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Kafka Developer Salary in Chicago 2026
How much does a Kafka developer expect to make at Chicago-based startups? The average expected salary for Kafka developers in Chicago-based startups is 165k per year, with a range from 122k to 233k. These amounts were gathered from Wellfound self-reported data and represent the median salary range. The salary range for Kafka developers in Chicago startups varies depending on factors such as industry, experience, and startup stage.
164.5k
Average Salary
7 years
Average years of experience
Salary
The average salary for a Kafka developer in Chicago is$164,500, which is 45.7% higher than the average Chicago startup salary of $112,875. Kafka developer salaries in Chicago are based on exclusive Wellfound data. All data is updated on a weekly basis. Factors that may influence salary include: years of experience, title, size of company, skill-set, and industry.
Top of market
$226,900/yr
Range $208k - $233k
Average
$164,500/yr
Range $160k - $175k
Below Average
$137,600/yr
Range $122k - $150k
Industries
The highest average salary a Kafka developer in Chicago can get in Mobile, that is $211,500. This pay is 10.0% higher than the average Kafka developer salary, which is $192,200. The highest-paying industries in 2023 are: Mobile (avg $211,500 per year), Fin Tech (avg $211,500 per year), Enterprise Software (avg $206,500 per year).
Tech Stack
Top Tech Stacks
The top-paying developer skills of 2026 are:
1. Svn
$241.5k
2. Docker
$205k
3. Verilog
$200k
4. openAI
$200k
5. Celery
$200k
6. Hbase
$197.5k
7. Heroku
$190k
8. Neo4J
$180k
9. Python
$175k
10. Go
$171k
Years of experience
Below Average
Average
Top of Market
The highest average salary Kafka developer in Chicago can get with 10+ years of experience, that is $188,500. This pay is 67.0% higher than the average salary in Chicago startups, which is $112,875. The salary range varies with years of experience and depends on other factors such as skill set, size of company, and industry.
Popular roles in Chicago
Software EngineerMobile DeveloperAndroid DeveloperiOS DeveloperFrontend EngineerBackend EngineerFull-Stack EngineerSoftware ArchitectMachine Learning EngineerEmbedded EngineerData EngineerDevOpsEngineering ManagerQA EngineerData ScientistDesignerUI/UX DesignerUser ResearcherVisual DesignerCreative DirectorGraphic Designer Product DesignerProduct ManagerOperationsFinance/AccountingH.R.Office ManagerRecruiterCustomer ServiceOperations ManagerSalesBusiness DevelopmentSales Development RepresentativeAccount ExecutiveBD ManagerAccount ManagerSales ManagerCustomer Success ManagerMarketingGrowth HackerMarketing ManagerContent CreatorCopywriterSocial Media ManagerManagementCEOCFOCMOCOOCTOOther EngineeringHardware EngineerMechanical EngineerSystems EngineerOtherBusiness AnalystProject ManagerAttorneyData AnalystInvestorLimited PartnerStrategic InvestorInstitutional InvestorVenture DebtVCSeed FundIndividual InvestorAngelFounder
Popular skills in Chicago
PythonPHPC++JavaJavascript.NETMachine LearningBudgetingSQLC#MySQLMongoDBNode.jsRubyRedisRPostgreSQLCassandraClojureScalaSpringSASAutocadRuby on RailsAzureSplunkPandasKafkaTypeScriptSparkscikit-learnElixirDeep LearningDockerKotlinSwiftElasticSearchAWSreactKubernetesReact NativeRESTful APIsGraphQLPysparkPrometheusGoAirflowGCPPyTorchSwiftUI