Role: Kafka Solution Architect
Location: 100% Remote (U.S.)
Experience: 15+ Years

Job Description

Client is seeking an experienced Kafka Solution Architect to design and build highly scalable, event-driven enterprise solutions. The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in Apache Kafka, API design and integration, distributed systems, and microservices architecture. This role requires strong technical leadership, hands-on development experience, and the ability to architect enterprise-grade messaging and integration solutions.

Required Skills

10+ years of experience in software engineering and solution architecture.
Expert-level experience with Apache Kafka, including Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, and Confluent Platform.
Strong expertise in REST API design, development, integration, and API security.
Hands-on experience designing event-driven and microservices architectures.
Strong experience with Java, Spring Boot, and enterprise integration frameworks.
Experience with API Gateway technologies such as Apigee, Kong, AWS API Gateway, or MuleSoft.
Strong knowledge of asynchronous messaging, event streaming, and distributed systems.
Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (AWS preferred).
Strong understanding of messaging patterns, fault tolerance, scalability, and high availability.
Experience implementing OAuth2, JWT, SSL/TLS, and API authentication/authorization.
Strong SQL skills with experience in relational and NoSQL databases.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or similar tools.
Experience with monitoring tools such as Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or Datadog.
Strong understanding of Agile/Scrum development methodologies.
Excellent communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills.

Responsibilities

Architect enterprise-scale event-driven solutions using Apache Kafka.
Design and implement secure, scalable, and high-performance REST APIs.
Develop Kafka producers, consumers, streams, and event-processing applications.
Define API standards, governance, versioning, and best practices across enterprise platforms.
Collaborate with application, cloud, and DevOps teams to build highly available distributed systems.
Optimize Kafka clusters for performance, resiliency, and scalability.
Troubleshoot production issues involving Kafka, APIs, and distributed applications.
Conduct architecture reviews, mentor development teams, and establish technical best practices.
Work closely with business stakeholders to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions.

Preferred Skills

Confluent Kafka Certification.
Experience with AWS cloud services.
Experience with OpenAPI/Swagger.
Knowledge of GraphQL and AsyncAPI.
Experience with Terraform and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Kafka Solution Architect

Key skills

About this role