Senior Data Streaming Engineer

4A Consulting, LLC; Woodlawn (MD); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

4A Consulting, LLC in Baltimore, MD is seeking a Senior Data Streaming Engineer with deep expertise in Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Java, and Confluent technologies to lead real-time data streaming initiatives for federal and commercial clients.

The role is onsite 5 days a week, requiring hands-on engineering and technical leadership across teams, with a focus on secure delivery, schema governance, and scalable streaming patterns.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/IT or related field preferred.
• 10+ years IT experience in senior engineering or advisory roles.
• 5+ years in enterprise-scale data streaming or secure software delivery.
• Expert Kafka, Flink, Java, Avro, Confluent Schema Registry experience.
• Strong Kafka admin and streaming framework knowledge expected.
• CI/CD and DevSecOps practices; secure coding and remediation workflows.
• Jenkins, Maven, Bitbucket, Nexus hands-on proficiency.
• Security controls incl. SSL/MTLS, SASL/OAUTHBEARER; RBAC proficiency.

Responsibilities

• Define enterprise streaming patterns, architectures, and guardrails.
• Develop reusable streaming libraries and reference implementations.
• Guide application and platform teams on streaming designs.
• Escalate and resolve complex streaming issues and performance bottlenecks.
• Partner with DevOps to implement secure CI/CD and DevSecOps practices.
• Create patterns for zero-downtime deployments and schema evolution.
• Validate Kafka provisioning, naming standards, and RBAC compliance.
• Mentor engineers and develop reusable engineering patterns.

Skills

Apache Kafka

Apache Flink

Java

Confluent technologies

CI/CD

DevSecOps

RBAC

Security

Jenkins

Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Jenkins

Nexus

Bitbucket

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

At 4A Consulting, we turn complexity into opportunity. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Baltimore, MD, we are a women-owned, boutique consulting firm specializing in delivering innovative, data-driven solutions to both the Federal Government and Fortune 500 clients. Our team blends deep industry knowledge with advanced technologies to design tailored strategies that drive measurable and sustainable outcomes. We pride ourselves on an agile, collaborative approach that helps organizations navigate challenges and seize emerging opportunities in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. At 4A, we don’t just deliver projects, we build trusted partnerships that empower our clients to lead with confidence in the digital age.

Position Overview

We are seeking a Senior Data Streaming Engineer with deep expertise in Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Java, Confluent technologies, and secure software delivery to support enterprise-scale real-time data streaming initiatives. The ideal candidate will provide both hands-on engineering expertise and technical leadership across application and platform teams, establishing standardized patterns for streaming architecture, DevSecOps, schema governance, microservices, security, and operational reliability.

The successful candidate will serve as a senior technical resource responsible for developing reusable streaming solutions, advising development teams, troubleshooting complex production issues, and improving enterprise streaming engineering maturity through reference architectures, shared libraries, automation, and technical enablement.

This role is expected to be onsite 5 days a week.

Interview: In-person interview required

Key Responsibilities

• Define and maintain enterprise patterns, reference architectures, standards, and guardrails for Kafka, Flink, Kafka Streams, CI/CD, schema governance, and secure microservices.
• Develop reusable streaming libraries, starter templates, reference implementations, and technical patterns to accelerate adoption across development teams.
• Provide hands-on technical guidance to application and platform teams evaluating streaming solution designs.
• Serve as a senior escalation point for complex streaming issues, including consumer lag, serialization failures, state store anomalies, rebalancing behavior, memory issues, and performance bottlenecks.
• Partner with DevOps and Platform Engineering teams to establish secure and standardized CI/CD and DevSecOps practices.
• Design reusable pipeline patterns incorporating vulnerability scanning, dependency governance, artifact promotion controls, security validation, and remediation workflows.
• Define patterns for zero-downtime stateful deployments, including rolling updates, schema evolution, and checkpoint/snapshot-aligned deployments.
• Implement automated validation for Kafka topic provisioning, including naming standards, configurations, and RBAC compliance.
• Develop secure coding and dependency management standards for Java, Kafka, and Flink applications.
• Analyze vulnerability scan results, develop remediation approaches, and provide technical guidance to development teams.
• Support secure delivery practices aligned with NIST controls, POA&M processes, and enterprise security requirements.
• Apply advanced knowledge of Kafka internals, including brokers, partitions, replication, consumer groups, ACLs, RBAC, retention, and cluster health.
• Troubleshoot Kafka operational issues, including ISR fluctuations, replication delays, partitioning issues, and cluster health concerns.
• Design and implement secure microservices and Kafka client security configurations using SSL/MTLS and SASL/OAUTHBEARER.
• Develop enterprise documentation, standards, reference architectures, implementation guides, and reusable technical patterns.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance to improve streaming development and operational practices.
• Support large-scale distributed streaming environments and participate in production incident troubleshooting and resolution.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field is preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive IT experience, including senior engineering, architecture, or technical advisory responsibilities.
• 5+ years of experience working with enterprise-scale data streaming or secure software delivery environments.
• Expert-level experience with Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Java, Avro, and Confluent Schema Registry.
• Strong hands‑on knowledge of Kafka development as well as operational and administration concepts.
• Experience with Kafka Streams or similar stateful streaming frameworks.
• Proven experience designing and implementing CI/CD and DevSecOps practices.
• Hands‑on experience with Jenkins, Maven, Bitbucket, and Nexus.
• Experience with enterprise vulnerability management, secure coding practices, and remediation workflows.
• Hands‑on experience designing secure microservices and Kafka client security configurations, including SSL/MTLS and SASL/OAUTHBEARER.
• Strong understanding of Kafka partitioning, consumer groups, replication, ISR behavior, retention, and cluster health.
• Experience developing enterprise standards, reference architectures, technical documentation, and reusable engineering patterns.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem‑solving skills across distributed streaming environments.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively and provide guidance to multiple technical teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working within a Center of Excellence, architecture council, or enterprise technology governance organization.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, or OpenShift, including secure containerized workloads and CI/CD integration.
• Experience with security platforms such as Black Duck, SonarQube, or Fortify.
• Experience with Confluent Platform RBAC and enterprise Kafka security controls.
• Experience architecting large-scale streaming workloads involving partitioning, schema evolution, state management, and fault tolerance.
• Experience developing shared libraries, starter templates, and reusable components for streaming and microservices.
• Advanced experience with distributed systems troubleshooting and production incident management.
• Experience supporting regulated or security-sensitive enterprise environments.

Why Join 4A

• Be part of a mission-driven, women‑owned consulting firm with a reputation for excellence.
• Work on high‑impact projects across federal and commercial clients.
• Collaborate in an inclusive, growth‑oriented culture where innovation is valued.
• Access career development programs, mentorship, and learning opportunities.
• Enjoy a comprehensive benefits package, flexible work options, and a focus on work‑life balance.

Equal Opportunity Statement

4A Consulting is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to an inclusive hiring process. Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation due to a disability may contact [e-mail]. This email is intended solely for accommodation requests.

Please note that 4A Consulting participates in the federal E-Verify program. Upon hire, we will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the US. 4A Consulting will only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9.