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 17 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 437 196 282
Rank change year-on-year -241 +86 -7
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 238 500 441
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.28% 1.46% 0.80%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 3.26% 10.62% 4.16%
Number of salaries quoted 164 118 202
10th Percentile £53,750 £43,750 -
25th Percentile £62,376 £52,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £67,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% +22.73% -21.43%
75th Percentile £85,000 £83,438 £66,875
90th Percentile £97,500 £97,500 £85,000
UK median annual salary £80,000 £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 7,301 4,706 10,607
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.67% 13.70% 19.18%
Number of salaries quoted 5,642 2,846 6,409
10th Percentile £40,000 £33,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £47,500 £45,000 £44,738
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year - +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £76,250 £73,750 £70,000
90th Percentile £93,738 £86,250 £81,250
UK median annual salary £67,500 £69,384 £65,000
% change year-on-year -2.71% +6.74% -3.70%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -120 77 £75,000 +7.14% 167
North West -87 60 £75,000 +9.09% 106
South East -66 45 £67,500 -5.59% 75
South West -75 35 £85,000 +25.93% 52
Midlands -80 31 £85,000 +25.93% 40
West Midlands -34 29 £85,000 +51.11% 30
Wales - 26 £70,000 - 5
East of England -30 22 £72,500 -4.29% 31
North East -58 12 £67,500 +42.11% 18
Scotland -87 12 - - 81
Yorkshire -46 5 £78,500 +4.67% 43
East Midlands -81 2 £71,500 +5.93% 10
Northern Ireland -87 1 - - 49
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 27 (11.34%) Apache Spark
2 17 (7.14%) Apache
3 13 (5.46%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (1.68%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.26%) Anypoint
5 3 (1.26%) BizTalk Server
6 2 (0.84%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.84%) Confluence
7 1 (0.42%) JBoss
7 1 (0.42%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 152 (63.87%) AWS
2 119 (50.00%) Azure
3 59 (24.79%) GCP
4 40 (16.81%) Serverless
5 35 (14.71%) AWS CloudFormation
6 30 (12.61%) GitHub
7 29 (12.18%) Amazon SQS
8 27 (11.34%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (9.24%) Amazon S3
10 20 (8.40%) Amazon ECS
11 17 (7.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 16 (6.72%) Amazon EventBridge
13 15 (6.30%) Azure Service Bus
14 14 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
15 13 (5.46%) Amazon EKS
16 12 (5.04%) GitHub Copilot
16 12 (5.04%) Snowflake
17 11 (4.62%) Datadog
18 9 (3.78%) GitHub Actions
19 8 (3.36%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 27 (11.34%) MQTT
2 5 (2.10%) Network Security
3 2 (0.84%) 4G
3 2 (0.84%) 5G
3 2 (0.84%) DNS
3 2 (0.84%) HTTP
3 2 (0.84%) Internet
3 2 (0.84%) SSH
3 2 (0.84%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.42%) ATM
4 1 (0.42%) Firewall
4 1 (0.42%) LAN
4 1 (0.42%) SSL
4 1 (0.42%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (26.05%) MongoDB
2 50 (21.01%) PostgreSQL
3 45 (18.91%) NoSQL
4 30 (12.61%) MySQL
5 19 (7.98%) SQL Server
6 18 (7.56%) Elasticsearch
7 15 (6.30%) Data Lake
8 14 (5.88%) Big Data
8 14 (5.88%) Relational Database
9 13 (5.46%) Flink
10 12 (5.04%) Redis
11 10 (4.20%) Data Warehouse
11 10 (4.20%) DynamoDB
12 9 (3.78%) Amazon Redshift
13 8 (3.36%) Amazon RDS
14 7 (2.94%) Power BI
15 6 (2.52%) BigQuery
16 5 (2.10%) Looker
16 5 (2.10%) Tableau
17 4 (1.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 55 (23.11%) Git
2 25 (10.50%) GitLab
3 22 (9.24%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.94%) JIRA
5 5 (2.10%) Selenium
6 4 (1.68%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (1.68%) Bitbucket
6 4 (1.68%) MLflow
7 3 (1.26%) JUnit
7 3 (1.26%) Postman
7 3 (1.26%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.84%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.84%) JMeter
8 2 (0.84%) minitest
8 2 (0.84%) RSpec
9 1 (0.42%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.42%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.42%) Karma Test Runner
9 1 (0.42%) Maven
9 1 (0.42%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 36 (15.13%) Social Skills
2 35 (14.71%) Analytical Skills
2 35 (14.71%) Public Sector
3 22 (9.24%) Finance
4 16 (6.72%) Banking
5 11 (4.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.94%) Law
6 7 (2.94%) Publishing
7 4 (1.68%) Advertising
7 4 (1.68%) Aerospace
7 4 (1.68%) Games
7 4 (1.68%) Marketing
8 3 (1.26%) iGaming
8 3 (1.26%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.84%) Automotive
9 2 (0.84%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.42%) Billing
10 1 (0.42%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.42%) Military
10 1 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 78 (32.77%) Developer
2 75 (31.51%) Senior
3 49 (20.59%) Data Engineer
4 37 (15.55%) Lead
5 35 (14.71%) Java Developer
6 31 (13.03%) Senior Developer
7 25 (10.50%) Architect
8 24 (10.08%) Software Engineer
9 23 (9.66%) Senior Data Engineer
10 16 (6.72%) Kafka Engineer
10 16 (6.72%) Python Developer
11 14 (5.88%) Python Engineer
12 13 (5.46%) Senior Python Developer
13 12 (5.04%) Backend Developer
13 12 (5.04%) Java Engineer
14 11 (4.62%) Azure Data Engineer
14 11 (4.62%) Azure Engineer
14 11 (4.62%) Elasticsearch Engineer
14 11 (4.62%) Python Data Engineer
15 10 (4.20%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (32.77%) Spring
2 72 (30.25%) Spring Boot
3 70 (29.41%) Terraform
4 61 (25.63%) RESTful
5 58 (24.37%) RabbitMQ
6 48 (20.17%) REST
7 31 (13.03%) Hibernate
7 31 (13.03%) Node.js
8 29 (12.18%) JPA
9 24 (10.08%) React
10 21 (8.82%) FastAPI
11 18 (7.56%) OpenAPI
11 18 (7.56%) Swagger
12 16 (6.72%) .NET
13 15 (6.30%) PySpark
14 14 (5.88%) Keycloak
15 11 (4.62%) Apache NiFi
16 9 (3.78%) JWT
16 9 (3.78%) OAuth
17 8 (3.36%) Ruby on Rails
Miscellaneous
1 76 (31.93%) Cloud Native
2 60 (25.21%) Distributed Systems
3 34 (14.29%) Product Ownership
4 19 (7.98%) Enterprise Software
5 16 (6.72%) Hybrid Cloud
6 14 (5.88%) Self-Motivation
7 13 (5.46%) Virtual Team
8 10 (4.20%) Onboarding
9 8 (3.36%) Distributed Computing
9 8 (3.36%) Public Cloud
10 7 (2.94%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
10 7 (2.94%) Media Streaming
10 7 (2.94%) Podcast
10 7 (2.94%) Robotics
11 6 (2.52%) Data Structures
11 6 (2.52%) IoT
11 6 (2.52%) Mainframe
12 5 (2.10%) AI Agents
12 5 (2.10%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 24 (10.08%) Linux
2 4 (1.68%) Windows
3 1 (0.42%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (55.46%) CI/CD
2 118 (49.58%) Agile
3 109 (45.80%) Microservices
4 106 (44.54%) DevOps
5 102 (42.86%) Event-Driven
6 77 (32.35%) Containerisation
7 76 (31.93%) Software Engineering
8 75 (31.51%) Infrastructure as Code
8 75 (31.51%) Mentoring
9 67 (28.15%) Observability
10 62 (26.05%) AI
11 56 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
12 50 (21.01%) Data Pipeline
13 48 (20.17%) Analytics
14 46 (19.33%) Roadmaps
14 46 (19.33%) Scrum
15 45 (18.91%) Technical Leadership
16 43 (18.07%) Continuous Improvement
17 42 (17.65%) API Design
17 42 (17.65%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 120 (50.42%) Java
2 118 (49.58%) Python
3 71 (29.83%) SQL
4 35 (14.71%) TypeScript
5 32 (13.45%) JavaScript
6 18 (7.56%) Go
7 11 (4.62%) C#
8 10 (4.20%) PowerShell
8 10 (4.20%) Rust
9 8 (3.36%) Ruby
9 8 (3.36%) Scala
10 7 (2.94%) Bash
10 7 (2.94%) Groovy
11 6 (2.52%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.68%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.68%) T-SQL
13 3 (1.26%) C++
13 3 (1.26%) DataWeave
14 2 (0.84%) Bicep
14 2 (0.84%) PHP
Qualifications
1 62 (26.05%) Security Cleared
2 43 (18.07%) SC Cleared
3 26 (10.92%) Degree
4 18 (7.56%) DV Cleared
5 17 (7.14%) Azure Certification
5 17 (7.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (2.52%) AWS Certification
8 5 (2.10%) Master's Degree
9 4 (1.68%) MBA
10 3 (1.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.84%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.42%) HND
12 1 (0.42%) OCP
12 1 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (10.92%) QA
2 21 (8.82%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.94%) Accessibility
3 7 (2.94%) GDPR
4 6 (2.52%) WCAG
5 5 (2.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (1.26%) NIST
6 3 (1.26%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.84%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.42%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.42%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.42%) PSD2
System Software
1 100 (42.02%) Docker
2 1 (0.42%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 118 (49.58%) Kubernetes
2 28 (11.76%) Grafana
3 24 (10.08%) Prometheus
4 16 (6.72%) Ansible
5 7 (2.94%) Argo
6 6 (2.52%) Puppet
7 5 (2.10%) Kibana
7 5 (2.10%) Podman
8 1 (0.42%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 22 (9.24%) Splunk
2 20 (8.40%) Databricks
2 20 (8.40%) Microsoft
3 11 (4.62%) Dynatrace
4 9 (3.78%) Google
5 8 (3.36%) Oracle
6 7 (2.94%) Atlassian
6 7 (2.94%) HubSpot
6 7 (2.94%) OpenAI
7 5 (2.10%) Dell
7 5 (2.10%) MuleSoft
8 4 (1.68%) Adobe
8 4 (1.68%) Cloudera
8 4 (1.68%) Confluent
8 4 (1.68%) Informatica
8 4 (1.68%) NVIDIA
9 3 (1.26%) Tenable
9 3 (1.26%) webMethods
10 2 (0.84%) Sparx
11 1 (0.42%) YouTube