Kafka Platform Engineer - Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Kafka Connect, Linux, AWS MSK - Onsite

Only W2 / 1099. / / H1B accepted.

We are looking for a Senior Kafka Platform Engineer with strong hands-on experience managing Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform in large scale production environments. The ideal candidate will have expertise in Kafka administration, platform engineering, DevOps/SRE practices, and Linux based infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, deploy, and operate highly available Apache Kafka clusters in production environments
• Manage Kafka topics, partitions, quotas, retention policies, and consumer group strategies
• Perform Kafka cluster upgrades, patching, migrations, and maintenance activities
• Implement and manage Kafka ecosystem tools including Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, MirrorMaker, and REST Proxy
• Perform performance tuning for producers and consumers, throughput testing, and benchmarking
• Plan capacity, partition strategy, and cluster right sizing
• Implement monitoring and observability solutions using tools such as DataDog, Grafana, and JMX exporters
• Develop automation and scripting solutions for platform deployment and operational efficiency
• Implement disaster recovery strategies and multi-region Kafka environments
• Create operational documentation including runbooks, monitoring standards, and DR procedures

Required Skills:

• Strong experience with Apache Kafka administration in production environments
• Hands-on experience with Confluent Platform
• Experience with Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, and MirrorMaker
• Strong Linux system administration and networking knowledge
• Experience working in DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering environments
• Automation and scripting experience
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as DataDog, Grafana, and log aggregation platforms
• Deep understanding of Kafka internals including partitions, replication, retention policies, and rebalance strategies

Nice to Have:

• Experience with AWS MSK or cloud-based Kafka environments
• Experience leading Kafka cluster migrations, rebuilds, or hardware refresh initiatives
• Familiarity with Kafka Streams or ksqlDB

Minimum Requirements:

• 5+ years experience in Platform Engineering, DevOps, or SRE roles
• 4+ years of hands-on Apache Kafka production support experience

If you are interested, please share your updated resume along with contact details.