Job Title: Kafka Platform Engineer
Location: Irvine, CA (Hybrid)
12+ Months
Visa Status : Any visa except OPT
Key Responsibilities:
· Manage and enhance existing Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform on AWS.
· Review existing implementations and recommend improvements.
· Collaborate with engineering and product teams to integrate new use cases and define scalable streaming patterns.
· Implement and maintain Kafka producers/consumers, Connectors, and Kafka Streams applications.
· Enforce governance around topic design, schema evolution, partitioning, and data retention.
· Monitor, troubleshoot, and tune Kafka clusters using Confluent Control Center, Prometheus, and Grafana.
· Use Kubernetes and Terraform to automate Kafka infrastructure deployment and scaling.
· Ensure high availability, security and disaster recovery.
· Mentor other engineers and provide leadership in Kafka-related initiatives
Required Skills:
· 8+ years in platform engineering with 3+ years of hands-on experience with Apache Kafka.
· Proficiency in Kafka client development using Java or Python.
· Expertise with Confluent Platform (Brokers, Schema Registry, Control Center, ksqlDB).
· Experience deploying and managing Kafka on AWS (including MSK or self-managed EC2-based setups).
· Solid understanding of Kubernetes, especially EKS, for microservices integration.
· Hands-on experience with Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, and schema management.
· Infrastructure automation experience with Terraform and Helm.
· Familiarity with monitoring and alerting stacks: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or similar.
Preferred Qualifications:
· Prior experience in the FinTech domain or other regulated industries.
· Understanding of security best practices including TLS, authentication (SASL, OAuth), RBAC, and encryption at rest.
· Exposure to Apache Flink, Spark Streaming, or other stream processing engines.
· Experience establishing Kafka governance frameworks and multi-tenant topic strategies.
Must Have & Desired Skills: Confluent Kafka, Terraform, Kubernetes, EKS
Education: Nice to have Kafka Certification
Never miss an opportunity! Create an alert based on the job you applied for.
