Kafka Consultant

Manager s Notes:

• Hands-on Engineer, built some of the Kafka initial parts, a new resource to do the stage and production build out
• Hands-on scripting, building API's (Python or GoLang, or Java). Will be tested on their preferred language
• Kafka Engineer with automation experience, how to monitor the operations
• Well-rounded Kafka engineer with automation experience (infrastructure automation). Can be strong with either Terraform or Ansible
• 1st part of the interview will be a hands-on coding test (remote test). Three total rounds of interviews
• Would like to do an on-site final interview if possible
• Operational Kafka experience in an enterprise environment
• Should also have AWS experience. 2-3 years Kafka experience minimum, 5+ years total experience
• No MSK being used in the role, but happy to have people with that knowledge

Role Description

The successful candidate will be responsible for developing and managing infrastructure as code (IaC), software development, continuous integration, system administration, and Linux.

The candidate will be working with Confluent Kafka, Confluent Cloud, Schema Registry, KStreams, and technologies like Terraform and Kubernetes to develop and manage infrastructure-related code on the AWS platform.

Responsibilities

• Support systems engineering lifecycle activities for Kafka platform, including requirements gathering, design, testing, implementation, operations, and documentation.
• Automating platform management processes through Ansible, Python, or other scripting tools/languages.
• Troubleshooting incidents impacting the Kafka platform.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data requirements and design scalable solutions that meet business needs.
• Develop documentation materials.
• Participate in on-call rotations to address critical issues and ensure the reliability of data engineering systems.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize the performance and reliability of Kafka in AWS environments.

Experience

• Ability to troubleshoot and diagnose complex issues (e.g., including internal and external SaaS/PaaS, troubleshooting network flows).
• Able to demonstrate experience supporting technical users and conducting requirements analysis
• Can work independently with minimal guidance & oversight.
• Experience with IT Service Management and familiarity with Incident & Problem management
• Highly skilled in identifying performance bottlenecks, identifying anomalous system behavior, and resolving root cause of service issues.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively work across teams and functions to influence design, operations, and deployment of highly available software.
• Knowledge of standard methodologies related to security, performance, and disaster recovery
• Advanced understanding of agile methodologies such as CI/CD, Application Resiliency, and Security.

Required Technical Expertise

• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of Kafka and its various components.
• Strong Knowledge in Kafka Connect, KSQL and KStreams.
• Implementation experience in designing and building secure Kafka/streaming/messaging platform at enterprise scale and integration with other data system in hybrid multi-cloud environment.
• Experience in working with Confluent Kafka, Confluent Cloud, Schema Registry, and KStreams Infrastructure as code (IaC) using tools like Terraform.
• Strong operational background running Kafka clusters at scale.
• Knowledge of both physical/onprem systems and public cloud infrastructure.
• Strong understanding of Kafka broker, connect, and topic tuning and architectures.
• Strong understanding of Linux fundamentals as related to Kafka performance.
• Background in both Systems and Software Engineering.
• Strong understanding and working knowledge, experience with containers and Kubernetes clusters.
• Proven experience as a DevOps Engineer with a focus on AWS.
• Strong proficiency in AWS services such as EC2, IAM, S3, RDS, Lambda, EKS, and VPC. Working knowledge of networking VPCs, Transit Gateways, firewalls, load balancers, etc.
• Experience in monitoring and visualizing tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Kibana.
• Competent in developing new solutions in one or more of the high-level languages Java, Python.
• Competent with configuration management in code/IaC, including Ansible and Terraform
• Hands-on experience delivering complex software in an enterprise environment.
• 3+ years of Python and Shell Scripting.
• 3+ years of AWS DevOps experience.
• Proficiency in distributed Linux environments.

Preferred Technical Experience

Certification in Confluent Kafka and/or Kubernetes is a plus