Kafka

N Consulting; Kraków; Hybrid; PLN 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

N Consulting is seeking a Kafka SRE in Krakow on a hybrid basis (2 days onsite). The role focuses on operating and scaling the Kafka ecosystem, including connectors, monitoring, and automation. You will collaborate with a globally located team to ensure reliability and performance of streaming data pipelines.

Ideal candidates have strong Kafka architecture knowledge, IaC experience, and hands-on Kubernetes ops, with a proactive mindset for incident resolution and improvements.

Qualifications

• Experience with Kafka brokers and ZooKeeper/KRaft
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills
• Clear communication with engineers and stakeholders
• IaC and automation-first environment experience
• Messaging technologies: Apache Kafka, Confluent Kafka
• DevOps toolsets: GitHub, JIRA, Confluence, Jenkins

Responsibilities

• Provide deep technical expertise across the Kafka ecosystem (brokers, ZooKeeper/KRaft, Connect, Schema Registry)
• Deploy and operate Kafka on Kubernetes with scaling, upgrades and troubleshooting
• Administer Kafka topics and role-bindings across the platform
• Configure and maintain Kafka connectors (MQ, Splunk, MongoDB, GCP PubSub) and Connect components
• Implement monitoring and alerting for observability and resilience
• Automate operational tasks using scripting and IaC tools
• Perform benchmarking and tuning for scalable data streaming
• Lead RCAs for production incidents and drive improvements

Skills

Kafka architecture

Problem solving

Technical communication

Infrastructure as Code

Messaging: Kafka & Confluent

Tools

GitHub

JIRA

Confluence

Jenkins

Job description

Role: Kafka SRE

Location: Krakow (Hybrid-2 Days Onsite)

Type: Contract

Job Spec:

Roles and RESPONSIBILITIES

• Provide deep technical expertise across the Kafka ecosystem, including brokers, ZooKeeper/KRaft, Kafka Connect and Schema Registry.
• Deploy and operate Kafka components on container platforms, with hands-on Kubernetes experience (e.g., scaling, upgrades, configuration and troubleshooting).
• Administer and operate the Kafka platform end-to-end, including provisioning of Topics and Role-bindings.
• Configure, deploy and maintain Kafka connectors, including MQ, Splunk, MongoDB, GCP Pub sub, as well as Connect components such as workers, tasks, converters and SMTs (transforms).
• Implement monitoring and alerting to ensure platform observability and resilience.
• Automate operational and maintenance activities using scripting and automation tools.
• Perform benchmarking, performance analysis and tuning to ensure scalable and efficient data streaming.
• Lead root cause analysis for production incidents, document findings and drive preventative improvements to enhance reliability.

SKILLS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

• Must be able to communicate on technical levels with Engineers and stakeholders.
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills.
• Thorough understanding of the Kafka Architecture.
• Familiar with cluster maintenance processes and implementing changes and recommended fixes to Kafka clusters and topics to protect production.
• Experience operating in an infrastructure as code and automation first principles Environment.
• Messaging technologies - Apache Kafka, Confluent Kafka.
• DevOps toolsets - GitHub, JIRA, Confluence, Jenkins.

Nice to have:

This role requires working in conjunction with a globally located team. There will be occasions where activity may need to align with another geographic location.