Apache Kafka Experts in Berlin
to power reliable event streaming, matched in minutes with vetted professionalsHire experts who design event-driven architectures, build Kafka Streams and Connect pipelines, and operate resilient data platforms. FRATCH matches you quickly and precisely with vetted, available freelancers who fit your Apache Kafka project.
Meet FRATCH Experts in Berlin, who have recently used Apache Kafka
Kenan Š.
Last position:
Enterprise Architecture at Swiss Krono
- Building up the Enterprise Architecture department. Preparing the convergence of IT / OT.
- Mapping the global business application landscape (6 countries).
- Concept for a graph model of the application landscape. Storing the results in the open-source graph database Neo4J. Various reports in the database query language CYPHER and the visualization component BLOOM. Automatic generation of IT architecture diagrams.
- Development of an application taxonomy to identify redundant applications.
- Applying Gartner's Software Portfolio Management TIME model (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, and Eliminate) for portfolio management.
- Enterprise Architecture Governance: establishing architecture guidelines for documenting measures and decisions.
- Process modeling according to Porter (Value Chain).
- Various architecture approvals for change requests and documentation in Architecture Decision Records (ADR).
- Working on the RACI matrix for various processes.
- Working on business capabilities as preparation for a LeanIX rollout.
- Contributing to the concept for IT/OT convergence.
- Establishing architecture guidelines in a very pragmatic corporate culture. Knowledge about applications and responsibilities is spread across the world.
Oleg A.
Last position:
Staff Software Engineer at Kpler Germany GmbH
- Delivered a new notifications platform implementation built from scratch to replace existing and upcoming services
- Collaborating with other teams to integrate more domains
Tech stack:
- Data: Scala 3, Apache Kafka, Python, Airflow, Astronomer
- BE-FE: TypeScript, NestJS, Java, Spring Boot, Vue
- Dev-ops: AWS, PostgreSQL, Docker, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes, Helm, ArgoCD
Alexander Z.
Last position:
Senior Data Solutions Engineer at VMware Inc.
- Architected and deployed private cloud data platform on VMware vSphere, integrating Greenplum MPP, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and Apache Solr, and developed real-time ingestion pipelines with Kafka Connect and Schema Registry.
- Led Oracle Exadata to Greenplum migration, rearchitected data models, optimized storage, implemented RabbitMQ with Debezium for CDC, and deployed VectorDB for Generative AI.
- Designed and executed multi-cloud migration PoC across AWS, Azure, and GCP, defined KPIs for throughput, latency, and cost efficiency, executed bulk data transfers, validated analytics and streaming workloads, and delivered full-scale architecture recommendations.
- Assessed legacy on-premises infrastructure and designed modern cloud-native data platforms using Greenplum and containerized microservices, advising on scalability, disaster recovery, and high-availability.
Rüdiger S.
Last position:
Full-Stack Software Engineer / Consultant for Digitalization at ARTEVENT
Designed, built, and launched an internal event planning web application used by over 100 department leads for a large event, despite having no dedicated testing phase.
Ensured smooth, failure-free operation during first production use, leading to the tool being adopted for future events.
Automated catering calculations and related workflows, significantly reducing email communication and manual computation effort for meal planning.
Managed deployment and hosting on a Linux server using Coolify, including application setup and runtime operations.
Hired and guided a communication designer on UX while independently owning all technical decisions and implementation.
Murad H.
Last position:
Founder & Technical Lead at Hubpoint.Ai
- Founded an AI-powered scheduling and business-management SaaS for SMBs, owning technology strategy, architecture, product development, UX, billing and go-to-market execution.
- Architected and shipped a multi-tenant platform with REST APIs, RBAC, CRM, billing and notifications, powering the manager dashboard, admin console, booking experience and iOS/Android applications.
- Led and mentored 7 software engineers, 1 DevOps engineer, 1 QA engineer and 1 UX/UI designer, while remaining hands-on across backend, frontend and product delivery.
- Built AI voice and chat agents using Python/FastAPI, OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, RAG, pgvector and tool calling; integrated Twilio, Google Calendar/Meet, Stripe and Firebase.
- Owned production infrastructure and automated delivery across separate environments using Docker, Nginx, GitHub Actions and Grafana; represented the company at accelerators and international startup events.
Selected stack: Python, FastAPI, Node.js, Vue 3, React/Next.js, React Native, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker
Aamir S.
Last position:
Founder at Self-Directed Project Work
- Building independent projects in the AI/developer tools space.
- Experimenting with product ideas, rapid prototyping, and go-to-market validation.
- Designing AI-native operating model—leveraging agentic pipelines, living context schemas, and rigorous eval harnesses to multiply individual contributor leverage and eliminate implementation bottlenecks.
Santhosh K.
Last position:
Freelance Software Engineer at Zalando SE
- Drive migration of enterprise authorization platform from Styra DAS to open-source OPA via Skipper (Zalando's Golang-based ingress proxy) integration
- Optimise k8s resources and integrate native Prometheus metrics with OPA
- Migrate from internal monitoring solution to Prometheus CRs + Dash0
Tech Stack: Java/Kotlin, Golang, Python, Spring Boot, AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenTofu, Prometheus, Grafana
Maciej R.
Last position:
Full Stack Developer (Freelancer) at Runbuggy
- Led development of RunBot AI assistant autonomously using LLM-powered workflow automation (React, TypeScript, Java, MongoDB, NATS)
- Architected TMS platform providing unified transportation management and real-time logistics visibility with AI processing pipelines
- Designed event-driven microservices architecture supporting marketplace
- Drove architectural decisions and technical leadership across full-stack platform development
Sejal V.
Last position:
Data & ML Engineering at Consulting
- Fractional leadership; consulting growth-stage startups and scale-ups on data strategy, ML products, and platform foundations
- Building decisioning systems for growth, personalization, & product experimentation, across e-Commerce, Digital Health, Energy, and Logistics
- Exploring Agentic AI & LLM-based tooling for production readiness patterns
Imran A.
Last position:
Software Engineer II at LivePerson Germany GmbH
- Led development of 15+ microservices (Java 17, Spring Boot) driving customer interactions; migrated from on-prem to GCP Kubernetes, improving scalability and reducing infra cost by 20%.
- Optimized user services with CouchDB caching and API refactoring, cutting response times by 35% and enhancing customer experience.
- Implemented canary deployments, FluxCD GitOps, and CI/CD optimizations in GitLab, reducing release lead time by 25% and enabling zero-downtime rollouts.
- Set up Grafana health checks and Anodot alerts for latency, error, and throughput monitoring, reducing MTTR by 40%.
- Built secure APIs using OAuth2, DPoP, and Gatekeeper, integrated REST and GraphQL, and achieved 90%+ test coverage with unit and E2E tests.
- Mentored junior developers, promoted Agile best practices, and collaborated cross-functionally to deliver high-impact, reliable customer-facing features.
Wolfram K.
Last position:
AI / Machine Learning Engineer (Projects & Applied AI) at UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 1 PANTHEON-SORBONNE & LIORA
- Designed and implemented a hybrid recommendation system (content-based + collaborative filtering)
- Built end-to-end ML pipelines including data processing, feature engineering, model training, and evaluation
- Developed RAG-based LLM systems using LangChain and vector databases for semantic search and knowledge retrieval
- Established MLOps workflows with MLflow for experiment tracking, versioning, and deployment readiness
- Implemented deep learning models (computer vision & classification) using PyTorch and TensorFlow
Ola V.
Last position:
IT Lecturer
- IT training in theory and practice for IT specialists in application development and system integration
Jan K.
Last position:
Data Expert at Manufacturing
Ibrahim H.
Last position:
Senior Full Stack / AI Engineer at Punktum Digital GmbH
- Context: Healthcare and laboratory teams required faster document analysis, treatment-planning support, and reliable AI workflows for MR/VR-assisted operations.
- Contribution: Built the AI healthcare platform, model/agent workflows, VR-glasses deployment platform, REST APIs, Next.js/React interfaces, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Impact: Delivered a production-ready AI product foundation that improved clinical document review, supported laboratory automation, and made VR fleet deployment manageable across environments.
Tech: TypeScript, Next.js, Node.js, React, Java, Spring Boot, Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Docker, PostgreSQL, OpenAPI, GitLab, GitHub Actions.
Thomas Ü.
Last position:
Head of Engineering - Midnight at IOG / Midnight
- Built and scaled a 35-member engineering team (Core Engineering, QA, and SRE) in 12 months, accelerating Midnight’s blockchain development on Parity’s Substrate framework.
- Defined strategic direction and aligned technology development with business objectives as a key member of the leadership.
- Optimized software development processes and implemented agile methodologies, enhancing operational efficiency and code security.
- Delivered projects in a fast-paced startup environment through effective project management and resource allocation.
Discover over 15,000 top freelancers
Statistics of experts using Apache Kafka
Aggregated from the professional profiles of matched freelancers.
Experience
16 years (Germany: 18 years)
Position duration
2 years (Germany: 2.7 years)
Positions per freelancer
10 (Germany: 13)
Top business areas
Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management
Top industries
Information Technology, Banking and Finance, Automotive
Certification focus areas
Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management
Bachelor's degree or higher
96% (Germany: 91%)
Master's degree or higher
44% (Germany: 55%)
Doctorate
4% (Germany: 9%)
Certifications per freelancer
1 (Germany: 3)
Most common languages
English, German, Spanish
Speak two or more languages
97% (Germany: 98%)
Based on our profile pool as of 9 Oct 2026.
Daily rate distribution
The chart shows how the daily rates of experts in this technology in Berlin are distributed, based on recent contracts on our platform. Each bar covers a rate range — its height shows the share of experts charging within that range.
Average rates of experts in Berlin using Apache Kafka
Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.
The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.
The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.
Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 9 Oct 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
Apache Kafka experts industry focus
See which industries our matched freelancers work in most often — every figure is calculated live from the freelancers on FRATCH.
- Information Technology (95%)
- Banking and Finance (51%)
- Automotive (40%)
- Retail (35%)
- Media and Entertainment (33%)
- Manufacturing (29%)
- Education (27%)
- Healthcare (27%)
Please note that freelancers can work across multiple industries, so percentages overlap.
About the technology
Event streaming
Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform for publishing, storing and processing records in real time. Companies use it to connect services, capture operational events and move data between systems without tightly coupling applications. Kafka topics, partitions and consumer groups support scalable, durable data flows.
Practical systems
Kafka appears in architectures that need continuous data movement rather than scheduled batch transfers. Typical deliverables include:
- Event-driven services and asynchronous workflows
- Real-time analytics and monitoring pipelines
- Change data capture and database integration
- Data feeds for customer, logistics and financial systems
Kafka ecosystem
Strong Apache Kafka specialists work across the wider Confluent and open-source ecosystem. Their toolkit may include Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, Schema Registry and ksqlDB, alongside Java, Scala, Python or Go. They also understand Avro, Protobuf, JSON schemas, REST interfaces and stream-processing patterns.
Operations and reliability
Kafka requires careful attention to partitioning, replication, retention and consumer lag. Professionals configure brokers, security controls and observability, then plan recovery and capacity changes. In Berlin, teams may bring in local specialists for workshops or on-site collaboration while keeping implementation remote across distributed teams.
When to hire expertise
Freelance support is useful when an existing data architecture is becoming difficult to scale or govern. Companies often seek help when they need to:
- Replace fragile point-to-point integrations
- Migrate from a legacy message broker
- Connect cloud, on-premises and SaaS systems
- Diagnose delivery delays or repeated records
- Establish event schemas and ownership rules
Judging specialists
Look for professionals who can explain delivery guarantees, ordering limits and failure handling in terms of your business flow. Strong specialists show how they have monitored consumer lag, handled schema evolution and tested replay scenarios. They communicate clearly with application, data and operations teams, including remote stakeholders and German-speaking colleagues when needed.
Frequently asked questions
The facts hiring teams ask for most often when it comes to Apache Kafka.
Apache Kafka is used to transport and process streams of events between applications and data systems. It supports use cases such as service integration, real-time analytics, activity tracking, change data capture and asynchronous workflows.
Apache Kafka is designed as a distributed event log with durable retention and replay, while RabbitMQ and similar queues commonly focus on routing messages to consumers for processing. The right choice depends on replay needs, ordering, throughput, delivery semantics and operational preferences.
A strong Apache Kafka specialist often also understands distributed systems, Java or another application language, SQL, data modeling and cloud infrastructure. Experience with Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, Schema Registry, Kubernetes, observability and security is especially useful.
The needed depth depends on the system’s risk and complexity. A simple connector or producer may need focused Kafka knowledge, while a multi-region platform requires proven skill in partition design, replication, failure recovery, security and performance testing.
Yes. Apache Kafka work is often well suited to remote collaboration because configuration, code review, testing and monitoring can be handled online. On-site workshops in Berlin can still help when teams need to align on event ownership, architecture or operational procedures.
Apache Kafka is a strong fit when multiple systems need the same continuously changing events, when consumers must process data independently, or when replay and durable history matter. A database or direct API may be simpler for point-to-point requests and transactional records.
Ask the specialist to explain partitioning, consumer groups, delivery guarantees, schema evolution and recovery using your own scenario. Quality is shown through clear trade-offs, practical monitoring plans, failure testing and attention to data contracts rather than through product terminology alone.
A freelancer should clarify event volumes, retention, ordering requirements, producer and consumer ownership, deployment model and security constraints. With Apache Kafka, it is also important to understand whether the work involves self-managed brokers, Confluent services, Kafka-compatible alternatives or an existing cloud setup.
The average hourly rate of freelancers in Berlin, Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects is 99 €, which corresponds to a daily rate of about 788 € based on an 8-hour working day.
Of the freelancers in Berlin, Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects, 96% hold at least a Bachelor's degree, 44% hold at least a Master's degree, and 4% hold a doctorate.
On average, freelancers in Berlin, Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects have 16 years of professional experience, with a single engagement typically lasting around 2 years.
The most common languages among freelancers in Berlin, Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects are English (100%), German (92%), and Spanish (13%).
The most common industries among freelancers in Berlin, Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects are Information Technology (95%), Banking and Finance (51%), and Automotive (40%).
The most common business areas among freelancers in Berlin, Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects are Information Technology (100%), Product Development (94%), and Project Management (54%).
Main locations of FRATCH Experts, who have recently used Apache Kafka
Our freelancers and interim experts are at home across the DACH region — available on-site in the major business hubs or fully remote. Choose a location to discover matched specialists, local market insights and up-to-date availability.
Hamburg 
Munich 
Cologne 
Frankfurt 
Stuttgart 
Dusseldorf 
Nuremberg Request a free demo
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FRATCH CEO
