Senior Kafka Platform Engineer
Core
Building a scalable, self-service Kafka streaming platform and control plane to connect trading, banking, and financial crime detection systems in real-time for a Europe-scale bank.
Role type
Senior Kafka Platform Engineer (Infrastructure/Control Plane)
Builds
A multi-cluster Kafka fleet with a Temporal-backed control plane, Backstage-integrated self-service, and transparent routing for product engineers.
Domain
Fintech / Banking / Real-time Data Streaming
Deliverable
production ML models | infrastructure
Required skills
Kubernetes control-plane management (CRDs, operators, Cluster API), GitOps at fleet scale (Flux/Argo CD), AWS networking (VPC, PrivateLink, IAM), Go backend development, Kafka cluster operations, Crossplane composition authoring, observability and SLO management.
Preferred skills
Experience with zero-downtime migrations of live production clusters, schema management and consumer group patterns, cross-team initiative leadership.
Technologies
Kafka, Temporal, Backstage, Kubernetes, Cluster API (CAPA/CAPI), Crossplane, Terraform, Flux, Argo CD, AWS (VPC, IPAM, PrivateLink, Cilium), Go.
Responsibilities
Ensure high availability and resilience of the Kafka fleet across domains and shards; design and implement the control plane for cluster lifecycle automation and self-service interfaces; define and embed streaming best practices for topic design and reliability; participate in on-call rotation for full system ownership; shape the roadmap and align the streaming platform with business goals.
Seniority
Senior, hands-on IC with strategic direction