Kafka Platform Engineer

• Assist in building, deploying, and maintaining Confluent Kafka platforms on OpenShift (OCP) under guidance from senior engineers

• Support the deployment and operation of Kafka components including brokers, KRaft controllers, Schema Registry, and Kafka Connect

• Participate in platform upgrade and improvement activities, including patching, configuration updates, and performance tuning

• Work with senior engineers to evaluate and integrate Kafka ecosystem tools and OCP-native capabilities

• Contribute to automation efforts, including CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure-as-Code templates for Kafka deployments

• Assist in implementing high availability and resiliency patterns, including replication, failover configurations, and cluster linking

• Follow established platform governance and standards, including naming conventions, topic management, and security best practices

• Participate in incident response and troubleshooting, helping identify root causes and document resolutions

• Learn and apply best practices for Kafka architecture and OCP deployment models, including networking, storage, and resource allocation

• Support operational processes and controls, ensuring alignment with enterprise policies and procedures

• Assist in monitoring and improving platform performance, capacity, and resource utilization

• Collaborate with application teams to support Kafka onboarding and basic integration use cases

• Work closely with internal teams (OCP, networking, security) and vendors to resolve issues and improve platform stability

• 2+ years of Technology Infrastructure Engineering and Solutions experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education

• Good understanding of Apache Kafka concepts, including topics, partitions, producers, and consumers

• Exposure to container platforms such as Kubernetes or OpenShift (OCP)

• Familiarity with Linux systems, networking basics, and distributed system fundamentals

• Basic knowledge of automation or scripting, such as Shell, Python, or similar tools

• Understanding of CI/CD concepts and DevOps practices

• Awareness of security fundamentals, including authentication, authorization, and encryption basics

• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to troubleshoot issues with guidance

• Good communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work in a team environment

• Exposure to Confluent Platform or Kafka operator-based deployments

• Familiarity with OpenShift/Kubernetes concepts such as pods, services, routes, and namespaces

• Basic understanding of monitoring and observability tools (metrics, logs, alerts)

• Exposure to event-driven architecture or streaming data pipelines.

• Experience with Git, CI/CD tools, or automation frameworks

• Interest in learning large-scale distributed systems and cloud-native architectures

Job Expectations:

• Telecommuting is not an option for this position

• This position offers a hybrid work schedule

• Relocation assistance in not available for this position

• This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship