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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 301 387 248
Rank change year-on-year +86 -139 +5
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 249 230 375
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.70% 0.48% 1.22%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 5.97% 2.68% 4.85%
Number of salaries quoted 77 140 311
10th Percentile £43,750 £42,500 £45,500
25th Percentile £52,500 £44,738 £53,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £56,000 £70,576
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -20.65% +0.82%
75th Percentile £87,500 £71,563 £84,056
90th Percentile £98,000 £97,500 £91,250
UK median annual salary £93,750 £72,500 £80,294
% change year-on-year +29.31% -9.71% -5.54%

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 4,173 8,585 7,731
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.75% 17.99% 25.12%
Number of salaries quoted 2,754 4,876 6,102
10th Percentile £30,000 £35,000 £36,750
25th Percentile £42,250 £45,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £57,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% -0.87% -
75th Percentile £72,500 £71,250 £72,500
90th Percentile £82,500 £82,500 £84,056
UK median annual salary £67,500 £65,000 £66,000
% change year-on-year +3.85% -1.52% +1.54%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025. 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 +52 81 £70,000 +27.27% 69
Scotland +45 78 £60,000 -11.11% 12
North West +51 65 £70,000 +27.27% 54
South East -7 38 £70,000 +55.56% 462
South West +21 27 £80,000 +33.33% 8
Midlands +64 13 £70,000 +16.67% 20
Yorkshire +7 12 £75,000 +36.36% 12
East of England +25 8 £71,500 +14.40% 25
West Midlands +43 7 £70,000 +16.67% 13
East Midlands +21 6 £68,750 +24.72% 6
North East +16 4 £47,500 -3.60% 3
Northern Ireland 0 4 £45,000 -14.29% 12
Wales +11 2 £73,316 +65.33% 10
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 30 (12.05%) Apache Spark
2 24 (9.64%) Apache Airflow
3 18 (7.23%) Apache
4 11 (4.42%) Appian
5 6 (2.41%) Confluence
6 4 (1.61%) Cloud Foundry
7 3 (1.20%) Mule
7 3 (1.20%) SAS
8 2 (0.80%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.40%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.40%) JBoss
9 1 (0.40%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.40%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.80%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 171 (68.67%) AWS
2 95 (38.15%) Azure
3 37 (14.86%) GCP
4 35 (14.06%) Amazon S3
5 30 (12.05%) GitHub
6 25 (10.04%) Serverless
7 18 (7.23%) AWS Lambda
8 17 (6.83%) Power Platform
9 14 (5.62%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (5.22%) SaaS
10 13 (5.22%) Snowflake
11 11 (4.42%) Amazon SQS
11 11 (4.42%) MinIO
12 10 (4.02%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (2.81%) Cloud Computing
14 6 (2.41%) Azure Service Bus
14 6 (2.41%) OpenShift
15 5 (2.01%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.01%) HTTP
2 3 (1.20%) PuTTY
3 2 (0.80%) AMQP
3 2 (0.80%) Broadband
3 2 (0.80%) Internet
3 2 (0.80%) MQTT
4 1 (0.40%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (22.89%) NoSQL
2 54 (21.69%) SQL Server
3 53 (21.29%) MongoDB
4 39 (15.66%) PostgreSQL
5 33 (13.25%) Big Data
6 25 (10.04%) Relational Database
7 19 (7.63%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (6.43%) DynamoDB
9 15 (6.02%) Apache Cassandra
9 15 (6.02%) Hadoop
10 14 (5.62%) Amazon Athena
10 14 (5.62%) MySQL
11 12 (4.82%) Amazon Redshift
11 12 (4.82%) Elasticsearch
12 9 (3.61%) Apache Iceberg
12 9 (3.61%) RDBMS
13 8 (3.21%) KDB
13 8 (3.21%) Kdb+
14 7 (2.81%) Data Lake
14 7 (2.81%) Impala
Development Applications
1 57 (22.89%) Selenium
2 49 (19.68%) JIRA
3 47 (18.88%) Cucumber
4 43 (17.27%) GitLab
4 43 (17.27%) Maven
5 39 (15.66%) Sonatype Nexus
6 38 (15.26%) SonarQube
7 36 (14.46%) Bitbucket
8 31 (12.45%) Jenkins
9 16 (6.43%) Git
10 14 (5.62%) JUnit
11 11 (4.42%) Robot Framework
11 11 (4.42%) Snyk
12 5 (2.01%) git-flow
12 5 (2.01%) JMeter
12 5 (2.01%) Subversion
13 4 (1.61%) Cypress.io
13 4 (1.61%) Mockito
14 3 (1.20%) TeamCity
15 2 (0.80%) LoadRunner
General
1 134 (53.82%) Finance
2 109 (43.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 90 (36.14%) Banking
4 82 (32.93%) Law
5 53 (21.29%) Investment Banking
6 47 (18.88%) Social Skills
7 36 (14.46%) Corporate Banking
7 36 (14.46%) Retail
8 20 (8.03%) Marketing
9 9 (3.61%) Analytical Skills
10 7 (2.81%) Public Sector
11 6 (2.41%) Legal
12 5 (2.01%) Tech for Good
13 4 (1.61%) Private Banking
13 4 (1.61%) Publishing
14 3 (1.20%) Advertising
14 3 (1.20%) Financial Institution
14 3 (1.20%) Games
14 3 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 130 (52.21%) Software Engineer
2 61 (24.50%) Java Engineer
3 53 (21.29%) Java Software Engineer
4 40 (16.06%) Developer
5 38 (15.26%) Lead
6 29 (11.65%) Architect
7 25 (10.04%) Senior
8 24 (9.64%) Lead Software Engineer
9 23 (9.24%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 23 (9.24%) Java Developer
10 19 (7.63%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
11 17 (6.83%) Python Engineer
12 16 (6.43%) Lead Java Engineer
13 14 (5.62%) Data Engineer
14 13 (5.22%) AWS Engineer
14 13 (5.22%) Python Software Engineer
14 13 (5.22%) Senior Software Engineer
15 12 (4.82%) Applications Architect
15 12 (4.82%) Kafka Developer
15 12 (4.82%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (53.01%) Spring
2 104 (41.77%) Spring Boot
3 102 (40.96%) React
4 67 (26.91%) RESTful
5 56 (22.49%) REST
6 50 (20.08%) CSS
7 48 (19.28%) HTML
8 41 (16.47%) Redux
9 39 (15.66%) HTML5
9 39 (15.66%) Jest
10 36 (14.46%) CSS3
10 36 (14.46%) JPA
10 36 (14.46%) Sass
11 23 (9.24%) AngularJS
12 22 (8.84%) .NET
13 21 (8.43%) RabbitMQ
14 15 (6.02%) Apache NiFi
15 13 (5.22%) Node.js
16 11 (4.42%) Hibernate
16 11 (4.42%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 70 (28.11%) Cloud Native
2 55 (22.09%) Product Ownership
3 43 (17.27%) Enterprise Software
4 22 (8.84%) Algorithms
4 22 (8.84%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (4.42%) Data Structures
5 11 (4.42%) Low-Code
6 10 (4.02%) Public Cloud
7 8 (3.21%) Management Information System
7 8 (3.21%) Reference Data
8 6 (2.41%) Wiki
9 4 (1.61%) Credit Risk
9 4 (1.61%) Derivative
9 4 (1.61%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.61%) Equities
9 4 (1.61%) Fixed Income
9 4 (1.61%) Legacy Code
9 4 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.61%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.80%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 7 (2.81%) Linux
2 4 (1.61%) Unix
3 2 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.80%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (81.93%) Agile
2 157 (63.05%) CI/CD
2 157 (63.05%) Software Engineering
3 130 (52.21%) Microservices
4 108 (43.37%) SDLC
5 102 (40.96%) DevOps
6 81 (32.53%) Full-Stack Development
7 77 (30.92%) Mentoring
8 69 (27.71%) Test Automation
9 65 (26.10%) AI
10 61 (24.50%) Operational Stability
11 57 (22.89%) Containerisation
11 57 (22.89%) Machine Learning
12 50 (20.08%) User Experience
13 44 (17.67%) Front End Development
14 42 (16.87%) Community of Practice
15 41 (16.47%) Performance Optimisation
16 39 (15.66%) Migration
17 37 (14.86%) Strategic Thinking
17 37 (14.86%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 171 (68.67%) Java
2 114 (45.78%) SQL
3 66 (26.51%) JavaScript
4 62 (24.90%) Python
4 62 (24.90%) TypeScript
5 36 (14.46%) C#
6 9 (3.61%) Go
7 6 (2.41%) Bash
8 5 (2.01%) Groovy
9 4 (1.61%) C++
9 4 (1.61%) R
10 3 (1.20%) PROC SQL
10 3 (1.20%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.40%) C
11 1 (0.40%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.40%) Ruby
11 1 (0.40%) Rust
11 1 (0.40%) Scala
Qualifications
1 23 (9.24%) AWS Certification
2 22 (8.84%) Security Cleared
3 15 (6.02%) SC Cleared
4 13 (5.22%) Degree
5 12 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (4.42%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.61%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.81%) Master's Degree
9 4 (1.61%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.40%) CISSP
11 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (18.07%) QA
2 36 (14.46%) Accessibility
3 12 (4.82%) GDPR
4 10 (4.02%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.81%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (1.20%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.80%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.80%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.40%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 86 (34.54%) Docker
2 5 (2.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.20%) Apache Flume
3 3 (1.20%) HDFS
4 1 (0.40%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 109 (43.78%) Kubernetes
2 33 (13.25%) Terraform
3 16 (6.43%) Ansible
4 7 (2.81%) Kibana
5 6 (2.41%) Grafana
6 3 (1.20%) logstash
6 3 (1.20%) Oozie
7 2 (0.80%) Control-M
7 2 (0.80%) HP Fortify
7 2 (0.80%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.80%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.40%) Istio
8 1 (0.40%) Podman
8 1 (0.40%) Puppet
Vendors
1 36 (14.46%) Oracle
1 36 (14.46%) Solace
2 17 (6.83%) Databricks
3 16 (6.43%) VMware
4 13 (5.22%) Google
5 11 (4.42%) BiZZdesign
5 11 (4.42%) Black Duck
5 11 (4.42%) UiPath
6 9 (3.61%) Splunk
7 7 (2.81%) Microsoft
8 6 (2.41%) Blue Prism
8 6 (2.41%) Coverity
8 6 (2.41%) SAP
9 5 (2.01%) Informatica
10 3 (1.20%) IBM
10 3 (1.20%) MicroStrategy
10 3 (1.20%) MuleSoft
10 3 (1.20%) OpenAI
10 3 (1.20%) Salesforce
11 2 (0.80%) Adobe