Kafka Engineer - W2 Only

The following requirement is open with our client. 

Title                                       : Senior Kafka Engineer
Location                               : Saint Louis, MO (Onsite)
Duration                              : 12 Months Contract
Rate                                       : $53/Hr On W2

Relevant Experience      : 8

Job Description:

 8 years Seeking a Kafka expert with experience in Agentic AI to design, build, and optimize real-time data pipelines and intelligent autonomous systems.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and manage Kafka-based streaming architectures

• Develop and optimize real-time data processing pipelines

• Build and integrate Agentic AI solutions (LLMs, autonomous workflows)

• Ensure scalability, reliability, and performance of data systems

• Collaborate with AI, data, and engineering teams

Required Skills:

• Strong experience with Apache Kafka (Streams, Connect, brokers)

• Proficiency in Python/Java and distributed systems

• Hands-on experience with Agentic AI / LLM frameworks (e.g., LangChain, AutoGen)

• Knowledge of event-driven architecture and microservices

Key Responsibilities

Top 3 responsibilities you would expect the Subcon to shoulder and execute

Hardware refresh plan capacity model, sizing, architecture diagrams,

consumer group strategies for performance and cost. Own upgrades, patches, and migrations. Implement and manage Kafka components Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, Mirror Maker Confluent Replicator, REST Proxy familiarity with Kafka Streams and ksqlDB is a plus. Performance

risk register Implement and validated onprem clusters on refreshed hardware with performance benchmarks Operational documentation standards, runbooks, monitoring alerts

Nice to Have Skills:

Cloud platform experience (Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform)

Experience with real-time analytics platforms and monitoring tools

• Grafana
• Prometheus
• ELK Stack
• Datadog
• Splunk

Experience with containerization and orchestration

• Docker
• Kubernetes

Exposure to MLOps or AI deployment pipelines

Experience integrating Kafka with cloud-native data services

Knowledge of vector databases and RAG architectures

Experience working in large-scale enterprise environments

Must-Have Skills:

·         Senior Kafka Engineer

·         Apache

·         Kafka Expertise

·         Kafka Streams

·         Kafka Brokers