Systems Engineer - Expert

job summary:

On-Site in Austin 4 days per week

TOP 3 MUST HAVE SKILLS:

Experience with Confluent Kafka Platform

Experience with both On-Prem and Cloud

Must have experience leveraging AI powered tools and building AI driven agentsls as it relates to

- Design and implement secure Kafka architectures, including authentication, authorization, encryption, and network isolation.

- Define and support high availability, disaster recovery, and data replication strategies.

- Ensure alignment with enterprise security, compliance, and governance standards.

Data Streaming & Integration

- Advise on data ingestion, event streaming, batch and stream processing architectures.

- Provide guidance on data modeling and serialization standards (Avro, Protobuf, JSON Schema).

- Support enterprise integration use cases and resolve complex Kafka related integration challenges.

AI Development

- Design and build AI agents, custom skills, or equivalent frameworks to automate engineering and operational workflows at scale

- Leverage AI-powered tools (e.g., Copilot, AI agents) to accelerate development, automate testing, improve code quality, and enable intelligent SDLC workflows aligned to AI-DLC vision.

- Design agentic workflows and multi-agent orchestration patterns to solve complex distributed systems, integration, and operational challenges

- Strong hands-on experience with GitHub Copilot and other AI-assisted development tools, including advanced prompt engineering and workflow integration to accelerate engineering

- Proven ability to leverage AI-assisted development (e.g., Copilot, code generation) and build AI-driven agents/workflows to improve team productivity and engineering efficiency

Automation & DevOps Enablement

- Drive automation first operations using Python, Ansible, and scripting.

- Build and maintain self service operational tools to reduce day to day support overhead.

- Integrate Kafka platform operations with DevOps and CI/CD tooling (e.g., Azure, Jenkins, Puppet, Chef).

Incident Management & Problem Resolution

- Lead deep dive investigations into complex production issues and outages.

- Perform root cause analysis, document findings, and drive remediation to closure.

- Operate effectively in high pressure outage and incident management scenarios.

Advisory & Stakeholder Engagement

- Act as a trusted technical advisor to Client engineering, operations, and leadership teams.

- Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non technical stakeholders.

- Demonstrate strong customer focus, ownership, and onshore engagement.

- Collaborate effectively with cross functional teams and vendors.

Required Experience & Skills

- 10+ years of experience in distributed systems, messaging, and enterprise platform engineering.

- Extensive hands on experience with Confluent Kafka Platform (on prem and cloud).

- Strong background in Linux/Unix environments, networking, OS performance, and security.

- Proven experience with automation, DevOps, and operational tooling.

- Experience leveraging AI powered tools to accelerate development and improve team productivity and efficiency

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

- Strong organizational, relationship management, and teamwork skills.

Preferred Qualifications

- Confluent Kafka and/or Cloud certifications.

- Prior experience supporting large scale, regulated enterprise environments.

location: Austin, Texas

job type: Contract

salary: $72 - 75 per hour

work hours: 9am to 6pm

education: Bachelors



responsibilities:

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qualifications:

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skills:

Ansible,Kafka,AI-powered tools,AI,AI Development,automate testing,Avro,Design and build,Cloud,code generation,Confluent,CI/CD,data ingestion,Data Streaming,data replication,Automation & DevOps,DevOps,disaster recovery,distributed systems,enterprise integration,GitHub Copilot,JSON,Jenkins,Azure,multi-agent,prompt engineering,Protobuf,Puppet,Python,scripting,serialization,code quality,stream processing,high availability,SDLC,Communicate,Excellent written and verbal communication,leadership,Problem Resolution,customer focus,teamwork skills,AI-assisted development,automate,automation,relationship management,Cloud certifications,Client engineering,Advise,Advisory,enterprise security,encryption,data modeling,governance,Incident Management,powered tools,platform engineering,use cases,root cause analysis,security,Stakeholder Engagement,tooling,operational workflows,workflows

Equal Opportunity Employer: Race, Color, Religion, Sex, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, National Origin, Age, Genetic Information, Disability, Protected Veteran Status, or any other legally protected group status.

At Randstad Digital, we welcome people of all abilities and want to ensure that our hiring and interview process meets the needs of all applicants. If you require a reasonable accommodation to make your application or interview experience a great one, please contact

Pay offered to a successful candidate will be based on several factors including the candidate's education, work experience, work location, specific job duties, certifications, etc. In addition, Randstad Digital offers a comprehensive benefits package, including: medical, prescription, dental, vision, AD&D, and life insurance offerings, short-term disability, and a 401K plan (all benefits are based on eligibility).

This posting is open for thirty (30) days.