Senior Engineer - Kafka

What are we building?

Hard Rock Digital is a team focused on becoming the best online sportsbook, casino, and social casino company in the world. We’re building a team that resonates passion for learning, operating and building new products and technologies for millions of consumers. We care about each customer's interaction, experience, behavior, and insight and strive to ensure we’re always acting authentically.

Rooted in the kindred spirits of Hard Rock and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the new Hard Rock Digital taps a brand known the world over as the leader in gaming, entertainment, and hospitality. We’re taking that foundation of success and bringing it to the digital space — ready to join us?

What’s the position?

We are seeking a talented Senior Kafka Engineer to join our team and lead the design and implementation of our Kafka-based streaming platforms. As the Senior Kafka Engineer, you will be responsible for architecting scalable and reliable Kafka solutions that meet our business requirements and support our data processing and analytics initiatives.

• Lead the design and implementation of our Kafka ecosystem, including configuration, deployment, and optimization for reliability, performance and scalability.

• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather requirements and define Kafka use cases and architectures that align with business objectives.

• Design and implement Kafka integration with other data systems and pipelines.

• Implement security measures to protect Kafka clusters and data, including encryption, authentication, and authorization.

• Establish monitoring, alerting, and logging mechanisms to ensure the health and performance of Kafka clusters, and troubleshoot issues as they arise..

• Provide guidance and best practices to development teams on Kafka usage, including producers, consumers, and stream processing applications.

• Collaborate with development teams to define Kafka topics, partitions, and configurations based on application requirements.

• Automate deployment, configuration, and monitoring tasks using tools like Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, or Chef.

• Stay up-to-date with the latest Kafka developments and best practices, and make recommendations for continuous improvement.

Because we operate with a startup mindset, we will be reliant on your technical skill, but also your passion and ownership over all aspects of your work.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for an engineer who is willing to tackle problems with innovative ideas and quality technical implementations. We believe the perfect candidate isn’t interested in just what we’re building right now, but wants to understand where we’re going and how it impacts the customer to ensure everything we create moves us closer to our goal: delivering the best customer experience.

The ideal candidate will have:

• Degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience

• Proven experience as a Kafka Engineer or similar role, with hands-on experience deploying and managing Kafka clusters in production Cloud environments.

• Deep understanding of Kafka architecture, including brokers, topics, partitions, replication, and consumer groups.

• Extensive experience with Kafka administration, monitoring, and troubleshooting.

• Experience with Kafka security features, such as SSL/TLS encryption, Kerberos authentication, and ACLs.

• Experience with Kafka integration patterns and technologies, such as Kafka Connect and and other Kafka ecosystem tools.

• Proficiency in programming and scripting languages, such as Java, Scala, Python, or Shell scripting.

• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AWS (or other cloud platforms)

• Experience with Confluent Cloud or Kafka hosted solutions (e.g., AWS MSK, Redpanda)

• Experience with Java and Spring Boot as it relates to Kafka Consumers & Producers

• Certification in Apache Kafka (e.g., Confluent Certified Developer, Confluent Certified Administrator, Confluent Certified Architect) is a plus.

• Experience with DevOps practices and tools, such as CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code.

What’s in it for you?

We offer our employees more than just competitive compensation. Our team benefits include:

• Competitive pay and benefits

• Flexible vacation allowance

• Flexible work from home or office hours

• Startup culture backed by a secure, global brand

• Opportunity to build products enjoyed by millions as part of a passionate team

Roster of Uniques

We care deeply about every interaction our customers have with us, and trust and empower our staff to own and drive their experience. Our vision for our business and customers is built on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where regardless of background or beliefs you feel able to be authentic and bring all your talent into play. We want to celebrate you being you (we are an equal opportunities employer)