Remote Kafka Engineer - Confluent Specialist (Contract)

System One; Vienna (VA); Remote; USD 83,000 - 103,000; Full time

Job summary

System One is seeking a Kafka - Confluence Engineer for a 100% remote contract. Candidate must be available for onsite interview at own expense in Vienna, VA or Pensacola, FL or San Diego, CA. 40 hours per week, EST hours.

Responsibilities include supporting enterprise messaging, administering Confluent Kafka environments, capacity planning, high availability, security, and integration with Kubernetes/OpenShift and CI/CD pipelines.

Qualifications

• 5+ years supporting enterprise messaging and event-driven platforms.
• 3+ years administering Confluent Kafka.
• Experience across Development, QA, Performance, DR, Production environments.
• Proficient with Confluent Control Center, Schema Registry, Connect, ksqlDB.
• Experience implementing security: TLS, mTLS, RBAC, ACLs, encryption, authentication.
• Strong knowledge of Kubernetes/OpenShift, cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Support enterprise messaging and event-driven platforms, ensuring seamless operation and integration.
• Administer and troubleshoot Confluent Kafka environments across multiple deployment stages (dev, QA, performance, DR, production).
• Manage Kafka cluster sizing, brokers, partitions, replication, retention, and capacity planning.
• Implement high availability, disaster recovery, and multi-cluster replication strategies.
• Configure and secure Kafka (TLS, mTLS, RBAC, ACLs, encryption, authentication).
• Integrate Kafka with Kubernetes/OpenShift, cloud platforms, observability tools, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Troubleshoot producer/consumer/broker issues; perform root cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to enhance event-driven architecture and data contracts.

Skills

Confluent Kafka

Kafka administration

Confluent Control Center

Schema Registry

Kubernetes/OpenShift

CI/CD pipelines

TLS/mTLS/RBAC

Job description

System One is seeking a Kafka - Confluence Engineer for a 100% remote contract. Candidate must be available for onsite interview at own expense in Vienna, VA or Pensacola, FL or San Diego, CA. 40 hours per week, EST hours.

Responsibilities include supporting enterprise messaging, administering Confluent Kafka environments, capacity planning, high availability, security, and integration with Kubernetes/OpenShift and CI/CD pipelines.