Kafka Architect

Job Title : Kafka Architect
Location : Bethesda, MD
Work Mode : Hybrid 3-4 days work from office (local candidates)
Years of Exp : 15+ years

Note: Only Local Candidates & No Visa Sponsorship

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, and deployment of Apache Kafka-based platforms.
• Define best practices and standards for Kafka implementation, integration, and security across the organization.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, solution architects, and engineering teams to translate business requirements into scalable and resilient Kafka architectures.
• Oversee the setup, configuration, and tuning of Kafka clusters to ensure high availability and performance.
• Develop and enforce policies for data retention, topic management, security, and disaster recovery.
• Guide migration and integration projects, including legacy system modernization and cloud adoption using Kafka.
• Mentor and train development teams on Kafka concepts, tools, and best practices.
• Monitor system health, troubleshoot complex issues, and implement proactive performance improvements.
• Stay abreast of new developments in the Kafka ecosystem and recommend adoption of relevant technologies.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 14-16 years of total IT experience, including at least 5 years architecting and managing large-scale Kafka deployments.
• Expertise in Apache Kafka internals, including producers, consumers, brokers, partitions, replication, and ZooKeeper.
• Strong knowledge of event-driven architecture, stream processing (Kafka Streams, ksqlDB), and real-time analytics.
• Deep experience integrating Kafka with various data sources, sinks, and enterprise systems (e.g., databases, microservices, cloud platforms).
• Hands-on experience with Kafka security (SSL, SASL, ACLs), data governance, and compliance.
• Proficiency in scripting and programming languages commonly used with Kafka (such as Java, Scala, or Python).
• Understanding of containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) as related to Kafka deployments.
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience leading technical teams and mentoring junior engineers.