Confluent Kafka Engineer

Job Title: Confluent Kafka Engineer

Location: Woodlawn, MD (on-site)

Key Required Skills:

Expertise in the development, testing, and production support of Confluent Kafka-based systems. This role requires deep expertise in Kafka architecture, including Confluent Control Center, Kafka Streams, and Kafka Connect. The engineer will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to ensure the smooth operation of data streaming services.

Position Description:

• Design Confluent Kafka cluster environments, configure and manage Kafka instances, and monitor system performance.
• Ensure data integrity and availability in a big data environment.
• Expertise in a programming language, such as Java or Python.
• Collaborate with product design teams and SMEs to understand data pipeline needs.
• Participate in all Agile ceremonies.

Skills Requirements:

Basic Qualifications

10+ years of experience in a technical field.

Software development experience with a solid understanding of building, deploying, and maintaining applications that leverage the Confluent Kafka platform, focusing on data streaming and messaging solutions.

Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, or a related field.

• Master's or Doctorate degree may substitute for required experience.
• 5+ years of experience on an Agile development team
• Must be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust. Contract requirement.
• Must be able to work on-site in Woodlawn, MD 5 days a week.

Required Skills

Extensive experience with Apache Kafka and Confluent Kafka, including proficiency with Confluent Control Center, KSQLDB, Kafka Streams, and Kafka Connect.

Proven experience in Kafka development, including producer and consumer API, stream processing, and connector development.

Experience with Kafka cluster management, including setup, configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting.

Familiarity with distributed systems, microservices architecture, and event-driven design patterns.

Experience with AWS and containerization (Kubernetes) is a plus.

Proficiency in programming languages, such as Java.

Strong knowledge of Kafka internals, including brokers, zookeepers, topics, partitions, and offsets.

Experience with monitoring tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana) and logging frameworks (e.g., Log4j.

Proficiency in using Confluent Control Center for monitoring, managing, and optimizing Kafka clusters.

Expertise in Kafka Streams for building scalable, fault-tolerant stream processing applications.

Experience with KSQLDB for real-time processing and analytics on Kafka topics.

Strong understanding of Kafka Connect for integrating Kafka with external data sources and sinks.

Understanding of networking, security, and compliance aspects related to Kafka.

Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools (e.g., Jenkins, Git).

Write and maintain high-quality code for Kafka producers, consumers, and stream processing applications.

Develop and manage Kafka connectors for seamless integration with external systems, ensuring data consistency and reliability.

Utilize Kafka Streams for real-time processing of streaming data, transforming and enriching data as it flows through the pipeline.

Employ KSQLDB for stream processing tasks, including real-time analytics and transformations.

Collaborate with data engineers, software developers, and DevOps teams to integrate Kafka solutions with existing systems.

Ensure all Kafka-based solutions are scalable, secure, and optimized for performance.

Troubleshoot and resolve issues related to Kafka performance, latency, and data integrity, including issues specific to Kafka Streams, KSQLDB, and Kafka Connect.

Desired Skills

• Experience in an AWS environment.
• Experience with Hadoop or other big data platform.
• Excellent troubleshooting and analytical skills to quickly identify and resolve issues.
• Proficiency in Software development, preferably Java.

• Experience working on Agile projects and understanding Agile terminology.
• Participate in daily scrum and provide updates.