Kafka Infrastructure Engineer

Description

Senior Kafka Engineer, Enterprise Data Engineering

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Senior Infrastructure Engineer to join our Enterprise Data Engineering team. This full-time role is ideal for candidates with hands-on experience in infrastructure technologies, Apache Kafka including Confluent Kafka and Kafka Streams, MQ, SQL and NoSQL databases, and cloud engineering. If you are passionate about building efficient, scalable platforms, we would love to hear from you.

Locations & Work Arrangement: Candidates must be willing to commute to one of the following hub locations with a hybrid schedule of four days onsite and one day remote per week with flexibility:

• Phoenix, AZ

• Johnston, RI – One Citizens Bank Way

• Westwood, MA – 200 Station Drive

• Iselin, NJ

• Plano, TX

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a team of engineers and technicians in monitoring, diagnosing, and resolving infrastructure issues using event-based management

• Administer and troubleshoot Kafka clusters, including configuration and performance tuning

• Integrate Kafka with various systems using connectors such as MQ, MongoDB, Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL

• Automate infrastructure setup across environments using Terraform

• Provide senior-level support and troubleshooting across a wide range of technologies

• Collaborate within agile teams to drive modern development practices and product vision

• Serve as the primary point of contact for daily operations and incident management

• Conduct proactive monitoring to identify and mitigate potential service disruptions

• Document actions, create reports, and establish escalation procedures

• Audit support tickets to identify patterns and reduce downtime

• Ensure compliance with internal policies and industry standards

• Develop and maintain runbooks and playbooks for operational excellence

Required Qualifications

• 7 or more years of experience in Kafka administration on-prem and cloud, messaging systems, and database integration

• Proficiency with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, event-driven architecture, DevOps, and containerization

• Experience deploying Kafka clients and brokers in production and disaster recovery environments

• Proven ability to scale Kafka clusters and connector infrastructure

• Hands-on experience building real-time data pipelines using Kafka producers and Spark Streaming consumers

• Familiarity with monitoring tools such as Splunk, Datadog, and Grafana

• Strong knowledge of source control systems such as SVN and Git

• Solid understanding of networking protocols, operating systems, and diagnostic tools

• Proficiency in scripting languages such as PowerShell, Bash, Python, and Perl

• Strong analytical and decision-making skills, even with limited information

• Ability to work independently and track issues to identify trends

• Excellent communication and customer service skills

• Sound judgment and autonomy in handling both emergency and routine situations

• Experience collaborating with technical teams for issue resolution

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with monitoring tools

• Working experience in the financial services industry

Education and Certifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electronics Engineering

Work Schedule: Monday through Friday

Hybrid: 4 days on site and 1 day remote

Pay Transparency

The salary range for this position is $125,000-155,000 per year, plus an opportunity to earn an annual discretionary bonus. Actual pay is based on various factors including but not limited to the work location, and relevant skills and experience.

We offer competitive pay, comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs and more. Note, Citizens’ paid time off policy exceeds the mandatory, paid sick or paid time-away policy of very local and state jurisdiction in the United States. For an overview of our benefits, visit

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Some job boards have started using jobseeker-reported data to estimate salary ranges for roles. If you apply and qualify for this role, a recruiter will discuss accurate pay guidance.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.

Why Work for Us

At Citizens, you'll find a customer-centric culture built around helping our customers and giving back to our local communities. When you join our team, you are part of a supportive and collaborative workforce, with access to training and tools to accelerate your potential and maximize your career growth

Background Check

Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the candidate successfully passing a background check, which may include initial credit, motor vehicle record, public record, prior employment verification, and criminal background checks. Results of the background check are individually reviewed based upon legal requirements imposed by our regulators and with consideration of the nature and gravity of the background history and the job offered. Any offer of employment will include further information.