Remote Lead Kafka Engineer - Real-Time Data Pipelines

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

Job summary

First Citizens Bank is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to design and implement scalable Kafka-based enterprise integration solutions. The role supports a remote work model with priority given to candidates in North Carolina, Arizona, and Texas, and aligns with enterprise architecture standards.

You will lead architecture discussions, mentor teams, and drive DevOps practices while delivering high-availability data pipelines and secure, scalable systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree plus 6 years of software development experience; or 10 years with a high school diploma/GED.

Responsibilities

• Design, configure and maintain Confluent Kafka clusters across multi-data center and cloud environments.
• 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.
• Provide technical guidance and mentoring to teams.

Skills

Confluent Kafka

Kafka Connect

Kafka Streams

Schema Registry

Java

Python

Go

DevOps automation

Cloud native architecture

Legacy systems integration

CI/CD pipelines

Education

Bachelor’s Degree

High School Diploma or GED

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenShift

CI/CD

Schema Registry

Job description

First Citizens Bank is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to design and implement scalable Kafka-based enterprise integration solutions. The role supports a remote work model with priority given to candidates in North Carolina, Arizona, and Texas, and aligns with enterprise architecture standards.

You will lead architecture discussions, mentor teams, and drive DevOps practices while delivering high-availability data pipelines and secure, scalable systems.