Lead Confluent Kafka Developer
Location: Sydney, Australia
Duration: 6 Months Contract (Possible Extension)
About the Role
We are seeking an experienced Lead Confluent Kafka Developer to join a technology team responsible for providing reliable, scalable and well-supported event streaming capabilities.
The successful candidate will have strong hands-on experience in Confluent Kafka administration, platform operations, troubleshooting and basic solution architecture. You will work closely with engineering and delivery teams to onboard new initiatives, support solution development and testing, and resolve Kafka-related production issues.
This is an ideal opportunity for someone who enjoys solving complex technical problems, supporting engineering teams and improving the reliability and operational maturity of Kafka-based platforms.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide hands-on administration and operational support for Confluent Kafka platforms and services.
- Troubleshoot and resolve Kafka-related issues across development, testing and production environments.
- Support new initiatives and engineering teams during Kafka onboarding, solution design, development, testing and production readiness.
- Provide practical technical guidance to developers on effective Kafka implementation and usage patterns.
- Support Kafka developers with topics, producers, consumers, schemas and operational practices.
- Manage and support Kafka topics, configurations, access controls and related platform activities.
- Support Confluent Schema Registry and schema governance.
- Work with delivery and engineering teams to identify and resolve issues affecting event streaming reliability.
- Assist with Kafka integration and operational readiness activities.
- Provide basic solution architecture and design guidance for Kafka-based solutions.
- Help establish and promote best practices for Kafka administration, development and production support.
- Collaborate with infrastructure, application, data and engineering teams to deliver reliable event streaming solutions.
- Contribute to automation, documentation, testing and continuous improvement of Kafka platform capabilities.
Required Skills & Experience
- Strong hands-on experience administering and supporting Apache Kafka / Confluent Kafka environments.
- Strong understanding of Confluent Kafka administration and operations.
- Experience with Kafka topics, partitions, configurations and access management.
- Strong production support and troubleshooting experience.
- Experience supporting Kafka developers and engineering teams.
- Experience guiding teams through Kafka onboarding, development, testing and production deployment.
- Good understanding of Kafka architecture and event streaming patterns.
- Experience providing basic solution architecture and technical design guidance.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to investigate complex technical issues and independently drive them through to resolution.
Highly Desirable Skills
- Hands-on experience with Confluent Schema Registry.
- Strong experience with Apache Avro / Avro schemas and serialization.
- Experience with Confluent Cloud.
- Experience supporting Kafka-based integrations and enterprise event streaming platforms.
- Experience with Kafka security, authentication and authorization.
- Experience with monitoring and operational tooling for Kafka.
- Experience supporting Kafka producers and consumers across multiple applications.
- Experience working in large-scale enterprise environments.
What We're Looking For
The ideal candidate is someone who:
- Enjoys solving complex technical and production problems.
- Can work across large and diverse technology environments.
- Is comfortable supporting both developers and platform operations.
- Takes ownership of quality, automation, testing and documentation.
- Can quickly understand new systems, technologies and business requirements.
- Has strong communication skills and can provide practical guidance to technical stakeholders.
Candidates with strong Confluent Kafka Administration, Schema Registry and Avro experience are highly encouraged to apply.
Pay: $550.00 – $700.00 per day
Application Question(s):
- How many years of hands-on experience do you have administering and supporting Apache Kafka / Confluent Kafka environments?
- Have you provided production support and troubleshooting for Kafka-related issues?
- Do you have hands-on experience with Confluent Schema Registry?
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Sydney NSW