Apache Kafka

A distributed event-streaming platform for moving large volumes of data between systems in real time.

Hiring data as of September 20, 2026 · refreshed daily

companies naming it: 10 of 47companies naming it
open roles naming it: 38open roles naming it
of those based in NYC: 23of those based in NYC
median posted base (n=14): $231kmedian posted base (n=14)

What Apache Kafka means

Kafka is a durable, high-throughput log that systems publish events to and read events from. It underpins real-time data pipelines, event-driven architectures, and the streaming features that feed fraud, pricing, and recommendation models.

Apache Kafka in New York job posts

10 of the 47 New York AI companies we track name Apache Kafka in at least one open role today, across 38 postings. 23 of those are based in New York; the rest are remote or in the companies’ other offices.

This is engineering vocabulary: 87% of the postings that name it are Engineering roles.

How to read it

A backend and data-infrastructure term that shows up at the fintech and marketplace end of New York’s AI companies, where decisions are made on live events. It marks senior backend roles more than AI-specific ones.

What these roles pay

$208k25th percentile

$231kMedian

$255k75th percentile

Midpoints of 14 distinct salary ranges posted on New York roles that name Apache Kafka. Base salary only; on-target earnings are excluded, and a range repeated across one company’s postings counts once. For comparison, the median across all New York engineering postings is $215k. A term’s pay reflects the roles that name it as much as the skill itself — see the role mix below before reading a premium into it. Full bands by function and seniority are in the NYC salary calculator.

Companies naming Apache Kafka, daily

Count of companies with at least one open role naming the term. We read between 47 and 48 companies a day over this period, so a move of one or two is noise.

View as table

Date	companies
2026-08-17	11
2026-08-18	10
2026-08-19	10
2026-08-20	10
2026-08-21	10
2026-08-22	10
2026-08-23	10
2026-08-24	10
2026-08-25	10
2026-08-26	10
2026-08-27	10
2026-08-28	10
2026-08-29	10
2026-08-30	10
2026-08-31	10
2026-09-01	10
2026-09-02	11
2026-09-03	10
2026-09-04	10
2026-09-05	10
2026-09-06	10
2026-09-07	10
2026-09-08	10
2026-09-09	11
2026-09-10	11
2026-09-11	11
2026-09-12	11
2026-09-13	11
2026-09-14	11
2026-09-15	11
2026-09-16	11
2026-09-17	10
2026-09-18	10
2026-09-19	10
2026-09-20	10

Who names it

Open roles naming Apache Kafka, by company.

Headway12
AlphaSense7
Hebbia5
Invisible Technologies4
Attentive2
H12
Optimal Dynamics2
Ramp2
ElevenLabs1
Tabs1

Which roles

The same postings, by function and by seniority.

Engineering33
GTM5

Mid14
Staff/Principal10
Senior10
Manager4

Named alongside Apache Kafka

Terms that appear in the same postings far more often than chance would put them there. The number is how many of the 10 companies pair the two.

Open roles naming Apache Kafka

A sample from today’s data, New York roles first and one per company before any repeats. Links go to the employer’s own posting. For the full market, see AI jobs in NYC.

Backend Engineer II - Healthcare ↗H1 · New York
Backend Engineer, Agent Collaboration Platform ↗Hebbia · NYC
Engineering Manager (Data Safety) ↗Headway · New York City
GTM Business Systems Engineer – Post Sales ↗Ramp · New York, NY (HQ)
Principal Backend Engineer (Forward Deployed) ↗Invisible Technologies · London - Hybrid; New York - Hybrid; San Francisco Bay Area - Hybrid
Senior Software Engineer, Financial Sync ↗Tabs · New York City, NY
Join AlphaSense Helsinki Talent Community! ↗AlphaSense · Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
Safety Engineer - Free Tier Abuse ↗ElevenLabs · United Kingdom

How this is counted

Every day we read the open roles on the public job boards of the New York AI companies in our coverage — the NYC AI 100 and the AI in NYC Show roster. This term is matched against each role’s description after removing the text a company repeats across its postings, so an “About us” paragraph cannot tag every role the company has open. A vendor’s own postings never count toward its own name.

The figure means named in a job posting. It does not mean used in production, and a “nice to have” counts the same as a requirement. Companies are the headline number because posting counts are dominated by whichever few employers are hiring hardest this month.

Full method, including the pay rules, is on the glossary index; the underlying series is the NYC AI Hiring Index.

Apache Kafka — common questions

What does Apache Kafka mean in an AI job posting?

A distributed event-streaming platform for moving large volumes of data between systems in real time. A backend and data-infrastructure term that shows up at the fintech and marketplace end of New York’s AI companies, where decisions are made on live events. It marks senior backend roles more than AI-specific ones.

How many New York AI companies are hiring for Apache Kafka?

As of September 20, 2026, 10 of the 47 New York AI companies we track name Apache Kafka in the description of at least one open role, across 38 postings (23 based in New York). The count refreshes daily from the companies’ own job boards.

What do roles that ask for Apache Kafka pay in New York?

Across 14 distinct posted salary ranges on New York roles naming Apache Kafka, the median midpoint is $231k base, with the middle half between $208k and $255k. The same figure for all New York engineering postings is $215k. These are employer-posted ranges required by New York’s pay transparency law, base salary only.

Which skills are asked for alongside Apache Kafka?

In the same postings, the terms most distinctively paired with Apache Kafka are TensorFlow, Elasticsearch, Hugging Face, LangChain, Java. We rank pairings by how much more often they appear together than apart, so near-universal terms such as Python do not crowd out the informative ones.

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