Kafka Platform Architect & Automation Lead

Selby Jennings; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology recruitment firm is seeking a Senior Kafka Platform Engineer to oversee the Kafka platform in Chicago. In this role, you will design, automate, and manage event-streaming capabilities, ensuring security and operational excellence. The ideal candidate has extensive Kafka expertise, a strong cloud-native mindset, and solid skills in automation and Kubernetes. This position offers the chance to work on modern deployment patterns in a dynamic environment.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience operating Kafka in production environments.
• Strong background in operating stateful systems on Kubernetes.
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform.
• Solid scripting experience in Python, Go, or Java.
• Expertise in performance troubleshooting and capacity planning.

Responsibilities

• Own and operate production-grade Kafka clusters.
• Run Kafka on Kubernetes using Operators and Helm.
• Establish SLOs and maintain runbooks.
• Build and maintain monitoring for Kafka.
• Implement security measures for data-in-motion.

Skills

Kafka expertise

Kubernetes skills

Automation

Programming (Python, Go, Java)

Observability & Tuning

Security

Ecosystem components (Kafka Connect, Schema Registry)

Cloud knowledge (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Operational excellence

Tools

Terraform

Argo CD

GitOps

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Job description

A leading technology recruitment firm is seeking a Senior Kafka Platform Engineer to oversee the Kafka platform in Chicago. In this role, you will design, automate, and manage event-streaming capabilities, ensuring security and operational excellence. The ideal candidate has extensive Kafka expertise, a strong cloud-native mindset, and solid skills in automation and Kubernetes. This position offers the chance to work on modern deployment patterns in a dynamic environment.