Senior Kafka Operation Engineer- (24/7 Production Support)

Who We Are

At Kyndryl, we run and reimagine the mission-critical technology systems that drive advantage for the world’s leading businesses. We are at the heart of progress; with proven expertise and a continuous flow of AI-powered insight, enabling smarter decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge. For our people—Kyndryls—that means doing purposeful work that powers human progress. Join us and experience a flexible, supportive environment where your well-being is prioritized and your potential can thrive.

The Role

Your Role

Bring your specialist knowledge and experience to a company managing 50% of the world’s MIPS and play a critical role in our modernization mission. You’ll be in good company among our global community of experts leading the future of mainframe modernization. Experts who share knowledge openly and collaborate freely.

A Senior Kafka Operations Engineer is responsible for ensuring the stability, performance, and reliability of Kafka-based data streaming platforms in production. The role focuses on end-to-end operational support, advanced troubleshooting, and enabling development teams to build resilient, high-performing Kafka integrations.

This is a hands-on operational role, working in a 24/7 support environment, with deep involvement in Kafka clients, cluster health, and real-time incident resolution.

What you will do

• Provide 24x7 production support for Kafka environments, ensuring high availability, reliability, and uninterrupted data flow.
• Monitor and optimize Kafka cluster performance, proactively identifying and resolving issues to minimize downtime.
• Troubleshoot end-to-end Kafka ecosystems, including producers, consumers, brokers, clusters, and messaging workflows.
• Diagnose and resolve connectivity, security, and data integration issues, including TLS/SASL authentication, schema compatibility, and serialization failures.
• Drive performance and cluster health improvements by addressing consumer lag, throughput bottlenecks, partition hotspots, broker performance issues, and replication concerns.
  

Your future at Kyndryl

This role opens the door to many career paths, both vertical and horizontal, and there may be opportunity to travel. It’s a great chance for database administrators or other techs to break into the cloud. It’s also a solid path to become enterprise or chief architect or a distinguished engineer! Whatever you see for yourself, you’ll find the opportunity here.

Who You Are

You’re good at what you do and possess the required experience to prove it. However, equally as important – you have a growth mindset; keen to drive your own personal and professional development. You are customer-focused – someone who prioritizes customer success in their work. And finally, you’re open and borderless – naturally inclusive in how you work with others.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum 6-8 years of experience
• Strong experience supporting and administering Apache Kafka in large-scale, production-critical environments.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, Kafka architecture, brokers, partitions, replication, and cluster operations.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot complex Kafka issues across producers, consumers, networking, security, and performance layers.
• Experience performing incident management, root cause analysis (RCA), and driving resolution in 24x7 support environments.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work effectively across engineering and business teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience onboarding and integrating enterprise applications onto Kafka-based event streaming platforms.
• Hands-on expertise with Kafka security frameworks, including TLS, SASL, authentication, and authorization mechanisms.
• Strong knowledge of schema management, serialization technologies, and data streaming best practices.
• Demonstrated success in improving system resilience, operational efficiency, and platform reliability through automation and process optimization.
• Experience serving as a subject matter expert (SME), providing technical guidance, mentoring teams, and supporting critical business initiatives.

Being You

The “Kyn” in Kyndryl means kinship, which represents the strong bonds we have with each other, our customers and our communities. We focus on ensuring all Kyndryls feel included and we welcome people of all cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. Even if you don’t meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply. We believe in growth, and we’re excited to see what you can bring. At Kyndryl, employee feedback has told us that our number one driver of employee engagement is belonging. That sense of belonging — being a valued, respected, trusted member of the team — is fundamental to our culture and fueling great experiences for our customers. This dedication to welcoming everyone into our company means that Kyndryl gives you the ability to thrive and contribute to our culture of empathy and shared success. That’s The Kyndryl Way.

What You Can Expect

Your career with us isn’t just a job—it’s an adventure with purpose. We offer a dynamic, hybrid-friendly culture that supports your well-being and empowers you to grow. Our Be Well programs are thoughtfully designed to support your financial, mental, physical, and social health—because we know that when you feel your best, you do your best.

From your very first day, you’ll dive into impactful work that powers the systems our customers rely on every day. You won’t just contribute—you’ll make a difference, tackling meaningful projects that sharpen your skills and fuel your growth.

We’re here to champion your journey. With powerful tools to chart your career path, personalized development goals aligned with your ambitions, and continuous feedback to keep you inspired and on track, you’ll have everything you need to thrive and evolve. You’ll develop in-demand skills to grow your career and achieve your ambitions with access to cutting-edge learning opportunities—from certifications with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to coaching and hands-on experiences. And through it all, you’ll be part of a culture that values empathy, restless learning, and a devotion to shared success.

We want you to thrive here—and we’re committed to helping you do just that. Ready to make an impact? Join us and help shape what’s next.

Get Referred!

If you know someone that works at Kyndryl, when asked ‘How Did You Hear About Us’ during the application process, select ‘Employee Referral’ and enter your contact's Kyndryl email address.

Kyndryl is the world's largest provider of IT infrastructure services serving thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries.

We design, build, manage and modernize the mission-critical information technology the world depends on every day. Our business quite literally powers the vital systems that run banks, stock markets, airlines, automotive and healthcare companies, governments and more.

Kyndryl is at the heart of progress — dedicated to helping companies and people grow strong. With state-of-the-art resources and Fortune 100 clients, every day is an opportunity to innovate, build new capabilities, new relationships, new processes, and new value. Our people are actively discovering, co-creating, and strengthening.