Job Title: Kafka Engineer Location-Type: Hybrid - Owning Mills, MD (2 days onsite, 3 days remote) Start Date Is: 2 weeks from offer Duration: 6-month contract Compensation Range: $50-$70/hr Role Overview The Kafka Engineer will join the Platform Engineering team, focusing on mission-critical projects within a hybrid multi-cloud environment. The role involves supporting the engineering lifecycle of the Kafka platform, including development, implementation, and maintenance while collaborating with cross-functional teams to optimize performance and reliability.
Day-to-Day Responsibilities- Support systems engineering lifecycle activities for the Kafka platform: requirements gathering, design, testing, implementation, operations, and documentation.
- Automate platform management processes using Ansible, Python, or other scripting tools.
- Troubleshoot incidents impacting the Kafka platform and ensure reliability.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design scalable solutions meeting business needs.
- Participate in on-call rotations to address critical issues.
- Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Kafka performance in AWS environments.
- Develop and maintain technical documentation.
Must-Haves- Experience: 5-7+ years of cloud engineering experience.
- Kafka Expertise: Deep understanding of Kafka, Kafka Connect, KSQL, and KStreams.
- Implementation Skills: Experience designing secure Kafka platforms and integrating with multi-cloud environments.
- Tools & Languages: Proficiency in Ansible, Terraform, Python, Java, and AWS DevOps tools.
- AWS Knowledge: Strong skills with EC2, IAM, S3, RDS, Lambda, EKS, VPC, and networking fundamentals.
- Platform Management: Hands-on experience with Kafka clusters, Confluent Kafka, Confluent Cloud, and monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Kibana).
- Linux Expertise: Understanding Linux fundamentals related to Kafka performance.
- Containerization: Experience with Kubernetes and container management.
- Scripting: 3+ years of Python scripting experience.
- DevOps Experience: 3+ years working with AWS DevOps.
- Soft Skills: Strong communication, problem-solving, and ability to work collaboratively.
Nice-to-Haves- Certifications: Confluent Kafka and/or Kubernetes certifications are a plus.
- Experience: Working knowledge of distributed Linux environments and complex enterprise software delivery.
- Technical Communication: Ability to write clear, precise documentation and communicate effectively with cloud operations teams.