Senior Kafka Platform Engineer

3761 Barclays - BX - UK; Knutsford; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Barclays in Knutsford or Northampton seeks a Senior Kafka Platform Engineer to design, build and improve scalable, secure streaming platforms used across the organisation. You will work with Confluent Kafka, Kafka Connect, Kubernetes and CI/CD tooling to deliver reliable data pipelines while collaborating with product, engineering and security teams to elevate platform resilience.

This role emphasizes automation, IaC, disaster recovery planning and adherence to secure coding practices to protect

Qualifications

• Design and implement enterprise-scale Kafka platforms across cloud and on‑premises.
• Ensure secure, reliable streaming with RBAC, TLS, and secret management.
• Collaborate with engineering, security and architecture teams to improve platform resilience.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement and optimize Kafka platforms for scalability and reliability.
• Collaborate with engineering, architecture, and security teams to ensure platform resilience.
• Automate provisioning with Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD pipelines.

Skills

Distributed systems

Event-driven architecture

Performance optimization

Tools

Confluent Kafka

Kafka Connect

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Schema Registry

Job description

Job Description Purpose of the role

To design, develop and improve software, utilising various engineering methodologies, that provides business, platform, and technology capabilities for our customers and colleagues.

Accountabilities

Development and delivery of high-quality software solutions by using industry aligned programming languages, frameworks, and tools. Ensuring that code is scalable, maintainable, and optimized for performance. Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define software requirements, devise solution strategies, and ensure seamless integration and alignment with business objectives. Collaboration with peers, participate in code reviews, and promote a culture of code quality and knowledge sharing. Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations and actively contribute to the organization’s technology communities to foster a culture of technical excellence and growth. Adherence to secure coding practices to mitigate vulnerabilities, protect sensitive data, and ensure secure software solutions. Implementation of effective unit testing practices to ensure proper code design, readability, and reliability.

Assistant Vice President Expectations

To advise and influence decision making, contribute to policy development and take responsibility for operational effectiveness. Collaborate closely with other functions/ business divisions. Lead a team performing complex tasks, using well developed professional knowledge and skills to deliver on work that impacts the whole business function. Set objectives and coach employees in pursuit of those objectives, appraisal of performance relative to objectives and determination of reward outcomes. If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others. OR for an individual contributor, they will lead collaborative assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will identify new directions for assignments and/ or projects, identifying a combination of cross functional methodologies or practices to meet required outcomes. Consult on complex issues; providing advice to People Leaders to support the resolution of escalated issues. Identify ways to mitigate risk and developing new policies/procedures in support of the control and governance agenda. Take ownership for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work done. Perform work that is closely related to that of other areas, which requires understanding of how areas coordinate and contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the organisation sub-function. Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategy. Engage in complex analysis of data from multiple sources of information, internal and external sources such as procedures and practises (in other areas, teams, companies, etc).to solve problems creatively and effectively. Communicate complex information. 'Complex' information could include sensitive information or information that is difficult to communicate because of its content or its audience. Influence or convince stakeholders to achieve outcomes. All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Join us as a Senior Kafka Platform Engineer

In this role, you will contribute to scalable, resilient and secure platform solutions that support services used across the organisation. Working with cloud‑native technologies, distributed systems and event‑driven architectures, you will help improve streaming capabilities used by a wide range of teams and business areas. This is an opportunity for you to apply your technical skills at scale, helping to deliver solutions that improve reliability, security and automation while supporting the technology needs of Barclays. To be successful as a Senior Kafka Platform Engineer, you must have the following essential skills: Designing, implementing and improving enterprise‑scale Confluent Kafka platforms supporting enterprise workloads across cloud, on‑premise and hybrid environments, including multi‑cluster, multi‑region and highly available deployments. Applying distributed systems knowledge, event‑driven architecture practices and Confluent Platform technologies, including Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, Cluster Linking and ksqlDB, to deliver reliable, scalable and efficient streaming solutions. Developing secure and automated platform capabilities using Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes and CI/CD tooling, alongside performance optimisation, capacity planning and Kafka security technologies, including RBAC, ACLs, OAuth, SSL/TLS, mTLS and secrets protection solutions. Some other highly valued skills may include: Contributing to disaster recovery, business continuity and platform resilience solutions for streaming environments. Working with streaming technologies such as Kafka Streams, Flink or Spark Streaming and applying real‑time data processing approaches to business requirements. Working collaboratively across engineering, architecture, security and infrastructure teams, sharing knowledge and contributing to platform improvements. You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job‑specific technical skills. This role will be based in Knutsford or Northampton.

Our Work Experience

Our Work Experience is the combination of everything that's unique about us: our culture, our core values, our company meetings, our commitment to sustainability, our recognition programs, but most importantly, it's our people. Our employees are self‑disciplined, hard working, curious, trustworthy, humble, and truthful. They make choices according to what is best for the team, they live for opportunities to collaborate and make a difference, and they make us the #1 Top Workplace in the area.