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Kafka freelance projects & contracts in Germany 2026

2% of the analysed German IT freelance listings name Kafka – 1,062 projects, rank 46 of the 60 most requested IT skills. In October 2026 it was 1.8% (+0.2 percentage points from the month before). Kafka is asked for most often in Java Backend Developer projects: they make up 30% of the engineering projects with Kafka.

By . Data: 52,106 listings on German IT freelance project boards, May 2026 – October 2026. Published , last updated .

Is Kafka required or nice to have?

53% of the listings with Kafka name it as a required skill. That is less often than for most skills of this overview (median 69%). 33% name it as nice to have, 14% without a clear mark.

Kafka demand by month

Share of listings with Kafka per month of first publication, with the number of projects under each month; months with fewer than 1,000 projects are left out. Single months fluctuate.

  1. June 2026216 of 7,653 projects2.8%
  2. July 2026217 of 9,884 projects2.2%
  3. August 2026202 of 10,216 projects2%
  4. September 2026176 of 10,958 projects1.6%
  5. October 2026237 of 13,054 projects1.8%

Skills asked for together with Kafka

The 15 skills that listings with Kafka name most often besides it, as a share of those projects. Blue: typical for Kafka, i.e. asked for at least 3 times as often as in projects overall; the tick shows the share across all projects.

Under each skill: its share across all projects.

  1. Kubernetesall projects 7.1%62%
  2. Javaall projects 6.6%61%
  3. Spring Bootall projects 3.7%48%
  4. CI/CDall projects 9.2%44%
  5. REST APIsall projects 7.3%40%
  6. Dockerall projects 4.8%39%
  7. Microservicesall projects 2.9%33%
  8. Gitall projects 5.1%30%
  9. Scrumall projects 8.1%29%
  10. PostgreSQLall projects 2.9%28%
  11. AWSall projects 4.1%26%
  12. TypeScriptall projects 4.3%25%
  13. SQLall projects 4.8%25%
  14. Angularall projects 2.6%23%
  15. Grafanaall projects 2.2%22%

Typical for Kafka – asked for at least 3 times as often as in projects overall – are Spring Boot (48%), Microservices (33%), Grafana (22%), PostgreSQL (28%), Java (61%), Angular (23%).

All of the most frequent companion skills are typical for this skill.

Roles asking for Kafka

91% of the projects with Kafka are engineering projects (962 projects) – projects that build software or technical systems; the rest are e.g. consulting, project management or IT operations. The bars show the roles with the most of those projects and their share of them; 4.2% fit none of the major roles. Under each role: how many of its projects name Kafka, and how often as required.

  1. Java Backend Developerin 23% of the role's projects · required 58%30%
  2. Java Fullstack Developerin 26% of the role's projects · required 69%22%
  3. DevOps / Platform Engineerin 7.2% of the role's projects · required 48%15%
  4. Data Engineerin 5.9% of the role's projects · required 49%7.8%
  5. ML / AI Engineerin 3.6% of the role's projects · required 28%3.3%
  6. Python Developerin 8.6% of the role's projects · required 34%3.3%
  7. C# / .NET Developerin 4.4% of the role's projects · required 48%2.8%
  8. Cloud Solution Architectin 5.8% of the role's projects · required 84%2.6%

Skills related to Kafka

Skills of this overview that are asked for together with Kafka much more often than chance would predict.

How to use the data

If Kafka is in your profile, the blue skills often belong with it – name them if you have them. Projectmatch automatically matches new projects against your profile and shows for each project which of the required skills your profile covers. Browse current Kafka projects or try it now.

All skills compared: Most in-demand IT skills in German freelance projects. Which skills form clusters: Which skills belong together? Which skills are in particular demand in Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt and other cities: IT freelance projects by city.

Method

An AI model reads the requested skills from each project description, and a project's role from its title and skills; the figures are updated monthly. Details: method of the IT skills analysis.