Big Data Engineer

Job Title: Senior Big Data Engineer
Location: Onsite – Nashville, TN 
Employment Type: 6-Month Contract
Schedule: 40 hours/week 
Start Date: ASAP

We are seeking a Senior Big Data Engineer to help scale and secure an enterprise-grade streaming platform supporting real-time, event-driven data across complex systems. This is a high-visibility role within a large enterprise environment focused on modern cloud-native infrastructure and distributed systems engineering.

This position is ideal for someone who has deep hands-on ownership of Kafka at scale and thrives in production-heavy, security-focused environments.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Architect, scale, and manage enterprise Kafka / Confluent streaming platforms

• Implement security best practices (TLS, SASL, RBAC) across distributed systems

• Design and maintain Kubernetes (EKS) production environments

• Build and manage infrastructure using Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code practices

• Automate CI/CD workflows for streaming and platform services

• Troubleshoot complex distributed system performance and reliability issues

• Implement monitoring and observability solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)

• Support secure, scalable cloud-native platform engineering initiatives

Required Experience

• Deep enterprise Kafka and Confluent platform engineering experience

• Strong cloud-native engineering background (AWS preferred)

• Production Kubernetes experience (EKS required)

• Terraform / Infrastructure-as-Code expertise

• Hands-on distributed systems troubleshooting experience

• Strong programming skills in at least one of the following:
  Java, Python, Scala, Go, C/C++, or .NET

• Experience building secure, scalable production systems

Nice to Have

• Experience operating Kafka in large, multi-team enterprise environments

• Advanced knowledge of monitoring and observability stacks

• Healthcare or highly regulated industry experience

Determining compensation for this role (and others) at Vaco/Highspring depends upon a wide array of factors including but not limited to the individual’s skill sets, experience and training, licensure and certifications, office location and other geographic considerations, as well as other business and organizational needs. With that said, as required by local law in geographies that require salary range disclosure, Vaco/Highspring notes the salary range for the role is noted in this job posting. The individual may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses, and can participate in medical, dental, and vision benefits as well as the company’s 401(k) retirement plan. Additional disclaimer: Unless otherwise noted in the job description, the position Vaco/Highspring is filing for is occupied. Please note, however, that Vaco/Highspring is regularly asked to provide talent to other organizations. By submitting to this position, you are agreeing to be included in our talent pool for future hiring for similarly qualified positions. Submissions to this position are subject to the use of AI to perform preliminary candidate screenings, focused on ensuring minimum job requirements noted in the position are satisfied. Further assessment of candidates beyond this initial phase within Vaco/Highspring will be otherwise assessed by recruiters and hiring managers. Vaco/Highspring does not have knowledge of the tools used by its clients in making final hiring decisions and cannot opine on their use of AI products.