Kafka Architect@ 100% Remote Role

Kafka Architect position is a leadership position in the organization that is responsible for managing multiple consulting and delivery projects, teams/programs. The Architect, provides consulting and delivery assurance of services for clients through a range of internal and external functions. The position of Kafka Architect is distinguished from other Architect positions by the nature of the engagements or programs involved; deal sizes range from transactional solutions of $2-5M. As an Kafka Architect, is expected to have the experience and background to perform all the duties described below for engagements that are focused on consulting/delivery management within the defined subject matter area, including resource management, deliverables development, project planning and executions, adherence to contract attributes and costing, customer interaction, and other key aspects of solution-based managed services.

For a Kafka Architect, these engagements will typically be delivered for a North America customer or at the customer location, usually North American based. They are expected to have adequate level skills required for complex deliverable-based, fully outsourced, or extremely large-scale engagements or programs and lead the delivery effort to a larger cross-functional project/program. This role may require up to 50% travel.


The ideal candidate will bring their deep expertise in DevOps and Cloud services architecture, presales, delivery, and operational excellence. They will provide expert level support for strategic ongoing and new TGS client initiatives. They will work amongst our other key partners to assist in the development of robust cloud offerings and bring holistic solutions across key focus areas of TGS DevOps strategic objectives.

Additional responsibilities will include but not be limited to:

Provide leadership, expertise, and support for DevOps and Cloud engagements through a range of internal and external functions in the following areas:

Engagement Support : provide support of newly won deals through the transition and delivery phases while partnering with the Delivery organization to ensure projects are started and delivered according to DevOps practice guidelines and methods


Engagement Delivery : drive the transition phase as well as the setup of the engagement operating model, help define metrics and support the delivery for defined statement of work. Help identify opportunities for service improvements

Practice Support : provide input, expertise, and implement changes into the design, development and improvement of service offerings and back-office procedures; assist in the research and development of new offerings and analyze competing offerings to ensure practice is current and competitive within the market; create and maintain practice artifacts that document key methods, processes and delivery tools


Human Resources : assist with interviewing, hiring, and on-boarding of project team members during initial DevOps engagement phase

Pre-Sales Support : as required, support Solution Architects and Solution Executives with technical opinions, methodology recommendations, work estimates, and solution support

Engagement Delivery Support Responsibilities
• Partner with our Delivery organization to ensure project initiation and transition phase is executed according to DevOps practice guidelines and that the assigned Delivery Manager/Service Manager is provided the knowledge required to deliver the engagement effectively
• Facilitate internal communication and assembling a solution delivery team for new engagements
• Provide solution consulting and advice during the initiation and transition phases to the Delivery Manager as needed
• Attend project kick-off meetings, status reviews, and other delivery meetings as requested by the Delivery Manager
• Ensure engagement methodology is followed by team from opportunity assessment to project closeout
• Develop collaborative relationship with the Delivery team to support the organization from a delivery perspective
• Help define the team's performance metrics in alignment to customers KPIs
• Identify opportunities for service improvement through problem management, service optimization, automation, etc.

Pre-Sales Support
• Work with Solution Architects and Solution Executives, when needed, to develop scope, prepare estimates, prepare implementation plans, and ensure project risks are assessed during sales cycle for project services and outsource engagements
• As needed, understand client business and technical requirements and communicate internally with Solution Architects and Solution Executives to ensure solution matches client needs
• As needed, support Solution Architects and Solution Executives in process to calculate risk premium, prepare and review estimates, and prepare project pricing

Practice Support
• Collect and provide input into the design, development and improvement of service offerings and internal DevOps and Cloud accelerator programs
• Implement service offering changes in process and procedures
• Maintain and organize DevOps practice intellectual property
• Work with Practice Managers and Practice Director to improve and implement changes to project delivery processes, methodology, and back office procedures
• Stay informed with regards to developments in the application management industry and maintain current knowledge of the generally accepted best practices in service transition and management

Minimum Qualifications:
• Bachelor's in Computer Science or other engineering or technical discipline is required
• 7+ years' experience in information technology and/or professional services, with emphasis on subject matter expertise
• At least 3 years of experience as a DevOps Architect or equivalent role
• At least 4 years of experience as Kafka architect / Subject matter expert.
• 2 years of experience as mongo DB architect is preferred.
• Hands on experience in provisioning, cconfiguring, and operating a container orchestration system such as Kubernetes, RedHat OpenShift Container Platform, or VMWare Tanzu on-prem or in the cloud
• Deep experience with the configuration, management, and security configurations containers and at least one container platform

• Hands on experience in provisioning, configuration and operating Kafka clusters in an on-premise or cloud based hosting environments (Confluent Cloud, Azure, GCP, AWS, Kubernetes)
• Hands on experience implementing partitioning strategies and configuring brokers, topics, producers, consumers, schema registry, KSQL
• Expertise in Kafka security and encryption
• Expertise in Kafka performance optimization and tuning
• Experience with data visualization and monitoring tools such as Splunk, Grafana, Dynatrace, Datadog, New Relic, Oracle Enterprise Manager etc.
• Experience with telemetry frameworks and tools: (including but not limited to) Open Telemetry, Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, Fluent, Jaeger etc.
• Prior experience in Multi-cluster Kafka replication with mirror maker
• Solid knowledge and experience with Confluent KAFKA development in container environment
• Experience with source code and software collaboration technologies (e.g. GitHub, BitBucket, Artifactory)
• Experience configuring and managing continuous integration servers (e.g. Jenkins, Bamboo, TeamCity, Travis CI, Circle CI)
• Strong scripting skills (e.g. Python, Bash, Groovy)
• Knowledge of IP networking, VPN's, DNS, load balancing and firewalling
• Strong practical Linux and Windows-based systems administration skills in a Cloud or Virtualized environment
• Develop innovative solutions to complex business and technology problems
• Ability to travel to client locations to deliver professional services, as needed

Desired Qualifications
• Master's in Computer Science or other engineering or technical discipline is required
• 10+ years' experience in information technology and/or professional services, with emphasis on subject matter expertise
• At least 4 years of experience as a DevOps Architect or equivalent role
• At least 6 years of experience as Kafka architect / Subject matter expert.
• 3 years of experience as mongo DB architect is preferred.

• Strong track record of delivering projects of demonstrable complexity & scale
• Experience with data visualization and monitoring tools such as Splunk, Grafana, Dynatrace, Datadog, New Relic, Oracle Enterprise Manager etc.
• Experience with telemetry frameworks and tools: (including but not limited to) Open Telemetry, Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, Fluent, Jaeger etc.
• Prior success in automating real-world production environments using Chef, Puppet, Salt, Ansible or cloud native equivalents
• Ability to lead adoption and mentor team members on modern DevOps and architectural concepts
• Proficient designing and building highly available, resilient large-scale distributed systems
• Demonstrated leadership abilities in an engineering environment in driving operational excellence and best practices
• Demonstrated ability to achieve stretch goals in a highly innovative and fast paced environment

• Candidate must have subject matter expertise with the following Cloud Service Providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Experience with GCP plus)
• Expertise in DevOps Technologies including but not limited to CI/CD frameworks, Infrastructure as Code and monitoring and logging frameworks
• Familiarity in container technologies like Docker, Kubernetes and cloud native frameworks

• Excellence in technical communication with peers and non-technical cohorts
• Sharp analytical abilities and proven design skills
• Strong sense of ownership, urgency and drive
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills with an emphasis on communicating technical requirements and solutions to internal and external audiences.

Certifications
• Candidate must have professional level certifications in either AWS or Azure cloud platform.
• Good to have any of the below Kafka certifications:
• Confluent Certified Administrator for Apache Kafka
• Confluent Certified Developer for Apache Kafka