We are looking for a skilled Confluent Expert with hands-on experience in Kafka-based event streaming and Azure cloud environments. This role will focus on designing and managing Confluent Platform solutions on Azure, ensuring seamless event-driven data flow between enterprise systems, including MuleSoft-integrated applications. The ideal candidate should have experience with Kafka fundamentals, Confluent enterprise tools, and Azure-native services that integrate with Confluent.
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and manage Confluent Kafka solutions hosted on Azure.
- Deploy and configure Confluent Cloud on Azure, ensuring optimal performance and scalability.
- Integrate Confluent Kafka with MuleSoft and other Azure-based enterprise applications.
- Implement Confluent Schema Registry to ensure data governance and schema enforcement.
- Utilize Kafka Connect for seamless integration with Azure services (e.g., Azure Data Lake, Azure Event Hubs, Cosmos DB).
- Develop real-time processing workflows using KSQL and Kafka Streams.
- Monitor and optimize Kafka performance using Confluent Control Center and Azure Monitor.
- Ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and security using Azure RBAC, Managed Identities, and private networking.
- Troubleshoot and resolve data streaming, connectivity, and performance issues in a cloud-native environment.
- Provide best practices, documentation, and knowledge transfer to internal teams.
Skills
- 3+ years of experience with Confluent Platform (or Apache Kafka in an enterprise setting).
- Strong understanding of Kafka topics, partitions, consumer groups, and producer/consumer configurations.
- Experience with Confluent Schema Registry for schema validation and governance.
- Hands-on experience with Kafka Connect to integrate external systems, including Azure services.
- Proficiency in KSQL or Kafka Streams for real-time data transformation.
- Understanding of Azure cloud services related to data streaming, such as Azure Event Hubs, Azure Functions, Azure Data Lake, and Cosmos DB.
- Experience with Azure networking and security best practices, including private endpoints, RBAC, and Managed Identities.
- Familiarity with Azure DevOps pipelines for CI/CD automation.
- Strong troubleshooting and performance tuning skills.
Nice to have
- Confluent Certified Developer/Admin certification is a plus.
- Experience with Confluent Cloud on Azure or self-managed Confluent Kafka clusters in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
- Exposure to Terraform, ARM templates, or Bicep for infrastructure as code (IaC).
- Familiarity with MuleSoft integration patterns (nice to have).
