Kafka Cloud Architect

Leidos is seeking a Kafka Cloud Architect to be part of the mission solution and help lead SSA's Digital Modernization Strategy. Join one of our high performing teams responsible for building the next-generation enterprise APIs and modern responsive user interfaces, supporting the Social Security Administration (SSA) and their mission to meet the changing needs of the public, positively impacting at least 65 million American lives per month. We are a team of forward-looking professionals in need of a strong candidate with these key required skills: Kafka Architecture, Confluent Kafka, Apache Flink, Kafka Connect, and Modern Development (Java with SpringBoot, or Python).

If this sounds like a mission you want to be a part of, keep reading!

TEAM CULTURE

Your passion and values might be a good fit for our teams if you answer "yes" to the following questions:

• Are you looking for a company that puts employees first, with a focus on career, flexibility, and well-being?
• Do you enjoy collaborating with colleagues and teammates and believe that the best ideas are fostered in an inclusive environment?
• Are you searching for a team with a strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive for daily mission success?
• Are you comfortable with proactive outward communication and technical leadership?
• Do you enjoy being a catalyst, solving complex problems, and providing innovative solutions?
• Do you have the flexibility, creativity, and resilience to pivot the mission for success?
• Do you have the courage to make tough ethical decisions with pride, transparency, and respect?

MENTORSHIP & CAREER GROWTH

Our teams are dedicated to supporting new team members in an environment that celebrates knowledge sharing and mentorship. Experienced team members will be assigned to new hires for one-on-one mentoring, collaborative reviews, and coaching on customer engagement to help each new hire successfully onboard and demonstrate their skills. Projects and tasks are assigned in a way that leverages your strengths and will help you further develop your skillset.

DAY TO DAY RESPONSIBILITIES

Every position we take is more rewarding when you know the why behind it. Knowing your work makes a difference to support those who need it most. If your passion is enabling life-changing service to those around you, this is the place for you. Find you passion in a team environment where all members are valued regardless of contractor or employee status. Find your "Why" with us and take your place in our Leidos Family!!

• Architect, design, code, and implement next-generation data streaming and event-based architecture / platform using system/software engineering best practices and the latest technologies: Confluent Kafka, Apache Flink, Kafka Connect, and modern software development.
• Work alongside customers to determine expanded use of Kafka within the Agency.
• Strategize within Leidos to set up opportunities to explore new technologies to use with Kafka.
• Define strategy for streaming data to data warehouse, and integrating event-based architect with microservice based applications.
• Establish Kafka best practices and standards for implementing the Kafka platform based on identified use cases and required integration patterns.
• Mentor existing team members by imparting expert knowledge to build a high-performing team in our event-driven architecture. Assist developers in choosing correct patterns, event modelling and ensuring data integrity.
• Provide software expertise in one or more of these areas: application integration, enterprise services, service-oriented architecture (SOA), security, business process management/business rules processing, data streaming/event driven design, or data ingestion/data modeling.
• Triage, investigate, advise in a hands-on capacity to resolve platform issues regardless of component.
• Influence development of data stream solutions that impact strategic project/program goals and business results. Recommend and develop new technical solutions, products, and/or standards in support of function's strategy and operations. Lead and manage works of other technical staff that has significant impact on project results/outputs.
• Brief management, customer, team, or vendors using written or oral skills at appropriate technical level for audience.
• All other duties as assigned or directed.

FOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS (Basic Qualifications)

• Must be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust. Contract requirement.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or a related field with 12 years of relevant experience or master's degree with 10 years of relevant experience. Additional years of experience may be substituted/accepted in lieu of degree.
• 12+ years of experience with modern software development including systems/application analysis and design.
• 7+ years of combined experience with Kafka (Confluent Kafka and/or Apache Kafka).
• 2+ years of combined experience with designing, architecting, and deploying to AWS cloud platform.
• 1+ years of leading a technical team.

*** Selected candidate must be willing to work on-site in Woodlawn, MD 5 days a week.

FACTORS TO HELP YOU SHINE (Required Skills)

These skills will help you succeed in this position:

• Expert experience with Confluent Kafka with hands-on production experience, capacity planning, installation, administration / platform management, and a deep understanding of the Kafka architecture and internals.
• Expert in Kafka cluster and application security.
• Strong knowledge and experience with Event Driven Architecture (EDA)
• Expert Experience in data pipeline, data replication and/or performance optimization.
• Kafka installation & partitioning on OpenShift or Kubernetes, topic management, HA & SLA architecture.
• Strong knowledge and application of microservice design principles and best practices: distributed systems, bounded contexts, service-to-service integration patterns, resiliency, security, networking, and/or load balancing in large mission critical infrastructure.
• Expert experience with Kafka Connect, KStreams, and KSQL, with the ability to know how to use effectively for different use cases.
• Hands-on experience with scaling Kafka infrastructure including Broker, Connect, ZooKeeper, Schema Registry, and/or Control Center.
• Hands-on experience in designing, writing, and operationalizing new Kafka Connectors.
• Solid experience with data serialization using Avro and JSON and data compression techniques.
• Experience with AWS services such as ECS, EKS, Flink, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, and/or S3.
• Basic knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL, DB2, or Oracle), SQL, and ORM technologies (JPA2, Hibernate, and/or Spring JPA).

HOW TO STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD (Desired Skills)

Showcase your knowledge of modern development through the following experience or skills:

• Creating disaster recovery strategy
• Experience with Domain Driven Design (DDD)
• AWS cloud certifications
• Delivery (CI/CD) best practices and use of DevOps to accelerate quality releases to Production.
• PaaS using Red Hat OpenShift/Kubernetes and Docker containers.
• Experience with configuration management tools (Ansible, CloudFormation / Terraform).
• Solid experience with Spring Framework (Boot, Batch, Cloud, Security, and Data).
• Solid knowledge with Java EE, Java generics, and concurrent programming.
• Solid experience with automated unit testing, TDD, BDD, and associated technologies (Junit, Mockito, Cucumber, Selenium, and Karma/Jasmine).
• Working knowledge of open-source visualization platform Grafana and open-source monitoring system Prometheus and uses with Kafka

At Leidos, we deliver innovative solutions through the efforts of our diverse and talented people who are dedicated to our customers' success. We empower our teams and contribute to our communities. Everything we do is built on a commitment to do the right thing for our customers, our people, and our community. Our Mission, Vision, and Values guide the way we do business. Every position we take is more rewarding when you know the why behind it. Knowing your work makes a difference to support those who need it most. If your passion is enabling life-changing service to those around you, this is the place for you. Find your passion in a team environment where all members are valued regardless of contractor or employee status. We are excited for you to take your place with our Leidos Family.

Are you an or Permanent US resident and think you might fit? We recommend you apply and start the conversation today! Join us in supporting our SSA contracts in Woodlawn, Maryland.

ITSSCII

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo - because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 - and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:
January 16, 2026

For U.S. Positions: While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:
Pay Range $131,300.00 - $237,350.00

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.