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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 437 200 257
Rank change year-on-year -237 +57 +48
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 196 524 601
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.26% 1.53% 0.96%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 3.07% 10.52% 5.49%
Number of salaries quoted 144 133 260
10th Percentile £54,866 £44,000 £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 £88,125 £77,500 £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 6,389 4,979 10,955
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 8.61% 14.57% 17.52%
Number of salaries quoted 5,103 3,116 7,877
10th Percentile £37,500 £32,500 £34,404
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 £74,066 £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 30 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 30 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 -136 58 £75,000 +11.49% 44
South East -60 48 £67,500 -6.90% 42
North West -85 47 £75,000 +11.11% 21
South West -68 29 £85,000 +30.77% 25
Midlands -86 19 £85,000 +25.93% 9
Wales - 19 £70,000 - 2
West Midlands -37 17 £85,000 +41.67% 7
East of England -30 16 £72,500 +1.40% 6
Scotland -82 11 £65,000 +4.00% 20
North East -50 7 £62,500 +31.58% 10
Yorkshire -32 4 £66,805 -10.93% 13
East Midlands -61 2 £71,500 +5.93% 2
Northern Ireland -80 1 - - 5
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 25 (12.76%) Apache Spark
2 18 (9.18%) Apache Airflow
3 15 (7.65%) Apache
4 3 (1.53%) Anypoint
4 3 (1.53%) BizTalk Server
5 2 (1.02%) ArcGIS
5 2 (1.02%) CICS
5 2 (1.02%) Confluence
6 1 (0.51%) JBoss
6 1 (0.51%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.51%) PegaRULES
6 1 (0.51%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 128 (65.31%) AWS
2 102 (52.04%) Azure
3 59 (30.10%) GCP
4 34 (17.35%) Serverless
5 30 (15.31%) GitHub
6 26 (13.27%) AWS CloudFormation
7 24 (12.24%) Amazon SQS
8 23 (11.73%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (8.67%) Snowflake
10 16 (8.16%) Amazon EventBridge
10 16 (8.16%) Amazon S3
11 15 (7.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 14 (7.14%) Amazon ECS
12 14 (7.14%) dbt
13 13 (6.63%) GitHub Copilot
14 11 (5.61%) Amazon EKS
14 11 (5.61%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (5.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 9 (4.59%) Datadog
16 9 (4.59%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 23 (11.73%) MQTT
2 4 (2.04%) Network Security
3 2 (1.02%) Firewall
3 2 (1.02%) SSL
4 1 (0.51%) ATM
4 1 (0.51%) Broadband
4 1 (0.51%) LAN
4 1 (0.51%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (21.94%) MongoDB
2 36 (18.37%) PostgreSQL
3 32 (16.33%) NoSQL
4 21 (10.71%) MySQL
4 21 (10.71%) SQL Server
5 19 (9.69%) Elasticsearch
6 17 (8.67%) Data Lake
7 14 (7.14%) Relational Database
8 13 (6.63%) Data Warehouse
8 13 (6.63%) Flink
9 12 (6.12%) Amazon Redshift
9 12 (6.12%) Big Data
10 11 (5.61%) Redis
11 10 (5.10%) BigQuery
11 10 (5.10%) Looker
12 9 (4.59%) DynamoDB
12 9 (4.59%) Power BI
13 7 (3.57%) Amazon RDS
13 7 (3.57%) Snowflake Schema
13 7 (3.57%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 44 (22.45%) Git
2 22 (11.22%) Jenkins
3 21 (10.71%) GitLab
4 8 (4.08%) JIRA
5 7 (3.57%) MLflow
6 4 (2.04%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (2.04%) Bitbucket
6 4 (2.04%) IntelliJ
6 4 (2.04%) JUnit
7 3 (1.53%) Eclipse
7 3 (1.53%) Postman
7 3 (1.53%) Selenium
7 3 (1.53%) SonarQube
8 2 (1.02%) Cucumber
8 2 (1.02%) JMeter
8 2 (1.02%) minitest
8 2 (1.02%) RSpec
9 1 (0.51%) Mockito
9 1 (0.51%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.51%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 32 (16.33%) Social Skills
2 29 (14.80%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 18 (9.18%) Finance
5 7 (3.57%) Banking
6 5 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (2.04%) Advertising
7 4 (2.04%) Law
8 3 (1.53%) Aerospace
9 2 (1.02%) Automotive
9 2 (1.02%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.51%) Billing
10 1 (0.51%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.51%) Games
10 1 (0.51%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.51%) Japanese Language
10 1 (0.51%) Marketing
10 1 (0.51%) Retail
10 1 (0.51%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.51%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 55 (28.06%) Developer
2 49 (25.00%) Senior
3 46 (23.47%) Data Engineer
4 31 (15.82%) Lead
5 25 (12.76%) Java Developer
6 22 (11.22%) Architect
7 19 (9.69%) Senior Data Engineer
8 16 (8.16%) Senior Developer
9 14 (7.14%) Software Engineer
10 13 (6.63%) Full-Stack Developer
11 10 (5.10%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (5.10%) Integration Developer
12 9 (4.59%) Full-Stack Java Developer
12 9 (4.59%) Kafka Engineer
12 9 (4.59%) Principal Engineer
13 8 (4.08%) Backend Developer
13 8 (4.08%) Integration Engineer
13 8 (4.08%) Python Developer
13 8 (4.08%) Senior Systems Engineer
14 7 (3.57%) DevSecOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (25.00%) Spring
2 48 (24.49%) Spring Boot
3 44 (22.45%) RESTful
4 38 (19.39%) REST
5 35 (17.86%) RabbitMQ
6 24 (12.24%) Hibernate
7 23 (11.73%) JPA
8 22 (11.22%) Node.js
9 16 (8.16%) React
10 14 (7.14%) .NET
10 14 (7.14%) PySpark
11 12 (6.12%) FastAPI
11 12 (6.12%) OpenAPI
11 12 (6.12%) Swagger
12 10 (5.10%) Apache NiFi
12 10 (5.10%) JWT
12 10 (5.10%) OAuth
13 9 (4.59%) PyTorch
13 9 (4.59%) scikit-learn
13 9 (4.59%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 57 (29.08%) Cloud Native
2 45 (22.96%) Distributed Systems
3 23 (11.73%) Product Ownership
4 11 (5.61%) Public Cloud
5 10 (5.10%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (5.10%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (5.10%) Onboarding
6 8 (4.08%) Mainframe
7 7 (3.57%) Clustering
7 7 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (3.57%) Robotics
8 6 (3.06%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (2.55%) Data Structures
9 5 (2.55%) Distributed Computing
9 5 (2.55%) Virtual Team
10 4 (2.04%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (2.04%) Marketing Technology
10 4 (2.04%) Replication
11 3 (1.53%) Algorithms
11 3 (1.53%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 20 (10.20%) Linux
2 3 (1.53%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (55.61%) CI/CD
2 97 (49.49%) Agile
3 87 (44.39%) Microservices
4 82 (41.84%) DevOps
5 65 (33.16%) Event-Driven
6 58 (29.59%) AI
7 56 (28.57%) Infrastructure as Code
8 55 (28.06%) Containerisation
9 52 (26.53%) Observability
10 50 (25.51%) Analytics
11 49 (25.00%) Data Pipeline
12 47 (23.98%) Mentoring
13 43 (21.94%) Software Engineering
14 41 (20.92%) Machine Learning
14 41 (20.92%) Problem-Solving
15 40 (20.41%) Scrum
16 38 (19.39%) Continuous Improvement
17 35 (17.86%) ETL
18 34 (17.35%) Data Modelling
19 32 (16.33%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 110 (56.12%) Python
2 91 (46.43%) Java
3 79 (40.31%) SQL
4 31 (15.82%) JavaScript
5 22 (11.22%) TypeScript
6 13 (6.63%) Rust
7 11 (5.61%) C#
7 11 (5.61%) Go
8 10 (5.10%) PowerShell
9 9 (4.59%) Scala
10 8 (4.08%) Groovy
10 8 (4.08%) Ruby
11 6 (3.06%) Kotlin
12 5 (2.55%) Bash
12 5 (2.55%) T-SQL
13 4 (2.04%) C++
14 3 (1.53%) DataWeave
14 3 (1.53%) PL/SQL
15 2 (1.02%) Bicep
15 2 (1.02%) C
Qualifications
1 48 (24.49%) Security Cleared
2 32 (16.33%) SC Cleared
3 27 (13.78%) Degree
4 15 (7.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (6.63%) DV Cleared
6 10 (5.10%) Azure Certification
7 4 (2.04%) Master's Degree
7 4 (2.04%) MBA
8 3 (1.53%) AWS Certification
9 2 (1.02%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.51%) HND
10 1 (0.51%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (12.24%) Data Quality
2 18 (9.18%) QA
3 9 (4.59%) GDPR
4 7 (3.57%) Accessibility
4 7 (3.57%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 6 (3.06%) WCAG
6 2 (1.02%) NIST
6 2 (1.02%) NIST 800
6 2 (1.02%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.51%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.51%) PSD2
System Software
1 79 (40.31%) Docker
2 1 (0.51%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 93 (47.45%) Kubernetes
2 64 (32.65%) Terraform
3 19 (9.69%) Grafana
4 18 (9.18%) Ansible
5 16 (8.16%) Prometheus
6 6 (3.06%) Puppet
7 5 (2.55%) Argo
7 5 (2.55%) Kibana
8 4 (2.04%) Podman
9 2 (1.02%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (11.22%) Databricks
2 20 (10.20%) Microsoft
3 11 (5.61%) Google
3 11 (5.61%) Splunk
4 8 (4.08%) Dell
4 8 (4.08%) Oracle
5 7 (3.57%) Atlassian
5 7 (3.57%) Cloudera
5 7 (3.57%) HubSpot
6 6 (3.06%) Dynatrace
7 5 (2.55%) Confluent
7 5 (2.55%) MuleSoft
7 5 (2.55%) OpenAI
8 4 (2.04%) Adobe
8 4 (2.04%) Informatica
8 4 (2.04%) NVIDIA
9 3 (1.53%) Pega
9 3 (1.53%) Tenable
9 3 (1.53%) webMethods
10 1 (0.51%) Yahoo!