Kafka Job Trends in the South East

Apache Kafka
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Kafka skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 275 225 208
Rank change year-on-year -50 -17 +44
Permanent jobs citing Kafka 46 69 136
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 0.27% 0.78% 0.99%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 2.75% 6.63% 5.35%
Number of salaries quoted 36 38 116
10th Percentile £54,904 £50,275 -
25th Percentile £57,188 £62,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £72,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -6.90% +38.10% -25.00%
75th Percentile £80,313 £92,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £97,500 £101,500 £72,500
England median annual salary £85,000 £82,500 £72,500
% change year-on-year +3.03% +13.79% -17.14%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
South East

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 South East.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 1,674 1,040 2,542
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 9.78% 11.78% 18.45%
Number of salaries quoted 1,390 710 1,938
10th Percentile £42,500 £35,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £44,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £73,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £83,750 £82,500
England median annual salary £65,000 £67,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -3.70% +8.00% -7.41%

Kafka
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Kafka relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Kafka job vacancy trend in the South East

Kafka
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kafka.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Kafka

Kafka
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing Kafka in the South East over the 6 months to 15 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Kafka in the South East

Kafka
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Kafka within the South East region over the 6 months to 15 August 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
Hampshire -34 23 £69,000 -3.50% 7
Thames Valley -17 11 £60,000 +14.29% 10
Buckinghamshire -14 5 £60,000 +14.29% 2
West Sussex -19 5 £67,500 -3.57% 4
Oxfordshire -22 5 £63,750 - 3
Surrey -23 5 £70,000 -12.50% 8
Berkshire +2 1 - - 5
East Sussex -18 1 £60,000 - 1
Kafka
England

Kafka
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 4 (8.70%) Apache
2 3 (6.52%) Apache Spark
3 2 (4.35%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (4.35%) ArcGIS
3 2 (4.35%) Confluence
4 1 (2.17%) JBoss
4 1 (2.17%) OpenStack
4 1 (2.17%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 35 (76.09%) AWS
2 32 (69.57%) Azure
3 16 (34.78%) GCP
4 11 (23.91%) Serverless
5 4 (8.70%) Cloud Computing
5 4 (8.70%) GitHub
5 4 (8.70%) Snowflake
6 3 (6.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 3 (6.52%) Amazon MSK
6 3 (6.52%) Anthropic Claude
6 3 (6.52%) Entra ID
7 2 (4.35%) Amazon EKS
7 2 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (4.35%) Boomi
7 2 (4.35%) ChatGPT
7 2 (4.35%) GitHub Copilot
7 2 (4.35%) Google Gemini
7 2 (4.35%) SaaS
8 1 (2.17%) Amazon S3
8 1 (2.17%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (23.91%) MQTT
2 5 (10.87%) Network Security
3 1 (2.17%) ATM
3 1 (2.17%) LAN
3 1 (2.17%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (17.39%) MongoDB
1 8 (17.39%) NoSQL
1 8 (17.39%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (10.87%) Elasticsearch
2 5 (10.87%) Relational Database
3 4 (8.70%) MySQL
3 4 (8.70%) SQL Server
3 4 (8.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 3 (6.52%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (6.52%) Redis
4 3 (6.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 3 (6.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 2 (4.35%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (4.35%) Couchbase
5 2 (4.35%) Geospatial Data
5 2 (4.35%) GIS
5 2 (4.35%) Pinecone
5 2 (4.35%) QGIS
5 2 (4.35%) Spotfire
6 1 (2.17%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 21 (45.65%) Git
2 9 (19.57%) GitLab
3 7 (15.22%) JIRA
4 3 (6.52%) Jenkins
4 3 (6.52%) SonarQube
5 2 (4.35%) Cucumber
5 2 (4.35%) JMeter
5 2 (4.35%) JUnit
6 1 (2.17%) TeamCity
General
1 10 (21.74%) Social Skills
2 7 (15.22%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (13.04%) Finance
4 4 (8.70%) Advertising
5 3 (6.52%) Public Sector
6 2 (4.35%) Aerospace
6 2 (4.35%) Law
6 2 (4.35%) Manufacturing
7 1 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (2.17%) Games
7 1 (2.17%) Italian Language
7 1 (2.17%) Japanese Language
Job Titles
1 10 (21.74%) Architect
1 10 (21.74%) Developer
2 8 (17.39%) Backend Developer
3 7 (15.22%) Software Engineer
4 6 (13.04%) Integration Architect
5 5 (10.87%) Data Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) DevSecOps Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) Java Developer
5 5 (10.87%) Senior
6 4 (8.70%) Analyst
7 3 (6.52%) Applications Support
7 3 (6.52%) Applications Support Analyst
7 3 (6.52%) Lead
7 3 (6.52%) Lead Security Architect
7 3 (6.52%) Security Architect
7 3 (6.52%) Service Analyst
7 3 (6.52%) Service Desk Analyst
7 3 (6.52%) Service Desk Support
7 3 (6.52%) Service Desk Support Analyst
7 3 (6.52%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (39.13%) REST
2 11 (23.91%) RabbitMQ
3 10 (21.74%) RESTful
3 10 (21.74%) Spring
4 9 (19.57%) Spring Boot
5 7 (15.22%) JSON
5 7 (15.22%) XML
6 6 (13.04%) Middleware
6 6 (13.04%) Node.js
7 5 (10.87%) gRPC
7 5 (10.87%) JWT
7 5 (10.87%) OAuth
7 5 (10.87%) OAuth2
7 5 (10.87%) SOAP
8 4 (8.70%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (8.70%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (8.70%) Vert.x
8 4 (8.70%) XML Messaging
9 3 (6.52%) Flask
9 3 (6.52%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 13 (28.26%) Distributed Systems
2 12 (26.09%) Product Ownership
3 8 (17.39%) Cloud Native
4 7 (15.22%) Onboarding
5 5 (10.87%) Robotics
6 3 (6.52%) Replication
6 3 (6.52%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 2 (4.35%) AI Agents
7 2 (4.35%) Algorithms
7 2 (4.35%) Data Structures
7 2 (4.35%) Life Science
7 2 (4.35%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (2.17%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (2.17%) Management Information System
8 1 (2.17%) NHS
8 1 (2.17%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 13 (28.26%) Linux
2 1 (2.17%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (73.91%) Agile
2 32 (69.57%) CI/CD
3 28 (60.87%) Microservices
4 17 (36.96%) DevOps
5 16 (34.78%) Problem-Solving
5 16 (34.78%) Software Engineering
6 15 (32.61%) AI
6 15 (32.61%) Containerisation
7 14 (30.43%) DevSecOps
7 14 (30.43%) Machine Learning
8 13 (28.26%) Event-Driven
9 11 (23.91%) Scrum
10 9 (19.57%) Cybersecurity
10 9 (19.57%) Edge Computing
10 9 (19.57%) Infrastructure as Code
10 9 (19.57%) Kanban
10 9 (19.57%) Observability
10 9 (19.57%) Test Automation
11 8 (17.39%) API Design
11 8 (17.39%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 24 (52.17%) Java
1 24 (52.17%) SQL
2 20 (43.48%) Python
3 11 (23.91%) Rust
4 8 (17.39%) JavaScript
5 5 (10.87%) Go
6 4 (8.70%) T-SQL
6 4 (8.70%) TypeScript
7 2 (4.35%) C++
7 2 (4.35%) PowerShell
7 2 (4.35%) Shell Script
8 1 (2.17%) Ada
8 1 (2.17%) C
8 1 (2.17%) C#
Qualifications
1 18 (39.13%) Degree
2 16 (34.78%) Security Cleared
3 12 (26.09%) SC Cleared
4 8 (17.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (2.17%) AWS Certification
5 1 (2.17%) Azure Certification
5 1 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (2.17%) HND
5 1 (2.17%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (13.04%) QA
2 4 (8.70%) Data Quality
3 3 (6.52%) NIST
3 3 (6.52%) NIST 800
4 2 (4.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 27 (58.70%) Docker
2 1 (2.17%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 26 (56.52%) Kubernetes
2 14 (30.43%) Terraform
3 11 (23.91%) Ansible
4 7 (15.22%) Grafana
5 5 (10.87%) Kibana
5 5 (10.87%) Podman
5 5 (10.87%) Prometheus
5 5 (10.87%) Puppet
Vendors
1 7 (15.22%) Microsoft
2 5 (10.87%) Google
3 4 (8.70%) NVIDIA
3 4 (8.70%) OpenAI
4 3 (6.52%) Tenable
5 2 (4.35%) Atlassian
5 2 (4.35%) Databricks
5 2 (4.35%) MuleSoft
5 2 (4.35%) Oracle
5 2 (4.35%) Splunk
6 1 (2.17%) Confluent
6 1 (2.17%) Dell
6 1 (2.17%) Rollbar
6 1 (2.17%) Sparx
6 1 (2.17%) VMware
6 1 (2.17%) Yahoo!