Kafka Engineer

Ignite the future of real-time data - elevate Kafka infrastructure in a cloud-native environment! Krakow-based opportunity with hybrid work model (up to 3 days remote per week) As a Senior Kafka Engineer, you will be working for our client, a leading financial services organization committed to operational excellence and technological innovation. In this role, you'll enhance and maintain the Kafka clusters operating within a Kubernetes environment, ensuring seamless data streaming and system reliability that empowers digital transformation across the enterprise. Your main responsibilities: • Provide expert-level support in Kafka brokers, Zookeepers, Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, KSQL, Rest proxy, and Kafka Control Center. • Manage high-volume Kafka Connect deployments utilizing schema registry, ensuring optimal performance and uptime. • Administer Kafka platforms, including provisioning, access control, Kerberos, and SSL configurations. • Develop and maintain Kafka connectors such as MQ, Elasticsearch, JDBC, File Stream, and JMS, along with custom connectors using Kafka core APIs. • Create topics, set up redundancy clusters, deploy monitoring tools, configure alerts, and develop stubs for producers, consumers, and consumer groups to onboard applications across various languages and platforms. • Perform root cause analysis of production incidents, documenting findings, and implementing proactive measures to improve system robustness. • Automate routine tasks with scripts or automation tools; conduct benchmarking, performance tuning, and capacity planning. You're ideal for this role if you have: • At least 5 years of experience working with Kafka and streaming data technologies. • Strong understanding of Kafka architecture and operational best practices. • Hands-on experience with Kafka in Kubernetes environments. • Proficiency in DevOps tools such as GitHub, JIRA, Jenkins, and automation platforms like Ansible or Puppet. • Experience with observability tools like DataDog, Prometheus, Grafana, and monitoring of distributed systems. • Solid problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively to engineers and stakeholders. It is a strong plus if you have: (optional)• Experience with Confluent Kafka ecosystem. • Knowledge of cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP. • Certifications in Kafka or cloud technologies. Language Required for the role: • Fluent English, with the ability to communicate effectively at a technical level. Eligibility to work in Europe: • Only candidates with an existing legal right to work in the European Union will be considered for this role.