System Engineer-Platform/Kafka/Messaging (Onsite Role)

O'Reilly Auto Parts; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

O'Reilly Auto Parts is seeking a Systems Engineer for the Messaging Platform to design, implement, and maintain enterprise messaging across hybrid cloud and on-prem environments. You will collaborate with architects, DevOps, and developers to standardize patterns and enable scalable, secure event-driven integrations.

The role emphasizes governance, observability, and migration to modern streaming technologies, with a focus on reliability, cost-efficiency, and developer enablement across

Qualifications

• 3+ years with enterprise messaging platforms (Kafka, Pub/Sub) and deep Kafka architecture knowledge.
• Design high-throughput, low-latency event-driven systems with governance and access control.
• Hands-on with GCP messaging services (Pub/Sub, Eventarc) and hybrid architectures.
• Proficiency with Terraform, Kubernetes/Helm and CI/CD tools; GitOps configuration management.
• Security-focused with encryption, authentication, and regulatory standards (PCI, SOC2, HIPAA).
• Observability stack experience (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, GCP tools) and latency monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate scalable messaging platforms for real-time and batch processing.
• Automate messaging infrastructure with Terraform, Helm, and Kubernetes; build CI/CD pipelines.
• Implement secure messaging with IAM, TLS/mTLS, and ACLs; ensure compliance.
• Establish observability and lead incident response, RCA, and disaster recovery planning.
• Provide developer enablement with reusable connectors and self-service tooling.
• Drive platform modernization and migration to modern streaming technologies.
• Collaborate on architecture, governance, and data-mesh strategies; mentor engineers.

Skills

Kafka architecture

Event-driven design

GCP Pub/Sub

Security & compliance

Observability

Performance tuning

Developer enablement

Cloud & on-prem hybrid

Multi-region replication

POCs & tech adoption

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Helm

CI/CD tooling

Strimzi / Confluent Operator

TLS/mTLS security

Job description

The Systems Engineer Platform - Messaging Platform will play a key role in designing, implementing, and maintaining enterprise messaging systems that support both real-time and asynchronous communication between distributed applications and services. This role focuses on ensuring robust, scalable, secure, and cost-efficient messaging solutions across hybrid cloud and on-premises environments. The engineer will work closely with architects, developers, infrastructure, and DevOps teams to standardize messaging platforms and promote modern integration patterns that align with the organization's digital transformation goals.

This is an on-site position located in Springfield, MO.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Messaging Platform Engineering

  Design and operate scalable messaging platforms (Kafka, Pub/Sub, legacy MQ) supporting high-throughput, low-latency event streaming. Manage topics, schemas (Avro/JSON/Protobuf), connectors, and stream processing (Kafka Streams/KSQLDB). Enforce governance for naming, retention, access control, and multi-tenancy, while ensuring reliable delivery (retries, DLQs, idempotency, exactly-once).

• Infrastructure as Code & Automation

  Automate messaging infrastructure using Terraform, Helm, and Kubernetes (e.g., Strimzi), with Git-based configuration management. Build CI/CD pipelines for deployments, upgrades, and topic provisioning, including drift detection and self-healing workflows.

• Security & Governance

  Implement secure messaging with IAM integration (GCP, LDAP, Kerberos), TLS/mTLS, and ACLs. Align with compliance standards (PCI, HIPAA) and Zero Trust principles, including data classification, logging, and anomaly detection.

• Monitoring & Reliability

  Establish observability using Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or GCP tools. Monitor SLAs/SLOs, consumer lag, broker health, and replication. Lead incident response, RCA, and disaster recovery planning.

• Integration & Developer Enablement

  Enable teams with reusable connectors, SDKs, and event-driven patterns. Provide guidance on schema evolution, idempotency, and domain-driven event design, supported by self-service tools and documentation.

• Platform Modernization & Migration

  Drive migration from legacy systems to modern streaming platforms, evaluating new technologies (e.g., Pulsar, Redpanda). Lead migration strategies, dual-write patterns, and multi-region replication.

• Collaboration & Leadership

  Collaborate with cross-functional teams on architecture and governance, contribute to event-driven and data mesh strategies, and mentor engineers while promoting best practices.

Skills:

• Required:
  • 3+ years with enterprise messaging platforms (Kafka, Pub/Sub), including deep knowledge of Kafka architecture (brokers, partitions, replication, schema management, streams, and connectors).
  • Strong experience designing high-throughput, low-latency event-driven systems with governance, topic management, and access control.
  • Hands-on experience with GCP messaging services (Pub/Sub, Eventarc) and hybrid architectures, including secure connectivity, IAM, and multi-region designs.
  • Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code and automation using Terraform, Kubernetes/Helm, and CI/CD tools, with GitOps-based configuration management.
  • Solid background in security and compliance, including encryption (TLS/mTLS), authentication (SASL, IAM), and regulatory standards (PCI, SOC2, HIPAA).
  • Experience implementing observability with Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, and GCP tools, including monitoring lag, throughput, and distributed tracing.
  • Strong performance tuning and reliability practices, including scaling, backpressure handling, DLQs, retries, and cross-region replication.
  • Focus on developer enablement through reusable tools, self-service platforms, schema governance, and event-driven best practices.
  • Ability to evaluate and prototype messaging technologies (e.g., Pulsar, RabbitMQ), lead POCs, and drive adoption of modern streaming and data integration patterns.
• Desired:
  • Experience running Kafka on Kubernetes (Strimzi/Confluent Operator), including scaling, configuration, and multi-tenant architectures.
  • Strong foundation in event-driven architecture, microservices communication, and asynchronous messaging patterns.
  • Hands-on experience with real-time processing tools (Kafka Streams, Flink, Spark) and Kafka Connect integrations (Debezium, JDBC, Elasticsearch).
  • Proficiency in schema management (Avro, Protobuf) and schema registries (Confluent, Apicurio).
  • Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes (GKE), and service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) for secure, cloud-native deployments.
  • Experience with cloud messaging and analytics tools (GCP Pub/Sub, Dataflow) and migrating from legacy systems (e.g., IBM MQ, RabbitMQ).
  • Strong knowledge of security and access control (ACLs, SASL/SCRAM, Kerberos, IAM) and message delivery semantics (at-least-once, exactly-once).
  • Experience with observability (Prometheus, Grafana, GCP Monitoring), CI/CD automation for Kafka resources, and data governance too