Sr. Kafka Engineer

Sr. Kafka Engineer Location: Irvine, CA (Hybrid) Duration: Long Term Contract Required Experience: 12+ years Job Summary We are looking for a Senior Kafka Engineer with strong experience in Kafka, AWS, Java, and distributed systems. The candidate will be responsible for designing, implementing, supporting, and optimizing Kafka solutions in a large-scale enterprise environment. The role requires strong troubleshooting, automation, and platform engineering skills, along with the ability to work closely with application, infrastructure, DevOps, and architecture teams. Key Responsibilities · Design, implement, and support Kafka clusters, topics, producers, and consumers. · Manage Kafka partitions, replication, retention, performance, and capacity. · Integrate Kafka with Java/Spring Boot and Python applications. · Troubleshoot Kafka and production issues and perform root-cause analysis. · Implement Kafka security, including SSL, SASL, and ACLs. · Support Kafka in AWS environments and support Kafka deployments in Docker/Kubernetes environments. · Monitor Kafka using tools such as Splunk and Datadog. · Develop automation using Python, Ansible, and Terraform. · Improve platform reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency through SRE and DevOps practices. · Identify repetitive operational tasks and develop automation and self-service solutions. · Work with development and architecture teams to design reliable real-time data solutions. · Participate in incident response, problem management, technology evaluations, and platform improvements. Required Skills & Experience · 10+ years of experience in software, platform, or infrastructure engineering. · 5+ years of hands-on Kafka experience in production environments. · Strong understanding of Kafka architecture, brokers, topics, partitions, replication, consumer groups, and offsets. · Strong AWS experience, preferably AWS MSK. · Strong Java development experience, preferably Spring Boot and microservices. · Experience integrating Kafka with Java and Python applications. · Experience with Kafka Connect and Schema Registry. · Experience with Kafka Streams or ksqlDB is a plus. · Experience with Terraform, Ansible, Docker, and Kubernetes/OpenShift. · Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as Splunk, PrometheGrafana, or Datadog. · Understanding of Kafka security and access controls. · Strong troubleshooting, automation, and root-cause analysis skills. · Good understanding of SRE, DevOps, CI/CD, Git, and Jenkins. · Excellent communication and collaboration skills. Preferred Skills · Confluent Kafka / Confluent Cloud experience. · Experience building self-service platforms and automation. · Experience with distributed tracing, APM, and synthetic monitoring.