Kafka Platform Engineer

POC: Sam ChavezATTENTION ALL SUPPLIERS!!!READ BEFORE SUBMITTING" UPDATED CONTACT NUMBER and EMAIL ID is a MANDATORY REQUEST from our client for all the submissions" Limited to 1 submission per supplier. Please submit your best." We prioritize endorsing those with complete and accurate information" Avoid submitting duplicate profiles. We will Reject/Disqualify immediately." Make sure that candidate's interview schedules are updated. Please inform the candidate to keep their lines open." Please submit profiles within the max proposed rate." Please make sure to TAG the profiles correctly if the candidate has WORKED FOR INFOSYS as a SUBCON or FTE.MANDATORY: Please include in the resume the candidate s complete & updated contact information (Phone number, Email address and Skype ID) as well as a set of 5 interview timeslots over a 72-hour period after submitting the profile when the hiring managers could potentially reach to them. PROFILES WITHOUT THE REQUIRED DETAILS and TIME SLOTS will be REJECTED.Job Title: Technology Lead | Cloud Platform | Amazon Webservices DevOps -- Kafka AdminWork Location & Reporting Address: Denver, CO 80111 or St Louis, MO 63131 (Onsite)Contract duration: 12MAX VENDOR RATE: per hour maxTarget Start Date: 13 Mar 2026Does this position require . independent candidates only? YesMust Have Skills:? Must have deep, hands?on experience running Kafka in large?scale production environments, including cluster operations, upgrades, patches, and migrations.? Should understand Kafka internals such as partitions, replication, retention/compaction, and rebalance strategies.o Kafka Administrationo Platform / SRE / DevOps Experienceo Kafka Ecosystem Toolso Linux Networkingo Automation / Scriptingo Monitoring / Observabilityo Disaster RecoveryNice to Have Skills:? AWS MSK / Apache Kafka Cloud: Experience with MSK operations and cloud?aligned Kafka environments.? Helpful for cross?environment consistency between on?prem and cloud.? Hardware Refresh Experience: Prior work leading Kafka hardware refreshes or cluster rebuilds.Detailed Job Description:Minimum Qualifications- Education & Prior Job Experience:We re seeking a senior contract Kafka/Confluent administrator to own and evolve our on-prem event streaming platform, with a primary focus on Confluent Platform. You will lead planning and execution of a hardware refresh for our on-prem clusters, drive reliability and performance, and embed DevOps/automation across provisioning, deployment, observability, and incident response. Experience with Apache Kafka and AWS MSK is desired for secondary support and cross-environment alignment. Comprehensive documentation and runbooks are required deliverables.Kafka Platform Support Key Responsibilities? Design, deploy, and operate highly available Kafka clusters (on-prem, cloud, and/or managed services such as Confluent Cloud or AWS MSK).? Manage topics, partitions, quotas, retention policies, and consumer group strategies for performance and cost.? Own upgrades, patches, and migrations.? Implement and manage Kafka components: Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, MirrorMaker/Confluent Replicator, REST Proxy; familiarity with Kafka Streams and ksqlDB is a plus.? Performance tuning (producers/consumers, batching, compression, acks, ISR, controller health), throughput testing, and benchmarking.? Capacity planning, partitioning strategy, and cluster right-sizing.Contract Deliverables? Hardware refresh plan: capacity model, sizing, architecture diagrams, migration/cutover strategy, risk register? Implement and validated on-prem clusters on refreshed hardware with performance benchmarks? Operational documentation: standards, runbooks, monitoring/alerts configuration, backup/restore and DR playbooks.? Knowledge transfer sessions and documentation handoff at milestones and project close.Minimum Qualifications? 5 years in systems/platform engineering, SRE, or DevOps; 4 years operating Kafka in production at scale.? Deep knowledge of Kafka internals: partitions, replication, retention/compaction, rebalance strategies.? Hands-on with Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, MirrorMaker/Confluent Replicator.? Strong Linux fundamentals; networking (TCP, DNS, load balancing), and performance analysis.? Proficiency in automation/scripting.? Monitoring/observability: Data Dog, Grafana, JMX exporters, and log aggregation.? Experience with DR, multi-region design, and incident management.? Proven ability to produce clear, comprehensive documentationPreferred Qualifications? Experience with Apache Kafka and AWS MSK operations and integration.? Experience executing hardware refreshes mor major cluster rebuilds/migrations with minimal downtime.Minimum Years of Experience:? 5 yearsCertifications Needed:? NoneTop 3 responsibilities you would expect the Subcon to shoulder and execute:Interview Process (Is face to face required?)? FACE TO FACE INTERVIEW IS MANDATORY