Kafka Data Platform Engineer

Our client, a major bank in New York City, is looking for Data Platform Engineer. Permanent position with competitive compensation package (base range is 130-160K), excellent benefits, and target bonus. Must be 2/3 days per week in New York City Office Data Platform Engineer Looking for a highly skilled Kafka Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate our enterprise event-streaming platform using Red Hat AMQ Streams (Kafka on OpenShift). In this role, you will be responsible for ensuring a reliable, scalable, secure, and developer-friendly streaming ecosystem. You will work closely with application teams to define and implement event-driven integration patterns, and you will leverage GitLab and Argo CD to automate platform delivery and configuration. This position requires a strong blend of platform engineering, DevOps practices, Kafka cluster expertise, and architectural understanding of integration/streaming patterns. Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field. Proven experience with Kafka administration and management. Strong knowledge of OpenShift and container orchestration. Proficiency in scripting languages such as Python or Bash. Experience with monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana). Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail. Strong communication and collaboration skills. Preferred Qualifications Experience with Red Hat OpenShift administration. Knowledge of service mesh patterns (Istio, OpenShift Service Mesh). Familiarity with stream processing frameworks (Kafka Streams, ksqlDB, Flink). Experience using observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana). Background working in regulated or enterprise-scale environments. Knowledge of DevOps practices and tools (e.g., ArgoCD, Ansible, Terraform). Knowledge of SRE Monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana). Job Description: Kafka & AMQ Streams Engineering · Design, deploy, and operate AMQ Streams (Kafka) clusters on Red Hat OpenShift. · Configure and manage Kafka components including brokers, Kraft, MirrorMaker 2, · Explore Kafka Connect, and Schema Registry concepts and implementations. · Ensure performance, reliability, scalability, and high availability of the Kafka platform. · Implement cluster monitoring, logging, and alerting using enterprise observability tools. · Manage capacity planning, partition strategies, retention policies, and performance tuning. Integration Patterns & Architecture · Define and document standardized event-driven integration patterns, including: o Event sourcing o CQRS o Pub/sub messaging o Change data capture o Stream processing & enrichment o Request-reply over Kafka · Guide application teams on using appropriate patterns that align with enterprise architecture. · Establish best practices for schema design, topic governance, data contracts, and message lifecycle management. Security & Governance · Implement enterprise-grade security for Kafka, including RBAC, TLS, ACLs, and authentication/authorization integration. (SSO and OAuth) · Maintain governance for topic creation, schema evolution, retention policies, and naming standards. · Ensure adherence to compliance, auditing, and data protection requirements (Encryption at Rest and flight). Collaboration & Support · Provide platform guidance and troubleshooting expertise to development and integration teams. · Partner with architects, SREs, and developers to drive adoption of event-driven architectures. · Create documentation, runbooks, and internal knowledge-sharing materials. CI/CD & GitOps Automation · Build and maintain GitOps workflows using Argo CD for declarative deployment of Kafka resources and platform configurations. · Develop CI/CD pipelines in GitLab, enabling automated builds, infrastructure updates, and configuration promotion across environments. · Maintain Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) repositories and templates for Kafka resources Please email your resume or use this link to apply directly: https://brainsworkgroup.catsone.com/careers/index.php?m=portal&a=details&jobOrderID=16757380 Or email: igork@brainsworkgroup.com Check ALL our Jobs: http://brainsworkgroup.catsone.com/careers Keywords: kafka openshift python bash splunk grafana Prometheus monitoring logging Redhat ksqlDB Flink DevOps ansible terraform ArgoCD