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

First Citizens Bank; Scottsdale (AZ); Remote; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

First Citizens Bank is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join the Enterprise Architecture team in a remote role with priority for NC, AZ and TX. You will design and implement scalable, Kafka-based event-driven integrations and mentor peers to align with enterprise standards.

Deep Kafka experience, cloud-native architecture and strong DevOps practices are required to ensure high availability and performance across distributed systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 6+ years of software development experience.
• Or a high school diploma/ GED with 10+ years of software development experience.
• Experience designing, configuring and maintaining Confluent Kafka clusters in multi-data center and cloud environments.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka topics design, schema evolution, and DevOps automation.

Responsibilities

• Design, configure and maintain Confluent Kafka clusters in a multi data center and cloud environment.
• Implement authorization, authentication and schema governance.
• Build real-time data pipelines using Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams and KSQL/FLinkSQL.
• Monitor system metrics and address performance issues to ensure high availability.
• Mentor others, provide technical guidance, and align projects with enterprise standards.
• Advise on strategies that align development with business needs and tech direction.

Skills

Kafka

Confluent Kafka

Kafka Connect

Kafka Streams

Schema Registry

Java

Python

Go

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenShift

CI/CD

Cloud-native architecture

Legacy systems integration

Education

Bachelor's Degree

High School Diploma

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenShift

CI/CD tools

Job description

First Citizens Bank is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join the Enterprise Architecture team in a remote role with priority for NC, AZ and TX. You will design and implement scalable, Kafka-based event-driven integrations and mentor peers to align with enterprise standards.

Deep Kafka experience, cloud-native architecture and strong DevOps practices are required to ensure high availability and performance across distributed systems.