IT Operations Engineer (Kafka)

Our client, a leading global financial services and alternative investment administrator, is seeking a Kafka Operations Engineer. Operating within the IT Operations Middleware unit in Makati, this role is responsible for administering, scaling, and automating enterprise-grade Apache Kafka clusters. The engineer will partner with development and architecture teams to maintain a highly reliable, secure, and observable event-driven architecture.

Key Responsibilities

Kafka Cluster Administration & Infrastructure

• Cluster Management: Deploy, configure, and operate Apache Kafka production clusters, including broker tuning, topic management, and ACL administration.
• Ecosystem Management: Administer key Kafka ecosystem tools, including Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, and MirrorMaker 2.
• Infrastructure Automation: Build and maintain automated provisioning, configuration, and deployment scripts using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible).

Operations, Observability & Security

• Performance & Monitoring: Optimize cluster performance, conduct capacity planning, and maintain observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, EFK stack) for alerts and metrics.
• Security & Governance: Enforce data governance standards and configure Kafka security protocols, including TLS, SASL-SCRAM, and fine-grained access control lists (ACLs).
• Incident Management: Drive root-cause resolution for platform incidents with minimal client impact and participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation for critical applications.
• Developer Onboarding: Partner with engineering teams to onboard new producers and consumers, contributing to the Event Catalog and Subscription API documentation.

Requirements

Education & Experience

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
• Platform Tenure: 3+ years of hands-on professional experience administering Apache Kafka or enterprise event-streaming platforms in production.
• Certifications (Preferred): Confluent Certified Administrator for Apache Kafka (CCAAK) is a strong advantage.

Technical Skills

• Kafka Ecosystem: Deep working knowledge of Kafka brokers, Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, MirrorMaker 2, and event-driven architecture patterns.
• DevOps & OS: Solid Linux/Unix system administration, networking fundamentals, and IaC tools (Terraform or Ansible).
• CI/CD & Monitoring: Experience with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, BitBucket, Rundeck) and centralized monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, EFK).