Senior Software Engineer

Description Hybrid 3 days onsite in either Concord, CA or Charlotte, NC or Dallas, TX Our client is seeking a Sr Software Engineer to support, enhance, and modernize its enterprise Kafka streaming platforms. This role combines technical expertise with hands-on engineering and operational leadership to ensure available, scalable, and observable event streaming services. The Lead Software Engineer will maintain platform stability, guide Kafka adoption patterns, and support application teams through design, onboarding, and production readiness. The role requires urgency, operational rigor, and the ability to influence best practices across the organization. Preference exists for candidates with Kafka on OpenShift or Kubernetes, experience migrating from legacy VM-based Kafka, and future-state Confluent Kafka exposure. The role supports the Kafka platform used by application teams. Experience supporting Flink platforms is a plus. Due to client requirements, applicants must be willing and able to work on a w2 basis. For our w2 consultants, we offer a great benefits package that includes Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits, 401k with company matching, and life insurance. Rate: $60.00 to $80.00/hr. w2 JN -062026-107563 Responsibilities Lead and support complex Kafka-related initiatives with enterprise impact and multi-team dependencies.Define and evolve standards, best practices, and operational patterns for Kafka-based streaming solutions.Design, develop, test, debug, and document software and platform components that support Kafka infrastructure, tooling, and integrations.Provide hands-on engineering and support for Kafka platforms, including incident response, root cause analysis, and remediation.Design, build, and maintain APIs and services for Kafka provisioning, monitoring, configuration management, and client integration.Implement CI/CD automation for Kafka platform services and tooling for safe and auditable deployments.Influence Kafka platform architecture, operational models, and support processes using industry best practices.Collaborate with application developers, SREs, infrastructure teams, and senior stakeholders to resolve complex Kafka issues.Advance observability through logging, metrics, dashboards, and alerting strategies.Lead projects, mentor engineers, and contribute to knowledge sharing and operational maturity. Experience Requirements 5+ years deploying and supporting software on Kubernetes-based platforms, preferably OpenShift.3+ years of hands-on experience supporting Apache Kafka, with preference for Kubernetes-based operations and Confluent Kafka exposure.7+ years of support experience on Linux or Unix servers.3+ years using CI/CD tools such as Ansible, Git, Jenkins, or Harness.7+ years of Software Engineering experience or equivalent through work, training, military experience, or education.Kafka cluster operations, upgrades, capacity planning, and performance troubleshooting.Familiarity with Kafka security including authentication, authorization, and encryption.3+ years with observability tools such as ELK, Splunk, AppDynamics, or Grafana.2+ years supporting or contributing to cloud migration initiatives.Experience leveraging automation to improve Kafka support efficiency and reduce operational risk.Bonus: Experience supporting Flink platforms. Education Requirements