Job#: 3054619 Job Description: Sr Kafka Engineer
Location: Maryland Heights, Missouri (Onsite)
Position Overview
We are seeking a Senior Kafka Engineer / Administrator to support and enhance a large-scale enterprise streaming platform spanning on-premises and cloud environments. The environment includes Apache Kafka running on Cloudera, Confluent Platform, and AWS Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK), with infrastructure and configuration managed through Terraform and GitLab CI/CD. This is a senior, hands-on engineering role focused on Kafka administration, production support, platform reliability, automation, and application-team enablement. The consultant will also contribute to the ongoing modernization and transition of Kafka workloads to AWS MSK. This is a collaborative, team-based position where success requires shared ownership, strong communication, and the ability to coordinate effectively across technical teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Administer and support Kafka clusters across Cloudera, Confluent Platform, and AWS MSK.
- Monitor platform health, availability, scalability, and performance.
- Manage Kafka topics, partitions, replication, retention, quotas, ACLs, and consumer groups.
- Tune Kafka brokers, producers, and consumers for throughput, latency, and reliability.
- Perform cluster patching, upgrades, capacity planning, and performance troubleshooting.
- Participate in production support, incident response, on-call coverage, and root-cause analysis.
- Support the ongoing transition of workloads from on-premises environments to AWS MSK.
- Build and maintain Kafka and AWS MSK infrastructure using Terraform and manage deployments through GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
- Build and maintain Datadog dashboards, monitoring, and alerting for Kafka and AWS MSK.
- Serve as a technical liaison between the platform team and producer/consumer application teams.
Required Qualifications
- Five or more years of experience in data, platform, infrastructure, or systems engineering.
- Four or more years of hands-on experience operating Apache Kafka in a production environment.
- Strong Kafka administration experience with both Cloudera and Confluent Platform.
- Production experience provisioning, configuring, and supporting AWS MSK.
- Strong hands-on experience with Terraform and GitLab CI/CD.
- Experience using Datadog to build monitoring, dashboards, and alerting.
- Deep understanding of Kafka architecture and internals.
- Experience providing production support, participating in on-call rotations, and responding to incidents.
- Strong AWS knowledge, including VPCs, security groups, IAM, KMS, CloudWatch, and PrivateLink.
- Strong Linux, networking, and scripting skills using Bash and/or Python.
- Excellent communication, documentation, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with MirrorMaker 2, Confluent Replicator, or cluster linking.
- Experience with Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, or ksqlDB.
- Familiarity with Kafka Streams or Apache Flink.
- Kubernetes or Amazon EKS experience, including Strimzi.
- Confluent Certified Administrator certification.
- AWS Solutions Architect or AWS DevOps certification.
- Experience supporting Kafka within a regulated or large enterprise environment.
Initial Priorities
During the first 90 days, the Senior Kafka Engineer / Administrator will be expected to develop a working understanding of the current environments, contribute to an assessment of platform health, help standardize monitoring, support ongoing operations, and partner with the team on modernization activities.
Everforth Apex is a world-class IT services company that serves thousands of clients across the globe. When you join Everforth Apex, you become part of a team that values innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning. We offer quality career resources, training, certifications, development opportunities, and a comprehensive benefits package. Our commitment to excellence is reflected in many awards, including ClearlyRateds Best of Staffing in Talent Satisfaction in the United States and Great Place to Work in the United Kingdom and Mexico.
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Everforth Apex Benefits Overview: Everforth Apex offers a range of supplemental benefits, including medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and other insurance plans that offer an optional layer of financial protection. We offer an ESPP (employee stock purchase program) and a 401K program which allows you to contribute typically within 30 days of starting, with a company match after 12 months of tenure. Everforth Apex also offers a HSA (Health Savings Account on the HDHP plan), a SupportLinc Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with up to 8 free counseling sessions, a corporate discount savings program and other discounts. In terms of professional development, Everforth Apex hosts an on-demand training program, provides access to certification prep and a library of technical and leadership courses/books/seminars once you have 6+ months of tenure, and certification discounts and other perks to associations that include CompTIA and IIBA. Everforth Apex has a dedicated customer service team for our Consultants that can address questions around benefits and other resources, as well as a certified Career Coach. You can access a full list of our benefits, programs, support teams and resources within our 'Welcome Packet' as well, which an Everforth Apex team member can provide.
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