Senior Data Platform Engineer — Kafka & PostgreSQL

Mirantis, Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Mirantis, Inc. seeks a Senior Data Platform Engineer to run the PostgreSQL and Apache Kafka platform behind k0rdent-ai, our multi-tenant control plane for enterprise GPU infrastructure.

You will deploy and operate stateful services across cloud and bare-metal clusters, owning automation, upgrades, observability, backups, and DR. You will enable self-service access to databases and topics, build monitoring, and implement secure, scalable multi-tenant governance with TLS, secrets, and identity

Qualifications

• 8+ years in DevOps, SRE, platform, or infrastructure engineering with 3+ years on stateful systems.
• Kubernetes operations on cloud and/or bare-metal clusters with stateful workloads.
• Experience running PostgreSQL and/or Kafka via Kubernetes operators and Helm charts.
• Proficient with Argo CD or Flux, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines in declarative workflows.
• PostgreSQL replication, backup, PITR, performance troubleshooting; Kafka broker topics and monitoring.
• DR design and testing for HA across regions; scripting in Go or Python, plus Bash.

Responsibilities

• Run PostgreSQL and Kafka on Kubernetes; deploy, upgrade, scale, and operate clusters using operators and Helm.
• GitOps & IaC: manage declarative pipelines with Argo CD/Flux, Terraform, and CI/CD.
• Design high availability and cross-region DR with defined RPO/RTO and recovery drills.
• Provide self-service provisioning of databases, users, topics, and ACLs via code.
• Build observability: monitoring/alerts with Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
• Implement TLS, secrets management, network policies, and per-tenant isolation.
• Develop Go or Python automation to reduce manual work; collaborate with product teams on standards.

Skills

Kubernetes

PostgreSQL

Kafka

GitOps

Go

Python

Terraform

Helm

SRE Practices

Monitoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

CloudNativePG

Strimzi

Argo CD

Flux

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

Vault/OpenBao

Job description

• Full-time

Company Description

Mirantis, an IREN company, is the Kubernetes-native AI infrastructure company, enabling organizations to build and operate scalable, secure, and sovereign infrastructure for modern AI, machine learning, and data-intensive applications. By combining open source innovation with deep expertise in Kubernetes orchestration, Mirantis empowers platform engineering teams to deliver composable, production-ready developer platforms across any environment—on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, or in sovereign data centers. As enterprises navigate the growing complexity of AI-driven workloads, Mirantis delivers the automation, GPU orchestration, and policy-driven control needed to manage infrastructure with confidence and agility. Committed to open standards and freedom from lock-in, Mirantis ensures that customers retain full control of their infrastructure strategy. https://www.mirantis.com/

Job Description

We are looking for a Senior Data Platform Engineer to run the PostgreSQL and Apache Kafka platform behind k0rdent-ai — our multi-tenant control plane for enterprise GPU infrastructure. Every cluster provisioned, every GPU-hour consumed, and every tenant action is recorded on this platform, so it must be reliable, secure, and recoverable.
This is a hands-on DevOps / SRE role for stateful systems. You will deploy and operate PostgreSQL (CloudNativePG) and Kafka (Strimzi) on Kubernetes using operators, Helm, and GitOps — across cloud and bare-metal clusters, in a global control plane and multiple regions. You will own automation, upgrades, observability, backups, and disaster recovery, and give product teams self-service access to databases and topics through code.
Main Responsibilities

• Run PostgreSQL and Kafka on Kubernetes: Deploy, upgrade, scale, and operate CloudNativePG and Strimzi clusters with Helm charts and operator custom resources, across cloud and bare-metal Kubernetes.
• GitOps & Infrastructure as Code: Manage everything declaratively with Argo CD (or Flux), Helm, and Terraform; build CI/CD pipelines for database and Kafka changes, schema migrations, and operator upgrades.
• High Availability & Disaster Recovery: Design and operate high availability within each region and cross-region disaster recovery — PostgreSQL replica clusters, backups and point-in-time recovery, Kafka MirrorMaker 2 — with defined RPO/RTO targets and regular failover drills.
• Self-Service Platform: Give product teams self-service provisioning of databases, users, topics, and ACLs through code, with secure defaults and guardrails.
• Observability & Operations: Build monitoring and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) for replication lag, backups, consumer lag, and capacity; participate in on-call and lead incident reviews.
• Security & Multi-Tenancy: Implement TLS/mTLS, secrets management (Vault/OpenBao), network policies, Kafka ACLs, and per-tenant isolation; integrate database and Kafka access with our identity platform (Keycloak / OIDC).
• Data Movement & CDC: Operate the outbox and change-data-capture pipelines (Debezium, Kafka Connect) that keep databases and event streams consistent between the global control plane and regions.
• Automation & Tooling: Write automation and small services in Go or Python to remove manual work, and partner with application teams on schema standards and performance troubleshooting.

Qualifications

Must Have

• Experience: 8+ years in DevOps, SRE, platform, or infrastructure engineering, including 3+ years running stateful systems (databases or message streaming) in production.
• Kubernetes: Strong hands-on Kubernetes operations — StatefulSets, persistent volumes and storage classes, pod disruption budgets, scheduling and affinity, network policies, and cluster upgrades — on cloud and/or bare-metal clusters.
• Operators & Helm: Production experience running PostgreSQL and/or Kafka through Kubernetes operators (CloudNativePG, Zalando, or Crunchy PGO; Strimzi, Confluent for Kubernetes, or similar), and authoring and maintaining Helm charts. Depth with one operator matters more than the specific product.
• GitOps & IaC: Day-to-day use of Argo CD or Flux, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar) in a declarative, review-driven workflow.
• PostgreSQL Operations: Practical PostgreSQL administration — replication and failover, backup and point-in-time recovery, connection pooling (PgBouncer), version upgrades, and performance troubleshooting.
• Kafka Operations: Running Kafka in production — brokers, topics and partitions, replication, consumer groups, monitoring, and capacity planning.
• Reliability & DR: Designing and testing high availability and disaster recovery for stateful systems, with defined RPO/RTO.
• Automation: Strong scripting and programming in Go (preferred) or Python, plus Bash.

Nice to Have

• Cross-region replication (CloudNativePG replica clusters, Kafka MirrorMaker 2) and global/regional multi-site architectures.
• Debezium, Kafka Connect, and transactional outbox / CDC patterns.
• Identity integration for data platforms (Keycloak, OIDC, LDAP/Active Directory).
• Observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, VictoriaMetrics).
• Secrets and security tooling (Vault/OpenBao, cert-manager, mTLS).
• Bare-metal infrastructure, Ceph or object storage, or GPU/AI infrastructure.
• Contributions to CloudNativePG, Strimzi, or related open-source projects.
• Experience in SOC 2 or ISO 27001 environments.

Education and Experience
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Additional Information

What does Mirantis offer you?

• Work with an established Silicon Valley leader in the cloud infrastructure industry;
• Work with exceptionally passionate, talented and engaging colleagues, helping Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers implement next-generation cloud technologies;
• Be a part of cutting-edge, open-source innovation;
• Thrive in the high-energy environment of a young company where openness, collaboration, risk-taking, and continuous growth are valued;
• Professional development and training;
• Attend conferences and working groups;
• Company outings, happy hours, hackathons, and tech talks;
• Receive a competitive compensation package with a strong benefits plan.