Kafka Engineer

Kafka/DevOps Engineer Location: Owings Mills, MD (Hybrid – 2 days onsite per week) Role Overview Seeking a hands-on Kafka/DevOps Engineer with strong infrastructure engineering and automation experience to support the buildout and ongoing operations of a new enterprise-scale Kafka platform. Candidate must be highly skilled in automation, monitoring, and troubleshooting, with the ability to design and manage Kafka on Confluent Cloud and AWS. This is not an architect/strategist role — they want someone who can roll up their sleeves and engineer solutions while helping mature the platform. Key Responsibilities • Develop and maintain enterprise-scale Kafka infrastructure (Confluent Cloud). • Hands-on experience with Kafka ACL management and security realms. • Automate platform operations using Python, Go, Terraform, and other scripting tools. • Build APIs, automation pipelines, and custom dashboards. • Monitor and react to alerts for Kafka and supporting infrastructure. • Participate in a rotating on-call schedule (every 6 weeks). • Collaborate with a 4-person Kafka team and wider engineering group (~10 total). Must-Have Skills • Kafka Engineering: 2–3 years (enterprise scale, Confluent Cloud, ACLs, security). • Automation / Infrastructure-as-Code: 2–3 years (Python, Go, Terraform, scripting). • AWS Cloud: 5+ years (experience operating Kafka in AWS environments). • Hands-on infrastructure engineering background (not just application development). • Strong troubleshooting and monitoring experience for Kafka operations. • Ability to work independently and deliver automation solutions. Nice-to-Have Skills • Golang (growing use in the environment). • Java development (alongside Python). • Kubernetes knowledge. • Experience building custom dashboards and monitoring frameworks. Candidate Profile • Strong, hands-on engineer with a bias for automation. • Comfortable being part of a Kafka on-call rotation. • Solid communicator who can collaborate with engineering peers but also operate independently. • Excited to build and improve new platform capabilities, not just maintain legacy systems. #DICE