 15 (10.56%) Amazon S3
7 15 (10.56%) Amazon SQS
8 14 (9.86%) dbt
8 14 (9.86%) Snowflake
9 13 (9.15%) Amazon ECS
9 13 (9.15%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (7.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (6.34%) Amazon EventBridge
11 9 (6.34%) Power Platform
12 8 (5.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 7 (4.93%) Datadog
14 6 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
15 5 (3.52%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 18 (12.68%) MQTT
2 3 (2.11%) Network Security
3 2 (1.41%) Firewall
3 2 (1.41%) SSL
4 1 (0.70%) AMQP
4 1 (0.70%) Broadband
4 1 (0.70%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (19.72%) NoSQL
2 27 (19.01%) MongoDB
3 24 (16.90%) PostgreSQL
4 17 (11.97%) Data Lake
5 15 (10.56%) Elasticsearch
5 15 (10.56%) SQL Server
6 13 (9.15%) Data Warehouse
7 11 (7.75%) Amazon Redshift
8 10 (7.04%) Looker
8 10 (7.04%) Relational Database
9 9 (6.34%) DynamoDB
9 9 (6.34%) Flink
9 9 (6.34%) Power BI
9 9 (6.34%) Redis
10 8 (5.63%) BigQuery
10 8 (5.63%) MySQL
10 8 (5.63%) Tableau
11 7 (4.93%) Amazon RDS
11 7 (4.93%) Snowflake Schema
12 5 (3.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 32 (22.54%) Git
2 14 (9.86%) GitLab
2 14 (9.86%) Jenkins
3 7 (4.93%) MLflow
4 6 (4.23%) JIRA
5 4 (2.82%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (2.82%) Bitbucket
5 4 (2.82%) IntelliJ
5 4 (2.82%) JUnit
6 3 (2.11%) Cucumber
6 3 (2.11%) Eclipse
6 3 (2.11%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.41%) JMeter
7 2 (1.41%) Postman
7 2 (1.41%) Selenium
8 1 (0.70%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.70%) Mockito
8 1 (0.70%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.70%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.70%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 22 (15.49%) Social Skills
2 17 (11.97%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (8.45%) Finance
4 8 (5.63%) Public Sector
5 4 (2.82%) Advertising
6 3 (2.11%) Banking
6 3 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (1.41%) Law
8 1 (0.70%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.70%) Automotive
8 1 (0.70%) Games
8 1 (0.70%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.70%) Marketing
8 1 (0.70%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 37 (26.06%) Developer
2 35 (24.65%) Senior
3 29 (20.42%) Data Engineer
4 21 (14.79%) Lead
5 19 (13.38%) Architect
6 17 (11.97%) Java Developer
7 11 (7.75%) Senior Data Engineer
7 11 (7.75%) Senior Developer
8 9 (6.34%) DevOps Engineer
9 8 (5.63%) Integration Engineer
9 8 (5.63%) Senior Systems Engineer
9 8 (5.63%) Software Engineer
10 7 (4.93%) Backend Developer
10 7 (4.93%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 7 (4.93%) Integration Developer
10 7 (4.93%) Lead Developer
10 7 (4.93%) Systems Engineer
11 6 (4.23%) Full-Stack Developer
11 6 (4.23%) Java Engineer
11 6 (4.23%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (23.24%) Spring
2 32 (22.54%) REST
3 31 (21.83%) Spring Boot
4 26 (18.31%) RESTful
5 22 (15.49%) RabbitMQ
6 18 (12.68%) Node.js
7 13 (9.15%) .NET
8 12 (8.45%) React
9 10 (7.04%) Hibernate
10 9 (6.34%) JPA
10 9 (6.34%) PyTorch
10 9 (6.34%) scikit-learn
10 9 (6.34%) TensorFlow
11 8 (5.63%) FastAPI
11 8 (5.63%) OpenAPI
11 8 (5.63%) PySpark
11 8 (5.63%) SOAP
11 8 (5.63%) Swagger
12 7 (4.93%) .NET Framework
12 7 (4.93%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 43 (30.28%) Cloud Native
2 38 (26.76%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (11.27%) Product Ownership
4 8 (5.63%) Onboarding
4 8 (5.63%) Public Cloud
5 7 (4.93%) Clustering
6 6 (4.23%) Robotics
7 5 (3.52%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (3.52%) Hybrid Cloud
8 4 (2.82%) Data Structures
8 4 (2.82%) Mainframe
8 4 (2.82%) Replication
9 3 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (2.11%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 3 (2.11%) Virtual Team
10 2 (1.41%) Algorithms
10 2 (1.41%) Distributed Computing
10 2 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (1.41%) Marketing Technology
10 2 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 15 (10.56%) Linux
2 2 (1.41%) Windows
3 1 (0.70%) Android
3 1 (0.70%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (56.34%) CI/CD
2 73 (51.41%) Agile
3 66 (46.48%) Microservices
4 53 (37.32%) DevOps
4 53 (37.32%) Event-Driven
5 45 (31.69%) Containerisation
6 43 (30.28%) AI
6 43 (30.28%) Observability
7 39 (27.46%) Infrastructure as Code
8 34 (23.94%) Analytics
9 33 (23.24%) Mentoring
10 31 (21.83%) Continuous Improvement
10 31 (21.83%) Data Pipeline
10 31 (21.83%) Machine Learning
11 30 (21.13%) Data Modelling
12 28 (19.72%) Scrum
13 24 (16.90%) Problem-Solving
14 22 (15.49%) Data Engineering
14 22 (15.49%) ETL
14 22 (15.49%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 81 (57.04%) Python
2 66 (46.48%) SQL
3 62 (43.66%) Java
4 27 (19.01%) JavaScript
5 19 (13.38%) TypeScript
6 14 (9.86%) Rust
7 10 (7.04%) C#
8 9 (6.34%) PowerShell
9 7 (4.93%) Scala
10 6 (4.23%) Go
10 6 (4.23%) Groovy
11 5 (3.52%) Bash
11 5 (3.52%) T-SQL
12 4 (2.82%) C++
13 3 (2.11%) Kotlin
13 3 (2.11%) PL/SQL
14 2 (1.41%) Bicep
14 2 (1.41%) Ruby
15 1 (0.70%) Embedded C
15 1 (0.70%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 27 (19.01%) Security Cleared
2 21 (14.79%) Degree
3 19 (13.38%) SC Cleared
4 12 (8.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (4.23%) DV Cleared
6 3 (2.11%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.41%) MBA
8 1 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.70%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (12.68%) Data Quality
2 13 (9.15%) QA
3 7 (4.93%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 7 (4.93%) GDPR
4 4 (2.82%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.41%) WCAG
6 1 (0.70%) SOC 2
System Software
1 58 (40.85%) Docker
Systems Management
1 72 (50.70%) Kubernetes
2 48 (33.80%) Terraform
3 15 (10.56%) Ansible
4 14 (9.86%) Grafana
5 11 (7.75%) Prometheus
6 6 (4.23%) Puppet
7 5 (3.52%) Kibana
8 4 (2.82%) Argo
8 4 (2.82%) Podman
9 2 (1.41%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 18 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 17 (11.97%) Databricks
3 9 (6.34%) Oracle
4 7 (4.93%) Cloudera
4 7 (4.93%) Dell
4 7 (4.93%) HubSpot
5 6 (4.23%) Splunk
6 5 (3.52%) Google
7 4 (2.82%) Confluent
7 4 (2.82%) NVIDIA
7 4 (2.82%) Pega
8 3 (2.11%) Atlassian
8 3 (2.11%) Dynatrace
8 3 (2.11%) OpenAI
8 3 (2.11%) Tenable
9 2 (1.41%) Adobe
10 1 (0.70%) Automation Anywhere
10 1 (0.70%) Informatica
10 1 (0.70%) Rollbar
10 1 (0.70%) ServiceNow