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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 430 203 259
Rank change year-on-year -227 +56 +48
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 194 527 614
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.26% 1.54% 0.97%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 3.07% 10.49% 5.47%
Number of salaries quoted 143 134 267
10th Percentile £54,846 £44,125 £42,500
25th Percentile £61,250 £52,500 £44,738
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,500 £67,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +5.93% +17.39% -17.86%
75th Percentile £88,750 £78,750 £72,500
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% -19.98%

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 6,315 5,025 11,225
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.61% 14.71% 17.68%
Number of salaries quoted 5,054 3,159 8,085
10th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £34,000
25th Percentile £46,250 £43,750 £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% -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 27 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 27 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 -131 58 £75,000 +11.11% 36
South East -53 48 £67,500 -6.90% 46
North West -94 47 £75,000 +11.11% 12
South West -65 28 £85,000 +30.77% 20
Midlands -82 19 £85,000 +25.93% 6
Wales - 19 £70,000 - 1
West Midlands -38 17 £85,000 +41.67% 5
East of England -16 16 £72,500 +1.40% 5
Scotland -83 10 £65,000 +4.00% 18
North East -49 7 £62,500 +31.58% 11
Yorkshire -37 4 £66,805 -9.42% 13
East Midlands -67 2 £71,500 +5.93% 1
Northern Ireland -79 1 - - 3
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 23 (11.86%) Apache Spark
2 17 (8.76%) Apache Airflow
3 14 (7.22%) Apache
4 3 (1.55%) Anypoint
4 3 (1.55%) BizTalk Server
5 2 (1.03%) ArcGIS
5 2 (1.03%) CICS
6 1 (0.52%) Camunda
6 1 (0.52%) Confluence
6 1 (0.52%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.52%) PegaRULES
Cloud Services
1 129 (66.49%) AWS
2 100 (51.55%) Azure
3 58 (29.90%) GCP
4 34 (17.53%) Serverless
5 30 (15.46%) GitHub
6 26 (13.40%) AWS CloudFormation
7 24 (12.37%) Amazon SQS
7 24 (12.37%) AWS Lambda
8 17 (8.76%) Snowflake
9 16 (8.25%) Amazon EventBridge
9 16 (8.25%) Amazon S3
10 15 (7.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 13 (6.70%) Amazon ECS
11 13 (6.70%) dbt
11 13 (6.70%) GitHub Copilot
12 11 (5.67%) Amazon EKS
12 11 (5.67%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (5.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 9 (4.64%) Power Platform
15 8 (4.12%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 22 (11.34%) MQTT
2 4 (2.06%) Network Security
3 2 (1.03%) Firewall
3 2 (1.03%) SSL
4 1 (0.52%) AMQP
4 1 (0.52%) ATM
4 1 (0.52%) Broadband
4 1 (0.52%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (22.16%) MongoDB
2 36 (18.56%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (17.53%) NoSQL
4 21 (10.82%) MySQL
4 21 (10.82%) SQL Server
5 19 (9.79%) Elasticsearch
6 17 (8.76%) Data Lake
7 13 (6.70%) Data Warehouse
7 13 (6.70%) Relational Database
8 12 (6.19%) Amazon Redshift
8 12 (6.19%) Big Data
8 12 (6.19%) Flink
9 11 (5.67%) Redis
10 10 (5.15%) Looker
11 9 (4.64%) BigQuery
11 9 (4.64%) DynamoDB
11 9 (4.64%) Power BI
12 7 (3.61%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (3.61%) Snowflake Schema
12 7 (3.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 43 (22.16%) Git
2 21 (10.82%) Jenkins
3 20 (10.31%) GitLab
4 7 (3.61%) JIRA
4 7 (3.61%) MLflow
5 4 (2.06%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (2.06%) Bitbucket
5 4 (2.06%) IntelliJ
5 4 (2.06%) JUnit
6 3 (1.55%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.55%) Postman
6 3 (1.55%) Selenium
6 3 (1.55%) SonarQube
7 2 (1.03%) Cucumber
7 2 (1.03%) JMeter
7 2 (1.03%) minitest
7 2 (1.03%) RSpec
8 1 (0.52%) Karma Test Runner
8 1 (0.52%) Mockito
8 1 (0.52%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 33 (17.01%) Social Skills
2 29 (14.95%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (11.86%) Public Sector
4 16 (8.25%) Finance
5 7 (3.61%) Banking
6 4 (2.06%) Advertising
6 4 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.55%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.55%) Law
8 2 (1.03%) Automotive
8 2 (1.03%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.03%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.52%) Billing
9 1 (0.52%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.52%) Games
9 1 (0.52%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.52%) Japanese Language
9 1 (0.52%) Marketing
9 1 (0.52%) Retail
9 1 (0.52%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 56 (28.87%) Developer
2 50 (25.77%) Senior
3 44 (22.68%) Data Engineer
4 31 (15.98%) Lead
5 25 (12.89%) Java Developer
6 23 (11.86%) Architect
7 19 (9.79%) Senior Data Engineer
8 17 (8.76%) Senior Developer
9 13 (6.70%) Full-Stack Developer
9 13 (6.70%) Software Engineer
10 10 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
10 10 (5.15%) Integration Developer
11 9 (4.64%) Backend Developer
11 9 (4.64%) Full-Stack Java Developer
11 9 (4.64%) Kafka Engineer
11 9 (4.64%) Principal Engineer
12 8 (4.12%) Integration Engineer
12 8 (4.12%) Python Developer
12 8 (4.12%) Senior Systems Engineer
13 7 (3.61%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (25.77%) Spring
2 49 (25.26%) Spring Boot
3 44 (22.68%) RESTful
4 40 (20.62%) REST
5 33 (17.01%) RabbitMQ
6 24 (12.37%) Hibernate
7 23 (11.86%) JPA
7 23 (11.86%) Node.js
8 16 (8.25%) React
9 14 (7.22%) .NET
9 14 (7.22%) PySpark
10 11 (5.67%) FastAPI
10 11 (5.67%) OpenAPI
10 11 (5.67%) Swagger
11 10 (5.15%) Apache NiFi
11 10 (5.15%) JWT
11 10 (5.15%) OAuth
12 9 (4.64%) PyTorch
12 9 (4.64%) scikit-learn
12 9 (4.64%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 57 (29.38%) Cloud Native
2 45 (23.20%) Distributed Systems
3 23 (11.86%) Product Ownership
4 10 (5.15%) Enterprise Software
4 10 (5.15%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (5.15%) Onboarding
4 10 (5.15%) Public Cloud
5 8 (4.12%) Mainframe
6 7 (3.61%) Clustering
6 7 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
6 7 (3.61%) Robotics
7 6 (3.09%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (2.58%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (2.58%) Virtual Team
9 4 (2.06%) Data Structures
9 4 (2.06%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (2.06%) Marketing Technology
9 4 (2.06%) Replication
10 3 (1.55%) IoT
10 3 (1.55%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 19 (9.79%) Linux
2 2 (1.03%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (56.19%) CI/CD
2 95 (48.97%) Agile
3 88 (45.36%) Microservices
4 82 (42.27%) DevOps
5 66 (34.02%) Event-Driven
6 58 (29.90%) AI
7 55 (28.35%) Containerisation
7 55 (28.35%) Infrastructure as Code
8 52 (26.80%) Observability
9 49 (25.26%) Analytics
10 48 (24.74%) Data Pipeline
11 45 (23.20%) Mentoring
12 43 (22.16%) Software Engineering
13 42 (21.65%) Machine Learning
14 41 (21.13%) Problem-Solving
15 40 (20.62%) Continuous Improvement
16 38 (19.59%) Scrum
17 35 (18.04%) Data Modelling
17 35 (18.04%) ETL
18 33 (17.01%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 109 (56.19%) Python
2 90 (46.39%) Java
3 81 (41.75%) SQL
4 31 (15.98%) JavaScript
5 23 (11.86%) TypeScript
6 13 (6.70%) Rust
7 11 (5.67%) C#
7 11 (5.67%) Go
8 10 (5.15%) PowerShell
9 9 (4.64%) Scala
10 8 (4.12%) Groovy
10 8 (4.12%) Ruby
11 6 (3.09%) Kotlin
12 5 (2.58%) Bash
12 5 (2.58%) T-SQL
13 4 (2.06%) C++
14 3 (1.55%) DataWeave
14 3 (1.55%) PL/SQL
15 2 (1.03%) Bicep
15 2 (1.03%) C
Qualifications
1 47 (24.23%) Security Cleared
2 31 (15.98%) SC Cleared
3 28 (14.43%) Degree
4 16 (8.25%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (6.70%) DV Cleared
6 10 (5.15%) Azure Certification
7 5 (2.58%) Master's Degree
8 4 (2.06%) MBA
9 2 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (0.52%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (11.86%) Data Quality
2 18 (9.28%) QA
3 9 (4.64%) GDPR
4 7 (3.61%) Accessibility
4 7 (3.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 6 (3.09%) WCAG
6 2 (1.03%) NIST
6 2 (1.03%) NIST 800
6 2 (1.03%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.52%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.52%) PSD2
System Software
1 78 (40.21%) Docker
Systems Management
1 92 (47.42%) Kubernetes
2 63 (32.47%) Terraform
3 18 (9.28%) Grafana
4 17 (8.76%) Ansible
5 15 (7.73%) Prometheus
6 6 (3.09%) Puppet
7 5 (2.58%) Kibana
8 4 (2.06%) Argo
8 4 (2.06%) Podman
9 2 (1.03%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (11.34%) Databricks
2 19 (9.79%) Microsoft
3 10 (5.15%) Google
3 10 (5.15%) Splunk
4 9 (4.64%) Oracle
5 8 (4.12%) Dell
6 7 (3.61%) Cloudera
6 7 (3.61%) HubSpot
7 6 (3.09%) Atlassian
8 5 (2.58%) Confluent
8 5 (2.58%) Dynatrace
8 5 (2.58%) OpenAI
9 4 (2.06%) Adobe
9 4 (2.06%) Informatica
9 4 (2.06%) MuleSoft
9 4 (2.06%) NVIDIA
9 4 (2.06%) Pega
10 3 (1.55%) Tenable
10 3 (1.55%) webMethods
11 1 (0.52%) Yahoo!