Senior Kafka Engineer

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, operate, and maintain multi-cluster and multi-region Apache Kafka environments running on Kubernetes, using Strimzi Operator or similar technologies.
• Administer and maintain enterprise HiveMQ MQTT broker environments.
• Drive the upgrade lifecycle for Kafka, Strimzi, and HiveMQ, including minor and major version upgrades and security patching.
• Coordinate platform patching activities to mitigate vulnerabilities while maintaining application availability.
• Develop and maintain custom Kafka Connect Source and Sink connectors for data integration between legacy systems and cloud environments.
• Define and implement Kafka scaling strategies, node affinity, topology spread constraints, and persistent volume configurations for I/O-intensive workloads.
• Manage Kafka broker partition layouts, topic configurations, compaction, retention, segmentation, and cluster-wide resource allocation.
• Design and implement high-availability and disaster-recovery solutions, including cross-region replication and automated failover.
• Manage and enforce data governance using Schema Registry , including Avro, Protobuf, and JSON Schema.
• Design messaging traffic routing through ingress and edge technologies such as Envoy Gateway or custom proxies.
• Implement Kafka security controls including ACLs, SASL authentication, RBAC, OAuth/OIDC, and API management integrations.
• Implement and maintain security mechanisms such as mTLS, SSL/TLS, SASL/SCRAM , and certificate-based authentication.
• Build and maintain observability solutions using Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Fluent Bit , and/or OpenTelemetry.
• Create dashboards and monitoring solutions for key Kafka and infrastructure KPIs.
• Develop proactive alerting for issues such as Kubernetes node failures, JVM memory degradation, disk capacity thresholds, storage problems, consumer lag, and other cluster anomalies.
• Perform Root Cause Analysis (RCA) following platform incidents and implement preventive measures and automated guardrails.
• Provide Tier 3 support for complex Kafka and integration issues, including consumer lag, rebalance loops, performance issues, and network bottlenecks.
• Act as a technical subject matter expert for development teams working with Java and Spring Boot , advising on Kafka Producer/Consumer configurations, idempotency, acknowledgements, batching, schemas, and performance.
• Ensure platform stability, scalability, performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Build and maintain reusable GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines for validating, testing, linting, and deploying infrastructure and Kafka-related configurations.
• Implement event-driven application scaling using technologies such as KEDA , based on Kafka lag and throughput metrics.
• Build developer self-service capabilities allowing teams to safely provision topics, schemas, credentials, and other messaging resources within defined architectural and security guardrails.
• Maintain clear technical documentation, READMEs, and operational procedures.
• Handle platform-level incident, problem, and change management.

Requirements

• Kafka & Platform Engineering 4–6 years of experience with Apache Kafka at platform/engineering level.
• Strong experience with Kafka clusters, performance tuning, security, and administration.
• Experience with Strimzi Operator and Kafka on Kubernetes.
• Experience with Kafka Connect API.
• Knowledge of Kafka KRaft architecture.
• Experience with HiveMQ or enterprise MQTT platforms.
• Strong understanding of Kafka availability, replication, partitioning, retention, and scaling.
• Development 4–6 years of experience with Java and Spring Boot.
• Experience developing or maintaining Kafka integrations and custom connectors.
• Experience with PostgreSQL.
• Cloud & Kubernetes Strong experience with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
• Solid Kubernetes administration and troubleshooting experience.
• Experience working with Linux, including WSL.
• Experience with Azure and/or other major cloud platforms.
• DevOps & Automation Strong experience with GitHub Actions and/or Jenkins.
• Experience with ArgoCD and GitOps practices.
• Strong Infrastructure as Code experience using Terraform or equivalent.
• Experience with automated deployment and platform lifecycle management.
• Experience with Splunk.
• Knowledge of Fluent Bit and/or OpenTelemetry.
• Experience creating dashboards, alerts, and operational monitoring for production platforms.

Preferred

• Experience with API Management (APIM) platforms.
• Experience across Azure, AWS, and/or Google Cloud.
• Experience with cloud cost optimization and resource efficiency.
• Experience working within large enterprise integration or platform engineering departments.
• Experience with Envoy Gateway or similar edge-routing technologies.
• Experience with KEDA and event-driven autoscaling.
• Experience with OAuth/OIDC-based authentication and API security.

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior Kafka Engineer to join an integration and platform engineering team responsible for building, operating, and continuously improving critical integration and messaging capabilities used by multiple development teams. The role focuses on Apache Kafka, HiveMQ, Kubernetes, platform stability, automation, self-service, security, and end-to-end operational ownership. You will be responsible for designing and maintaining highly available messaging platforms, automating operational processes, improving observability, and ensuring reliable and scalable platform performance. The position is primarily platform-focused rather than application-development focused, although you will collaborate closely with development teams and may contribute to customer projects when required.

Apply

• Infrastructure as Code principles using Helm , Terraform, and related tooling. Package and manage reusable Helm resources and OCI artifacts.
• Collaborate closely with Security, Architecture, Infrastructure, and Software Development teams.

Requirements

• Experience with Helm and OCI-based artifact management.
• Observability Experience with Prometheus and Grafana.

What We Offer

A dynamic and innovative workplace driving advancements in cutting-edge robotic technologies The opportunity to collaborate with talented cross-functional teams on meaningful and impactful projects Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits package A supportive culture that fosters continuous learning, growth, and professional development Flexible hybrid working model for an optimal work-life balance 25 days of annual leave to recharge and relax An annual wellness allowance of 3,500 SEK to support your health and wellbeing