Lead Kafka Engineer - Real-Time Data Pipelines (Remote)

First Citizens Bank; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

First Citizens Bank seeks a Lead Software Engineer to drive Kafka-based event-driven integrations on the Enterprise Architecture team. You will design scalable solutions, implement security and governance, and mentor others in modern data platforms.

The role favors remote candidates nationwide, with preferred Texas, North Carolina and Arizona locations, and involves leading real-time data pipelines in a cloud-enabled, multi-data center environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 6+ years of software development experience.
• Or a high school diploma with 10+ years of software development experience.
• Experience designing and maintaining Confluent Kafka clusters in multi-data center/cloud environments.
• Strong knowledge of Kafka topics, schema evolution, and DevOps automation.
• Proficient in Java, Python or Go with cloud-native architecture experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, configure and maintain Confluent Kafka clusters across data centers and cloud.
• Implement authorization, authentication and schema governance practices.
• Build real-time data pipelines using Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams and KSQL/ FlinkSQL.
• Monitor system metrics and address performance issues to ensure high availability.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship on new technologies and best practices.

Skills

Java

Python

Go

Education

Bachelor's Degree

High School Diploma

Tools

Confluent Kafka

Kafka Connect

Kafka Streams

Schema Registry

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenShift

Job description

First Citizens Bank seeks a Lead Software Engineer to drive Kafka-based event-driven integrations on the Enterprise Architecture team. You will design scalable solutions, implement security and governance, and mentor others in modern data platforms.

The role favors remote candidates nationwide, with preferred Texas, North Carolina and Arizona locations, and involves leading real-time data pipelines in a cloud-enabled, multi-data center environment.