Kafka Architect

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Kafka Architect to design, implement, and optimize large‑scale, real‑time event streaming architectures using Apache Kafka / Confluent Platform.

This role will focus on building high‑throughput, low‑latency data pipelines and event‑driven systems for enterprise workloads, while driving architectural standards, governance, and adoption across platforms. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in distributed systems, stream processing, and cloud‑native architectures, along with strong leadership and stakeholder engagement skills.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Strategy

• Design end‑to‑end event streaming architectures using Kafka for high‑volume, low‑latency environments
• Define architecture standards, governance models, and reusable design patterns
• Drive adoption of Event‑Driven Architecture (EDA) across enterprise platforms
• Define data modeling standards, including Avro/JSON schemas, serialization, and schema evolution strategies
• Implement robust security frameworks including ACLs, RBAC, encryption, and compliance controls
• Design and implement disaster recovery and high-availability architectures

Platform Engineering & Implementation

• Architect and manage deployment of self‑managed Kafka clusters (Confluent Platform)
• Lead capacity planning, cluster sizing, partitioning, replication, and scaling strategies
• Implement and manage Kafka Connect, KsqlDB, Kafka Streams, and streaming pipelines
• Ensure platform performance, reliability, and operational efficiency

Cross‑Functional Leadership

• Collaborate with DevOps, cloud, data engineering, and application teams to implement Kafka solutions
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and guidance to engineering teams
• Review solution architectures and ensure alignment with enterprise standards and governance frameworks
• Participate in architecture review boards and strategic decision‑making discussions

Required Skills & Experience

• 12–15 years of overall IT experience
• 6+ years of hands‑on experience with:
• Apache Kafka / Confluent Platform
• Schema Registry
• Kafka Connect
• Strong knowledge of:
• Event‑Driven Architecture (EDA) and pub/sub systems
• Distributed systems and stream processing frameworks
• Experience with streaming technologies such as:
• Kafka Streams, KsqlDB, Spark Structured Streaming

Cloud, DevOps & Platform Skills

• Experience deploying Kafka on cloud platforms (Azure / AWS / GCP)
• Knowledge of Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Ansible
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc.)
• Strong scripting and programming skills in:
• Java, Scala, Python, or Go

Monitoring & Observability

• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, and other monitoring frameworks
• Strong focus on performance tuning, monitoring, and reliability

Certifications (Good to Have)

• Kafka / Confluent certifications
• Azure or other cloud platform certifications

Soft Skills

• Strong communication and stakeholder engagement capabilities
• Ability to lead architecture discussions and influence decision‑making
• Excellent documentation, presentation, and mentoring skills
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving mindset