Confluent Kafka Engineer

Lead Confluent Kafka Engineer Role Overview We are seeking a highly skilled Lead Confluent Kafka Engineer to oversee the implementation, administration, and operational support of Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform environments. The ideal candidate will possess strong hands-on expertise in Kafka, Java, Spring Boot, Linux, security, troubleshooting, and data streaming technologies , ensuring the delivery of secure, scalable, and highly available messaging platforms.

Position Information Job Title: Lead Confluent Kafka Engineer Employment Type: Full-Time Work Arrangement: Onsite Location: Islamabad Experience Required: 5-10 Years Education: Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related discipline Key Responsibilities Install, configure, administer, and support Apache Kafka / Confluent Platform across Development, UAT, and Production environments.

Manage Kafka cluster setup , including broker configuration, topic management, partitioning, replication strategies, retention policies, and capacity planning. Execute Kafka upgrades, patch deployments, rolling restarts, configuration updates, and cluster scaling activities while maintaining production stability. Deploy and maintain Kafka ecosystem components including Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, Control Center, and related services .

Investigate and resolve production issues related to broker performance, partitions, ISR, replication, consumer lag, latency, throughput, storage utilization, and connectivity . Configure and maintain Kafka security controls, including TLS/mTLS, SASL authentication, ACLs, certificates, keystores, and truststores . Support and troubleshoot Java/Spring Boot Kafka applications , including producer and consumer integrations.

Collaborate with application, infrastructure, DevOps, and security teams to onboard new Kafka workloads and drive successful environment promotions. Contribute to CI/CD processes , deployment automation, release management, and configuration control for Kafka platforms and applications. Conduct regular health monitoring, performance optimization, capacity forecasting, incident response, and root cause analysis activities.

Create and maintain operational documentation, deployment guidelines, configuration standards, disaster recovery procedures, and runbooks. Support high availability, backup and recovery operations, disaster recovery strategies, and multi-cluster replication architectures where required.

Required Skills

& Experience Proven hands-on experience supporting Apache Kafka / Confluent Platform in production environments . Strong understanding of Kafka architecture , including brokers, partitions, replication, ISR, consumer groups, offsets, retention policies, and delivery guarantees. Experience with Kafka installation, configuration, upgrades, patch management, and ongoing operational support .

Strong development and integration experience using Java and Spring Boot for Kafka-based applications. Solid expertise in Linux administration, networking, JVM performance, production troubleshooting, and operational support . Experience implementing and managing Kafka security , including TLS/mTLS, SASL, ACLs, and certificate management .

Hands-on experience with Confluent Kafka solutions. Practical experience working with data streaming platforms and real-time event-driven architectures .

Preferred Skills

Experience with Kubernetes, Open. Shift, Anthos, Helm, and containerized Kafka deployments . Familiarity with Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, and Confluent Control Center . Experience working with CI/CD platforms such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps , or similar tools. Monitoring and observability experience using Splunk, App.

Dynamics, Prometheus, Grafana, or Confluent monitoring solutions . Knowledge of Kafka disaster recovery (DR), multi-cluster deployments, replication strategies, and migration projects . Experience supporting Kafka environments within banking, telecommunications, or other business-critical enterprise domains .