Kafka Administrator – Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Kafka Security

Job Description

Kafka Admin

Toronto Downtown, ON - Hybrid (2-3 Days WFO)

6-12 months

Must Have Technical/Functional Skills

• Apache Kafka Administration
• Kafka Cluster Installation, Configuration, and Management
• Topic, Partition, and Replication Management
• Kafka Broker Administration and Performance Tuning
• Kafka Connect
• Schema Registry
• Consumer Group Management
• Kafka Security (SSL/TLS, SASL, ACLs)
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery Configuration
• Kafka Monitoring and Alerting
• Linux/Unix Administration
• Shell Scripting (Bash) and/or Python Scripting
• Troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis of Kafka Production Issues
• Capacity Planning and Cluster Scaling
• Log Analysis and Performance Optimization - Experience with Monitoring Tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, ELK, Datadog) - Understanding of Distributed Systems and Event-Driven Architecture - Production Support and Incident Management - Kafka Upgrades, Patching, and Maintenance Activities

Roles & Responsibilities

• Install, configure, administer, and maintain Apache Kafka clusters across Development, Testing, UAT, and Production environments.
• Manage Kafka brokers, topics, partitions, replication factors, and consumer groups to ensure platform stability and performance.
• Monitor Kafka cluster health, availability, capacity, and resource utilization using enterprise monitoring tools.
• Perform Kafka performance tuning, capacity planning, and cluster scaling activities to support growing business workloads.
• Troubleshoot and resolve Kafka infrastructure, messaging, connectivity, and performance-related issues.
• Configure and manage Kafka security controls including SSL/TLS, SASL authentication, ACLs, and encryption standards.
• Support Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, and other ecosystem components required for data integration.
• Implement and maintain High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions for Kafka platforms.
• Perform Kafka upgrades, patching, migration, and platform maintenance activities with minimal business impact.
• Collaborate with application, data engineering, infrastructure, and DevOps teams to onboard and support Kafka-based applications.
• Develop and maintain operational procedures, runbooks, architecture documentation, and support guides.
• Configure and manage monitoring, logging, alerting, and incident management processes for Kafka environments.
• Support production deployments, release activities, and environment readiness assessments.
• Perform root cause analysis for production incidents and implement preventive measures to improve platform reliability.
• Automate administrative and operational tasks using Shell scripting, Python, or other automation tools.
• Ensure platform compliance with organizational security, governance, audit, and regulatory requirements.
• Participate in on-call support and provide timely resolution for critical production issues.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance Kafka platform performance, scalability, security, and operational efficiency.

Generic Managerial Skills, If any

• Teamwork
• Willingness to learn

Key Words to search in Resume

Apache Kafka, Kafka Cluster Management, Kafka Connect, Confluent Platform, Kafka Security (SSL/SASL/ACL), Linux/Unix Administration, Kafka Performance Tuning