Kafka Platform Engineer

Job Title: Kafka Platform Engineer

Duration (Contract): 12 Months

Client Location: Austin, TX

Location Preference: Hybrid

Job Description:
As a Kafka Platform Engineer , you will be responsible for designing, implementing, securing, and optimizing enterprise-scale Kafka environments across both on-premises and cloud platforms. This role requires deep expertise with the Confluent Kafka Platform, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and platform engineering best practices to support mission-critical data streaming and integration initiatives.

You will serve as a trusted technical advisor for Kafka architecture, automation, DevOps enablement, AI-driven engineering practices, and enterprise integration strategies. The ideal candidate will combine strong platform engineering skills with hands-on experience leveraging AI-powered development tools and building AI-driven agents to improve operational efficiency, automation, and software delivery outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and implement secure Kafka architectures, including authentication, authorization, encryption, network isolation, and access controls.

• Define and support high availability, disaster recovery, replication, backup, and resiliency strategies for Kafka environments.

• Ensure Kafka platforms comply with enterprise security, governance, and regulatory standards.

• Architect and support enterprise event streaming, data ingestion, batch processing, and real-time streaming solutions.

• Provide guidance on data modeling, schema governance, and serialization technologies including Avro, Protobuf, and JSON Schema.

• Resolve complex Kafka integration challenges involving multiple enterprise platforms and systems.

• Design and develop AI agents, custom skills, and intelligent automation frameworks to support engineering and operational workflows.

• Leverage AI-powered development tools such as GitHub Copilot and similar technologies to accelerate software delivery, testing, automation, and code quality improvements.

• Design multi-agent orchestration frameworks and agentic workflows to address distributed systems and operational challenges.

• Drive automation-first operations using Python, Ansible, scripting, and infrastructure automation tools.

• Build and maintain self-service operational platforms and tools to reduce administrative overhead.

• Integrate Kafka platform operations with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps ecosystems.

• Lead investigations into complex production incidents and platform outages.

• Perform root cause analysis, document findings, implement corrective actions, and drive issue resolution through closure.

• Collaborate with engineering, operations, architecture, and leadership teams to provide technical guidance and strategic recommendations.

• Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Partner with internal teams and external vendors to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable platform solutions.

Required Skills, Experiences, Education, and Competencies:

• 10+ years of experience in distributed systems, messaging technologies, platform engineering, or enterprise infrastructure environments.

• Extensive hands-on experience with the Confluent Kafka Platform in both on-premises and cloud deployments.

• Strong expertise in Kafka architecture, administration, security, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and operations.

• Experience designing secure Kafka environments with authentication, authorization, encryption, and network security controls.

• Strong knowledge of event-driven architecture, streaming platforms, data ingestion, and enterprise integration patterns.

• Experience with schema management technologies including Avro, Protobuf, and JSON Schema.

• Strong background in Linux/Unix systems administration, operating system performance, networking, and security.

• Proven experience with automation technologies including Python, Ansible, shell scripting, and operational tooling.

• Experience integrating Kafka platforms with DevOps and CI/CD tools such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Puppet, Chef, or similar platforms.

• Hands-on experience leveraging AI-powered development tools and technologies to enhance engineering productivity and operational efficiency.

• Experience building AI-driven agents, intelligent workflows, automation frameworks, and agentic orchestration solutions.

• Strong understanding of GitHub Copilot, prompt engineering, AI-assisted software development, and AI-enabled workflow optimization.

• Proven ability to lead production incident management, outage response, root cause investigations, and remediation efforts.

• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and stakeholder management skills.

• Strong organizational, collaboration, leadership, and relationship management abilities.

• Experience supporting large-scale enterprise platforms in regulated environments is preferred.

• Confluent Kafka certifications, cloud platform certifications, or related industry certifications are highly desirable.

The hourly range for roles of this nature are $60.00 to $80.00/hr. Rates are heavily dependent on skills, experience, location, and industry.

cyberThink is an Equal Opportunity Employer.