Kafka Flink Lead Consultant

Job Title: Kafka Flink Lead Location: Bolingbrook, IL (Onsite role - 3 days biweekly, first preference is local candidate) Duration: 6+ Month Mandatory skill: Confluent Kafka, Advanced Knowledge of KSQL DB and Flink Job Description: • Extensive experience architecting, implementing, and administering Confluent Cloud Kafka platform in production environments. • Advanced knowledge of KSQL DB and Flink for real-time stream processing/analytics. • Proven proficiency in Kafka Connectors—from configuration to end-to-end integration in cloud environments. • Strong background in platform governance: schema registry, RBAC, audit logging, retention, and compliance. • Deep expertise with Terraform and the Confluent Terraform provider; Infrastructure-as-Code methodology and automation. • Practical experience designing and managing Harness CI/CD pipelines or other similar tools. • Advanced knowledge of GCP networking, including Private Service Connect (PSC), DNS, Firewalls and enterprise security. • Track record in implementing cloud-native monitoring and observability solutions; troubleshooting, performance tuning, and incident response. • Thorough experience with Disaster Recovery (DR), High Availability (HA) strategies, backup/restore, and multi-region design. • Practical experience with cost optimization, resource monitoring, and right-sizing in Confluent Cloud. • Strong abilities in schema management, version compatibility, and data governance. • Demonstrated capability in capacity planning, partitioning, and scaling streaming architectures. • Experienced in Agile/DevOps methodologies. • Experience providing hands-on production support for mission-critical streaming platforms. Experience in working with an offshore/on-site model. The position requires gathering requirements on-site, creating detailed design documents and coordinating with offshore for the development/delivery.