Software Engineer

RESPONSIBILITIES:
Kforce has a client that is seeking a Software Engineer in Maryland Heights, MO.

Summary:
We're looking for a Senior Kafka Platform Engineer to join a team supporting a large-scale streaming technology environment. This role is focused on the administration, reliability, and ongoing modernization of enterprise Kafka infrastructure. You'll work closely with platform engineers, SREs, application teams, and engineering leadership to keep the Kafka environment healthy, troubleshoot production issues, and support the transition to AWS.

Duties:
* Administer and support large-scale Kafka clusters in production
* Troubleshoot cluster health, replication, partitions, consumer lag, and performance issues
* Manage topics, partitions, replication, retention, quotas, ACLs, and consumer groups
* Support production incidents, root-cause analysis, and reliability improvements
* Help migrate and modernize Kafka environments in AWS
* Support Kafka infrastructure automation and deployments
* Monitor Kafka performance, broker health, consumer lag, and overall platform reliability
* Partner with application teams to troubleshoot producer/consumer issues
* Contribute to documentation, runbooks, and operational best practices

REQUIREMENTS:
* 4+ years of hands-on Kafka administration in production
* Experience managing large Kafka environments, ideally 20+ brokers/nodes
* Strong understanding of Kafka fundamentals including partitions and replication; ISR and under-replicated partitions; Offsets and consumer lag; Consumer groups; Cluster health and performance
* Strong Linux and command-line experience
* Experience troubleshooting real-world Kafka production issues
* AWS experience
* Strong communication and collaboration skills

Nice to Have:
* Terraform/Infrastructure as Code
* AWS MSK
* Confluent Platform or Cloudera Kafka
* GitLab CI/CD
* Datadog
* Kafka migration experience
* MirrorMaker 2, Confluent Replicator, or Cluster Linking

The pay range is the lowest to highest compensation we reasonably in good faith believe we would pay at posting for this role. We may ultimately pay more or less than this range. Employee pay is based on factors like relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, seniority, location, performance, union contract and business needs. This range may be modified in the future.

We offer comprehensive benefits including medical/dental/vision insurance, HSA, FSA, 401(k), and life, disability & ADD insurance to eligible employees. Salaried personnel receive paid time off. Hourly employees are not eligible for paid time off unless required by law. Hourly employees on a Service Contract Act project are eligible for paid sick leave.

Note: Pay is not considered compensation until it is earned, vested and determinable. The amount and availability of any compensation remains in Kforce's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified in its discretion consistent with the law.

This job is not eligible for bonuses, incentives or commissions.

Kforce is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, or disability status.

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