Kafka Administrator (Ansible)

First Soft Solutions LLC; Woodlawn (MD); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

First Soft Solutions LLC in Maryland is seeking a senior DevOps Engineer to own and scale automation across Linux, Windows, and cloud platforms. You will implement Confluent Kafka administration, Ansible playbooks, and CI/CD integrations, ensuring robust, idempotent workflows in production.

The ideal candidate has a strong background in Python, Bash, Kafka security (SSL/TLS, SASL, RBAC, MDS), and monitoring with Prometheus/Grafana, Docker, Kubernetes, and Git.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 7+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience with Confluent Kafka administration and production environments.
• Hands-on Ansible automation including playbooks, roles, modules, Tower/AWX, and Vault.
• Proficient in Python, Bash, Linux, systemd, SELinux, networking.
• Experience securing Kafka with SSL/TLS, SASL, RBAC, and MDS.
• Familiar with Prometheus, Grafana, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, Git.
• Ability to automate mixed Linux/Windows/cloud infra and create enterprise-grade workflows.

Skills

Python

Bash

Linux

systemd

SELinux

Networking

RBAC

MDS

Kafka security

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Confluent Kafka

Ansible

Tower/AWX

Vault

Prometheus

Thanos

Grafana

Jenkins

Docker

Kubernetes

Git

Job description

Onsite 5 days/week
Interview: In-person required Requirements

• Bachelor s degree with 7+ years of relevant experience.
• Strong production administration experience with Confluent Kafka.
• Hands-on expertise with Ansible automation, including playbooks, roles, modules, Tower/AWX, and Vault.
• Experience building scalable, idempotent automation and integrating Ansible with CI/CD and Git workflows.
• Strong Python, Bash, Linux, systemd, SELinux, permissions, and networking knowledge.
• Experience securing Kafka using SSL/TLS, SASL, RBAC, and MDS.
• Strong Kafka troubleshooting experience across performance, replication, partitioning, consumer lag, topics, schemas, and connectors.
• Experience with Prometheus, Thanos, Grafana, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, and Git.
• Ability to automate hybrid Linux, Windows, and cloud infrastructure and convert manual processes into enterprise-grade workflows.
  

Preferred

• Confluent Cloud or hybrid Kafka environments.
• KRaft and ZooKeeper migration.
• Strimzi or Confluent Operator.
• Kafka/JVM/I/O/network performance tuning.
• Federal security or compliance environments.