Kafka Messaging & SRE Engineer — Automation & Reliability

Realtech Services; O’Fallon (MO); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Realtech Services is seeking a Kafka Messaging & SRE Engineer to own and operate Kafka-based messaging platforms in production. You will apply SRE principles to improve reliability, availability, and performance, and drive automation initiatives across CI/CD pipelines.

The role requires hands-on experience with Kafka, DevOps practices, and Java-based tooling, with a focus on scalable distributed systems. Local candidates in the O’Fallon, MO area preferred for on-site work.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years of experience with Apache Kafka in production
• Strong knowledge of Kafka architecture (brokers, topics, partitions, replicas)
• Experience with Kafka security (SSL, SASL, ACLs)
• Configuring, deploying, and managing Kafka clusters in cloud and on-premises
• Kafka stream processing using Kafka Streams, KSQL, or Apache Flink
• Experience with DevOps practices including CI/CD, monitoring, and logging
• Familiarity with Zookeeper, Schema Registry, and Kafka Connect
• BS degree or equivalent practical experience in CS or related field

Responsibilities

• Own and operate Kafka-based messaging platforms in production environments
• Apply SRE principles to improve reliability, availability, and performance
• Drive DevOps and automation initiatives to reduce toil and manual operations
• Build and enhance automation using Ansible, scripts, and CI/CD pipelines
• Perform incident management, RCA, capacity planning, and operational readiness
• Collaborate with application and platform engineering teams
• Contribute to Java-based tooling and platform enhancements

Skills

Kafka admin

Kafka architecture

SRE/DevOps

Automation

Java development

Linux

Incident management

CI/CD

Zookeeper

Schema Registry

Kafka Connect

Education

BS in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kafka Streams

KSQL

Apache Flink

Job description

Realtech Services is seeking a Kafka Messaging & SRE Engineer to own and operate Kafka-based messaging platforms in production. You will apply SRE principles to improve reliability, availability, and performance, and drive automation initiatives across CI/CD pipelines.

The role requires hands-on experience with Kafka, DevOps practices, and Java-based tooling, with a focus on scalable distributed systems. Local candidates in the O’Fallon, MO area preferred for on-site work.