Confluent 7.9X Platform Administrator with Red Hat OpenShift Experience

Confluent Platform Administrator (Mid–Senior Level) Job Description --- US Federal Government Project requirements mandates role open only for US Citizens only. ---- (No exceptions to this requirement. Ps do not apply if you are not a US Citizen) About the Role We are seeking an experienced Confluent Platform Administrator to support, operate, and optimize our production-grade Confluent Platform 7.9.x clusters deployed on Red Hat OpenShift. This role blends platform operations, Kafka administration, DevOps practices, troubleshooting, and high-availability engineering.The ideal candidate has hands-on experience managing enterprise-scale Kafka clusters, supporting mission-critical applications, and implementing disaster recovery (DR) architectures (active-active or active-passive). Key ResponsibilitiesConfluent Platform Administration Operate, administer, and optimize Confluent Platform 7.9.4 clusters running on Red Hat OpenShift (OCP/EKS/ROSA optional). Manage Kafka Brokers, KRaft Controllers, Schema Registry, Connect, REST Proxy, ksqlDB, and Control Center. Configure replication factors, partitions, quotas, rack-awareness, tiered storage, and retention policies. Implement Confluent RBAC, mTLS, ACLs, identity providers (Keycloak/Ping/ADFS), and certificate rotation. Production Operations & Troubleshooting Monitor cluster performance, partition distribution, ISR, under-replicated partitions, and controller health. Troubleshoot broker instability, controller failovers, consumer lag, schema incompatibilities, connector failures, and cluster state issues. Diagnose network, TLS, storage, or operator-level issues within OCP. Perform root-cause analysis (RCA) and create operational best practices and runbooks. Upgrades & Patching Plan and execute rolling upgrades for Confluent Platform 7.9.x using Confluent for Kubernetes (CFK) operator. Test and validate upgrade impact on brokers, KRaft quorum, C3, and Connect plugins. Implement patching, configuration changes, and cross-version migrations with zero or minimal downtime. Disaster Recovery (DR) & Multi-Cluster Implement, operate, and test active-active or active-passive DR architectures using: Cluster Linking Design RPO/RTO strategies and run failover/failback procedures. Support multi-AZ and multi-cluster replication in OpenShift. Kafka Connect & Integrations Deploy and manage Connect clusters, connectors (Debezium, JDBC, S3 Sink, and plugin lifecycle. Troubleshoot connector offset resets, stuck tasks, DLQs, workers scaling, and schema compatibility. Manage Schema Registry with compatibility modes, exports, and DR for schemas. Security, Compliance & Observability Manage secrets, TLS keystores, cert-manager integrations, network policies, and encryption. Configure Confluent audit logs, RBAC, API access, and cluster health and utilization dashboards. Maintain Prometheus/Grafana/App Dynamics-based monitoring for Kafka and OpenShift. DevOps & Automation Automate routine operational tasks using Helm, CFK Operator or GitOps (ArgoCD). Implement CI/CD pipelines for configuration deployment, connector rollout, and environment promotion. Maintain Git-based configuration management for Kafka cluster and Connect infrastructure. Support & Collaboration Partner with application teams to onboard topics, ACLs, connectors, and best-practice patterns. Participate in on-call rotations, incident handling, capacity planning, and performance tuning. Write architecture diagrams, operational runbooks, SOPs, and postmortems. Required Qualifications 4–10+ years total experience in Linux, DevOps, or distributed system engineering roles. 4-6+ years direct experience administering Confluent Platform in production, ideally CP 7.5 – 7.9.x. Hands-on experience deploying Confluent components on Red Hat OpenShift (Operators/CFK). Experience with KRaft mode, multi-broker scaling, controller quorum, and tiered storage. Strong understanding of Kafka internals: partitions, ISR, replication, fetch/produce paths, offsets, consumer groups, and log retention. Experience executing upgrades, rolling restarts, DR failover, and change management in enterprise settings. Familiarity with Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB, Control Center, and REST Proxy. Proficiency with TLS/mTLS, ACLs, RBAC, OAuth/OIDC, identity provider integrations. Strong skills in Bash, YAML, Git, and at least one scripting language (Python preferred). Experience with monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Confluent monitoring extensions, App Dynamics). Ability to get a US Federal Government Security clearance. IRS MBI, Treasury Security clearance, Active Secret or Top Secret is preferred. Preferred Qualifications Experience with Confluent for Kubernetes 3.x (CFK). Hands-on with Debezium CDC (Oracle LogMiner, Postgres, SQL Server). Experience with multi-cluster Cluster Linking, MirrorMaker 2, or hybrid cloud setups. Knowledge of Kafka performance tuning, JVM tuning, and OpenShift node optimization. Experience working within government or regulated environments (NIST, FedRAMP, PCI, FISMA). Confluent Certification (CCDAK or Confluent Platform Engineer) is a plus. Soft Skills Ability to handle high-severity production incidents quickly and calmly. Strong communication skills to collaborate with developers, architects, and management. Detail-oriented with the ability to document processes and share knowledge. A mindset focused on reliability, automation, and continuous improvement. Job Types: Full-time, Contract Pay: $95,000.00 - $140,000.00 per year Benefits: Dental insurance Flexible schedule Health insurance Life insurance Paid time off Vision insurance Experience: AWS: 3 years (Required) CI/CD: 3 years (Required) Kafka: 7 years (Required) Java: 3 years (Required) Change Data Capture: 3 years (Required) Work Location: Remote