Kafka jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-28, Kafka appears in 7,396 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Software Engineer has the most postings mentioning Kafka, with demand down 51% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-28
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Frequently asked questions about Kafka
+Is Kafka in demand in 2026?
Yes. Kafka appears in 7,396 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, with demand down 51% vs the prior 4 weeks. Software Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning Kafka (37.4% of all postings mentioning Kafka).
+What jobs require Kafka?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning Kafka are CloudOps Engineer (80.6% of that role’s postings mention Kafka), Machine Learning Platform Engineer (40.0% of that role’s postings mention Kafka), Data Infrastructure Engineer (34.5% of that role’s postings mention Kafka).
+What skills are commonly paired with Kafka?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-28), Kafka most often appears alongside Python, Java, Kubernetes, AWS, SQL.
+Where is Kafka most in demand?
As of 2026-09-28, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring Kafka are Bengaluru, New York City, London, San Francisco, Pune, according to the Skillenai jobs index.
+How can I keep up with new Kafka content and jobs?
Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning Kafka alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new Kafka content from your Skillenai account.
Weekly job postings requiring Kafka — last 90 days
Salary distribution
Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized
Roles most likely to require Kafka
Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | % of role postings mentioning skill |
|---|---|---|
| CloudOps Engineer | 25 | 80.6% |
| Machine Learning Platform Engineer | 10 | 40.0% |
| Data Infrastructure Engineer | 10 | 34.5% |
| Integrations Engineer | 9 | 32.1% |
| Software Engineering Team Lead | 7 | 31.8% |
| Java Backend Engineer | 9 | 30.0% |
| Consulting Engineer | 18 | 29.0% |
| Lead Data Engineer | 21 | 28.8% |
| Distributed Systems Engineer | 17 | 25.4% |
| Data Platform Engineer | 74 | 25.3% |
Roles with the most Kafka postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | 2,768 | 37.4% |
| Data Engineer | 747 | 10.1% |
| Backend Engineer | 461 | 6.2% |
| Engineering Manager | 207 | 2.8% |
| DevOps Engineer | 136 | 1.8% |
| Solutions Architect | 126 | 1.7% |
| Site Reliability Engineer | 101 | 1.4% |
| Backend Software Engineer | 87 | 1.2% |
| Full Stack Engineer | 79 | 1.1% |
| Platform Engineer | 77 | 1.0% |
Top metros hiring for Kafka
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Bengaluru | 285 | 3.9% |
| New York City | 264 | 3.6% |
| London | 263 | 3.6% |
| San Francisco | 223 | 3.0% |
| Pune | 111 | 1.5% |
| Toronto | 103 | 1.4% |
| Boston | 93 | 1.3% |
| Amsterdam | 88 | 1.2% |
| San Jose | 85 | 1.1% |
Skills commonly paired with Kafka
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How this was computed
Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Role prevalence divides postings mentioning Kafka by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s Kafka postings by all Kafka postings, including postings without a role. Shares need not sum to 100% for the displayed roles. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills).
- source
- Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
- entity_id
- fd8879017b49226d
- data_as_of
- 2026-09-28
- window_days
- 90
The demand, skills, and geo numbers on this page come from the same Skillenai labor market index that powers our API. Use it for compensation benchmarking, hiring-competition analysis, and skill-adoption tracking.
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